The Truce of Hasan with Muawiya

صلح الحسن مع معاوية

41 AH

The truce between Hasan and Muawiya was concluded at Maskin. Hasan then withdrew to Medina, and Muawiya sent Busr ibn Abi Artat to Basra in Rajab 41 AH ^{1 2}. According to al-Suyuti, the people of Kufa had acclaimed Hasan caliph after his father's killing, and he stayed there six months and some days; then Muawiya marched against him, and Hasan offered to hand him the command, on condition that the succession pass to Hasan after him, that Muawiya pursue no one of the people of Medina, the Hijaz or Iraq for anything done in their father's days, and that Muawiya settle his debts. Muawiya agreed to what he asked. Hasan's stepping down was in 41 AH, in Rabi' I according to the best-known account. His companions cried, 'O shame of the believers!', and he answered that shame is better than the Fire; to one who reproached him he said that he had not humiliated the believers but disliked having to kill you over kingship; and to Jubayr ibn Nufayr he said that the chiefs of the Arabs had been in his hand, fighting whom he fought and making peace with whom he made peace, and that he had left it all seeking God's face and sparing the blood of Muhammad's community ³. According to al-Mas'udi, Amr ibn al-As (may God be pleased with him) advised Muawiya at Kufa to order Hasan to preach, to expose his supposed poor eloquence; Muawiya disliked this but obeyed. Hasan spoke extemporaneously: God guided you through our first and spared your blood through our last, this affair has its term, and the world turns in rounds. Then he said, 'O people of Kufa, were my soul not distracted from you by three things, it would be distracted by your killing my father, plundering my baggage and stabbing me in the belly.' The Kufans had looted his pavilion and stabbed him with a dagger; when he saw what had befallen him he yielded to the truce ⁴.