so that nothing could be heard but a clatter like sledge-hammers (1) striking bronze. Marwan thereupon sent orders to Qudaʿah to dismount, but they answered, “Tell Banū Sulaym to come down instead.” He then dispatched to the Sakāsik, “Charge!” They replied, “Tell Banū ʿĀmir to charge.” He sent to the Sakūn with the same command, and they responded, “Tell Ghatafān to charge.”

He turned to the commander of his guards and said, “Dismount!” The man replied, “By Allah, I will not make myself a target.” Marwan retorted, “By Allah, I shall make you regret it!” The commander answered, “I only wish you had the power to do so.” It is also said that these words were addressed to Ibn Hubayrah.

The Syrians then broke and fled, while the men of Khurasan pursued them, killing and capturing. Those who drowned among the Syrians were more numerous than those slain on land; among the drowned was Ibrāhīm ibn al-Walīd ibn ʿAbd al-Malik, the deposed ruler. ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAlī ordered a bridge thrown across the river and had the bodies of the drowned recovered, all the while reciting, “And [remember] when We parted the sea for you, saving you and drowning Pharaoh’s folk while you looked on” (Q. 2:50).

ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAlī remained on the battlefield for seven days. A descendant of Saʿīd ibn al-ʿĀṣ composed these verses on Marwan’s flight:

The urge to flee seized Marwan, so I said to him:
The tyrant has returned an ostrich whose only thought is flight!
Where now your escape, your kingdom lost, when ease has left you—
you have no faith, no honor to uphold!
A moth in gentleness, a Pharaoh in punishment; and if
you seek his bounty, a dog is better than his dog. (2)

ʿAbdallāh gathered up everything in Marwan’s camp—money, furnishings, and stores—finding no woman there save one slave-girl who belonged to ʿAbdallāh ibn Marwan. He wrote to Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Saffāḥ informing him of the victory Allah had granted and of the spoils obtained. Al-Saffāḥ thereupon prayed two rakʿahs in gratitude to Allah, exalted is He, awarded every man who had fought five hundred dirhams, and raised their monthly stipend to eighty, all the while reciting, “And when Ṭālūt set out with the troops…” (Q. 2:249).

The Shock of the Slaying of Marwan al-Ḥimār
(He was also called al-Jaʿdī because he had studied under al-Jaʿd ibn Dirham.) He was the last of the Umayyad caliphs.

When Marwan’s army collapsed, he fled without looking back. ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAlī stayed on the battlefield for seven days, then, at al-Saffāḥ’s instruction, set off after him with the forces at his disposal. Passing through Harran, Marwan merely skirted the town, released Abū Muḥammad the Sufyānī from prison, and appointed Abān ibn Yazīd—his sister’s son and the husband of his daughter Umm ʿUthmān—as governor in his stead.

When ʿAbdallāh reached Harran, Abān ibn Yazīd came out to him clad in black. ʿAbdallāh guaranteed his safety, confirmed him in office, and tore down the house in which Ibrāhīm the Imām had been imprisoned. Marwan meanwhile passed Qinnasrīn on his way to Ḥims; when he arrived, the townspeople came out to meet him.