Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/231

 202 various accounts of his wanderings in the East after the battle of Nihāvend, destitute and helpless; but they all agree in the fact that about this time, taking shelter in a miller's hut he was there assassinated, and that he was buried with reverence by the Metropolitan of Merv. The knowledge that the line of Anūsharwān was now at an end, tended no doubt to the pacification of the East.

Although upon the whole the progress of the Muslims was steadily forward, there were still reverses, and these not seldom of a serious kind. An arduous campaign was carried on during this reign against the hordes of Turks and Khazar, to the west of the Caspian Sea. In the year 32 these gained so signal an advantage in the mountainous passes of Azerbījān, that in the discomfiture which followed the Arab leaders and a great body of the veterans were slain. To retrieve the disaster, ʿOthmān ordered levies from Syria to reinforce the Kūfan army. Bad blood bred between the two; the Syrians refused to serve under a General commanding troops from Al-Kūfa; and altercation ensued which nearly led to bloodshed. This, adds the historian, was the first symptom of the breach between the Kūfans and the men of Syria, which subsequently broke out into prolonged hostility. About the same time, a whole army was lost in deep snow upon the heights of Kirmān, only two men escaping to tell the tale. There were also some alarming losses in Turkestân. But Arabia continued to cast forth its swarms of fighting tribes in such vast numbers, and the wild fanaticism of the Faith still rolled on so rapidly, that such disasters soon disappeared in the swelling tide of conquest.

Syria had by this time come entirely under Muʿāwiya. On the death of his brother Yezīd, ʿOmar gave him the government of Damascus; and as the other governors passed away, their districts fell successively into his hands; till at last, early in the reign of ʿOthmān, to whom as of the Umeiyad line Muʿāwiya was closely related, the entire Province came