How should Yazid ibn Mu'awiya be judged?

While answering what Ibn al-Mutahhar al-Hilli said about the killing of al-Husayn, Ibn Taymiyya devoted a chapter of Minhaj al-Sunna to "people on Yazid: two extremes and a middle", setting out three positions on Yazid ibn Mu'awiya, and then returned to the accounts of the killing to sort what he considered established from what he considered fabricated. ^{1 2}

The first extreme. Some people believe, as Ibn Taymiyya relates, that Yazid was a Companion, one of the rightly guided caliphs, or a prophet; he judges all of this false. ²

The second extreme. Others believe he was a hidden unbeliever and hypocrite who meant to avenge his kinsmen among the pagans of Quraysh killed at Badr. They cite verses attributed to him, said when the heads of the slain came into view on the heights of Jayrun, and his quoting the poem of Ibn al-Ziba'ra in which the poet wishes his elders at Badr could witness what had happened. ²

Ibn Taymiyya says that both views are false, as every rational person knows, and that the man was "one of the kings of the Muslims, a caliph of the kingly kind, neither this nor that". ² In the same place he states that al-Husayn was killed wrongfully, a martyr, and that killing him was disobedience to God and His Messenger on the part of whoever killed him, helped to kill him or was content with it. ²

Ibn Taymiyya reports from several authorities that Yazid did not order al-Husayn's killing and had no aim in it; he preferred to honour him, as his father Mu'awiya had advised, though he wanted to keep him from rising against him. When the news reached him he was grieved and his household wept; he cursed "the son of Marjana", meaning Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad, said he would have been content with the obedience of the people of Iraq without al-Husayn's death, and equipped al-Husayn's family well and sent them to Medina. ³ Yet, Ibn Taymiyya states, Yazid "did not take al-Husayn's side, did not order his killer killed, and did not avenge him". ³

Ibn Taymiyya holds that those who related al-Husayn's death added falsehoods to it, as was done with the killing of Uthman and with the campaigns, and that even the scholars who wrote on the killing, such as al-Baghawi and Ibn Abi al-Dunya, transmit broken-chained reports. ⁴ What is established, for him, in the Sahih is that al-Husayn's head was brought before Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad, who struck at his front teeth with a rod while Anas ibn Malik (may God be pleased with him) and Abu Barza al-Aslami (may God be pleased with him) were present; the report that this happened before Yazid has an unknown chain, and he argues it is false because the Companions present at the striking were in Iraq, not Syria. ⁴ He rejects the reports that the women of Banu Hashim were taken captive and paraded through the lands on camels without saddles, saying that Muslims never took a Hashimi woman captive. ³

The two other positions are given only through Ibn Taymiyya's account; the views of other Sunni scholars on cursing Yazid or withholding judgement, the early historians' accounts of the killing from their own sources, and academic studies have not yet been added.