Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/211

 182 added an address which had often an important political bearing. Military and fiscal functions, vested at the first, like other powers, in the Governor’s hands, came eventually to be discharged by officers specially appointed to the duty. Teachers of religion were commissioned by the State. From the rapidity with which whole peoples were brought within the scope of Islām, risk arose of error in respect both of creed and ritual, to the vast multitude of "New-muslims," as they were called. To obviate the danger, ʿOmar appointed masters in every country, whose business it should be to instruct the people—men and women separately—in the Ḳorʾān and its requirements. Early also in his reign, he imposed it, as a legal obligation, that the people, both small and great, should all attend the public services, especially on Friday; and notably that in the month of Fast, the whole body of Muslims should be constant in the assembling of themselves together in the Mosques.

To ʿOmar is popularly ascribed, not only the establishment of the Dīwān or Exchequer, and offices of systematic account, but also the regulation of the Arabian year. He introduced for this purpose the Moḥammadan Era, commencing with the new moon of the first month (Moḥarram) of the year in which the Prophet fled from Mecca. Hence the Moḥammadan year was named Hijra, sometimes written Hegira, or "Era of the Flight."

Of the state of Moḥammadan society at this period we have not the: material for judging closely. Constant employment in the field, no doubt, tended to check the depraving influences which, in times of ease and luxury, relaxed the sanctions and tainted the purity of Bedawi life. But there is ample indication that the relations between the sexes were already deteriorating, The baneful influence of polygamy, divorce, and servile concubinage, was quickened by the multitude of captive women distributed or sold among the soldiers and the community at large. The