After the terrible slaughter of the Romans at Wacûsa, we left the Syrian forces reposing on the banks of the Yermûk. There, for some time, they were engaged in burying the dead, tending the wounded, and dividing the spoil.
Syria east of the Jordan.
The country around them, ‘the land beyond Jordan on the east,’ differed from any they had previously known. To the south was the undulating pasture-ground of the Belcâa, and again to the north of the Yermûk the pasture-lands of Jaulân.[226] Between these two pastoral tracts lay the hills and dales of Gilead, with their fields of wheat and barley, dotted every here and there with clumps of the shady oak, olive, and sycamore, and thickets of arbutus, myrtle, and oleander. It was emphatically ‘a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills.’ The landscape, diversified with green slopes and glens, is in season gay with carpeting of flowers and melody of birds. From heights not far north of the Yermûk, beyond the green expanse around, might be descried the blue waters of the Sea of Galilee sparkling in the west, and still farther the snow-capped peaks of the Lebanon and Hermon—a strange contrast to the endless sands and stony plains of the peninsula.[227] Not less marked was the contrast with the land of Chaldæa. There the marshy delta of the Euphrates displays an almost tropical luxuriance; while above it the plains of Mesopotamia, with its network of canals, were covered by vast mounds, the site of cities teeming with life in the early cycles of the world, and strewn with fragments of pottery and bricks stamped with strange devices—mysterious records of bygone kingdoms. Here, on the contrary, the pride of the Byzantine empire was yet alive. From the Jordan to the desert were colonial cities founded by the Romans, boasting their churches, theatres, and forum. Even the naval contests of the naumachia might be witnessed in the land of Gilead. The country was populous and flourishing, inhabited by a mongrel race half Arab and half Syrian, who aspired to the privileges and aped the luxurious habits, without the chivalry and manliness, of the Roman citizen. It was altogether a civilisation of forced and exotic growth. No sooner was the western prop removed than the people returned to their Bedouin life, true sons of the desert; the chariot and waggon were banished for the camel; and nothing left of Roman rule but columns and peristyles, causeways and aqueducts—great masses of ruined masonry which still startle the traveller as if belonging to another world. But, at the time we write of, the age of so-called civilisation was still dominant there.
Highway between Syria and Arabia.
Such was the beautiful country, strange to the peninsular Arab, both in its natural features and in its busy urban life, which was now traversed by the Moslem armies, and soon became the beaten highway between Syria and Arabia.
Abu Obeida succeeds Khâlid. A.H. XIII. Sept. A.D. 634.
After achieving the victory of Wacûsa, Khâlid delivered over to Abu Obeida the despatch from the new Caliph, which (as we have related) was put into his hands at the commencement of the action, and with it surrendered the commission which he held from Abu Bekr.[228] The other leaders were all confirmed in their commands by Omar.
Khâlid loyally supports Abu Obeida.
The affront put upon him by Omar did not damp the zeal or devotion of Khâlid. He placed himself forthwith at the command of Abu Obeida, who published with reluctance the order for his deposition.[229] Abu Obeida knew full well the rare military genius of Khâlid; and, himself of a mild and unwarlike turn, was wise and magnanimous enough to ask, and as a rule implicitly to follow, his advice. Khâlid, nobly putting aside his grievance, devoted his best energies to the cause; and, his supersession notwithstanding, remained thus virtually the chief captain of Islam in Syria.
The course of Moslem victory in Syria advanced with little let or check. In Persia the struggle was not to save a limb, but life itself. Byzantine struggle in Syria faint-hearted.Here it was otherwise. Syria, indeed, contained the holy places and all that was dearest to the Byzantine people as the cradle of their faith. But, after all, it was, though fair and sacred, but an outlying province, of which a cowardly, supine, and selfish court could without vital injury afford the loss. There were, accordingly, no such mortal throes in Syria as on the plains of Chaldæa.