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 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 389 heads of his rehgion and empire. The opposition of Abu Sophian had been fierce and obstinate ; his conversion was tardy and reluctant ; liis new faith was fortified by necessity and interest ; he served, he fouiijht, ])erhaps he believed ; and the sins of the time of ignorance were expiated by the recent merits of the family of Onnniyah. Moawiyah, the son of Abu Sophian and of the cruel Henda, was dignified in his early youth with the office or title of secretary of the prophet ; the judgment of Omar entrusted him with the government of Syria ; and he administered that important province about forty years either in a subordinate or supreme rank. Without renouncing the fame of xalour and liberality, he affected the reputation of humanity and moderation ; a grateful people was attached to their benefactor ; and the 'ictorious Moslems were enriched with the spoils of Cyprus and Rhodes. The sacred duty of pursuing the assassins of Othman was the engine and pretence of his ambition. The bloody shirt of the martyr was exposed in the mosch of Damascus ; the emir deplored the fate of his injured kinsman ; and sixty thousand Syrians were engaged in his service by an oath of fidelity and revenge. Amrou, the conqueror of Egypt, himself an army, was the first who saluted the new monarch, and divulged the dangerous secret that the Arabian caliphs might be created elsewhere than in the city of the prophet. ''-'^ The policy of Moawiyah eluded the valour of his rival ; and, after the death of Ali, he negotiated the abdica- tion of his son Hassan, whose mind was either above or below the government of the world, and who retired without a sigh from the ])alace of Cufa to an humble cell near the tomb of his grandfather. The aspiring wishes of the caliph were finally crowned by the important change of an elective to an hereditary kingdom. Some murmurs of freedom or fanaticism attested the reluctance of the Arabs, and four citizens of Medina refused the oath of fidelity ; but the designs of Moawiyah were conducted with vigour and address ; and his son Yezid, a feeble and dis- solute youth, was proclaimed as the commander of the faithful and the successor of the apostle of God. A familiar story is related of the benevolence of one of the Death of sons of Ali. In serving at table, a slave had inadvertently dropt a d gso, a dish of scalding broth on his master ; the heedless wretch fell prostrate, to deprecate his punishment, and repeated a verse of the Koran : " Paradise is for those who command their anger : " '9^ I borrow, on this occasion, the strong sense and expression of Tacitus (Hist, i. 4) : Evulgato imperii arcano posse imperatoreni [principem] alibi quani Ronice fieri.