Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/377

348 governors, of embezzlement. Having to set out on a campaign against the Kurds, he took them with his camp, under a Syrian guard. Yezīd was subjected to torture, which he bore with fortitude; but on one occasion the instrument of torture pierced his leg, and he cried aloud. His sister, one of Al-Ḥajjāj's wives, alarmed at the cry, screamed, whereupon the tyrant divorced her on the spot. The prisoners were fortunate enough to effect their escape; and Al-Ḥajjāj, thinking they had fled to Khorāsān, warned Ḳoteiba of the danger. But they had taken horse in the opposite direction, and fled to Ramleh in Palestine, where they took refuge with Suleimān, the Caliph's brother. Al-Ḥajjāj was instant with the Caliph that Yezīd should be delivered up; whereupon Suleiman sent him, and his own son with him, to Damascus, both in chains, with a letter supplicating mercy. Al-Welīd, touched at the sight, let them depart in peace, and forbade Al-Ḥajjāj to interfere. Yezīd continued to live with the heir-apparent as his intimate and, as we shall see hereafter, favourite courtier. His tribe, the Azd, was also that of the mother of Suleimān.

During the remainder of his life we do not hear much of Al-Ḥajjāj, and it was well for him that he died before Al-Welīd, for he had given mortal offence to Suleimān, whose right of succession Al-Welīd desired to set aside in favour of his son, and the design was encouraged by Al-Ḥajjāj. But the wrath of Suleimān, though escaped by the father, fell, as we shall see, with terrible severity on his family and adherents, Al-Ḥajjāj stands out in the annals of Islām as the incarnation of cruelty. But the Caliphate owed much to him. For twenty years, the absolute ruler of the East in times of trouble and danger, with anarchy abroad, perversity and fickleness at home, rebellion and wild fanaticism at his doors, Al-Ḥajjāj, by his bravery and resolution, maintained the strength and restored the prosperity of the Empire in Al-ʿIrāḳ, ʿArabia, and Khorāsān. Severity was no doubt often justified in quelling the turbulent elements around; but nothing can excuse the enormous bloodshed and inhumanity which have handed down his name as that of one of the