BOOK II.

THE ARAB INVASION (622-1058).

 

CHAPTER VI.

MOHAMMED AND THE EMPIRE OF THE ARABS (622-732).

 

Arabia and the Arabs.—Mohammed.—The Hegira (622) ; Struggle with the Koreishites (624); Conversion of Arabia. —The Koran.— The first Caliphs of Persia and of Egypt ; Conquest of Syria (623-640).—Revolution in the Caliphate, Hereditary Dynasty of the Ommiads (661-750).—Conquest of Upper Asia (707) and of Spain (711).

 

We now pass from the forests and rivers of the north of Europe to the sands and deserts in the south of Asia; from the country of clouds, of rains, and of moist vegetation to one of a burning sun, to the consuming and suffocating simoom, and to dry and aromatic plants. The men dwelling in these two countries are as different as their climates. A people sober in body and mind, of a quick and ardent temperament, seeing nothing but their desired goal and going directly toward it, and accustomed to dash through the desert with the swiftness of an arrow, because of the impossibility of stopping there with impunity, and because there was nothing to attract them between the place of departure and that of arrival; a people made either for prompt action or absolute repose—such is the Arab people, and these traits of character are seen in its history.

The Roman Empire was bounded by the Germans on the north and the Arabs on the south. The former had directed their attacks for the most part toward the Empire of the West, and had overthrown it by an invasion prepared and indeed begun long before: the latter, emerging suddenly from their deserts, had made the Empire of the East their special point of attack, and without overthrowing it entirely, had, as it were, with a single blow of their cimeter cut off a large portion. It was by astonishing good fortune that the Empire at Constantinople survived these two attacks coming from opposite directions, like an island in the midst of an inundation.

Arabia, which then appeared for the first time on the stage of history, is a vast peninsula of which some portions are still little known. It is bordered on the north toward Asia by great deserts, and on the northwest is connected with Africa by the isthmus of Suez, where the small peninsula of Sinai projects between the gulfs of Suez and of Akaba. The peninsula of Arabia forms an imperfect square, with the longest side facing Egypt and Abyssinia across the Red Sea and the strait of El Mandeb—the shortest side facing Persia, from which it is separated only by the Persian Gulf. The width is very great, especially at the southern end. A chain of mountains, the continuation of the Lebanon range, extends along the Red Sea to Bab-el-Mandeb, the Gate of Tears. Another range borders the Persian Gulf as far as the Strait of Ormuz. These two mountain systems are connected by a line of hills which run from one strait to the other. The inner slopes of these mountains surround a low and arid valley which forms the center of Arabia, and their outward slopes face the sea and form a girdle of lands, parts of which are rich and fertile, and here the heat of the climate is mitigated by the sea-breezes, the rains, the water­courses, and the numberless irregularities of the land.

While the impossibility of permanently settling or of founding anything durable in the interior has always kept up the nomad life, the advantages offered by the coast lands have given birth to fixed institutions and to a civilization which at times is brilliant enough.

The only knowledge the ancients had of Arabia came through a few scattered Roman expeditions. They divided it into three parts,—Arabia Petraea (the peninsula of Sinai); Arabia Deserta (the deserts which extend from the Red Sea to the Euphrates); and Arabia Felix (Southern Arabia).

The Arabian geographers, on the other hand, do not include either the peninsula of Sinai or the deserts of Suez or of the Euphrates in their country, but consider them as lying outside of Arabia. They divided the rest of the peninsula into eight countries: 1, Hedjaz (Hiyaz), which borders the Red Sea, southeast of the peninsula of Sinai; 2, Yemen, which lies south of Hedjaz; 3, Hadramaut, on the Indian Sea, at the east of Yemen; 4, Mahrah, at the east of Hadramaut; 5, Oman, between Mahrah and the Persian Gulf and the Indian Sea; 6, Haga or Bahrein, on the Persian Gulf, between Oman and the Euphrates; 7, Nedjed, south of the Syrian deserts beween Hedjaz and Bahrein; and 8, Ahkaf, south of Nedjed. The two latter provinces comprise the great valley in the interior of the peninsula.

The most fertile of these provinces is Yemen, which is also well situated for commerce, at the southwestern corner of Arabia between the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. This is the country of Aden, of Sana, of the ancient and wonderful Saba, and of Mocha, famous for its coffee. The best known though not the most fertile of these provinces is Hedjaz, the country of Mecca and of Medina, two cities which ruled all the rest of Arabia through their religious influence, though their situation in the sandy zone, far from the sea, obliged them to have two ports on the Arabian Gulf (Yanbo for Medina, and Djidda for Mecca), in order to derive their means of subsistence from abroad.

The Arabs attribute a double origin to their population: to the Ariba, a primitive race descended from Shem according to some, from Ham according to others, and to the descendants of Abraham, who, according to their traditions, in obedience to the commands of God came to Mecca to found the temple of the Kaaba. They say that Abraham lived many years in Hedjaz, and was aided in his divine mission by Ishmael, who was the founder of the Ishmaelites or the Moutarriba; while his other son Kahtan or Jectan was the father of the Jectanides or the Moustarriba. The Ishmaelites remained iu Hedjaz, the Jectanides settled mainly in Yemen. We must add to these the Nabatean Arabs who live in the north of Arabia, and who are believed to be of Syrian or Aramean origin.

The Arab populations of the north and of the south founded great powers, and came often into contact both in peace and war with foreign powers far and near. The Nabatean kingdoms of Hira, Anbar, and Ghassan were often involved in the affairs of the Roman Empire and of Persia. The Arabs of Hira under the dynasty of the princes Moundhir or Mondar in the sixth century were formidable adversaries of the Greek Empire, while those of Ghassan under the princes of Djafna upheld the cause of Constantinople. By the beginning of the seventh century, these powers were much weakened and contracted between the Greeks and the Persians. The Jectanides brought great renown to Yemen, where one of their branches, the Homerites, had the skill to excite the fertility of the soil by remarkable works of irrigation. The dynasty of the Tobbas played a great part in this province, and tradition, though evidently falsely, attributed to them the conquest of India, of Asia, and of Africa as far as the Atlantic. Under this dynasty of idolaters, Christianity was preached by an envoy sent by Constantine, but at the beginning of the sixth century they persecuted the new religion, and the Greek Emperor Justin I induced the negusch or king of Abyssinia, who was a Christian, to avenge the wrongs of the Cross. The Abyssinians then invaded Yemen (525), and under the viceroy Abraha-el-Djadan, established their dominion and the Christian religion in this country. They had a code of laws drawn up by the Bishop Gregentius, and built at Sana a church with which they tried to oppose the Kaaba of Mecca. A rivalry had indeed always existed between Yemen and Hedjaz, between the Moutarriba and the Moustarriba. In 575 the Abyssinians were driven from the country, but only with the assistance of a Persian army sent by Chosroes, who merely substituted his own dominion for that of the Africans.

