[40] Ibid. ch. xxvii.
[41] The Beni Iyâdh, Namir, and Sheibân. We shall meet them again in the Irâc campaign.
[42] Sajâh, it is said, lived quietly with her tribe after this in the profession of Christianity, until with them she was converted to Islam. There is a childish tale that on returning from the hasty marriage, her army, scandalised that she had received no dower, made her go back and ask Moseilama, who received her roughly, refusing her admittance; but, in lieu of dower, agreed to remit two of the daily prayers imposed by Mahomet.
By some of the historians the interview between Moseilama and Sajâh is drawn (happily a rare case in these annals) in language of gross indelicacy. The pruriency suggesting this, is the more gratuitous, as we are told, almost in the same breath, that Moseilama’s tenets were rather of an ascetic turn. His system enjoined prayer and fasting, and prohibited (so the tradition runs) cohabitation after the birth of a son, to be resumed only, if the child died, till the birth of another. But our knowledge of the life and doctrines of these pretenders to prophecy is really too scanty to warrant us in pronouncing judgment upon them.
Belâdzori and Ibn Khaldûn are among the few who have here kept their pages clean. Gibbon characteristically seizes on the passage.
[43] In a passage of Tabari (vol. i. p. 188) it is stated that when Amru passed through these regions with a column to clear the roads, he and Mâlik had words with each other. It is possible, therefore, that Khâlid may have had a stronger case against Mâlik than appears.
[44] That is, the Ansârs, as opposed to the Refugees, i.e. the men of Medîna, as opposed to the Coreish and men of Mecca.
[45] In the Kinânite.
[46] A full account of Mâlik and Motammim, with copious extracts from their poetry, will be found in Nöldeke’s Poesie der alten Araber, Hanover, 1864. Arab critics take Motammim as the model of elegiac poets, both for beauty of expression and intensity of feeling. For twenty years he had been blind of an eye, and now he told Omar that grief for his brother’s cruel fate had brought floods of tears from that eye, which all these years had been bereft of moisture. ‘Verily this surpasseth all other grief!’ said Omar. ‘Yes,’ replied Motammim, ‘it would have been a different thing if my brother had died the death of thy brother Zeid upon the field of battle.’ The noble mien and generosity of Mâlik are painted in glowing colours. He used to kindle a great fire by his tent all night until the day broke, in the hope of attracting travellers to his hospitable home.
[47] The darker suspicion has been preserved by tradition, both in prose and verse. See C. de Perceval, vol. iii. p. 368; and Kitâb al Aghâny, vol. iii. p. 355. Leila, we are told, cast herself at Khâlid’s feet, with hair dishevelled and unveiled face, imploring mercy for her husband. The wretched man, noticing the admiring look which the conqueror bestowed upon his wife, cried out, ‘Alas, alas! here is the secret of my fate!’ ‘Not so,’ said Khâlid, as he gave the sign for beheading him; ‘but it is thine own apostasy.’ All the same, he took the wife straightway for his own. We may dismiss the scene as unsupported by evidence. It is also inconsistent with Abu Bekr’s treatment. His reproach of Khâlid was based not on the impropriety of the act itself (which he could hardly have avoided had the story been founded on fact), but on its being at variance with the ideas of the Arabs to wed on the field of battle. The example, however, was set by the Prophet himself, who married Safia the night after the battle of Kheibar, and at any rate it was not long in becoming a common practice. Following the example of Khâlid (repeated by him again shortly after), the Moslem warriors made no delay in the field to wed—or rather, without wedding, to treat upon the spot as servile concubines—the wives and daughters of their fallen foes. The practice also now arose of taking their own families with them in the field, and marriages were celebrated there among themselves—on one occasion, we read, on the eve of an impending battle.