Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/354

 683–92] Zāb, Muṣʿab set out for Al-Kūfa with a fully equipped army. He was met on the way by the troops of Al-Mukhtār, whom he totally discomfited. Al-Mukhtār then rallied his adherents in Al-Kūfa, and himself at their head encountered the enemy just outside the walls; but he was driven back, and with some 8000 followers, mostly Persians, forced to take refuge in the Fort. For several months they held out, but with little sympathy from the citizens at large. At last, driven by hunger and thirst, Al-Mukhtār called on the garrison to go forth with him and fight either for victory or a hero's death. He was followed but by nineteen, and with them met his fate. The rest surrendered at discretion. There was much discussion as to whether these should be spared, or at least those amongst them of Arab blood, who numbered 700. But the army was incensed, and the citizens of Al-Kūfa had no favour for them; and so Muṣʿab gave command, and the whole seven or eight thousand were beheaded. It was a deed of enormous ferocity, and brought Muṣʿab into well-merited disfavour with his brother Ibn az-Zubeir. The hand of the pretender was nailed to the wall of the Mosque, where it remained till taken down by Al-Ḥajjāj; and the cruelties were crowned by putting to death one of the widows of Al-Mukhtār, who refused to speak otherwise than well of her husband's memory. Thus ended the short-lived triumph of Al-Mukhtār, but a year and a half after his seizure of the city. The cause which he championed—that of the Mawāli—seemed lost, but the fire quenched in blood in Al-Kūfa, where the Arabs were strong, broke out again in Khorāsān sixty years later; and this time it was not put out.

During the next two years there was little change in the relations subsisting between the several provinces. ʿAbd al-Melik looked quietly on while Muṣʿab made an end of Al-Mukhtār. The Khawārij kept the East in constant alarm. They scoured the country, made cruel