The Chaliphate - Muir - The Search For Mecca

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A.D. 748-50] END OF U^rEIVAD DYNASTY 431
ance, with blue eyes and a ruddy complexion. He was A. IT. 130-
called the Ass of Mcsopotmnia, perhaps not in derision, but
in virtue of his great power of physical endurance. Others
say, because he was fond of the peony, of which asses are
fond
;
or his real by-name was .\1-Faras (the Horse), which
the people of Khorasan changed to the Ass. He was one
of the bravest and best of his house, and deserved a better
fate.^
So perished the Umeiyad dynasty. Its reliance had End of
been altogether upon the temporal power ; it was religious ^"naslv'^
only in name. Its sovereigns, as far as they had any
religion, were Unitarians and so might be called Muslims
but in the matter of drinking wine and of most other
things, they set Islam at nought. This fact was so clearl)'
appreciated by the theologians of the time as to give rise to
a school which held that no Muslim would be called to account
for his sins until after the Resurrection, and that, at an}'
rate, none, however Umeiyad he might be, would be
eternally lost. These astute philosophers were named
Murjiya—Putters off.
The Syrians had let Merwan, whom they hated, perish,
and only too late discovered that his ruin was theirs. The
seat of government passed from Damascus to Al-Kilfa.
Al-Trak recovered the hegemony which it had held, though
not undisputed, under 'All. As the Syrians, so also the
Arabs ceased to be the ruling race. Henceforth there was
no distinction of Arab and non-Arab ; the Mawali came
into their own. The people who gained most were the
people of Khorasan. They formed a kind of military
aristocracy. Bagdad was their barracks later on.
^
He was also called Al-Ja'di, from professing- the heretical views of
Al-Ja'd, a theologian who held the doctrine of Free-will, and denied
that the Kor'an was eternal and uncreate. Ikit this may have been one
of the calumnies heaped by the 'Abbasid coin-tiers on the house of
Umeiya. His mother was the Um Weled of Ibrfdilm ibn al-Ashiar,
taken over by his father the day her master was slain.
^^''