Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/391

 360 demands upon him, that he was reduced to poverty, and when released, forced to beg from his friends the means of living. To add to his misfortune, his son ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, whom he had left to succeed him in Spain, was assassinated, as is supposed, but without sufficient grounds, by secret orders from Damascus; and the heartless Suleimān sent his head to the father with an insulting message:—"a grievous error on the Caliph’s part," justly adds the Arabian annalist. Ṭāriḳ also must have retired into private life, for we hear no more of him. It is sometimes said that Al-Welīd leaned towards Ḳeis and Suleimān towards the Yemenis; but their treatment of Mūsa and his son, who were Yemenis, shows that their partisanship was not very deep. The fall of both resembles that of Khālid—an ungrateful end for the three great conquerors of their age.

The era of Al-Welīd was glorious both at home and abroad. There is no other reign, not excepting even that of