earth methods.
After ɹve years of civil war, law and order would
prevail. The empire that had teetered on the brink of
disintegration would be rescued. Muawiya was to rule
for nineteen years, and on his death—of natural causes,
itself a sign of political stability—his eulogist would call
him “the rod and the blade of the Arabs, by means of
whom God cut oʃ strife.” Whatever part he had taken in
creating that strife was not the stuff of eulogies.
With Kufa newly submissive, the man who had mused
that “I like nothing better than a bubbling spring in an
easy land” now went about assuring himself of just that.
He took great delight in the rewards of power, tempered
only by a certain ironic sensibility—in many ways a
very modern one. It’s said that one time, as he watched
the arrival in Damascus of a caravan full of Arabian
horses and Caucasian slave girls, he sighed with
satisfaction at how good the caliphate had been to him.
“May God have pity on Abu Bakr, for he did not want
this world, nor the world him,” he said. “Then the world
wanted Omar, but he did not want the world. And then
Othman used up this world, and it used up him. But me
—I revel in it!”
He did not even mention Ali, editing him out of
thought as if he could edit him out of history. But at that
point in time, history surely seemed his to write. His was
the subtle political mind that had gone up against Ali’s