Then Mázyár, the Ispahbad of Ṭabaristán, was brought forward, and Afshín was asked, “Knowest thou this man?” Fifth charge: of secretly inciting Mázyár to revolt, and encouraging him in his rebellion. “No,” he answered. Then Mázyár was asked whether he knew Afshín, to which he replied in the affirmative. “This,” said they to Afshín, “is Mázyár.” “Yes,” said Afshín, “I recog­nise him now.” “Hast thou corresponded with him?” they inquired. “No,” said Afshín. “Has he written to you?” they demanded of Mázyár. “Yes,” he replied, “his brother Khásh wrote to my brother Qúhyár, saying, ‘None can cause this Most Luminous Religion* to prevail save I, and thou, and Bábak. As for Bábak, he hath caused his own death by his folly, and, though I strove to avert death from him, his own folly would not brook intervention until it cast him into the catastrophe which befell him. If thou dost revolt, the people [i.e., the Arabs] have none but me to send against thee, and with me are the knights, and the valiant and brave; so that if I be sent against thee, there remain to do battle with us only three sorts of men, the Arabs, the Moors,* and the Turks. The Arab is like a dog; I will throw him a crust, and then smash his head with a mace. And these flies’ (meaning the Moors) ‘are but few in numbers;* while as for these sons of devils’ (meaning the Turks), ‘it needs but a short while to exhaust their arrows, after which the cavalry will surround them in a single charge and destroy them all, and religion will return to what it ever was in the days of the Persians.’”

*

To this Afshín replied, “This man brings against his brother and my brother charges which do not affect me. And even had I written this letter to him, that I might incline him to myself, and that he might regard my approach with equanimity, there would be nothing objectionable therein; for since I helped the Caliph with my hands, I had the better right to help him by my wits, that I might take his enemy unawares and bring him before him, that I might thereby be honoured in my master's eyes even as 'Abdu'lláh b. Ṭáhir thus won honour.”

Some further details of the trial are given, especially Afshín's attempt to defend himself for his neglect to undergo the rite of circumcision (“wherein,” said Ibn Abí Du'ád, “is the whole of Islám and of legal purity”), on the ground that he feared harm to his health from the operation. His excuses were scouted: was it possible that a soldier, constantly exposed to lance-thrust and sword-blow, should be afraid of this? Afshín saw that he was doomed, and, in the bitterness of his heart, exclaimed to Ibn Abí Du'ád, “O Abú 'Abdi'lláh, thou raisest up thy hood (ṭaylasán) with thy hand, and dost not suffer it to fall on thy shoulder until thou hast slain thereby a multitude.”* “It hath become apparent to you,” said Ibn Abí Du'ád, addressing the audience, “what he is”; then to Bughá the Turk (called “the Elder”), “Away with him!” Thereupon Bughá seized Afshín by the girdle, and, as he cried out, “This is what I expected from you!” cast the skirt of his robe over his head, and, half throttling him, dragged him back to his prison. The Caliph al-Mu'taṣim, disregarding his piteous appeal for clemency, caused him to be slowly starved to death, after attempting, as it would appear, to poison him in some fruit which he sent to him by the hand of his son Hárún, who afterwards succeeded to the Caliphate under the title al-Wáthiq bi'lláh.* The body, crucified for a while between Bábak and Mázyár, as already described, was afterwards burned, and its ashes cast into the Tigris. In Afshín's house were found, besides sundry idols set with jewels, many books of the religion to which he was secretly attached, including a “Magian book” called Zaráwa. His death took place in June, A.D. 841, so that he must have languished in prison for nine months after his trial and the execution of Mázyár.

It was the policy of the early 'Abbásids, and of al-Ma'mún in particular,* to exalt the Persians at the expense of the Arabs; and in this chapter we have examined some of the more open and undisguised manifestations of the old Persian racial and religious spirit—actual attempts to destroy the supremacy of the Arabs and of Islám, and to restore the power of the ancient rulers and teachers of Persia.* Such aspirations after an irrevocable past may be said, in a certain sense, to have been crucified on the three gibbets at Surra man-ra'a; and yet so strongly did these Persianising ideas, which they represented in their different ways, continue to work, that, in the words of Abú Tammám already quoted (p. 330 supra), “the spectator might suppose them to be always on a journey.”