The Chaliphate - Muir - The Search For Mecca

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142 'OMAR [chap. XIX.
A.H. 17. the demand. ICqually remarkable is the tale of the Beni
Beni Tiphlib 'i'^S^^''^. They tendered submission to Al-VVelid, who,
allowed to solicitous for the adhesion of this famous race, pressed them
pay e.
'
with some rigour to abjure their ancient faith. 'Omar was
displeased ;— " Leave them," he wrote, " in the profession
of the Gospel. It is only within the Arabian peninsula,
where are the Holy Places, that none but a Muslim tribe is
to remain." Al-Welld was removed from his command
and it was enjoined on his successor to stipulate only that
the usual tribute should be paid, that no member should be
hindered from embracing Islam, and that children should
not be educated in the Christian faith. The tribe, deeming
in its pride the payment of "tribute" an indignity, sent a
deputation to the Caliph :—They were willing, they said,
to pay the tax, if only it v/ere levied under the same name
as that taken from the Muslims. The liberality of 'Omar
allowed the concession ;
and the Beni Taghlib enjoyed the
• singular privilege of being assessed as Christians at a
" double Tithe," instead of paying the obnoxious badge of
subjugation.
Fall of The last place to hold out in Syria was Cssarea. It fell
f7*rr^' "^ ^^"'^ ^^^^ y^^^ °^ 'Omar's Caliphate. 'Amr had sat long
638 A.D. before it. But, being open to the sea, and the battlements
landward strong and well manned, it resisted his efforts ; and
although Yezld sent his brother Mu'awiya with reinforcements
from Damascus, the siege was prolonged for several years.
Sallies persistently made by the garrison, were driven back
with equal constancy : but in the end, the treachery of a
Jew revealed a weak point in the defences ; the city was
carried by storm and with prodigious carnage. Four
thousand prisoners of either sex were despatched with the
royal booty to Medina, and there sold into slavery.^
^
The Jew betrayed the town by showing the Arabs an aqueduct,
through which they efifected an entrance. The population was mixed ;
70,000 Greeks ;
30,000 Samaritans ; and 200,000 (?) Jews. It was a sad
fate that of the captives. Multitudes of Greeks, men and women, pined
miserably in strange lands in hopeless servitude. Amongst these must
have been many women of gentle birth degraded now to menial office ;
or if young and fair to look upon, reserved for a worse fate,—liable, when
their masters became tired of them, to be sold into other hands. No
wonder that Al-Kindi in his Apology inveighs, with scathing denunciation,
against the proceedings of the Muslims in these early wars.