A literary history of Persia

242 THE UMAYYAD PERIOD" Tell those of Rabi'a in Merv and her brethren*ere wrath shall avail nothing,And to declare war ; for verily the peoplethe skirts of which the wood is ablaze Ito rise in wrathhave raised a war onWhat ails you that ye stir up strife amongst yourselves, as thoughmen of sense were absent from among you,And neglect an enemy who already overshadows you, a heterogeneoushorde, devoid alike of religion and nobility ?They are no Arabs of ours that we should know them, nor evendecent clients, if their pedigree be declared,But a people who hold a faith whereof I never heard from theProphet, and which the Scriptures never brought,And should one question me as to the essence of their religion,verily their religionis that the Arabs should be slain/"Vain, however, were these and other warnings. 2 Khurisanwas seething with disaffection and revolt, and Abu Muslim,having assured himself at length that all wasBiackla^rdrea( ty,raised the Black Standard 3 of the 'AbbasidsjunsTo^D1^8 'at tne viHag 6 f Siqadanj, near Merv, on June 9,A.D. 747. This standard bore the followingsignificant inscription from the Qur'an : Permission [to fight]isaccorded to those who take up arms because they have been unjustlytreated" Yet for a while the insurrection did not spreadbeyond the extreme north-east of Khurasan, Nasa, Biward,Herdt, Marwarudh, and the surrounding regions. In responseto the appeal of Nasr b. Sayyar the Caliph Marwan wrote : 4" Verily he who ispresent seeth what he who is absent seethnot : do thou, then, treat this disease which hath appeared"amongst you The ! only practical step which it occurred tohim to take was to seize, imprison, and poison Ibrahim the1I.e.,the other towns of Khurasan.2 See the gloomy but forcible verses of the poet Harith b. 'Abdu'llahal-Ja'di and of the Umayyad prince 'Abbas b. al-Walid cited by VanVloten (op. laud., pp. 62-63) !also Dinawari, pp. 358 and 359.3 Concerning the significance of the black standards and appareladopted by the 'Abbasids (hence called al-Musawwida), see Van Vloten,op1laud., pp. 63-65, and references there given.Al-Fakhri, pp. 170-171.