64 • 5 THE EARLY ARAB CONQUESTS
blank check. A rich man now, Hasan retired to Medina and played no fur¬
ther role in politics.
It is interesting that Mu'awiya first claimed the caliphate in Jerusalem,
the city sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims. What if he had made it
his capital, something no Arab or Muslim ruler has ever done? But
Mu'awiya had started his career as a Meccan merchant, and he chose to
stay in Damascus, his provincial capital, because it was on the main trade
route between Syria and Yemen. He seems to have viewed Syria as a step¬
ping stone toward taking over all the Byzantine Empire. How can we prove
this? Once the fitna had ended, the Arab conquests resumed, targeted
mainly against Byzantium. Each summer the caliph's armies would pene¬
trate Anatolia. Meanwhile, his navy drove the Byzantine fleet from the
southeastern Mediterranean and twice during his reign besieged the very
capital of the empire. But Byzantium withstood the onslaught. The Arabs
consoled themselves by pushing westward across Tunisia and eastward
through Khurasan.
Administrative Changes
Mu'awiya, once called the "Caesar of the Arabs" by none other than Caliph
Umar himself, was more worldly than his precursors; but the changes that
took place after 661 could not be ascribed to personality differences. Patri¬
archal government—namely, what had grown up in Medina on the model
of the Arab tribal system, modified somewhat by the Quran and the
Prophet's practices—could not meet the needs of a sprawling empire en¬
compassing many peoples and religions. Mu'awiya adopted some of the
Byzantine imperial customs and the bureaucratic practices familiar to
Egypt and Syria. Many of his administrators and some of his warriors
were Syrians or Christian Arabs, often survivors or sons of the old Byzan¬
tine bureaucracy and soldiery.
Mu'awiya realized that he depended on the Arab tribes for most of his
military manpower, and he wisely flattered their sense of racial superior¬
ity. But he had each tribe send a representative (really a hostage) to his
court in Damascus. Such troublesome areas as Iraq, where Arab tribes had
terrorized the countryside during Ali's caliphate, were cowed by ruthless
local governors. Notorious among these was Ziyad, whom Mu'awiya won
over from Ali's backers by acknowledging him as his own half brother
(Ziyad bore the unflattering nickname "son of his father" because his
mother had been a courtesan in Medina). Upon taking charge in Basra,
Ziyad warned the people from the pulpit of its main mosque:
