eed in assimilating
them as the Syrian Christians were assimilated. Even when in process of
time they did accept the religion of the prophet, they leavened it
thoroughly with their own peculiar leaven, and, especially, deprived it
of the practical political and national character which it had assumed
after the flight to Medina. To the Arabian state they were always a
thorn in the flesh; it was they who helped most to break up its internal
order, and it was from them also that it at last received its outward
death-blow. The fall of the Omayyads was their work, and with the
Omayyads fell the Arabian empire.

2. _Reign of Omar_.--Abu Bekr died after a short reign on the 22nd of
August 634, and as a matter of course was succeeded by Omar. To Omar's
ten years' Caliphate belong for the most part the great conquests. He
himself did not take the field, but remained in Medina with the
exception of his visit to Syria in 638; he never, however, suffered the
reins to slip from his grasp, so powerful was the influence of his
personality and the Moslem community of feeling. His political insight
is shown by the fact that he endeavoured to limit the indefinite
extension of Moslem conquest, to maintain and strengthen the national
Arabian character of the commonwealth of Islam,[6] and especially to
promote law and order in its internal affairs. The saying with which he
began his reign will never grow antiquated: "by Allah, he that is
weakest among you shall be in my sight the strongest, until I have
vindicated for him his rights; but him that is strongest will I treat as
the weakest, until he complies with the laws." After the administration
of justice he directed his organizing activity, as the circumstances
demanded, chiefly towards financial questions--the incidence of taxation
in the conquered territories,[7] and the application of the vast
resources which poured into the treasury at Medina. It must not be
brought against him as a personal reproach, that in dealing with these
he acted on the principle that the Moslems were the chartered plunderers
of all the rest of the world. But he had to atone by his death for the
fault of his system. In the mosque at Medina he was stabbed by a Kufan
workman and died in November 644.

3. _Reign of Othman._--Before his death Omar had nominated six of the
leading Mohajir (Emigrants) who should choose the caliph from among
themselves--Othman, Ali, Zobair, Talha, Sa'd b. Abi Waqqas, and
Abdarrahman