'IRAQ AND THE PERSIAN GULF' [‎172v] (349/862)

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HISTORY
Mohammed had died in 632, 1 and the first Moslem raids into Syria
and Mesopotamia were in 634. By 636 all Syria was in Moslem hands,
and Hira, the southern key to Mesopotamia, had capitulated (p. 237).
In 637 the Moslems attacked in force from Arabia, crushed the
Persian general Rustam at Qadisiya, and captured Ctesiphon. The
Emperor Yazdagird fled into Persia, where in 641 the last Sassanid
army was destroyed at Nihawand. The same year the Moslems over
ran northern Mesopotamia (Adiabene). Eastwards they pressed into
Khuzistan (Elymais), and by 650 took Persepolis and occupied the
Persian provinces as far as the Oxus. With the death of Yazdagird in
651 or 652 the Persian monarchy came to an end.
Iraq or Sawad (the black land), as the Arabs called Babylonia,
became one province of an Arab empire governed, at first from
Medina, by the recognized successor of Mohammed, the Caliph, to
whom the political power of the Prophet descended. But soon there
was a quarrel over this office, to which the Arabs of Iraq and those of
Syria put forward different claimants. From this schism there grew
up two rival schools or sects of Islam, the Sunni and the Shia, and
this division has been a main feature in the life of Iraq down to the
present day. In 656 the third Caliph was murdered in Medina by
the Egyptian Arab supporters of Ali, who was first cousin of the
Prophet, husband of his daughter, and father of his only two sur
viving male descendants. Ali was proclaimed Caliph and at the
‘Battle of the Camel’ outside Basra rid himself of two rivals, but a
third soon appeared, Muawiya the Governor of Syria. In 657, on the
battlefield of Siffin near Rakka on the Euphrates, appeal was made
to arbitration, which went against Ali. He held out, but in 661 he
was murdered by one of his former supporters, the Kharijites or
‘seceders’, who had withdrawn from his cause because they dis
approved of his submission of the question of the Caliphate to human
arbitration. Ali’s eldest son, Hasan, though proclaimed Caliph by
the Moslems of Iraq, abdicated in favour of Muawiya.
The Omayyad Caliphate, 661-750
Muawiya, proclaimed Caliph at Jerusalem in 661, turned the
Caliphate into an hereditary dynasty by nominating his son Yazid as
his successor. Yazid’s succession in 680 was challenged by Ali’s
second son Husain, who relied on the support of Arabs from Kufa.
But they were unable to maintain him and he was killed with his
followers at the battle of Karbala. Ali and Husain became the martyrs
1 All dates are by the Christian reckoning.