Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/108

 634] dwelling with the family of the wife whom he married on coming to Medīna, and who shortly after his death gave birth to a daughter. Every morning he rode or walked to the courtyard of the Mosque where Moḥammad lived and ruled, to discharge the business of the day, and to perform the Public prayers, ʿOmar presiding if he were absent. For the more important service of Friday, at which an address also was delivered, he stayed in the early hours at home to dye his hair and beard, and dress more carefully; and so did not appear till midday prayer. Here, as elsewhere, he preserved the severe simplicity of early life, and even fed and milked the household goats. At the first he continued to maintain himself by merchandise; but perceiving that it interfered with the burdens of the State, he consented to forego all other occupation, and to receive instead a yearly allowance of six thousand dirhems for household charge.

Finding the Sunḥ too distant from the Mosque where, as in the time of Moḥammad, public affairs were all transacted, he transferred his residence thither. The Exchequer was in those days but simple. It needed neither guard nor office of account. The tithes as they came in were given to the poor, or spent on military equipage and arms; the spoil of war also was distributed just as received, or on the following morning. All shared alike, the recent convert and the veteran, male and female, bond and free. As claimant on the Muslim treasury, every believing Arab was his brother's equal. When urged to recognise precedence in the faith as ground of preference, Abu Bekr would reply, "That is for the Lord; He will fulfil the reward of such, in the world to come. These gifts are but an accident of the present life." After his death, ʿOmar had the treasury opened; they found but a solitary golden piece, slipped out of the bags; so they lifted up their voices and wept, and blessed the departed Caliph's memory. His conscience had troubled him for taking even what he did by way of stipend from the People's chest; and on his deathbed he gave command that certain lands, his private property, should be sold and a sum equal to that received, refunded.

In disposition Abu Bekr was singularly mild and gentle. ʿOmar used to say there was no man for whom the people would more readily have laid down their lives. He had long