[44] This relates to an expedition which Muhammed undertook, in the ninth year of the Hejira (A. D. 630), towards _Tabúk_, a place situated about half-way between _Madína_ and _Damascus_, beyond the limits of Arabia; it was in the midst of the summer heats, at a time of great drought and scarcity; besides the fruits were then just ripe, and the people had much rather have remained to gather them. But the first cause of discontent was the exaction of a tribute for covering the expense of the expedition. Abubekr, Omar, Osman, Alí, Talha, Abder rahmen, contributed largely to it; others declined their pecuniary and personal aid; three of the _anśars_, friends above alluded to (see p. 27), were permitted to remain. Alí staid at Madína as lieutenant of the prophet, who moved with an army of thirty thousand men to the frontiers of Syria, which were defended by an equal force of Greeks. He encamped during twenty days near Tabúk, and then thought it necessary to retreat. [45] If I am not mistaken, allusion is here made to _Zeinah_ (Zenobia), the wife of Zaid. Muhammed, having gone one day to the house of the latter, who was not at home, found Zeinah in a dress which permitted him to remark her beauties, with which he was so smitten, that he could not refrain from an exclamation betraying his sensation. Zeinah did not fail to apprise her husband. Zeid then thought he could not do less than to place his wife by a divorce at the disposition of his master and benefactor, whose slave he had once been, and by whom he was not only affranchised, but adopted as a son. On that very account, Muhammed was prevented by law from marrying Zeinah; but he procured to himself an authorization from heaven, in a verse of the Koran (chap. XXXIII. v. 36), and after the term of Zeinah’s divorce, took to wife the object of his desires, at the latter end of the fifth year of the Hejira (A. D. 626). [46] During the contest between Alí and Moaviah, the armies of both chiefs were in the year of the Hejira 37 (A. D. 657) encamped opposite to each other in a plain on the banks of the Euphrates, called by the Greeks _Barbelissos_ or _Barabrissos_, and by the Arabs _Safin_; and in ninety engagements, which took place between them in a hundred and ten days, on the side of Moaviah fell forty-five thousand, and on that of Ali twenty-five thousand men. In the night which preceded the decisive day of Safin, Ali is said to have killed with his own hand four hundred enemies.――(_Abulfeda_, vol. I. pp. 305-313.) [47] See vol. I. pp. 103-104, note 1.