Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/227

 198 prince and the slave. Saʿd, incensed at the loss of his slave, seized ʿObeidallah, still reeking with his victims' blood, and carried him, as the murderer of a believer (for Al-Hormuzān had professed the Muslim faith), before the Caliph. A council was called. There was not a tittle of evidence, or presumption even, of the supposed conspiracy. ʿAlī conceived that, according to the law, ʿObeidallah must be put to death as having slain a believer without due cause. Others were shocked at the proposal:—"But yesterday," they said, "the Commander of the Faithful lost his life, and to-day thou wilt put his son to death!" Moved by the appeal, ʿOthmān assumed the responsibility of naming a money compensation in lieu of blood, and this he paid himself. Some feeling was excited, and people said that the Caliph was already departing from the strict letter of the law. The poet, Ibn Lebīd, satirised both the murderer, and the Caliph who had let him off, in stinging verse; but he was silenced. So the matter dropped, and there is no reason to think that the judgment was generally disapproved.

One of ʿOthmān's first acts was to increase the stipends of the chief men all round, by the addition to each of one hundred dirhems. The act, no doubt, was popular, but it gave promise of extravagance in the new administration.