The second cause, though less threatening to Islam, was more insidious, and fraught with greater danger to the Caliphate and the person of Othmân himself. Had the Coreish rallied loyally around the throne, the Arab factions might have been nipped in the bud. But the weakness of Othmân, and the partiality with which he favoured his own friends and relatives, stirred the jealousy of the house of Hâshim, which began vaunting the claims of Aly and the Prophet’s family, and depreciating the Omeyyad branch to which the Caliph belonged. That branch, unfortunately for the Omeyyads, had been the tardiest to recognise the mission of Mahomet; and the kinsmen on whom Othmân now lavished his favours had been the most inveterate in their opposition to it. Every unfavourable expression uttered by the Prophet during that period of bitter enmity was now raked up against them, and used to blacken their names, and to cast discredit on a government which promoted them to power and honour. Thus the Coreish were divided; rivalry paralysed their influence, and Othmân lost the support which would otherwise have enabled him to check the machinations of the Arab malcontents. Still worse, Aly and his party lent themselves to the disloyal policy of the Bedouin faction, which was fast sapping the foundations of the Caliphate, and which, as Aly should have foreseen, would in the end recoil against himself.[440]
Factious spirit diverted by military service.
It was not, however, till the later part of Othmân’s reign that these influences, though early at work, assumed dangerous prominence. Their retardation was in great measure due to the military operations, which, busily pursued in all directions by the Moslem arms, diverted attention from domestic trouble. Campaigns were annually prosecuted, with more or less vigour, throughout the twelve years of Othmân’s Caliphate. A very brief outline of them will suffice.
Operations in Persia.
In Persia, as we have seen, the Mussulman invasion had resulted hitherto rather in the dispersion of great armies than in the effectual reduction of the country. Most of the provinces resented the first imposition of tribute, and rose against their new masters, one after another, in repeated and sometimes long-continued rebellion. Expeditions were time after time equipped from Kûfa and Bussorah to crush these risings, from the Caspian Sea and the Oxus to the shores of the Indian Ocean, and even as far as Kabul.[441] It was not till near the close of Othmân’s reign that the Moslem yoke was firmly settled on the neck of Persia. A.H. XXXI. A.D. 652.In the eighth year of his Caliphate, Yezdegird died; and thereafter, though in a desultory and sporadic fashion opposition might still survive, anything like national or dynastic antagonism was at an end. Success, indeed, did not invariably attend the Moslem arms. The progress, on the whole, was steadily forward; but there were reverses, and these sometimes of a serious type. In the year A.H. 32, the Turks on the western shore of the Caspian had an advantage, in which the Arab leaders and a great body of the veterans were slain. To retrieve the disaster, Othmân ordered levies from Syria to cross Mesopotamia and reinforce the Kûfan army. Bad blood bred between the two; the Syrians refused to serve under the captain of the rival body; and an altercation ensued which nearly led to bloodshed. This, adds the historian, was the first symptom of the breach between the Kûfans and the men of Syria, which subsequently broke out into prolonged hostilities. About the same time, a whole army was lost in deep snow upon the heights of Kermân, only two men escaping to tell the tale. There were also very serious reverses in Turkestan. But Arabia continued to cast forth its swarms of fighting tribes in such vast numbers, and the wild fanaticism of the faith still rolled so rapidly onward, that these and similar disasters soon disappeared in the swelling tide of conquest.
Syria, Asia Minor, and Armenia. A.H. XXV. A.D. 646.
Excepting raids of little import, Syria had for some time past enjoyed rest,[442] when suddenly in the second year of this Caliphate, Muâvia was startled by the approach of an army from Asia Minor, which he had not the means to oppose. Othmân ordered troops to pass over from the eastern provinces, and eight thousand volunteers soon joined the Syrian army. Thus reinforced, the Arabs repulsed the Byzantine attack. Following up their success, they overran Asia Minor, and, piercing the heart of Armenia, joined their comrades on the Persian border within sight of the Caspian. Thence they penetrated as far north as Tiflis, and even to the shores of the Black Sea. Thereafter hostilities were renewed for a long period every summer; and eventually, aided by naval expeditions from the ports of Africa, the Syrian generals pushed forward their conquests in the Levant and Asia Minor, enlarged their coasts, and strengthened their border.
Africa. A.H. XXV. A.D. 646.
In Africa, I have already noticed the desperate attack made early in the reign of Othmân on Alexandria from seaward. The Byzantine forces, for a little while, regained possession of the city, but (as we have before related) were finally driven out by Amru; and against the Moslem power in Egypt no further attack was made. The Imperial arms, however, were still active in Africa; and along the northern shores of the Mediterranean, strong Arab columns were long actively engaged. Among the chiefs who had joined the Egyptian army was Abu Sarh,[443] already noticed as the foster-brother of Othmân. He did not bear an enviable reputation in Islam; for having been employed by Mahomet as amanuensis to record his early revelations, he had proved in some way unfaithful to the trust; and on the capture of Mecca, was in consequence proscribed from the amnesty, and only at the intercession of Othmân escaped being put to death. Abu Sarh supersedes Amru in Upper Egypt. A.H. XXVI. A.D. 647.Possessed of administrative ability, he had been appointed by Omar to the government of Upper Egypt. But some years after, he fell out with Amru, in whom was vested the supreme control of the province; and each appealed to Othmân. Amru was declared to be in fault, and the Caliph deposed him altogether from the civil charge of Egypt. Amru objected. ‘To be over the army,’ he said, ‘and not over the revenue, was but holding the cow’s horns, while another milked her.’ He repaired angrily to Othmân, who, after some words of bitter altercation, transferred the entire administration, civil and military, into the hands of Abu Sarh. The act was unfortunate for the Caliph. It threw Amru into the ranks of the disaffected party at Medîna; while the bad repute of ‘the renegade’ Abu Sarh, though he was an able warrior, gave point to the charges of partiality and nepotism now rife against Othmân.[444]
Conquest in Northern Africa. A.H. XXVI. A.D. 647.