Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/591

Rh CALIPHS.] MOHAMMEDANISM 563 The fall of the Omayyads was their work, and with the Omayyads fell the Arabian empire. The course of Islam s political history during its first centuries is denoted by the removal of the capital from Damascus to Cufa, and from Cufa to Baghdad, the latter occupying, approximately, the site of the ancient Ctesiphon. Omar But we must return to the period of Abubekr. He died Caliph, after a short reign, on 22d August 634, and as matter of course was succeeded by Omar. To Omar s ten years Caliphate belong for the most part the great conquests. He himself did not take the field, but remained in Medina ; he never, however, suffered the reins to slip from his grasp, so powerful was the influence of his personality and the Moslem community of feeling. His political insight is shown by the circumstance that he endeavoured to limit the indefinite extension of Moslem conquest, and to main tain and strengthen the national Arabian character of the commonwealth of Islam ; l also by his making it his fore most task to promote law and order in its internal affairs. The saying with which he began his reign will never grow antiquated : &quot;By God, he that is weakest among you shall be in my sight the strongest, until I have vindicated for him his rights ; but him that is strongest will I treat as the weakest, until he complies with the laws.&quot; It would be impossible to give a better general definition of the function of the State. After the administration of justice he directed his organizing activity, as the circumstances demanded, chiefly towards financial questions the incidence of taxation in the conquered territories, 2 and the applica tion of the vast resources which poured into the treasury at Medina. It must not be brought against him as a personal reproach, that in dealing with these he acted on the principle that the Moslems were the chartered plun derers of all the rest of the world. But he had to atone by his death for the fault of his system ; a workman at Cufa, driven to desperation by absurd fiscal oppressions, stabbed him in the mosque at Medina. He died in the beginning of November 644. Othman Before his death Omar had nominated six of the leading Caliph. Emigrants who should choose the Caliph from among them selves Othman, All, Zobair, Talha, Sa d b. Abi WakkAs, and Abd al-Rahmdn b. Auf. The last named declined to be candidate, and decided the election in favour of Othmdn b. Affan. Under this weak sovereign the government of Islam fell entirely into the hands of the Koraish nobility. We have already seen that Mohammed himself prepared the way for this transference ; Abubekr and Omar likewise helped it ; the Emigrants were unanimous among themselves in thinking that the precedence and leadership belonged to them as of right. Thanks to the energy of Omar, they were successful in appropriating to themselves the succes sion to the Prophet. They indeed rested the claims they put forward in the undeniable priority of their services to the faith, but they also appealed to their blood relationship with the Prophet, as a legitimation of their right to the inheritance ; and the ties of blood connected them with the Koraish in general. In point of fact they felt a greater solidarity with these than, for example, with the natives of Medina ; nature had not been expelled by faith. 3 The supremacy of the Emigrants naturally fur nished the means of transition to the supremacy of the 1 He sought to make the whole nation a great host of God ; the Arabs were to be soldiers and nothing else. They were forbidden to acquire landed estates in the conquered countries ; all land was either made state property or was restored to the old owners subject to a perpetual tribute which provided pay on a splendid scale for the army. 2 Noldeke, Tabari, 246. To Omar also is due the establishment of the Era of the Flight. 3 Even in the list of the slain at the battle of Honain the Emigrants are enumerated along with the Meccans and Koraish, and distinguished from the men of Medina. Othman Meccan aristocracy. Othman did all in his power to press forward this development of affairs. He belonged to the foremost family of Mecca, the Omayyads, and that he should favour his relations and the Koraish as a whole, in every possible way, seemed to him a matter of course. Every position of influence and emolument was assigned to them ; they themselves boastingly called the important province of Irak the garden of Koraish. In truth, the entire empire had become that garden. Nor was it unreasonable that from the secularization of Islam the chief advantage should be reaped by those who best knew the world. Such were beyond all doubt the patricians of Mecca, and after them / those of Tdif, people like Khalid b. al-Walid, Amr b. al- As, Abdallah b. Abi Sarh, Moghira b. Sho ba, and, above all, old Abu Sofydn with his son Mo dwiya, the governor of Syria. Against the rising tide of worldliness an opposition, Move- however, now began to appear. It was led by what may ment be called the spiritual noblesse of Islam, which, as dis- i 1 /; ^&quot;* tinguished from the hereditary nobility of Mecca, might also be designated as the nobility of merit, consisting of the &quot; Defenders,&quot; and especially of the Emigrants who had lent themselves to the elevation of the Koraish, but by no means with the intention of allowing themselves to be thereby effaced. The opposition was headed by AH, Zobair, Talha, both as leading men among the Emigrants and as disappointed candidates for the Caliphate, who therefore were jealous of Othman. Their motives were purely selfish ; not God s cause but their own, not religion but power and preferment, were what they sought. 4 Their party was a mixed one. To it belonged the men of real piety, who saw with displeasure the promotion to the first places in the commonwealth of the great lords who had actually done nothing for Islam, and had joined themselves to it only at the twelfth hour, while those who had borne the burden and heat of the day were passed by. But the majority were merely a band of men without views, whose aim was not a change of system but of persons, that they themselves might fatten in the vacant places. Everywhere in the provinces there was agitation against the Caliph and his governors, except in Syria, where Othmdn s cousin, Mo dwiya b. Abf Sofydn, carried on a wise and strong administration. The movement was most energetic in Irdk and in Egypt. Its ultimate aim was the deposition of Othman in favour of AH, whose own services as well as his close relationship to the Prophet seemed to give him the best claim to the Caliphate. Even then there were enthusiasts who held him to be a sort of Messiah. The malcontents sought to gain their end by force. In bands they came from the provinces to Medina to concuss Othman into concession of their demands. From the Indus and Oxus to the Atlantic the world was trembling before the armies of the Caliph, but in Medina he had no troops at hand. He propitiated the mutineers by concessions, but as soon as they had gone, he let matters resume their old course. Thus things went on from worse to worse. In the following year (656) the leaders of the rebels came once more from Egypt and Irdk to Medina with a more numerous following ; and the Caliph again tried his former plan of making promises which he did not intend to keep. But the rebels caught him in a flagrant breach of his word, and now demanded his abdi cation, besieging him in his own house, where he was 4 It was the same opposition of the spiritual to the secular nobility that afterwards showed itself in the revolt of the sacred cities against the Omayyads. The movement triumphed with the elevation of the Abbasids to the throne. But, that the spiritual nobility was fighting not for principle but for personal advantage was as apparent in All s hostilities against Zobair and Talha as in that of the Abbasids against the followers of Ah.