Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/160



main attack of the Arabs was, as we have seen, on the Ḥauran. Issuing from Arabia, their northward course had been along the highway to Damascus, the pilgrim route of the present day, east of the Dead Sea. The base of operations throughout the Syrian campaign was at Al-Jābiya, a town on the high land to the east of the Sea of Galilee; from whence columns could be forwarded, by the great military roads, either to Damascus and the north, or westward to Tiberias, the Jordan, and Palestine. Soon after the battle of Fiḥl and siege of Damascus, the greater part of the Jordan province fell rapidly under the arms of ʿAmr and Shuraḥbīl. In Palestine proper, Jerusalem, Ramleh, and Cæsarea alone held out.

Towards Jerusalem, full of associations sacred to the Muslims, ʿAmr first directed his steps. On his approach, Arṭabūn (Aretion) retired with his army into Egypt. The Patriarch sued for peace. One condition he is said to have made, that ʿOmar should himself come to the Holy City, and there in person settle the capitulation. The Caliph, braving the objections of his court, at once set out, journeying direct for Al-Jābiya. It was a memorable occasion, the first progress of a Caliph beyond the limits of Arabia.

Jerusalem was to the Muslim an object of intense veneration, not only as the cradle of Judaism and Christianity, but as the first Ḳibla of Islām, or sacred spot to which the Faithful turn in prayer; and also the shrine at which Moḥammad alighted on the heavenly journey which he performed by night. ʿOmar, having inspected the site of

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