the Prophet, amid the scenes where he had himself been lord and judge, and under the conditions in which his life as ruler had been cast. All the sources, except that of divine revelation, which had been open to him, were open to his successors and they made full use of all. Round that mother-hearth of Islam was still gathered the great body of the immediate Companions of Muhammad, and they formed a deliberative or consulting council to aid the Khalifa in his task. The gathering of tradition and the developing of law were vital functions; they were the basis of the public life of the state. This patriarchal period in Muslim history is the golden age of Islam. It ended with the death of Ali, in the year 40 of the Hijra, and the succession of Mu'awiya in the following year. "For thirty years," runs a tradition from the Prophet, "my People will tread in my Path (sunna); then will come kings and princes."

And so it was; Mu'awiya was the first of the Umayyad dynasty and with him and them. Islam, in all but the name, was at an end. He and they were Arab kings of the old type that had reigned before Muhammad at al-Hira and Ghassan, whose will had been their law. The capital of the new kingdom was Damascus; al-Madina became a place of refuge, a Cave of Adullam, for the old Muslim party. There they might spin theories of state and of law, and lament the good old days; so long as there was no rebellion, the Umayyads cared little for those things or for the men who dreamt them. Once, the Umayyads were driven to capture and sack the holy city, a horror in Islam to this day. After that there was peace, the peace

of the accomplished fact. This is the genuinely Arab period in the history of Islam. It is a period full of color and light and life; of love and song; battle and feasting. Thought was free and conduct too. The great theologian of the Greek Church, John of Damascus, held high office at the Umayyad court, and al-Akhtal, a Christian at least in name, was their poet laureate. It is true that the stated services of religion were kept up and on every Friday the Khalifa had to entertain the people by a display of eloquence and wit in the weekly sermon. But the old world was dead and the days of its unity would never come again. So all knew, except the irreconcilable party, the last of the true Muslims who still haunted the sacred soil of al-Madina and labored in the old paths. They gathered the traditions of the Prophet; they regulated their lives more and more strictly by his usage; they gave ghostly council to the pious who sought their help; they labored to build up elaborate systems of law. But it was all elaboration and hypothetical purely. There was in it no vitalizing force from practical life.

From this time on Muslim law has been more or less in the position held by the canon law of the Roman Church in a country that will not recognize it yet dares not utterly reject it. The Umayyads were statesmen and opportunists; they lived, in legal things, as much from hand to mouth as Muhammad had done, He cut all knots with divine legislation; they cut them with the edge of their will. Under them, as under him, a system of law was impossible. But at the same time, in quiet and in secret, this