Towards the close of Othmân’s reign, the ferment, which (excepting Syria perhaps) had long been secretly at work throughout the empire, began to make its appearance on the surface. The Arab people at large were everywhere displeased at the pretensions of the Coreish. The Coreish themselves were ill at ease, the greater part being jealous of the Omeyyad branch and of the favourites of the Caliph. And the temptation to revolt was fostered by the weakness and vacillation of Othmân himself. [Sidenote: Ibn Sauda preaches sedition in Egypt. A.H. XXXII. A.D. 653.] Ibn Aámir had been now three years governor of Bussorah, when Ibn Saba (or, as he is commonly called, Ibn Sauda), a Jew from the south of Arabia, appeared on the scene, and professed the desire to embrace Islam. It soon appeared that he was steeped in disaffection to the existing government--a firebrand of sedition; and as such he was expelled successively from Bussorah, Kûfa, and Syria, but not before he had given a dangerous impulse to the already discontented classes. At last, he found a safe retreat in Egypt, and there became the setter forth of strange and startling doctrines. Mahomet was to come again, even as the Messiah was expected to come again. Meanwhile, Aly was his legate. Othmân was a usurper, and his governors a set of godless tyrants. The people were stirred. Impiety and wrong, they heard, were rampant everywhere; truth and justice could be restored no otherwise than by the overthrow of this wicked dynasty. Such was the preaching which gained daily ground in Egypt; by busy correspondence it was spread all over the empire, and startled the minds of men already foreboding evil from the sensible heavings of a slumbering volcano.[466] [Sidenote: Émeute at Kûfa. A.H. XXXIII. A.D. 654.]