Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/74

633] religious strife and military disaster, had impaired their vigour and undermined their strength. Barbarous hordes overrunning the Western Empire, had wrested the farther provinces from Byzantine rule. Between the Kaiser and the Chosroes again, war had long prevailed, Syria and Mesopotamia, scenes of the coming warfare, being the prize, now of one, now of the other. By the last turn of fortune, Heraclius, marching from the Black Sea, had routed the Persians on the field of Nineveh, and advanced triumphantly to the very gates of the enemy's capital. Siroes, after putting to death his father and eighteen brothers, enjoyed but a few months the fruits of his parricidal crime; and (as we are told by Gibbon) "in the space of four years, the royal title was assumed by nine candidates, who disputed, with the sword or dagger, the fragments of an exhausted monarchy." Such was the condition of Persia, its Court imbecile and anarchy rampant, at the time when Abu Bekr was engaged in his struggle with the apostate tribes. Nevertheless, the Arabian armies met with a fiercer and more protracted opposition on the Persian than on the Syrian side. And the reason is that Islam aimed its blow at the very heart of Persia. Constantinople might remain, with Syria gone, ignobly safe. But if the Arabs gained Al-ʿIrāḳ, Ctesiphon (Al-Medāin) close at hand, must fall, and Persia with it. To this quarter attention will be now directed.

Among the chiefs who helped to reclaim Al-Baḥrein, Al-Muthanna has been already named. Advancing along the Persian Gulf, he reduced Al-Ḳaṭīf, and carried his victorious arms into the delta of the Euphrates. "Who is this Al-Muthanna?" asked Abu Bekr, as tidings of success kept reaching Medīna, "and to what clan does he belong?" Learning that he was of the great Bekr tribe which peopled that vicinity, he commanded him to "march forward fighting in the ways of the Lord." The service was such as Bedawīn love; and his column was soon swelled to 8000 men. But opposition gathered in front. The Christian and heathen tribes were roused; and Abu Bekr, anticipating the impending struggle, resolved that "the Sword of the Lord" should be again unsheathed, and so Khālid was deputed to subdue Chaldæa.