Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/284

656–7] able a ruler as Ḳeis, whom he made every effort to detach from ʿAlī. Upbraiding him with having joined a party still imbued with the blood of ʿOthmān, he called upon Ḳeis to repent, and promised that, if he joined in avenging the crime, he should be confirmed in the government of Egypt, and his kinsmen promoted to such office as he might desire. Ḳeis, unwilling to precipitate hostilities, fenced his answer with well-balanced words. Of ʿAlī's complicity in the foul deed there was as yet, he said, no evidence; he would wait. Meanwhile he had no intention of making attack on Syria. Again pressed by Muʿāwiya, Ḳeis frankly declared that he was, and would remain, a staunch supporter of the Caliph. Thereupon Muʿāwiya sought craftily to stir up jealousy between ʿAlī and his Lieutenant. He gave out that Ḳeis was temporising, and spoke of his leniency towards the Egyptian malcontents as proving that he was one at heart with them. The report, assiduously spread, reached, as intended, the court of ʿAlī, where it was taken up by those who either doubted the fidelity of Ḳeis or envied his prosperity. To test his obedience, ʿAlī ordered an advance against the malcontents; and the remonstrance of Ḳeis against the step as premature was taken as proof of his complicity. He was deposed, and the regicide Moḥammad son of Abu Bekr, appointed in his room. Ḳeis retired in anger to Medīna, where, as on neutral ground, adherents of either side were unmolested; but finding no peace there from the taunts of Merwān and others, he at last resolved to cast himself on ʿAlī's clemency; and ʿAlī, on the calumnies being cleared away, took him back at once into his confidence, and thenceforward kept him as his chief adviser. Muʿāwiya upbraided Merwān with having driven Ḳeis from Medīna;—"If thou hadst aided ʿAlī," he said, "with a hundred thousand men, it had been a lesser evil than is the gain to him of such a counsellor."

On his own side, however, Muʿāwiya had a powerful and astute adviser in ʿAmr, the conqueror of Egypt. During the attack on ʿOthmān, ʿAmr had retired from Medīna with his two sons to Palestine. The tidings of the tragedy, aggravated by his own unkindly treatment of the Caliph, affected him keenly. "It is I," he said, "who, by deserting