This was naturally intolerably painful for Ziyad who was...

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…