acknowledged that he was “an inexperienced young
man.” So when news came that Muawiya was planning
to dispatch Amr to take over Egypt, Ali sent one of his
most experienced generals to shore up the province’s
northern defenses. The general traveled by ship from
Arabia instead of taking the land route through
Palestine so that he could avoid Muawiya’s agents, but
that was wishful thinking. When his boat docked, he
was welcomed with a great show of hospitality by the
chief customs oɽcer, a man already well “sweetened” by
Muawiya, and oʃered the customary honeyed drink in
welcome.
The poison in it killed him within hours. As Amr
would later say, “Muawiya had armies in honey.”
Poison has none of the heroics of battle. It works
quietly and selectively, one might almost say discreetly.
For Muawiya, it was the perfect weapon.
His personal physician, Ibn Uthal, a Christian and a
noted alchemist, was an expert on poisons, as was his
successor, Abu al-Hakam, also a Christian. Their records
no longer exist, but Ibn Washiya’s Book on Poisons,
written in ninth-century Baghdad as a guide for his son,
has survived.
Equal parts biology, alchemy, and superstition, Ibn
Washiya’s work constituted the state of the art for
centuries to come. One section deals with poisons that