Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/408

720–4] took ship by the gulf to a fortress in Kirmān, hoping that its governor, who owed his post to Yezīd, would give his family and kindred shelter. But they were mistaken; the brothers were put to death, and the women and children, in defiance of all Islāmic law, exposed for sale in Al-Baṣra; but a loyal servant of the Umeiyads, Al-Jarrāḥ ibn ʿAbdallah al-Ḥakami, did his duty and ransomed them. Their estates were, of course, confiscated. Equally cruel was the fate of the prisoners at Al-Kūfa, where 300 were by the Caliph's orders slain. In companies of twenty and thirty, they were brought out, some of them naked, and decapitated in cold blood. Thus the Caliph slaked his wrath against the faction hostile to Al-Ḥajjāj. And so perished the house of Al-Muhallab, none of whose descendants were meet representatives of that great man. The butcheries and contempt of human life we now so often read of, are a painful feature of the day. The cruel scene, however, is but a fit ending to the career of the man who drove the corn-mill of Jurjān with his victims' blood.

The services of Maslama in this dangerous rebellion, and in the campaign against the Greeks, were rewarded by the government of Al-ʿIrāḳ and Khorāsān. As his lieutenant at Merv, Maslama appointed his son-in-law Saʿīd, a weak man, called in derision Khodheina, from affecting in his dress the attire of a Persian lady. The choice was far from fortunate. There was a general rising of the hordes in Khojanda and Ferghāna, which became dangerous owing to Muslim inactivity. The tributary Soghdians, threatened by these, sought protection from Merv, but help being slow of coming, they meanwhile made overtures to the Turks, and between the two suffered grievously. When Muslim forces did arrive, the Soghdians returned at first to their allegiance. Information, however, having reached the Muslim general of the murder of an Arab (for numbers of Arabians and Persians had begun to settle in the land), he sent for the culprit, and slew him in his tent. The Soghdians retaliated by putting to death the Muslim prisoners in their hands; on which the general fell upon the Soghdian residents, who having been meanwhile disarmed had only staves wherewith to defend themselves. The whole, 3000 in number, fell by the