Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/49

 22 homage. At first ʿOmar spoke roughly to him,—"Thou art he that killed ʿOkkāsha, and his comrade too. I love thee not." "Was it not better," answered the quondam prophet, "that they by my hand should obtain the crown of martyrdom, rather than that I by theirs should have perished in hell-fire?" When he had sworn allegiance, the Caliph asked him concerning his oracular gift, and whether anything yet remained of it. "Ah," he replied, "it was but a puff or two, as from a pair of bellows." So he returned to his tribe and went forth with them to the war in Al-ʿIrāk, where in the great struggle with Persia he became a hero of renown.

After the battle of Al-Buzākha the Beni Asad, fearing lest their families should fall into the conqueror's hands, submitted and were pardoned. Other important tribes in the neighbourhood which had stood aloof watching the event, now came in and received from Khalid the same terms. They resumed the profession of Islam with all its obligations, and in proof thereof brought in the tithe. A full amnesty was accorded on but one condition, that those who during the apostasy had taken the life of any Muslim should be delivered up. These were now (to carry out the Caliph's vow) put to the like death as that which they had inflicted. If they had speared their victims, cast them over precipices, drowned them in wells, or burned them in the fire, the persecutors were now subjected to the same cruel fate.

Khālid stayed at Al-Buzākha for a month, receiving the submission of the people and their tithes. Troops of horse scoured the country, striking terror all around. In only one direction was serious opposition met. A body of malcontents from amongst the penitent tribes, unable to brook submission, assumed a defiant attitude. They had yet to learn that the grip of Islam was stern and crushing. These gathered in a great multitude around Um Ziml, daughter of a famous chieftain of the Ghaṭafān. Her mother had been taken prisoner, and put to a cruel death by Moḥammad. She herself had waited upon ʿĀisha as a captive maid in the Prophet's household; but the haughty spirit of her race survived. Mounted on her mother’s war-camel, she led the force herself and incited the insurgents to a bold resistance. Khālid proclaimed a great reward to him who should maim