Part 676

"The deeds of Musa [in Africa and Spain] had been performed 'in the evening of his life,' but, to borrow the words of Gibbon, 'his breast was still fired with the ardor of youth, and the possession of Spain was considered as only the first step to the monarchy of Europe. With a powerful armament by sea and land, he was preparing to pass the Pyrenees, to extinguish in Gaul the declining kingdoms of the Franks and Lombards, and to preach the unity of God on the altar of the Vatican. Thence, subduing the barbarians of Germany, he proposed to follow the course of the Danube from its source to the Euxine Sea, to overthrow the Greek or Roman empire of Constantinople, and, returning from Europe to Asia, to unite his new acquisitions with Antioch and the provinces of Syria.' This vast enterprise … was freely revolved by the successors of Musa. In pursuance of it, El Haur, the new lieutenant of the califs, assailed the fugitive Goths in their retreats in Septimania (715-718). El Zamah, who succeeded him, crossed the mountains, and, seizing Narbonne, expelled the inhabitants and settled there a colony of Saracens (719). The following year they passed the Rhone, in order to extend their dominion over Provence, but, repelled by the dukes and the militia of the country, turned their forces toward Toulouse (721). Eudo, Duke of Aquitain, bravely defending his capital, brought on a decisive combat. … El Zamah fell. The carnage among his retreating men then became so great that the Arabs named the passage from Toulouse to Carcassone the Road of Martyrs (Balat al Chouda). Supporting their terrible reverses with the characteristic resignation of their race and faith, the Arabs were still able to retain a hold of Narbonne and of other fortresses of the south, and, after a respite of four years, spent in recruiting their troops from Spain and Africa, to resume their projects of invasion and pillage in Gaul (725). Under the Wali Anbessa, they ascended the Rhone as far as the city of Lyons, devastating the towns and the fields. … When, … at the close of his expeditions, Anbessa perished by the hands of the Infidels, all the fanaticism of the Mussulman heart was aroused into an eager desire for revenge. His successor, Abd-el-Rahman, a tried and experienced general, energetic and heroic as he was just and prudent, … entered into elaborate preparations for the final conquest of Gaul. For two years the ports of Syria, Egypt, and Africa swarmed with departing soldiery, and Spain resounded with the calls and cries to arms (727-729)." The storm broke first on Aquitaine, and its valiant Duke Eudes, or Eudo, rashly meeting the enemy in the open field, in front of Bordeaux, suffered an irretrievable defeat (May, 731). Bordeaux was stormed and sacked, and all Aquitaine was given up to the ravages of the unsparing Moslem host. Eudes fled, a helpless fugitive, to his enemies the Franks, and besought the aid of the great palace-mayor, Karl Martel, practical sovereign of the Frankish kingdoms, and father of the Pippin who would soon become king in name as well as in fact. But, not for Aquitaine, only, but for all Gaul, all Germany,—all Christendom in Europe,—Karl and his Franks were called on to rally and do battle against the sons of the desert, whose fateful march of conquest seemed never to end. "'During all the rest of the summer, the Roman clarions and the German horns sounded and groaned through all the cities of Neustria and Austrasia, through the rustic palaces of the Frankish leudes, and in the woody gaus of western Germany.' … Meanwhile, Abel-el-Rahman, laden with plunder and satiated with blood, had bent his steps toward the southwest, where he concentrated his troops on the banks of the Charente. Enriched and victorious as he was, there was still an object in Gaul which provoked alike the cupidity and the zeal of his followers. This was the Basilica of St. Martin of Tours, the shrine of the Gallic Christians, where the richest treasures of the Church were collected, and in which the profoundest veneration of its members centred. He yearned for the pillage and the overthrow of this illustrious sanctuary, and, taking the road from Poitiers, he encountered the giants of the North in the same valley of the Vienne and Clain where, nearly three hundred years before, the Franks and the Wisigoths had disputed the supremacy of Gaul. There, on those autumn fields, the Koran and the Bible—Islamism and Christianity—Asia and Europe—stood face to face, ready to grapple in a deadly and decisive conflict. … {2075} Trivial skirmishes from time to time kept alive the ardor of both hosts, till at length, at dawn on Saturday, the 11th of October [A. D. 732], the signal for a general onset was given. With one loud shout of Allah-Akbar (God is great), the Arab horsemen charged like a tempest upon their foe, but the deep columns of the Franks did not bend before the blast. 'Like a wall of iron,' says the chronicler, 'like a rampart of ice, the men of the North stood unmoved by the frightful shock.' All day long the charges were renewed." Still the stout Franks held their ground, and still the indomitable warriors of Islam pressed upon them, until late in the afternoon, when the latter were thrown into confusion by an attack on their rear. Then Karl and his men charged on them and their lines were broken—their rout was bloody and complete. When night put an end to the slaughter, the Franks slept upon their arms, expecting that the dreaded Saracens would rally and resume the fight. But they vanished in the darkness. Their leader, the brave Abd-el-Rahman had fallen in the wild melée and no courage was left in their hearts. Abandoning everything but their horses and their arms, they fled to Narbonne. "Europe was rescued, Christianity triumphant, Karl the hero forever of Christian civilization."

