Early in 120/738 Asad died, and after a lapse of some months the governorship was conferred by Hishām on Na_s_r b. Sayyār. For the subject peoples no choice could have been more opportunely made. Na_s_r was one of the few men who had come with honour and reputation through the external and internal conflicts of the last thirty years. Belonging to the small and almost neutral tribe of Kināna, his position bore a strong similarity to that of Qutayba in that both were more dependent on the support of a powerful patron than on their tribal connexions, and therefore, though favouring Qays, less frantically partisan. In contrast to Qutayba, however, Na_s_r, after thirty years of active leadership, knew the situation in Khurāsān, Transoxania, and Central Asia as no Arab governor had ever done. He had seen the futility of trying to hold the country by mere brute force, and the equal futility of trying to dispense with force. While he held the support of Hishām, therefore, he set himself to restore Arab authority in Transoxania. The appointment of Qa_t_an b. Qutayba, who had inherited much of his father’s ability, to command the forces beyond the river gave earnest of an aggressive policy. The appointment was not to Samarqand, as Wellhausen says, but “over _S_ughd,” _i.e._, the garrisons in Bukhārā and probably Kish, who were responsible in the first place for keeping the surrounding districts in subjection. The governor himself then carried out a brief expedition, intended apparently to punish some rebels in the neighbourhood of the Iron Gate, possibly in Shūmān. Having thus vindicated the authority of the administration, Na_s_r returned to Merv and delivered the famous Khu_t_ba in which the system of taxation and conditions of amnesty were at last laid down in a form satisfactory to the mawālī and the subject peoples[100]. The results were as he had foreseen. The princes and people of Transoxania submitted, as far as we can judge, without opposition when Na_s_r with his army marched through _S_ughd to re-establish the Arab garrison and administration in Samarqand.