weary as were the Jews of oppression by monks and bishops, weary also of endless disputes among the churches, and ready to accept a simpler belief in one God, and in a living prophet who said that there was but one faith taught by all who came before him, and common to Christian and Jew. It was not a persecuting faith, and the tolerance of Islâm, under the Arab khalifs, was not changed into fanaticism till later Turks arose to give their captives the stern choice between the sword and the Ḳorân. [Sidenote: OMAR] It needed, therefore, only one great defeat for the decayed power of Byzantium to crumble away, and for the ruined Sassanians to lose their sway over races mainly Semitic. This victory was won on the precipitous banks of the Yermûḳ stream in Bashan, four years after the death of Muḥammad, which took place in his house at Medînah on June 8, 632 A. D. The capture of Jerusalem by the forces of Omar, in 637 A. D., was merely an incident in that story of wonderful conquests, which, within three-quarters of a century, united West Asia, North Africa, and Spain under the Arab khalîfah of Damascus, as “successor” of the prophet. We have, however, no contemporary account of the siege of Jerusalem, which lasted at least four months. The Moslem histories were--at earliest--written six centuries later, though based on older sources. The earliest Christian account is that of Theophanes, two hundred years after the event, and the narrative of Eutychius (about 930 A. D.) is inaccurate: this writer was chiefly interested in showing that Heraclius was defeated because he had become a Maronite, deserting the orthodoxy of the Greek Church.[450] There is, however, a general agreement as to the main features of the story. When the patriarch Sophronius capitulated to Abu ’Obeidah, a lean Arab about fifty-five years of age, clad in a coarse cotton shirt and sheepskin jacket, was seen approaching on his camel, accompanied by his victorious general on a little dromedary with a rude halter of hair, his camel-hair cloak folded on the wooden saddle. Such was the early simplicity of the conquerors of Asia--of Abu ’Obeidah, and of his master Omar the second khalîfah. To the patriarch it was a sure sign of the end of the world, and Theophanes says that he exclaimed, “This is of a truth the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place.” Eutychius preserves what seems to be the original written promise to the city, faithfully fulfilled by Omar: “In the name of God merciful and pitying, from ’Amr ibn el Khaṭṭâb to the dwellers in the city Ailia, that they may be safe as to their lives, their children, their possessions, and their churches, that these shall neither be pulled down nor occupied.” Yet a place must be set aside where Moslems should pray in future, and it was agreed that this should be at the site of Solomon’s Temple, which still stood desolate at the Ṣakhrah rock.[451]