Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/360

 683–92] unequal fight. The heads of Ibn az-Zubeir and two of his leaders were exhibited at Medina, and thence sent on to Damascus. Al-Ḥajjāj, giving thus early proof of his hard and cruel nature, had the pretender's body impaled on the outskirts of the Holy City. ʿAbd al-Melik blamed him for his inhumanity, and bade him give the body up to Asmā, by whose loving hands it was washed and committed to the grave.

Thus ended the rule of Ibn az-Zubeir, a man of noble but inactive spirit, who for nine years held the title, and much also of the real power, of Caliph. He died aged seventy-two.

His mother, Asmā, is the same who, at the Hijra, seventy-three years before, tore off her girdle to bind with it the Prophet's wallet to his camel as he took his flight from the cave of Mount Thaur, and thus earned the historic name of "She of the shreds." It is one of the last links that connect the Prophet with the chequered days on which we have now entered. What a world of events had transpired within the lifetime of this lady!

The only one of Ibn az-Zubeir's governors who remained faithful to his memory was Ibn Khāzim, now fighting with the rival clans of Khorāsān. ʿAbd al-Melik offered, if he swore allegiance, to confirm him in Khorāsān; but he indignantly rejected the offer. "I would have slain the envoy," he said, "had he not been of my own Ḳeis blood." But he made him swallow the Caliph's letter. Thereupon ʿAbd al-Melik sent him the head of Ibn az-Zubeir, in order to assure him of his end. Ibn Khāzim embalmed the relic, and forwarded it to the family of the deceased. He was shortly after slain in battle by one whose brother he had put to death in the intertribal warfare.