It is very difficult to weave a narrative at once faithful and consistent out of all this. The conversations of the rebel leaders with Aly must have been to a great extent conjectural; and the surprise of both armies no doubt adds to the confusion of the narrative as given by our authorities. The general outline, however, is established.

[515] The Eastern traveller will recognise and appreciate the illustration.

[516] This camel is a prominent subject in tradition, as we might expect from its having given its name to the battle, and many tales of heroism are told both in its attacks and defence. One says he never heard anything so fearful as the scream it gave when hamstrung.

[517] The numbers may be exaggerated; but the loss of life was, no doubt, immense, and it is evidence of the terrible fury with which the battle was fought. Of one tribe, the Beni Dhabba, alone, 1,000 men are said to have been slain. The strong partisan feelings both of Bedouin against Coreish, and of the opposing families of Hâshim and Omeyya, long pent up, tended to give bitterness to the conflict; and there was in addition the new cry of vengeance for the blood of Othmân.

[518] So carefully were Aly’s orders against plundering observed, that whatever was found on the field, or in the insurgent camp, was gathered together in the Great Mosque, and every man was allowed to claim his own. To the malcontents who complained that they were not allowed to take booty, Aly replied that the rights of war, in this case, lasted only so long as the ranks were arrayed against each other; and that, immediately on submission, the insurgents resumed their rights and privileges as brother Moslems.

[519] ‘She of the two shreds.’—Life of Mahomet, p. 145.

[520] There is a great abundance of tradition concerning Ayesha, both in the battle and after it. In the heat of the action, Aly’s soldiers taunted her as ‘the unnatural Mother of the Faithful.’ The soldiers on her side, in reply, extemporised a couplet, extolling her as ‘the noblest and best of Mothers.’ When they told it to her, she was much affected, and exclaimed, ‘Would that I had died twenty years before this!’ Aly also, when he heard it, said, ‘Would that I too had died twenty years ago!’

Ayesha, always ready in repartee, was not very particular in her language, and some of the speeches attributed to her are both coarse and intemperate. Asim approaching her litter on the field, she cursed him for the liberty he had taken. ‘It was but a little something red and white,’ he said, impudently, ‘that I caught a glimpse of.’ ‘The Lord uncover thy nakedness,’ she cried angrily; ‘cut off thy hands, and make thy wife a widow!’ All which, they say, came to pass. A saucy passage is related between her and the aged Ammâr, whose last words were, as she was leaving, ‘Praise be to the Lord that we shall hear no more that vile tongue of thine!’

Aly’s conduct was forbearing and generous. Of the family with which Ayesha was lodged at Bussorah, two sons had been killed fighting, one on the side of Aly, the other against him. The widow of the latter was loud in her lamentation, crying out against Aly as the cause of her sorrow. Aly was asked to punish her; but he refused, saying she was but a weak woman, and should not be touched. On the other hand, some one who spoke contumeliously of Ayesha was, by his order, beaten with shoes.

As Ayesha was starting for Mecca, Aly and a company gathered round her. When the time came to bid farewell, she said, ‘Let us not entertain hard thoughts one against the other; for verily, as regardeth Aly and myself, there happened not anything between us (alluding to her misadventure in the Prophet’s lifetime[521]) but that which is wont to happen between a wife and her husband’s family; and verily Aly was one of the best of them that entertained suspicions against me.’ Aly replied: ‘She speaketh the truth; there was nought, beyond what she saith, between her and me.’ And then he went on to say (quoting Mahomet’s own words) that ‘she was not only the Prophet’s wife in this world, but equally his spouse in the next.’