Chapter XXXVIII

ALY TRANSFERS HIS SEAT OF GOVERNMENT TO KUFA.
AFFAIRS IN EGYPT.

A.H. XXXVI. A.D. 656, 657.

[Sidenote: Medîna abandoned as seat of Caliphate.]

When Aly rode forth from Medîna in pursuit of the insurgent army, a Companion seized his bridle;--‘Stay!’ he cried with earnest voice;--‘if thou goest forth from this city, the government will depart therefrom, never more to return.’ He was pushed aside as a crackbrained meddler. But his words were long remembered, and the prophecy was true. Medîna, hitherto queen of the Moslem world, was to be the seat of empire no more.

[Sidenote: Aly’s entry into Kûfa. Rajab, A.H. XXXVI. Jan. A.D. 657.]

About the middle of the thirty-sixth year of the Hegira, seven months after the death of Othmân, Aly entered Kûfa. The first four months of his Caliphate had been spent, as we have seen, at Medîna; the other three in the camp at Rabadza, in the campaign ending with the battle of the Camel, and a short stay at Bussorah. No Caliph had as yet visited Kûfa. It was now to be the seat of Aly’s government. We find no mention of the manner of his entry and reception; simply the fact of his arrival. No doubt the people were flattered by the honour now put upon them. The city also had some advantages; for there were in it many leading men, able, and some of them willing, to support the Caliph by their influence. [Sidenote: Factious spirit there.]Moreover, Aly might calculate on the jealousy of the inhabitants towards Syria, in the approaching struggle with Muâvia. But all this was more than counterbalanced by the fickle and factious humour of the populace. It was the focus of Bedouin democracy; and the spirit of the Bedouins was yet untamed. What had they gained, the citizens asked one of another, by the rebellion against Othmân? The cry of vengeance on the regicides was for the moment stifled; but things were fast drifting back again into the old Coreishite groove. This was, in fact, the same cry as the Arab tribes were making all around. ‘Aly hath set up his cousins, the sons of Abbâs, everywhere--in Medîna, in Mecca, and in Yemen; and now here again at Bussorah; while he himself will rule at Kûfa. Of what avail that we made away with Othmân; and that we have shed all this blood, fighting with Zobeir and Talha?’ So spoke the arch-conspirator Ashtar among his friends at Bussorah; and Aly, fearful of the effect of such teaching, took him in his train to Kûfa, where, indeed, among the excitable populace his influence was even more dangerous. Another uneasy symptom of the times was that the baser sort and the servile dregs of Bussorah, breaking loose from authority, went forth in a body, and took possession of Sejestan on the Persian frontier. They killed the leader sent by Aly to suppress the insurrection, and were not put down till Ibn Abbâs himself attacked them with a force from Bussorah.

[Sidenote: Struggle in prospect with Syria.]

It was in the West, however, that the sky loured the most. That was but a shorn and truncated Caliphate which Aly enjoyed, so long as his authority was scorned in Syria. A mortal combat with Muâvia loomed in that direction. But, before resuming the thread of the Syrian story, it is necessary first to turn to Egypt and relate what was being enacted there.

[Sidenote: Mohammed ibn Abu Hodzeifa usurps Egypt. Shawwâl, A.H. XXXV. April, A.D. 656.]

When the band of conspirators set out from Egypt to attack Othmân, we have seen that Mohammed son of Abu Hodzeifa thereupon ousted Abu Sarh, Othmân’s lieutenant, and usurped the government. This man’s father had been killed at Yemâma, and Othmân, adopting the orphan, had brought him up kindly. Mortified at the refusal of the Caliph to give him a command until he should have proved his capacity in the field, Mohammed joined the insurgent faction, and gained great influence in Egypt by an affected piety and by the vehement denunciation of his former guardian. On the murder of Othmân he succeeded in holding the government of Egypt for several months. [Sidenote: Flies to Syria and is killed.]But he quickly paid the penalty of his ingratitude. On the approach of the new governor, sent by Aly, he fled to Syria, and there lost his life.[522]

[Sidenote: Cays appointed governor of Egypt. Safar, A.H. XXXVI. August, A.D. 656.]

The follower whom Aly selected for the heavy task of governing Egypt was Cays, a citizen of Medîna, son of that Sád ibn Obâda who, it may be remembered, was the rival of Abu Bekr for the Caliphate. Of approved sagacity, strength, and judgment, he was a loyal follower of Aly. He declined to take an army with him, saying that the Caliph had more need of soldiers than he; and preferred instead to be supported by seven ‘Companions’ of the Prophet, whom he took along with him. He was well received by the Egyptians at large, who swore allegiance to him in behalf of Aly. But a strong faction, as before observed, found shelter in the district of Kharanba, and loudly demanded satisfaction for the death of Othmân. Cays wisely left these alone for the present, waiving even the demand for tithe. In other respects he held Egypt firmly in his grasp.

[Sidenote: Is supplanted by Muâvia’s machinations.]

