and
despatched a messenger to Tariq b.'Amr, who was encamped at Wadi
'l-Qora with 5000 men, to make himself master of Medina and thence to
rejoin Hajjaj. Before the arrival of this reinforcement, Hajjaj confined
himself to skirmishes, in which his soldiers always had the advantage.
Then, in Dhu 'l Qa'da 72 (March 25th, 692) Mecca was invested. The
blockade lasted more than six months, during which the city was a prey
to all the horrors of siege and famine. Hajjaj had set up a balista on
the hill of Abu Qobais, whence he poured on the city a hail of stones,
which was suspended only in the days of the pilgrimage. Ibn Zobair
employed against him Abyssinians armed with Greek-fire-tubes, who,
however, quitted him soon under the pressure of famine. This at length
triumphed over his last adherents. Ten thousand fighting men, and even
two of the sons of the pretender (it is said, on his own advice), left
the city and surrendered. Mecca being thus left without defenders, Ibn
Zobair saw that ruin was inevitable. Hajjaj having promised him amnesty
if he would surrender, he went to his mother Asma, the daughter of Abu
Bekr, who had reached the age of a hundred years, and asked her counsel.
She answered that, if he was confident in the justice of his cause, he
must die sword in hand. In embracing him for the last time, she felt the
cuirass he wore and exclaimed that such a precaution was unworthy of a
man resolved to die. He, therefore, took off the cuirass, and, when the
Omayyad troops made their way into the city, attacked them furiously,
notwithstanding his advanced age, and was slain. His head was cut off,
and sent by Hajjaj to Damascus.

With Ibn Zobair perished the influence which the early companions of
Mahomet had exercised over Islam. Medina and Mecca, though they
continued to be the holy cities, had no longer their old political
importance, which had already been shaken to its foundations by the
murder of Othman and the subsequent troubles. Henceforward we shall find
temporal interests, represented by Damascus, predominating over those of
religion, and the centre of Islam, now permanently removed beyond the
limits of Arabia, more susceptible to foreign influence, and
assimilating more readily their civilizing elements. Damascus, Kufa and
Basra will attract the flower of all the Moslem provinces, and thus that
great intellectual, literary and scientific movement, which reached its
apogee under the first Abbasid Caliphs at B