Haroun Alraschid, caliph of Bagdad;

Front matter

THE NEW PLUTARCH:

Lives of Men and Women of Action.

Post Octavo. Price 2/6 per Volume.

Chap. I.— Haroun's Accession, ... 29 II.— "The Golden Prime," . , • 55

III.— The Fall of the Barmecides, . . 81

IV.— The Latter End, . . . .107

v.— The Caliph of the Legend, . . 139

Genealogical Table of the Houses of Ommaiyeh,

Abbas, and Ali, • . . • . 229

Introduction

THE RISE OF THE CALIPHATE.

THE ancient Empire of Persia was tottering to its fall, the great and holy Roman Empire had well-nigh run its course, when Mohammed, with true prophetic inspiration — or, what is more, with true political instinct — foretold to the Arabians that they should inherit the glories of the dying empires, and should themselves, for the same faults, ultimately share their fate.

" Do they not see how many a generation we have destroyed before them, whom we had settled on the earth as we have not settled for you, and sent the rain of heaven on them in copious showers, and made the waters flow beneath them ? Then we destroyed them for their sins, and raised up other generations after them." — Koran, vi. 6.

I propose, in the following pages, to show what the Mohammedan empire was at the culminating point of its greatness, by sketching the career of the most illustrious of its sovereigns, and the one most familiar to European readers — to describe, in short,

the golden prime

Of good Haroun Alraschid.

It will, however, be necessary first to learn, as briefly as possible, in what manner and through what means the Mohammedan power had its rise and origin.

The Arabs, in and before Mohammed's time, were a brave and vigorous race, preserving almost unlo Introductioit.

changed the habits and mode of life of the patriarchal age. Living in the pure and invigorating air of the desert, far from the turmoil of men and cities ; unacquainted with luxury, and possessing in his camels, sheep, and tents all that he absolutely required for his subsistence, the Arab was, and still is, a free, simple, vigorous child of nature. Like all peoples who live in constant communion with nature, poetry was a passion as well as an innate talent with him, and by furnishing him with an easy vehicle for the recording of thoughts and events, by giving him in fact a literature, although an unwritten one, redeemed him from many of the faults of unlettered savagery. " The Arabs' registers are the verses of their bards," says their own proverb, and the number of these which have been preserved afford invaluable materials for the study of their history and character. Their poetry was the natural outcome of their mode of existence, and the very metres and rhythms which they employ breathe the desert air. Just as the Scandinavian poet, in his daily life amidst brawling torrents and dashing cascades, threw his thoughts insensibly into language that flowed in harmony with these voices of nature around him ; so the Arab, in the stillness of the desert, thought aloud as he journeyed on, while his thoughts insensibly fell into language whose rhythm was guided by the pace of his camel or himself.

So passionately fond of liberty is the Arab, that he will not brook the trammels of government or even of society. The individual Bedawi bows to no authority but his own will; and if a tribe acknowledge a Sheikh or elder as its head, it promises no allegiance to him as ruler or lord, but only cedes to him the right of representing it in its dealings with strangers, and gives him the somewhat equivocal privilege of occupying the most exposed part of the

Arab Character, ii

camp, and of entertaining all comers at his own expense. A certain strong feeling of clanship among the members of individual tribes, an irrepressible love of plunder and freebooting, leading to constant petty wars and prolonged vendettas, and a superstitious belief in a debased form of Sabaeanism, were the chief characteristics of the people in the midst of whom Mohammed was born.

The requirements of commerce necessitated some general gatherings of the tribes, and the territory of Mecca, where was situated the most honoured shrine of Sabaean worship, was naturally the locality in which they would occur. Accordingly, an annual fair was held at Ocadh, where literary contests also took place ; and these, like the Olympic games amongst the Greeks, served to keep alive a certain feeling of national unity among the different tribes. Two results followed from this state of things, which have an important bearing on the success of Mohammed's mission. In the first place, the tribe of the Koreish, from which he sprung, were located on the site of the Ka'abeh, the chief temple of national worship just referred to, and they therefore became the natural guardians of the sacred edifice, and so acquired a kind of prescriptive superiority over other tribes. Secondly, as all the tribes met in the territory of the Koreish to try their respective skill in poetry and oratory, the language of this particular tribe became necessarily the standard dialect, and absorbed into itself many of the idioms and locutions of the rest. Thus we see that local, tribal, and social circumstances were all in favour of the development of any great idea originating with the Koreish.