In this way the prosperity and the independence of the two outermost regions of Arabia had succumbed together. On the other hand, the central region, which had never wielded so great a power, had at least preserved that liberty without which no progress could be made in Arabia This region had enjoyed that tranquillity which in a great country divided into several states is always assured to those in the center, as they cannot be approached before the outer states which form a natural barrier to them are subdued. The foreign armies which had appeared in the north and the south had not penetrated to Hedjaz. More traces of patriarchal government were found there; the people were divided into tribes composed of a certain number of families, a sheikh (lord) at the head of each family; a supreme sheikh or emir (commander) at the head of each tribe, which he governed with the advice of the sheikhs of the families. In ancient times when a chief took possession of a pasturage he set his pack of hounds barking, and so far as the hound could be heard, so far extended his right of possession. So great simplicity was there in the primitive customs of this people. Nevertheless the population of Hedjaz, though hardly advanced from the primitive condition as far as their institutions are concerned, held a variety and mixture of religious ideas of every sort which prepared them for a brilliant destiny, and compensated for their past obscurity. For another advantage possessed by central states is that they are the meeting-ground of all the others, the point where all intercourse, trade, and ideas converge. Three of the great religions of Asia and Europe, without mentioning idolatry with all its gods, met there : Christianity, which had been carried to the north by the Greeks and to the south by the Abyssinians; Sabianism, brought by the Persians to the north and south, and finally Judaism, which had been introduced everywhere with that faculty the Jews have always possessed of making their way into every country. Three hundred and sixty idols were gathered together in the Kaaba, and when Mohammed turned them out, there was found among the number a Byzantine virgin, painted on a column, holding Christ in her arms. Idolatry was the dominant religion,—not the ingenious idolatry of Greek paganism, which personified the abstractions of the intellect and clothed the gods in human form, but the Egyptian idolatry, the worship of animals, of plants, of the gazelle, of the horse, of the camel, of palm-trees and of rocks. Some worshiped the stars. All indeed, recognized a supreme god, Allah, and this idea of a deity above all others was upheld by the influence of the Jewish and the Christian religions, which also diffused abroad the idea of revelation, of a future life, of paradise, of the infernal regions, etc., elements which are found again in the Koran.

The form of this religion had not changed for a long time. All its ceremonies were determined, processions in the Kaaba, pilgrimages, sacrifices in the valley of Mina, etc. As with the Jews, the care of the temple had been given to one chosen family for many years; in 440 Cossai, head of the Ishmaelite family of the Koreishites, had secured this charge, had rebuilt the temple, and, in a way, founded Mecca and established the principal religious and civil institutions of the Arabs. This showed a tendency toward organization and unity.

A like movement was going on in the language; unity of idiom, so necessary in effecting a great revolution of thought in a vast country, was gradually produced by the influence of the poets. The Arabs were poets as well as warriors and merchants; at least they had their bards, like the men of the north, and their feasts, and their poetical contests, such as were held at the Olympic games of the Greeks.

These poets, who were not merely literary men, but who knew as well how to handle the sword and exchange merchandise as to give voice to the tender and fierce feelings of the human soul, hospitality, revenge, honor, or perhaps the solemn and pleasing scenes of nature, the immense desert, fresh oases, the light gazelle,—these poets hastened to the poetical contests which, with the religious ceremonies, were the object of these pilgrimages. Then what were called con­tests of glory were held, and whoever was most successful in moving the souls of the listeners and in awakening within them a response, saw his work written in letters of gold on costly canvas and hung in the Kaaba. In this way seven poems have come down to us, one of which was written by the famous Antar, who died in 615, during the life of Mohammed, and who best expressed the Arab spirit of his times. It was he who cried one day, at the first recitation of his poems: “What subject is there that the poets have not sung?” as if he felt that Arabia had exhausted one phase of its existence and needed to begin a new life.

The Arabs are generally referred to as a young people: but they were rather an ancient people who had traversed the whole sphere of their political existence, narrow though it was. It could hardly have been otherwise in the midst of this strange mixture of all the divinities in the enclosure of the Kaaba, and it was but natural that the general feeling should be an indifference and scepticism where there were so many altars to choose from. We need only mention as an example the small number of those who took part in the religious struggle at the time of the first preaching of Mohammed; on the one hand, on the side of the prophet a few devoted disciples, on the other a thousand Koreishites who by their title of guardians of the temple necessarily constituted the defenders of the ancient creeds, but who were themselves very incredulous, men of witty, brilliant, and acute minds, scoffers, and without sincere attachment to the beliefs which they defended much more from their interest and habit than from conviction.

Certain men were greatly struck by this general lukewarmness and lack of faith, and sought for means of escape. During a feast celebrated by the Koreishites in honor of one of their idols, a few years before the preaching of Mohammed, four men, more enlightened than the rest of the nation, met by themselves, and, after agreeing that their fellow-country­men were led astray into error, resolved to seek the truth and to ask after it in foreign lands. One of them went to Constantinople to be baptized, a second being persecuted fled into Syria, the third became a Christian like the first, and the fourth just saw Mohammed and died proclaiming that he was the true prophet.

Mohammed was born about the year 570. He was the son of the Koreishite Abdallah, son of Abd-el-Muttalib, who had defended Mecca against the Abyssinians, and who was himself son of Haschim, famous for his distribution of soup during a famine. Having lost his father at two months, and his mother at six years of age, he was taken charge of by his grandfather and put under the guardianship of his uncle Abu-Talib. Being without fortune he became a camel driver and traveled a great deal, especially in Syria, where he is said to have become intimate with a monk of Bostra, and a Jewish rabbi, who both introduced him to their sacred books, the Old and New Testaments. He fought with bravery in a tribal war, and by his amiable qualities gained the affection of all, and by his probity the name of Al-Almin (the trustworthy man). A rich and noble widow, Khadijah, took him into her service as director of her commercial affairs, and he served her interests so well that she married him out of gratitude. From that time he was master of a great fortune, and was able to give himself up to his meditations and to exert that influence which is given by the possession of riches. Until his fortieth year he did nothing really worthy of note, though every year he retired with his family to the mountain of Hira and passed there entire nights in deep meditation.

In 611 he disclosed his projects to Khadijah, to his cousin Ali, to his freedman Seid, and to his friend Abu Bekr, and declared to them the necessity of bringing the religion of Abraham back to its original purity. He told them that he had received commands from God through Gabriel, and gave to his new religion the name of Islam, which signifies a complete resignation to the will of God. They believed in him.

When the growing numbers of the proselytes had spread abroad the report of his undertaking, he assembled them together and said : “Which one of you will be my brother, my lieutenant, my vicar?” No one spoke. Then Ali cried with the enthusiasm of an ardent disciple and the fierceness of an Arab of the desert: “I will be that man; apostle of God, I will support you, and if any one resists you, I will break his teeth, I will tear out his eyes, I will cleave his belly and I will break his legs”. They were engaged in a very dangerous struggle, and Abu-Talib trembled for his nephew and besought him to abandon his plan. “If some one should come to me with the sun in one hand and the moon in the other, I should not draw back”, answered Mohammed. The Koreishites persecuted him, and he could not go into the Kaaba to pray without being overwhelmed with insults. One day he returned home after preaching all day in the midst of outrages; and, dispirited, he wrapped himself in his cloak and threw himself down on his mat; but soon courage for his undertaking returned to him, and he dictated the beautiful surah, where the Angel Gabriel is supposed to say to him : “Arise and preach, O man, who art wrapped up in a cloak...” His adherents were alarmed and took refuge in Abyssinia, and he himself retired to the mountains near Mecca, from 616-619. The surahs or chapters of the Koran (Al-Koran, the book), which he dictated according to the impressions and needs of the moment, and which his secretary wrote on palm-leaves and on the bones of sheep—were certainly impostures as far as concerns the pretended inspiration by the Angel Gabriel. But full of elevated thought as they were, and written in a forcible, pure and musical language, they delighted the Arabs, who were trained by their poetic contests to appreciate such merit, and who, perhaps tired of a poetry which had touched on all the old subjects, found a powerful charm in this eloquence so keen, penetrating, practical, and yet rich in poetical color, although it had thrown off the trammels of rhythm. Omar was one of those savage warriors, one of those men of the sword who cannot bear that any one should believe differently from themselves. He was starting to kill Mohammed it is related when one of his relations stopped him and said he would do better first to cleanse his own house, for his sister Fatima read the verses of the false prophet. He returned home and found her reading with his brother-in-law. “What are you hiding under your clothing?” he cried, and wounded her with his dagger. But at the sight of the blood of his sister, he stopped, and taking the verses glanced at them, and exclaiming, hastened to the prophet to declare himself his disciple. From that time he gave to the councils of Islamism the benefit of his decided and violent spirit, and we may, perhaps, attribute partly to his influence the character of warlike propagandism and conquest with the sword, which the religion of Mohammed, at first more peaceful and mild, now assumes.

