so he granted them amnesty, then sent ʿAbbād ibn al-Ḥuṣayn to bring them out, each man wrapped tightly in his cloak. One of them said:
“Praise be to Allah, who granted you victory over us and tried us with captivity. O son of al-Zubayr, whoever pardons will be pardoned by Allah, whereas whoever punishes cannot be sure of escape. We face the same qiblah as you and follow the same religion. Now that power is yours, be generous and spare us.”
Muṣʿab was moved and resolved to release them. Then ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ashʿath and men from every tribe rose and said, “They have killed our sons and kinsmen and wounded many of us—either you choose us or you choose them!” At that Muṣʿab ordered their execution.
All the prisoners cried out together, “Do not kill us! Make us your vanguard against ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān; if we win, the victory is yours, and if we fall we will not die until we have first slain a band of them, exactly what you want.” But Muṣʿab refused.
Musāfir said to him, “Fear Allah, Muṣʿab, for Allah—Glorified and Exalted be He—has commanded you not to kill a Muslim soul except in rightful retaliation. Indeed He says: ‘And whoever deliberately kills a believer—his recompense is Hell, wherein he shall abide; Allah is angry with him, curses him, and has prepared for him a tremendous punishment’ (Qur’an 4:93).” Muṣʿab did not listen; instead he ordered that they all be beheaded. They were seven thousand souls.
He then wrote to Ibn al-Ashṭar: “Join me, and Syria together with command of the cavalry will be yours.” Ibn al-Ashṭar set out to meet him.
It is also related that when Muṣʿab reached Mecca he came to ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿUmar and said, “Uncle, I wish to ask you about a people who cast off obedience, fought until they were overcome, then fortified themselves and asked for safe-conduct; it was given, and afterward they were killed.” He asked, “How many were they?” “Five thousand,” Muṣʿab replied. Ibn ʿUmar glorified Allah and said, “We belong to Allah and to Him we shall return,” then added, “If a man were to come upon al-Zubayr’s herd and slaughter five thousand head of livestock in one morning, would you not deem him wasteful?” “Yes,” Muṣʿab answered. He said, “You see extravagance with animals but not extravagance with human beings whose repentance you might have hoped for? Nephew, drink of cool water as much as you can in this world.” ] (1)
After that Muṣʿab sent al-Mukhtār’s head to his brother in Mecca and consolidated his authority over the two Iraqi provinces, appointing governors and officials. Ibrāhīm ibn al-Ashṭar enjoyed special favor with him, so he put him in charge of official delegations. Later Muṣʿab traveled to his brother in Mecca and informed him of what he had done; his brother approved everything—except concerning Ibn al-Ashṭar. He said, “Would you raise a standard that Allah has already lowered?” Then he bared his back, showing a wound he had received, and said (2), “Do you suppose I could love Ibn al-Ashṭar when he is the one who dealt me this blow?”
He then summoned the Iraqis who had accompanied Muṣʿab and said to them, “By Allah, I would rather have one man from Syria for every two of you.” Abū Ḥājiz al-Asadī (3)—who had been the chief judge of Basra—replied, “Commander of the Faithful, a proverb already applies to both you and us, as al-Aʿshā said:
I courted her on a whim, but she was smitten with another man,
while that man was smitten with yet another woman.
[As someone else has also said:
We lost our wits for Laylā, yet she went mad for someone else;
and still another is mad for us—whom we do not desire.] (4)