So far, the picture of the Arab is a bright and favourable one ; but there is, unfortunately, a dark side to it. Morally and intellectually, they were in a

12 Introduction.

state of revolting barbarism ; the primitive simplicity of Sabaeanism — the worship of the Hosts of Heaven — had degenerated into a gloomy and idolatrous polytheism ; drunkenness, gambling, divination by arrows, polygamy, murder, and worse vices were terribly rife amongst them.

Am.ongst their other savage practices, that of burying their female children alive was perhaps the worst. Even at the present day, female children are considered rather a disgrace than a blessing by the Bedawi Arabs, and a father never counts them in enumerating his offspring. Before Mohammed's time, the same dislike existed in a more repulsive form still, and this practice of burying daughters alive — wdd at bendt, as it was called — was very prevalent. " The best son-in-law is the grave," said one of their own proverbs, and the father was in most cases the murderer. It is narrated of one chief, Othman, that he never shed tears except on one occasion, when his little daughter, whom he was burying alive, wiped the grave-dust from his beard. Against this inhuman practice Mohammed directed all the thunders of his eloquent indignation, and set before their eyes the terrors of the last day, " when the female child that hath been buried alive shall be asked for what crime she was put to death."

The Ka'abeh, their chief sanctuary, contained no fewer than three hundred and fifty idols ; amongst them the famous black stone, said to have fallen from heaven, and to have been originally white, though now blackened by the kisses of devout but sinful mortals.

The guardianship of the Ka'abeh and the chieftainship of the Koreish tribe were vested in Abd Menaf,^

1 See Genealogy.

The Early Caliphs. 13

j

land would in the ordinary course of things have descended to his eldest son, Abd Shems. His second son Hashim, however, having obtained a victory over kn invading Abyssinian army, was promoted to the office, and a deadly rivalry henceforth existed -between the two families ; from his son Ommaiyeh .were descended the Ommiade cahphs of Damascus. Hashim's son, Abd al Muttaleb, had three sons — )Abdallah, the father of the Prophet Mohammed; lAbbas, the progenitor of the Abbaside caliphs ; and :Abu Talib, the father of Ali, who married Mohammed's idaughter Fatima, from whom sprang the Fatemite land Alawi caliphs, who ruled in Egypt and Africa.

At Mohammed's death, the tribes of Arabia would have relapsed into their former anarchy, had it not been for the wisdom and energy of Omar, one of the staunchest supporters of El Islam, and a father-in-law of the Prophet. There were four claimants for the Caliphate — Ali, first cousin to Mohammed, and husband of the latter's youngest daughter Fatima ; Abu Bekr, father of Mohammed's favourite wife Ayesha ; Omar, whom we have just mentioned, father of Hafsa, another of his wives ; and Othman, a member of the house of Ommaiyeh. Othman had, however, embraced Islam and married two of the Prophet's daughters. Ali was undoubtedly the lawful successor, but as he had on one occasion mortally offended Ayesha by listening to a charge of incontinence that had been brought against her, she used all her influence to prevent his accession, and the house of Ommaiyeh strenuously supported her opposition. An immediate rupture was avoided by the election of Abu Bekr, at whose death Omar was, by the intrigues of Ayesha, invested with the office of Caliph, and, when Omar died, Othman was elected, as Ali refused to subscribe to the conditions imposed upon him, that

14 Introduction, he should govern according to the Koran and the, " Traditions." Ali's reply is remarkable : he declared his readiness to govern according to the Koran, but would not be bound by the " Traditions of the Elders," as he called them ; thus giving contem-1 poraneous evidence that the " Sunna," or " Tradi-j tions," are not, as the sect called Sunnis pretend] composed of the personal sayings of Mohammed, bub represent the traditional legal wisdom of Arabia] which has received the sanction of Mohammed's name. This is a very important point to bear in mind, as it accounts to a great extent for the antipathy of the Persians to the Sunnite creed. The Koran itself is, indeed, less the invention or conception of Mohammed, than a collection of legends and moral axioms borrowed from desert lore and couched in the language and rhythm of desert eloquence, but adorned with the additional charm of enthusiasm. Had it been merely Mohammed's own invented discourses, bearing only the impress of his personal style, the Koran could never have appealed with so much success to every Arab-speaking race as such a miracle of eloquence that its very beauty is divine ; nor would it, as it has done, have formed the recognised standard of literary elegance and grandeur. Ali's reply, then, contained the whole gist of the dispute between Shiah and Sunni. The former will accept the Koran, the legal code of which is vague and incomplete, and which contains only one uncompromising dogma — that of the unity of God — which he can and does refine away. But, on the other hand, he will not acknowledge the Sunna, which hampers him at every step with alien ordinances and with ceremonies foreign to his nature and his national traditions,

