Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/167

 138 the land tax, in return for services rendered by them since the conquest.

Financial affairs had been regulated for the time being by treaties made with individual towns by the generals who took them. ʿOmar contented himself with revising them with a view to uniformity. Thus the Christian governor of Boṣra in the Ḥaurān claimed that the treaty made with that town stipulated for the supply of a certain quantity of wheat, vinegar, and oil as ransom for himself and the town, and prayed ʿOmar to ratify it. Abu ʿObeida, however, denied the fact alleged, and the town had to submit to the same terms as the rest, the payment of land (kharāj) and capitation tax. This shows that at first these treaties were not written, and the law not always consistently executed. When at Al-Jābiya ʿOmar saw some Christian lepers, and ordered that they should be provided for out of the poor's rate (zakāt). Since the canon law, however, forbade the participation of unbelievers in the zakāt, this charity fell into disuse.

Jabala, the "king" of Ghassān, according to one account, remained Christian. Being a high-born Arab, he objected to pay the capitation tax of the subject races, but ʿOmar refused in spite of his lineage to let him off with the zakāt alone, which the Muslims paid. Jabala therefore went into voluntary exile with many of his tribe to Asia Minor. Later on, however, ʿOmar repented of his severity, and in the year 21 he invited him to return upon his own terms. Jabala declined; but when the tribe of Taghlib, who were settled in Mesopotamia, threatened to follow his example for the same reason, ʿOmar and his council went out of their way to devise a means to retain them upon Muslim territory.

According to another account Jabala did become a Muslim, but when ʿOmar permitted an Arab whom Jabala had struck to retaliate by striking back, Jabala's pride was so offended by this equality of high and low that he fled to Constantinople and died a Christian.

But whilst the purpose of receiving the submission of Jerusalem was not the sole motive for ʿOmar's journey to Syria, he must have desired eagerly to be one of the first to enter the Holy City, round which clustered so many sacred memories of the prophets, and which was the goal