Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/414



now entered peaceably on a long reign. His mother was of Makhzūm, once the principal gens of Ḳoreish, and he showed favour to her brothers. Exemplary as a true believer, he banished, like ʿOmar II., from his Court all things inconsistent with the profession of Islām, and his mild and generally upright administration might have restored prosperity to the Empire, had not the evil genius of his predecessors still cast its blight upon the throne. There was much besides to cause depression. His lieutenants were not always happily chosen, and they so played upon his two defects of character, avarice and suspicion, as sometimes to betray him into unguarded and cruel action, as well as cause him to miss the friendship and popularity which a well-timed liberality would have secured. Military enterprise was nowhere successful in his reign, and indeed repeatedly suffered severe disaster. From the first Hishām threw himself into the arms of the Yemeni party, and thus alienated from his rule the Northern faction.

From early times, anterior even to the birth of Moḥammad, there existed a rivalry between the two chief stocks of Ḳoreish, the descendants namely of Hāshim and of Umeiya. The Prophet, sprung from the former, suffered bitter opposition, both in field and forum, from the Umeiyads, till the conquest of Mecca converted the whole body of Ḳoreish, and welded friend and foe equally within the bonds of Islām.