Suleiman succeeded his brother Walid I. The new caliph vigorously put into execution all the plans his brother had formed for the propagation of the religion of the Prophet. In the first year of his reign he conquered Tabaristan and Georgia, and sent his brother Maslama to lay fresh siege to Constantinople. On his accession to the throne Suleiman placed the government of Egypt in the hands of Assama ibn Yazid, with the title of agent-general of finances. The Koptic clerical historians, according to their usual habit, portray this governor as still worse than his predecessors, but in this case the Mussulman authorities are in agreement in accusing him of the most iniquitous extortions and most barbarous massacres. The gravest reproach they bring against him is that, calling all the monks together, he told them that not only did he intend to maintain the old regulations of Abd el-Aziz, by which they had to pay an annual tax of one dinar ($2.53), but also that they would be obliged to receive yearly from his agents an iron ring bearing their name and the date of the financial transaction, for which ring they were to make personal contribution. He forced the wearing of this ring continually, and the hand found without this strange form of receipt was to be cut off. Several monks who endeavoured to evade this strict order were pitilessly mutilated, while a number of them, rebelling against the payment of the tax, retired into convents, thinking they could safely defraud the treasury. Assama, however, sent his soldiers to search these retreats, and all the monks found without rings were beheaded or put to death by the bastinado. [Illustration: 338.jpg COIN OF MALIK] Careful about all that related to the Egyptian revenues, Assama commanded the keeping up of the various Nilometers, which still served to regulate the assessment of the ground tax. In the year 718 he learned that the Nilometer established at Helwan, a little below Fostat, had fallen in, and hastened to report the fact to the caliph. By the orders of this prince the ruined Nilometer was abandoned, and a new one built at the meridional point of the island now called Rhodha, just between Fostat and Gizeh. [Illustration: 339.jpg CITADEL OF CAIRO (FOSTAT).]