His cool reproach smarted, but the previous terse answers about his mother should have warned her that it was a touchy subject.
Even when Rome and Italy smarted beneath his proscriptions and extortions, the provinces were undisturbed.
Omar II., however, extended to non-Arabic Moslems immunity from all taxes except the zakat (poor-rate), with the result that a large number of Persians, who still smarted under their defeat, under Mokhtar, embraced Islam and drifted into the towns to form a nucleus of sedition under the Shiite preachers.