Chapter L (7)

[558] Why to Hasan does not appear, as the hereditary principle of succession was not as yet thought of, either in Aly’s or any other line.

[559] The mother, for example, apostrophising the assassin, speaks of her infants, with singular beauty and pathos, as pearls whose shell has been rudely torn asunder:

Ah! who hath seen my two little ones--
Darlings that lay hidden, as it were pearls within the fold of
their shell?

As they were grandchildren of Abbâs, the Caliph’s uncle, the incident naturally occupies a conspicuous position in Abbasside tradition. [Sidenote: Ackîl, Aly’s brother, deserts.]Aly cursed Bosor, praying that he might lose his intellect, and in answer to the prayer (so it is said) he became a hopeless, drivelling lunatic.

[560] The defection of Ackîl is not mentioned in the Persian Tabari. But the circumstance is not one of a kind likely to have been invented, or (as being opposed to the credit of the Prophet’s family) perpetuated by tradition under Abbasside influence, if it had not been founded on fact. On the occasion, Aly gave vent to his grief in these lines, illustrating the proverb of Solomon, ‘A brother is born for adversity’:

He is not a brother who quitteth thee in the dark and louring day;
But rather he that abideth with thee then,
Rejoicing in thy success, and weeping in thy misfortune.

Some traditions make the retirement of Abdallah from Bussorah to have occurred after Aly’s death. But the fact, as stated above, is not likely to have been fabricated. Besides, the narrative is given in great detail and consistency. Abdallah received the summons of Aly to render an account of his government, with wrath and scorn, and retired from Bussorah, carrying his great riches with him. He was pursued by the citizens of Bussorah; but after some fighting, in which the rival tribes took part, he managed to get off to Mecca without further molestation.

[561] The assassin thought at first that he had accomplished his object; but, when taken before Amru, and seeing how the people made their obeisance to him, he discovered his mistake. ‘Tyrant!’ he exclaimed, ‘it was for thee the blow was intended.’ ‘Thou intendedst me,’ replied Amru, with characteristic brevity; ‘but the Lord intended thee!’ and the culprit was led away to execution. Like many of Amru’s sayings, the words became a proverb.

[562] Muâvia was stabbed in the groin. Some say that the culprit was put to death. Others say, that one hand and the opposite foot (the punishment of a robber according to the Corân) were cut off, and that he was sent to Bussorah. There having begotten a son, Ziâd put him to death, saying, ‘Thou hast begotten a son thyself, and hast made the Caliph impotent; thou shalt die.’ Muâvia said, that having already Yezîd for his heir, he did not care for further offspring. I give the story as I find it.

[563] In modern times, some spiritual loss in the future state is popularly attributed to the burning of a criminal’s body. Here, apparently, it was intended to be emblematical of the fire of hell to which Hasan consigned the murderer. In the case of Abu Bekr’s son (p. 403), the additional indignity was added of the body being packed up in an ass’s skin.

The offer to assassinate Muâvia is hardly consistent with the expectation which Ibn Muljam must have had that he had already perished at the hand of his brother conspirator. But I give the words as I find them.

[564] The popular tradition is that he was buried at Najaf, near to Kûfa, and on the shore of the ‘Sea’ of that name, where his supposed tomb is the object of popular veneration at the present day. Others assert (but on no sufficient ground) that Hasan had the body removed to Medîna. There is, in fact, no tradition of any authority on the subject. The uncertainty is significant. Aly never had any hold on the affections of the people. His grave must have been neglected, and even lost sight of, in the troubles succeeding his death. The oblivion as to his burial-place is in strange contrast with the almost Divine honours paid to him by so many sects in later days.

[565] One of the sons died in infancy. The daughters were Zeinab and Omm Kolthûm; but he had, by other mothers, two other daughters whom he called by the same names, _i.e._ Zeinab the less, and Omm Kolthûm the less.

[566] The mother of this little girl belonged to the Beni Kilâb. The child lisped, pronouncing _l_ like _sh_, and so was unable to say _Kilâb_; so when asked to what tribe she belonged, she would imitate the bark of a dog (kilâb or kalb meaning ‘a dog’), to the great delight of Aly and his courtiers.

[567] Such was the popular belief even at the Alyite court of Al Mâmun. See _The Apology of Al Kindy_, which faithfully represents the sentiments current at that day among the courtiers of Baghdad, p. 25.

[568] It might be thought that the teaching of Ibn Sauda in Egypt was the germ of the Divine Imâmate and Second Coming. But the traditions regarding that teaching are altogether vague and uncertain. Whatever it was, it certainly took no root; nor do we hear of it again for many years after, and then first away in the far East.

