Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/171

142 the demand. Equally remarkable is the tale of the Beni Taghlib. They tendered submission to Al-Welīd, who, solicitous for the adhesion of this famous race, pressed them with some rigour to abjure their ancient faith. ʿOmar was displeased;—"Leave them," he wrote, "in the profession of the Gospel. It is only within the Arabian peninsula, where are the Holy Places, that none but a Muslim tribe is to remain." Al-Welīd was removed from his command; and it was enjoined on his successor to stipulate only that the usual tribute should be paid, that no member should be hindered from embracing Islām, and that children should not be educated in the Christian faith. The tribe, deeming in its pride the payment of "tribute" an indignity, sent a deputation to the Caliph:—They were willing, they said, to pay the tax, if only it were levied under the same name as that taken from the Muslims. The liberality of ʿOmar allowed the concession; and the Beni Taghlib enjoyed the singular privilege of being assessed as Christians at a "double Tithe," instead of paying the obnoxious badge of subjugation.

The last place to hold out in Syria was Cæsarea. It fell in the fifth year of ʿOmar's Caliphate. ʿAmr had sat long before it. But, being open to the sea, and the battlements landward strong and well manned, it resisted his efforts; and although Yezīd sent his brother Muʿāwiya with reinforcements from Damascus, the siege was prolonged for several years. Sallies persistently made by the garrison, were driven back with equal constancy: but in the end, the treachery of a Jew revealed a weak point in the defences; the city was carried by storm and with prodigious carnage. Four thousand prisoners of either sex were despatched with the royal booty to Medīna, and there sold into slavery.