/p. 69/ .. .Mu'awiya, Hudhayfa, the son of his sister, and Mu'awiya
gave orders that he be‘put to death.
‘Ali, too, threatened to go up once again against Mu'awiya, but
they struck him while he was at prayer in al-Hira
133 /p. 70/ and
killed him.
134 Mu'awiya (then) went down to al-Hira, where all
the Arab forces there proffered their right hand to him,
135
whereupon he returned to Damascus.
In AG 970, the 17th year of Constans, on a Friday in June,
136
at the second hour,
there was a violent earthquake in Palestine, and
many places there collapsed.
In the same month the bishops of the Jacobites, Theodore and
Sabukht
137 came to Damascus and held an inquiry into the Faith
with the Maronites
138 in the presence of Mu'awiya. When the
Jacobites were defeated, Mu'awiya ordered them to pay 20,000 denarii
and commanded them to be silent. Thus there arose the custom that the
Jacobite bishops should pay that sum of gold every year to Mu'awiya,
so that he would not withdraw his protection and let them be persecuted
by the members of the (Orthodox) Church. The person called
‘patriarch’ by the Jacobites fixed the financial burden that all the
convents of monks and nuns should contribute each year towards the
payment in gold and he did the same with all the adherents of his faith.
He bequeathed his estate to Mu'awiya,
139 so that out of fear of
that man all the Jacobites would be obedient to him.
On the ninth of the same month in which the disputation with the
Jacobites took place, on a Sunday at the eighth hour,
there was an
earthquake.
140
In the same year King Constans ordered his brother Theodosius to
be put to death - quite unjustly and without any fault on his part,
according to what many people said. Many were grieved at his violent
end and they say that the citizens chanted slogans {Gr. phonas} against
the King, calling him a second Cain, murderer of his brother. In great
anger he left his son Constantine on /p. 71/ his throne and himself set
out for the north, taking the queen and the whole Roman fighting force
with him, against foreign peoples.
In AG 971, Constans’s 18th year, many Arabs gathered at Jerusalem
and made Mu'awiya king
141 and he went up and sat down on
Golgotha; he prayed there, and went to Gethsemane and went down to
the tomb of the blessed Mary to pray in it. In those days, when the
Arabs were assembled there with Mu'awiya,
there was an earthquake
and a violent tremor and the greater part of Jericho fell, including all
its churches, and of the House of Lord John at the site of our Saviour’s
baptism in the Jordan every stone above the ground was overthrown,
together with the entire monastery. The monastery of Abba Euthymius
as well as many convents of monks and solitaries and many other places
also collapsed in this (earthquake).
In July of the same year the emirs and many Arabs gathered and
proffered their right hand to Mu'awiya. Then an order went out that
he should be proclaimed king in all the villages and cities of his
dominion and that they should make acclamations and invocations {Gr.
phonas, kleseis} to him. He also minted gold and silver, but it was not
accepted, because it had no cross on it. Furthermore, Mu'awiya did
not wear a crown like other kings in the world. He placed his throne
in Damascus and refused to go to Muhammad’s throne.
The following year there was frost in the early morning of
Wednesday, 13 April, and the white grapevines were withered by
it.
142
When Mu'awiya had acquired the power which he had aimed at and
was at rest from the (civil) wars of his people, he broke the peace
settlement with the Romans and refused to accept peace from them any
longer. Rather he said, ‘If the Romans want /p. 72/ peace, let them
surrender their weapons, and pay the tax {Ar. jizya}.’
[one folio missing]
this section starts by describing a battle
133 Arabic sources say he was killed at a mosque in Kufa; ‘Ali is,
however, described as governor of al-Hira by a Palestinian Christian
writing c.680 (Brock, ‘An early Syriac’Life’, p. 313/319). [R.H.]
134 Arabic sources are generally agreed that ‘Ali was killed in
Ramadan 40 (January 661 = AG 972). Our chronicler may have been
misled by the fact that ‘the Syrians acknowledged Mu'awiya as caliph
in Dhu ’l-Qa‘da 37 (April 658=969)’ (Tabari, 11, p. 199), or he may
be better informed than we. Theophanes, p. 347 also places ‘Ali’s
death earlier than the accepted date, in 659/60. [R.H.]
135 By this is probably meant the glancing gesture of right palm
against right palm by which Arabs today seal a contract; see text No.
10 under AG 967.
136 7 June, AD 659.
137 {Syr. SBKWT).
138 Literally: ‘those of the House of Lord Maron.’
139 Literal1y he made himself a legator of Mu'awiya {Syr. wa-'bad napseh mawr' tono d-Mu'awiya}.
140 9 June, AD 659, was indeed a Sunday.
141 Allegiance was rendered to Mu'awiya in Jerusalem after the death
of ‘Ali in the year 40 (February 661=972: Tabari, II, p. 4); ‘the
people as a whole’ recognized him after ‘Ali’s‘ son, Hasan had made
peace with him and turned matters over to him in the year 41, five days
before the end of the month of Rabi' I (31 July 661=972)
(Tabari,
II, p. 199). Again, our chronicler may have inside information, but
one suspects that he has brought forward Mu'awiya’s accession and
tour in Jerusalem to coincide with the earthquake of 659, the latter
being in his mind an evident indication of God’s disapproval of the
former event. Note that the entry for ‘the following year’, a severe
frost, falls in 662, not 660. [R.H.]
142 The weekday shows that this was AD 662
