Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/396

 715–17] The Azd were his enemies all through, and he had deeply offended Temīm. Fighting thus with but a scanty following, he was slain, and his head, with those of eleven of his brethren, sent a welcome offering to the Caliph. And so the conqueror of Bokhārā, Samarķand, and Kāshghār, came to an untimely and dishonoured end. It was said of him by a Turk, Ḳoteiba at the world's end was more terrible to us than Yezīd at our very door. He had been one of the greatest heroes of Islām, were not his name stained by treachery and bloodshed, and his career cut short by a heedless rebellion.

Yezīd son of Al-Muhallab, the Caliph's minion, was at first appointed to Al-ʿIrāḳ, but unwilling to incur unpopularity in collecting the severe assessments of Al-Ḥajjāj, which barely sufficed for the now lavish expenditure at Damascus, he obtained the nomination of a financial officer to undertake the ungrateful task. He was Ṣāliḥ ibn ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān, the Maulà of Sijistān, who had procured the change of language in the government offices. Finding, however, the exchequer thus closed against his own extravagance, Yezīd prevailed on the Caliph, by the vain boast that his conquests would cast Ḳoteiba's into the shade, to give him Khorāsān. With him, the Azd again come to power, and Temīm take second rank. He also introduced Syrian government troops into Khorāsān, a thing which Al-Ḥajjāj had not done. Arriving at Merv nearly a year after the outbreak of Ḳoteiba, he felt bound to make good his boast; and casting aside his luxuries, took the lead of an immense army, recruited chiefly from Syria and Al-ʿIrāḳ. His efforts were directed to Jurjān, on the south-eastern recess of the Caspian Sea, which, as we have seen, had been overrun by Saʿīd ibn al-ʿĀṣ so long ago as the reign of ʿOthmān. But though tributary in name, the native rulers, conscious of their strength, were ever withholding payment of their dues, and no one dared to set foot within that inaccessible and rebellious region, This region formed a barrier to communication between Al-ʿIrāḳ and Merv, and a southern circuit had consequently to be made by troops and travellers for Central Asia. It was therefore an important object to reduce the intervening space. Starting from Merv, Yezīd first attacked Jurjān; and its defenders were driven back into their defiles, where, after suffering much hardship, they came to terms. Here