Mohammed had lost his protector Abu-Talib in 619, and had also lost Khadijah, whom he always remembered with loyalty and gratitude. Deprived of these supports he looked about for others. The inhabitants of Yatrib, for a long time the rivals of those of Mecca offered him a refuge; and he went to that city in 622 to escape the persecutions of the Koreishites. This year is famous, because it is the first of the Mussulman Era ; it is called the year of the Hegira, or of the flight. From that time Yatrib took the name of the City of the Prophet, Medinat-en-Nebi.

Mohammed had gained much knowledge of men in his youth, and showed great skill in building up a party in his new city and in preparing himself to sustain an open contest. He himself made the first attack, probably in order to prevent the faith of his new proselytes from wasting in inactivity. He started with 306 men to surprise a caravan returning to Mecca. Nearly 1000 Koreishites came out against him. They fought at Bedr (624). The Mussulmans were giving way, when Mohammed, leaving his wooden throne, whence he had been watching the combat, threw himself on his horse and, tossing a handful of sand in the air, cried : “May our enemies be covered with confusion!”. The courage of his troops revived, and they gained a victory which bore great results for his cause.

He was, however, defeated somewhat later at Mount Ohud (625), and the war then assumed a more cruel character. He turned his attack upon the neighboring Jewish tribes, in order to force them to take his part. They combined, and, with the assistance of the Koreishites, laid siege to Medina where he was. This is called the War of the Nations or of the Trench (627). Mohammed had had a trench dug before the city; he himself seized a pickaxe one day and, as the iron drew sparks from the rock, said : “The first spark tells me of the subjection of Yemen, the second of the conquest of Syria, and the third of the conquest of the East”. He succeeded in driving away the besiegers by sowing discord among them, and the advantage thus gained was so considerable that he was able to obtain a truce of ten years from the Koreishites, and to turn his arms against the Jews of Khaibar, five leagues from Medina, whose power he completely destroyed (628).

The following year (629) he went on a pilgrimage to Mecca and made many converts there; and when in 630 this city broke the truce, he entered it with 10,000 men, marched against the temple and destroyed all the idols, saying: “Truth has come, let falsehood disappear!”. From that time he was feared as the great religious chief of Arabia, and he already was entering into relations with foreign states. Chosroes tore his letters in pieces: “Thus may his kingdom be torn to pieces!" cried the Prophet. Heraclius gave a better reception to his messages; nevertheless a war broke out with the Greeks of Syria, who had slain the messenger of the Prophet. This war did not last long, but we already see in it the fanatical courage of the Mussulmans. Djafar, son of Abu-Talib, after losing both hands, still held the banner of Islamism between his arms and received fifty-two wounds in front. For a short time Mohammed thought he should have to carry on a general war; and clothed in a robe of green, the color still worn by his descendants, he started off at the head of 10,000 horse­men, 20,000 foot-soldiers and 12,000 camels, but the enemy did not appear.

The union of Arabia, however, was brought about by the adhesion of the chiefs of Yemen and of Mahrah, the princes of Hadramaut, of Oman, of Bahrain, etc. The character of these adhesions was undoubtedly in general rather political than religious, and these far-off tribes had hardly had the time to inquire minutely into the new religion. The religion of Mohammed did not have preachers who carried the teaching of its dogma and its morality far and wide, like the Christian religion. But buried as almost the whole of Arabia was in religious indifference, these far-off Arabs heard of a powerful chief who had arisen in Hedjaz, and who seemed to promise a brilliant future to Arabia, and they hastened to share in these glories. These conversions were made almost as summarily as that of the Franks under Clovis, and it is certain that many of the soldiers in the first victorious armies which started from Arabia in search of conquest hardly knew anything of the Koran. And though there were these adhesions, there were, on the other hand, oppositions, antagonisms, and the appearance of false prophets, which saddened the last years of the life of Mohammed. After a sickness of several months he went, followed by 114,000 Mussulmans, to the holy places to make the great pilgrimage of El-Haddj. On returning from Medina, as he felt the approach of death, he was carried to the mosque, where he recited the public prayers, and then asked the assembly in a loud voice if he had ever injured any one or was in debt to any one. An old woman claimed three drachmas; he gave them to her, and thanked her for having reminded him of her debt here on earth rather than in heaven. He died on the 8th of June, 632.

The Koran is a collection of all the verses which fell as occasion demanded from the lips of the Prophet, and which were gathered together in a first edition by the orders of the Caliph Abu-Bekr, and in a second by the orders of the Caliph Othman. The method of their composition is shown by their incoherence and by the numberless contradictions which they contain. It is composed of 114 chapters or surahs, which are divided into verses. These verses, containing all the precepts of Islam morality, are inscribed by the Mohammedans upon the walls of their mosques, on their banners, and on their monuments.

What especially characterizes the Koran is a general simplicity and even a certain dearth of imagination. The fervid exaggeration and the forcible images of the East are indeed to be found in it, but only in rare flashes, with no trace of the Indian exuberance or of the wealth of imagination of the European races. This is to be seen in the fundamental principle of their dogma, which is simply this—"God alone is God, and Mohammed is his prophet." The Koran does not acknowledge any lower divinity by the side of Allah, the sole God, the all-powerful Creator; it does not allow of a plurality of persons in Allah, and entirely rejects the idea of God become man. It only teaches that God has been revealed to man by a series of prophets, the last and the most perfect of whom is Mohammed; his predecessors are Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Christ. It also recognizes the existence of angels, messengers of God to the prophets. Mohammed acknowledged that Christ had the power of performing miracles, and owned that he had not received it himself. " When the unbelievers say : 'We will not believe you unless you make a spring of fresh water gush from the earth, or a piece of sky fall on us, or unless you produce God and his angels to bear witness to your words.' .... Reply to them : 'Praise be to God—am I anything but a man and an apostle?' "

The Koran admits the immortality of the soul, but with­out venturing to define its nature. "The knowledge of the Soul is a thing that is reserved to God. Man is only permitted to possess a small part of knowledge." It also acknowledges the resurrection of the body and the participation of this part of our being in the joys and sufferings of a future life. Mounkir and Nebir, black angels with blue eyes, question the dead; Gabriel weighs their deeds in scales large enough to contain the heavens and the earth. Those risen from the dead are led to the bridge Al-Sirat, which is more slender than a hair and sharper than a dagger. Those who are guilty cannot cross it. They fall into the infernal regions which lie below it, and where the least guilty wear shoes of fire, which make their brains seethe as in a caldron. Those who truly believe cross the abyss as quickly as a flash of lightning, and go to dwell in the gardens of the seventh heaven, or paradise. They find there groves which are always fresh and green, pavilions of mother of pearl, of ruby, of hyacinth, limpid streams flowing in yellow amber, diamonds and emeralds, carpets of rich silk, flowers, perfumes, exquisite repasts and black eyed immortal nymphs. Such is the sensual paradise that Mohammed promised to the mass of faithful Mussulmans, but he places the spiritual joys much higher. " The most favored of God is he who shall see his face morning and evening, a rapture which surpasses all the pleasures of the senses, as the ocean surpasses a drop of dew."