Othman's first act, on being promoted to the chief

Murder of All 15

:ommand in El Islam, was to fill all the most important posts with members of the House of Ommaiyeh, ^.loawiyeh, son of Abu Sofyan, being made Governor 'if Syria. Othman was at length assassinated, and Ali 'lected, this time unconditionally, to the Caliphate. jie at once recalled Moawiyeh, who refused to obey, '.nd, backed by the influence of Ayesha, claimed the Caliphate for himself. A severe contest followed between the armies of Ali and Moawiyeh, in which he former was at first successful. He was, however, iompelled by the intrigues of Amrou, the general who lad conquered Egypt, to submit his own claims and hose of Moawiyeh to arbitration, instead of taking ull advantage of his military success. Arrived at <:u.a, 12,000 of Ali's followers took offence at the )roposed arbitration and deserted, which defection )riginated the sect of Kharegites or Separatists, who reject the lawful government established by •ublic consent." Three of these deserters, named 'arak, Amrou, and Abdarrahman, planned a con- :)iracy to assassinate, on one and the same day, Ali, "oawiyeh, and Amrou, whose quarrels they condered had caused all the troubles and dissensions in slam. Barak went to Damascus, and attacked vioawiyeh in the mosque during the Friday prayers, iut without fatal results. Amrou, at the same hour, intered the Mosque of Cairo and slew Karija, whom ie mistook for Amrou, the general. Abdarrahman, ;he third conspirator, repaired to Kufa, where the [laliph was felled to the ground by a sword-cut on the lead as he was entering the mosque (A.D. 660). He ivas buried about five miles from Kufa, and in later iimes a magnificent mausoleum was erected over the ipot, which became the favourite resort of Shiah pilgrims, and the site of the city of Meshed Ali, or ' Ali's shrine." On All's death, his eldest son Hasan

1 6 Introduction.

was elected Caliph, but resigned the office to Moa wiyeh, on the understanding that he should agaii succeed at the latter's decease. Moawiyeh, howevei had other designs in view, and determined that hi own son Yezid should succeed him. At Moawiyeh' instigation, Hasan was foully murdered by his ow wife, eight years after his father's death, and Ayesh the evil genius of Ali's family, herself died some yea' after — murdered, it is said, by her protege Moawiye On Moawiyeh's death, his son Yezid succeeded hi without election, and the Ommiade dynasty thi became established on the throne of the Caliphat Yezid had hardly assumed the office, when tl partisans of Ali's family prepared to revolt, ar. Husain, Ali's surviving son, who was then at Mecc^j was secretly invited to Kufa to place himself at thj head of the party. Yezid, however, had timelj warning of the intended rising, and replaced the the) governor of Kufa by the stern and uncompromising Obeidallah, who seized on Muslim, the envoy i Husain, and on Hani, in whose house he had bee concealed ; and when a crowd collected about t Palace, clamouring for the release of the prisoner ordered their heads to be struck off and thrown dow; to the assembled multitude. As Husain himseli arrived on the borders of Babylonia, he was met b; Harro with a company of horse. This man told hin that he had Obeidallah's orders to bring him to Kufa \ and on Husain's refusing to accompany him, h< allowed him to choose any road that led to Kufa, an( , retreated his force for the purpose of facilitating th« movement. After riding through the night, a horse ' man met them, and delivered instructions to Harrc ; that he was to lead Husain into an open and unde| m fended place until the Syrian army came up anc " surrounded them. The next day Amer arrived witl

Death of Htisain, ij

4000 men from Kufa, and, on Obeidallah's orders, cut Sff Husain's retreat on the plain of Kerbela by the ^'^iver Euphrates, surrounded his camp, and demanded lis unconditional surrender. His refusal was followed Sy a murderous attack from the enemy, which Husain ^uid his few followers for some time repelled, but vhich ended in their complete annihilation. ^ The great secret of Mohammed's success, and of , he rapid military and religious development of Islam, ay in the fact that he, for the first time in their listory, banded together the Arab tribes in one confederation, taught them that they possessed a national iriity, and made them lay aside their petty feuds and ^ealousies.

