Mistaking inaction for remissness, and themselves reduced to straits, the Byzantine army, on a certain morning, thought to fall upon the Arabs unawares. They little knew the vigilance of Shorahbîl, who night and day was on the watch ready for action. Fetching a circuit, the Romans suddenly appeared on the Moslem flank. They met a warm reception, and there ensued a battle as fierce and obstinate as any that had yet taken place. All day the Romans held their ground; but by nightfall the impetuosity of the Arabs had its way. Sacalâr, the Byzantine captain, fell, and his army broke and fled. The greater part, caught in the marsh, there met their fate; and few escaped the sword. ‘Thus the Lord wrought for his people,’ writes the pious crusader; ‘and the morass which we thought a curse turned in His hands into a blessing.’ And so the plain of Esdraelon again looked down upon another great and sanguinary conflict, which, following on the defeat of Wacûsa, decided for many a long century the fate of Syria. The loss of the Mussulmans was comparatively small. The booty was immense, and served to sharpen the Arab appetite for further victory. [Sidenote: Khâlid’s contingent sent back to Irâc.] No enemy now was left in sight. Omar, therefore, remembering the last behest of Abu Bekr, that when the Lord gave victory in Syria the contingent of Khâlid should be sent to Irâc, gave orders accordingly. Its ranks, thinned by the fighting they had undergone, were before the march made up to their former strength by transfer of volunteers from the Syrian army. Thus recruited, the contingent (under command, not now of Khâlid, but of Hâshim, son of Otba) recrossed the desert just in time to take part in the great battle of Câdesîya. Abu Obeida, with Khâlid and other chiefs of note, returned to Damascus. Shorahbîl and Amru were left to reduce to order the province of the Jordan. [Sidenote: Province of Jordan reduced.]The task was easy. The fire of patriotism had never burned brightly anywhere in Syria; and what there might have been was now extinguished by the listless cowardice of the Byzantine Court. To the Bedouin class, weary of Roman trammels, the prospect of an Arabian rule was far from unwelcome. Neither were the Jews and Samaritans unfavourable to the invaders; indeed, we find them not infrequently giving aid and information to the enemy. Even the Christians cared little for the maintenance of a government which by courtly and ecclesiastical intolerance had done its best to alienate their affection. [Sidenote: Progress east of the Jordan,]