II The Peasantry?s Condition 1.Actual Life Mesopotamia – Iraq (ca. 767-773) Depopulation [Al-Mansur] set up another governor to brand and mark men on their necks as slaves (Al-Mansur, brother of the caliph al-Saffah 750-54, was governor of Mesopotamia, Mosul, Azerbaijan, and Armenia. According to Ghevond – eighth century, he forced all dhimmis to wear a lead seal on their necks. [p. 124]). "And which", says the prophet, "[had not worshipped the beast, neither the image,] neither had received his mark upon their foreheads [?]" [Rev. 20:4]. But here they no longer bear it only on their foreheads, but on both hands, on their breast and even on their back. [p. 104] This governor therefore came, and his arrival made the region to tremble with greater fear than any of those who had come before him. In fact, he had orders to mark the inhabitants with a sign on their hands which would not fade and would never leave its place for the whole lifetime of the man <who had received it>. When he entered towns, all the men were seized with terror and took flight before him. Shops were shut; there was no more buying or selling in the markets; no coming or going in the streets. Those who wished to enter <the town> were stopped by fear of evil; those who wanted to leave it, were likewise stopped because the gates of the town were closed and no one was allowed to leave. When he had acted thus for a week, <seeing that> no one came to the town from the country, the administrators of the poll tax sent to the man who had replaced Abbas (Al-Abbas, former governor of the Jazira, was replaced by Musa b. Musab) in collecting this tax, and informed him: "The people are fleeing before the brander, and if this latter does not leave here, it will be impossible to levy the tax". On hearing these things, he sent a letter to the brander who went away. The men enjoyed a little respite on this side, because he died on the road. [p. 105] On Exile He also set up another governor to bring back each of those <who had fled> to his country, to his father?s house. He [this governor], in his turn, set up other governors whom he sent to the towns. He did not send one for each town, but he sent the governor of any one town to another, with the result that the governors of all the towns of Mesopotamia sometimes found themselves gathered together in the same place, in connection with the exile. Thenceforth, there was no more safety anywhere; but everywhere pillage, malice, injustice, godlessness, every wicked act, calumnies, injustice, the vengeance of men, one against another – not only by foreigners, but by members of the same family. Brother laid traps against his brother, and this one betrayed that one. He set up a Persian [official from Baghdad] at Marda [Mardin] to bring the fugitives back there and collect the tribute. The population had taken flight from there more than from any other place, and the whole region was occupied by Arabs, because the Syrians [Christians] had fled before them. This man was called Khalil Ibn Zadan. He made the Arabs suffer many ills. He had no equal for his hatred of the Arabs, either before or after him. He sent a few emirs to all the towns. If it was learned that a man or his father or his grandfather had been in Marda, even forty or fifty years before, he was snatched from his house, from his village, from his country, and taken back to that town. With this man a gift was no longer accepted, persuasion was in vain: very few escaped. In this way, he gathered such a multitude in this region that there was not one place, not one village, not one house which was not full and did not overflow with inhabitants. He made the Arabs move from region to region and took all that they had. He filled their lands and their houses with Syrians, and made the latter sow their corn. He seized those among them who were rich and mercilessly used every sort of torment and torture on them. He made one of them come forward, had a razor put to [cut] his hair and beard, made him a crown of paste, placed it on his head and exposed him to the sun. He then threw oil on his head in such a way that it gradually flowed over his eyes, and his head was thus gripped by sharp pains. Then he pressed his thighs, his fingers and his arms into shackles and put iron knobs on his eyes. He thus employed torments on them without pity and caused a large number of men to die as a result. The others fled and moved from place to place. [pp. 105-6] We will also make known the ills which overwhelmed the Arabs, for no one escaped the calamity which took place at that period because of our many sins. [p. 128] Verily, here the wicked were punished by the wicked [?]