consolidate his position and wait patiently, and he had
done so in luxury. His palace in Damascus—known as
al-Khadra, the Green One, for its distinctive green-
marbled facing—was ɹner by far than Othman’s in
Medina, yet there was none of the resentment against
him that Othman had seemed to inspire, perhaps
because Muawiya was known for his generosity as much
as for his ruthlessness. In fact, he prided himself on
being exactly as generous and precisely as ruthless as he
needed to be.
“If there be but one hair binding someone to me, I do
not let it break,” he once said. “If he pulls, I loosen; if he
loosens, I pull.” As for any sign of dissent: “I do not apply
my sword where my whip is enough, nor my whip
where my tongue is enough.”
His displeasure, when it was roused, was not a
dictatorial wrath, but something far more subtle and,
because of that, far more chilling. As one of his senior
generals put it, “Whenever I saw him lean back, cross his
legs, blink, and command someone ‘Speak!’ I had pity on
that man.” Yet Muawiya accepted with equanimity the
one thing that might have displeased him most, and that
was his nickname, Son of the Liver Eater. He certainly
recognized the taunt in it, for it was an insult for any
man to be known by his mother’s name instead of his
father’s, as though he had been born out of wedlock. But
he purposely let it ride. “I do not come between people
and their tongues,” he said, “so long as they do not come