Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/334



a long and prosperous reign, Muʿāwiya died about seventy-five years of age. As he felt the end approach, he brought forth a casket, carefully kept, with parings of the Prophet's nails. Of these, ground fine, he bade them sprinkle the powder in his eyes and mouth when dead, and bury him, for a winding-sheet, in a garment given to him by Moḥammad. Fortune had favoured his protracted rule. Since the abdication of Al-Ḥasan, there had been peace throughout the Empire. Wise, courageous, and forbearing, he held the dangerous elements around him in check; consolidated and extended the already vast area of Islām; and nursed commerce and the arts of peace, so that they greatly flourished in his time. The secret of his success probably lay in the fact that he always took the offensive. All through his Caliphate he waged unremitting war against the Emperor. Domestic affairs he left to his stadtholders. But he looked to the future with anxiety.

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