Khâlid joins Mothanna in Irâc.
The progress of Iyâdh was hampered by his enemy, and he was long detained in the Jôf, or country about Dûma. Khâlid met with no such obstacle. His army, like Mothanna’s, was swelled on its march from Yemâma to Irâc by large bodies of Bedouins. These were of the greater service as his numbers had been thinned not only by the carnage at Yemâma, but also by the free permission, which, after their long and arduous campaign, the Caliph had given the army, of furlough to their homes. Nevertheless, the expedition was so popular that when Khâlid, after a flying visit to the Caliph at Medîna, rejoined his camp as it neared the mouth of the Euphrates, he found himself at the head of 10,000 men; and this besides the 8,000 of Mothanna, who hastened loyally to place himself under the great leader’s command.
The Syrian desert and Mesopotamia.
The country on which they had now entered was, in some of its features, familiar to the invading army, but in others new and strange. From the head of the Persian Gulf to the Dead Sea there stretches right across the peninsula a stony wilderness, trackless and waterless. As you advance north, nature relaxes its severity; the plain, still a desert, is at certain seasons clothed with verdure, bright with flowers and instinct with the song of birds and hum of insect life. Such is the pasture-land which for several hundred miles extends from Damascus to the Tigris. Still further north, the desert features gradually disappear, and, about the latitude of Mosul, are blended with the hills and fields of Asia Minor. Athwart this vast plain, from Aleppo to Babylon, runs the river Euphrates, and the far east is bounded by the Tigris flowing under the mountain ranges of Persia. Between the two rivers lies the Jezîra, or ‘Island,’ of Mesopotamia, full of patriarchal memories. Over this great waste there roamed (as still roam) Bedouin tribes with their flocks and herds. The greater part of these Arabs had for centuries professed the Christian religion. Those on the Syrian side, as the Beni Ghassân of Bostra, owed allegiance to the Roman Empire; while on the east, like the Lakhmites of Hîra, they were dependent upon Persia.[100] But nomad life tends to fickleness of attachment and laxity of faith; and, not infrequently, affinity with their brethren of Arabia, and the lust of plunder, led these northern Arabs, deserting now their ancient allies and their ancestral faith, to cast in their lot with the invading columns.
Chaldæa and the delta of the Euphrates. Irâc Araby.
The lower Euphrates—Irâc Araby[101]—is in striking contrast with the region just described. The two great rivers of Mesopotamia, while yet more than 500 miles above the sea, draw close to one another. Below this point, the land, naturally rich, is easily supplied with water, and when irrigated is exuberantly fertile. Instead of joining where they approach, the two rivers still keep apart, and for two or three hundred miles, running parallel, inclose what was the memorable plain of Dura. The country (as now) was covered with long hillocks and mounds, the remains of an ancient network of irrigation,[102] and also strewed with fragments of brick and pottery, remnants of the dim ages of antiquity. At the time of which we write, the face of the land was not, as it is for the most part now, a barren waste, but richly cultivated and irrigated by canals. On the Tigris, a little below the point of its drawing near the Euphrates, was Medâin, ‘the twin city’ (combining the sites of both Seleucia and Ctesiphon), at this time the capital of Persia. Fifty miles to the south of it a series of shapeless mounds, looking down on the ‘great river’ Euphrates, marked the site of ancient Babylon, and from their summit, still to the south, might be descried the Birs Nimrûd (or ‘Tower of Babel’) rearing its weird head on the horizon of the verdant plain. Some thirty miles yet further south lay Hîra, the capital of the Lakhmites and of the Arab tribes around. It stood (like its successor Kûfa) upon the Bâdacla, a branch which issues from the right bank of the Euphrates by a channel in the live rock, sixteen miles above Babylon, cut by the hand of man, but of unknown antiquity.[103] Sweeping to the west of the parent river, the rival stream, in its southward course, feeds many marshes, and especially the great lake called the ‘Sea of Najaf; after a wide circuit it rejoins the Euphrates above its junction with the Tigris. There was in olden times another branch still further to the west, the Khandac, or ‘Trench of Sapor,’ which intended as a bar to Bedouin incursions, and, taking a yet wider circuit, fell into the Euphrates near Obolla, at the head of the Persian Gulf. This is now dry, but originally it carried a stream which, like the other, helped materially to widen the green belt continually narrowed and pressed in upon by the dry and sandy desert beyond. The lower delta again has features of its own. It is subject to tidal flow for fifty miles above the junction of the two rivers. Alluvial, low, and watered with ease, it is covered with a sea of corn, and has, not without reason, been called ‘the garden of the world.’ Besides the familiar palm, the country abounded with the fig, mulberry, and pomegranate. But the climate was close and oppressive; the fens and marshes, always liable to inundation, were aggravated by the neglect of dams and sluices in those days of anarchy;[104] and the Arab, used to the sandy steppes of the peninsula, gazed wonderingly at the luxuriant growth of reeds and rushes, and at buffalos driven by the pestiferous insects to hide their unwieldy bodies beneath the water, their heads alone appearing, or splashing lazily through the shallow waste of endless lagoons. All Chaldæa, from the estuary upwards, was cultivated, as now, by Fellaheen, or Arab peasantry, and these were lorded over by Dihcâns, or collectors commissioned by the Persian Court.[105] Such was the magnificent province lying between the desert and the mountain range of Persia, the cradle of civilisation and the arts, which attracted the first crusade of the Moslem arms.
Khâlid advances on the delta, and summons Hormuz.
The Satrap of the delta was Hormuz, a Persian prince, who (we are told), ‘fighting the tribes of Arabia by land, and the Indians by sea, guarded thus the portals of the Empire.’ But he was hateful to his Arab subjects, and his name for tyranny had become a byword. To him, as master of the tribes gathering in his front, Khâlid addressed a letter in the haughty type of Moslem summons. ‘Accept the faith and thou art safe, or else pay tribute, thou and thy people; which thing if thou refusest, thou shalt have thyself to blame. A people is already upon thee, loving death, even as thou lovest life.’ Then he ordered an advance. Mothanna led the first column; Adi, son of Hâtim (the famous chieftain of the Beni Tay), the second. Khâlid brought up the rear; all three converging upon Hafîr, a station on the Persian frontier by the desert border.[106]
Khâlid routs the army of the Persians. Battle of Chains.
Startled by the strange summons, Hormuz informed the king, and set out to meet the invader with an army, the wings of which were commanded by princes of the royal house. He marched in haste, thinking to have an easy victory over the untrained tribes of the desert; and reaching first the encamping ground, took possession of the springs. Khâlid, coming up, bade his force alight, and at once unload their burdens. Moharram, A.H. XII. March, A.D. 633.‘Then,’ said he, ‘let us fight for the water forthwith; by my life! the springs shall be for the braver of the two.’ Thereupon Hormuz challenged Khâlid to single combat, and, though he treacherously posted an ambuscade, was in the encounter slain. The Moslems then rushed forward, and with great slaughter put the enemy to flight, and pursued them to the banks of the Euphrates. The Arabs had now a foretaste of the spoils of Persia. The share of each horseman was one thousand dirhems, besides great store of arms.[107] The jewelled tiara of Hormuz, symbol of his rank, and valued at a hundred thousand pieces, was sent to the Caliph with the royal Fifth.[108] An elephant taken in the field was marched as part of the prize to Medîna; but having been paraded about the town, much to the wonder of the admiring citizens, was sent back as unsuitable to the place.[109] The action was called ‘the Battle of the Chains,’ for we are told that a portion of the Persian army was bound together to prevent its giving way.[110]