Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/407

 376 rebellion gained so great a head, that he was able to send governors to Al-Ahwāz, Fars, and Kirmān, but not to his old province of Khorāsān, for there the Azd were held in check by Temīm. At Al-Baṣra all the adherents of Al-Ḥajjāj that fell into his hands were slain, but the chief men of the city, even such as favoured Yezīd, fearing to compromise themselves with the Court, made their escape to Al-Kūfa. Yezīd himself settled down inactive at Al-Baṣra, till tidings of an army 80,000 strong advancing from Syria under command of the veteran commander in Asia Minor and Armenia, Maslama, the Caliph’s brother, forced him to take the field. His brothers urged him to leave Al-ʿIrāḳ and occupy Khorāsān, or the strongholds in the nearer mountains, where the discontented would flock to him, and thus weary out the Syrian force; but he declined to be "like the bird that flies from hilltop to hilltop," and so moving forward he occupied Wāsiṭ. Maslama advanced on Al-Kūfa, where there was a strong party in favour of Yezīd; and having deposed the governor, with difficulty suppressed a rising. Then crossing the Euphrates, he took ground on the left bank of the river. Yezīd, leaving one of his brothers with a strong reserve at Wāsiṭ, marched against his enemy. Many Kūfaites of note, Temīm as well as Kelb, came over to him. A week passed in skirmishing and single combats. Then Yezīd wished to attack the Caliph's army by night, but was prevented by two religious fanatics who followed him. Next day he harangued his army, denouncing the Umeiyads as a godless race, against whom it were a more sacred duty to war than against the Turks, and thus bring back the pure observances of their holy faith,—words that must have sounded strange from the lips of the unprincipled worldling. On the other side, to nerve his men by making retreat impossible, Maslama set fire to the bridge behind them. The rebel army, unable to sustain the Syrian onset, fell back, Temīm showing them the way; and Yezīd, hearing that his favourite brother was killed, rushed upon the enemy’s ranks, crying that life after that was no longer worth living, and was slain. On this, his remaining brothers, unable to hold their position at Wāsiṭ, retired, after beheading all the prisoners in their hands, some thirty including the stadtholder, and, with wives and children,