The historians give the most contradictory accounts of the events that followed; according to Balādhurī the new Caliph Sulaymān confirmed Qutayba in his command but gave permission to the army to disband. _T_abarī’s narrative, with which Yaʿqūbī’s in general agrees, is fully discussed by Wellhausen (274 ff.), together with a valuable analysis of Qutayba’s position. The story of his highhanded negotiations with Sulaymān is too well known to need repetition. Finding the army disinclined to follow him, he completely lost his head and roused the mutiny in which he was killed. The Persian levies, who were inclined to side with him, were dissuaded by _H_ayyān an-Naba_t_ī, and at the last only his own family and bodyguard of Sogdian princes remained faithful. The death of Qutayba marked not merely the end of the Arab conquests in Central Asia for a quarter of a century, but the beginning of a period of retrogression. Under Wakīʿ b. Abī Sūd, his successor[69], the armies melted away. Mukhallad, the son of Yazīd b. Muhallab and his lieutenant in Transoxania, carried out summer raids on the villages of _S_ughd, but an isolated attempt on the Jaxartes provinces by ʿOmar’s governor, Al-Jarrā_h_ b. ʿAbdullah, met with ignominious failure. It is possibly to this that the tradition, mentioned by Barthold (_Turkestan_ 160), of the disaster met with by a Muslim army refers. On the other hand an embassy was sent in the name of the Caliph to renew relations with the Chinese court, and a third in concert with the kingdoms of _T_ukhāristān and Samarqand, etc., during the reign of ʿOmar[65]. There is mention also of an expedition into Khuttal which regained some territory. But it was Qutayba, with _H_ajjāj at his back, who had held his conquests together, and when he disappeared there was neither leader nor organisation to take his place. The history of the next decade clearly shows how loose and unstable was the authority of the Arabs. It was force that had made the conquests, and only a settled policy of force or conciliation could hold them. The first was absent. “Qutayba in chains at the world’s end is more terrible to us than Yazīd as governor in our very midst” is the graphic summary put into the mouths of the conquered, while of Rutbīl, king of Zābulistān, we are told expressly that after the death of _H_ajjāj “he paid not a cent of tribute to any of the governors of Sijistān on behalf of the Umayyads nor on behalf of Abū Muslim.”[70].