, \The first four, or orthodox Caliphs, as the Moham-

liedans call them, though exercising a perfectly

absolute authority, never threw aside the simple

<("icinners and habits of a desert sheikh. Dressed in a

oarse abba, or loose hair-cloth cloak, or wearing a yde sheepskin mantle over his shoulders, and with

ajthern sandals on his feet, the " Prince of the ■jAilthful" walked unattended about the market-place,

. ci listened to complaints of and criticisms on his j^Ji'e, and often delivered in rude offensive terms. ■p (Their position, as the name Caliph (or, more iD[rrectly, Khalifeh) implies, was strictly that of

Successor" to the Prophet, and their functions were iif^refore ecclesiastical as well as military. Indeed, .ley used to lead the prayers of the worshippers in (?!rson on Fridays in the principal mosque of the i-kpital.

j The following anecdote will illustrate the simplicity xf their lives and the relations they held towards ^■{leir followers : — On one occasion the Caliph Omar J;in el Khattab had received a present from Yemen of lome fine striped cloth, which he distributed amongst si

Introduction.

his followers. On the next day, when he ascended the pulpit and exhorted the congregation to fight against the infidels, one man rose and said, " I will neither listen nor obey!" "Why not?" asked the Caliph. " Because," said he, '' I see you wearing a shirt of that stuff from Yemen, and unless you had taken more than your share, such a tall man as you are would not have found it enough." Omar called upon his son Abdallah to clear him from the unjust suspicion, which he did by telling the congregation that he had himself given a piece from his own share of the cloth to make up the deficiency in his father's portion.

Led by such chiefs, and animated by the intense enthusiasm and religious fervour which Mohammed had inspired, the armies of Islam swept irresistibly over Asia, and the vast empire of the Khosroes fell almost without a struggle. At first, with their iconjoclastic instincts and their love of plunder, thjey brought nothing but ruin and devastation in thjeir train, and the treasures of art and literature wtjire dispersed or destroyed as soon as they fell into thjeir hands. Nor had they at first any better idea j of taking advantage of their conquests than the 6)ld Arab plan of confiscating the portable property cpf, and imposing a tax on, the conquered, offering tlie choice of Islam or death to those who either could njot or would not pay it. Soon, however, the exigencies of their widely extended dominions required mo^.re settled and elaborate government ; the aid of Greellcs and Persians was called in to assist the Arajb generals and governors, and the desert warriors begain gradually to adapt themselves to the civilisatiojn around them. Arts, sciences, and literature begarn once more to take their former place under the Moslem rule, but we must not forget, as so maniy

Govermnefit of Conqiiend Countries. 19

historians seem to do, that none of these blessings owe more to the Arabs than the permission to exist. It is solely to Persian and Greek influence that they survived ; the simple but barbarous Caliphs, during the first years of the empire, left the whole of the administration of the provinces in native hands to such an extent that, for some time, Greek was the language \x\ which the official acts of the Arab rulers were rc-corded. Persian artists designed and decorated their mosques and palaces ; the gardens of Shiraz, and not the rude rocks of the desert, suggested the beautiful forms of tracery that we are accustomed to call Arabesque ; the science and philosophy were all either Indian or Greek. In fact, it was Aryan civilisation, that would not be crushed out by rude invasion ; it was history repeating itself, and

Yezid's succession to the Caliphate on the death of his father Moawiyeh was not distasteful to the partisans of All's family alone. In Mecca resided Abdallah ibn Zobeir, a man with many claims to the affection and reverence of the faithful. His father, Z^obeir, had been one of the earliest converts to Islam, ?l cousin and intimate friend of the prophet, and a successful general who had mainly contributed to the c|onquest of Africa, and had almost won Byzantium for the Moslem arms : the son, Abdallah, was born at Medina during Mohammed's sojourn there, and had been nursed by the Prophet himself, with whom he was a great favourite. On the death of H us a in, Abdallah was saluted Caliph by the Meccans ; Medina followed shortly after, and in a little time all Hejjaz acknowledged his authority. Medina was slacked by the army which Yezid had sent against it,

20 Introduction.

but Mecca still held out, until the death of the Caliph put an end to the siege.

Yezid presented a great contrast to his simple and severe predecessors. During h s reign, which lasted only three years and six months, he shocked the Moslem world by his excesses, his open indulgence in wine, and his poetry, in which he ridiculed the most sacred tenets of his faith, and launched into extravagant praises of all that it forbade.

