Chapter XXVII

THE LATER YEARS OF OMAR’S REIGN--DOMESTIC EVENTS.

A.H. XVII.-XXIII. A.D. 638–644.

[Sidenote: Quiet in Syria, Arabia, and Egypt.]

While the arms of Islam were thus rapidly reducing province after province in the East to the sway of Omar from the Caspian to the Indian Ocean, the wave of conquest was for the time calmed down in Asia Minor. There had now for some time prevailed a period of comparative quiet. After the death of Heraclius there was no spirit left in the Byzantine empire to continue the struggle either by land or by sea. Desultory attempts were made, indeed, at intervals upon the coast; but they were followed by no lasting success.[394] Muâvia was busy meanwhile consolidating the administration of Syria; and, with a sagacious foresight, strengthening his hold upon the provinces against the contingencies of the future. Elsewhere peace prevailed. Shorahbîl ruled over the district of the Jordan. Amru maintained a firm government in Egypt; and, pushing a chronic warfare against the native tribes and the Roman settlements on the coast of Africa, gradually extended the boundaries of Islam towards the West. Arabia, still pouring forth its unquiet spirits to fight in the wars abroad, was tranquil at home under its various governors.

[Sidenote: Omar visits Mecca, and founds Grand Square around Kâaba.]

Besides the journeys into Syria already mentioned, Omar only quitted his residence at Medîna for the purpose of performing the annual pilgrimage.[395] The governors of the various provinces were wont to repair to Mecca to discharge at that season the same religious obligation; and the Caliph used to improve the opportunity for conferring with them, as they returned by way of Medîna, on such provincial business as needed his attention. The occasion, in fact, served the purposes of an annual report delivered orally of local government. Several years before his death, Omar spent three weeks within the sacred precincts of Mecca, and enlarged the space around the Kâaba. The dwellings approaching too closely the Holy House were pulled down, and the first step taken towards the formation of a grand square and piazza fitting the place of worship for all nations. Some of the owners refused to sell their patrimony; but the houses were demolished nevertheless, and the price in compensation left at their disposal in the treasury. The boundary pillars of the _Haram_, or Sacred Territory, were renewed. And convenient halting places were constructed at the pilgrim stations on the road to Medîna, for the custody of which, and the care of the adjoining springs of water, the local tribes were held responsible.

[Sidenote: Volcano near Medîna. A.H. XIX.]

The seventh year of Omar’s Caliphate was distinguished by the bursting forth of volcanic fires from a hill called Leila in the neighbourhood of Medîna. The Caliph gave command for a general distribution of alms amongst the poor. The people joined in the pious work, and the volcano stopped.[396]

[Sidenote: Disaster in Red Sea.]

In the same year a naval expedition was sent to Abyssinia, across the Red Sea, to check attacks upon the Moslems on the coast, or on the borders of Nubia. [Sidenote: A.H. XIX. A.D. 640.] The vessels were wrecked, and the expedition suffered great privations. [Sidenote: Omar dreads the sea.]The disaster led Omar to vow that he would never again permit his troops to embark on an element fraught with such danger. It was not till some years after his death that the Mussulmans gathered courage to brave the risks of naval encounter in the Mediterranean Sea.[397]

[Sidenote: Moghîra, Governor of Bussorah, arraigned on charge of adultery, A.H. XVII. A.D. 638,]

In the governors appointed to control the turbulent cities of Kûfa and Bussorah, Omar was not altogether fortunate. Otba, Governor of Bussorah, died shortly after rescuing the unfortunate expedition to Persepolis.[398] The choice of a successor in Moghîra ibn Shoba, was ill-advised. Of rude and repulsive aspect, he had committed murder in his youth at Tâyif, and Islam had not softened his nature or improved his morals. The heartless insult which he offered to an aged Christian princess of the house of Hîra, whom he demanded in marriage on the capture of that city, has been handed down in Arab song. His harem, stocked with fourscore wives and concubines, failed to satisfy his vagrant passion. His enemies at Bussorah watched his movements from an adjoining building; and through a party-window were witness to an intrigue with a Bedouin lady, who had visited his house. When he issued forth to lead the public prayer, they shouted him down as an adulterer; and Omar summoned him to his court to answer the accusation. [Sidenote: and acquitted.]By any reasonable law of evidence, the crime had been established beyond a doubt; but, under the strange ordinance promulgated by Mahomet on the misadventure of his favourite wife, there was a flaw in the testimony of Ziâd, the fourth witness. And the Caliph, with an ill-concealed groan at the miscarriage of justice, ordered the witnesses who had brought the charge to be scourged according to the law, and the accused released. ‘Strike hard,’ cried the barefaced culprit, addressing the unwilling minister of the law;--‘strike hard, and comfort my heart thereby!’ ‘Hold thy peace,’ said Omar, ‘it wanted little to convict thee; and then thou shouldest have been stoned to the death as an adulterer.’ The guilty chief was silenced, but not abashed. He continued to reside in Medîna, a crafty courtier at the Caliph’s gate.[399]

