Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/369

 340 partner." "God is the One, and the Eternal God: He did not beget, nor was He begotten." "Moḥammad is the Apostle of God, sent with guidance and the religion of truth, to make it prevail over all other religions." The amity of the two Courts thus rudely broken, war was prosecuted vigorously. Its fortune varied. In 79, Antioch was seized by the Greeks for a time; and under Justinian severe reverses were inflicted on the Muslims. On the other hand, the latter took many strongholds in Asia Minor, and penetrated as far as Erzerum. The people on the borderlands of Syria and Armenia suffered greatly in this chronic warfare; and in 84 , so many churches were set on fire that the year was called "The Year of Burning."

A second important innovation was that the Government business and accounts were carried on in Arabic instead of in Greek, as they had been in Syria, or in Persian, as they had been in Al-ʿIrāḳ. The change was made at the suggestion of a Persian Maulà of Sijistān, Ṣāliḥ ibn ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān.

With even greater energy, but more chequered fortune, the Muslim forces were engaged in Africa. ʿOḳba pushed his armies from Ḳairawān to the verge of the Atlantic. At Tangier he heard from Count Julian a tempting account of the prize that lay across the strait; but the attempt on the Spanish coast was not to be just yet. The Berbers were