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If you protect what follows you, then the governors of your land are wolves in the country.
They do not respond to that to which you summon unless you cut off heads with the sword.
[1] Hayat al‐Imam al‐Hasan, vol. 2, p. 202.
In the hands of brave ones endowed with insight; in their striking there are restraints and
punishment.[1] While 'Umar (b. 'Abd al‐'Aziz) delivering a sermon on the pulpit, a man interrupted
him, saying: Surely those whom you have sent in its countries have left your letter and regarded
as lawful the unlawful. Those whose clothes are dirty (are sitting) on the pulpits of our land; all of
them tyrannize (the people) and all of (the people) complain (of them).
You want a just one from among them to undertake the trust. How far is the trustworthy
Muslim![2] The governors and the collectors went too far in persecuting the Islamic society and
depriving it of its economic elements. They did not do that willingly; rather the Umayyad kings
commanded them to do it; it was they who urged them to plunder and shared them with that
which they took from they people. This meaning has frankly been mentioned in what Fanflotin has
said: "And in stead of that the Caliphs‐the Umayyad Caliphs‐took measures to punish the
governors and to prevent them from oppression, we find them shared with them in their interests
of the properties which they collected through those exposed ways. This means that the Caliphs
were consent with the bad behavior of the governors toward the people of the country, as well it
is a proof of that some of them was at first interested in the interests of the central treasury."[3]
Certainly the Umayyad kings did not punish their governors and their collectors for what they
committed such as excessive oppression, and plundering the properties of the community in a
horrible way. It was they who urged them to do that; the more oppressive and tyrannical the
governor was, the more close to them he was. For example, Ziyad b. Abeeh was the closest of all
the people to Mu'awiya, to the extent that he made him belong to him in lineage. That was due to
his violence, tyranny, quick assassinating the Muslims. Yet another example of that is al‐Hajjajj b.
Yousif al‐Thaqafi. He was the nearest of all the governors to 'Abd al‐Malik (b. Merwan) and the
most preferred of them to him, to the extent that he entrusted the affair of Iraq to him and he
acted freely wherein and in whatever a way he wished. That is due to his violence and his going
too far in shedding blood.
Any way, the tyranny and oppression of the governors toward the Muslims was among the
reasons for the great revolt that overthrew the regime of the Umayyad government and folded its
authorities.
[1] Al‐Jahiz, al‐Bayyan wa al‐Tabiyyin, vol. 3, p. 358.
[2] Ibid., 359.
[3] Al‐Siyada al‐'Arabiya, p. 28.
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