ABSTRACT
Men of Kufa, I see before me heads ripe for the harvest and the reaper, I am he. I seem to myself to see blood between turbans and shoulders. I am not one of those who can be frightened by an inflated bag of skin, nor need any one think to squeeze me like dried figs…. The Prince of the Believers has spread before him the arrows of his quiver, and has tried every one of them by biting its wood. It is my wood he has found the hardest and the bitterest, and I am the arrow which he shoots against you.—The Speech of Hajjaj bin Yusuf.
