With reference to Khâlid’s speech, I should notice that it was the tendency of the Kûfa and Bussora schools to magnify the difficulties of the conquest of Irâc in their own interest, as enhancing their claims upon the revenues of the Sawâd, or surrounding province. In this sense there is a fragment from the Arab warrior Amr ibn Cacâa:—
The Lord water the ground where lie buried the heroes of Irâc
Upon the dusty plain and beneath the sandy mounds!
And then he mentions in verse the various fields in which they had fallen in this first campaign from Hafîr to the siege of Hîra.
[127] These treaties were mostly abrogated by the rebellion that shortly after swept over the land. But some of the chieftains remained steadfast, as Salûba ibn Nestûba, ‘the lord of Coss Nâtick.’ His treaty is given verbatim by Tabari, with the witnesses, &c., copied, probably, from the original. He had to pay a tribute of 10,000 dirhems, to be contributed rateably by his people according to each man’s means, besides a tax of four dirhems per head (apparently a Persian tax, as it is called harazat Chosra).
The terms of these treaties were made by Khâlid, with the consent and approval of the army, showing how Khâlid recognised the dominancy of the democratic element.
[128] The terms of the discharge are given by Tabari, who also mentions nine of the Moslem chiefs employed to attest the receipts.
[129] One of the great channels drawn above Babylon from the Euphrates, which flows across the peninsula and falls into the Tigris.
[130] P. 68.
[131] His name was Shîrazâd, for we come now constantly on Persian names. The story is that the Moslems were told to shoot at the eyes of the garrison. And so a thousand of the enemy had their eyes transfixed; whence the siege was called ‘The action of the Eyes.’ I give the tradition as I find it—not pretending to offer an explanation—excepting that the same word stands for eyes and fountains.