40
ABU BEKR
[CHAP. VI.
A.H. 11.
burial-ground, and there burn him with fire.” So, hard by the graveyard of the City they gathered wood, and, heaping it together at the place of prayer, kindled the pile and cast Al-Fujāʾa on it. If the charges were well founded, which we have no ground for doubting, Al-Fujāʾa deserved the fate of a bandit; but to cast him alive into the flames was a savage act, for which Abu Bekr was sorry afterwards, and used to say—"It is one of the three things which I would I had not done."
