ssion round the palace, as if it had been the
Ka'ba. Mansur being told of it said: "I would rather they went to hell
in obedience to us, than to heaven in disobedience." But as they grew
tumultuous, and he saw that this impious homage gave offence to his men,
he caused the principal leaders to be seized and thrown into prison. The
Rawendis immediately rose in revolt, broke the prison doors, rescued
their chiefs, and returned to the palace. The unfortunate fanatics were
hunted down and massacred to the last man, and thereby the ties that
bound the Abbasids to the ultra-Shi'ites were severed. From that time
forward the Abbasid caliphs became the maintainers of orthodox Islam,
just as the Omayyads had been. The name of Hashimiya, which the reigning
family still retained, was henceforward derived not from Abu Hashim, but
from Hashim, the grandfather of Abbas, the great-grandfather of the
Prophet.

A much greater danger now threatened Mansur. In the last days of the
Omayyads, the Shi'ites had chosen as caliph, Mahommed b. Abdallah b.
Hasan, whom they called the Mahdi and the "pure soul," and Mansur had
been among those who pledged themselves to him by oath. Not unnaturally,
the Alids in Medina were indignant at being supplanted by the Abbasids,
and Mansur's chief concern was to get Mahommed into his power.
Immediately after his occupying the throne, he named Ziyad b. Obaidallah
governor of Medina, with orders to lay hands on Mahommed and his brother
Ibrahim, who, warned betimes, took refuge in flight. In 758 Mansur,
informed that a revolt was in preparation, came himself to Medina and
ordered Abdallah to tell him where his sons were. As he could not or
would not tell, he together with all his brothers and some other
relatives were seized and transported to Irak, where Abdallah and his
brother Ali were beheaded and the others imprisoned. Notwithstanding all
these precautions, a vast conspiracy was formed. On the same day
Mahommed was to raise the standard of revolt in Medina, Ibrahim in
Basra. But the Alids, though not devoid of personal courage, never
excelled in politics or in tactics. In A.D. 762 Mahommed took Medina and
had himself proclaimed caliph. The governor of Kufa, 'Isa b. Musa,
received orders to march against him, entered Arabia, and captured
Medina, which, fortified by Mahommed by the same means as the Prophet
had employed against the besieging Meccans, could not hold out against
the well-trained Khorasanians. M