[215] The history of this contingent is interesting. Mahomet had promised Jarîr that he should have a commission to gather the scattered members of the Beni Bajîla into a fighting column. Jarîr followed Khâlid into Irâc, and then returned to Medîna, where he found Abu Bekr sick, or too much occupied to attend to his claim. But after his death, Omar, in fulfilment of the Prophet’s promise, gave him letters to the various governors to search out everywhere those who, before Islam, belonged to the Bajîla tribe, and still desired to be associated with it. A great rendezvous of these was accordingly made, at a spot between the Hejâz and Irâc, whither, yielding to the persuasion of Omar, they now bent their steps. There was rivalry between Jarîr and Arfaja as to the command of this tribe; but the levy had some grudge against Arfaja, who therefore left them and took the command of his own tribe, the Beni Azd. Arfaja is also said, by another tradition, to have led the Beni Bajîla into Syria; but that (if true) must have been a different body of men, and at a different time.
[216] The tradition runs: ‘Among those who joined Mothanna was Anis ibn Hilâl, with an immense following of the Beni Namr (Christians); for they said, We shall surely fight on the side of our own people.’
[217] Rustem and the insurgent Firuzân had come to a compromise, and agreed, we are told, to a division of power.
[218] Mehrân is called Hamadâny, because he was a native of that province. He is said, as on the former occasion, to have given Mothanna the option of crossing by the bridge.
The channel was the Bâdacla, which is here described as a spill canal to pass off the surplus waters of the Euphrates when in flood, into the Jowf or sea of Najaf—the same as the western branch of the river taken off (as already described) by the cut at Museyib, above Babylon. Boweib was not far from Hîra, the inhabitants of which must have been in much excitement during this and other great battles in the vicinity, on which their alternating fate depended.
[219] ‘Mothanna was an example,’ we are told, ‘in word and deed. The people trusted and obeyed him both in what they liked and what they disliked’—a noble, single-minded commander, whose repeated supersession had no effect upon his loyalty and zeal.
[220] ‘I brought the army,’ Mothanna said, ‘to an evil pass by getting before the enemy and closing the bridge upon him; but the Lord graciously warded off the danger. Beware, therefore, of following my example, for verily it was a grievous lapse. It becometh us not to bar the escape of those who have nothing to fall back upon.’ It will be observed that the compunction was not at all for any unnecessary bloodshed among the helpless enemy (an idea altogether foreign to the thoughts of a Moslem crusader), but of gratuitous loss and risk to the Moslems. It may have added to Mothanna’s grief that in repelling this last charge he lost his brother. The slain are put at 100,000. ‘Years after, even in the time of the civil wars, you could not walk across the plain without stumbling on the bones strewed all around.’
[221] The horse and spoil of Mehrân were awarded to the column in which this youth was fighting. Jarîr and another had a quarrel over them. Had the youth been a Mussulman, no doubt he would have obtained the whole as a prize.
[222] His own tribe, the Beni Bekr ibn Wâil.
[223] Amr went on with supplies to Hîra, where the rest of the families were in hiding. The female defenders of their camp remind one of Layard’s description of a similar occasion on which the women of an Arab encampment rushed out to repel an attack, armed with tent-poles and pitchforks. (Nineveh and Babylon, p. 168.)