KARMATHIANS
22
KARMATHIANS
Ahmed. This Ahmed, profit uip hy the experience of his father, carried on tlie work of conversion somewhat secretly ; at least he did not dare to assume publicly the claims of an imam, as his father had done. He sent missionaries, however, to different jiarts of the country to gain adherents for this extreme nationalistic move- ment, and one of the converts made was our Karmatha, who gave ne^v life to this inidertaking. He (juickly gathered about him a large number of converts, and, successful in securing their confidence, he soon made tliem the blind instruments of his will. He advocated, according to some authorities, absolute communism, not only of property, but even of wives, and fomided one particular colony, consisting of chosen converts, around his own house at Kufa. (See below. Religious Belief.)
From this place, called the "House of Refuge," there- after the whole religious movement of the Karmathians was conducted. jNIissionaries were created and sent to different parts of the earth to convert the nations, and gather them into the fold of Karmathianism. Among these converts was one Abu Said, whose success in Southern Persia, and afterwards at Bahrein, in the Per- sian Gulf, deserves special notice here. The inhabitants of this country, formerly a province of Persia, adhering partly to the Jewish, partly to the Persian faith, had been subjected by Mohammed, but had been allowed to retain their o^vn creed. After the prophet's death they had at once shaken off the unwelcome yoke, Avhich, however, had again been put upon them by Omar. In the interior of this country lived certain Arabs, highly disaffected against Islam, the innumerable precepts of which they intensely disliked, and among these Abu Said made the most marvellous strides in his con- versions, until he finally gained the confidence of the Bahreinites generally, and in less than two years he brought over a great part of the people of Bahrein. To suppress this proselytism, an army of 10,000 men was dispatche'd in 282 (Hegira) against liim and his fol- lowers, but the Karmathians were victorious, and Abu Said now became inidisputcd possessor of the whole country, destroyed the old capital Hajar, and made Lahsa (his own residence) the cayjital of the country. In other parts of the Saracenic possessions the Karma- thians also warred for a time successfully against the caliphate of Bagdad, and threatened its very existence, until, in a batlle fought in the 29ith year of the Hegi- ra, the caliph's general, Wasif, won a decisive victory, and greatly crippled the military strength of the Kar- matliians. Both Karmatha (of whose personal historj' after this time we lack all information) and Abu Said became — by what means is matter of great obscurity — faithless to their own creed ; but they continued to have followers, and when Abu Said was killed, together with some of his principal officers, in the bath in his own castle at Lahsa. in 301 of the Hegira, by one of his eunuchs, his son, Abu Tahir, liecame his successor, and the struggle was continued. In 311 he seized the town of Basra. In the next year he pillaged the caravan which went to JNIecca, and ransacked KuHi. In 315 he once more appeared in Kufa and in Irak, and gained so decided a victory over the caliph's troops that Bagdad began to tremble before him. In 317 (A.D. 930) the great and decisive blow against the caliphate, or, rather, against JMohammedanism itself, was struck. '■ When the great caravan of pilgrims for the annual pilgrimage had arrived at jNIccca, the news suddenly sjiread that Abu Tahir, the terror of Islam, had appeared at tlie head of an army in the holy city itself. All attempts to buy him oil" failed, and a ma.ssacre of the most fearful de- scription ensued. AVith barbarous irony, he asked the victims what had become of flie sacred [irotection of the place. Every one. they had ahvays been told, Avas safe and inviolable at !Mecca. Why was he allowed thus ea- sily to kill them — the race of donkeys? Accordrng to some, for six days; to others, for eleven or seventeen, the massacre lasted. The numbers killed within the pre- cincts of the temple itself are variously given. The
holy places were desecrated, almost irredeemably. But, not satisfied with this, Abu Tahir laid hands on the su- preme palladium, tlie black stone itself. Yet he was apparently mistaken in his calcidations. So far from turning the hearts of the faithful from a worship which God did not seem to have defended, the remaining Mos- lems clung all the more fervently to it. God's decree had certainly permitted all these indignities to be put upon his house, but it was not f(jr them to murmur. The stone gone, they covered the place where it had lain with their kisses." Whenever Abu Tahir did not prevent them by force, the caravans went on their usual annual pilgrimage, and Abu Tahir was finally persuade<i to conclude a treaty permitting the pilgrimage on pay- ment of five denars fur every camel, and seven for everj-- horse. But the black stone, notwithstanding all the efforts on the part of the court of Bagdad, he never re- turned. (See below.) Abu Tahir liimself was a man of great daring, and so infatuated were his men with the personal bravery and divine calling of their leader that they blindly obeyed any demands he made upon them.