though they numbered fewer than one hundred. He instructed them to kill Khālid al-Qasrī. Khālid therefore sent detachments against them, yet they smashed the armies sent in their path. Their cause grew formidable indeed, thanks to their courage and endurance and the half-hearted counsel of those who fought them. They drove back contingents of many thousands, fully armed and mounted on well-bred horses, while they themselves had not even reached one hundred. They then resolved to march on Syria to kill the Caliph Hishām and set out ⦗1⦘ in that direction. An army intercepted them in the Jazīrah region, and a fierce engagement ensued. The greater part of Bahlūl the Khārijite’s followers were slain. Then a man of the tribe of Jadīlah, known by the kunya Abū al-Mawt (“Father of Death”), struck Bahlūl a blow that felled him, whereupon the rest of his companions scattered. Altogether they had been seventy men.

One of their comrades lamented them, saying:
After Abū Bishr and his faithful band were gone,
You joined with other clans to press the fight upon.
They left as though they never dwelt among our line,
Nor only yesterday were comrades and friends of mine.
O eye, let streaming tears unceasingly flow,
And mourn the friends and neighbors we used to know.
They left to us this world—its surface and its core—
While they became in the Gardens of Eternity neighbors evermore.⦗2⦘

Later another group of them rallied around one of their chiefs. They fought and were killed; Khālid kept sending troops against them until he utterly destroyed their green fields, leaving not a single survivor.

That same year Asad al-Qasrī campaigned against the lands of the Turks. Their king, Badr Ṭurkhān, offered him one million, but he would accept nothing. Asad seized him by force, executed him patiently in his presence, and took his city, fortress, stores, women, wealth, and properties.

In that year al-Ṣaḥārī ibn Shabīb, a Khārijite, also rebelled. About thirty men followed him. Khālid al-Qasrī dispatched a force against them, which killed him and all his followers, leaving not a single man alive.

The leader of the pilgrimage that year was Abū Shākir Maslama ibn Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik. Ibn Shihāb al-Zuhrī accompanied him to teach him the rites and regulations of ḥajj. The governor of Mecca, Medina, and Ṭāʾif was Muḥammad ibn Hishām ibn Ismāʿīl. The governor of Iraq and the entire East was Khālid ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Qasrī, whose deputy over all of Khurāsān was his brother Asad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Qasrī—said by some to have died this very year, though others place his death in 120 AH; Allah knows best. The governor of Armenia and Azerbaijan was Marwān ibn Muḥammad ibn Marwān, nicknamed al-Ḥimār; Allah knows best.

[Year 120 AH]

In this year Sulaymān ibn Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik campaigned against the land of the Byzantines and captured a number of their fortresses.

In the same year Isḥāq ibn Muslim al-ʿUqaylī campaigned against Tūmān Famāh, took it, and laid waste to its surrounding lands.