Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/245



the close of ʿOthmān's reign, the hidden ferment, which (Syria perhaps excepted) had long been everywhere at work, began to make its appearance on the surface. The Arab tribes at large were displeased at the pretensions of Ḳoreish. Ḳoreish themselves were divided and ill at ease, the greater part being jealous of the Umeiyad house and the Caliph's favourites. And temptation to revolt was fostered by the weakness and vacillation of ʿOthmān himself.

Ibn ʿĀmir had been now three years governor of Al-Baṣra, when Ibn Sabaʾ (or, as he is commonly called, Ibn as-Saudā), a Jew from the south of Arabia, appeared there, and professed the desire to embrace Islām. It soon appeared that he was steeped in disaffection towards the existing government,—a firebrand of sedition; as such he was expelled successively from Al-Baṣra, Al-Kūfa, and Syria, but not before he had given a dangerous impulse to the already discontented classes there. At last he found a safe retreat in Egypt, where he became the setter forth of strange and startling doctrines. Moḥammad was to come again, even as the Messiah was. Meanwhile ʿAlī was his legate. ʿOthmān was a usurper, and his governors a set of godless tyrants. Impiety and wrong were rampant every-

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