Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/229

 200 took counsel on critical occasions with the leading men around him, but, as a rule, held himself bound by the same, and enjoined the like on his lieutenants. And so it was that in the concessions which he made to the clamour of the citizens of Al-Baṣra and Al-Kūfa, ʿOmar had already set a baneful lesson to his successor, and given to those con-stituencies a foretaste of power which they were not slow to take advantage of. Thus the turbulent spirit grew from day to day—a spirit of opposition to authority, and impatience of Ḳoreishite rule.

The second cause, less threatening to Islām at large, was more insidious and fraught with greater danger to the Caliphate, and to the person of ʿOthmān himself. Had Ḳoreish rallied loyally around the throne, they might have nipped the Arab faction in the bud. But the weakness of ʿOthmān, and the partiality with which he favoured his own relations, stirred the jealousy of the house of Hāshim, which began now to vaunt the claims of ʿAlī and the Prophet's family, and to depreciate the Umeiyad branch to which the Caliph belonged. That branch, unfortunately for the Umeiyads, had been the tardiest to recognise the mission of the Prophet; and those on whom ʿOthmān now lavished his favour were amongst the earliest and most inveterate opponents of Islām. Every expression uttered by Moḥammad during that period of bitter enmity was now raked up and used to blacken their names, and cast discredit on a Government which promoted them to power and honour. Thus Ḳoreish were divided; rivalry paralysed their influence, and ʿOthmān lost the support which would otherwise have enabled him to crush the machinations of the Arab malcontents. Still worse, ʿAlī and his party lent themselves to the disloyal policy of the Bedawi faction, which was fast sapping the foundations of the Caliphate, and which, as ʿAlī should have foreseen, would in the end, if he succeeded to the throne, recoil against himself.

It was not, however, till later on that these influences, though early at work, assumed dangerous prominence. This was in great measure due to the military operations which, busily pursued in all directions throughout the twelve years of ʿOthmān's caliphate, served to divert attention from domestic trouble. Expeditions,as we have seen, had been