ar intrusted him with the
government of Syria; and he administered that important province above
forty years, either in a subordinate or supreme rank. Without renouncing
the fame of valor and liberality, he affected the reputation of humanity
and moderation: a grateful people was attached to their benefactor;
and the victorious Moslems were enriched with the spoils of Cyprus and
Rhodes. The sacred duty of pursuing the assassins of Othman was the
engine and pretence of his ambition. The bloody shirt of the martyr
was exposed in the mosch of Damascus: the emir deplored the fate of his
injured kinsman; and sixty thousand Syrians were engaged in his service
by an oath of fidelity and revenge. Amrou, the conqueror of Egypt,
himself an army, was the first who saluted the new monarch, and
divulged the dangerous secret, that the Arabian caliphs might be created
elsewhere than in the city of the prophet. [178] The policy of
Moawiyah eluded the valor of his rival; and, after the death of Ali, he
negotiated the abdication of his son Hassan, whose mind was either above
or below the government of the world, and who retired without a
sigh from the palace of Cufa to an humble cell near the tomb of his
grandfather. The aspiring wishes of the caliph were finally crowned
by the important change of an elective to an hereditary kingdom. Some
murmurs of freedom or fanaticism attested the reluctance of the Arabs,
and four citizens of Medina refused the oath of fidelity; but the
designs of Moawiyah were conducted with vigor and address; and his son
Yezid, a feeble and dissolute youth, was proclaimed as the commander of
the faithful and the successor on the apostle of God.

[Footnote 178: I borrow, on this occasion, the strong sense and
expression of Tacitus, (Hist. i. 4: ) Evulgato imperii arcano posse
imperatorem alni quam Romae fieri.]

A familiar story is related of the benevolence of one of the sons of
Ali. In serving at table, a slave had inadvertently dropped a dish of
scalding broth on his master: the heedless wretch fell prostrate, to
deprecate his punishment, and repeated a verse of the Koran: "Paradise
is for those who command their anger: "--"I am not angry: "--"and for
those who pardon offences: "--"I pardon your offence: "--"and for those
who return good for evil: "--"I give you your liberty and four hundred
pieces of silver." With an equal measure of piety, Hosein, the younger
brother of Hassan, inherited a remnant of his fathe