_P. Godwin, History of France: Ancient Gaul, chapter 14._

The booty found by the Franks in the Moslem camp "was enormous; hard-money, ingots of the precious metals, melted from jewels and shrines; precious vases, rich stuffs, subsistence stores, flocks and herds gathered and parked in the camp. Most of this booty had been taken by the Moslemah from the Aquitanians, who now had the sorrow of seeing it greedily divided among the Franks."

_H. Coppée, Conquest of Spain by the! Arab-Moors, book 6, chapter 1 (volume 2)._

ALSO IN: _E. S. Creasy, Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World, chapter 7._

MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 715-750. Omeyyads and Abbassides. The dividing of the Caliphate.

The tragic death of Hosein and his companions at Kerbela kindled a passion which time would not extinguish in the hearts of one great party among the Moslems. The first ambitious leader to take advantage of the excitement of it, as a means of overthrowing the Omeyyads, was Abdallah ibn Zobeir, who, posing first as the "Protector of the Holy House" of Ali, soon proclaimed himself Caliph and maintained for thirteen years a rival court at Mecca. In the war which raged during a great part of those years, Medina was taken by storm and given over to pillage, while the holy city of Mecca withstood a siege of forty days, during which the sacred Caaba was destroyed. Zobeir fell, at last, in a final battle fought under the walls of Mecca. Meantime, several changes in the caliphate at Damascus had taken place and the throne was soon afterwards [A. D. 705] occupied by the Caliph Welid, whose reign proved more glorious than that of any other prince of his house. "Elements of disorder still remained, but under the wise and firm sceptre of Welid they were held in check. The arts of peace prevailed; schools were founded, learning cultivated, and poets royally rewarded; public works of every useful kind were promoted, and even hospitals established for the aged, lame, and blind. Such, indeed, at this era, was the glory of the court of Damascus that Weild, of all the Caliphs both before and after, gives the precedence to Welid. It is the fashion for the Arabian historians to abuse the Omeyyads as a dissolute, intemperate, and godless race; but we must not forget that these all wrote more or less under Abbasside inspiration. … After Welid, the Omeyyad dynasty lasted six-and-thirty years. But it began to rest on a precarious basis. For now the agents of the house of Hashim, descendants of the Prophet and of his uncle Abbas, commenced to ply secretly, but with vigour and persistency, their task of canvass and intrigue in distant cities, and especially in the provinces of the East. For a long time, the endeavour of these agitators was directed to the advocacy of the Shiya right; that is to say, it was based upon the Divine claim of Aly, and his descendants in the Prophet's line, to the Imamate or leadership over the empire of Islam. … The discomfiture of the Shiyas paved the way for the designing advocates of the other Hashimite branch, namely, that of the house of Abbas, the uncle of the Prophet. These had all along been plotting in the background, and watching their opportunity. They now vaunted the claims of this line, and were barefaced enough to urge that, being descended from the uncle of Mahomet through male representatives, they took precedence over the direct descendants of the Prophet himself, because these came through Fatima in the female line. About the year 130 of the Hegira, Abul Abbas, of Abasside descent, was put forward in Persia, as the candidate of this party, and his claim was supported by the famous general Abu Muslim. Successful in the East, Abu Muslim turned his arms to the West. A great battle, one of those which decide the fate of empires, was fought on the banks of the Zab [A. D. 750]; and, through the defection of certain Kharejite and Yemen levies, was lost by the Omeyyad army. Merwan II., the last of his dynasty, was driven to Egypt, and there killed in the church of Bussir, whither he had fled for refuge. At the close of the year 132 [August 5, A. D. 750], the black flag, emblem of the Abbassides, floated over the battlements of Damascus. The Omeyyad dynasty, after ruling the vast Moslem empire for a century, now disappeared in cruelty and bloodshed. … So perished the royal house of the Omeyyads. But one escaped. He fled to Spain, which had never favoured the overweening pretensions of the Prophet's family, whether in the line of Aly or Abbas. Accepted by the Arab tribes, whose influence in the West was paramount, Abd al Rahman now laid the foundation of a new Dynasty and perpetuated the Omeyyad name at the magnificent court of Cordova. … Thus, with the rise of the Abbassides, the unity of the Caliphate came to an end. Never after, either in theory or in fact, was there a successor to the Prophet, acknowledged as such over all Islam. Other provinces followed in the wake of Spain. The Aghlabite dynasty in the east of Africa, and, west of it, the Edrisites in Fez, both of Alyite descent; Egypt and Sicily under independent rulers; the Tahirite kings in Persia, their native soil; these and others, breaking away from the central government, established kingdoms of their own. The name of Caliph, however it might survive in the Abbasside lineage, or be assumed by less legitimate pretenders, had now altogether lost its virtue and significance."

