Head of security forces According to medieval historian
Ibn Habib, Humayd succeeded Yazid ibn al-Hurr al-Ansi as Caliph Yazid I's
ṣāḥib al-shurṭa (head of security forces), a senior Umayyad governmental post; the
shurṭa served a dual role as the military division that guarded the caliph in battle and the police force of the capital city, in this case
Damascus. However, most medieval Muslim accounts hold that Yazid ibn al-Hurr died just before Caliph Yazid's reign. The latter was an Umayyad commander whose defection during the Battle of Khazir was blamed for the Umayyads' defeat there. The first counter-raid Humayd led was an attack on
Palmyra that killed sixty tribesmen of
Banu Numayr, a branch of the Amir. This was in retaliation to a raid by the end Amir against Musaiyakh in the Samawah (desert between Iraq and Syria), that killed twenty Kalbi tribesmen. According to a report cited by medieval historian
al-Tabari, the two sides fought for an extended period until the women of the Kalb tribe intervened with their children and appealed to Humayd and Sufyan not to kill each other for the sake of the Umayyad family; after another standoff, Humayd ultimately relented and withdrew to Damascus. Amr was later defeated and executed, but Humayd and Abd al-Malik reconciled. In 689, Abd al-Malik dispatched Humayd, along with Kurayb ibn Abraha Abu Rishdin, to
Constantinople to negotiate a treaty with the
Byzantine emperor
Justinian II. The latter were based in
Medina's eastern countryside and had not taken part in the Qaysi–Kalbi war, but by dint of their tribal affiliation and possible assistance to the Amir and Sulaym, they became an alternative target for Humayd. In retaliation, the Fazara killed nearly seventy Kalbi tribesmen at Banat Qayn in the Samawah . ==References==