[569] His vagrant passions gained for him the unenviable nickname of _The Divorcer_, for it was only by continual divorces that he could harmonise his craving for new nuptials with the requirements of the Divine law, which limited his lawful wives to four. He is said to have exercised the power of divorce, as a matter of simple caprice, seventy (according to others ninety) times. The leading men complained to Aly that his son was continually marrying their daughters, and continually divorcing them. Aly replied that the remedy lay in their own hands; they should refuse to give him their daughters to wife. These divorced wives were irrespective of his concubines or slave-girls, upon the number and variety of whom there was no limit or check whatever.

[570] There are some traditions, but untrustworthy, that Muâvia was now, for the first time, proclaimed Caliph at Jerusalem.

[571] The traditions read as if the army had been previously kept up in readiness for an attack on Syria; but, as already shown, a truce at this time existed between Aly and Muâvia of indefinite duration, according to which hostilities had been laid aside.

[572] Aly had formerly taken the same route, via Medâin, when advancing upon Syria. Muâvia was no doubt marching now from Ricca or Tadmor, across the plain of Upper Mesopotamia, and the natural way of meeting him would, consequently, be up the Tigris from Medâin, and then striking off to the west.

[573] The received date of Hasan’s resignation, as in the text, would make his reign last five and a half months. Others place it in Rabî II., and some even in Jumâd I., which would make the reign one or two months longer.

His offer to resign on specified terms was crossed by a messenger from Muâvia, with a blank sheet signed by Muâvia, who thus declared his readiness to concede any terms to Hasan if he abdicated. Thereupon Hasan doubled his claim; but Muâvia refused, saying that he had already specified his terms, and that they had been accepted. Darâbgird was the district of which Hasan was to receive the revenues; but the people of Bussorah claimed it as their own conquest, and would not give it up.

There is an Abbasside tradition, that one abused Hasan as he left Kûfa, saying that he had ‘blackened the faces of the Moslems;’ to which Hasan replied by quoting a dream in which Mahomet saw the descendants of Omeyya one after another ascending the steps of his pulpit; whereupon the Prophet was comforted by the revelation of Suras 97 and 108, regarding the Fountain of Al Cawthar and the Night of Power, which he is told are ‘better than a thousand months,’ that is, than the thousand months during which the Beni Omeyya would rule!

According to another tradition, Amru persuaded Muâvia to allow Hasan, after his own inaugural speech, to address the people. Hasan then began to speak of the wheel of fortune, and of the necessity of stopping the effusion of blood, and was going on to quote Sura xxi. v. 111, about the world being a trial, and the Lord helping the Prophet against his adversaries, when Muâvia made him sit down. He also told Amru he had made a mistake in proposing that Hasan should be allowed to speak.

[574] Amru, they say, wished Muâvia to fight Cays, but he answered that it would be only useless bloodshed, and so sent to Cays a clean sheet signed at foot, as he had done to Hasan, agreeing to any terms he might propose. Cays, upon receiving this, bade his soldiers choose whether they ‘preferred to obey an illegitimate prince, or to go on fighting without any prince at all.’ They preferred to give in, and so retired from the field.

We hear little more of Cays, who died before Muâvia. His sympathies had been all on the side of Aly; and if the correspondence that passed between Muâvia and him, when in Egypt, be genuine, he had little reason to trust Muâvia.

[575] We are even told that the promise given by Muâvia to Hasan, namely that the sound of the curse should not fall upon his ears, was not kept.

It is said that Omar II. (A.H. 100) dropped the imprecation; but he was a poor pietist, whose religious scruples led him to make many weak concessions, and even to recognise the claims of the house of Aly. He is of course popular with the Abbassides, who magnify him as a saint of blessed memory, and have invented many wonderful stories to his credit. Weil thinks that this may be one of them; and, at any rate, if suspended during his reign, the curse was resumed immediately on his decease.

[576] The culprit was a noble Arab lady, the daughter of Asháth, Chief of the Beni Kinda. The tradition, that she was bribed by Muâvia, is altogether unlikely, and is no doubt a fiction of the prevailing character. Hasan was, politically, a harmless creature; and Muâvia had no motive whatever, after his abdication and retirement into private life (so far as our materials go), for the crime. The jealousies of Hasan’s ever-changing harem afford a far likelier reason.

[577] Amru is, as a matter of course, unpopular with the Abbasside historians, who make the most of his undoubted unscrupulousness and levity both in word and action. His last words are said to have been the humble confession that his life had been one of rebellion against the Lord, and an earnest prayer for pardon.

