The breaking out of turbulence was for the moment repressed at Bussorah by Ibn Aámir; but at Kûfa, Saîd had neither power nor tact to quell the factious elements around him. He offended even his own party by ostentatiously washing the steps of the pulpit before he would ascend a spot pretended to have been made unclean by his drunken predecessor. He was not only unwise enough openly to foster the arrogant assumptions of the Coreish, but he had the folly to contemn the claims of the Arab soldiery, to whose swords they owed the conquest of the lands around them. He was so indiscreet as to call the beautiful vale of Chaldæa (the Sawâd) ‘_the Garden of the Coreish_’--‘as if,’ cried the offended Arabs, ‘without us--our strong arm and our good lances--they could have ever won this Garden.’ The disaffection, stimulated by a popular leader named Ashtar, and a knot of factious citizens, found vent at last in an émeute. As the governor and a company of the people, according to the custom of the time, sat one day together in free and equal converse, the topic turned on the bravery of Talha, who had shielded the Prophet in the day of battle. ‘Ah!’ exclaimed Saîd, with an invidious contrast, ‘_he_ is a warrior, if ye choose, a real gem amongst your Bedouin counterfeits. A few more like him, and we should dwell at ease.’ The assembly was still nettled at this speech, when a youth incautiously gave expression to the wish, how pleasant it would be if the governor possessed a certain property which lay invitingly by the river bank near Kûfa. ‘What!’ shouted the company with one voice, ‘and out of our Sawâd!’ So saying, and with a torrent of abuse, they leaped upon the lad and upon his father, who vainly endeavoured to urge his youth in excuse of his indiscretion, and went near to killing both.[467] [Sidenote: The ringleaders are exiled to Syria.]