[Sidenote: Abu Mûsa, Governor of Bussorah,]

As successor to Moghîra, Omar appointed Abu Mûsa al Ashári, Governor of Bussorah--a man of a very different stamp. Of small stature, smooth in face, and little presence, he had yet distinguished himself on the field of Honein; and had been the envoy of Mahomet to Hadhramaut.[400] He wanted strength and firmness (as we shall see hereafter) for the stormy times that were coming; but he was wise and sufficiently able to hold the restless Bedouins of Bussorah in check. Belonging to the tribe of Ashár, it was perhaps an advantage, in the jealousies now growing up, that he was himself outside the clique of Mecca and Medîna citizens. But he still felt the need of Coreishite influence to support his government; and as he departed he said to Omar: [Sidenote: is accused of malversation, but aquitted. A.H. XXIII. A.D. 643.]‘Thou must strengthen my hands with a company of the Companions of the Prophet, for verily they are as salt in the midst of the people;’--so he took in his train nine-and-twenty men of mark along with him. But even Abu Mûsa was near losing his command. The story is curious, and illustrates Omar’s style of government. After a successful campaign against the Kurds in Ispahan, Abu Mûsa, as was usual, sent a deputation to Medîna to report the victory, and carry to the Caliph the royal Fifth. Dhabba, a discontented citizen, desired to be of the number, but was not allowed. He forthwith set out alone to Medîna, and there laid certain charges against Abu Mûsa, who was summoned by Omar to clear himself. After some days of confinement to his quarters, he was brought before the Caliph, face to face with his accuser. The first charge was that a band of youths, from amongst the captives taken in the recent expedition, had been used by him as personal attendants. ‘True,’ said Abu Mûsa; ‘these sons of Persian chieftains did me good service as guides; therefore I paid their ransom as prize of the column, and now, being free, they serve me.’ ‘He speaketh the truth,’ answered Dhabba, ‘but what I said was also true.’ The second accusation was that he held two landed properties. ‘I do,’ explained Abu Mûsa; ‘the one is for the subsistence of my family, the other for the sustenance of the people.’ Dhabba answered as before. The third was that the governor had in his household a girl who fared too sumptuously. Abu Mûsa was silent. Again, he was charged with making over the seals of office to Ziâd; which was admitted by Abu Mûsa, ‘because he found the youth to be wise and fit for office.’ The last charge was that he had given the largess of a thousand dirhems to a poet; and this Abu Mûsa admitted having done, with the view to preserve his authority from being weakened by scurrilous attacks. The Caliph received the explanation, and permitted Abu Mûsa to resume his government, but desired him to send Ziâd and the girl to Medîna. He was so pleased with the knowledge and readiness of Ziâd, who was already foreshadowing the greatness of his administrative talent, that he sent him back with the full approval of his employment in the affairs of the province; but the girl was detained in confinement at Medîna. With Dhabba the Caliph was very angry. Out of malice he had sought to ruin Abu Mûsa by one-sided allegations. ‘Truth perverted is no better,’ Omar said, ‘than is a lie; and a lie leadeth to hell fire.’[401]

[Sidenote: Sád deposed at Kûfa. A.H. XXI. A.D. 642.]

Kûfa remained for several years under the rule of Sád, its founder, the conqueror of Chaldæa and Medâin. At length, in the ninth year of Omar’s Caliphate, a faction sprang up against him. The Bedouin jealousy of the Coreish had already begun to work; and Sád was accused of unfairness in distributing the booty. There was also imputed to him the lack of martial spirit and backwardness to show himself in the field, a revival of the old charge made slanderously against him at Câdesîya.[402] He was summoned, with his accusers, to Medîna; but the main offence of which he was found guilty was one of little concern to them. Sád in his public ministrations had cut short the customary prayers; and Omar, deeming the offence unpardonable, deposed him.

[Sidenote: Changes in the government of Kûfa.]

