[FN#43] This masterful administrator of the Caliphate under the early Ommiades is noticed in vols. iv. 3, vii. 97.  The succession to the Prophet began—­as mostly happens in the proceedings of elective governments, republics, and so forth—­with the choice of a nobody, “Abubakr the Veridical,” a Meccan merchant, whose chief claim was the glamour of the Apostolate.  A more notable personage, and seen under the same artificial light, was “Omar the Justiciary,” also a trader of Meccah, who was murdered for an act of injustice.  In Osman nepotism and corruption so prevailed, while distance began to dim the Apostolic glories, that the blood-thirsty turbulence of the Arab was aroused and caused the death of the third Caliph by what we should call in modern phrase “lynching.”  Ali succeeded, if indeed we can say he succeeded at all, to an already divided empire.  He was only one of the four who could be described as a man of genius, and therefore he had a host of enemies:  he was a poet, a sage, a moralist and even a grammarian; brave as a lion, strong as a bull, a successful and experienced captain, yet a complete failure as a King.  A mere child in mundane matters, he ever acted in a worldly sense as he should have avoided acting, and hence, after a short and disastrous reign, he also was killed.  His two sons, Hasan and Husayn, inherited all the defects and few of the merits of their sire:  Hasan was a pauvre diable, whose chief characteristic was addiction to marriage, and by poetical justice one of his wives murdered him.  Husayn was of stronger mould, but he fought against the impossible; for his rival was Mu’awiyah, the Cavour of the Age, the longest-headed man in Arabia, and against Yazid, who, like Italy of the present day, flourished and prospered by the artificial game which the far-seeing politician, his father, had bequeathed to his house—­the Ommiade.  The fourth of this dynasty, ’Abd al-Malik bin Marwan, “the Father of Flies,” and his successor, Al-Walid, were happy in being served thoroughly and unscrupulously by Al-Hajjaj, the ablest of Lieutenants. whose specialty it was to take in hand a revolted province, such as Al-Hijaz, Al-Irak, or Khorasan, and to slaughter it into submission; besides deaths in battle he is computed to have slain 120,000 men.  He was an unflinching preacher of the Divine Right of Kings and would observe that the Lord says, “Obey Allah and ye can” (conditional), but as regards royal government “Hearing and obeying” (absolute); ergo, all opposition was to be cut down and uprooted.  However, despite his most brilliant qualities, his learning, his high and knightly sense of honour, his insight and his foresight (e.g. in building Wasit), he won an immortality of infamy:  he was hated by his contemporaries, he is the subject of silly tale and offensive legend (e.g., that he was born without anus, which required opening with instruments, and he was suckled by Satan’s orders on blood), and he is still execrated as the tyrant, per excellentiam, and the oppressor of the Holy Family—­ the children and grand-children of the Apostle.