[264] The three envoys were Ribia, Hodzeifa, and Moghîra. The colloquies are much in the same style as those at the court of Medâin—long addresses, and rather tiresome. Rustem is represented at one time as inclining to Islam, and held back only by the taunts of his officers from embracing it; at another, threatening the Arabs with contemptuous denunciations. Much is drawn evidently from the imagination of the traditionists.
[265] ‘If the Lord will,’ added one of his followers. ‘Whether He will or not,’ said Rustem. Affecting to speak contemptuously of the Arabs, he said: ‘It is going, I fear, to be a year of monkeys. The fox barks when the lion is dead;’ meaning that in the time of Chosroes the Arabs would not have dared to invade Persia. Fresh dreams and omens of a portentous kind now multiplied upon him.
[266] There were, besides, the riding elephants of the court and nobles. These must all have been imported from India. The elephant does not appear to have been used by the Assyrians in war. It only appears in their mural representations as a rarity, and under peaceful associations.
The names of the other leaders were Dzul Hâjib (or Bahmân Jadoweih), Mehrân, Hormuzan, and Bendzowân.
[267] The squib did not die out (as we shall see below), but assumed a permanent form, as in this couplet:—
We fought patiently until the Lord vouchsafed us victory,
While Sád was safe within the walls of Câdesîya;
And we returned to our homes, finding many a widow there;
But among the women of Sád there was not any widow found.
[268] Sura viii., entitled Anfâl, or ‘The Spoils,’ is called also ‘Sura Jehâd.’ It is a long chapter, of seventy-eight verses. On ordinary occasions only suitable portions were recited. Here, apparently, the entire Sura was read. Two other Suras—Victory (xlviii.) and She who is tried (lx.)—are also used before battle, as containing warlike passages; and the practice is kept up in Moslem campaigns to the present day.