This doctrine of rewards and punishments in the future life implies the moral freedom of man, since God can only reward or punish those who have been free to choose between good and evil. Nevertheless Mohammed teaches the opposite dogma of predestination, which destroys this freedom, by declaring that a man is predestined to good or to evil from all Eternity. But this belief was of powerful assistance to him, for why should one try to escape from dangers or death if everything is decided beforehand, if the fate of each is ruled by an unchanging will? Thus the Mussulman, impelled by his passions, called by him the spirit of God, rushed against the enemy, to victory and to the conquest of the world, much" as today, since he has lost his warlike enthusiasm, he sits calm and resigned in the face of the "fire which burns his towns, of the pestilence which decimates his people, and of the Christian civilization which shakes the foundation of his empire, and would utterly overthrow it if it had no interest in its preservation.

The religious law of the Arabs, like that of the Jews, is also their civil law, and the Koran is at the same time the sacred book and the code of the Mussulman. Mohammed reformed Arabian family life. He raised the position of women. Daughters had before inherited nothing; he decreed that each daughter should inherit half as much as was received by each of her brothers. Though maintaining the authority of husbands, he commanded them to be considerate protectors of their wives, and though he permitted polygamy in order to avoid too much collision with the customs of the East, he praised and encouraged those who contented themselves with one wife. The position of woman as a mother also was raised. “A son gains paradise at his mother’s knees”. The rights of the children are protected, and the Koran does away with the frightful custom which permitted parents to bury their daughters alive. If it did not require the abolition of slavery, it at least determined the obligation of the masters toward their slaves, and recommended manumission to them as an act agreeable to God.

The Koran provides severe punishments for theft, usury, fraud, and false testimony, and prescribes the giving of alms. It regulates the religious observances with severity: the fast of Rhamadan; the observance of the four holy months, an ancient custom, which, by a kind of truce of God, suspended all hostilities of the faithful with each other; the great annual pilgrimage to Mecca, which city Mohammed had made the seat of the new religion in order that, instead of disturbing the Arab customs, he might turn them to the profit of Islamism; and the five daily prayers, which were so irksome an obligation, that the false prophet Moseilama was able to draw many followers to himself by simply dispensing with one of these prayers. Ablutions either with water or, if water failed, with the fine sand of the desert, circumcision, the avoidance of wine and of swine flesh, the latter health measures, are also required by the Koran.

It reiterates the doctrine that the faithful are all broth­ers, but also that all who do not believe are enemies. There; is, however, a great distinction made between Christians, Jews, and all the unfaithful who believe in one God and in the last judgment, and idolators, apostates, and schismatics. With the former it is enough to avoid ties of blood, and it is not right to fight with them unless they give the first offense. But as to the latter, it is the duty of every good Mussulman to attack them, pursue them, and to kill them, unless they embrace the religion of the Prophet. 'Ye believers, form no connections with Christians and with Jews." Woe to the Mussulman who stays by his fireside instead of going to war; he cannot escape death, for the term of his life is fixed. Does he fear the burning heat of the combat? "The infernal regions are hotter than the heats of summer." Does he think to turn and flee? "Paradise is before you, behind you the flames of the infernal regions."

These precepts, hopes, and menaces were the powerful motives which sent the Arabs forth, sword in hand, in every direction.

Mohammed did not regulate either the form of the government or the order of succession. The caliph was at the same time the religious, civil, and military chief. Abu-Bekr, whom Mohammed had enjoined to say the prayers in his stead, was recognized as caliph (632), and afterwards chose as his successor Omar (634), who in his turn intrusted this choice to a commission of six important persons. This commission appointed Othman (644), whose weakness gave rise to disturbances in the midst of which Ali mounted the throne (656). Ali, the husband of Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed, had, ever since the death of his father-in-law, been one of the pretendants to the throne, and chief of the party of the Fatimites. These rivalries were perpetuated by the two Mussulman sects, the Schiites or Separatists, who considered Ali and his posterity as unjustly deprived of their rights, and the Sunnites or the conservative party, who recognized Abu-Bekr, Omar, and Othman as legitimate sovereigns. Long and bloody wars resulted from this division. Today the Persians are Schiites and the Turks are Sunnites. After Ali (661) hereditary rule begins with the Ommiades.

This is the period (632-661) of the most rapid and most marvelous conquests of the Arabs.

"Go," said Abu-Bekr to the Arab warriors, "and fight bravely and loyally; do not mutilate those whom you have conquered, or kill the old men, the women and children; do not destroy the palm-trees or burn the crops, or cut down the fruit-trees." Some of these warriors went to the heart of Arabia to put down the false prophets and the tribes who refused to recognize Islamism, others marched against Syria, and others toward the Euphrates and Persia.

The first subdued the interior of the peninsula and thus gave unity to the whole Arab nation.

The second succeeded in six years in conquering Syria from the Byzantine Greeks. They first took Bostra, which was the key to the country toward the desert, and then besieged Damascus. The siege was interrupted by the bat­tle of Aiznadin, where they utterly defeated an army of 70,000 men, sent by the Emperor Heraclius. Damascus capitulated to the General Abu-Obeidah; but the fiery Khalid, who at the same time successfully fought his way through another gate, after three days of truce pursued the fugitives with all the speed of his Arab horses, caught up with them, and utterly destroyed them, returning with their spoils (635). A second victory gained on the banks of the Yermuk in Palestine completed this conquest (636). A Greek army of considerable size had come out against the Mohammedans; three times they fell back, but each time their wives, who were on horseback, bow in hand, at the rear of the army, sent them back to the combat. The Arabian historians undoubtedly exaggerate when they speak of 150,000 enemies slain and 40,000 taken prisoners. Jerusalem opened its gates to the Caliph Omar, who came in person to take possession; he was plainly mounted on a rough-haired camel, and carried in front of him, on his saddle, a bag of wheat, a bag of dates, and a leathern bottle of water, and offered to share his frugal repast with all whom he met. He stayed ten days at Jerusalem in order to regulate the affairs of the country, and to build a mosque, though he allowed the Christians the free exercise of their religion. After Jerusalem, Aleppo, and finally Antioch, the mighty capital of Syria, surrendered, and Heraclius abandoned this country forever (638).

The army which had been sent in the direction of the Euphrates had had no less marvelous a success. Khalid, the first commander, took Hanbar and Hira. His passing into Syria did not diminish his success. Persia, whose power was already declining, tried in vain with 150,000 soldiers to resist 30,000 Arabs, and was defeated in the great battle of Kadesiah, which lasted three days (637). The famous standard of the Sassanides, the leather apron, which recalled their origin, fell into the hands of the Mussulmans. The victors, leaving behind them the colonies of Bussorah and Kufah, hastened to Ctesiphon, which they captured. The victory of Jalula, and that of Nehavend, or the victory of victories, at the south of Ecbatana (642), made Persia subject to them. Ispahan was conquered, Persepolis sacked, and Yezdegerd, the king of Persia, just escaped being taken prisoner in the midst of his falling palace. He went in search of aid as far as China, but in vain, and was assassinated on the shore of the Oxus (652), and Khorassan became subject to the Arabs.

While the overthrow of the great King was being effected, Egypt was subjugated. There, as in Syria, it was the Eastern Empire that suffered the attack. Amru, chief of the Arabs, skillfully took advantage of the hatred which the

Copts or the natives felt toward the Greeks, whom they considered as foreigners and heretics. His progress was not checked till he reached Alexandria, which held out against him fourteen months. It has not been proved that Amru gave the order to burn the precious library of this rich and learned city. On the contrary we see Amru organizing the government of the country with wisdom, substituting a more just system of taxation for the capitation, and reserving one-third of these taxes for the preservation of the canals and ditches, and also reviving the ancient project of the Pharaohs, the Ptolemys, and the Caesars, of connecting the Nile and the Red Sea, a project which was, however, abandoned in the fear of opening to the infidels a way to the sacred cities.

