Continuation of the explanation of the athar of Abu al-‘Ajlan al-Muharibi, who said: “I was in the army of Ibn al-Zubayr, and a cousin of mine passed away and bequeathed a camel of his in the cause of Allah. So I said to his son, hand over the camel, for I am in the army of Ibn al-Zubayr.”

The Shaykh : This is a man known as Abu al-‘Ajlan al-Muharibi, speaking about himself and what happened between him and one of his relatives. Abu al-‘Ajlan said, “I was in the army of Ibn al-Zubayr.” Ibn al-Zubayr is ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr; his mother was Asma’ bint Abi Bakr al-Siddiq. He was among the younger of the Companions, and al-Zubayr was among the foremost of the early believers and among the ten promised Paradise, about whom the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) said: Then he mentioned the rest of the ten, among whom was al-Zubayr ibn al-‘Awam, the father of ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr who is mentioned in this story.
This Abu al-‘Ajlan was a Tabi‘i who was in the army of Ibn al-Zubayr. When was this? Ibn al-Zubayr rose up against the Umayyads during their caliphate. He was in Makkah and considered himself more deserving of the caliphate than the caliphs of the Banu Umayyah. Therefore, he called people to pledge allegiance to him for the caliphate, even though a caliph was already in place. In his time, ‘Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan the Umayyad was the caliph in the Levant. He had inherited the caliphate from those before him, and the Muslims continued to live under the rule of these caliphs. However, to speak the truth, this caliphate was not established on justice from the beginning. I do not wish to go into details, but I will make a brief reference: al-Husayn (may Allah be pleased with him) was forced to pledge allegiance to Mu‘awiyah ibn Abi Sufyan for the caliphate, and this was in order to spare the blood of the Muslims, so that the followers of al-Husayn, who considered his pledge after ‘Ali to be more rightful than Mu‘awiyah’s, would not fight each other. He relinquished his right and handed the caliphate over to Mu‘awiyah. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) had indicated this reality, and this was one of the many prophecies of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) that point to his truthfulness and that he only spoke by the revelation of his Lord.
That is, the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: He pointed to al-Husayn. And so it was. When al-Husayn relinquished his right, he thereby spared the blood of the two armies: his own army and the army of Mu‘awiyah. In this way, by one of the parties taking the path of relinquishing his right—namely al-Husayn—in order to spare the blood of the Muslims, the caliphate passed from the People of the House to Mu‘awiyah ibn Abi Sufyan. After Mu‘awiyah came Yazid, and so on until the caliphate of ‘Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan. At that time, during the caliphate of ‘Abd al-Malik, ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr called himself caliph, and many people pledged allegiance to him, especially there in the Hijaz. When the Umayyad caliph feared that he would gain strength and that people would gather around ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr, unfortunately, many battles took place between the followers of ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr on one side and the army of ‘Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan on the other, until the matter reached the point where ‘Abd al-Malik’s army attacked ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr in his own home, which was in Makkah. And unfortunately, Makkah was bombarded with catapults until Ibn al-Zubayr was killed while he was defending himself. There is a long story here; the point is that the army of Ibn al-Zubayr is this army.