With the prospect of an early attack from the banks of the Euphrates, Muâvia became uneasy at the Egyptian border being commanded by so firm and powerful a ruler as Cays; whom, therefore, he made every effort to detach from his allegiance to Aly. Upbraiding him with having joined a party whose hands were still red with the blood of Othmân, he reminded Cays that there was yet time to repent, and promised that, if even now he joined in avenging the crime, he should not only be confirmed in the government of Egypt, but his kinsmen would be promoted to such office in the Hejâz, or elsewhere, as he might desire. Cays, unwilling to precipitate hostilities, fenced his answer with well-balanced words. Of Aly’s complicity in the foul deed he had no knowledge; he would wait. Meanwhile it was not in his mind to make any attack on Syria. Again pressed by Muâvia, Cays frankly declared that he was, and would remain, a staunch supporter of the Caliph’s cause. Thereupon Muâvia sought craftily to stir up jealousy between the Viceroy and his Master. He gave out that Cays was temporising, and spoke of his treatment of the Kharanba malcontents as proving that he was one at heart with them.[523] The report, assiduously spread, reached (as it was intended) the court of Aly, where it was taken up by those who either doubted the fidelity of Cays or envied his prosperity. To test his obedience, Aly ordered an advance against the schismatics of Kharanba; and when Cays remonstrated against the policy, it was taken as proof of his complicity. [Sidenote: Mohammed son of Abu Bekr appointed to Egypt.] He was deposed, and Mohammed the regicide, son of Abu Bekr, appointed in his room. Cays retired in anger to Medîna, where, as on neutral ground, adherents of either side were unmolested. Finding no peace there from the taunts of Merwân and his party, Cays resolved at last to go to Kûfa, and cast himself on Aly’s clemency; and Aly, on the calumnies being cleared away, took him back at once into his confidence, and thenceforward kept him at court as his chief adviser. Muâvia was grieved that Merwân had driven Cays away from Medîna: ‘If thou hadst aided Aly,’ he wrote upbraidingly, ‘with a hundred thousand men, it had been a lesser evil than is the gain to Aly of such a counsellor.’[524]

[Sidenote: Muâvia is joined by Amru.]

On his own side, however, Muâvia had gained a powerful and astute adviser in the person of the conqueror of Egypt. During the attack on Othmân, Amru had retired from Medîna with his two sons to Palestine. The tidings of the tragedy, aggravated by his own unkindly treatment of the Caliph, affected him so keenly that he wept like a woman. ‘It is I,’ he said, ‘who, by deserting the aged man, am responsible for his death.’ From his place of retirement he watched the struggle of Zobeir and Talha at Bussorah; and when Aly conquered, he repaired at once to Damascus, and with his two sons presented himself before Muâvia. In consequence of the unfriendly attitude he had held towards Othmân, Amru was at first received coldly. But in the end, the past was all condoned; friendship was restored between the two chiefs, and thenceforward Amru was the trusted counsellor of Muâvia.[525]

[Sidenote: Weakness of Aly’s position at Kûfa.]

This coalition, and the false step of Aly in recalling Cays from Egypt, now materially strengthened Muâvia’s hands. The success of Aly at Bussorah brought at least this advantage even to Muâvia, that it removed Talha and Zobeir, the only other competitors, from the field. On the other hand, the position of Aly, as one of concession to the Arab faction, was fraught with peril. While refusing ostensibly to identify himself with the murderers of Othmân, it was virtually in their cause that he had taken up arms; and therefore equally in the cause of the Arabs, as against the Coreish and aristocracy of Islam. And Aly should have foreseen that the socialistic element in this unnatural compromise must sooner or later come into collision with the Caliphate.

[Sidenote: Advantages of Muâvia’s position in Syria.]

The authority of Muâvia rested on a firmer basis; his attitude was bolder, and his position more consistent. He had from the first resisted the levelling demands of the faction which rose up against Othmân. He was, therefore, justified now in a course of action which, pursuing these to justice, asserted in the pursuit the supremacy of the Coreish. The influence of the ‘Companions’ had always been paramount in Syria; and the Arab element (partly because very largely recruited from the aristocratic tribes of the south) was thoroughly under control. The cry for vengeance, inflamed by the gory emblems still hanging from the cathedral pulpit, was taken up by high and low. The temporising attitude of the Caliph was in every man’s mouth as a proof of complicity with the regicides. And though many may have dreaded Aly’s vengeance in the event of his ultimate success, the general feeling throughout Syria was a burning desire to avenge the murder of his ill-fated predecessor.

[Sidenote: Aly and Muâvia in personal antagonism.]

Still, whatever other motives may have been at work elsewhere, the contest, as between Aly and Muâvia, had now become a purely personal one. The struggle was for the crown; and many looked to ‘the grey mule of Syria’ as having the better chance. A possible solution of the contest lay, no doubt, in the erection of Syria into an independent kingdom side by side with that of Persia and Egypt. [Sidenote: Unity of Caliphate still the ruling sentiment.]But the disintegration of the empire of Islam was an idea which as yet had hardly entered into the minds of the Faithful. The unity of the Caliphate, as established by the history and the precedents of a quarter of a century, was still, and long continued, the ruling sentiment of Islam.