[98] By some accounts Mothanna appeared in person before Abu Bekr and promised to engage the local tribes in carrying the attack into the border lands of Irâc.
[99] Such are said to have been Abu Bekr’s orders; but tradition here probably anticipates the march of events. It is very doubtful whether he had yet the city of Hîra in view. The campaign widened, and the aims of Khâlid became more definite as his victories led him onwards.
[100] The pre-Islamite history of these Arab races is given in the introductory chapters to the Life of Mahomet, vol. i.
[101] i.e. ‘Irâc of the Arabs’ as distinguished from Irâc Ajemy, ‘foreign’ or Persian Irâc.
[102] The mounds are, no doubt, not only the remains of embankments but also of the clearances of silt, which (as we know in India) become hillocks in the course of time.
[103] This, as well as the main stream, is sometimes called by our historians Furât, or Euphrates; at other times by its proper name of Bâdacla, and also Al Atîck, the ‘old’ or deserted channel; but the streams have varied their course from age to age.
[104] The country suffers similarly in the present day at the hands of the Turkish Government. A traveller writes regarding it: ‘From the most wanton and disgraceful neglect, the Tigris and Euphrates, in the lower part of their course, are breaking from their natural beds, forming vast marshes, turning fertile lands into a wilderness,’ &c.
[105] These seem to have occupied a position similar to that of the great Talookdars in Upper India.
[106] Beyond the general outline we must not look for much trustworthy detail at the outset of these campaigns. The narrative of them is brief and summary, often confused and contradictory. For example, Hîra is said by some to have submitted at the outset and agreed to pay tribute, which is inconsistent with the course of the narrative. The summons to Hormuz as given in the text savours too much of the set type of after days to be above suspicion; so with the constant repetition of single combats, without which the historians seem to think no Arab battle complete.
There is one point of some importance. It is the call on Hormuz to pay tribute. Now, tribute was permitted by Mahomet only to ‘the people of the Book,’ that is, to Jews and Christians. No such immunity was allowed to the heathen, who were to be fought against to the bitter end. Zoroastrians (for such was Hormuz) should strictly have been offered no terms but Islam. They had not, however, yet been thought of, for they were altogether beyond the limits and tribes of Arabia. Eventually, Omar ruled that having ‘a Book’ or Revelation, they might be admitted into the category of those to be spared on payment of tribute. But, as I have said, the summons is no doubt cast in the conventional mould of later days.