On Osmân’s tragical death, Ali, the cousin of the Prophet and the husband of his daughter Fâtima, was elected to the Caliphate. The legitimate heir to the spiritual headship of Islâm, as a temporal chief, Ali came before his time. Chivalrous, brave, and gifted, his humanity and gentleness were mistaken for weakness; and his short government was disturbed by rebellions. The first was suppressed without difficulty; whilst engaged in dealing with the second, headed by Muâwiyah, a kinsman of Osmân, who held the governorship of Syria, Ali was assassinated by a zealot, one of a body who wanted to bring peace to Islâm by the murder of both the Caliph and the rebel governor. =Death of Ali, 661 A.C.=—The latter escaped, but Ali fell a victim to their fanaticism. On the murder of Ali his eldest son, Hassan, was elected to the Caliphate, but, fond of ease, he was easily induced to renounce the dignity in favour of Muâwiyah. =Accession of the Ommeyades to Power.=—With the death of Ali and the renunciation of Hassan came to an end the Republic of Islâm. Up to this time the office of Caliph was elective, and the government essentially democratic. Muâwiyah, whilst retaining the form of election, made it in reality hereditary and autocratic. The seat of government was removed from Medîna to Damascus, where the head of the state surrounded himself by Syrian mercenaries. =The Butchery of Kerbela—The Martyrdom of Hussain.=—Muâwiyah died in 680 A.C., and was succeeded by his son Yezîd, the Domitian of the Arabs. Hussain, the second son of the Caliph Ali, had never acknowledged the title of Yezîd, whose vices he despised and whose character he abhorred; and when the Moslems of Mesopotamia invited him to release them from the Ommeyade yoke he felt it his duty to respond to their appeal. Accompanied by his family and a few retainers he left for Irâk. On the way, at a place called Kerbela, on the western bank of the Euphrates, they were overtaken by an Ommeyade army, and, after a heroic struggle, lasting over several days, were all slaughtered save the women and a sickly child, also named Ali, who were carried as captives to Damascus. The butchery of Kerbela caused a thrill of horror throughout Islâm, and gave birth in Persia to an undying national sentiment.[43] =Conquest of Spain, 712 A.C.=—Under Walid the fifth sovereign of this family, Spain was conquered and added to the Caliphate. The seventh Ommeyade ruler was the pious Omar II., deservedly called the Marcus Aurelius of the Arabs. The Ommeyades held the reins of government for nearly ninety years.