When Abu ʿAbdullah heard of the Emir’s flight he went at once to Wady an-Namal, and sent forward 1,000 men under Arunaba b. Yusus and Hasan b. Jarir to Raqada. The news soon reached Kairawan, and a deputation was sent out to congratulate the Shiʿites. These emissaries thought to ingratiate themselves by making contemptuous and hostile reflections upon the late ruler, but Abu ʿAbdullah rebuked them, stating that Ziadat Allah had lacked neither courage nor intelligence, but that defeat had overtaken him because it was the will of God. His gracious reception of the envoys from Kairawan caused great annoyance to the Katama tribesmen, to whom he had made a promise that they would be allowed to plunder the city. In Rajab I. 296 Abu ʿAbdullah, at the head of 300,000 men, entered Raqada to find the town entirely deserted by its inhabitants. He established himself in one of the empty mansions, and the leaders of the Katama occupied others (Maq. ii. 11). He then sent to Tripoli to fetch his brother Abu l-ʿAbbas and Abu Jaʿfar, as well as ʿUbayd Allah’s mother, who had apparently accompanied her son, though we hear no more about her. Abu ʿAbdullah was a fervent Shiʿite and established a strict puritan rule in Kairawan, death being the penalty for drinking wine or bringing it into the city. The Shiʿite formula was used in the call to prayer, which implied the addition of the words “come to the excellent work” to the orthodox call, and the names of ʿAli, Fatima, Hasan, and Husayn were inserted in the _Khutba_ or public prayer at the Friday service. As in modern Persia the supreme authority was attributed to the concealed Imam, and the civil government based its rights on the claim to act as his deputy until the day of his revealing. In Kairawan the proper deputy would naturally be the Mahdi ʿUbayd Allah, but no public announcement was made of this as yet. The Khatibs of Kairawan and Raqada were ordered to omit the name of the ʿAbbasid Khalif from the _khutba_, but no other ruler’s name was inserted in its place. A new coinage was prepared, and this similarly bore no prince’s name; simply it had the inscription on one side, “I have borne my witness to God,” and on the other “May the enemies of God be scattered.”