Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/140

 635] besides the special gifts for veterans and such as showed extraordinary valour. The jewels stripped from Rustem's body were worth 70,000 pieces, although its most costly portion, the tiara, had been swept away. The great banner of the Empire was captured on the field, made of panthers' skins, and so richly garnished with gems as to be valued at 100,000 pieces. Thus did the needy Arabs revel in the treasures of the East, the preciousness of which exceeded almost their power to comprehend.

For the enemy the defeat was fateful and decisive. Little more than thirty months had passed since Khālid set foot in Al-ʿIrāḳ; and already that Empire,—which fifteen years before had humbled the Byzantine arms, ravaged Syria, and encamped triumphantly on the Bosphorus,—was crumbling under the blows of an enemy whose strength never exceeded thirty or forty thousand Arabs rudely armed. The battle of Al-Ḳādisīya reveals the secret. On one side there was lukewarm, servile following; on the other, an indomitable spirit, which after long and weary hours of fighting nerved the Muslims for the final charge. The vast host, on which the last efforts of Persia had been lavished, was totally discomfited; and, though broken columns escaped across the river, the military power of Persia never again gathered into formidable and dangerous shape. The country far and wide was terror-struck. The Bedawīn on either side of the Euphrates hesitated no longer. Many of them, though Christian, had fought in the Muslim ranks. These came to Saʿd and said: "The tribes which at the first embraced Islām were wiser than we. Now that Rustem hath been slain, we will accept the new belief." And so, many of them came over and made profession of the Faith.

The battle (which De Goeje dates the end of 637) had been so long impending, and the preparations on so grand a scale, that the issue was watched everywhere, "from Al-ʿOdheib away south to Aden, and from Ubulla across to Jerusalem," as about to decide the fate of Islām. The Caliph used to issue forth alone from the gates of Medīna early in the morning, if perchance he might meet some messenger from the field. At last a camel-rider arrived outside the city, who to ʿOmar's question replied shortly, "The Lord hath discomfited the Persian host." Unrecognised, ʿOmar followed