Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/100

 633–4] sent to Constantinople in disgrace, from which he did not emerge again. Heraclius retired upon Antioch. For the Muslims a result of the victory was the reduction of Gaza and the surrounding towns. Abu Bekr lived to see the first great step taken towards the conquest of the province he most desired to see brought under the sway of the Arabs. It was the first-fruits of the wisdom he had shown in transferring Khalid from Al-ʿIrāḳ to Syria. He died a month later on the 22nd Jumādà II.

The death of Abu Bekr did not make much difference to the army in Syria. ʿOmar, whom he nominated as his successor, had long had a large share in the supreme authority; and greatly as the first and second Caliphs differed in many respects, there was no break in the continuity of their foreign policy. The capture of Gaza was followed by the siege of Sebaste (Samaria) and Neapolis (Shechem, Nābulus), the city of the Samaritans. Both of these capitulated; and other towns taken by the Muslims at this time were Lydda, Emmaus, Jaffa, and Beit Jibrīn. The lives and goods of the inhabitants were spared; but the poll-tax was exacted from the men, and the land-tax (kharāj) imposed on the soil. Up to this point the Muslim army in Syria had acted as a unit, apparently under the chief command of ʿAmr; but now their forces divided, and ʿAmr remained to complete the conquest of Palestine (Filastīn), whilst Khālid pushed forward into the province of the Jordan. Evidence of the success which waited upon the Muslim arms may be read in a sermon delivered by Sophronius, Archbishop of Jerusalem, on Christmas Day, 634, in which he bewails the inability of his people to make their wonted pilgrimage to Bethlehem on account of the country being in the hands of the Saracens, and the scene of the Nativity itself being (it was said) besieged by them.

Meantime the wreck of Theodore’s army, reinforced by fresh troops, had re-formed in the direction of Beisān a (Bethshean, Scythopolis), in the Jordan valley south of the Sea of Galilee, having a bridge over that river in their rear. They attempted to stay the Muslim advance by damming up the numerous mountain streams which flow across the plain, thus turning the country into a swamp, so