Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/371

 342 89, when he was superseded by Mūsa, of whom we shall hear more anon.

The progress of the Muslim power during this Caliphate in the far East and beyond the Oxus, was paralysed for a time by the continued jealousies and discord of the Arab tribes that formed its garrison. The story of Mūsa, son of Ibn Khāzim, illustrates both this feeling and the relation in which the independent or protected States beyond the frontier stood towards the Muslim Court. Ibn Khāzim, it will be remembered, having put many of the Beni Temīm to death, was deserted by his followers, and returning to Nīsābūr, sent Mūsa to save his property at Merv, and place it in some stronghold across the Oxus. This he did with a following of one or two hundred mounted men. The Prince of Bokhārā, and other chiefs whom he approached, refused to meet him; but Ṭarkhūn, king of Samarḳand, received him into friendship. One of his followers, however, having killed a Turkoman, he was obliged to fly to Tirmidh, where, treated kindly by the Chief, he took advantage of a feast to seize his fortress. Established there, the Ḳeisites who had served under his father flocked to him, and refugees also from the army of Ibn al-Ashʿath, to the number of some 8000. With their aid, Mūsa beat back not only the Turkomans, but the Muslim columns sent from Merv to dislodge him. Thus prospering, his followers pressed him to recross the river and take possession of Khorāsān. But he was content with the country beyond the Oxus, and with expelling the provincial residents sent from Merv. Al-Muhallab, and after him his sons, thought best to leave him alone; and so for fifteen years Mūsa was undisputed ruler of this great tract. At last, one of Al-Muhallab's sons, thinking to please Al-Ḥajjāj, sent an army against him, which was joined by 15,000 of Ṭarkhūn's Turks; and by these, after a long siege, Mūsa was defeated and slain, 85 But so inveterate were the tribal leanings of Al-Ḥajjāj—(who, as we have lately seen, was vexed at Yezīd having spared some of Ibn al-Ashʿath's followers because they were of Yemeni blood)—that he was little pleased with tidings of the death of Mūsa. "I bade Yezīd," he said, "to slay the Yemeni, and he replied that he had given him quarter; and now his brother hastens to tell me of the death of this noble Ḳeisite, Mūsa, son of Ibn Khāzim, as if, instead