To fill a vacancy requiring, beyond all others in the empire, skill, experience, and power, Omar unwisely appointed Ammâr, who, having been, as a persecuted slave at Mecca, one of Mahomet’s earliest converts, possessed a merit second to none in the Faith, but was a man of no ability, and, moreover, advanced in years.[403] The citizens of Kûfa were not long in finding out his incapacity; and, at their desire, Omar transferred Abu Mûsa from Bussorah to rule over them. But it was no easy work to curb the factious populace. They took offence at his slave for buying fodder as it crossed the bridge; and for so slight a cause the Caliph, after he had been governor for a year, sent him back again to Bussorah. Another nomination had already been determined on, when the artful Moghîra, finding Omar alone in the Great Mosque, wormed the secret out of him; and dwelling on the grave burden of a hundred thousand turbulent citizens, suggested that the new candidate was not fit to bear it. ‘But,’ said Omar, ‘the men of Kûfa have pressed me to send them neither a headstrong tyrant, nor a weak and impotent believer.’ ‘As for a weak believer,’ answered Moghîra, ‘his faith is for himself, his weakness falleth on thee; as for a strong tyrant, his tyranny injureth himself alone, and his strength is all for thee.’ Omar was caught in the snare, and, the scandals of Bussorah notwithstanding, was weak enough to confer on Moghîra the government of Kûfa. With all his defects, Moghîra was, without doubt, the strong man needed for that stiff-necked city; and he held his position there during the two remaining years of Omar’s reign.[404]

[Sidenote: Evil arising from change of governors.]

The vacillation of Omar, and his readiness, at the complaint of the citizens of Kûfa, once and again to shift their ruler, led that turbulent populace to know their power, and gave head to the factious temper already disquieting the city. It was a weak though kindly spirit which led the Caliph to nominate Ammâr to a post for which he had no aptitude whatever. Upon his recall, Omar asked whether his removal had caused him pain. ‘It did not much rejoice me,’ replied Ammâr, ‘when thou gavest me the command; but I confess that I was troubled when thou didst depose me.’ To which Omar responded amiably: ‘I knew when I appointed thee that thou wast not a man fitted to govern; but verily I was minded (and here he quoted from the Corân) _to be gracious unto the weak and humble ones in the land; and to make them patterns of religion, and heirs of the good things in this present life_.’[405] At the same time, he appointed another early convert of singular religious merit, Abdallah ibn Masûd, who had also been a slave at Mecca, to a post at Kûfa, for which, however, he was better fitted--the chancellorship of the treasury. He had been the body-servant of the Prophet, who was used to call him ‘light in the body, but weighty in the Faith.’ He was learned in the Corân, and had a ‘reading’ of his own, to which, as the best text, he held persistently against all recensions.[406]

[Sidenote: Additional endowment to Bussorah.]

There was still a considerable jealousy between Bussorah and its more richly endowed sister city. The armies of both had contributed towards the conquest of Khuzistan, and had shared accordingly. But Bussorah, with its teeming thousands, was comparatively poor; and Omar, to equalise the benefits of all who had served in the earlier campaigns, assigned to them increased allowances, to be met from the surplus revenues of the Sawâd administered by Kûfa.[407]

[Sidenote: Officers of State: judicial, military, fiscal, and spiritual.]

In the more important governments, the judicial office was discharged by a functionary who held his commission immediately from the Caliph.[408] The control of all departments remained with the governor, who, in virtue of his supreme office, led the daily prayers in public; and, especially on the Fridays, gave an address, or sermon, which had often an important political bearing. Military and fiscal functions, which vested at the first, like all other powers, in the governor’s hands, came eventually to be discharged by officers specially appointed to the duty. Ministers of religion were also commissioned by the State. From the extraordinary rapidity with which cities and provinces were converted, risk of error rose, in respect both of creed and ritual, to the vast multitudes of ‘new believers.’ To obviate this danger, Omar appointed teachers in every country, whose business it was to instruct the people--men and women separately--in the Corân and the requirements of the Faith. Early in his reign, he imposed it also, as an obligation to be enforced by the magistrate, that all, both great and small, should attend the public services, especially on every Friday; and that in the month of Ramadhan, the whole body of the Moslems should be constant in the assembling of themselves together in their Mosques.

[Sidenote: Omar establishes era of Hegira. A.H. XVII.]

To Omar is popularly ascribed, not only the establishment of the Dewân, and offices of systematic account, but also the regulation of the Arabian year. He introduced for this purpose the Mahometan Era, commencing with the new moon of the first month (Moharram) in the year of the Prophet’s flight from Mecca. Hence the Mahometan year was named the _Hegira_, or ‘Era of the Flight.’[409]

[Sidenote: Deterioration of social and domestic life.]

