elevated spiritual one, and it had been clear to Muawiya
from the beginning which of them would prevail, at
least in terms of worldly success. One was destined to eat
dust and thorns; the other to contemplate his slave girls
and thoroughbred horses.
The Iraqis might still have posed a problem. They had
sworn allegiance, but Muawiya had no intention of
relying on their oaths. These were the people who had
pledged themselves to Ali yet disobeyed him, then
pledged again to Hasan and turned on him. Muawiya
was determined to ensure not their loyalty—he was
hardly so foolish as to expect that—but their continued
submission. All that was needed was the right man for
the job. If the Kufans had been as glad to see Hasan go as
he had been to leave them, they would soon change their
minds.
Ziyad, the veteran general appointed by Muawiya as
the new governor of Iraq, was also one of the toughest.
He had once been known as Ibn Abihi—the “Son of His
Father”—and the identity of that father had been a
matter of both dispute and entertainment. The most
consistent rumors had it that Ziyad was a bastard son of
Muawiya’s father, Abu Sufyan. Some said that his
mother had been a concubine of Abu Sufyan’s; others
swore that she had been a prostitute; yet others that
worse still, she had been a Christian, and Ziyad was “the
son of a blue-eyed mother.” But nobody called him Ibn
Abihi any longer, not unless they wanted to be burned