Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/364

 692–705] Though Al-Ḥajjāj escaped these recent dangers, his viceroyalty was during the next two or three years seriously disturbed by Khawārij of various shades. Some were dissatisfied with a government that seemed to trample on the sanctions of Islām, and preferred return to the days of ʿOmar, under a Caliph to be chosen (some still holding to Ḳoreish, and others not) by the voice of the people at large. The Theocrats, on the other hand, would none of any Caliph—their cry, as of old, was No Rule but the Lord's alone. But all were nerved to action by the tyranny of Al-Ḥajjāj, and by the countenance accorded him by the Caliph. The most dangerous was the latter class. These had no worldly views. As a matter of conscience, they fought with equal bravery whatever the chances of success, goaded by a wild fanaticism. They belonged for the most part to one tribe, the proud Beni Sheibān of Bekr, who had migrated from their settlements on the right bank of the Euphrates to new pasture grounds in northern Mesopotamia. Their leader Shebīb ibn Yezīd, with his few hundreds, put to flight the thousands of Al-Ḥajjāj. By rapid counter-marches, he outmanœuvred his enemy, and with desperate bravery over and again discomfited the columns which, for two years, were continually sent against him. He repeatedly stormed the walls of Al-Kūfa, and on one occasion effecting an entrance, made havoc in the city, and slew many of the worshippers assembled in the Mosque. Abusing the Kūfans in his despatches to the Caliph, for their cowardice, Al-Ḥajjāj was reinforced by a contingent of Syrian troops. With their aid he succeeded at last in dispersing the followers of Shebīb, who was drowned, at the end of the year 77 (Spring, 697 ), by his horse stumbling on a bridge of boats over the river at Al-Ahwāz.

Under Al-Ḥajjāj the revenues from the kharāj or land-tax began to fall off owing to the peasantry flocking into the towns; and he adopted the drastic remedy of forbidding them to migrate and of compelling those who had done so