[578] See above, p. 264.

[579] The subject was much canvassed by all parties. Prior to Islam, the law of marriage and legitimacy was lax; and a loose woman might, as in the present case, ascribe the paternity of her child to anyone prepared to admit the same; and (adds Ibn al Athîr) had Muâvia taken up this ground, there could have been no valid objection to it. But he did more; he proceeded to take the evidence of the owner of the slave-girl, as if the case had been one of Mahometan law, under which the paternity would not have been admitted, and the case, in fact, would have been held to be one of whoredom, demanding the punishment of both parties. Tradition varies as to whether Abu Sofiân himself ever acknowledged the paternity.

After Muâvia had recognised him as his brother, Ziâd proposed to go on pilgrimage to Mecca and Medîna. His brother, Abu Bakra (who, offended at his tergiversation in the adulterous charge against Moghîra, had never spoken to him since) sent a message to dissuade him. ‘Thou wilt meet Omm Habîba,’ he said, ‘if thou wilt go on pilgrimage. Now, if she receive thee as her brother, that will be regarded as a slight upon the memory of the Prophet; if otherwise, it will be a slight upon thyself.’ So Ziâd thought better of it, and gave up the design.

Again, Ziâd, wishing to extract an acknowledgment of his birth from Ayesha, addressed a letter to her in which he subscribed himself, _Ziâd son of Abu Sofiân_; to which she replied, without committing herself, merely thus, ‘To my dear son, Ziâd.’ On the same ground, Abbasside writers ordinarily name him without a patronymic, as, _Ziâd ibn Abîhi_, i.e. ‘Ziâd, son of his _father_.’ He is also called after his _mother_, ‘Ziâd ibn Sommeyya.’

[580] We are told that the same attempt, followed by similar prodigies, was made by the Caliph Abd al Malik, and also by Welîd, &c.; in fact, it was an impious act, of a kind which Abbasside tradition is rather fond of attributing to the Omeyyad Caliphs. We are told that Mahomet, anticipating the sacrilege, is said to have threatened hell-fire against any who would venture to remove the pulpit. This Abu Horeira, who came to Medîna, A.H. 7, and from whom we have so many traditions, died in A.H. 57 or 59.

[581] Sád (the father of Cays) was the only recusant.

[582] The project, indeed, has been attributed entirely to Moghîra. The tradition runs thus: Moghîra was afraid that Muâvia intended to supersede him as Governor of Kûfa by the promotion of Ziâd to the post; and so, by suggesting the nomination of Yezîd, and promising to gain over the city of Kûfa to it, he hoped to secure his continued hold of the city, as being necessary to the success of the scheme. But the tradition bears strong marks of coming through an Abbasside medium.

[583] When Merwân, governor of the city, placed the matter before the men of Medîna, he was at first violently opposed. Amongst others, Abd al Rahmân, son of Abu Bekr, said, ‘This thing is naught but a fraud and a deception. In place of the election, the right to which vesteth in this city, ye will now make the succession like unto that of the Greeks and Romans--where one Heraclius succeedeth another Heraclius.’ On this, Muâvia quoted from the Corân: ‘Say not unto your parents, _Fie on you!_ neither reproach them’ (_Sura_ xvii. 24); signifying, it may be, that the very practice of nomination, now opposed, had been introduced by Abu Bekr himself in appointing Omar.

Abdallah son of Omar is said to have been gained over by the gift of ten thousand golden pieces.

[584] That the Caliph should be a Coreishite was a condition generally admitted, excepting by the Khârejites, who opposed the exclusive pretensions of the Coreish, and, supposing there were a Caliph (for the stricter would have had only a Council of State), were indifferent from what stock he came.

[585] Yezîd was the only fit son Muâvia had. He was also born of a noble mother belonging to the Beni Kalb, who amid the luxuries of the court pined for the freedom of nomad life. Another son was decrepid; and a third the son of a slave-girl. By the letter of the Mahometan law, the son of the bond-woman is equally legitimate with the son of the free. But amongst the Arabs, the son of a noble mother took precedence over the lower born; and so noble birth became naturally one of the elements of fitness in the choice. And the same we see to the present day, even in such petty principalities as that of Afghanistan.

