Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/324

 661–80] turbulent city, now patrolled incessantly by an armed police of a thousand men. None might venture abroad at night on pain of death; and so ruthless was the order, that an unlucky Arab, wandering unawares into the precincts, was executed for the involuntary offence. His best friends were the Azd, especially those lately arrived from ʿOmān, and he did not forget their services. The supremacy of law, an experience new to Al-Baṣra, repressed rebellion, and effectually enforced order where strife and faction had heretofore prevailed.

On Al-Moghīra's death, he was elevated to the governorship of Al-Kūfa also, and his habit was to spend half the year there and half at Al-Baṣra. A reign of terror now began. At the first address of his representative in the Mosque of Al-Kūfa, stones were cast at him. Ziyād came from Al-Baṣra. To discover the offenders, all present were put to the oath, and some fifty men who refused to swear had their hands cut off. The ʿAlid faction which reviled ʿOthmān abounded in both cities, and strong measures were no doubt needful to repress conspiracy; but cruelty and bloodshed went far beyond the bounds of need. Tales abound of parties refusing to curse the memory of ʿAlī—one especially, headed by the grandson of the famous Ḥātim of the tribe of Ṭaiʾ —being ruthlessly beheaded; and the tyranny thus inaugurated by Ziyād casts a dark stain upon his memory. The gravel in the Mosque was replaced by a pavement, and the clan system in the army was broken up.

From Iṣṭakhr, Ziyād brought with him the pride of an Oriental court. Abroad he was followed. by a crowd of silver-sticks and lictors, and at his gate 500 soldiers mounted guard. He was the most powerful lieutenant the Caliphate yet had seen. The entire East was subject to him. From the Oxus and the Indus to the Persian Gulf his sway was absolute. His sons held important commands in Khorāsān and the frontier; but the most famous, or infamous, of them was ʿObeidallah, who became governor of Al-Baṣra. One of these carried with him 50,000 citizens of Al-Kūfa, whom by a wise policy he