nk. 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. 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.

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 father's spirit, and
served with honor against the Christians in the siege of Constantinople.
The primogeniture of the line of Hashem, and the holy character of
grandson of the apostle, had centred in his person, and he was at
liberty to prosecute his claim against Yezid, the tyrant of Damascus,
whose vices he despised, and wh