_Sir W. Muir, Annals of the Early Caliphate, chapter 50._

ALSO IN: _S. Lane-Poole, The Mohammadan Dynasties, pages 12-14._

_R. D. Osborn, Islam Under the Arabs, part 3._

{2076}

MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 717-718. Second repulse from Constantinople.

See CONSTANTINOPLE: A. D. 717-718.

MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 752-759. Final expulsion from southern Gaul.

During the year of his coronation (A. D. 752) Pippin, or Pepin the Short—the first of the Carolingians to assume the Frankish crown—having taken measures to reduce Aquitaine to obedience, was diverted, on his march towards that country, into Septimania. The discord prevailing among the Moslems, who had occupied this region of Gaul for more than thirty years, "opened the prospect of an easy conquest. With little fighting, and through the treachery of a Goth named Ansemond, who commanded at Beziers, Agde, Maguelonne, and Nismes, under an Arabian wali, he was enabled to seize those strong-holds, and to leave a part of his troops to besiege Narbonne, as the first step toward future success." Then Pippin was called away by war with the Saxons and in Brittany, and was occupied with other cares and conflicts, until A. D. 759, when he took up and finished the task of expelling the Saracens from Gaul. "His troops left in occupation of Septimania (752) had steadily prosecuted the siege of Narbonne. … Not till after a blockade of seven years was the city surrendered, and then through the treason of the Christians and Goths who were inside the walls, and made secret terms with the beleaguers. They rose upon the Arabs, cut them in pieces, and opened the gates to the Franks. A reduction of Elne, Caucoliberis, and Carcassone followed hard upon that of Narbonne. … In a little while the entire Arab population was driven out of Septimania, after an occupation of forty years; and a large and important province (equivalent nearly to the whole of Languedoc), held during the time of the Merovingians by the Wisigoths, was secured to the possession of the Franks. The Arabs, however, though expelled, left many traces of their long residence on the manners and customs of Southern Gaul."

_P. Godwin, History of France: Ancient Gaul, chapter 15._

MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 756-1031. The Omeyyad caliphs of Cordova.

When the struggle of the house of Abbas with the house of Omeyya, for the throne of the caliphate at Damascus, was ended by the overthrow of the Omeyyads (A. D. 750), the wretched members of the fallen family were hunted down with unsparing ferocity. "A single youth of the doomed race escaped from destruction. After a long series of romantic adventures, he found his way into Spain [A. D. 756]; he there found partizans, by whose aid he was enabled to establish himself as sovereign of the country, and to resist all the attempts of the Abbassides to regain, or rather to obtain, possession of the distant province. From this Abderrahman [or Abdalrahman] the Ommiad proceeded the line of Emirs and Caliphs of Cordova, who reigned in splendour in the West for three centuries after their house had been exterminated in their original possessions. … When the Ommiad Abdalrahman escaped into Spain … the peninsula was in a very disordered state. The authority of the Caliphs of the East was nearly nominal, and governors rose and fell with very little reference to their distant sovereign. … The elevation of Abdalrahman may have been the result, not so much of any blind preference of Ommiads to Abbassides, as of a conviction that nature designed the Iberian peninsula to form an independent state. But at that early period of Mahometan history an independent Mahometan state could hardly be founded, except under the guise of a rival Caliphate. … And undoubtedly nothing is more certain than that the Ommiads of Cordova were in every sense a rival dynasty to the Abbassides of Bagdad. The race of Moawiyah seem to have decidedly improved by their migration westward. The Caliphs of Spain must be allowed one of the highest places among Mahometan dynasties. In the duration of their house and in the abundance of able princes which it produced, they yield only to the Ottoman Sultans, while they rise incomparably above them in every estimable quality. … The most splendid period of the Saracen empire in Spain was during the tenth century. The great Caliph Abdalrahman Annasir Ledinallah raised the magnificence of the Cordovan monarchy to its highest pitch. … The last thirty years of the Ommiad dynasty are a mere wearisome series of usurpations and civil wars. In 1031 the line became extinct, and the Ommiad empire was cut up into numerous petty states. From this moment the Christians advance, no more to retreat, and the cause of Islam is only sustained by repeated African immigrations."