Of the state of Mahometan society at this period we have not the materials for judging closely. Constant employment in the field, no doubt, tended to arrest the action of the depraving influences which, in times of ease and luxury, began to relax the sanctions and taint the purity of Bedouin life. But there is ample indication that the relations between the sexes were already rapidly deteriorating. The baneful influence of polygamy, especially now that it was intensified by the husband’s power of arbitrary divorce and the unlimited licence of servile concubinage, was quickened by the vast multitudes of slave-girls taken by the army, and distributed or sold, both among the soldiers and the community at large. The wife of noble blood held, under the old chivalrous code of the Arabs, a position of honour and supremacy in the household, from which she could be ousted by no base-born rival, however fair or fruitful. She was now to be, in the estimation of her husband, but one amongst many, to whose level she was gradually being lowered. If his slave-girls bore him children, they became at once, as _Omm Walad_, free;[410] and in point of legitimacy and inheritance the offspring was equal to the children of the free and noble wife. Beauty and blandishment began to outshine birth and breeding, and the favourite of the hour too often displaced her noble mistress.

[Sidenote: Story of the Princess Leila.]

With the coarse sensualist, revelling like Moghîra in a harem well stocked with Greek and Persian captives, this might have been expected. But it was not the less the case in many a household of greater refinement and repute. Some lady, ravished, it may have been, from a noble home, and endowed with the charms and graces of a courtly life, would captivate her master, and for the moment rule supreme. The story of the Princess Leila will afford a sample. This beautiful daughter of Judi, the Ghassanide chief slain at Dûma, was bought by the victorious Khâlid from the common prize. The fame of her charms had already reached Medîna, and kindled a romantic flame in the breast of Abd al Rahmân, son of Abu Bekr. He was wild in his passion for her, and sang his grief in verses still preserved.[411] At last he became her happy master, and she was despatched from the camp to his home. At once he freed her, and took her to wife. His love for this lady was so great that, forsaking all other, he kept him only to her--so long as her beauty lasted. She was the queen of his household. But after a time she fell sick and began to waste away. The beauty went, and with it her master’s love; and so her turn, too, came to be forsaken. Then his comrades said to him: ‘Why thus keep her on, neglected and forsaken here? Suffer her to go back to her people and her home.’ So he suffered her. Leila’s fate was happy compared with that of others. Tired of his toy, the owner would sell her to become, if still young and beautiful, the plaything of another; or if, like Leila, disease or years had fretted her beauty, to eke out the weary, wistless, hopeless lot of a household slave.

[Sidenote: The use of wine.]

Relaxation of manners is significantly marked by the frequent notice of punishment for drunkenness. There are not wanting instances of even governors deposed for the offence. Omar was rigorous in imposing the legal penalty. He did not shrink from commanding that stripes should be inflicted, even upon his own son and his boon companions, for the use of wine. At Damascus, the scandal grew to such a height that Abu Obeida had to summon a band of the citizens, with the heroes Dhirâr and Abu Jandal at their head, for the offence. Hesitating in such a case to enforce the law, he acquainted Omar with the circumstances, and begged that the offenders, being penitent, might be forgiven. An angry answer came: ‘Gather an assembly,’ he wrote in the stern language of his early days;--‘gather an assembly, and bring them forth. Then ask, ‘_Is wine lawful, or is it forbidden?_ If they say _forbidden_, lay eighty stripes upon each one of them; if they say _lawful_, then behead them every one.’ They confessed that it was forbidden, and submitted themselves to the ignominious punishment.[412]

[Sidenote: Influence of female slavery in the family.]

The weakness for wine may have been a relic of ‘the days of Ignorance,’ when the poet sang ‘Bury me under the roots of the juicy vine.’ But there were influences altogether new at work in the vast accession to the households of believers everywhere of captive women from other lands. Greek, Persian, and Egyptian maidens abounded in every harem. The Jews and Christians amongst them might retain their ancestral faith, whether in freedom or bondage, whether as concubines or married to their masters; and with their ancestral faith retain much also of the habits of their fatherland; and the same may be said of the heathen bondmaids from Africa and the Parsee slave-girls from Persia, even if outwardly converted to the Moslem faith. The countless progeny of such alliances, though ostensibly bred in the creed and practice of Islam, must have inherited much of the nationality of the mothers by whom they were nursed and brought up. The crowded harem, with its Divine sanction of servile concubinage, was also an evil school for the rising generation. Wealth, luxury, and idleness were under such circumstances provocative of a licence and indulgence which too often degenerated into debauchery.

[Sidenote: Intemperance, dissipation, and depravity.]

