Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/40

 20 THE DECLINE AND FALL royalty, expired in iron fetters in the dungeons of Haran. His two younger brothers, SafFah *- and Ahiiansor,*-^ eluded the search of the tyrant, and lay concealed at Cufa, till the zeal of the people and the approach of his eastern friends allowed them to expose their persons to the impatient public. On Friday, in the dress of a caliph, in the colours of the sect, SafFah proceeded with religious and military pomp to the mosque ; ascending the pulpit, he prayed and preached as the lawful successor of Maho- met ; and, after his departure, his kinsmen bound a willing people by an oath of fidelity. But it was on the banks of the Zab, and not in the mosque of Cufa, that this important contro- versy was determined. Every advantage appeared to be on the side of the white faction : the authority of established govern- ment ; an army of an hundred and twenty thousand soldiers, g*arw.-.^. against a sixth part of that number ; *^^ and the presence and merit of the caliph Mervan, the fourteenth and last of the house of Ommiyah. Before his accession to the throne, he had deserved, by his Georgian warfare, the honourable epithet of the ass of Mesopotamia ; ^* and he might have been ranked among the greatest princes, had not, says Abulfeda, the eternal order decreed that moment for the ruin of his family : a decree against which all human prudence and fortitude must struggle in vain. The orders of Mervan were mistaken or disobeyed ; the return of his horse, from which he had dismounted on a necessary occa- sion,-^ impressed the belief of his death ; and the enthusiasm of the black squadrons was ably conducted by Abdallah, the uncle of his competitor. After an irretrieveable defeat, the caliph escaped to Mosul ; but the colours of the Abbassides were dis- played from the rampart ; he suddenly repassed the Tigris, cast a melancholy look on his palace of Haran, crossed the Euphrates, abandoned the fortifications of Damascus, and, without halting in Palestine, pitched his last and fatal camp at Busir on the banks praises the courafje of that warlike breed of asses who never fly from an enemy. The surname of Mervan may justify the comparison of Homer (Iliad v. 557, &c. ), and both will silence the moderns, who consider the ass as a stupid and ignoble emblem (d'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient, p. 558). ■*■' [This motive seems to have been drawn from Persian sources — Gibbon took it from Herhelot. We must rather follow Tabari's p.ccount. Marwansent his son with some troops back to the camp to rescue his money. This back movement was taken by the rest of the army as a retreat and they all took to flight. See Weil, op. cit. i. p. 701 ; Tabari, ed. de Goeje, iii. 38 sqq.
 * 2[Abd Allah Abu-1-Abbas al-Saffah (the bloody), caliph 750-754.]
 * [Abu-Jafar Mansur, caliph 754-775.]
 * ^^[So Tabari, ed. de Goeje, iii. 45.]
 * Al Hamar. He had been governor of Mesopotamia, and the Arabic proverb