. These Arabs penetrated into the midst of those unfortunate peasants like worms into wood, and took their lands, their houses, their seed and their livestock, so that they came to the point of taking them [the peasants] themselves, as well as their children, as slaves; in all that they possessed, these peasants worked for them like slaves. [?] On all sides, one heard nothing talked of but blows and cruel torture and sometimes, moreover, the Arabs caused the death of the peasants who lived on their lands for they taxed them and forced them to pay [the taxes] with them, until they had ruined them and had seized all that they possessed. They fled from their dwellings. As this was the beginning of the calamity and the start of the devastation and there were still adequate resources, they were not reduced completely to perish; but nor did these depraved governors eat their fill either. [p. 130] When the district chiefs and governors entered a village, they seized the perfect of the place and made him give up everything he had levied. They broke open the sack and took what they wanted from it saying: "This is the emir?s share". They beat honourable men and the hoary headed elders without mercy. Thenceforth, all that was heard on every side was a cry of lament. He [the governor] also helped all the governors charged with seeking our fugitives, for he was party to their brigandage. He sent them to the furthermost frontiers and instructed them <to collect> a triple or quadruple capitation fee. He made every effort to make the people of God [the Jacobites] suffer all manner of cruel evils. The grandees of the town themselves favoured him because he promised them great things. Everywhere, he demanded tribute for himself and not for the royal treasury. The evils on the region multiplied: exile; extortionists who claimed what was owing by a man who had been dead for twenty years, and took the same tax several times without mercy; many other ills, <such as> excessive taxes and others which it is impossible to list because of their great number. [p. 134] On Poll Tax [jizya] When they knew that he [a peasant] could give nothing because he possessed nothing, these governors who were unjust judges, said to him: "Come out on to the public square, watch out for someone whom you know possesses something and say: ?I left my property with this man?, or again: ?He is my debtor?". And that unfortunate man, oppressed from right and left, from the front and from behind, from above and from below, was driven by fear of God not to give false testimony against this man, and he was prevented from refraining from so doing by the torture that these godless judges inflicted on him. And then he took God as his witness that he was forced to do these things and that it was not of his own will that he was led to bear false testimony against people whom he had never seen or whom he did not know. [?] They had been abandoned because their leaders went from malicious act to malicious act and hastened from one injustice to another. They despoiled and pillaged the poor who were in their midst like lambs fallen among which was barely enough to pay the poll tax, not to mention the other calamities which they had to suffer: <on the part> of those who were seeking out the exiled, of those who took away livestock, <from the officials of> the tithe, the sufi (a tax imposed on currency destined for the troops) and the ta?dil (a harvest tax calculated in proportion to the number of taxpayers). [pp. 135-36] On Torture First, they made pieces of wood four fingers wide and flat on both sides. Then, they stretched a man out with his face against the ground, and one of them stood on his head, another on his feet, while a third beat his thighs mercilessly like on a hide. [?] Secondly, they brought two sticks bound with chains at one end, and applied them to the thighs of an individual, one above and the other below. Then, a robust man positioned himself at the other end, until the thighs were broken. And thus was accomplished <that word>: "Thou puttest my feet also in the stocks" <Job 13:27>. Thirdly, they hung them up by their arms until their limbs were dislocated, and even the women by their breasts, until they were torn off. Fourthly, they stripped them of their clothing, loaded them with stones and immersed them in snow and ice in this condition. They also poured cold water over them until they became inert and fell on their faces to the ground. Fifthly, they took five pieces of wood. They split them all at one end, put someone?s fingers into this split and squeezed the other end until the two sections came together and the fingers were broken. They also took two planks which they bound together at one end and placed one under the loins, the other on the stomach. Then a man stood on the other end until the ribs were broken and the entrails on the point of coming out. They made fetters for the arms and for every limb. They sharpened reeds and forced them under the fingernails. They made a type of pellet which they put in the eye socket until the eyes were about to gouged out. They made them stand in snow and water bare-footed and without clothing until they turned white as death. They whirled thick sticks and beat them without pity while they were stretched out on the ground. For them, whips were of no use, and prison unnecessary. [?] (The tortures are confirmed by the Armenian historians. Cf. Ghevond: "Gallows, presses and scaffolds were erected everywhere; only terrible, endless tortures" p. 131. The lower class of the population had been "exposed to different sorts of tortures: some suffered flagellation for having been unable to pay exorbitant contributions, others were hung up on the gallows or crushed under the presses; others were stripped of their clothing and thrown into lakes in the depths of an extremely harsh winter; and the soldiers who were disposed on the bank prevented them from reaching land, and forced them