While those searches were being conducted there were other distasteful chores to be done. Dead bodies were strewn across the roadway. They could not simply be left there for the scavengers. Prince Ahmad turned to Umar for guidance.
“What can we do with the bodies?” he asked. “There are no dakhmas here on which to place them for the vultures, and we don’t have the tools or the resources to build any.”
Umar bin Ibrahim considered the alternatives. It was a touchy matter of applied theology. Since it was Oromasd who had created life and Rimahn who countered it with death, any dead body became the property of and, symbolically, a temple to Rimahn. Nasu, the druj of corruption and decay, had already claimed the corpses.
The simplest answer, cremation, was out of the question; the dead matter