The intestine quarrels that filled and followed the Cali­phate of Ali brought the conquests of the Arabs to a halt, for the time being. Ali, the leading representative of the Hashimites and of Mohammed saw arise against him a Koreishite reaction which had already shown itself in the election of Othman. Moawijah was the leader of the movement; he governed Syria, where this party was strongest, while Ali was established at Kufah, in Irak-Arabi (Babylonia), a country devoted to his cause. After several bloody contests Moawijah had the caliph assassinated by three fanatics, and the hereditary dynasty of the Ommiades began, which lasted 90 years (661-750). Under this dynasty, Damascus became the capital of the Empire. From that time the character of the government changed and became more despotic; though it must be borne in mind that it had to do with a very different people from the Arabs of Hedjaz.

The institutions and the faith of the Mohammedans un­derwent various modifications; while some on the one hand gave themselves up to luxury and disobeyed the precepts of their religion, others by a natural reaction formed the fanatical and gloomy sects of the Kharegites, the Motazelites, the Kadonians, etc., the puritans of Islamism, who struggled against the Ommiades with indomitable energy. The dynasty was only established by rivers of blood, and more especially by the victories of the valiant Hojiaj in the reign of Abd-el-Melek. A second and last period of conquests began in his reign.

In the east the conquest of Transoxiana, of the ancient Sogdiana and the shores of the Indus (707) carried the dominion of the Mussulman to the limits of the empire of Alexander. The Arabs found at this extreme end of their empire, at Bokhara and at Samarcand (707), the fruits from the seeds of civilization left there by the Greek conquerors, and they did not allow this growing prosperity to perish.

They advanced also in the direction of Asia Minor and of Constantinople. So far they had only fought on land, but the Syrian dynasty of the Ommiades gave them a maritime power, the elements of which they found in the conquered provinces of Phoenicia and Cilicia. In 672 they began a series of attacks upon Constantinople itself, and carried them on for seven years, but were driven away by the Greek fire, an invention of a Syrian, which had the terrible property of burning in water. This bold enterprise, which threatened to destroy all that was left of the Roman Empire, was renewed in 717 under the Caliph Soliman. An army of 120,000 men crossed Asia Minor and the Hellespont and stationed themselves before Constantinople, which a fleet of 1800 sail was besieging at the same time. Again the Greek fire caused the attempt to fail, and the Arab invasion in this direction was given up. Their retreat decided that the Eastern Empire should live some centuries longer.

The Arabs were summoned to Africa by the natives, who were overwhelmed by the tributes imposed by the Romans. Akbah hastened thither and advanced as far as the Atlantic, where he urged his horse into the waves. He founded Kairowan at the south of Carthage, twelve miles from the coast (670). The Arabs feared the Roman fleet, but the desert, their domain, had no terror for them. Akbah yielded to the attacks of the Moors. But Hassan, under the Caliph Abd-el-Melek (692-698), established the dominion of the Arabs over the whole length of the African sea-coast by the conquest of Carthage, which was consigned to the flames and has never been rebuilt. A last insurrection of the Moors, led by their Queen Kahina, was put down in 709, and the Arabs then turned their attention to the countries beyond the strait of Hercules.

Tarik crossed this strait in 711 and gave it the name of Gibraltar (Djebel-Tarik, Mountain of Tarik). These Arabs encountered here for the first time the barbarians of the north. They found in Spain the Visigoth monarchy in an enfeebled condition, torn by discord and allowing the walls of its fortifications to fall to pieces. They were aided by the powerful Count Julian, Governor of Ceuta, and by the Archbishop of Seville, who wished to overthrow King Roderic; and were victorious at the battle of Xeres, on the banks of the Guad-al-Lete. Roderic is said to have perished in the waters of the Guadalquivir, when trying to make his escape (711). This three days' battle put an end to the kingdom of the Visigoths, but it was eight years before the Arabs succeeded in subjugating the peninsula as far as the mountains of Asturia, where Pelayo, a Visigothic chief, kept his independence. In 720 they occupied Septimania as a dependency of the Gothic kingdom. Thus they had crossed the Pyrenees, another mighty barrier, and Gaul lay opened before them. It was now a question whether or not they would succeed in conquering it as they had done

Asia, Africa, and Spain, and in destroying with a single blow the German states and the Christian religion. They had already pushed their cavalry as far as Sens, and the Berber Munuza had already settled in Septimania and married the daughter of the Duke of Aquitaine. This was a solemn moment in the history of the world. The question was decided in the famous plains between Tours and Poitiers, where the powerful Austrasian infantry of Charles Martel, like a wall of iron, resisted the fiery horsemen of Arabia, of Syria, and of Magrib (732).

Thus the Arab invasion found its bounds on the banks of the Indus, at the entrance to Asia Minor, and at the Pyrenees. Like the German invaders the Arabs settled in their conquered countries, and there arose in the face of the western and Christian civilization, a civilization which was entirely Eastern and Mussulmanic. The Byzantine Empire, escaping from the torrents which rushed past on either side, thanks to its position and to the walls of its capital, existed between the two new worlds like a pale image of the ancient Roman world.

 

CHAPTER VII.

DISMEMBERMENT, DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ARABIAN EMPIRE (755-1058).

 

Accession of the Abbasides (750), and foundation of the Caliphate of Cordova (755).—Caliphate of Bagdad (750-1058).—Almanssur, Haroun-al-Rashid, Al-Mamun.—Creation of the Turkish Guards. Decline and dismemberment of the Caliphate of Bagdad.—Africa; Fatimite Caliphate (968).—Spain; Caliphate of Cordova.—Arabian Civilization.

 

It was just a century after Mohammed’s death when Charles Martel, in 732, forced the Arabian invaders to retrace their steps; in one hundred years the Arabs had spread from the Indies to the Pyrenees. To give their boundaries more exactly, their empire reached, on the east, as far as the Indus and the Vale of Cashmir; on the north their boundary line followed the steppes of Turkestan, the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus, which Islamism had already crossed, then a line drawn obliquely from the eastern point of the Black Sea to Tarsus, beyond which lay their tributaries, Pontus and Cappadocia; the Mediterranean, where they occupied Rhodes, Cyprus, and the Balearic Islands; finally the southern Cevennes and the Pyrenees, excepting the little kingdom of Pelayo; on the west their boundary was the Atlantic Ocean;—on the south, the deserts of Africa, Ethiopia, and the Indian Ocean as far as the mouths of the Indus.

This empire was more than four thousand miles in length; no empire in antiquity had attained to so great a size. But this great belt was soon cut into three parts by the Abbassides in Asia, the Ommiades in Spain and the Fatimites in Africa. Thus, while the German invasion, carried on at different times and by different methods, without plan or unity of direction reached under Charlemagne’s influence an organized result, the Arab invasion, the outcome of a single, common idea, accomplished at one blow and under one impulse, fell into a state of utter disorganization.

The extreme weakness of the Arabian Empire was due not only to the extent of its territory but also to its institutions and its dynasties. There had been a purely Arabian period under the first four successors of Mohammed, and a Syrian period under the Ommiades; now came a Persian period under the Abbassides, and after that a Turkish period, each subject people claiming in turn the supreme power, as is generally the case in great empires formed by conquest, and as was the case in the Roman Empire.

The Ommiades of Damascus had begun to arouse a certain civilization in Syria, steeped as it was in all the ancient civilizations, as is shown by the celebrated mosque, one of the wonders of the world, which Valid I had built at Damascus and which Tamerlain destroyed; nevertheless, conquest was the distinguishing characteristic of that period. On the other hand, peaceful employments, industry, and the cultivation of the sciences characterized the period that followed.