His son Moawiyeh was a mere boy when his father died. In a few months he begged to be relieved of the burden of sovereignty, which he felt to be too great for him, and died (some say poisoned) in retire-t ment shortly afterwards. |

Abdallah ibn Zobeir failed to take advantage of the opportunity afforded by Yezid's death, and th6 chiefs of the house of Ommaiyeh chose Merwan, /k friend and favourite of the Caliph Otliman, as thje successor to the throne. He was murdered by hfs wife after a short reign of nine months, during which the empire was distracted by the sanguinary confliqts of the rival parties contending for power. Besidt^s the son of Zobeir at Mecca, there were also in tlpe field the partisans of Ali at Kufa and the Kharegite^s, or Separatists, who had deserted Ali at Siffin. NoW were these the only elements of discord, for a disturbing cause existed in Islam, almost as potent a's the racial hatred between the Arabs and the Persians ; this was the antagonism between the purely nomadit'^. tribes, who claimed Modhar for their sire — and td> whom the Koreish, although settled at Meccabelonged — and the more civilised tribes of Yemen Between these two parties an ancient and irreconcil able feud existed, and although the enthusiasm o religion and the lust of conquest banded the together for a time, their smothered hatred was

Abd el Melik. 21 always ready to burst out into flame. Another fertile source of danger to the empire was the miUtary power with which the governors of provinces were armed, and which often enabled and tempted them to withstand the Caliph's authority. Thus religious fanaticism, racial hatred, tribal feuds, family quarrels, and private ambition were all together threatening to undermine the magnificent structure which the easy victories of Mohammed and his successors had built up.

The Ommiade family had owed its success to the severe virtues and the unflinching courage inherent in the chiefs of the desert ; but prosperity, by destroying the necessity for the exercise of these virtues and by effacing their primitive simplicity, hastened their fall.

Abd el Melik, Merwan's son, who succeeded him, did something to stem the tide of ruin. He was a prince of great ability and determination, and knew how to consolidate his authority, and establish it on a firmer basis. The language of the official documents in which the affairs of the empire were recorded was changed from Persian to Arabic ; the freedom of intercourse which the former Caliphs had allowed their subjects was jealously repressed by him ; the Arabian provinces were brought under his rule ; and El Hejjaz, one of the most stern and bloodthirsty commanders that Arab history records, having been sent by him to Mecca, conquered the city and put the usurper, Abdallah ibn Zobeir, to death (a d. 692).

Before Abd el Melik ascended the throne, he had pursued theological studies at Medina with such assiduity that he acquired the sobriqiiet of the ' Mosque Pigeon," since, like those birds, he scarcely ^ver quitted the holy edifice, but remained there day and night reading the Koran. When news was

22 Introdiictioit.

brought him of his father's death and his own succession, he shut up the volume and said, " Here you and I part!" after which he occupied himself entirely with affairs of state.

His greatest achievement was the building of the magnificent Dome of the Rock at Jerusalem, which work, though undertaken chiefly through political exigencies, and in order to divert men from the pilgrimage to Mecca, the capital of his rival Abdallah ibn Zobeir, remains a lasting memorial of his munificence.

At Abd el Melik's death, the Caliphate passed into the hands of his eldest son, Walid, with a reversion, in case of his death, to his second son, Suleiman. Walid wished to set aside this arrangement in favour of his own son Abd el Aziz, and, with the assistance of El Hejjaz and other chiefs, planned to obtain from his brother a formal renunciation of his rights of succession. Suleiman sought the aid of the Yemeni chiefs, and the slumbering passions of the two factions being aroused, a series of revolutions and civil wars commenced, which ultimately resulted in the downfall of the Ommiade dynasty.

In A.D. 715 Walid died, and was succeeded by his brother Suleiman. He, like his brother, had wished one of his own sons to succeed him, but yielded to the advice of his counsellors, and left sealed instructions that Omar ibn Abd el Aziz, a grandson of Merwan, should be proclaimed Caliph at his death, which was accordingly done.

During the reigns of Abd el Melik and Walid the limits of the empire were vastly extended by a conf tinned series of conquests, Spain, India, and Centraij. Asia being included in their dominions. Arabia had been quieted by the death of Abdallah ibn Zobeii and the taking of Mecca. El Hejjaz, who had

Anecdote of IValfd II. 23

accomplished the task, ruled the turbulent provinces of Irak with an iron hand.

