Sahl, who was dressed in white garments and was riding a pale-gray palfrey (1). Before long, however, both his clothes and his mount (2) had turned black, so many were the people who rubbed themselves against him and so much perfume and musk did they pour over him.

Ibn Jarīr (3) reports: “In this same year the power of the Khārijites in Basra grew formidable. During it Nāfiʿ ibn al-Azraq—the leader of the Khārijites and the foremost notable of Basra—killed Muslim ibn ʿUbayis, the champion horseman of Basra; in turn Nāfiʿ was killed by Rabīʿah al-Salūṭī. About five emirs were slain in the fighting between the two men, and in that Khārijite engagement Qurrah ibn Iyyās al-Muzanī, Abū Muʿāwiyah—one of the Companions—was also killed.

“When Nāfiʿ ibn al-Azraq was killed, the Khārijites appointed ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Māḥūz over them. He led them to al-Madāʾin, where they massacred its inhabitants; they then seized Ahwāz and the surrounding regions, levied taxes, and received reinforcements from al-Yamāmah and Bahrain. Thereafter they marched on Isfahan, whose governor was ʿAṭṭāb ibn Warqāʾ al-Riyāḥī. He met them in battle and routed them, and when their commander Ibn Māḥūz was killed—as we shall relate—they installed Quṭriyy ibn al-Fujāʾah as their emir.

“Ibn Jarīr (4) also records their encounter with the people of Basra at a place called Dūlāb (5), in which the victory belonged to the Khārijites. Fearing that they might enter the city, ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr removed Basra’s governor, ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ḥārith—known as Babba (6)—and appointed al-Ḥārith ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Rabīʿah, called al-Qabbāʿ, in his stead. Ibn al-Zubayr also dispatched al-Muhallab ibn Abī Ṣufrah al-Azdī to assume the governorship of Khurasan.

“When al-Muhallab reached Basra, the people said to him, ‘No one is fit to fight the Khārijites but you.’ He replied, ‘The Commander of the Believers has sent me to Khurasan, and I shall not disobey his order.’ The Basrans, together with their governor al-Ḥārith ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Rabīʿah, therefore drafted a letter (7) in Ibn al-Zubayr’s name instructing al-Muhallab to march against the Khārijites so as to keep them from entering Basra. When the letter was read to him, he stipulated that the people of Basra should finance his army from their public treasury and that whatever wealth he captured from the Khārijites would be his. They agreed to this. It is also said that they wrote to Ibn al-Zubayr about the arrangement, and he affirmed and permitted it.

“Al-Muhallab then set out against them; he was a brave, redoubtable warrior. When he and the Khārijites met (8), they advanced toward him in serried ranks, equipped with armor and chain-mail the like of which had never been seen…"