Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/148



was satisfied, as well he might be, with the success achieved. His old spirit of caution revived, and beyond the plain skirted by the hilly range to the east, he strictly forbade a forward movement. Summer of the 16th year of the Hijra was passed in repose at Al-Medāin. The King, with his broken troops, had fled into the Persian mountains; and the people on either bank of the Tigris, seeing opposition vain, readily submitted to the conqueror. In the autumn, the Persians, resolving again to try the chance of arms, flocked in great numbers to Yezdejird at Ḥolwān, about one hundred miles north of Al-Medāin. From thence part of the force advanced to Jalūlā, a fortress held to be impregnable, surrounded by a deep trench, and the outlets guarded by chevaux de frise and spikes of iron. With ʿOmar's sanction, Saʿd pushed forward Hāshim and Al-Ḳaʿḳāʿ at the head of 12,000 men, including the flower of Mecca and Medīna; and they sat down in front of the Citadel. The garrison, reinforced from time to time by the army at Ḥolwān, attacked the besiegers with desperate bravery. Fresh troops were despatched from Al-Medāin, and the siege was prolonged for eighty days. At length, during a vigorous sally, a storm darkened the air; and the Persian columns, losing their way, were pursued to the battlements by Al-Ḳaʿḳāʿ, who seized one of the gates. Thus cut off, they turned in despair upon the Arabs, and a general engagement ensued, which was not surpassed by the Night of Clangour, excepting that it was 119