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him. He could be a potential danger for
the newly risen Umayyads, and thus Mu'awiyah could not
disregard him. This man was Ziyad who must be brought
under Mu'awiyah's banner by every possible means, to
benefit from his cunning and craftiness in the interest
of his rule. Therefore, without bothering about religion
and its injunctions and without fearing the alteration
of divine verdicts, he tried to find a solution. In
all aspects of his life what was predominant were worldly
matters, deceits and transient joys of the world, and
so in this course, too, no alternative remained for
him but worldly methods.
Ziyad ibn Abihi had been the son of a slave named 'Ubayd
who had married a notorious prostitute named Sumayyah.
Thus from a family viewpoint, Ziyad had no worth in
the Arab society. His father was regarded as a low creature
according to the Arab custom and tradition. He was a
slave lacking Arab blood. Therefore he was scorned for
having a slave father and for his own non-Arab blood.
This was naturally intolerably painful for Ziyad who
was gradually gaining a position for himself, and he
longed to be delivered from these fetters.
Mu'awiyah was aware of all these conditions. So he resorted
to a plan from which there was no escape for Ziyad.
What he did was to place his finger on his Achilles
heel, and by proposing to call him his brother, he won
his agreement o ubmit o he Umayyad rule and abstain
from disobedience.
On his own part, Ziyad realized that from the viewpoint
of lineage in being introduced as Mu'awiyah's brother,
he was joining the most famous and strongest Arab tribe,
and his father was no longer a slave named 'Ubayd, but
it was Abu Sufyan, chief of the Quraysh and father of
his brother Mu'awiyah. Until yesterday he was regarded
as an ordinary man of an ordinary descent, but now he
had become the brother of the caliph of the time.(201)
al-Mas'udj and Ibn al-Athir and other famous historians
report this grafting of Ziyad with the Umayyad house
as follows: Sumayyah, Ziyad's mother, was a slave-girl
of al-Harath ibn Kaldah ath-Thaqafi, a well-known Arab
physician. This woman was one of the most notorious
prostitutes who lived in the town of at-Ta'if in the
prostitutes' quarter where a red
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