In Persia, as we have seen, the Mussulman invasion had resulted hitherto rather in the dispersion of great armies than in the effectual reduction of the country. Most of the provinces resented the first imposition of tribute, and rose against their new masters, one after another, in repeated and sometimes long-continued rebellion. Expeditions were time after time equipped from Kûfa and Bussorah to crush these risings, from the Caspian Sea and the Oxus to the shores of the Indian Ocean, and even as far as Kabul.[441] It was not till near the close of Othmân’s reign that the Moslem yoke was firmly settled on the neck of Persia. [Sidenote: A.H. XXXI. A.D. 652.]In the eighth year of his Caliphate, Yezdegird died; and thereafter, though in a desultory and sporadic fashion opposition might still survive, anything like national or dynastic antagonism was at an end. Success, indeed, did not invariably attend the Moslem arms. The progress, on the whole, was steadily forward; but there were reverses, and these sometimes of a serious type. In the year A.H. 32, the Turks on the western shore of the Caspian had an advantage, in which the Arab leaders and a great body of the veterans were slain. To retrieve the disaster, Othmân ordered levies from Syria to cross Mesopotamia and reinforce the Kûfan army. Bad blood bred between the two; the Syrians refused to serve under the captain of the rival body; and an altercation ensued which nearly led to bloodshed. This, adds the historian, was the first symptom of the breach between the Kûfans and the men of Syria, which subsequently broke out into prolonged hostilities. About the same time, a whole army was lost in deep snow upon the heights of Kermân, only two men escaping to tell the tale. There were also very serious reverses in Turkestan. But Arabia continued to cast forth its swarms of fighting tribes in such vast numbers, and the wild fanaticism of the faith still rolled so rapidly onward, that these and similar disasters soon disappeared in the swelling tide of conquest. [Sidenote: _Syria_, _Asia Minor_, and _Armenia_. A.H. XXV. A.D. 646.]