Nasb-and-the-Nawasib

Furthermore, just as people fight for the procurement of leadership, they
likewise do everything within their capacity to preserve it. The Umayyads were
no different in this regard and were not immune from becoming victims of greed
for continuous power even if it meant sacrificing a lot. This was the primary
reason why ʿAlī I and some of his sons had suffered much at the hands of the
Umayyads.
Hence Ibn Taymiyyah mentions that Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiyah did not execute the
killers of Ḥusayn I nor he did avenge his murder in any way. Rather he killed
his supporters and aiders in order to firmly ground his kingdom. 1
This was not something unique to the Umayyads, i.e. their in-house fighting or
their fights against the Alawids. For many of the events which transpired in the
first century were due to greed for the world. This was precisely what Rasūl Allah
H had feared for his Ṣaḥābah M:
فوالله ما الفقر أخشى عليكم،‏ ولكني أخشى أن تبسط عليكم الدنيا كما بسطت على من كان قبلكم،‏
فتنافسوها كما تنافسوها فتهلككم كما أهلكتهم
By Allah it is not poverty that I fear upon you. But I fear that the world
will be given to you in abundance just as it was given to those before you
in abundance. It will thus prompt you to vie with one another just as
they vied with one another, and it will consequently destroy you just as it
destroyed them. 2
Ibn Kathīr has stated that this ḥadīth came to the fore in the eras of ʿAlī and
Muʿāwiyah L. 3
1 Majmūʿ Fatāwā Shaykh al-Islam 4/506.
2 The ḥadīth of ʿAmr ibn ʿAwf al-Anṣārī which appears in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī: Chapter of battles: subchapter
regarding the presence of the angels in Badr: ḥadīth no. 3791; Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim: Chapter regarding
disinclination from the world and heart softening narrations: ḥadīth no. 2961.
3 Al-Bidāyah wa al-Nihāyah 6/190; Fatḥ al-Bārī 6/614.
293