Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/285

 256 the aged man in time of trouble, am responsible for his death." From his retirement he watched the struggle at Al-Baṣra; and when ʿAlī proved victorious, repaired at once to Damascus, and presented himself before Muʿāwiya. In consequence of his unfriendly attitude towards ʿOthmān, Muʿāwiya at first received him coldly. In the end, however, the past was condoned and friendship restored. Thenceforward ʿAmr was the trusted counsellor of Muʿāwiya.

This coalition, and the false step of ʿAlī in recalling Ḳeis from Egypt, materially strengthened Muʿāwiya's hands, The success of ʿAlī at Al-Baṣra had also this advantage for Muʿāwiya, that it removed Ṭalḥa and Az-Zubeir, his only other competitors, from the field. The position of ʿAlī, again, as one of concession to the Arab faction, was fraught with peril. While refusing ostensibly to identify himself with the murderers of ʿOthmān, it was virtually their cause that he had fought; and therefore equally the cause of the Arab tribes against Ḳoreish and the aristocracy of Islām. And ʿAlī might have foreseen that the socialistic element in this unnatural compromise must, sooner or later, inevitably come into collision with the interests of the Caliphate.

The authority of Muʿāwiya rested on a firmer basis; his attitude was bolder, his position more consistent. He had from the first resisted the levelling demands of the faction hostile to ʿOthmān. He was, therefore, now justified in pursuing these to justice, while, at the same time, in so doing, he asserted the supremacy of Ḳoreish. The influence of the "Companions" had always been paramount in Syria; while the Arab element there was itself largely recruited from the aristocratic tribes of the south;—the result being that the Bedawīn were by Muʿāwiya held thoroughly in check. The cry for vengeance, inflamed by the gory emblems still hanging from the pulpit, was taken up by high and low; while the temporising attitude of ʿAlī was in every man's mouth proof of complicity with the regicides. And though many may have dreaded ʿAlī's vengeance in the event of his success, the general feeling throughout Syria was a burning desire to avenge the murder of his ill-fated predecessor.

Still, whatever the motives at work elsewhere, the contest