If the charges were well founded, which we have no ground for doubting, Fujâa deserved the fate of a bandit; but to cast him alive into the flames was a savage act, for which Abu Bekr was sorry afterwards. ‘It is one of the three things,’ he used to say, ‘which I would I had not done.’[38] CHAPTER VI. STORY OF MALIK IBN NOWEIRA. A.H. XI. A.D. 632. [Sidenote: Khâlid advances south. A.H. XI. November (?) A.D. 632.] Having subdued the Beni Asad, and other tribes inhabiting the hills and desert to the north-west of Medîna, Khâlid now bent his steps southward, against the Beni Temîm who occupied the plateau towards the Persian Gulf. [Sidenote: The Beni Temîm.] This great tribe had from time immemorial spread itself with multitudinous branches over the pasture-lands and settlements lying between Yemâma and the delta of the Euphrates. Some of its clans professed Christianity, but the greater portion were heathen. They used in past times to have frequent passages, often of a hostile character, with Persia.[39] Most part of this people had submitted to the claims of Mahomet, and the oratorical contest between their embassy and the poets of Medîna forms a curious episode in the Prophet’s life.[40] His death had produced amongst them the same unsettlement and apostasy as elsewhere. Abu Bekr’s first early success resulted, as we have seen, in bringing some of their chiefs to Medîna with the tithes. Meanwhile a strange complication had arisen which embroiled the Beni Yerbóa, one of their clans, commanded by the famous Mâlik ibn Noweira, and eventually brought Khâlid on the scene.