Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/109

 80 been called "the Sighing" because of his tender-heartedhess. He was severe in his treatment of the Apostate tribes; but excepting the solitary case in which he committed a brigand to the flames, no act of cruelty stands out against him; and for that he expressed his sorrow. "It was one of the three things which he would wish undone." The others were, that he had pardoned Al-Ashʿath when he deserved death; and that when Khālid was transferred to Syria, he had not at the same time sent ʿOmar to Al-ʿIrāḳ. "Then," said he, "I should have stretched out mine arms, both the right hand and the left, in the ways of the Lord."

Unlike his Master, he contented himself with but few wives. Two he had at Mecca before conversion. On arrival at Medīna, he married the daughter of a Citizen; and, later on, Asmā, the widow of Jaʿfar, ʿAlī's brother, slain at Mūta. By all he left issue. There is no mention of any other wives, nor of any slave-girls in his ḥarīm. Of his children, he loved ʿÃisha best and, in proof thereof, gave her a property for her own. On his deathbed, troubled at the seeming partiality, he said to her, "I wish thee, my daughter, to return that property, to be divided with the rest of the inheritance amongst you all, not forgetting the one yet unborn." His father survived him six months, reaching the great age of ninety-seven.

At his court, Abu Bekr maintained the same simple and frugal life as Moḥammad. Guards and servitors there were none, nor anything approaching pomp and circumstance. Diligent in business, he leaned upon ʿOmar as his counsellor, whose judgment had such weight, that he might even be said to have shared the government with him. Abu Bekr never spared himself, and he personally descended to the minutest things. Thus, he would sally forth by night to seek for the destitute and oppressed. ʿOmar found him one night inquiring into the affairs of a poor blind widow, whom ʿOmar had himself gone forth to help. The department of justice was made over to ʿOmar, but for a whole year "hardly two suitors came before him." The seal of State bore the legend, God the best of Potentates. The despatches were chiefly indited by ʿAlī. Abu Bekr made use also of Zeid (the amanuensis of the Prophet and compiler of the Ḳorʾān) and of ʿOthmān, or any other penman who might at