Abu Sofiân himself survived till A.H. 32, and died aged eighty-eight years. One of his eyes he lost at the siege of Tâyif, and the other at the battle of the Yermûk, so that he had long been blind. He divorced Hind, the mother of Muâvia--she who ‘chewed the liver’ of Hamza at the battle of Ohod. As for her, we are told that, having received a loan from Omar, she supported herself by merchandise. What was the reason of the divorce does not appear.[417] CHAPTER XXVIII. DEATH OF OMAR. A.H. XXIII. A.D. 644. [Sidenote: Omar performs pilgrimage; end of A.H. XXIII. October, A.D. 644.] It was now the eleventh year of Omar’s Caliphate, and though fifty-five years of age (according to others over sixty) he was full of vigour and vigilant in the discharge of the vast responsibilities that devolved upon him.[418] In the last month of the twenty-third year of the Hegira, he journeyed, as was his wont, to Mecca; and taking on this occasion the Widows of Mahomet in his suite, performed with them the rites of the annual Pilgrimage. He had returned but a few days to Medîna, when his reign came to a tragical and untimely end. [Sidenote: Abu Lulû, a Persian slave, promises to make a windmill.] A Persian slave, Feroze, called more familiarly Abu Lulû, had been brought by Moghîra from Irâc. Carried off a prisoner in his youth by the Romans, he had early embraced Christianity; and now, captured from them by the Moslems, his fate was to endure a second captivity as Moghîra’s slave. When the crowd of prisoners was marched into Medîna from the battle of Nehâvend (which is said to have been his birthplace) he gave vent to his grief; the sight opened springs of tenderness long pent up, and stroking the heads of the little ones, he exclaimed: ‘_Verily, Omar hath consumed my bowels!_’ He practised the trade of a carpenter; and Moghîra, as his owner, shared the profit. Meeting Omar in the market-place,[419] he cried out, ‘Commander of the Faithful! right me of my wrong, for verily Moghîra hath assessed me heavily.’ ‘At how much?’ asked the Caliph. ‘At two dirhems a day.’ ‘And what is thy trade?’ ‘A carpenter, designer, and worker in iron.’ ‘It is not much,’ replied Omar, ‘for a clever artificer like thee. I am told that thou couldst make for me a mill driven by the wind.’ ‘It is true.’ ‘Come then,’ continued the Caliph, ‘and make me such a mill that shall be driven by the wind.’ ‘If spared,’ said the captive in a surly voice, ‘I will make a mill for thee, the fame whereof shall reach from the East even to the far West;’ and he went on his way. Omar remarked, as he passed on, the sullen demeanour of Abu Lulû:--‘That slave,’ he said, ‘spoke threateningly to me just now.’[420] [Sidenote: Omar mortally wounded by Abu Lulû.]