Page:PhilipK.Hitti-SyriaAShortHistory.djvu/131

Rh effects of this fire on enemy ships. What was left of the Arab fleet was wrecked on the return journey, occasioned by the death of Muawiyah in 680.

To this period also belong several naval attacks on islands in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean waters, Cyprus was already securely in the Moslem fold. Rhodes was temporarily occupied in 672 and Crete in 674. Sicily was attacked first about 664 and repeatedly thereafter. The Arab fleet was an imitation of the Byzantine and was manned mostly by Syrians. The galley, with a minimum of twenty-five seats on each of the two lower decks, was the fighting unit. Each seat held two rowers; the hundred or more rowers in each ship were armed. Those who specialized in fighting took up their positions on the upper deck.

These campaigns, colossal as they were, did not make the commander-in-chief neglect domestic affairs. The financial administration of the state was left in capable and experienced Christian hands. All provincial expenses were met from local income, principally tribute from subject peoples ; only the balance went to the caliphal treasury. Such was the revenue that Muawiyah could double the pay of the soldiers, strengthen the Syrian frontier fortresses against the northern enemy, undertake projects of agri- culture and irrigation in Hejaz and appease rival factions through subsidies. In Syria he instituted a bureau of registry, a state chancery charged with preserving a copy of each official document dispatched and a postal service. He maintained a standing army of 60,000 at a yearly cost of 60 million dirhems.

Throughout his undertakings, peaceful or military, he was sustained by the unwavering loyalty of his Syrian subjects, natives and Arabian immigrants. The Syro- Arabs were mostly of South Arabian origin and had been Christianized. His wife, his physician and his court poet were Christians. Maronites and Jacobites brought their religious disputes before him. In Edessa he reportedly re- Rh