Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/81

 52 of, she embraced Islām and, forgetting her Persian lord, gave her hand to Al-Muthanna's brother.

The ardour of Al-Muthanna was near to causing a disaster. When the message of Hormuz reached Al-Medāin, the King despatched another prince with troops to reinforce him. Rallying the defeated army, this force met Al-Muthanna who had been stopped by the Great Canal (a branch of the Tigris which runs athwart the Peninsula), and placed him with his small flying column in great peril. Khālid, apprised of the check, hastened to relieve his lieutenant, and just in time. The field was fiercely contested. Again the enemy fled; a prodigious number were either slain or drowned; the remainder escaped in boats. The deep canal stopped further pursuit, but the spoil of the camp was very great. Khālid scoured the country, killing all the men fit for war and taking their women captive. But the fellāḥīn or unwarlike peasants he left unharmed.

The Court was now thoroughly aroused. Arab invaders, it was said, would best be matched by Arabs who knew their tactics; and so the King raised a great levy of the Bekr and other loyal clans, under a famous warrior of their own. He also summoned Bahman, a veteran general, from the east, to command the imperial troops. The combined army, in imposing force, advanced to Al-Walaja, near the junction of the two rivers. Leaving a detachment to guard his conquests in the Delta, Khālid marched to meet the enemy. The battle, long and obstinate, was won by the tactics of the Muslim leader, who surprised the exhausted enemy by ambuscades placed in their rear. The discomfiture was complete. The Persians fled; and with them their Bedawi allies, but not until many had been taken prisoners. Flushed with success as he gazed at the scene around, Khālid thus addressed his followers:—"O see ye not the food, plentiful as flintstones? Ay, by God, were it not ours to fight for God against the unbelievers, and were it only as a means of living, the right opinion would be to lay our stakes for these fair fields, until we show ourselves worthy of them, and give over hunger and penury to those who prefer them, and who find burdensome that which you are enduring.”