The Ommiades, who were perverted, wine-drinking Mohammedans, belonged, in fact, neither to the Arabs who had remained in their native peninsula, nor to those who had settled in large numbers in Irak (ancient Babylonia). This country was an Arabia on a small scale, where the worship of Islam and the attachment to the Prophet's family were kept up in all their purity. The descendants of Ali preserved together with their pretensions great influence over these tribes. But though they were men of virtue and fine character, the Alides had not in general the talents necessary to enforce the recognition of their rights. A family of their party, and one which pretended to be connected with them by blood, undertook this on their own account; this was the Abbas family. The Abbassides, taking advantage of a disturbance during which Merwan II. ascended the throne (744), stirred up a revolt in Khorassan, where their influence reigned supreme, and in Irak, where the Alides, although rivals, welcomed them out of hatred for the Ommiades. They took black for their color, because white was the color of the Ommiades, and the two opposing parties were distinguished by their colors. Merwan was defeated on the banks of the Zab, a tributary of the Tigris, and his head was cut off (750). The triumph of the Abbassides was signalized by horrible acts of vengeance. The Ommiades and their adherents were murdered by the thousand. Ninety of their chiefs were invited to a banquet on the pretext of a reconciliation. In the midst of the feast, a poet appeared, not an Antar singing of combats, love, hospitality and glory, but a gloomy and awe-inspiring poet; “Abdallah”, said he to the uncle of Abbas, who was presiding at the feast, “remember Al-Husein, remember Zaidi. Husein was assassinated and his corpse, dragged through the squares of Damascus, was trampled beneath the feet of horses, Zaidi, the son of Husein, conquered by Hescham the Ommiad, was strangled before his eyes, and his body was exposed like a vile criminal's. Remember your friends, remember your brothers. Hasten: this is the moment for your just vengeance!” He finished speaking; an executioner appeared behind each of the Ommiades; they were struck down, and their still palpitating bodies were covered with planks and carpets. Then, on this bloody platform, the feast went on (750). The tombs of the caliphs of Damascus were opened, the bones found there were burned, and the ashes thrown to the winds. Abul-Abbas acquired in this way his name of El-Saffah—the bloody.

One Ommiad, however, escaped; the young Abderrahman; he hid himself first with the Bedouins of Barcah, in Egypt, and then with the Zenetes, until he was called to rule by the Arabs of Spain.

The armies of Islam were composed of very varied elements; in the army which invaded Spain, there were doubtless many pure Arabs, but there were also Syrians, Egyptians and Berbers, and they settled separately, in distinct bands, in the conquered territory; this explains, though it is anticipating somewhat, the fall of the caliphate of Cordova. At Cordova the royal legion of Damascus had established itself. It was these Syrian Arabs, faithful to the Syrian family of the Ommiades, who delivered Spain into the hands of Abderrahman (755). He assumed the title of Emir-al-Moumenin (chief of the believers), and founded the Caliphate of the West.

The Abbassides, though deprived by this dismemberment of the western extremity of their empire, still reigned over Asia and over Africa, though it, too, was to follow the example of Spain, fifty years later. The first of the Abbassides, the sanguinary Abul-Abbas, reigned only four years. His brother Abu-Giaffar Almanssur, or the victorious, succeeded him (754-775). He had to fight against his uncle Abdallah, one of principal promoters of the fortunes of their house. He took him prisoner, and, as he had sworn not to kill him by the sword or by poison, he crushed him under a falling ceiling. After this act of cruel perfidy, which gave him absolute control, he reigned wisely. It was he who gave the Arabian Empire its third and celebrated capital Bagdad (762), situated on the banks of the Tigris, near the old Seleucia and built around a hill which was crowned by the pavilion of the Caliphs; it was defended from attacks without by a brick enclosure, fortified with 163 towers. Immense sums were spent on its decoration. In that stronghold of despotism, which the ghosts of the Persian kings, the great kings, still seemed to haunt, the Caliphs of the East acquired a more and more absolute authority and began to claim for themselves divine attributes, following the Oriental custom of the worship of the sovereign. A pompous court, officers of all kinds, and a prime minister called the Vizier (bearer of the burden), relieved the sovereign from all the cares of government and of the administration of justice, but they also separated him from his subjects. His primitive simplicity was exchanged for the luxury taught by the magnificent Persian palaces. He accumulated vast wealth, still following in the steps of the Persian kings. Almanssur's treasure amounted, it was said, to 150 millions of dollars. His son Mahdi spent six million dinars (a dinar is worth about two dollars) in a single pilgrimage to Mecca. What had become of Omar with his bag of dates and his leather bottle of water?

The most famous of the Caliphs of Bagdad was Haroun-al-Rashid (the Just) also called the Victorious (786-809). His name is familiar even in Europe, as well as that of his faithful vizier, Giaffar. We shall see farther on his relations with Charlemagne. He made eight invasions of the Eastern Empire, conquered successively Irene and the usurper Nicephorus, forbade the Greeks ever to rebuild the town of Heraclius on the Pontus, which he had destroyed, and laid upon them a tribute which they were obliged to pay in money stamped with his image. But even while he was waging war on them, he borrowed from them their science and their books, and made them popular among the Arabs by the protection he accorded to scholars.

His son, Al-Mamun, was still more eminent in this respect (813-833). He founded many schools and an academy, and spent enormous sums in the encouragement of science and literature.

Almanssur, Haroun-al-Rashid and Al-Mamun are the three great names of the Eastern Caliphate. Motassem, who came after them (833-842), although victorious in the wars he had to sustain against the Greek Empire, prepared the way for fall of the Abbassides, by forming a guard of 50,000 Turkish slaves, bought in Tartary. They proved masters, rather than slaves. This body of soldiers disposed at their will of the throne and the lives of the caliphs, who, surrounded by plots and menaces, developed a marvelous cruelty.

Motawakkil (847) is a typical representative of them; he ordered a vizier who had offended him to be roasted alive in a furnace lined with iron spikes; he invited all the officers of his court to a feast, and had them massacred, to prevent a plot against him; he allowed wild and ferocious beasts to run wild in his palace, and the courtiers were forbidden to protect themselves from them. He was finally assassinated by his son Muntassir (861). His successor was poisoned. Another was murdered. The palace of the caliphs became the scene of bloody tragedies, unrelieved by any generous sentiments. It is the old story of despots who surround themselves with a special and permanent military force whose duty it is to guard them: the soldiers soon take the law into their own hands and enforce it with the sword; witness the Praetorians at Rome, the Isaurians at Constantinople, and the Strelitz at Moscow. In the midst of this anarchy the caliphate of Bagdad fell to pieces. Africa had already broken away in the time of Haroun-al-Rashid. Even in Asia independent dynasties were springing up on all sides— founded generally by the Turks who had been made governors of provinces.

In this way the Turks were introduced little by little into Asia, which had been galvanized rather than resuscitated by the electric current of Arabian invasion. We have seen how, at the end of the Roman Empire, the barbarians were really governing it, though they appeared to be its servants, and then how, throwing aside the mask, they seized it openly by means of invasion and declared themselves its masters; in the same way the Turks first gained a footing in the caliphate as soldiers of the caliphs, and, when they had them completely in their power even to the point of disposing of their throne, and their lives, they degraded them and established themselves openly in their place.

