Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/278

 656] rivalry were now substituted other passions. Clans were broken up, and it became in some measure a contest between the two rival cities; "The Beni Ar-Rabīʿa of Al-Kūfa fought against the Beni Ar-Rabīʿa of Al-Baṣra, the Beni Moḍar of the one against the Beni Moḍar of the other;" and so on, with the various tribes, and even with families, one part arrayed against the other. The Al-Kūfa ranks were urged on by the regicides, who felt that, unless ʿAlī conquered, they were all doomed men. The fierceness and obstinacy of the battle can be only thus accounted for. One of the combatants tells us that "when the opposing sides came together breast to breast, with a furious shock, the noise was like that of washermen at the riverside." The attitude of the leaders was in marked contrast with the bitter struggle of the ranks. Az-Zubeir, half-hearted since his interview with ʿAlī, left the battlefield according to his promise, and was killed in an adjoining valley. Ṭalḥa, disabled by an arrow in the leg, was carried into Al-Baṣra, where he died. Bereft of their leaders, the insurgent troops gave way. They were falling back upon the city, when they passed by the camel of ʿĀisha. Attacked fiercely all around, she from within her litter kept crying out with fruitless energy,—"Slay the murderers of ʿOthmān." The word ran through the retiring ranks, that "the Mother of the Faithful was in peril," and they gallantly stayed their flight to rescue her. Long and cruelly the conflict raged around the fated camel. One after another brave warriors rushed to seize her standard; one after another they were cut down. Of Ḳoreish seventy perished by the bridle. At last, ʿAlī, perceiving that her camel was the rallying-point of the enemy, sent one of his captains to hamstring, and thus disable it. With aloud cry the animal fell to the ground. The struggle ceased and the insurgents retired into the city. The litter, bristling with arrows like a hedgehog, was taken down, and, by desire of ʿAlī, placed in a retired spot, where ʿĀisha's brother Moḥammad pitched a tent for her. As he drew aside the curtain, she screamed at the unknown intrusion;—"Are thine own people, then," he said, "become strange unto thee?" "It is my brother!" she exclaimed, and suffered herself to be led into the tent. The brave but wayward lady had escaped without a wound.