to die wretchedly" p. 132. Many sought refuge in caves; others committed suicide) They did not wait until they had completed one torture before they moved on to another. [?] They wanted to accumulate every type of torment on their bodies at the same time. They threw them naked into the snow; they gathered large stones, which they placed under their backs until their guts cracked, and their ribs and spine were broken. They heated the bath until it burned like fire. They filled it with smoke and shut them there naked; then they brought cats which they threw in their midst and, as these cats were burning, they hurled themselves on them and ripped them and their claws. They confined them in dark rooms into which no ray of light penetrated. [?] They crushed the poor people with all these torments and all these tortures, at the time of the tax. Would the gods and goddesses not have gloried in this bitter persecution, had this calamity not been universal, including – mixed altogether – Christians and pagans. Jews and Samaritans, worshippers of fire and of sun, Magians and Muslims, Sebeans and Manicheans? Yet the matter had nothing to do with faith, and affected the man who worships to the East no more than he who worships to the West. The name of <the worship> of the South [Islam] disappeared with that of <the worship> of the North [Christianity]. If the Christians had been the sole object of this persecution, I might with justice have been able to glorify the martyrs of our time above all previous martyrs: for rapid death by the sword is kinder than prolonged torments which do not cease. [?] A cup of bitterness and a diet of anger lay in store for all men equally; for great and small, for rich and poor, as the prophet says [Jer. 25:15]: The rich man continually ate bitterness because they unjustly took what he possessed and because his bones were broken by blows; the poor man because they demanded from him what he did not possess, what he could not borrow and because no one gave him work, neither in the field nor the vineyard. [?] Let no one, my brethren, think that I exaggerate here, but let it be known that all the calamus (a reed used for writing) and all the paper in the world would not be enough to write down the ills which have crushed men in our time. Let no one blame us for having diminished them, for we are incapable of thinking of everything, and these calamities did not only occur in one town. [pp. 142-44] They practiced iniquity without shame. The earth was troubled and turned topsy-turvy, and men went from village to village, from one place to the next. [?] No one, neither bishop, nor priest, nor judge, was exempt from sin, or calumny, or pillage, or denunciation, or abuse, or curses, or hatred, or gossip, or brigandage, or adultery, or the violation of graves. All the seeds of the devil were now sown in every man. Each one strove to do evil in accordance with his rank and power. [p. 166] These things have not come down to us by hearsay, but we see them before our eyes. [?] If someone owned something and wanted to flee, he was imprisoned as if bound, until he was stripped of everything and left with nothing. As soon as he was robbed of everything, he was able to flee, but as long as he had something he could not. If he took flight, the journey itself despoiled him. If it so happened that he deposited something in the ground, even the place betrayed him: "Here is the property of such a person: come let us take it". If he disclosed his repository to someone, this person became his despoiler and took his property himself instead of robbers and brigands. [p. 167] The Christians dragged out all the iron or wooden utensils <?> from their houses and sold them; they tore out their doors and sold them, awaiting a better time; lastly, they even ripped out the beams from their houses and sold them. Then they abandoned the ruins of their dwellings and went away stripped clean, wandering from village to village, from one place to another. [p. 168] We have to say not only that "meat offering and the drink offering is cut off from the house of the Lord" <Joel, 1:9>, but that the churches? liturgical <? > books have been torn out and sold, that the remainder have been burned in the fire, that their sacred vessels have been destroyed. The vineyards have been laid waste; the grape harvest mourns <Isaiah 24:7>. The fields have brought forth thorns and brambles; the fig trees have withered; the olive trees were destroyed; the pomegranate trees, date palms, the apple trees and all the trees have died. That is why joy has disappeared from among men; the workers have taken flight and their houses have become the dwellings of wild beasts. When collecting the poll tax and many others, they [the governors? assistants] demanded several times the amount. They sold everything the men possessed and they took <the value>of it. Not only did they exact the tax which was due in a place, but the same tax several times. There was neither beginning, nor middle, nor end <to their extortions>. They fell upon the country and hurled themselves upon it, saying: "The share of such a village is so much; so many <dinars> still remain <to be pain>". And they went on to tax it again. When they obtained the sum by violence, they began to exact it again. No one dared to speak