The history of Yezîd’s mother has attractions for the Arab writers. She gave vent to her longing for a return to desert life in verse, which coming to Muâvia’s ears, he dismissed her with her son to live in the encampment of her tribe; and there Yezîd acquired the tastes of the Bedouins, and his love for the chase and a free life, which he ever after retained. His mother’s verses were such as these:

A tent fanned by the desert breeze is dearer far to me than the
lofty palace.
I should ride more joyously on the young camel than on the richly
caparisoned steed.
The whistling of the gale across the sandy plain is sweeter to me
than the flourish of royal trumpets.
A crust of bread in the corner of a Bedouin tent has a better
relish to me than that of choicest viands.
The noble Arab of my tribe is more comely in my sight than the
obese and bearded men around me.
O that I were once again in my desert home! I would not exchange
it for the most gorgeous hall.

[586] His courage, however, was more moral than physical. Both he and Aly, by luxurious living, had become obese (at Kûfa, Aly went by the nickname of ‘the pot-bellied’), so that in their later years there was little room, in respect of either, for active bodily exertion. Still, even as late as the field of Siffîn, we have seen that Aly fought with his early gallantry; while Muâvia (if the tradition be true) shrank from a personal encounter with him. Aly was, without doubt, the braver of the two in physical courage; but Muâvia, beyond comparison, the abler and bolder ruler.

[587] Some, again, think that Abd al Rahmân died before this.

[588] Muslim was son of Ackîl (brother of Aly) and grandson of Abu Tâlib, Mahomet’s uncle. All the actors in this melancholy chapter have become household names in the mouths of Moslems, especially the Shîyites.

[589] The number varies in different traditions; but no account gives it at more than forty horse and one hundred foot. Seventy heads were brought into Kûfa, including probably all the combatants. There were, no doubt, others, non-combatants, camp-followers, &c.

[590] Horr (we are to believe), during these parleys, was converted to the cause of Hosein, and eventually going over to him, fell fighting by his side. But the whole of the sad tale becomes at this point so intensified and overlaid with Alyite fiction, that it is impossible to believe a hundredth part of what is related, and which the heated imaginations of the Shîyites have invented.

All the names we meet with here are ranged, either on one side or on the other (especially in the Shîyite vocabulary), as models either of piety or apostasy.

[591] Amr son of Sád the hero of Câdesîya, they tell us, had just been nominated by Obeidallah to the government of Rei in Persia; and now Obeidallah made it a condition of investiture that he should bring in Hosein, dead or alive. The scene is painted theatrically of Amr wavering between duty to the grandson of the Prophet, and the bribe of office. He yielded to the latter, and for Mammon sold his soul. But all this must be taken _cum grano_.

[592] _Shamir_ ibn Dzu al Joshan, the Dhihâbite, is a name never pronounced by the pious Moslem but with ejaculatory curse. Obeidallah (so the story goes) was at first inclined to concede the prayer of Hosein, as urged by Amr, for a safe-conduct to the Caliph at Damascus, when Shamir stepped forward, and said that Obeidallah, for the credit of his own name, must insist on the Pretender’s surrender at discretion. So he obtained from Obeidallah a letter to Amr, threatening that if he failed to bring Hosein in, Shamir should take the command, and also obtain the government of Rei in his stead. The name is variously pronounced as Shamir or Shimar, Shomar or Shimr.

[593] Aly Akbar, that is _Aly the elder_, as his brother was called Aly Asghar, _Aly the younger_.

[594] There were either six or seven of Abu Tâlib’s descendants. There was moreover a foster-brother of Hosein, and also a freedman of his.

[595] The tradition goes on to say that Obeidallah was wroth with this aged spokesman, called him a drivelling dotard, and said that if he had not been such, he would have beheaded him upon the spot. But much is manifestly here invented, and everything coloured for effect. Some represent the incident as occurring at the Court at Damascus, and ascribe the speech to Yezîd. Weil holds falsely so, and I agree with him.

[596] Aly the less is also called _Zein al Abidîn_, ‘Ornament of the Pious.’

[597] The name of Hasan is added, not only according to the Shîyite theory that he was entitled to the Caliphate (though he resigned it), but because he, too, is regarded as a martyr poisoned by his wife, as they say, at the instigation of Muâvia, but, as we have seen, without any sufficient presumption.

The tragedy is yearly represented on the stage as a religious ceremony, especially by the Shîyites, in the ‘Passion Play,’ throughout which are interwoven, in a supernatural romance, the lives of the early worthies of Islam, ending with the pathetic tale of the martyr company of Kerbala; while Abu Bekr, Omar, and Othmân are execrated as usurpers, and the whole Omeyyad crew, Obeidallah, Hajjâj, &c., are held up to eternal malediction. A series of these scenes will be found well represented in _The Miracle Play of Hasan and Hosein_, by Sir Lewis Pelly, London, 1879. It will give some idea of the extravagances of Shîya doctrine, and of the intense hold which the episode of Kerbala has taken of the Moslem mind.

