Who now should be the leader of this great army in Irâc? Mothanna and Jarîr, already there, were but Bedouin chieftains. None but a peer could take command of the Companions and Nobles of the land now flocking to the field. The matter was being discussed in an assembly, when at the moment there came a despatch from Sád son of Abu Wackkâs, the Caliph’s lieutenant with the Beni Hawâzin, reporting the levy of a thousand good lances from that tribe. ‘Here is the man!’ cried those around. ‘Who?’ asked the Caliph. ‘None but the _Ravening Lion_,’[250] was the answer; ‘Sád, the son of Mâlik.’ The choice was sealed by acclamation; and so, Omar immediately summoned Sád. Converted at Mecca while yet a boy, the new Ameer of Irâc was now forty years of age. He is known as ‘the first who drew blood in Islam,’ and was a noted archer in the Prophet’s wars. He took rank also as the nephew of Mahomet’s mother. Short and dark, with large head and shaggy hair, Sád was brave, but not well-favoured. The Caliph gave him such advice as the momentous issues of the campaign demanded, and warned him not to trust to his extraction. ‘The Lord,’ he said, ‘looketh to merit and good works, not to birth; for in His sight all men are equal.’[251] Thus admonished, Sád set out for Irâc, with 4,000 men, the first-fruits of the new levy. As a rule, they marched now with their women and children. As the levies kept coming in, Omar sent them on, one after another, to join Sád. [Sidenote: Sád marches to Irâc and encamps on the border of the desert.]The numbers swelling rapidly embraced the chivalry of Arabia. Toleiha, the _quondam_ prophet, now an exemplary believer, and Amr ibn Mádekerib, went in command of their respective tribes, the Beni Asad and Zobeid; and Omar wrote that each chief was himself worth a thousand men. Al Asháth, also, head of the Beni Kinda, the apostate rebel of the south, now joined the army with a column of his tribe from Yemen.[252] Indeed, Omar, we are told, ‘left not a single person of any note or dignity in the land, whether warrior, poet, orator, or chieftain, nor any man possessed of horse or weapons, but he sent him off to Irâc.’ Thus reinforced, Sád found himself at the head of 20,000 men; and when the column ordered back from Syria returned, the numbers were over 30,000--by far the largest force yet mustered by the Arabs on the plains of Chaldæa.[253] The troops now marching on Irâc, and those that had been commanded by Mothanna, drew all together at Sherâf, on the borders of the desert, fifteen or twenty miles to the south of Hîra. [Sidenote: Death of Mothanna. Safar, A.H. XIV. April, A.D. 635.]