Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/88

 633] prophetess to Al-Yemāma. These met Khālid as he approached, but were repulsed, and the Persian governor seeing the route from the ramparts, fled and left the fugitives to defend themselves as best they could. Refused terms, they surrendered at discretion. The persistent opposition of the Christian Bedawīn now led Khālid into an unwise severity that embittered them against him. Their leader was beheaded in front of the city walls, and every adult male of the garrison led forth and put to death; while the women and children were made over to the soldiers or sold into slavery. In a cloister of the church hard by, were forty youths who in their terror barred the door upon the enemy. When the retreat was forced, they gave themselves up as students receiving instruction in the Gospel. Their lives were spared, and they were distributed among the leaders. The fate of these unfortunate youths, snatched from a Nestorian seminary to be brought up as captives in the Muslim faith, must have been common enough in the rude and sanguinary tide of Saracen invasion; the reason why tradition makes special mention of these, is that amongst them were progenitors of several distinguished men, such as Ibn Isḥāḳ the historian, and Mūsa the conqueror of Spain.

All this while ʿIyāḍ, who ought long before to have joined Khālid, was battling unsuccessfully with enemies at Dūma. The Caliph becoming anxious, sent Al-Welid who had been deputed by Khālid to Medīna in charge of royal booty, to assist ʿIyāḍ, who by his advice despatched an urgent message for help to Khalid. The courier arrived just after the fall of ʿAin at-Tamr; and Khālid, with no enemy now in the field, answered ʿIyāḍ thus in martial verse—

Leaving Al-Ḳaʿḳāʿ in command at Al-Ḥīra, and starting at once with the flower of his force, he crossed the intervening desert, and made good his word.

He was not a day too soon. Okeidir and Al-Jūdi, Chiefs of Dūma, were supported by the Beni Kelb and other tribes from the Syrian desert; and now the Beni Ghassān were pouring down from the north, under Jabala, the Christian prince of Boṣra. The position of ʿIyāḍ, thus beset, grew