if at this very moment they are still asleep, then say: Rise, for the time of rising has come. (1)
Ibn Khallikān (2) comments: These lines recall what one of the Alids of Kūfa recited when Muḥammad and Ibrāhīm, the two sons of ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ḥasan, rebelled against al-Manṣūr, the brother of al-Saffāḥ:
I see a fire blazing on the open ground,
its glow shoots forth in every quarter.
The sons of al-ʿAbbās have slept through it,
spending the night secure, unafraid.
Just as the Umayyads once slumbered, then woke
to defend themselves when defense no longer availed.
Naṣr ibn Sayyār likewise wrote to the governor of Iraq, Yazīd ibn ʿUmar ibn Hubayra, asking for support. He said:
Convey to Yazīd—and the best speech is truthful,
for I have learned that no good lies in falsehood— (3)
that in the land of Khurāsān I have seen some eggs;
were they to hatch you would marvel indeed. (4)
Two-year-old chicks they are, yet they have grown huge;
they have not taken wing, still clad in downy feathers.
Should they take flight before a stratagem is devised,
they will kindle the fires of war with a fierce blaze. (5)
Ibn Hubayra forwarded Naṣr’s letter to Marwān, and it happened that just as it arrived a messenger from Ibrāhīm the Imām was seized. He carried a letter to Abū Muslim in which Ibrāhīm cursed him, ordering him to attack Ibn Sayyār and Ibn al-Karmānī and to leave alive no one there who spoke good Arabic. Upon this, while staying in Ḥarrān, Marwān sent a letter to his deputy in Damascus—al-Walīd ibn Muʿāwiyah ibn ʿAbd al-Malik—telling him to write to their governor in al-Balqāʾ, instructing him to go to al-Ḥumaymah (6)—the town where Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad the Imām was living—shackle him, and send him on. The Damascus deputy wrote accordingly; the governor of al-Balqāʾ went to the town’s mosque, found the Imām seated there, put him in irons, and dispatched him to Damascus. From there he was sent at once to Marwān, who ordered that he be jailed and then executed, as will be related.
As for Abū Muslim, when he had positioned himself between the armies of Naṣr and Ibn al-Karmānī, he wrote to Ibn al-Karmānī: “I am with you,” whereupon the latter inclined toward him. Naṣr wrote in turn to Ibn al-Karmānī: “Woe to you! Do not be deluded; his only aim is to kill you and your companions. Come, then, so that we may draw up a pact of truce between us.” Ibn al-Karmānī entered his house, then emerged onto the plain with one hundred horsemen and sent to Naṣr, saying, “Come so that…"