Here, too, was the famous minaret of Mu’tasim, which figures in the romantic stories of Wathiq, of whom the most fantastic tales have been told.
The fanatical nature of Mu’tasim has already been mentioned, and this was the moving factor in the pursuit of one of the greatest heresiarchs that ever threatened early Islam. This was Babak, who was known as the Khurrami, and who defeated in battle many of the bravest and most accomplished generals of the Khalifate. He was, however, captured by Afshin, a leader of great renown and bravery. To arrive at a knowledge of what the tenets of Babak were is now almost impossible, as the only record we have is the prejudiced accounts of Musulman writers, who naturally endeavour to fix upon him every loathsome and repulsive doctrine that is possible. At any rate, it would appear that Babak was supported in his wars by the northern Kurds, many of whom, not converted from the corrupt form of Zoroastrianism they had originally professed, were perfectly ready to throw the weight of their arms against any power that would force upon them new rulers and a new religion, particularly when those same were their hereditary enemies, the Arabs.
Professor Browne, one of the greatest authorities, writes at length on the subject of his beliefs,[72] which appear to have included the doctrines of metempsychosis, and a pretension to divinity.
SAMARRA
When captured, he was sent to Samarra, where he was killed, his body being crucified on the cliff that overlooks the Tigris. And the grimmest feature of the whole tragedy is the ultimate fate of Afshin, the conqueror and captor of Babak, for he was suspected of having abetted the rebel Mazyar (who was crucified beside Babak), and was tried at Samarra on the charge of himself being a follower of Babak, and of pretending to the Divine Title. He was found guilty of these and other crimes, and while Mazyar was executed and his body hung next that of Babak, the unhappy Afshin languished in a prison. Then he too, dead, took his place between them, and his ashes—for the body was subsequently burned—were cast upon the waters of the Tigris.
These things happened in the years A.D. 839 and 840, and with the accession of Mutawakkil (A.D. 847), a tyrant and profligate, the dynasty declined, and Samarra began to acquire that name for evil that it has never lost.
Yet it ranks high among the holy cities of Arabian Iraq, for here the tenth and eleventh saints of the Shi’a succession lived and died. During the time of the Khalifate at Samarra, there lived the saint Ali bin Muhammad bin Ali bin Musa bin Jafar bin Muhammad bin Zain ul Abidin bin Husain bin Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet himself. This was the “Tenth Imam,” and he was succeeded by his son Husain al Askari, the Eleventh Imam, whose offspring Muhammad “as Saghir” (“the Lesser”), is that Twelfth Imam, the mysterious saint who has passed from the living, but upon whose coming again the Shi’a waits, and around whose second advent are clustered such masses of prophecies and tales as would fill volumes. He is the “Mahdi,” at the mention of whose name the Persian rises and bows, for—who knows—he may see, as he is in the world of spirits, invisible but extant. He disappeared in the year 873 in a cellar in Samarra—a place where the dwellers retreat during the heat of the day. According to some he departed in Hillah, near Bagdad.
These religious circumstances, combined with an ancient fame and a present very fine mosque, make Samarra a favourite place of pilgrimage for Shi’a and Sunni alike—particularly the former—but all will agree with the Persian traveller who says, “The numbers of Sayyids[73] and beggars passes all description”; and again, “The inhabitants of Samarra are said to be Hanafites, but it is really impossible to assert of what race or of what belief they be, for they are of an extreme meanness and servility of character, and of an avarice such that the beggars of Samarra are a bye-word in all Islam.”[74]
As the golden dome faded from sight in the distance and the growing night, I realised that my journey as a poor man was nearly over, for we were approaching Bagdad. During the succeeding two days we passed cultivations, and gardens, and date groves, signs of the city we were approaching. From afar we sighted Kazemain, that holy place, too often described to call for mention here, and at last, one evening, our kalak-man told us that midnight would see us at the bridge above Bagdad, below which kalaks may not pass.
I began to think how I might enter Bagdad as a European, for I wished to go straight to the only hotel, and appear next day among the Europeans, with some of whom I had affairs, and some acquaintance. So, behind the bales, in the dark, I donned a suit of white clothing I had kept ready, minus a collar—for it was summer, and heat excuses many such details. I donned a pair of socks, a luxury to which I had long been a stranger, and had a soft felt hat, much squashed and battered—but still a Ferangi hat—ready in a handkerchief. Drawing the old dressing-gown around me, I climbed up on my bundles of roots and lay down and slept awhile. About two in the morning I woke, for the kalak bumped against a bank, and I saw we had arrived. My friends were collecting their goods, and the old Kirkukli asked me how and where I proposed to go? to which I replied, I would depart in a “quffa,” or round bitumen-covered coracle, to the house of a friend lower down the river. This craft one of the kalak-men found for me after some minutes, and I took a farewell of my friends, the last friends I should have in a world I was leaving—not without pangs, for I had become one of them, and found myself often enough contemplating with disgust the prospect of striding about as a Ferangi—the “vulgar and blatant abomination” at which Turkoman, Turk, Arab, Kurd, and Persian stand astonished.