HOW El-HAJJÂJ BECAME GOVERNOR OF ʾIRÂK.
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THE ACCOUNT OF HOW EL-HAJJÂJ
BECAME GOVERNOR OF ʾIRÂK.
LET us now return to the account of what happened in the days of ʾAbd-el-Málik-ibn-Marwân. El-Hajjâj[1] was appointed ruler over the two sacred
- ↑ El-Hajjâj-ibn-Yûsuf of the tribe of Thakîf, and Farigha daughter of el-Hamâm, appears by all accounts to have been one of the most tyrannical and bloodthirsty monsters that ever held the lives of others in their power. Arabian historians relate that at his birth he was deformed, and that he refused to allow either his mother or any other woman to suckle him. Then the devil took upon himself the form of el-Hárith-ibn-Kaldah, a celebrated Arab physician, who died soon after the promulgation of el-Islám, and came to the parents of el-Hajjâj in their distress and perplexity, and prescribed for the child as follows: "Slay for him a black goat, and let him lick its blood. Then slay for him a black serpent, and let him lap its blood, and also anoint his face with it for three days." On the fourth day, they say the child accepted his natural food. But the consequence of this treatment was that he could not refrain from blood-shedding, He even said of himself, that his greatest enjoyment was to kill and to commit actions which no other could. He died after for fifteen days suffering agonies from an internal cancer, in A.H. 95, at the age of fifty-three or fifty-four. He was buried at el-Wâsit, a city which he had built between el-Básrah and el-Kûfah, and wherein he had died; but his tomb was afterwards levelled to
