Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/128

635] campaign, and warned him not to trust in his extraction. "The Lord," he said, "looketh to merit and good works, notto birth; for in His sight all men are equal." Admonished thus, Saʿd set out for Al-ʿIrāḳ with 4000 men, the first-fruits of the new levy. According to Arab custom, these marched now with their wives and children.

As the levies kept coming in, ʿOmar sent them on, one after another, to join Saʿd. The numbers swelling rapidly, embraced the chivalry of all Arabia. Ṭoleiḥa, the quondam prophet, now an exemplary believer, and ʿAmr ibn Maʿdīkerib, went in command of their respective tribes; and ʿOmar wrote that each alone was worth a thousand men. Al-Ashʿath, also, the apostate rebel of the south, now joined the army with a column of his tribe. In short, ʿOmar "left not a single person of any note or dignity in the land, whether warrior, poet, orator, or chieftain, nor any man possessed of horse or weapons, but he sent him off to Al-ʿIrāḳ." Thus reinforced, Saʿd found himself at the headof 20,000 men, so that, with the column now on its way fromSyria, the numbers were over 30,000,—by far the largest force yet mustered by the Arabs on the Chaldæan plain. The new levies, with the veterans of Al-Muthanna, drew together at Esh-Shureif on the borders of the desert, fifteen or twenty miles south of Al-Ḥīra.

Before Saʿd reached the appointed rendezvous, Al-Muthanna had passed away. His brother Al-Moʿanna was just returning from a mission to the Beni Bekr, whom the Court of Persia were endeavouring to gain over. He went out to meet Saʿd with intelligence of his having frustrated the attempt, as well as with the sad news of his brother's death. He delivered also Al-Muthanna's dying message to the new Commander, advising that the Arabs should hold to their ground on the confines of the desert. "Fight there the enemy," was his last behest;—"Ye will be the victors; and, even if worsted, ye will have the friendly desert wastes behind: there the Persians cannot enter, and from thence ye will again return to the attack." Saʿd, as he received the message, blessed the memory of the great General. He also made the bereaved family his special care; and, the more effectually to discharge the trust, in true Arab fashion, took to wife his widow Selma.