handful of pebbles to pelt him with. But he
let them fall when Hajjaj lifted his veil and began to speak.

"Men of Kufa," he said, "I see before me heads ripe for the sickle, and
the reaper--I am he. It seems to me, as if I saw already the blood
between your turbans and your shoulders. I am not one of those who can
be frightened by inflated bags of skin, nor need any one think to
squeeze me like a fig. The Prince of the Believers has spread before him
the arrows of his quiver, and has tried every one of them by biting its
wood. It is my wood that he has found the hardest and strongest, and I
am the arrow which he shoots against you."

At the end of this address he ordered his clerk to read the letter of
the caliph. He began: "From the servant of God, Abdalmalik, Prince of
the Believers, to the Moslems that are in Kufa, peace be with you." As
nobody uttered a word in reply, Hajjaj said: "Stop, boy," and exclaimed:
"The Prince of the Believers salutes you, and you do not answer his
greeting! You have been but poorly taught. I will teach you afresh,
unless you behave better. Read again the letter of the Prince of the
Believers." Then, as soon as he had read: "peace upon ye," there
remained not a single man in the mosque who did not respond, "and upon
the Prince of the Believers be peace." Thereupon Hajjaj ordered that
every man capable of bearing arms should immediately join Mohallab in
Khuzistan (Susiana), and swore that all who should be found in the town
after the third day should be beheaded. This threat had its effect, and
Hajjaj proceeded to Basra, where his presence was followed by the same
results. Mohallab, reinforced by the army of Irak, at last succeeded,
after a struggle of eighteen months, in subjugating the Kharijites and
their caliph Qatara b. Foja'a, and was able at the beginning of the year
78 (A.D. 697) to return to Hajjaj at Basra. The latter loaded him with
honours and made him governor of Khorasan, whence he directed several
expeditions into Transoxiana. In the meantime Hajjaj himself had, in 695
and 696, with great difficulty suppressed Shabib b. Yazid at the head of
the powerful tribe of Shaiban, who, himself a Kharijite, had assumed the
title of Prince of the Believers, and had even succeeded in occupying
Kufa. In the east the realm of Islam had been very much extended under
the reign of Moawiya, when Ziyad was governor of Irak and Khorasan.
Balkh and Tokharistan, Bokhara, Samarkand and Khwarizm (mo