out, because everyone was afraid of being taxed further by the judge. They seized notables and put pressure on them mercilessly: to the point that it caused their death and destroyed many of them. The peasants themselves helped the wrongdoers. They attacked men, took away and sold everything they possessed. They said, untruthfully: "You have a vine in our country, or a garden, a wood, a field of olive trees", or: "You are responsible for someone", or: "You are subject to the poll tax in our land, and see, for so many years you have not paid the tribute. Pay now that we are hard-pressed". For such or like motives, the peasants seized poor men and plundered them. The judge himself taught them to act thus; he assisted them and did not ask them to account for what they did. They fell on a passerby, seized him, brought up false testimony against him <which said>: "This man is liable for our tribute". He stated on oath: "I have never seen these men, nor have they seen me". They said: "He is liable for our tribute" (levied on the community). And there were false witnesses among them whom they produced against him. Thus they sold his livestock, his property and all he possessed. They moved around the towns like dogs which sniff the ground for traces of their masters, animals or flocks. They informed themselves of those who had some stores: either of wheat, or iron or any other commodity, and they seized it. One should have seen them moving round the towns, in gangs, watching out for a man and saying: "Such a man is one of ours" (member of the same community). The man who escaped from one was seized by others, who took him to still others. If it so happened that he had hidden something, either in the ground or with someone, the place itself shouted it out, like a pregnant woman seized with birth pains. It is in like circumstances that men spent the holy days of Lent. [pp. 169-70] Exodus of thePeasants Razin (the person responsible for controlling the governors, who cruelly tormented all the inhabitants, according to this author) went on to Arzun (former capital of Arzanenus, in Kurdistan, north of the Tigris) and Maipherkat (former Martyropolis, south of Armenia), and when he saw the brigandage of the governors of the town, he condemned them to great torments and violent torture; to the point where they were gnawed by vermin and died. He broke their hands and feet in the stocks, and he took away everything they had pillaged. God delivered them up to the evils of this cruel villain, and all the impious acts they had committed fell on their own heads. It was said that they seized beardless youths in the streets and defiled them. Scribes and ungodly moneychangers, who were Christians, had young girls taken and let away and they defiled them, both daughters of the people and daughters of notables. [?] I have noted down some of these things in order that when the leaders see them, they [will] confront their conscience with God, that they do not act as they please and contrary to honesty; and also that they should know that there is a law, even for those who make the law, and that they understand that the prince who behaves in such a lawless manner immediately and rapidly loses the title of prince, in which lies his glory and, in exchange, receives the title of tyrant, which is full of madness; which is the beginning of dementia [?] There was great affliction in the lands of the South [lower Iraq, Syria], because of the drought, which we mentioned above. All the southern and eastern region was roused by the cruelty and persecution of Musa Ibn Musab. Their inhabitants invaded Mesopotamia. Villages and towns, houses and fields were full of them; to the point where it was not possible to move around or settle anywhere because of them. This increased the tribulations which weighed on the poor and the workers of Mesopotamia, because no one gave them wages, no one employed a single one of them. If someone offered to work solely for the cost of his food, there was to be found as many as were wanted among them, who agreed to work, even if they were not given enough bread. The whole day, without cease, they moved around houses, men and women, children and the old; when they noticed a door open somewhere, thirty or forty of them at a time hurled themselves at it. In the beginning everyone gave them alms. But when this host of poor people, of these strangers, of these starvelings, increased excessively, one stopped giving; for the inhabitants feared to go in want themselves and to become more miserable than they, and moreover the governor, through fraud and theft, had taken all the wheat from the landowners and had it sold. [?] The inhabitants of the various regions of Mesopotamia joined together and entered the towns, fleeing the famine. All their property was sold and no one wanted to lend to them. They ate meat and dairy produce throughout Lent. Because of the low price of livestock, they were given as much meat as they wanted everywhere. In certain places this famine became worse for the native inhabitants because of the multitude of strangers, to the point where they attacked the corpses of the dead. The strangers who had abandoned their land because of the famine, in order not to die there, were preceded, accompanied and pursued by sword and plague wherever they