The government of Kûfa, vacated by the deposition of Welîd, together with the whole province of Mesopotamia, was conferred by Othmân upon another young and untried kinsman, Saîd ibn al Aás. His father was killed fighting against the Prophet at Bedr; and the boy, thus left an orphan, had been brought up by Omar, and was eventually sent by him to the wars in Syria. Receiving a good account of his breeding and prowess, Omar summoned him to his court, and gave him two Arab maidens to wife.[453] This youth, now promoted to the most critical post in the empire, was not only without experience in the art of governing, but was vainly inflated with the pretensions of the Coreish. Accustomed in Syria to the discipline of Muâvia’s rule, he wrote to Othmân, on reaching Kûfa, that license reigned there; that noble birth passed for nothing; and that the Bedouins were away, beyond control, with the bit between their teeth. His final address as governor was a blustering harangue, in which he glibly talked of crushing the sedition and arrogance of the men of Kûfa with a rod of iron. [Sidenote: Discontent gains ground at Kûfa.]Countenanced by the Caliph in his vain career, he fomented discontent by advancing to invidious distinction the Coreishite nobility, and treating with contumely the great body of the citizens. ‘One Coreishite succeedeth another in this government,’ they said;--‘the last no better than the first. It is but “out of the frying-pan into the fire.”’ The under-current of faction gained daily in strength and volume. But the vigorous campaigns of Saîd in northern Persia, for he was an active soldier, served for a time to occupy men’s minds, and to stay the open exhibition of the rebellious spirit. [Sidenote: Other causes of disaffection.] Meanwhile other causes were at work throughout the empire calculated to increase the disaffection; or which, if unimportant in themselves, were adroitly seized by the Caliph’s enemies and turned to that purpose. [Sidenote: Othmân’s recension of the Corân. A.H. XXX. A.D. 651.]