After moving to Syria, he became a committed partisan of its governor Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan during the latter's conflict with the Kufa-based Caliph Ali () in the First Muslim Civil War. He served as one of Mu'awiya's envoys to Ali in June 657, a month before the Battle of Siffin between the two sides, which ended in a stalemate. During Mu'awiya's caliphate (661–680) he was a member of the caliph's inner circle, though at point he was surpassed in influence with the Umayyads by his Syrian Kindite rival, Husayn ibn Numayr al-Sakuni. Indeed, there is no record of Shurahbil or his family until the revolt of Yazid ibn al-Muhallab in Iraq in 720 when an unnamed son of Shurahbil was taken prisoner and executed by the rebels and then again during the Third Muslim Civil War in 744, during which a great-grandson of Shurahbil, Simt ibn Thabit ibn Yazid joined his erstwhile rival Mu'awiya ibn Yazid, a grandson of Husayn ibn Numayr, in opposition to Caliph Yazid III. Simt ibn Thabit was later crucified for leading a revolt in Homs against Caliph Marwan II (). The descendants of Shurahbil or rather, his father, temporarily took over Homs during the Fourth Muslim Civil War in the early 9th century.