came and went. [pp. 175-77] When the ills increased because of the governor, dearth, famine, plague, and the various diseases which swooped down on men, these men abandoned their houses and went to settle in the mountains and valleys. There they died like flies from hunger, plague and cold and they were eaten by birds and beasts without anyone to bury them. This plague weighed heavily on the lower regions and desolated the whole of this region. With the result that courts [habitations] where there had been forty or fifty people were left without a single inhabitant. In Mosul, more than a thousand coffins were taken out of the town daily. In the region of Nisibin, several villages, which had become sizeable, were totally ruined. All the great [notables] of the region died. Above all, this plague cased the death of the priests of towns and countryside. [?] Fields, villages, the great courts of the towns were left deserted. [p. 186] [Pseudo] Dionysius of Tell-Mahre Egypt Journey of the Jacobite Patriarch Dionysius of Tell-Mahre to Egypt (826 or 827) Yaqdan (we have found no further details about this person) had a Chalcedonian [Greek Orthodox] scribe [secretary] at Edessa who was called Walid. He detested the Christians [Jacobites]. When they complained of him [Walid] to Yaqdan, he honoured him even more because of the evils that he taught him to inflict on the Christians. The Edessenians [Jacobites from Edess] could not tolerate him and went down into Egypt to the emir Abdallah [b. Tahir], in order to complain about these two men. When Walid saw that his downfall was close at hand he saw to it that Yaqdan demolished their churches. He wrote to the leader of Callinicum (Callinicum, ancient name of Raqqa, in northern Mesopotamia on the Euphrates, a town developed under the early Abbasids) to arouse his anger against the Edessenians and against Theodos <ius>, their metropolitan. This leader, who was also an enemy of the Christians, presented the <letters> to the emir Muhammad [brother of Abdallah b. Tahir]. This latter, who was a young man, allowed himself to be taken in by the words of the judge. He [the emir Muhammad, governor of Callinicum] ordered that every new building be destroyed, and the Church of the Forty Martyrs was destroyed, as well as the diaconicom and the sacristy of the Great Church, the small north atrium of the baptistry, the basilica and the rest of the buildings of Theodosi <us>. They also destroyed the monastery [convent] of the Chalcedonian women and the church, and they built a mosque in the terapylon situated in front of the Old Church, the place called Beit Sabta. [3:61] (House of the Sabbath, probably an ancient synagogue) Seeing these things, the Taiyaye of Harran, were encouraged to demolish the church and molest Christians. When we received this news at Nisibin, we took a few bishops and set off without delay for Egypt, to the emir Abdallah [b. Tahir]. We and the bishops boarded a boat at Joppa [Jaffa] [?] After two days [of storms], we were thrown into the port of the town of Tanisis [Tanis]. When the inhabitants learned who we were, over thirty thousand of them came out to meet us (the majority of the population of Egypt at this period was still Christian). [3:62] We were delayed in the towns which are on the banks of the river, because they did not allow us <to depart> until we had celebrated and made them partake of the Mysteries. The Egyptians placed high value on receiving them from the hands of the patriarch. As a result of our delay, Theodosi <us> (Theodosius, bishop of Edessa and brother of Dionysius, the patriarch) went before us and spoke to the emir about us and about the storm at sea. When we arrived at the Persian camp [the armies of the Abbasid caliph al-Ma?mun] and when I came into his presence, he reprimanded me for having journeyed by sea, "being elderly", he said, "and cloaked in such dignity"; for I was much respected by him. He said: "Who obliged you to come to Egypt; you could have let me know what you wished by letter, all the more so as your brother [Theodosius], who was principally concerned, came." I answered: "This metropolitan, O prince, <has come> on his own account and because of what Edessa has suffered [the persecution of the Christians]; <but as that> is spreading in all the countries, it is I who am the most afflicted and the most oppressed, when our churches are destroyed and when our laws are abolished". And as the time of our visit to him was at night because he was engaged all day in battles (Abdallah b. Tahir had been sent by the caliph to expel the Arabs of Spain from Alexandria), we spoke to him for a long time of useful things and I introduced to him the embassy [delegation] from the Jazira and from the West (Jazira: the region north of the Euphrates; "the West" refers to Egypt) and [presented] their recriminations against his prefects. I told him the lamentable story of Tanisis, a town in Egypt. Although it had a large population and churches, we had never seen poverty such as that of its inhabitants. When we asked whence <it came>, they answered: "Our town is surrounded by water, and we have neither harvest nor other resources; we cannot keep flocks; the water we drink comes from afar and we buy it for four zuz a pitcher; our work consists of the flax that our women spin