Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/286

656–7] as between ʿAlī and Muʿāwiya, was now virtually for the crown; and many looked to "the grey mule of Syria" as having the better chance. A possible solution lay, no doubt, in the erection of Syria into an independent kingdom side by side with that of Al-ʿIrāḳ and Persia. But the disintegration of the Caliphate was an idea which had as yet hardly entered into the minds of the Faithful. The unity of Islām, established by the precedent of the quarter of a century, was still, and long continued to be, the ruling sentiment of the nation.