[598] Weil thinks that if, instead of leaving his battles to be fought by his generals and remaining himself inactive at Mecca, he had shown the energy of his early days and attacked the Caliphs in Syria, he would probably have overthrown them; even as it was, he was near to doing so.

The dismantling of the Káaba excited the same terror as when it was rebuilt in the youth of Mahomet, nearly a century before. (_Life_, p. 28.) No one durst detach a stone; and when Ibn Zobeir took the pickaxe in his own hands, many fled the city, fearing the Divine wrath, and only returned when after three days they saw no ill effect follow.

In the time of Ibn Zobeir music and singing were common at Mecca, so that notwithstanding the scandal excited at Medîna, the practices of Syria were beginning to leaven even the Holy Cities.

[599] Abu Obeid, the famous warrior who was slain in the battle of the Bridge.

[600] _Life of Mahomet_, p. 145.

[601] In this reign the Moslem arms, conducted by the famous Mûsa, reached to the Atlantic. The Moslem fleets were now powerful, and made a descent on Sicily, A.H. 82.

Kûfa and Bussorah continued to give such constant annoyance, that Wâsit (or the ‘_Midway_ garrison’) was founded half-way between the two cities, to keep them in check. Moslem mints were now first established, the coinage having a verse of the Corân for the legend. See Weil’s _Caliphs_, vol. i. p. 470.

[602] Whatever the cruelties of Hajjâj, it must be confessed that he had a rebellious race to deal with. And in respect of his attack on Mecca, from whence Ibn Zobeir so long defied the empire, it is difficult to see how that attack could have been avoided; but the necessity is forgotten, and only the sacrilege, with its testudos and battering rams, remembered. In point of cruelty, indeed, it would not be easy for inhumanity to outdo the deeds of some of the Abbasside Caliphs. But Hajjâj was the servant of the ‘godless’ Omeyyads, and indiscriminate abuse must be heaped both on him and his Master.

[603] For the unbridled sensuality of the times, the use of wine and other breaches of the Moslem law, and the demoralisation that festered in these seats of luxury, I must again refer to H. von Kremer’s excellent work, _Culturgeschichte des Orients unter den Chalifen_, Wien, 1875.

[604] The term _Shîya_ (Sheea) means simply sect or party; but it has come to signify the partisans of the house of Aly, holding this Divine claim. Imâm means head or leader, and, according to the Shîyas, the Imâmate, or Headship of all Islam, vests in the house of Aly. Hence we are continually hearing of an Imâm, or successor of this line, as about to appear.

[605] 26th Dzul Hijj, A.H. 132, August 5, A.D. 750.

[606] He was the fifth in descent from the Prophet’s uncle; that is, he was the grandson of Aly, who was the grandson of Abbâs. _Al Saffâh_ signifies, ‘The Butcher.’

[607] Thus the use of wine, and the Mutáah or temporary marriage, could be justified. The latter, by which a conjugal contract can be entered into for a limited period, is still a tenet of the Shîyas; but is justly reprobated by the orthodox.

[608] When he found that the scheme must be given up, he caused his son-in-law--now an inconvenient appendage--to be removed by poison.

[609] For example, it was only under a Motázilite court that any such discussion as the Christian ‘Apology of Al Kindy’ could have been allowed to see the light.

[610] For the ‘Ordinances of Omar,’ see above, p. 212.

[611] Such is the character of the Wahâbee revival which, born in the present century, spread rapidly and widely over Arabia, and extended in some of its features (chiefly of a protesting character) even to India.

[612] Soonnies (Sunnies) are those who acknowledge the authority of the _Sunnat_, or precedent established by the practice of Mahomet, and also admit the validity of the Caliphates of Abu Bekr, Omar, and Othmân, which the Shîyites deny.

[613] Their bigotry is conspicuous mostly in matters of purification, a remnant, probably, of their ancient faith. Baths and mosques are held polluted by the presence of an infidel. It is curious, also, that the Persians to this day curse the memory of Al Mâmûn, and accuse him of poisoning his Alyite son-in-law; curiously enough, using his name as a term of abuse.

Transcriber’s Notes:

1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been corrected silently.

2. Where hyphenation is in doubt, it has been retained as in the original.

3. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have been retained as in the original.

4. Errata have been silently corrected.

5. Italics are shown as _xxx_.