Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/327

 298 Suspicion rests on the name of Muʿāwiya of compassing the death of ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān, son of the great Khālid. The splendour of his father's memory, and his own success in the campaign against the Greeks, invested him with such distinction throughout Syria, as to arouse the fears and jealousy of Muʿāwiya, who employed (it is said) his Christian physician to poison him. The deed embittered the Makhzūm, to which tribe, formerly the most important in Mecca, Khālid belonged; for they were already alienated from the Umeiyads who had supplanted them, and were supporters of Az-Zubeir. It is rare to find an imputation of the kind against Muʿāwiya, who though backward in checking the cruelty of his lieutenants, was himself on the whole mild and just in his administration. De Goeje, however, rejects the whole story.

In the 50th year of the Hijra, Muʿāwiya entertained the project of removing the pulpit and staff of the Prophet from Medīna to Damascus, now the capital of Islām. But the impious project was, by divine interposition, checked. For, "on its being touched, the pulpit trembled fearfully, and the sun was darkened, so that the very stars shone forth, and the men were terrified at the prodigies." The fond tradition is significant of the superstitious regard in which everything connected with the Prophet's person was now held. Muʿāwiya was dissuaded from his design by the consideration urged upon him, that where the Prophet had placed his pulpit and his staff, there they should remain. And so they were left as relics in the Great Mosque hard by the last home of Moḥammad.

Syria was, of course, the capital province of the Umeiyad Empire, as with Egypt, it was first in culture and social and political standing. The Arabs of the northern part were mostly Ḳeisites, of the southern, Kelbites. Muʿāwiya was more nearly related to the former, but he made the son of his Kelbite wife his heir; and so held with both. Through the constant wars with the Greeks, the Syrians were also superior in military affairs. These conquerors and conquered lived on friendly terms, sharing the same cities and towns and even churches; whereas, in Al-ʿIrāḳ, Al-Kūfa and Al-Baṣra were two military colonies in the midst of a hostile