A.H. 15.
Damascus was again in their hands in the same month in which the battle was fought, exactly twelve months after its first capture. As the Greeks retired, the country fell into the hands of the Arabs so naturally that this re-conquest is scarcely mentioned, But Khalid’s occupation in Syria was gone. The country had been as good as won, and it was now a question of readjusting the relations of the governed to their new rulers, of fostering the resources of the country, and encouraging agriculture. The military chief had to give place to the civil functionary; the sword to the pen; Khālid to Abu ʿObeida. There is no occasion to seek for any ulterior motives which might lead ʿOmar to replace Khālid by Abu ʿObeida. Least of all can personal dislike have influenced him. ʿOmar was too great for that. He was, however, scrupulous to a fault in the management of public money, and Khalid appears to have grown rich at the expense of the State. This might have led ʿOmar to recall him to Medīna; but the truth was, the soldiers of Al-ʿIrāḳ had done the work for which they had been transferred to Syria. They were now required in the country of the two rivers, and were ordered home; and Khālid's lot was naturally theirs.
Completion of the Conquest.Khālid, however, remained with Abu ʿObeida. ʿAmr returned to Palestine, and set about the siege of Jerusalem, or as it was then called Aelia; Shuraḥbīl returned to the Jordan and took Acca (Acre), Tyre, and Sepphoris. Yezīd with his brother Muʿāwiya captured Saida (Sidon), ʿIrḳa, Jubeil, and Beyrout, on the sea-coast of the Damascus province; whilst Abu ʿObeida pushed northwards by Baalbek, Emesa, and Ḳinnasrin (Chalcis), to Aleppo and Antioch. Khālid set out with him, but soon left him in order to report himself at Medīna; and Abu ʿObeida remained as governor of the whole of Syria, the northern limit of his conquests being a line drawn from Antioch due east to the Euphrates, and the southern the confines of Arabia and Egypt. It was not, however, until the Muslim rulers had begun to cope with the naval forces of the Mediterranean that their authority was established beyond dispute along the seaboard, as it had long been in the interior.