Walid was the last great monarch of the Ommiade dynasty. Yezid II., who succeeded him, was a prince of frivolous character, and although he, or rather his brother Maslamah, succeeded in repressing a formidable revolt of the Yemeni faction, the slaughter with which the victory was accompanied only increased the latent hatred of the disaffected tribes. He died in A.D. 723, and was succeeded on the throne by his brother Hisham, who, by appointing Yemeni nobles as lieutenants to the various provinces, in place of the members of his own family, who had hitherto almost exclusively held these offices, succeeded in quieting at least a portion of his dominions for a time, although his parsimony alienated the affections of his subjects. Hisham died in 743, and was followed by his nephew, Walid II., a debauched and extravagant prince, who commenced his career by squandering the treasures which his predecessor had saved. An anecdote is related of him, that on one occasion he consulted the Koran by the species of divination practised in the middle ages with a volume of Virgil, and called Sortes VirgiliancE, and lit upon the passage, " Disappointed shall be every rebel tyrant." In a rage he threw the sacred volume on the ground, and cried in impromptu verse —

'' Me as a ' rebel tyrant' wouldst thou then affright? Yea ! for I am a rebel tyrant — thou art right ! And when in judgment thou before the Lord shalt stand, Say then that thou wert torn thus by Walid's right hand !"

A short time afterwards, say the historians, he was murdered.

The popularity which the extravagance of Walid II. had gained for him also induced him to try the

24 Introductio7i.

dangerous experiment of proclaiming one of his sons, then mere children, his successor. The sons of Hisham and of Walid I. naturally resisted this, and began to conspire against his authority. About the same time he committed a still greater mistake, and allowed one of the most popular leaders of the Yemenis, and formerly governor of Irak under Walid L, who was residing peaceably at Damascus, to be given up to, and put to death by, a political opponent. The Yemeni tribes rose like a man to avenge the death of their clansman, and with Yezid, a son of Walid I., at their head, attacked and slew the Caliph. This Yezid (III.) was then proclaimed in his stead, but only reigned six months. He died in 744, and was succeeded by Merwan II., a grandson of the first Caliph of that name, who had been governor of Armenia and Azerbaijan. With a large army of disciplined soldiers, composed almost entirely of Modharite Arabs, he easily defeated a larger force of untrained Yemenites who had proclaimed Ibrahim, Yezid's brother, Caliph, and assumed the chief power. Merwan's strong partiality for his own (the Modhar) clan raised a storm of disaffection amongst the Yemeni Arabs ; the other factions took advantage of the opportunity, and simultaneous revolutions broke out all over the empire. His prompt and vigorous measures soon quieted Syria. Arabia, which had been overrun by the Kharegites, was almost recovered, when a fresh outbreak occurred which changed the whole current of events.

We have hitherto not spoken much of a branch of Mohammed's family who were destined to play a very great role in the drama of Islam — Abd al Muttaleb's other son, Abbas, the prophet's uncle. Although at first he refused to embrace the new faith, Islam, he ultimately gave in his adherence

Rise of the Abbasides. 25

to it, and his son Abdallah, better known as Ibn Abbas, became one of the Hghts of religion, and the greatest authority for the reading and interpretation of the Koran. He left several children, but only the youngest of them, Ali, had issue, and it was his son Abdallah who first aspired to the Caliphate, and who created the Abbaside party.

Mohammed made common cause with the descendants of Ali ibn Abi Talib, succeeded in getting himself acknowledged Imam, or spiritual head of the Church, and at once commenced the dissemination of his doctrines in Persia. Here everything was ripe for revolt : the conquering Arabs lived as a military caste amongst the vanquished Persians, treating them with ignominy, holding themselves exclusively aloof from them, and in every way wounding their proud and sensitive natures. Those who had ostensibly professed Islam had, as we have seen, warmly espoused the cause of Ali and his family, and it is not to be wondered at that the Abbaside emissaries found ready listeners amongst the former subjects of the Sassanian kings. Mohammed ibn Abbas died in 742, but his son Ibrahim was acknowledged as Imam, and the secret propaganda still continued as active as ever. The moment was favourable to a rising, for the Modhari and Yemeni factions were in constant and open conflict throughout the empire, especially in Khorassan. Ibrahim associated himself with one Abu Moslem, a brilliant and most determined soldier, of uncertain origin, but of great attachment to the house of Abbas, and appointed him his agent in Khorassan, in which province he had been born. About the same time a grandson of Zein el Abidin, the son of Husain, and the rightful Imam, was murdered ; Abu Moslem had