The dynasty of the Gaznevides sprang from the province of Gazna (997). Mahmud, the son of the founder, took the new title of Sultan, subjugated Khorassan and Kowarism, laid a tribute upon the people of Georgia, sent twelve terrible expeditions into the country between the Indus and the Ganges, conquered Delhi and Lahore, and by his victories carried the religion of the Koran to all the peoples of Hindostan, who had become tributary to him. After him all this vast dominion came into the possession of a new horde from the north. He had established the Turkomans in the eastern part of Persia, and they revolted after his death, led by Seldjuk, who defeated Mahmud's son Masud and established the Seldjuk dynasty in the midst of the empire of the caliphs. Togrul-Beg, the grandson of Seldjuk, completed the revolution which deprived the Arabian race of their rule over the East (1058). The Caliph Kaim, reigning at Bagdad, when threatened by him sought his protection, and delegated to him all temporal power over the States of Islam, keeping for himself only the spiritual power. He placed on his head two crowns, emblematic of the power with which he was invested over Arabia and Persia, and girded him with a magnificent sword. The prince was then clothed successively with seven robes of honor, and the caliph gave him seven slaves born in the seven countries of the Empire, while he was proclaimed sovereign over the East and the West.

Africa, as has been said, soon broke away from the Caliphate of Bagdad. The Aglabides of Kairowan (800-999) were masters of the Mediterranean in the ninth and tenth centuries, and established themselves in Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily, besides making several attacks on Italy. To guard against them Pope Leo IV enclosed the neighborhood of the Vatican (Leonine City) with a rampart. To the west of the Aglabides, the Edrissites gained their independence at Fez (789-919).

But the greatest of the Mussulman dynasties in Africa was that of the Fatimites, which absorbed the other two. Ever since the Alides had seen the caliphate taken away from them by the Abbassides, in spite of their legitimate claims, they had sought to enforce those claims elsewhere than in Asia. A family, pretending to descend from Ali and Fatima, superseded the Aglabides at Kairowan in 909, and established themselves in Egypt under their chief Moez (968). “Of what branch of the family of Ali are you?” he was asked. “These are my ancestors”, he replied, pointing to his scimitar, “and these my children”, he added, as he threw some gold to his soldiers. The Fatimites brought about not merely a political but a religious schism. They assumed the title of caliph, and made their residence at Cairo, which they built, and whence their rule extended over all northern Africa, Syria, and even over Bagdad for a brief space, about the time of Togrul-Beg's invasion. Fanaticism prevailed over all this country; the names of Ali and of the successors of Moez were the only ones invoked in the mosques of Africa. The schism was pushed to such a point that the Fatimite Caliph Hakim, a cruel tyrant, perverting the Mohammedan religion, insisted on being adored as the incarnation of God. Driven from Cairo, he carried his divinity into Syria, where his doctrine, a unitarian religion, is still in force among the Druses. The Fatimites brought prosperity to Egypt and Egypt in return gave them great wealth; they built superb mosques and made Cairo a center of science and literature, as Bagdad was in the East, and Cordova in the West.

The Caliphate of Cordova had as brilliant and as transient a career as the other two. The Arabs had shown great moderation in the conquest of Spain. The Christians had everywhere not only liberty of worship but also their laws and their judges. Councils were held by them with the consent of the caliphs of Cordova. The tribute exacted of them was in no way oppressive. Above all, the Jews, whom the Visigoths had treated with extreme severity, were now unmolested and were even treated with favor, there were some revolts— the most formidable of which took place in Toledo, which mourned the loss of its title of capital and center of the government, but except for these, the conquered mingled very generally with the conquerors and formed a mixed population, the Mozarabes. The caliphs of Cordova rarely had to fight for their power over the peoples of central and southern Spain, and they were soon able to display in peace the brilliant qualities which most of them possessed. Abderrahman I (755), Hescham I (787), Abderrahman II (822), Al-Hakam II (961), were able sovereigns absorbed in caring for the happiness of their people, patrons of literature, and rich in the treasures which the fertile and well-cultivated soil of Spain yielded in profusion. Abderrahman I wept at the sight of a Syrian palm he had had brought to Spain, and which reminded him of his native country whence he had been forced to fly. Another made it his duty to perform some manual labor for an hour every day.

Nevertheless, during these reigns the Christians were encroaching upon the Arabian Empire from the north. Pippin the Short seized Septimania (759); Charlemagne established his power south of the Pyrenees as far as the Ebro (812), whence afterwards sprang the little Christian States of Barcelona and Aragon; while the Christians of Asturia held their ground and increased, though imperceptibly; so that, as we shall see farther on, there stretched across the northern part of the peninsula a belt of independent Christian people, who were later to drive out the Mussulmans.

The Walis, or governors of provinces, had already sought under Mohammed I (852) to make themselves independent, and had sometimes succeeded; while under the lead of Ibn-Hafson, Jewish and Berber bandits, from their hiding-place in the mountains of Aragon, began an insurrection which it took eighty years to subdue.

Abderrahman III (912-961), whose reign was the most brilliant in the annals of the Cordova caliphate, restored the sway of the Arabs by subduing Ibn-Hafson and his sons, and by his signal victories over the Christians of Asturia. This access of power was sustained until the reign of Hescham II by the genius of the prime minister, Almanzor, who drove the Christians back beyond the Douro and the Ebro, which they had crossed. But Almanzor carried with him to the tomb the power of the caliphs of Cordova (1002).

In the eleventh century the Caliphate of the West fell a prey to anarchy and confusion, in which the African guard of the caliphs, like the Turkish guard at Bagdad, took a prominent part, and during which the Walis shook off their yoke. In 1010 Murcia, Badajoz, Grenada, Saragossa, Valencia, Seville, Toledo, Carmona, and Algeziras had become so many independent principalities. In 1031, Hescham, the last of the Ommiades, was deposed and retired with joy into obscurity; in 1060, even the title of Caliph had disappeared.

Such was the fate of the Arabian Empire in the three portions of the world—Asia, Africa, and Europe : first a sudden and irresistible expansion, then at the end of a few centuries division and general decay. The Empire had been built too quickly to endure. As their poets improvised brilliant poems, so they improvised a gigantic dominion. No one can say that it has entirely perished who has seen the religion, the language, and the laws of the Koran still reigning over the greater part of the country formerly included in the Arabian Empire. Moreover, it handed down to the Europe of the Middle Ages discoveries, arts, and sciences, often borrowed, it is true, from other peoples, but the mere propagation of which sheds a luster over the Arabian name.

In fact, while Europe was lost in the darkness of barbarian ignorance scarce pierced by a single ray, the capitals of Islamism were flooded with a great light of literature, philosophy, arts, and industry. Bagdad, Samarcand, Damascus, Cairo, Kairowan, Fez, Grenada, and Cordova were so many great intellectual centers.

We have seen that the Arabs, before they left their peninsula, already possessed a poetical literature which found expression in two distinct dialects, the Homerite or Himyarite in Yemen, the Koreisch in Hedjaz. The latter was used by Mohammed and gained the preponderance. It has come down to us in all its purity, as the language of learning and religion, or literary Arabian, while, as the language of the people, it has undergone numerous changes, resulting from the diversity of the peoples subjugated to Islamism, and from the lapse of ages. This language is exceedingly rich in certain respects. The Arab poets had an inexhaustible supply of synonyms at their command to express, from every point of view and in every varying condition, the objects which their life in the desert brought continually before their eyes and offered to their use. They boasted of having 80 different terms to express honey, 200 for the serpent, 500 for the lion, 1000 for the camel, as many for the sword, and about 4000 to express the idea of misfortune. An extraordinary memory was necessary to permit of their making use of such a multitude of words, and the rawia or Arabian rhapsodists possessed such memories; one of them, Hammad, offered one day to recite to the Caliph Walid consecutively 100 poems of from 20 to 100 verses each, and of fanciful construction, and the illustrious auditor was more quickly tired by it than the indefatigable reciter.

