Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/352

 683–92] gained the victory. An amnesty was called; but from it all who had taken part against Al-Ḥosein were shut out. These including,—besides Shamir, ʿOmar and other leading actors in the tragedy,—no fewer than 284 citizens of lesser note, were ruthlessly put to death. And so Al-Mukhtār at once achieved the ostensible object of his mission, and avenged himself by horrid cruelties upon his enemies. The heads of ʿOmar and his son, slain after he had given them quarter, were sent to Moḥammad Ibn al-Ḥanefīya, with this message,—"I have destroyed every man within my reach concerned in the attack upon Al-Ḥosein, thy martyred brother; and I will yet slay the remainder, if the Lord will." Only a few escaped to Al-Baṣra.

While émeute and slaughter were thus going on, ʿObeidallah had taken Mosul, and was advancing on Al-ʿIrāḳ. Al-Mukhtār, now that he was rid of his foes at home, hurried off the army under Ibn al-Ashtar to meet his arch-enemy. He himself accompanied it a short way, when a scene, worthy of the unprincipled pretender, was enacted to stir the fanatic zeal of the troops. A party of his followers drew near with a worn-out chair borne upon a mule. "The chair of ʿAlī!" cried Al-Mukhtār; "a messenger from heaven sent to slay thousands upon thousands of the wicked ones; even as the ark brought victory unto. the children of Israel!" "Nay!" cried the pious Ibn al-Ashtar, as the crowds with uplifted arms shouted around the chair—"Call it rather the golden calf which led the Israelites astray." The wretched scandal thus countenanced by Al-Mukhtār tended to lower him in the eyes of all the thinking citizens. Meanwhile, with an immense force, ʿObeidallah was advancing from Mosul, and the Kūfan army hurried on to anticipate him before he should invade Al-ʿIrāḳ. The two armies met on the banks of the Zāb at the beginning of the year 67 But there