b. Auf. The last-named declined to be a candidate, and
decided the election in favour of Othman. Under this weak sovereign the
government of Islam fell entirely into the hands of the Koreish
nobility. We have already seen that Mahomet himself prepared the way for
this transference; Abu Bekr and Omar likewise helped it; the Emigrants
were unanimous among themselves in thinking that the precedence and
leadership belonged to them as of right. Thanks to the energy of Omar,
they were successful in appropriating to themselves the succession to
the Prophet. They indeed rested their claims on the undeniable priority
of their services to the faith, but they also appealed to their blood
relationship with the Prophet as a corroboration of their right to the
inheritance; and the ties of blood connected them with the Koreish in
general. In point of fact they felt a closer connexion with these than,
for example, with the natives of Medina; nature had not been expelled by
faith.[8] The supremacy of the Emigrants naturally furnished the means
of transition to the supremacy of the Meccan aristocracy. Othman did all
in his power to press forward this development of affairs. He belonged
to the foremost family of Mecca, the Omayyads, and that he should favour
his relations and the Koreish as a whole, in every possible way, seemed
to him a matter of course. Every position of influence and emolument was
assigned to them; they themselves boastingly called the important
province of Irak the garden of Koreish. In truth, the entire empire had
become that garden. Nor was it unreasonable that from the secularization
of Islam the chief advantage should be reaped by those who best knew the
world. Such were beyond all doubt the patricians of Mecca, and after
them those of Taif, people like Khalid b. al-Walid, Amr-ibn-el-Ass,
'Abdallah b. abi Sarh, Moghira b. Sho'ba, and, above all, old Abu Sofian
with his son Moawiya.

Against the rising tide of worldliness an opposition, however, now began
to appear. It was led by what may be called the spiritual noblesse of
Islam, which, as distinguished from the hereditary nobility of Mecca,
might also be designated as the nobility of merit, consisting of the
"Defenders" (_Ansar_), and especially of the Emigrants who had lent
themselves to the elevation of the Koreish, but by no means with the
intention of allowing themselves thereby to be effaced. The opposition
was headed by Ali, Zobair, Talha, both as leading m