sought an asylum with the king of Kabul. His partisans fled
before 'Omara's army and penetrated into Khorasan, where they were
isarmed by the governor Yazid, son of the celebrated Mohallab, who had
died in the year 701. The pretender was betrayed by the king of Kabul
and killed himself. His head was sent to Hajjaj and then to Damascus.
This happened in the year 703 or 704. Yazid b. Mohallab was soon after
deprived of the government of Khorasan, Hajjaj accusing him of
partiality towards the rebels of Yemenite extraction. He appointed in
his stead first his brother Mofaddal b. Mohallab, and nine months after
Qotaiba b. Moslim, who was destined in a later period to extend the sway
of Islam in the east as far as China.

The struggle of Ibn Ash'ath was primarily a contest for hegemony between
Irak and Syria. The proud Arabic lords could not acquiesce in paying to
a plebeian like Hajjaj, invested with absolute power by the caliph, the
strict obedience he required. They considered it further as an injustice
that the Syrian soldiers received higher pay than those of Irak. This is
apparent from the fact that one of the conditions of peace proposed by
Abdalmalik before the battle of Dair al-Jamajim had been that henceforth
the Irakian troops should be paid equally with the Syrian. Moreover,
Hajjaj, in order to maintain the regular revenue from taxation, had been
obliged to introduce stringent regulations, and had compelled a great
many villagers who had migrated to the cities to return to their
villages. Several of these were _faqihs_, students of Koranic science
and law, and all these seconded Ibn Ash'ath with all their might. But,
as Wellhausen has shown, it is not correct to consider the contest as a
reaction of the _maula's_ (Persian Moslems) against the Arabic
supremacy.

Immediately after the victories of Dair al-Jamajim and Maskin, in 702,
Hajjaj, built a new residence on the Tigris, between Basra and Kufa,
which he called Wasit ("Middle"). There his Syrian soldiers were not in
contact with the turbulent citizens of the two capitals, and were at any
moment ready to suppress any fresh outburst.

At the beginning of his reign Abdalmalik had replaced the humble mosque
built by Omar on the site of the temple at Jerusalem by a magnificent
dome, which was completed in the year 691. Eutychius and others pretend
that he desired to substitute Jerusalem for Mecca, because Ibn Zobair
had occupied the latter place, and thus the pilg