26 A Short History of the Middle East
maintained some commerce with the Southern Mediterranean and
the Levant, the effect of the Muslim conquests was gradually to
check the flow of Oriental goods to Christian Western Europe.1
The fertility of Egypt was maintained on about the same level as
before the Muslim conquest by a policy of non-interference with
the Coptic administration and irrigation-specialists. Historians no
longer hold, as formerly, that the Muslim conquest abruptly ended
the prosperity of Syria and Palestine; instead they ascribe the be-
ginnings of their economic decline to the shifting of the centre of
gravity from the Levant to Iraq and Persia which, followed the
transfer of the capital from Damascus to Baghdad with the acces-
sion of the Abbasid dynasty in the middle of the eighth century.
The Umayyads never succeeded in securing the loyalty of the
whole of even the Arab inhabitants of their vast Empire; and their
non-Arab subjects became increasingly estranged by the oppressive
rule of their deputies. The Arabs 'lived as soldiers at the expense
of the native population whom they inevitably regarded as an in-
ferior race. If the latter thought to win respect by embracing the
religion of their conquerors, they found themselves sadly mistaken.
The new converts were attached as clients (mawali) to an Arab
tribe: they could not become Muslims on any other footing. Far
from obtaining the equal rights which they coveted, and which,
according to the principles of Islam, they should have enjoyed, the
Mawali were treated by their aristocratic patrons with contempt,
and had to submit to every kind of social degradation----And these
Clients, be it remembered, were not ignorant serfs, but men whose
culture was acknowledged by the Arabs themselves—men who
formed the backbone of the influential learned class and ardently
prosecuted those studies, divinity and jurisprudence, which were
then held in highest esteem. Here was a situation full of danger.
Against Shi'is and Khawarij the Umayyads might claim, with
some show of reason to represent the cause of law and order, if not
of Islam; against the bitter cry of the oppressed Mawali they had
no argument save the sword___*
Active propaganda against the Umayyads was made, not only
by the Shi'is, but also by a branch of the Prophet's family des-
cended from his uncle Abbas. These Abbasids 'had genius enough
to see that the best soil for their dfforts was distant Khurasan, the
extensive north-eastern provinces of the old Persian Empire.
* H. Pirenne, Mahomet et Charlemagne, 148 if.