Though at first addicted to lyrical literature, after their conquests the Arabs enlarged the horizon of their minds, when they mingled with a people more advanced in civilization. In their contact with the Persians, the Grecianized Egyptians, and even the Greeks of Constantinople, they acquired that rich intellectual development which has always been rather energetical than creative. They became acquainted with the writings of Aristotle through the later ramifications of the Alexandrian school, which had become peripatetic toward its end, and, with a wonderful fervor, applied themselves to commenting on his great philosophical works. Al-Kindi, who is regarded as the father of philosophy among the Arabs, and who taught in Bagdad in the ninth century, professed the theories of the Stagirite philosopher. Al-Farabi, who followed him and who was also of the Bagdad school, wrote sixty separate treatises on the works of Aristotle. Unfortunately they did not read the writings of the Greek philosopher in the original, but only in Syriac versions from which they made Arabic translations. Accordingly, when they handed these writings over to the Christian Europe of the Middle Ages, which obtained a knowledge of the most of Aristotle's works through them only, many new variations crept in, because the Europeans were obliged, in their turn, to translate them again.

It may be added in connection with Aristotle that the Arabs carried on the debates on great philosophical problems which have always agitated the human mind. Avicenna (died 1037) represented God as a motionless being at the center of nature, and exerting scarcely any influence upon it; according to others, Avicenna was a pantheist. Gazali, on the contrary, after going through all the systems appeared, after a period of scepticism, in the mystic school of the Soufis, and wrote his book on the "Destruction of the Philosophers." The excitement stirred up by these disputes gave rise to a host of sects in Jslamism. The one most inspired by a philosophic spirit' was the sect of the Motazilites, a kind of Islamic protestants, who laid great stress on the human reason, and who were under the protection of some of the Abbassid caliphs. Al-Mamun, especially, brought up as he was by the Persian family of the Barmecides, encouraged them; while others, whose ideas extended in the same direction with Gazali, formed numerous fanatical sects. While this confusion of ideas and beliefs prevailed in the midst of the Eastern Caliphate the study of philosophy was revived in the Western Caliphate by Ibn-Badja and by Ibn-Tofail, who wrote that curious psychological romance of the Autodidactus, or the Natural Man, in which he supposes a child thrown upon a desert island at its birth and there growing to manhood, who comes by himself to the knowledge of nature, not only in its physical but also in its metaphysical aspect and even of God. Later, in the twelfth century, the study of philosophy had a fresh impulse given it under the Almohades by Averroes, who was so famous in the Middle Ages because it was from him that the Christian peoples received their direct knowledge of the greater part of Aristotle's works.

The Arabs had better success in the exact sciences, owing to the scholars who were attracted from Constantinople by the caliphs, and especially by the second of the Abassid caliphs, Almanssur. As early as the first half of the ninth century, two astronomers of Bagdad measured, in the plains near the Red Sea, a degree of the meridian. Soon a commentary on Euclid, a corrected edition of the tables of Ptolemy, a more exact calculation of the obliquity of the ecliptic and the precession of the equinoxes, a more precise knowledge of the difference between the solar year and the sidereal year, and the invention of new and exact instruments, bore witness to the aptitude of the Arabs for the exact sciences; and Samarcand, long before Europe, had a very fine observatory. Yet it is a mistake to ascribe to them, as is often done, the invention of algebra and of the so-called Arabic numbers which we use. They only handed down to Europe these two valuable instruments of our mathematics, as they did the Aristotelian philosophy, borrowing them from the work of other nations. It is possible that we inherit from them, under a like title, the mariner's compass and gunpowder, which they may have borrowed from the Chinese. Europe owes to them also the use of linen paper, which first lowered the price of manuscripts, and afterwards, when printing had been discovered, made its benefits more accessible and more quickly felt.

They excelled in the practice of medicine; and in that, too, they learned much from the Greeks, as can be seen from the treatises on Galen by Averroes. Many of their great philosophers were physicians also,—Avicenna, for instance, and Averroes, whom we have just mentioned. The Arabian physicians had such a reputation that a king of Castile, who was troubled with dropsy, wished to be treated for it at Cordova, and through the courtesy of the caliph obtained permission to recover his health among his enemies. They taught us the process of distillation and the uses of rhubarb; they discovered alcohol and many new remedies and medicaments, the use of manna, of senna, camphor, mercury, syrups, etc.

Geography is one of the sciences that owes most to the Arabs; their great conquests, their taste for travel and adventure, their enforced pilgrimages gave them an exact knowledge of many distant lands that had never been vis­ited by Europeans or else had been forgotten by them. Among these men the first in rank were Abulfeda, Masudi, and particularly Edrisi, who was called to the court of Roger, King of Sicily, and there composed his curious work, entitled: “Diversions of a man desirous of becoming thoroughly acquainted with the different countries of the world”. In the line of history, the annals of Masudi, Makusi, and Abulfeda may be mentioned. But the Arabian historians were little given to criticism or analysis, and rarely stated anything beyond bare facts.

Of the fine arts, they cultivated architecture alone, as the law of their religion forbade the representation of the human form, and so cut off the possibility of sculpture and painting. This prohibition itself gave a peculiar character to their architecture, though little invention was shown in it, as its principal element was borrowed from the Byzantine architecture, that is, the more than semicircular [or horse­shoe] arch borne on pillars—what really belongs to them are the arabesques by which they supplied the places of painted OV sculptured figures in their ornamentation. They were originally inscriptions with a meaning; later the sense disap­peared and they were merely combinations of lines borrowed from the Arabic letters, which lend themselves readily to the formation of the rich designs that we admire in the carpets and stuffs of the East. As regards the pretended Arabic origin of the pointed architecture, it is now known that nothing is more erroneous than this supposition. The characteristics of Arabic architecture are the magnificence and luxury of the interiors of their buildings, and the profusion of basins and fountains of gold and precious stones, which they obtained from the East and the mines of southern Spain. One of the most magnificent monuments of this kind was the famous mosque built by Abderrahman I at Cordova, with its 1093 marble columns and its 4700 lamps; another, no less splendid, was the palace of Al-Tehra (Flowers), which Abderrahman built upon the banks of the Guadalquivir for one of his favorites, and where a jet of mercury fell sparkling into a shell of porphyry. The Alhambra, at once a palace and a fortress, can still be seen and admired at Grenada, and many parts of it, especially the so-called court of the Lions, are models of architectural beauty and splendor.

The Arabs have always been merchants by nature, and when their power extended from the Pyrenees to the Himalayas, they easily became the most considerable merchants of the world. No one knew so well as those inhabitants of the desert how to make the best use of water in the work of cultivation, under their burning sun. The system of irrigation instituted by them, and still preserved in the plain of Valencia, the garden of Spain, might serve as a model to the agriculturists of our own times. When they went to the great Roman cities and became acquainted with works of industry, they developed great skill as artisans. The reputation of Toledo for its arms, Granada for its silks, Cuenca for its blue and green cloths, and Cordova for harnesses, saddles and leather goods, spread throughout Europe, and these products of infidel industry brought the highest prices. Spain especially profited by this time of splendor, as she was more peaceful than the East during the first centuries of the Caliphate. Her population was large; Cordova alone is said to have had 200,000 houses, 600 mosques, 50 hospitals, 80 public schools, 900 public baths, and a million inhabitants.

We have given here a brief sketch of the civilization which was diffused by the Arabs from the Tagus to the Indus, a civilization brilliant but unstable; while that of Europe, though slower in its development and suffering many convulsions and eclipses, has had the long continued existence which is reserved for all slow and labored growth.