For, apart from the field of war and the strife of faction, Moslem life was idle and inactive. There was nothing to relieve its sanctimonious voluptuousness. The hours not spent in the harem were divided between listless conversation in the city knots and clubs, and formal prayers in the Mosque five times a day. Ladies no longer appeared in public excepting as they flitted along shrouded beneath ‘the veil.’ The light and grace, the charm and delicacy, which their presence imparted to Arab society before Islam, was gone. The soft warm colouring of nature, so beautifully portrayed in ancient Arabian song, was chilled and overcast. Games of chance, and such like amusements, common to mankind, were forbidden by law as stigmatised in the Corân; even speculation was checked by the ban put upon interest for money lent. And so, Mussulman life, cut off, beyond the threshold of the harem, from the ameliorating influences of the gentler sex, began to assume that dreary, morose, and cheerless aspect which it has ever since retained.[413] But nature is not thus to be pent up and trifled with; the rebound must come; and with the rebound, humanity, in casting off its shackles, burst likewise through the barriers of the Faith. The gay youth of Islam, cloyed with the dull delights of the sequestered harem, were tempted when they went abroad to evade the restrictions of their creed, and to seek in the cup, in music, games, and dissipation the excitement which the young and the light-hearted will demand. In the greater cities, intemperance and libertinism were rife. The canker spread, oftentimes the worse because concealed. The more serious classes of believers were scandalised not only by amusements, luxuries, and voluptuous living, held to be inconsistent with their creed, but with immoralities of a kind which may not even be named. The development of this evil came later on, but the tares were already being sown even under the strict and puritanical Caliphate of Omar.[414]

[Sidenote: Simplicity of Omar’s domestic life.]

Such excesses were, however, for the present confined to foreign parts. At home, the first Caliphs, fortified by the hallowed associations of Medîna, and at a distance from the scenes of luxury and temptation, preserved the severe simplicity of ancient Arab life. This, it is true, was not inconsistent (as we see even in the case of Mahomet) with the uncontrolled indulgences of the harem. But as concerns the Caliphs themselves, Abu Bekr, Omar, and Othmân, their lives in this respect were, considering the licence of Islam, temperate and modest. Omar, we are told, had no passion for the sex. Before the Hegira, he contracted marriage with four wives, but two of these, preferring to remain at Mecca, were thus separated from him. At Medîna, he married five more, one of whom he divorced.[415] His last marriage was in the eighth year of his Caliphate, when over fifty, perhaps nearer sixty, years of age. Three years before, he had married a granddaughter of the Prophet, under circumstances which cast a curious light on his domestic ways. He conceived a liking for Omm Kolthûm, the young unmarried sister of Ayesha, through whom a betrothal was arranged. But Ayesha found that the light-hearted damsel had no desire to wed the aged Caliph. In this dilemma she had recourse to Amru, who undertook the task of breaking off the match. He broached the subject to Omar, who at first imagined that Amru wished the maiden for himself. ‘Nay,’ said Amru, ‘that I do not; but she hath been bred indulgently in the family of her father Abu Bekr, and I fear that she may ill brook thine austere manners, and the gravity of thy household.’ ‘But,’ replied Omar, ‘I have already engaged to marry her; and how can I break it off?’ ‘Leave that to me,’ said Amru; ‘thou hast indeed a duty to provide for Abu Bekr’s family, but the heart of this maiden is not with thee. Let her alone, and I will show thee a better than she, another Omm Kolthûm, even the daughter of Aly and Fâtima, the granddaughter of the Prophet.’ So Omar married this other maiden, and she bore him a son and daughter; but there was no eventual issue in this line.[416]

[Sidenote: Death of persons of distinction.]

Many of those whose names we have been familiar with in the life of Mahomet were now dropping off the scene. Fâtima, the daughter, and Safia, the aunt, of Mahomet, Zeinab his wife, and Mary his Coptic bond-maid, Yezid the son of Abu Sofiân, Abu Obeida, Khâlid, and Bilâl, and many others who bore a conspicuous part in the great _rôle_ of the Prophet’s life, had all passed away, and a new race was springing up in their place.

[Sidenote: Abu Sofiân, and Hind, his wife.]

Abu Sofiân himself survived till A.H. 32, and died aged eighty-eight years. One of his eyes he lost at the siege of Tâyif, and the other at the battle of the Yermûk, so that he had long been blind. He divorced Hind, the mother of Muâvia--she who ‘chewed the liver’ of Hamza at the battle of Ohod. As for her, we are told that, having received a loan from Omar, she supported herself by merchandise. What was the reason of the divorce does not appear.[417]