Muâvia had no sooner received the emblems of his Master’s murder--the gory shirt and Nâila’s mangled fingers--than he hung them up on the pulpit of the Great Mosque at Damascus. There suspended, they remained a spectacle maddening the Syrians to a bloody revenge.[499] Still they took no immediate action. Biding their time, they waited to see what the new Caliph might do. Aly, had he been wise, would have used such allies to take vengeance at once on the conspirators, and at the same time crush the rising democracy and disaffection of the Arab tribes. In this work Syria would have been his strongest stand-by; for it never suffered from the Bedouin turbulence which kept Irâc and Egypt in continual turmoil. In the early campaigns, Syria was the favourite field of the Coreish, who, settling there in larger proportion than elsewhere, found their influence, in consequence, better recognised. Moreover, the conquering race inhabited the ancient Syrian cities in common with the Christian population, which had surrendered, for the most part, on favourable terms. Society was thus throughout all classes of the community orderly and loyal, whereas on the banks of the Euphrates the settlements of Bussorah and Kûfa were filled with wild and headstrong Arab tribes who regarded the vanquished lands as their patrimony. Law prevailed in Syria; in Irâc and Egypt, the pride and petulance of arms. Syria was, moreover, attached to its Coreishite governors of the Omeyyad stock, and remained thus faithful to the end.