Page:Bury J B The Cambridge Medieval History Vol 2 1913.djvu/389

685-705] Marwān quickly succeeded in conquering Egypt, and then died, leaving a difficult inheritance to his son 'Abd-al-Malik (685-705). Complications with the Byzantines, who had incited the Mardaites, an unconquered mountain tribe in the Amanus, against him, rendered it impossible for him during his first years of office to take energetic steps in 'Irāḳ. The Zubair faction represented by Zubair's brother Muṣ'ab ruled there nominally. Apart from these however the Shiites had now attained to eminence and had organised a great insurrection under Mukhtār. They defeated an army sent out by 'Abd-al-Malik, but were then themselves defeated by the Zubairite Muṣ'ab. The latter was hindered in his fight against 'Abd-al-Malik by the Khārijites, who offered opposition to any and every form of state government and had developed into an actual scourge. In the decisive battle against 'Abd-al-Malik on the Tigris (690) Muṣ'ab accordingly succumbed to the military and diplomatic superiority of the Syrian Caliph. The opposition Caliph still maintained his resistance in Mecca. 'Abd-al-Malik despatched against him one of his best men, Ḥajjāj, who managed in 692 to put an end both to the Caliphate and to the life of the Zubairite.

This Ḥajjāj became later 'Abd-al-Malik's Ziyād, or almost unrestricted viceroy, of the eastern half of the empire. He exercised the authority of the State in a very energetic manner, and his reward is to be shamefully misrepresented in the historical account given of him by the tradition of 'Irāḳ, created by those who had been affected by his energetic methods. Ḥajjāj was also a Thakifite. He carried out in 'Irāḳ what 'Abd-al-Malik endeavoured to do in Syria, namely, the consolidation of the empire. The constitutional principles of the dominions of Islām were, according to tradition, formulated by Omar, but the extent to which tradition ascribes these to him is impossible, for the ten years of his reign, occupied as they were with enormous military expeditions, did not leave him the necessary time and quiet. For this reason later investigators consider that the chief merit must be attributed to Mu'āwiya. Probably however the honours must be divided between Omar, Mu'āwiya, and 'Abd-al-Malik, possibly including Hishām. Omar made the Arabs supreme over the taxpaying subjected peoples, and avoided particularism by the introduction of the state treasury. Mu'āwiya placed the Arabian Empire on a dynastic basis and disciplined the tribes by introducing the political in place of the religious state authority. 'Abd-al-Malik however was the first to create the actual Arabian administration, and this was followed under Hishām by the abolition of the agrarian political prerogative of the Arabs, to be discussed later. This process in the economic life was followed under the Abbasids by its extension to politics.

The Arabs were not so foolish as many modern conquerors, who first destroy the administrative organisation which they find in newly con-