He is praised by Mussulmen for his great qualities as sovereign. But he cared less to spread Islam from Arabia over all the world than to enrich Arabia at the cost of all the world. Foreign nations were to be put in chains, but not ennobled and bettered. They were to encounter not preachers, but tax-gatherers. His rulers might inflict any oppressions on those who were not Mussulmen, provided they sent the fruits of their oppression to him at Medina. At the same time he fed on barley bread, and had but one cloak for the summer and another for the winter, both well darned. But let us turn to his family life. Little of it is known, but that he had seven marriages—three in Mecca, four after the exit to Medina, one of them being with a daughter of Ali—and that he had two slave concubines who bore him children. Two other wives he tried to get. A daughter of Otba refused him because he kept his wives jealously shut up. But Asma, a daughter of Abu Bekr, disliked the barley bread and camel’s flesh of his household. He sought her in vain by the help of Aischa. Not obtaining her, he turned to Amm Kolthum, a daughter of Ali and Fatima, and granddaughter of Mohammed. Ali said to him, “My daughter is too young to marry”. Omar would not believe it, upon which Ali sent his daughter to him in a single vestment. Omar drew back her veil, and wished to draw her to him. But she escaped, and fled to her father, and told him of Omar’s conduct. Ali then said to him, “If thou wert not chalif, I would tear out thine eyes”. But Omar sought her again before comrades of the highest rank, grounding his proposal on what Mohammed had once said: “Every relationship and connection ceases at the Day of Judgment, except one contracted with me”. Ali went home, and said to his daughter: “Go back to Omar”. She rejoined: “Wilt thou send me again to this old voluptuary?” Ali replied, “He is thy husband”.(68) But though in the last years of Omar Ali became his father-in-law, no friendly relation seems ever to have existed between them. Ali had been the first in all Mohammed’s battles; by Omar he was made neither commander nor governor. But in Mussulman remembrance Omar stands as the greatest of their rulers, because of the vast power and extension to which under him Islam attained. Let us see what Omar in his chalifate did to Constantine’s empire and the Christian faith.