Note 546 — Chapter VI

We have already (see vol. I. p. 100, note) touched upon the enmity which existed between the family of Alí and that of Moaviah, the son of Abu Sofian and of Hinda, a woman famous for her animosity against Muhammed, the prophet. Nevertheless Moaviah became one of the secretaries of Muhammed, after whose death he was appointed to the government of Syria by Omar, and confirmed in that station by Osman. After the violent death of this khalif, Moaviah declared himself the avenger of his protector, and would not submit to Alí, upon whom he waged war during four years, and after whose death he opposed with equal ardour Hasan, who succeeded his father in the khalifat. Surrounded by rebellion in his own camp, Hasan could not resist, but resigned his right and person to Moaviah. He died in Medina of poison given him, as some say, by his wife, Jáda, or by his minister, at the injunction of Moaviah (see Elmacin, trad. Erpenii, p. 56); according to others, in concordance with the Dabistán, by the fraud of Moaviah’s son, Yazid, who seduced Jáda, and instigated her to poison her husband, promising to marry her, but after the perpetration of the act, rejected, with scorn, the woman supplicating for the price of her deed. I shall add, according to Abulfeda (edit. of Reiske, p. 350), that in Hasan terminated (A. D. 661) the legitimate khalifat, or the succession of chiefs whom the free consent of the Muslims called and established, and thus was fulfilled the prediction of the prophet, which from the mouth of Safina, his freeman, is recorded in the traditions as follows: “Thirty years after his decease shall last the true and legitimate khalifat, and then be succeeded by tyranny.”