Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/367

 338 great battle was fought. The leader of the Ḳorʾān-Readers of the day, and mainstay of the rebels falling early in the fight, his followers fled in dismay, and the army, thus disheartened, was totally discomfited. Ibn al-Ashʿath retired hastily to Al-Baṣra, and was there joined by many followers, who, though an amnesty was proclaimed, covenanted to fight under him to the death. Pursued by Al-Ḥajjāj, he was again beaten in a heavy engagement on the Persian border, and thence effected his escape to Kirmān. Eventually he took refuge with Zunbīl, who a year or two afterwards sent his head to Al-Ḥajjāj. He is said to have died or committed suicide.

In his flight Ibn al-Ashʿath had been followed to the East by some 60,000 of his defeated troops, who, either hating Al-Ḥajjāj, or too deeply compromised in rebellion, refused the amnesty. These, failing to induce Ibn al-Ashʿath to leave his protector and again try the fortune of war, set out on their own behalf, and, under ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān ibn al-ʿAbbās al-Hāshimi, took possession of Herāt. Yezīd, son of Al-Muhallab, governor at Merv, ordered them to evacuate the place and move elsewhere; but, choosing rather to fight, they were by him defeated and dispersed. Many were taken prisoners, and those of note sent to Al-Ḥajjāj at Wāsiṭ, which was then a-building; and he, both now and after the recent engagements in Al-ʿIrāḳ, shed the blood of his captives with unsparing hand and heartless cruelty. He was on this occasion vexed with Yezīd for having pardoned some leading men, because, as he suspected, they were of his own Yemeni blood, while Al-Ḥajjāj himself was of Ḳeis; and this is assigned as the reason for his shortly after superseding Yezīd and his brothers by the famous Ḳoteiba.

The rebellion of Ibn al-Ashʿath was a revolt of the Arabs of Al-ʿIrāḳ against their Syrian masters, an aftermath of the old enmity between the kings of Ghassān and those of Al-Ḥīra. Ibn al-Ashʿath himself was of Kinda, a descendant of a race of kings, and he looked upon Al-Ḥajjāj as a plebeian; but the tribes of Hamdān, Temīm, Bekr, and others were on his side. The question of pensions also came in, the ʿIrāḳites demanding equality with the Syrians in that respect.