Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/246

 654–5] where; truth and justice could be restored no otherwise than by the overthrow of this wicked dynasty. Such was the preaching which daily gained ground in Egypt; by busy correspondence it was spread all over the Empire, and startled the minds of men already foreboding evil from the sensible heavings of a slumbering volcano.

The outbreak of turbulence was for the moment repressed at Al-Baṣra by Ibn ʿĀmir; but at Al-Kūfa, Saʿīd had neither power nor tact to quell the factious elements around. At his first public service he had offended even his own party by ostentatiously washing the pulpit steps before ascending a spot pretended to have been made unclean by his drunken predecessor. He was foolish enough not only to foster the arrogant assumptions of Ḳoreish, but to contemn the claims of the Arab soldiery, to whose swords they owed the conquest of the land. He called the beautiful vale of Chaldæa The Garden of Ḳoreish—"as if forsooth," cried the offended Arabs, "without our strong arm and lances, they ever could have won it." Disaffection, stimulated by the demagogue Al-Ashtar and a knot of factious citizens, culminated at last in an outbreak. As the Governor and a company of the people, according to custom, sat in free and equal converse, the topic turned on the bravery of Ṭalḥa, who had shielded the Prophet in the day of battle. "Ah!" exclaimed Saʿīd, "he is a warrior, if ye choose, a real gem amongst your Bedawi counterfeits. A few more like him,and we should dwell at ease." The assembly was still nettled at this speech, when a youth incautiously gave expression to the wish, how pleasant it would be if the Governor possessed a certain property which lay invitingly by the river bank near Al-Kūfa. "What!" shouted the company, "out of our good lands!" And with a torrent of abuse, they leaped upon the lad and his father, and went near to killing both.

To awe the malcontents, emboldened by this outrage, ten of the ringleaders, with Al-Ashtar (of whom more hereafter) at their head, were sent in exile to Syria, where it was hoped that the powerful rule of Muʿāwiya and loyal example of the Syrians might inspire them with better feelings. Muʿāwiya quartered the exiles in a church; and morning and evening, as he passed by, rated them on their folly in setting up the crude claims of the Bedawīn against the in-