Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/72

 632] barren of incident. As Judge in civil causes, the Caliph nominated ʿOmar; but warlike operations, first in the Peninsula and then in foreign lands, so occupied men's minds, that for the time the office was a sinecure.

The Presidency at the Mecca Pilgrimage is carefully recorded yearly by the annalists of Islām. The Caliph was now too much engrossed with the commotion throughout Arabia to proceed thither himself, and so the Governor of the Holy City presided in his stead.

Thus ended the first year of the Caliphate.