The expedition to Khujanda may be put in the spring and summer of 722 (end of 103, beginning of 104), though the chronology here, and indeed for all this period, is uncertain. The piecemeal reduction of the fortresses in _S_ughd occupied the remainder of the year, a series of operations whose difficulty is sufficient witness to the effect of the news from Khujanda in stiffening the resistance to the Arabs. The first fortress to be attacked was that of Abghar, in which a band of the emigrants had settled. The attack was entrusted to Sulaymān b. Abiʾs-Sarī, with an army composed largely of native levies from Bukhārā, Khwārizm, and Shūmān, accompanied by their princes. Sulaymān persuaded the dihqān to surrender, and sent him to al-_H_arashī, who at first treated him well in order to counteract the effect of the massacre of Khujanda, but put him to death after recapturing Kish and Rabinjān. The most inaccessible fortress and the crowning example of Al-_H_arashī’s perfidy were left to the last. The dihqān Subuqrī still held out in the fortress of Khuzar, to the south of Nasaf; unable to take it by force, Al-_H_arashī sent Musarbal b. Al-Khirrīt, a personal friend of Subuqrī, to offer him a pardon. On his surrender, he was sent to Merv and put to death, although the amnesty, it is said, had been confirmed by ʿOmar b. Hubayra. The whole of _S_ughd was thus once more in the hands of the Arabs. The nearer districts, Khwārizm and Bukhārā, had remained loyal and the Oxus basin seems to have been unaffected. But to make a solitude and call it peace did not suit the aims of the Arab government and Al-_H_arashī found that his “policy of thorough” only provided Ibn Hubayra with an excuse for superseding him. During the winter, therefore, he was replaced by Muslim b. Saʿīd al-Kilābī, who, as the grandson of Aslam b. Zurʿa, came of a house long familiar with Khurāsān. The danger of the movement of revolt spreading to the Iranians of Khurāsān seems to have preoccupied the Arab government during all this period. Saʿīd Khudhayna had poisoned the too-influential _H_ayyān an-Naba_t_ī on suspicion of rousing the Persians against the government and that it was felt even in Ba_s_ra may be seen from Ibn Hubayra’s advice to his new governor, “Let your chamberlain be one who can make peace with your mawālī.” Muslim, in fact, favoured the Persians and did all in his power to appoint officials acceptable to them, the Mazdean Bahrām Sīs, for example, being appointed Marzubān of Merv[77]. But all such measures were merely palliatives and could not materially affect the growing discontent in _S_ughd and _T_ukhāristān. During his first year of office it is recorded (if the narrative is not, as Wellhausen thinks, a duplicate of the raid on Farghāna in the following year) that Muslim marched across the river but was met and pushed back into Khurāsān by a Turkish army, narrowly escaping disaster. It is not improbable that the local forces were again