Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/216



was now the eleventh year of ʿOmar's Caliphate, and though some sixty years of age, he was full of vigour, and vigilant in the discharge of the vast responsibilities devolving on him. In the last month of the year he journeyed, as was his wont, to Mecca; and taking the widows of Moḥammad in his suite, performed with them the full rites of the annual Pilgrimage. He had returned but a few days to Medīna, when his reign came to a tragic and untimely end.

A Persian slave, Abu Luʾluʾa, had been brought by Al-Moghīra from Al-ʿIrāḳ. Made prisoner in his youth by the Greeks, he had early embraced Christianity; and now, taken by the Muslims, his fate was to endure a second captivity as Al-Moghīra's: slave. When the crowd of prisoners was marched into Medīna from the battle of Nihāvend, said to have been Abu Luʾluʾa's birthplace, the sight opened springs of tenderness long pent up; and, stroking the heads of the little ones, he exclaimed: "Verily, ʿOmar hath consumed my bowels!" He followed the trade of carpenter; and his master shared the profits. Meeting ʿOmar in the market-place, he cried out, "Commander of the Faithful! right me of my wrong, for verily Al-Moghīra hath assessed me heavily." "At how much?" asked the Caliph. "At two dirhems a day." "And what is thy trade?" "A carpenter and worker in iron," he said. "It is not much," replied ʿOmar, "for a clever artificer like thee. I am told that thou couldest design for me a mill driven by the wind." "It is true." "Come then," continued the Caliph, "and make me such a mill that shall be driven by the wind." "If spared," 187