They next placed on the throne her sister, Āzarmīdakht Zanān; yet their affairs still failed to run smoothly. They therefore crowned Sābūr ibn Shahriyar and handed the reins of power to Farrukhzād ibn Binduwān. Farrukhzād married Sābūr to Khosrow’s daughter Āzarmīdakht, but she recoiled, saying, “This man is only a slave of ours.” On the very night of her wedding they fell upon Farrukhzād and killed him, then went on to Sābūr and killed him as well. They thereupon enthroned that same woman—Āzarmīdakht, daughter of Khosrow. Thus did the Persians make a plaything of their monarchy, and the last settlement to which their affairs came (in this very year) was that they placed a woman in authority, even though the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “A people who put a woman in charge of their affairs will never prosper.” (1)

In connection with the battle just mentioned, ʿAbdah ibn al-Ṭabīb al-Saʿdī (2)—who had migrated in pursuit of a wife and witnessed this Battle of Babylon, then, when he despaired of finding her, returned to the desert—recited the following (3):

Is Khawlah’s bond, after parting, still intact,
or are you far away, your dwelling distant, distracted from her?
The loved ones have days that remain in one’s memory,
and estrangement, before the day of parting, has its meaning.
Little Khuwaylah has settled with a clan I once knew,
outside the city (4) where the rooster and the elephant stand.
They smash the heads of the foreigners (5) in broad daylight—
horsemen who are neither unarmed nor apt to swerve.

Al-Farazdaq also composed a line about al-Muthannā’s slaying of that elephant (6):

The fortress of al-Muthannā, slayer of the elephant by storming assault,
stood at Babylon when Persia still held the kingdom of Babylon.

Al-Muthannā ibn Ḥārithah then found news from the Ṣiddīq (Abū Bakr) slow in coming, for Abū Bakr was occupied with the people of Syria and the Battle of Yarmūk already mentioned. Al-Muthannā therefore travelled in person to the Ṣiddīq, appointing Bashīr ibn al-Khaṣāṣiyyah over Iraq and Saʿīd ibn Murrah al-ʿIjlī over the frontier posts. When he reached Madinah he found the Ṣiddīq in the last stage of his fatal illness; Abū Bakr had already designated ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb as his successor. On seeing al-Muthannā, the Ṣiddīq said to ʿUmar:

“If I die, do not let evening fall before you summon the people to fight the folk of Iraq alongside al-Muthannā. And when Allah grants victory to our commanders in Syria, send Khālid’s men back to Iraq, for they know best how to wage war there.”

When the Ṣiddīq passed away, ʿUmar called upon the Muslims to wage jihad in the land of Iraq, for only a few fighting men were left there after Khālid ibn al-Walīd’s departure. Many responded, and he placed Abū ʿUbaydah ibn Masʿūd in command of them. He was a young man, courageous and skilled in warfare and stratagem.

This concludes the reports concerning Iraq up to the last days of the Ṣiddīq and the beginning of al-Farūq’s era.