The Chaliphate - Muir - The Search For Mecca

150 'OMAR [chap. XX.
A. II. 14-15. new-born zeal of the Faith had evaporated, the chivalry of
the Arabs as a race wholly devoted to arms, was, owing
mainly to 'Omar's foresight, maintained in full activity for
two centuries and a half. The Nation was, and continued
to be, an army mobilised ; the camp, and not the city,
their home their business, arms ;—a people whose calling
;
it was to be ready for warlike expedition at a moment's
notice.
Register of To carry out this vast design, a Register was kept of
all Arabs
gvcrv man, woman, and child entitled to a stipend from the
-^ ' ' ^
entitled to
_
stipend. State—in other words, of the whole Arab race employed in
the interests of Islam. This was easy enough for the upper
ranks, but a herculean task for the hundreds of thousands
of ordinary families which kept streaming forth to war from
the Peninsula, and which, by free indulgence in polygamy,
were multiplying rapidly. The task, however, was simplified
by the strictly tribal disposition of the forces. Men of a
tribe fought together ;
and the several Corps and Brigades
being thus territorially arranged in clans, the register assumed
the same form. Every soul was entered under the tribe
and clan whose lineage it claimed. And to this exhaustive
classification we owe the elaborate, and to some extent
artificial, genealogies and tribal traditions of Arabia before
Islam.
The Diwiin The roll itself, as well as the office for its maintenance
of 'Omar.
^^^ ^^^ pensionary account, was called the Dizvdn or
Exchequer, The State had by this time an income swollen
by tribute of conquered cities, poll-tax of subjugated peoples,
land assessments, spoil of war, and tithes. The first charge
was for the revenue and civil administration ;
the next for
military requirements, which soon assumed a sustained and
permanent form ;
the surplus was for the support of the
Nation. The entire revenues of Islam were thus expended
as soon almost as received ; and 'Omar took special pride
in seeing the treasury emptied to the last dirhem. The
accounts of the various provinces were at the first kept by
natives of the country in the character to which they were
accustomed—in Syria by Greeks, and in Chalda^aby Persians.
At Al-Kufa this lasted till the time of Al-Hajjaj, when, an
Arab assistant having learnt the art, the Arabic system
of record and notation was introduced.