[355] See Life of Mahomet, p. 555; and The Corân: its Composition and Teaching, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.
[356] This is the received derivation of the era called the Year of Ashes. Others call it so because the land was pulverised, dark and dusty, without a blade of grass or of any green thing.
[357] The secretary of Wâckidy has several pages filled with traditions about Omar’s treatment of the famine, and self-denying solicitude for his people. He refused to ride a horse during the famine because it consumed corn. He chided his son for eating a cucumber, when men around were dying of hunger, and so forth. There may be much of exaggeration; but at the bottom of it all lies a fine trait in Omar’s character.
[358] Ayla, on the Gulf of Acaba, at the head of the Red Sea.
[359] Here again the Kâtib Wâckidy gives a great array of traditions regarding Omar’s prayers and the service for rain. Some of these which notice the part taken by Abbâs (but they are comparatively few in number) have been eagerly seized by the Abbasside annalists to glorify the patriarch, and through him the dynasty descended from him. The tale is cast in the supernatural type of the Prophet’s life. A man finding a sheep which he had slaughtered to be nothing but mere skin and bone without a drop of blood, in his distress invokes Mahomet, who thereupon appears to him in a vision, assures him that he shares the distress of his people, and bids him tell Omar ‘to call to mind that which he had forgotten.’ A general assembly is summoned in the Great Mosque, and after much heart-searching as to what the Prophet meant by these words, they betake themselves to prayer. Omar seizes the hand of Abbâs, and for the sake of the Prophet’s aged kinsman, beseeches the mercy of Heaven. Then Abbâs himself prays, and the people weep floods of tears. The heavens are suddenly overcast, and the rain descends. Thereupon Abbâs is saluted as ‘the Waterer of the two Holy Places,’ i.e. of Mecca and Medîna.
[360] We are told that Amru, to meet the famine, established a shipping service between Egypt and the ports of the Hejâz, that the trade in grain thus begun was permanently established, and that prices were thereafter little higher at Medîna than in Egypt. But Egypt was not conquered till two years later; and in the hostile state of the border preceding the conquest, it is impossible that a peaceful trade in corn could have sprung up. We must therefore conclude that tradition here anticipates that which occurred shortly after, when Omar reopened the communication from the Nile to Lake Timsa and Suez, and Egypt found a rich customer in the markets of Medîna and the Hejâz.
[361] The council was held at Sargh, near Tebûk, on the confines of Syria. During the discussion Abd al Rahmân quoted a saying of Mahomet:—‘If pestilence break out in a land, go not thither; if thou art there, flee not from it.’ Omar’s views were more reasonable, and he justified them by this illustration: ‘Suppose that ye alight in a valley, whereof one side is green with pasture, and the other bare and barren, whichever side ye let loose your camels upon, it would be by the decree of God; but ye would choose the brow that was green.’ And so he judged that in removing the people from the scene of danger into a healthier locality, he was making no attempt to flee from the decree of God.
[362] He purposed to make a circuit of all the provinces subject to his sway. Aly, we are told, even recommended a second hijra, or transfer of the Caliph’s court to Kûfa (evidently a proleptic tradition anticipatory of the move eventually made by Aly himself to that capital). What induced Omar to give up the project of visiting Irâc is not very clear. The ordinary story is that Káb the Rabbin (a Jew from Himyar, converted about this time, who will be noticed more hereafter) dissuaded him from it: ‘Of evil,’ he said, ‘the East hath nine parts, and of good but one; while the dwellings of Satan and every kind of plague are there. On the contrary, the West hath nine parts good, and but one of evil.’ Thereupon, the tradition proceeds, Omar abandoned the idea of visiting Irâc.
[363] Before, having the double meaning of ‘he is before you,’ that is, in your presence; or (as they took it) ‘in advance of you,’ and farther on the road.
[364] Shorahbîl, who had the command of the province of the Jordan (Ordonna), was put aside as weak and unfitted for the office; or rather his government was apparently placed under that of Amru, who was in command of all the Holy Land. The appointment of Muâvia as the brother of Yezîd, the late governor of Damascus, was in every way natural and expected.