[54] From the expression used, it would almost seem as if Sâlim carried the Corân on the point of his flag-staff. This was a common practice in after times, but the Corân was not yet collected. Possibly some portion may have been thus borne aloft by the leader, or the words may be metaphorical or anticipative.
[55] In some accounts of the battle, Khâlid is spoken of as challenging his enemy to single combat, and slaying, one after another, all who came out against him. But the circumstances would hardly have admitted of this. These single combats are the conventional drapery of all the early battles, and need not always be taken as facts. Here they are specially introduced to give place to an apocryphal story about Moseilama. He came forth to answer the challenge of Khâlid, who, in reference to the offer made by him to Mahomet, ironically asked whether he was now prepared ‘to share the Kingdom’; whereupon Moseilama turned aside ‘to consult his dæmon.’ Khâlid then rushed at him, and he fled. ‘Where is that now which thou didst promise us?’ cried his followers to the prophet, but all that he could reply was to bid them fight for their honour and their families.
[56] The twelve Leaders at the Pledge of Acaba. Life of Mahomet, ch. vi.
[57] It is said that 7,000 of the enemy were slain on each of these occasions, but the statement is loose and, no doubt, vastly exaggerated. One tradition gives the slain in the garden alone at 10,000.
[58] The greater loss among the men of Mecca and Medîna was ascribed by themselves to their superior gallantry, but by the Bedouins to their being raw and unused to fighting. We see already the seed of the rivalry which afterwards broke out so fatally between the Bedouins and the Coreish.
[59] The terms of the treaty, notwithstanding the alleged artifice (which reads somewhat strangely) were sufficiently severe. The Beni Hanîfa agreed to give up all their armour, their silver and their gold; but they were allowed to retain half of their slaves, and get back half of their own people taken prisoner. Khâlid had already captured in the valleys and open villages so many prisoners, that he had sent 500 to Abu Bekr as the royal Fifth, implying a total number of 2,500. But Omar subsequently freed all slaves of Arab blood.
Selma, one of the Hanîfa chiefs, sought to dissuade his people from surrender, saying that the winter was not overpast, and that the enemy must retire. Being overruled, he fled and committed suicide.
[60] The sayings reported were such as these: ‘O croaking frog, thou neither preventest the drinker, nor yet defilest the water.’ ‘We shall have half the land and ye the other half; the Coreish are an overbearing folk.’ But as I have said before, we have not the materials for knowing what the real teaching of Moseilama was, nor the secret of his influence.
[61] The Persian paraphrase of Tabari gives a highly coloured version. Khâlid, it tells us, gave his bride the dower of a million pieces out of the spoil, while on the marriage night the Moslem warriors lay about hungry and in want. Verses banded about the camp to this effect reached Omar, and put him in a towering passion. He nearly persuaded Abu Bekr to recall Khâlid, but the Caliph, reflecting that, after so great a victory, it would discourage the army, contented himself with a reproachful letter. All this is evidently gross exaggeration, founded probably on the dislike of the Abbasside historians.
[62] See the previous history of the province, Life of Mahomet, ch. xxx.