Aly did not at first recognise the serious character and bearing of the movement. The number of the fanatics was comparatively insignificant; and he hoped that, when they saw their former comrades in arms marching against the graceless Syrians, they would not hesitate again to join his standard. So he mounted the pulpit and harangued the men of Kûfa. He reprobated the Umpires, because they had cast the Book of the Lord, equally with the precedent of the Prophet, behind their backs. Both were apostates, rejected of the Lord, of his Prophet, and of all good men. ‘Wherefore,’ he concluded, ‘we must begin to fight our battle again at the point where, on the eve of victory, we were forced to leave it off. Prepare then to march for Syria, and be ready in your camp without the city, by the second day of the coming week.’ [Sidenote: And summons the theocrats, who refuse to join him.]Then he indited a despatch to the fanatics at Nehrwân. It was couched in terms similar to his address, and ended thus: ‘Now, therefore, when ye have read this, return forthwith and join the army. I am marching against the common enemy, yours and ours alike; and we have come back again to the state of things when aforetime at Siffîn ye were fighting by my side.’ In reply Aly received an insulting message: ‘If he acknowledged his apostasy and repented thereof, then they would see whether anything could be arranged between them; otherwise they cast him off as an ungodly heretic.’ The stiff-necked theocrats were thereupon, for the present, left to their own devices, and the business of raising levies for Syria proceeded with. [Sidenote: Aly marches for Syria.]But little enthusiasm was anywhere displayed in the cause of Aly. Of the 60,000 fighting men drawing stipendiary allowances in Bussorah, 3,000 were with difficulty got together. At Kûfa, after vain appeal to the loyalty of the city, a conscription was ordered through the heads of clans; and thus at length an army of threescore and five thousand men of every rank and class was brought into the field.[550] [Sidenote: But is diverted by the excesses of the fanatic host.]