The Chaliphate - Muir - The Search For Mecca

;
52 ABU BEKR [chap. VIII.
A.H. 12.
Persians
aefiiin defeated.
Victory of
Walaja,
ii. 12 A.H.
April
633 A.D.
Khalid's
oration.
of, she embraced Islam and, forgetting her Persian lord,
gave her hand to Al-Muthanna's brother.
The ardour of Al-Muthanna was near to causing a
disaster. When the message of Hormuz reached Al-Medain,
the King despatched another prince with troops to reinforce
him. Rallying the defeated army, this force met Al-Muthanna
who had been stopped by the Great Canal (a branch of the
Tigris which runs athwart the Peninsula), and placed him
with his small flying column in great peril.
Khalid, apprised
of the check, hastened to relieve his lieutenant, and just in
time. The field was fiercely contested. Again the enemy
fled ; a prodigious number were either slain or drowned
the remainder escaped in boats. The deep canal stopped
further pursuit, but the spoil of the camp was very great.
Khalid scoured the country, killing all the men fit for war
and taking their women captive. But the fellahln or unwarlike
peasants he left unharmed.
The Court was now thoroughly aroused. Arab invaders,
it was said, would best be matched by Arabs who knew
their tactics ; and so the King raised a great levy of the
Bekr and other loyal clans, under a famous warrior of their
own. He also summoned Bahman, a veteran general, from
the east, to command the imperial troops. The combined
army, in imposing force, advanced to Al-Walaja, near the
junction of the two rivers. Leaving a detachment to guard
his conquests in the Delta, Khalid marched to meet the
enemy. The battle, long and obstinate, was won by the
tactics of the Muslim leader, who surprised the exhausted
enemy by ambuscades placed in their rear. The discomfiture
was complete. The Persians fled ; and with them their
Bedawi allies, but not until many had been taken prisoners.
Flushed with success as he gazed at the scene around, Khalid
thus addressed his followers :— " O see ye not the food,
plentiful as flintstones? Ay, by God, were it not ours to
fight for God against the unbelievers, and were it only as a
means of living, the right opinion would be to lay our stakes
for these fair fields, until we show ourselves worthy of them,
and give over hunger and penury to those who prefer them,
and who find burdensome that which you are enduring."^
1 Tab. i. 2031. Khfilid's speech is quoted by Al-Kindi, the Christian
Apologist, S.P.C.K., 1887, p. 85.