His sequel is curious. At the first, Toleiha took refuge with the Beni Kelb on the Syrian frontier; then when the Beni Asad were pardoned, he returned to them and again embraced Islam. Passing Medîna soon after on pilgrimage, he was seized and carried to Abu Bekr, who set him at liberty, saying, ‘Let him alone. What have I to do with him? The Lord hath now verily guided him into the right path.’ When Omar succeeded to the Caliphate, he presented himself to take the oath of allegiance. At first Omar spoke roughly to him: ‘Thou art he that killed Okkâsha and his comrade. I love thee not.’ ‘Was it not better,’ answered Toleiha, ‘that they by my hand should obtain the crown of martyrdom, rather than that I by theirs should have perished in hell-fire?’ When he had sworn allegiance, the Caliph asked him concerning his oracular gift,[35] and whether anything yet remained of it. ‘Ah,’ he replied, ‘it was but a puff or two, as from a pair of bellows.’ So he returned to his tribe, and went forth with them to the wars in Irâc, where, in the great struggle with Persia, he became a hero of renown.
Beni Asad and other tribes received back into Islam.
After the battle of Bozâkha, the Beni Asad, fearing lest their families should fall into the conqueror’s hand, tendered their submission. The Beni Aámir, Suleim, and Hawâzin, tribes which had stood aloof watching the event, now came in, and received from Khâlid the same terms as the Beni Asad. They resumed the profession of Islam with all its obligations, and in proof thereof brought in the tithe. A full amnesty was then accorded, on condition only that those who during the apostasy had taken the life of any Moslem should be delivered up. These were now (to carry out the Caliph’s vow) put to the like death as that which they had inflicted. If they had speared their victims, cast them over precipices, drowned them in wells, or burned them in the fire, the persecutors were now subjected to the same barbarous and cruel fate.
A body of malcontents under Omm Siml discomfited.
Khâlid stayed at Bozâkha for a month, receiving the submission of the people in the vicinity and their tithes. Troops of horse scoured the country, and struck terror into the vacillating tribes around. In only one direction was serious opposition met. Certain malcontents from amongst the penitent and returning people, unable to brook submission, gathered themselves together in a defiant attitude. They had yet to learn that the grip of Islam was stern and crushing. Their restless and marauding spirit preferred, perhaps, even as a forlorn hope, to hold their enemy at bay; or they had sinned beyond the hope of grace. Thus they assembled in a great multitude around Omm Siml, daughter of a famous chieftain of the Ghatafân. This lady’s mother, Omm Kirfa, had been captured and put to a cruel death by Mahomet. She herself had waited upon Ayesha as a captive maid in the Prophet’s household; but the haughty spirit of her race survived the servitude. Mounted on her mother’s war-camel, she led the force herself, and incited the insurgents to a bold resistance. Khâlid proclaimed the reward of one hundred camels to him who should maim her camel. It was soon disabled; and, Omm Siml slain, the rout was easy.[36]
Oyeina, Corra, and Alcama released by Abu Bekr.
In this campaign the only persons taken captive were those who had deeply compromised themselves as leaders in rebellion. They were sent by Khâlid to Abu Bekr. The chief were Oyeina, Corra, and Alcama. The story of this last, a chief of the Beni Aámir, is curious. After the surrender of Tâyif he had fled to Syria. On the death of Mahomet he returned, and incited his people to rebellion. An expedition sent in pursuit of him had seized his family, and carried them off captive to Medîna. He fled; but as all the country-side had now submitted, there was no longer any way of escape, and he was seized and delivered up to Khâlid. Corra, of the same tribe, was one of those whom Amru, on his journey from Oman, had found vacillating, and of whom he brought an evil report to Abu Bekr. Oyeina, the marauding chieftain of the Fezâra, had often been the terror of Medîna. When the city was besieged by the Coreish, he offered his assistance on certain humiliating terms, which the Prophet was near accepting; and he was one of the many influential leaders ‘whose hearts,’ after the battle of Honein and siege of Tâyif, ‘had been reconciled’ by the Prophet’s largesses. He was now led into Medîna with the rest in chains, his hands tied up behind his back. The citizens crowded round to gaze at the fallen chief, and the very children smote him with their hands, crying out, ‘Enemy of the Lord, and apostate!’ ‘Not so,’ said Oyeina bravely; ‘I am no apostate; I never was a believer until now.’[37] The Caliph listened patiently to the appeal of the captives. He forgave them, and commanded their immediate release.
Fujâa, a freebooter, burned alive.
Abu Bekr, as a rule, was mild in his judgments, and even generous to the fallen foe. But on one occasion the treachery of a rebel chief irritated him to an act of barbarous cruelty. Fujâa, a leader of some note amongst the Beni Suleim, under pretence of fighting against the insurgents in his neighbourhood, obtained from the Caliph arms and accoutrements for his band. Thus equipped, he abused the trust, and, becoming a freebooter, attacked and plundered Moslem and Apostate indiscriminately. Abu Bekr thereupon wrote letters to a loyal chief in that quarter to raise a force and go against the brigand. Hard pressed, Fujâa challenged his adversary to a parley, and asserted that he held a commission from the Caliph not inferior to his. ‘If thou speakest true,’ answered the other, ‘then lay aside thy weapons and accompany me to Abu Bekr.’ He did so, and followed, without further resistance, to Medîna. No sooner did he appear than the Caliph, enraged at his treachery, cried aloud: ‘Go forth with this traitor to the burial-ground, and there burn him with fire.’ So, hard by in Backî, the graveyard of the city, they gathered wood, and heaping it together at the Mosalla, or place of prayer, kindled the pile, and cast Fujâa on it.
Abu Bekr regrets the act.