and that we weave; the price that we receive per day from the clothes merchants is half a zuz a day. And although our work is not enough to put bread into our mouths, when we are taxed for the tribute, each of us is obliged to give five dinars; we are beaten and thrown into prison and forced to give our sons and daughters as a pledge, in order to work like slaves, for two years per dinar; and if it is a daughter or a wife, and if it so happen that she give birth while among them, they make us swear that we will not trouble them on this subject. It also happens that before the moment comes for the freeing of someone?s wife, a new tribute is imposed. And they asked me, O emir, to inform you of their situation so that you may have pity on them." Then the emir ordered that, according to the law of the Jazira, they give tribute of forty-eight zuz for the most affluent, twenty-four for the middle [rank] and twelve for the poor, when the poll tax would be levied on them. He wrote an edict for us so that everything that had been destroyed at Edessa should be rebuilt, and so that no one should ever destroy any part of a church. [3;62-64] Second Journey to Egypt by Dionysius of Tell-Mahre (832) n the month of Sebat <February>, the king [al-Ma?mun] entered Egypt, and the patriarch Mar Dionysius entered it with him, for the second time, as he himself wrote, saying: When we came to the town of Farama [Pelusium], the first in Egypt, the king had me summoned by Fadhl, director of royal affairs. When I entered, he held out his hand to me according to custom and said: "You have learned, O patriarch, of the revolt of the Egyptian Christians that are called Biamaye [in lower Egypt]. The first devastations that they suffered were not enough for them. And if it was not that I am merciful and that I do not contemplate massacre, I would not send them a man such as you. But take the bishops who are with you and the Egyptian bishops and go and find them; negotiate with them on condition that they surrender the rebels and that they come with the army where I will decide and I will make them live there; if not, I will have them put to death by the sword." When I had talked to him for a long time about submission and about leaving them in their country, he answered: "No! Either they leave or they are put to death". And he immediately ordered that the patriarch of Egypt accompany me. We went by water, and eight days afterwards the patriarch Joseph came to find us in order to join us. We immediately went down to the Basrut, which is the district of the Biamaye. We found them assembled and protected on an island surrounded by water, reeds and rushes on all sides. Then their leaders came out to us. When we reprimanded them for the revolt and for the massacres they had committed, they placed the blame on those who ruled them. When they learned that they had to leave their land, they were dismayed and begged us to send to the king to ask if they could go to him and tell him all their sufferings. They said that Abu?l-Wazir condemned them to excessive tribute; that he imprisoned them in the [words missing] and that when their wives came to pass them food, his servants seized them and raped them; that he had killed a large number of them, and intended to do away with all of them, so that they could not complain to the king about him. It was he who had urged [General] Aphsin to go into their villages in order to make them come to this [army] camp, and in order to kill the men. Now, it so happened that the soldiers met a woman and seized her in order to rape her. When she cried out and shouted, those who were on the island heard her voice, hastened out and joined the fray, killing and being killed; and for this reason, the peace was broken and ceased completely. [3:76-78] When we reached General Aphsin and informed him that the rebels were adamant, he answered: "The peace is broken. Go and tell the king that no peace is possible". And they started war. They set fire to villages, vines, gardens, and churches in the whole district. The Biamaye, for their part, pierced the Persians by throwing javelins or spears from amidst the water. They brought along their neighbours, rousing them against them [the Persians], and began to kill and be killed. When we reached the king, I told him everything, and informed him of the injustice <committed in respect> of the Egyptians and the wickedness of Abu?l-Wazir, who had prevented peace, and that the people of the land were complaining of him and of two others. [3:79] King Ma?mun went down to the Biamaye; he brought the devastation among them to an end; he summoned their leaders and ordered them to leave this region. They [the leaders] revealed to him the harshness of the prefects <set up> over them, and [explained] that, if they left their land, they would not have the means to live, since they drew their livelihood from papyrus and catching fish. Then they accepted his orders; they left by ships for Antioch, and from there they were sent to Baghdad. They numbered three thousand. The majority of them died on the way. Those who had been taken during the war were given as slaves to the Taiyaye, to the number of some five hundred. They exported them to Damascus and sold them there. A thing that had never been seen in the empire of the Taiyaye: