The loss of the Mussulmans was comparatively small. The booty was immense, and served to sharpen the Arab appetite for further victory.
Khâlid’s contingent sent back to Irâc.
No enemy now was left in sight. Omar, therefore, remembering the last behest of Abu Bekr, that when the Lord gave victory in Syria the contingent of Khâlid should be sent to Irâc, gave orders accordingly. Its ranks, thinned by the fighting they had undergone, were before the march made up to their former strength by transfer of volunteers from the Syrian army. Thus recruited, the contingent (under command, not now of Khâlid, but of Hâshim, son of Otba) recrossed the desert just in time to take part in the great battle of Câdesîya. Abu Obeida, with Khâlid and other chiefs of note, returned to Damascus. Shorahbîl and Amru were left to reduce to order the province of the Jordan. Province of Jordan reduced.The task was easy. The fire of patriotism had never burned brightly anywhere in Syria; and what there might have been was now extinguished by the listless cowardice of the Byzantine Court. To the Bedouin class, weary of Roman trammels, the prospect of an Arabian rule was far from unwelcome. Neither were the Jews and Samaritans unfavourable to the invaders; indeed, we find them not infrequently giving aid and information to the enemy. Even the Christians cared little for the maintenance of a government which by courtly and ecclesiastical intolerance had done its best to alienate their affection.
Progress east of the Jordan,
Beisân for some time held out; but the garrison, when their sallies had been repeatedly repulsed with slaughter, at last capitulated. Tiberias followed its example, and both obtained the terms of Damascus. Adzraât,[246] Ammân, Jerash, Maâb, and Bostra, all tendered their submission. And so the whole tract from the Jordan eastward to the Haurân and the desert, was brought under control, and garrisons were distributed throughout the leading towns.
and in Central Syria.
Yezîd extended similarly his authority from Damascus towards the desert as far as Tadmor. Westward he deputed his brother Muâvia, who, meeting little opposition, reduced Sidon and Beyrût, and pushed his conquests as far north as Arca.[247] Damascus itself, largely occupied by Arabs, quickly assumed the garb of a Moslem city. The Byzantine power and influence lingered longer on the coast; and once and again, from seaward, they retook what the Arabs had gained. It was not, indeed, until the Mussulmans began to cope with the naval forces of the Mediterranean, that their authority was riveted along the littoral, as it had long been in the interior.
Bareness of Syrian tradition.
The conquests of Syria have reached us, as I have before said, in a form vague and most perfunctory. With the court of Damascus, its early local traditions almost entirely disappeared; while those of the East preserved by the learned coteries of Kûfa, Bussora, and Baghdad, alone have reached us with any fulness and accuracy. In this we may see a reason for the comparative bareness of tradition in respect of the early history of Damascus and the rest of Syria under Moslem rule.
Leaving for the present Abu Obeida and Khâlid to make their advance on Hims, we must return again to stirring scenes on the plains of Chaldæa.