Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/71

 44 no leader who had joined the great Apostasy was ever promoted to a chief command. He might fight, and welcome, in the ranks; was allowed even to head small parties of fifty or a hundred; but to the last, high post of honour was denied.

The Arabs, thus emerging from their desert-home, became the aristocracy of Islām. Conquered nations, even of much higher civilisation, when they embraced the Faith fell into an altogether lower caste. Arabians were the dominant class, and they alone wheresoever they might go. It was only as "Clients," or dependants, that the people of other lands might share their privileges,—crumbs, as it were, from off the master's table. Yet great numbers of the Arabs themselves were at this early period slaves, captured during the Apostasy or in previous intertribal war, and held in bondage by their fellow-countrymen. ʿOmar saw the inconsistency. It was not fit that any of the noble race should remain in slavery. Therefore, when succeeding to the Caliphate, he decreed their freedom. "The Lord," he said, "hath given to us of Arab blood the victory and great conquests from without. It is not meet that any one of us, taken captive in the days of Ignorance or in the recent wars, should be holden in captivity." Slaves of Arab descent were therefore all allowed their liberty on payment of a slender ransom, excepting only bondmaids who, having borne children to their owners, already held, as such, a place of privilege. Men that had lost their wives or children, now set out in search, if haply they might find and reclaim them. Strange tales are told of these disconsolate journeys. But some of the women captive at Medīna preferred remaining with their masters.

This ascendency, social, military, and political, the Arab nation maintained for upwards of two centuries. Then they were gradually supplanted (as we shall see) throughout the East by Turks and Persians. Such as had settled in cities mingled with the people; the rest returned to their desert wilds, and with them departed the glory of the Caliphate. This, however, was not the case in the West; and so in Spain and Africa the prestige of Arab blood survived,

The domestic history of Medīna is at this early period