CHAPTER II
The Christians of the banu-Taghlib ibn-Wâʾil
ʿUmar doubles their ṣadaḳah. Shaibân ibn-Farrûkh from as-Saffâḥ ash-Shaibâni:—ʿUmar ibn-al-Khaṭṭâb wanted to collect the poll-tax from the Christian tribe, banu-Taghlib; but they took to flight and some of them went to a distant land. An-Nuʿmân ibn-Zurʿah (or Zurʿah ibn-an-Nuʿmân) addressed ʿUmar saying: "I plead in Allah's name for the banu-Taghlib. They are a body of Arabs too proud to pay poll-tax, but severe in warfare. Let not thy enemy, therefore, be enriched by them to thy disadvantage."[1] Thereupon ʿUmar called them back and doubled the ṣadaḳah laid on them.
Neither Moslems, nor of the "people of the Book." Shaibân from ibn-ʿAbbâs:—The latter said, "What is slaughtered by the Christians of the banu-Taghlib shall not be eaten, and their women shall not be taken as wives [by us]. They are neither of us nor of the 'people of the Book.'"
ʿUmair consults ʿUmar. ʿAbbâs ibn-Hishâm from ʿAwânah ibn-al-Ḥakam and abu-Mikhnaf:—ʿUmair ibn-Saʿd wrote to ʿUmar ibn-al-Khaṭṭâb informing him that he had come to the regions on the Syrian slope of the Euphrates and captured ʿÂnât and the other forts of [i. e., along the course of] the Euphrates; and that when he wished to constrain the banu-Taghlib of that region to accept Islâm, they refused and were on the point of leaving for some Byzantine territory; no one on the Syrian slope of the Euphrates whom he wished to constrain to Islâm had before the banu-
- ↑ Cf. Yûsuf, p. 68.
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