Sykes' History of Persia Vol 2 (pdf) - Heritage Institute

OMAYYAD DIRHEM.
CHAPTER XLVIII
PERSIA A PROVINCE OF THE OMAYYAD CALIPHATE
Men of Kufa, I see before me heads ripe
for the harvest and the reaper,
I am he. I seem to myself to see blood between turbans and shoulders. I
am not one of those who can be frightened by an inflated bag of skin, nor
any one think to squeeze me like dried figs. The Prince of the
. . .
Believers has spread
before him the arrows of his quiver, and has tried every
one of them by biting its wood. It is my wood he has found the hardest and
the bitterest, and I am the arrow which he shoots against you. The Speech
of HAJJAJ BIN YUSUF.
The Omayyad Dynasty. In the preceding two chapters,
and more especially
in the last, events which have concerned
Persia both from the religious and from the
political aspect have been treated in some detail, and
Muavia, the founder of the Omayyad dynasty, has been
given a secondary position.
But it would be impossible
in a history of Persia, to ignore the importance of the
Omayyad dynasty, which ruled the vast Moslem empire
for nearly
a century, and I have therefore devoted to it a
special chapter.
The Position of Muavia strengthened by the Adherence of
Ziad. Muavia began his reign
in Syria
in A.H. 35 (656),
and he became Caliph of the entire Moslem world upon
the abdication of Hasan in A.H. 40 (66 1),
but it was not
until two years
later that he entered into possession of
all the lands of the Caliphate. It was at this date that
Ziad, Ali's Governor of Fars, became reconciled to him,
and presented
himself under a safe-conduct at Damascus,
bringing all arrears of revenue, and in addition a million
pieces as a gift.
His remarkable capacity secured the
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