[142] The girl’s name was Sahba. Aly had recently received into his harem another maiden taken captive at Yemâma; being of the Beni Hanifa, the son, Mohammed, whom she bore to him, was called the Hanifite. Thus, though he sat inactive at home, Aly took his full share of the captive ladies. He also married in this year Omâma, a granddaughter of the Prophet (being a child of Abul Aâs and Zeinab) and niece of his deceased wife Fâtima.
I have noticed these expeditions very briefly, as the similarity of detail becomes tedious. The Persian generals Zermihr and Rozaba, were attacked by Cacâa and slain before they could form a junction with the Beni Taghlib, but the fugitives joined the Bedouin camp at Modeya in the desert. Thereupon, Khâlid organised three parties to converge at a set time by night upon the Arab encampment, which was surprised, and left covered with the dead, ‘like a field of slaughtered sheep.’ The chief, Hodzeil, escaped.
Among the slain were two Bedouin chiefs who, having embraced Islam, held an amnesty from the Caliph. Omar took the occasion again to blame Khâlid for his indiscriminating vengeance; but Abu Bekr, as before, justified him; ‘for those,’ he said, ‘who dwell in the encampment of an enemy must take their chance with him.’ As, however, they were both said to have called aloud the Moslem shibboleth, their families were set free and taken care of, and blood-money paid. Omar treasured up these things against Khâlid.
The similar stratagem of a convergent night attack was repeatedly resorted to at Thinia, Zomeil, and Bishr, not a soul escaping the sword but the women and children. Horcus, a famous chief of the desert, was surprised and slain while drinking his last draught of wine with his daughters, who were carried away captive. The subject is a favourite one, and the bacchanalian verses sung by Horcus in his last cups, with a swan-like anticipation of impending fate, are assigned to several different occasions.
[143] Ramadhan fell in December, A.D. 633.
[144] No details are given of this great battle, excepting the fabulous number of 100,000 slain.
[145] In the troublous times that followed, almost all the country rose and committed acts of disloyalty which, with one or two exceptions, cancelled the treaties and engagements now entered into by Khâlid with the Dihcâns.
[146] According to some traditions, Abu Bekr deputed Omar to preside at the pilgrimage this year. But the general opinion is that Abu Bekr did so himself, leaving Othmân during his absence in charge of Medîna. This is the more likely, as, owing to the troubled state of the peninsula, he had been unable to go on pilgrimage the previous year.
[147] See above, p. 53.
[148] Near to Castal (which C. de Perceval makes Callirhoe) and towards Abila but probably not so far north; the advance on Syria being made (as always) on the coast of the Dead Sea.