While the latter followed (or led) the Shu`ubite movement and declared for the excellence of all things not Arabian, Asma`i was the pious Moslem and avowed supporter of the superiority of the Arabs over all peoples, and of the freedom of their language and literature from all foreign influence.
In Egypt the relation was curiously reversed; the earth-god Keb was the husband of Nut, the sky, represented sometimes as a woman, overarching the earth and supported on hands and feet, sometimes as a gigantic cow, upheld on the outstretched hands of Shu, the atmosphere.
He wrote, we are told, a preface to the Shu King, or Book of Historical Documents.
Mencius held that the composition of the Ch'un Ch'iu was as great a work as Yu's regulation of the waters of the deluge with which the Shu King commences, and did for the face of society what the earlier labour did for the face of nature.
In the south a small volunteer force of cavalry was eventually raised, but after fighting against the British at Shu`aiba near Basra it returned to Kurdistan owing to the illtreatment it received at the hands of the Turks.