they sold those who were subjected to the yoke of the poll tax (this observation by the Patriarch Dionysius indicates a seeming unawareness of the rule condemning to slavery, deportation, or death any rebel dhimmi; and slavery for dhimmis unable to pay the jizya. His account depicts the good relations between the patriarch and the caliph and his generals, and the simultaneous persecution of his flock). But, with the help of God, we exhorted the faithful and they were all redeemed and released. They did not go back to their land, because there was a great famine there, and many withdrew to Syria in order to have their fill of bread. The king ordered the prefects not to use the Egyptians harshly, on pain of death. He remitted half the tax for all of Egypt. When the king had left Egypt, disasters multiplied on the Egyptians. The Persians entered the villages, chained together those who resisted in tens and twenties, and sent them to Fustat [near Cairo], without finding out whether they were guilty or innocent. Many died without having committed an offence. Some of those who were led away in chains to be slaughtered asked the man who was escorting them to accept a gift and to release them. As they had been given to him counted, he said: "Wait until we meet others on the way, and I will chain them up in your place". They met three men: a priest and two Taiyaye, one of those who were released on payment of a gift. And as the oppressed were not permitted to speak, they were slaughtered. Thus, the roads were filled with men unjustly killed. Sword and captivity, famine and plague prevailed in the land of Egypt at this period. [When al-Ma?mun died (833), he was succeeded by al-Mu?tasim.] He sent his troops to fight the Zotaye (Zotaye or Zanj: black slaves from Africa who farmed the domains of the Arabs in lower Iraq. They revolted in the early ninth century), who lived among the lakes into which the Euphrates and the Tigris flowed [lower Iraq]; for these people were continually in revolt and tormented the king. They beat, pillaged and slaughtered the merchants who came to Baghdad from Basra, India and China. But the troops could do nothing against them, because they fought from their boats. Then the king sent the Egyptians whom he had taken prisoner in Egypt, who were accustomed to water and swam like fish in water; without being seen, they suddenly struck the Zotaye with spears and pierced them. Thus, the Zotaye were vanquished by the [defeated] Biamaye; they were seized, with their women and children at the same time, and they wasted away and succumbed in prison in Baghdad. When the king saw the Egyptians? brilliant feats of arms in the battle against the Zotaye, he appreciated them, and took some of them into his service, to work in the gardens and parks, and others to weave the flaxen garments, in the manner of Egyptian embroidered work; he allowed all the others to return to their country. When they reached the sea, they took their places on boats to go back down to Egypt; but <divine> justice did not permit them to go and live there; a storm arose and they were all drowned in the sea. [3:82-84] Under the Caliph Harun al-Wathiq (842-847) At Cyrrhus [north of Aleppo], another prefect was going from village to village when he met a camel-driver whose camels were urinating on the road; he said to him: "Why do you let these camels piss on the road on which Muslims travel, to make them slide and fall?" He had him thrown into prison with his camels, until he gave him <a gift>. Another day, he saw a man who had fallen from his ass, and who had broken his head. Learning from him that his ass had taken fright and had thrown him to the ground; he ordered the ass to be killed, on the grounds that it was fearful and the murderer of his master. When this poor man saw the prefect?s sentence, he gave him two dinars and saved <his ass>. When one man complained about another, he imprisoned both of them until both were thereby ruined. And in this way, men were prevented from bringing a complaint; and of necessity they observed the commandment which says "Recompense to no man evil for evil". <Rom. 12:17> They prevented the harvest of the grapes in its season, until they had levied one dinar per thousand plants; likewise at the presses, they prevented pressing until they had been given the money that they wanted; then they confined the wine to barrels until they had levied <a tax> on buyers and sellers. They likewise levied <taxes> on the roads and at the gates of towns; and also at the start of the harvest, and on millstones, and when they pruned, and picked the olives. Ahmad Bar Abu Da?ud promulgated all these evil laws. We remember what was done by the people of his tribe, the Iyadayites [of the tribe of Iyad of Iraq]. The mind is astounded, the tongue trembles at the memory of the impiety of the Iyadayites. In fact, they were so boastful at this period that no one could withstand them, nor prevent them doing whatever they wished. [?] Should an Iyadayite covet a village: he burdened it with taxes until its owners were forced to sell it and then he bought it himself for almost nothing. Ahmad seized a number of villages in this way. The men were persecuted by the Iyadayites and by the prefects. The Taiyaye themselves were persecuted. [3:106-7] Michael the Syrian