46 DESTINY DISRUPTED
"Yes," said the courier.
"What's the news, then? What's the news?" the old man asked eagerly.
But the courier said he couldn't stop to chat and he rode on. The old
man trotted after him, pestering him with questions. When they passed
through the city gates, a crowd gathered. "Out of my way!" the courier
yelled importantly. "I must see the khalifa at once. Where is Khalifa
Omar?"
The crowd burst out laughing. "That's him right behind you."
No pomp-that was Omar's style, according to legend.
After Qadisiya, the Arabs took the Sassanid capital of Ctesiphon and
then just kept marching, eating into the centuries-old Sassanid Empire,
until the entire territory belonged to Muslims and the Sassanid Empire
was no more: in three years they put an end to an empire that had gone
toe-to-toe with Rome for centuries.
Meanwhile, other armies were routing the Byzantines along the
Mediterranean coast, down through Egypt, and into North Africa. The
crown jewel of these conquests was Jerusalem, which ranked just behind
Mecca and Medina as a holy site for Muslims, in part because Mo-
hammed had reported a vision of being briefly lifted to paradise from this
city during his lifetime. One of the most famous Omar stories took place
after this city fell. The khalifa made his way to Jerusalem to accept its sur-
render in person. He traveled with a servant, and since they had only one
donkey between them, they took turns riding and walking. When they
reached Jerusalem, the servant happened to be riding. The people of
Jerusalem mistook him for the khalifa and hastened to pay him obeisance.
They had to be told, "No, no, that's nobody; it's the other guy you should
be saluting."
The Christians assumed that the khalifa of Islam would want to per-
form the Muslim prayer in their most hallowed church as a token of his
triumph, but Omar refused to set foot in there. "If I do," he explained,
"some future Muslim will use it as an excuse to seize the building and turn
it into a mosque, and that's not what we've come here to do. That's not the
sort of thing we Muslims do. Continue to live and worship as you please;
just know that from now on we Muslims will be living among you, wor-
shipping in our way, and setting a better example. If you like what you see,
join us. If not, so be it. Allah has told us: no compulsion in religion."^3