Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/302

 658] over. He bore with their seditious talk; and made his intention known of treating them forbearingly. "They should have free access to the mosques for prayer. If they joined his army, they would share the booty like the rest. So long as they refrained from any overt act, he would use no force of arms against them."

Instead of pacifying the fanatics, this moderation but emboldened them. At last, when the umpires' judgment was delivered, they denounced it as amply justifying their secession, and resolved at once to raise the divine standard. They looked for heavenly interposition; but even if they perished, it was a righteous cause which must triumph in the end; and they themselves, protesting against a wicked world, would surely be inheritors of the world to come. Accordingly, about a month after the arbitration, they began, in concert with the brethren who sympathised with them at Al-Baṣra, to leave their homes by stealth. The conspirators from Al-Baṣra, 500 strong, under a Tamīmite, were pursued by the governor, but effecting their escape, joined the party which in greater force had issued forth from Al-Kūfa. Secular power, and the pomp of this life, were abhorrent from the covenanting creed; and it was only after many had declined the dangerous pre-eminence, and then simply as a temporary expedient, that a leader was prevailed on to accept the chief command. The design was to seize Al-Medāin, and there, under a Council of Representatives, establish theocratic rule as a model to the ungodly cities all around. But the governor had timely warning and repulsed the attempt. They passed on, and: in small bodies crossing the Tigris farther up, assembled at Nahrawān 4000 strong, under a chief of their own choice, ʿAbdallah ibn Wahb.

Like all fanatics, they would strain out a gnat and swallow a camel. They perpetrated terrible atrocities; but one of them having speared a pig went away to compensate its owner, and another would not eat a date which he had picked up because he had not paid for it.

ʿAlī did not at first recognise the serious bearing of the movement. The number was comparatively small; and he hoped that, immediately they saw their former comrades in