those he suspected—was as eʃective as it was ruthless.
So too was his demand that people spy on one another
and name names.
“Let each man save himself,” he ordered. “Inform me
of troublemakers sought by the Caliph Muawiya. Make
lists of them, and you will be free from harm. Anyone
who refuses will be denied protection, and his blood and
property will be halal”—Ziyad’s to take at will.
With his secret police, his network of informants, his
brutal reprisals, Ziyad ran Iraq much as another dictator
was to run it fourteen hundred years later. Like Saddam
Hussein, he was a Sunni ruling a majority Shia
population. If they pined for Ali, that was their problem.
He could not control their hearts, but he could, and did,
control their every action. He was every bit as ruthless as
Saddam would be, and seemingly as immovable.
Given his purpose, Muawiya had chosen his man in
Iraq well, all the more since he had no fear of Ziyad’s
turning against him. He ensured his new governor’s
absolute loyalty with the least expensive yet most
generous of gestures: the public recognition of Ziyad as a
legal son of Abu Sufyan and thus as Muawiya’s own half
brother. Family ties replaced the stigma of bastardy;
nobility dispelled dishonor. So when Ziyad died, victim
to one of the seventh century’s many localized outbreaks
of the plague, it was perfectly natural that his son
Ubaydallah, now Muawiya’s legal nephew, take his place