When, in the year (69 A.H.) 689 Abdalmalik had at last encamped at Botan Habib in the vicinity of Kinnesrin (Qinnasrin),[18] with the purpose of marching against Mus'ab, his cousin 'Amr Ashdaq, to whom by the treaty of Jabia, before the battle of Merj Rahit, the succession to Merwan had been promised, took advantage of his absence to lay claim to the supreme power, and to have himself proclaimed caliph by his partisans. Abdalmalik was obliged to retrace his steps and to lay siege to his own capital. The garrison of Damascus took fright, and deserted their posts, so that 'Amr Ashdaq was compelled to surrender. The caliph Abdalmalik summoned him to his palace and slew him with his own hand. Abdalmalik has every claim to our esteem as one of the ablest monarchs that ever reigned, but this murder remains a lasting blot on his career. Entry: 5
But the pacification was only on the surface. Many Omayyad princes considered Merwan as an upstart, his mother being a slave-girl; the Damascenes were angry because he had chosen Harran for his residence; the Kalbites felt themselves slighted, as the Qaisites predominated. Thabit b. No'aim revolted in Palestine, Emesa (Homs) and Tadmor were turbulent, Damascus was besieged by Yazid b. Khalid al Qasri. Merwan, who wanted to march against Irak, was obliged to return to Syria, where he put an end to the troubles. This time Thabit b. No'aim had to pay for his perfidy with his life. After this new pacification, Merwan caused the Syrians to acknowledge his two sons as heirs to the Caliphate, and married them to two daughters of Hisham. All the Omayyad princes were invited to the wedding, Merwan hoping still to conciliate them. He then equipped 10,000 Syrians, and ordered them to rejoin the army of 20,000 men from Kinnesrin (Qinnasrin) and Mesopotamia, who, under Yazid b. Omar b. Hobaira, were already on the march towards Irak. When these Syrians came to Rosafa (Rusafa), Suleiman b. Hisham persuaded them to proclaim himself caliph, and made himself master of Kinnesrin. From all sides Syrians flocked to his aid till he had 70,000 men under his orders. Merwan immediately ordered Ibn Hobaira to stop his march and to wait for him at Durin, and marched with the main force against Suleiman, whom he utterly defeated at Khosaf in the district of Kinnesrin. Suleiman fled to Homs and thence to Tadmor and on to Kufa, leaving his brother Sa'id in Homs. The siege of this place by Merwan lasted nearly five months. After the victory the walls were demolished, and likewise those of Baalbek, Damascus, Jerusalem and other towns. Syria was utterly crushed, and therewith the bulwark of the dynasty was destroyed. Not until the summer of 128 (A.D. 746) could Merwan resume his campaign against Irak. Entry: 14
On the prosody, see (besides the works of Bickell and Dyserinck) K. Budde, "Das hebräische Klagelied," _Z.A.T.W._, ii. 1 ff. (1882), iii. 299 ff. (1883), xi. 234 ff. (1891), xii. 31 ff. 261 ff. (1892); _Preussische Jahrbücher_, lxxiii. 461 ff. (1893); and C. J. Ball, "The Metrical Structure of Qinoth," _P.S.B.A._ (March 1887). (The writer was then unacquainted with Budde's previous labours.) Entry: LITERATURE
KAMALA, a red powder formerly used in medicine as an anthelmintic and employed in India as a yellow dye. It is obtained from _Mallotus philippinensis_, Müll., a small euphorbiaceous tree from 20 to 45 ft. in height, distributed from southern Arabia in the west to north Australia and the Philippines in the east. In India kamala has several ancient Sanskrit names, one of which, kapila, signifies dusky or tawny red. Under the name of wars, kanbil, or qinbil, kamala appears to have been known to the Arabian physicians as a remedy for tapeworm and skin diseases as early as the 10th century, and indeed is mentioned by Paulus Ægineta still earlier. The drug was formerly in the British Pharmacopoeia, but is inferior to many other anthelmintics and is not now employed. Entry: KAMALA
_Authorship and date._--The tradition of Jeremiah's authorship cannot be traced higher than the Septuagint version. The prefatory note there may come from a Hebrew MS., but perhaps refers to chapter i. only ("Jeremiah sang _this dirge_"). The idea that Lamentations was originally appended to Jeremiah in the Hebrew Canon, as it is in the old versions, and was afterwards separated from it and added to the other Megilloth for the liturgical convenience of the Synagogue, rests on the fact that Josephus (Ap. i. 1, 8) and, following him, Jerome and Origen reckon 22 books, taking Ruth with Judges and Lamentations with Jeremiah; whereas the ordinary Jewish reckoning gives 24 books, as in our Hebrew Bibles. There is no evidence that this artificial reckoning according to the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet was ever much more than a fanciful suggestion. Even in the Septuagint the existing order may not be original. It appears likely that Lamentations was not translated by the same hand as Jeremiah (Nöldeke). Unlike the latter, the Septuagint Lamentations sticks closely to the Massoretic text. The two books can hardly have been united from the first. On the strength of 2 Chron. xxxv. 25, some ancient writers (e.g. Jerome _ad_ Zech. xii. 11) held that Jeremiah composed Lamentations. When, however, Josephus (Ant. x. 5, 1) states that Jeremiah wrote an elegy on Josiah still extant in his day, he may be merely quoting a little too much of Chron. loc. cit.; and it is obvious that he need not mean our book (see Whiston's note). It is urged, indeed, that the author of Chronicles could not have imagined a prophet to have sympathized with such a king as Zedekiah so warmly as is implied by Lamentations iv. 20; and, therefore, he must have connected the passage with Josiah, the last of the good kings. However that may have been, the Chronicler neither says that Jeremiah wrote _all_ the elegies comprised in _The Qinoth_, nor does he imply that the entire collection consisted of only five pieces. Rather, the contrary; for he implies that _The Qinoth_ contained not only Jeremiah's single dirge on Josiah, but also the elegies of "all the singing men and singing women," from the time of Josiah's death (608) down to his own day (3rd century). The untimely fate of Josiah became a stock allusion in dirges. It is not meant that for three centuries the dirge-writers had nothing else to sing of; much less, that they sang of the fall of Jerusalem (presupposed by our book) before its occurrence. Upon the whole, it does not seem probable, either that the Chronicler mistook Lamentations iv. for Jeremiah's dirge on Josiah, or that the book he calls _The Qinoth_ was identical with our Qinoth. Later writers misunderstood him, because--on the ground of certain obtrusive similarities between Jeremiah and Lamentations (see Driver, L.O.T. p. 433 f.), and the supposed reference in Lamentations iii. 53 ff. to Jeremiah xxxviii. 6 ff., as well as the fact that Jeremiah was the one well-known inspired writer who had lived through the siege of Jerusalem--they naturally enough ascribed this little book to the prophet. It is certainly true that the same emotional temperament, dissolving in tears at the spectacle of the country's woes, and expressing itself to a great extent in the same or similar language, is noticeable in the author(s) of Lamentations i.-iv. and in Jeremiah. And both refer these woes to the same cause, viz. the sins of the nation, and particularly of its prophets and priests. Entry: O