معاوية بن يزيد بن معاوية
Third Umayyad caliph, succeeded by his father's testament in Rabi' I 64 — a righteous youth whose forty-day (or three-month) caliphate passed in illness without public appearance; he refused to name a successor, saying 'I tasted none of its sweetness — why should I shoulder its bitterness?', and died about twenty-one.
Reign · Umayyad Caliphate · no. 3 in the chain · 683–684 CE
Ruled the caliphate
Events of the reign
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Caliphate of Mu'awiya ibn Yazid
Mu'awiya II ibn Yazid succeeded by his father's testament in Rabi' I 64, a righteous youth; he remained ill throughout, never appearing before the people nor leading them in prayer. His caliphate lasted forty days — some say two or three months — and he died aged twenty or twenty-one. When urged at his deathbed to name a successor he answered: 'I have tasted none of its sweetness — why should I shoulder its bitterness?'.
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Ubaydallah ibn Ziyad's flight from Basra after Yazid's death
Al-Dinawari reports that after Yazid's death Ubaydallah ibn Ziyad sought the protection of the Azd, that Basra was left nine days without a governor, and that he then went to Syria and urged Marwan to claim the caliphate.
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The Caliphate of Marwan ibn al-Hakam
After Mu'awiya II's death Marwan ibn al-Hakam rose and mastered Syria then Egypt until he died in 65, having willed the succession to his son Abd al-Malik. Al-Dhahabi judges that Marwan is not reckoned among the commanders of the faithful — he was a rebel in revolt against Ibn al-Zubayr, whose testament to his son carried no validity; Abd al-Malik's caliphate became sound only from Ibn al-Zubayr's death.
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The Second Fitna
Draft card for the Second Fitna, the civil wars of the late Umayyad house after Yazid's death, from Ibn al-Zubayr's rising to the Marwanid restoration under Abd al-Malik; its sources are not yet checked on the page.