Note 116 — Chapter X · CAMPAIGN OF KHALID IN IRAC. A.H. XII. A.D. 633.

The slain are given at the fabulous figure of 70,000. The decapitation of the captives went on for a night and a day (so we are told), and then they scoured the country for more. Cacâa, one of the Arab captains, told Khâlid that ‘the Lord had forbidden the earth to allow human blood to flow upon its face more than the length of a man’s dress,’ and that it never would run in a stream until water was turned on. Blood, as we know, soon thickens and curdles of itself.

There is, presumably, great exaggeration in the story, and I should willingly have put down the whole as a fiction growing out of the name of the river; but the narrative unfortunately is in keeping with the bloodthirstiness of the Arab crusaders, and specially with the character of ‘the Sword of the Lord.’ The tradition about the flour-mills comes from Moghîra, through one of Tabari’s standing string of traditional authorities.