_E. A. Freeman, History and Conquests of the Saracens, lectures 4-5._

ALSO IN: _H. Coppée, Conquest of Spain by the Arab-Moors, book 6, chapter 5; book 7, chapters 1-4; book 8, chapter 1._

MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 763. The Caliphate transferred to Bagdad.

"The city of Damascus, full as it was of memorials of the pride and greatness of the Ommiade dynasty, was naturally distasteful to the Abbassides. The Caliph Mansur had commenced the building of a new capital in the neighbourhood of Kufa, to be called after the founder of his family, Hashimiyeh. The Kufans, however, were devoted partisans of the descendants of Ali. … The growing jealousy and distrust between the two houses made it inadvisable for the Beni Abbas to plant the seat of their empire in immediate propinquity to the head-quarters of the Ali faction, and Mansur therefore selected another site [about A. D. 763]. This was Bagdad, on the western bank of the Tigris [fifteen miles above Medain, which was the ancient Seleucia and Ctesiphon]. It was well suited by nature for a great capital. The Tigris brought commerce from Diyar Bekr on the north, and through the Persian Gulf from India and China on the east; while the Euphrates, which here approaches the Tigris at the nearest point, and is reached by a good road, communicated directly with Syria and the west. The name Bagdad is a very ancient one, signifying 'given or founded by the deity,' and testifies to the importance of the site. The new city rapidly increased in extent and magnificence, the founder and his next two successors expending fabulous sums upon its embellishment, and the ancient palaces of the Sassanian kings, as well as the other principal cities of Asia, were robbed of their works of art for its adornment."

_E. H. Palmer, Haroun Alraschid, Caliph of Bagdad, chapter 2._

"Baghdad, answering to its proud name of 'Dar al Salam,' 'The City of Peace,' became for a time the capital of the world, the centre of luxury, the emporium of commerce, and the scat of learning."

_Sir W. Muir, Annals of the Early Caliphate, chapter 50._

{2077}

MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 815-945. Decline and temporal fall of the Caliphate at Bagdad.

"It was not until nearly the close of the first century after the Hejira that the banners of Islam were carried into the regions beyond the Oxus, and only after a great deal of hard fighting that the oases of Bokhara and Samarkand were annexed to the dominions of the khalif. In these struggles, a large number of Turks—men, women, and children—fell into the power of the Moslems, and were scattered over Asia as slaves. … The khalif Mamoun [son of Haroun Alraschid—A. D. 815-834] was the first sovereign who conceived the idea of basing the royal power on a foundation of regularly drilled Turkish soldiers."

_R. D. Osborn, Islam under the Khalifs of Bagdad, part 3, chapter 1._

"The Caliphs from this time leaned for support on great bands of foreign mercenaries, chiefly Turks, and their captains became the real lords of the empire as soon as they realised their own strength. How thoroughly the Abbásid caliphate had been undermined was shown all at once in a shocking manner, when the Caliph Mutawakkil was murdered by his own servants at the command of his son, and the parricide Muntasir set upon the throne in his stead (December 861). The power of the Caliphs was now at an end; they became the mere playthings of their own savage warriors. The remoter, sometimes even the nearer, provinces were practically independent. The princes formally recognised the Caliph as their sovereign, stamped his name upon their coins, and gave it precedence in public prayer, but these were honours without any solid value. Some Caliphs, indeed, recovered a measure of real power, but only as rulers of a much diminished State. Theoretically the fiction of an undivided empire of Islam was maintained, but it had long ceased to be a reality. The names of Caliph, Commander of the Faithful, Imám, continued still to inspire some reverence; the theological doctors of law insisted that the Caliph, in spiritual things at least, must everywhere bear rule, and control all judicial posts; but even theoretically his position was far behind that of a pope, and in practice was not for a moment to be compared to it. The Caliph never was the head of a true hierarchy; Islam in fact knows no priesthood on which such a system could have rested. In the tenth century the Buids, three brothers who had left the hardly converted Gilán (the mountainous district at the southwest angle of the Caspian Sea) as poor adventurers, succeeded in conquering for themselves the sovereign command over wide domains, and over Bagdad itself [establishing what is known as the dynasty of the Buids or Bouides, or Bowides, or Dilemites]. They even proposed to themselves to displace the Abbásids and set descendants of Ali upon the throne, and abandoned the idea only because they feared that a Caliph of the house of Ali might exercise too great an authority over their Shíite soldiers, and so become independent; while, on the other hand, they could make use of these troops for any violence they chose against the Abbásid puppet who sat in Mansúr's seat."

_T. Nöldeke, Sketches from Eastern History, chapter 3._

MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 827-878. Conquest of Sicily.

See SICILY: A. D. 827-878.

MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 840-890. The Saracens in southern Italy.

See ITALY (SOUTHERN): A. D. 800-1016.

MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 908-1171. The Fatimite caliphs.