caliph, and even promised them the restitution of all their
property. Ninety men allowed themselves to be entrapped, and Abdallah
invited them to a banquet. When they were all collected, a body of
executioners rushed into the hall and slew them with clubs. He then
ordered leathern covers to be thrown upon the dying men, and had the
banquet served upon them. In Medina and Mecca Da'ud b. Ali, another
uncle of Abu'l-Abbas, conducted the persecution; in Basra, Suleiman b.
Ali. Abu'l-Abbas himself killed those he could lay his hands on in Hira
and Kufa, amongst them Suleiman b. Hisham, who had been the bitterest
enemy of Merwan. Only a few Omayyads escaped the massacre, several of
whom were murdered later. A grandson of Hisham, Abdarrahman, son of his
most beloved son Moawiya, reached Africa and founded in Spain the
Omayyad dynasty of Cordova.

With the dynasty of the Omayyads the hegemony passes finally from Syria
to Irak. At the same time the supremacy of the Arabs came to an end.
Thenceforth it is not the contingents of the Arabic tribes which compose
the army, and on whom the government depends; the new dynasty relies on
a standing army, consisting for the greater part of non-Arabic soldiers.
The barrier that separated the Arabs from the conquered nations begins
to crumble away. Only the Arabic religion, the Arabic language and the
Arabic civilization maintain themselves, and spread more and more over
the whole empire.

C.--THE ABBASIDS

We now enter upon the history of the new dynasty, under which the power
of Islam reached its highest point.

1. Abu'l-Abbas inaugurated his Caliphate by a harangue in which he
announced the era of concord and happiness which was to begin now that
the House of the Prophet had been restored to its right. He asserted
that the Abbasids were the real heirs of the Prophet, as the descendants
of his oldest uncle Abbas. Addressing the Kufians, he said, "Inhabitants
of Kufa, ye are those whose affection towards us has ever been constant
and true; ye have never changed your mind, nor swerved from it,
notwithstanding all the pressure of the unjust upon you. At last our
time has come, and God has brought you the new era. Ye are the happiest
of men through us, and the dearest to us. I increase your pensions with
100 dirhems; make now your preparations, for I am the lavish shedder of
blood[27] and the avenger of blood."

Notwithstanding these fine words, Abu'l-Abbas did not trust the
Kufians.