Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/262

 656] As soon as they had left, the palace gate was barred, and thus for three days and nights the three dead bodies lay in silence solemnly within. Then some chief men of Ḳoreish obtained leave of ʿAlī to bury the Caliph's body. In the dusk of evening, the funeral procession wended its way to the burying-ground outside the city. Death had not softened the rebels' hearts, and they pelted the bier with stones. Not in the graveyard, but in a field adjoining, the body, with hurried service, was committed to the dust. In after years the field was added by Merwān to the main burying-ground,—a spot consecrated by the remains of the early heroes of the Prophet's wars. And there the Umeiyads long buried their dead around the grave of their murdered kinsman.

Thus, at the age of eighty-two, died ʿOthmān, after a reign of twelve years. The misfortunes amidst which he sank bring out so sharply the failings of his character that further delineation is hardly needed. Narrow, irresolute, and weak, he had yet a kindly nature which might have made him, in less troublous times, a favourite of the people. Such, indeed, for a season he was at the beginning of his Caliphate. But afterwards he fell on evil days. The struggle between Ḳoreish and the rest of the Arabs was hurrying on the nation to an internecine war. The only possible safety was for the class still dominant to have opposed a strong and united front. By his vacillation, selfishness, and nepotism, ʿOthmān broke up into embittered factions the aristocracy of Islām, and threw the last chance away.

The columns hastening from the north for ʿOthmān's relief, hearing on their way the tragic end, returned to their respective homes.