[174] He was then not twenty years of age.
[175] We are told that Abū Muslim wished to have a distinctive colour for his party, the Umayyads having adopted white. After making one of his slaves clothe himself in suits of various colours, he ordered him to dress in black, and finding the sombre hue the most awe-inspiring adopted it for his party. Cf. Zotenberg, lot cit. p. 327. Later the Khārijites adopted red, and the Shi`ites green.
[176] Nasr ibn Sayyār was a poet of no mean order, and Arabic histories contain many quotations from his compositions, specimens of which will be found on p. 87 and 88 of Nöldeke’s Delectus Vet. Carm. Arab.
[177] Two very different versions of the end of Nasr are to be found in Oriental histories. That given in the text is the usually accepted one; but in the Persian translation of Tabari (cf. Zotenberg, loc cit. p. 329), in the Tārīkh-i-Guzīda, etc., we are told that he fled unaccompanied as far as Ray, where he died. No mention is made here of the engagements with Kahtaba, who, according to the author of the Guzīda, gained possession of Jurjān, Ray, Sāva, and Kum without striking a blow.
[178] His horse ran away with him and, slipping on the banks of the river, threw its rider into the water, where he was drowned. His disappearance was not remarked until daybreak. The Guzīda says that Ibn Hobayra also perished in the battle.
[179] Numbering, according to the Persian Tabari, more than 30,000 men.
[180] The Caliph’s two uncles, Dā´ūd and `Abdullah,—the former in Mekka and Medīna, the latter in Palestine,—were responsible for the wholesale extermination of the Umayyads in those countries. The historians tell us that `Abdullah on one occasion invited seventy members of the house of Umayya to a feast, under promises of a full amnesty, and that, at a given signal, the servants fell upon the unsuspecting guests and put them all to death. This tragedy recalls the famous “Blood bath” in Stockholm, but the Umayyads had no Gustav Wasa to avenge their death. We are told that the spirit of revenge carried them so far that they caused all the tombs of the Umayyad Caliph to be opened, and what remained of their corpses to be scattered to the winds. Cf. Chroniques de Tabari, vol. iv. p. 343.
[181] History of Bokhara, p. 40.
[182] Es-Saffāh was ten years younger than Abū Ja`far, but, as Weil suggests, was preferred to the latter, because his mother was a free woman, while his brother’s was a slave.
[183] See Weil, Geschichte der Khalifen, vol. ii. pp. 24, 25.