Q. & A. 711 to 1707 with solved Papers css 1971 to date

Battle of Harrah
The butchery of Karbalah caused a thrill of horror throughout Islamic World and gave birth in Persia to a national sentiment which afterwards helped the descendants of Abbas to destroy the Umayyads. In Medina the feeling was so strong that Yazid sent in haste a special governor to calm the people. At his advice the notables despatched a deputation to Damascus to seek redress for Hussain’s family. The deputation, however, returned disgusted with Yazid’s abominable life and his conduct towards them. Enraged at the unsatisfactory result of their endeavours, the Medinites proclaimed Yazid’s deposition and drove his governor from their city. This news threw Yazid into a fury, and he
S\ed Ameer Ali. A Short History of the Saracens. P.86. S M Imamuddin. A Political History of the Muslims. P. 18 S\ed Ameer Ali. P.87.

372 Political nnd Cultinal Hi.sfon/ of Islam

immediately hurried oft” a large ami}, consisting of his Syrian mercenaries and Umayyad partisans, under Muslim the son ol Ukbah. known in Arabian history as ”the accursed murderer.”
The Medinites met the Syrians at a place called Harrah. where a desperate battle took place. The Muslims were overmatched, and in spite of heroic valour, were defeated with terrible loss. 1 he flower of the Medinite chivalry and the noblest Companions oi the Holy Prophet, both Ansar and Muhajerin. perished in that disastrous fight.-disastrous to Islam in more ways than one. The city \\hich had sheltered the Holy Prophet, and \\hich was sanctified by his life and ministry, was foully desecrated, and the people who had stood by him in the hour of his need uere subjected to icvolting atrocities. which find a parallel only in those committed by the soldiers of the Constable of France, and the equally ferocious Lutherans of Georges Frundsberg at the sack of Rome. The public Mosque was turned into a stable, and the shrines were demolished for the sake of their ornaments. Paganism was once more triumphant, and ”its reaction,” says a European historian, ”against Islam uas cruel, terrible, and revolting.”
The Umayyads thus repaid the clemency and forbearance shown to them in the hour of Islam’s triumph. Its best men were either killed or fled for safety into distant countries. The feu who were spared had to acknowledge themselves the slaxes of Ya/ict: such as refused were branded on their necks. From this ignominy only two persons were spared, Ali II the son of Hussain, and Ali the grandson of Abbas. The colleges, hospitals, and other public edifices built under the Caliphs were closed or demolished, and Arabia relapsed into a wilderness! In later years grandson of Ali 11., whose name was Jafar, surnamed the True (as-Sadiq), revived, in Medina, the school of learning which had flourished under his ancestor, the Caliph Ali; but it was a veritable oasis in the desert: all around lay in gloom and darkness. Medina ne\er recovered her prosperity. It seems under the Umayyads to have become a city of the unknown past, for when Mansur, the second Abbassid Caliph, visited the place, he needed a guide to point out where the early heroes and heroines had lived and worked.6