Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/59

 32 answered, "thou hast heard it all; he was one whom the a Lord blessed not, nor yet his people"; and they repeated to him some of the things he used to say. "Good heavens!" exclaimed Abu Bekr; "what kind of words are these? There is neither sense in them for good nor yet for evil, but a strange fatuity to have beguiled you thus." So he dismissed them to their homes.

Among the slain are not a few names familiar to the student of the Prophet's life. The carnage amongst the "Reader" (those who had the Ḳorʾān by heart) was so great as to give ʿOmar the first idea of collecting the Sacred Text, "lest any part of it should be lost." At the death of his brother Zeid who had shared with him all the dangers of the early battles of Islām, ʿOmar was inconsolable. "Thou art returned home," he said to his son ʿAbdallah, "safe and sound; and Zeid is dead. Wherefore; wast not thou slain before him? I wish not to see thy face." "Father," was his reply, "he asked for martyrdom, and the Lord granted it. I strove after the same, but it was not given unto me." Such was the spirit of these Muslim warriors.

Khālid again signalised his victory by wedding a captive maid upon the field. "Give me thy daughter to wife," he said to Majāʿa, the same who had so faithfully defended his bride in the hour of peril. "Wait," replied Majāʿa; "be not so hasty; thou wilt harm thyself in the Caliph's eyes, and me likewise." "Man, give me thy daughter!" he repeated imperiously ; so Majāʿa gave her to him. When Abu Bekr heard of it, he wrote him a letter sprinkled with blood. "By my life! thou son of Khālid's father, thou art a pretty fellow, living thus at thine ease. Thou weddest a damsel, whilst the ground beneath the nuptial couch is yet moistened with the blood of twelve hundred!" The reproof fell lightly upon Khālid. "This is the work," he said as he read the epistle, "of that left-handed fellow," meaning ʿOmar. The sentiment, however, was Abu Bekr's own; but the "Sword of the Lord" could not be spared.

We shall meet Khālid next in Chaldæa, by the banks of the Euphrates.