A General History for Colleges and High Schools (Myers)/Chapter 36
CHAPTER XXXVI.
MOHAMMED AND THE SARACENS.
Introductory Statement.—The Arabs, or Saracens, who are now about to play their surprising part in history, are, after the Hebrews, the most important people of the Semitic race. Secure in their inaccessible deserts, the Arabs have never as a people bowed their necks to a foreign conqueror, although portions of the Arabian peninsula have been repeatedly subjugated by different races.
Religious Condition of Arabia before Mohammed.—Before the reforms of Mohammed, the Arabs were idolaters. Their holy city was Mecca. Here was the ancient and most revered shrine of the Caaba, where was preserved a sacred black stone believed to have been given by an angel to Abraham.
But though the native tribes of the peninsula were idolaters, still there were many followers of other faiths; for Arabia at this time was a land of religious freedom. The altar of the fire-worshipper rose alongside the Jewish synagogue and the Christian church. The Jews especially were to be found everywhere in great numbers, having been driven from Palestine by the Roman persecutions. It was from the Jews and Christians, doubtless, that Mohammed learned many of the doctrines that he taught.
Mohammed.—Mohammed, the great prophet of the Arabs, was born in the holy city of Mecca, about the year 570 of our era. He sprang from the distinguished tribe of the Koreishites, the custodians of the sacred shrine of the Caaba. Like Moses, he spent many years of his life as a shepherd.
Mohammed possessed a deeply religious nature, and it was his wont often to retire to a cave a few miles from Mecca, and there spend long vigils in prayer. He declared that here he had visions, in which the angel Gabriel appeared to him, and made to him revelations which he was commanded to make known to his fellow-men. The sum of the new faith which he was to teach was this: "There is but one God, and Mohammed is his Prophet."
Mohammed communicated the nature of his visions to his wife, and she became his first convert. At the end of three years his disciples numbered forty persons.
The Hegira (622).—The teachings of Mohammed at last aroused the anger of a powerful party among the Koreishites, who feared that they, as the guardians of the national idols of the Caaba, would be compromised in the eyes of the other tribes by allowing such heresy to be openly taught by one of their number, and accordingly plots were formed against his life. Barely escaping assassination, he fled to the city of Medina.
This Hegira, or Flight, as the word signifies, occurred in the year 622, and was considered by the Moslems as such an important event in the history of their religion that they adopted it as the beginning of a new era, and from it still continue to reckon their dates.
The Faith extended by the Sword.—His cause being warmly espoused by the inhabitants of Medina, Mohammed threw aside the character of an exhorter, and assumed that of a warrior. He declared it to be the will of God that the new faith should be spread by the sword. Accordingly, the year following the Hegira, he began to attack and plunder caravans. The flames of a sacred war were soon kindled. The reckless enthusiasm of his wild converts was intensified by the assurance of the Apostle that death met in fighting those who resisted the true faith ensured the martyr immediate entrance upon the joys of Paradise. Within ten years from the time of the assumption of the sword by Mohammed, Mecca had been conquered, and the new creed established among all the tribes of Arabia.
Mohammed died in the year 632. No character in all history has been the subject of more conflicting speculations than the Arabian Prophet. By some he has been called a self-deluded enthusiast, while others have denounced him as the boldest of impostors. We shall, perhaps, reconcile these discordant views, if we bear in mind that the same person may, in different periods of a long career, be both.
The Koran and the Doctrines of Islam.—Before going on to trace the conquests of the successors of Mohammed, we must form some acquaintance with the religion of the great Prophet.
The doctrines of Mohammedanism, or Islam, which means "submission," are contained in the Koran, the sacred book of the Moslems. They declare that God has revealed himself through four holy men: to Moses he gave the Pentateuch; to David, the Psalms; to Jesus, the Gospels; and to Mohammed, the last and greatest of all the prophets, he gave the Koran.
"There is no God save Allah," is the fundamental doctrine of Islamism, and to this is added the equally binding declaration that "Mohammed is the Prophet of Allah." The faithful Moslem must also believe in the sacredness and infallibility of the Koran. He is also required to believe in the resurrection and the day of judgment, and an after-state of happiness and of misery. Also he must believe in the absoluteness of the decrees of God,—that he foreordains whatsoever comes to pass, and that nothing man can do can change his appointments.
The Koran, while requiring assent to the foregoing creed, inculcates the practice of four virtues. The first is prayer; five times each day must the believer turn his face towards Mecca and engage in devotion. The second requirement is almsgiving. The third is keeping the Fast of Ramadan, which lasts a whole month. The fourth duty is making a pilgrimage to Mecca.
Abubekr, First Successor of Mohammed (632–634).—Upon the death of Mohammed a dispute at once arose as to his successor; for the Prophet left no children, nor had he designated upon whom his mantle should fall. Abubekr, the Apostle's fatherin-law, was at last chosen to the position, with the title of Caliph, or Vicar, of the Prophet, although many thought that the place belonged to Ali, the Prophet's cousin and son-in-law, and one of his first and most faithful companions. This question of succession was destined at a later period to divide the Mohammedan world into two sects, animated by the most bitter and lasting hostility towards each other.[1]
During the first part of his caliphate, Abubekr was engaged in suppressing revolts in different parts of the peninsula. These commotions quieted, he was free to carry out the last injunction of the Prophet to his followers, which enjoined them to spread his doctrines by the sword, till all men had confessed the creed of Islam, or consented to pay tribute to the Faithful.
The Conquest of Syria.—The country which Abubekr resolved first to reduce was Syria. A call addressed to all the Faithful throughout Arabia was responded to with the greatest alacrity and enthusiasm. From every quarter the warriors flocked to Medina, until the desert about the city was literally covered with their black tents, and crowded with men and horses and camels. After invoking the blessing of God upon the hosts, Abubekr sent them forward upon their holy mission.
Heraclius made a brave effort to defend the holy places against the fanatical warriors of the desert, but all in vain. His armies were cut to pieces. Seeing there was no hope of saving Jerusalem, he removed from that city to Constantinople the True Cross, which he had rescued from the Persians (see p. 390). "Farewell, Syria," were his words, as he turned from the consecrated land which he saw must be given up to the followers of the False Prophet.
The Conquest of Persia (632–641).—While one Saracen army was overrunning Syria, another was busy with the subjugation of Persia. Enervated as this country was through luxury, and weakened by her long wars with the Eastern emperors, she could offer but feeble resistance to the terrible energy of the Saracens.
Soon after the conquest of Persia, the Arabs crossed the mountains that wall Persia on the north, and spread their faith among the Turanian tribes of Central Asia. Among the most formidable of the clans that adopted the new religion were the Turks. Their conversion was an event of the greatest significance, for it was their swords that were destined to uphold and to spread the creed of Mohammed when the fiery zeal of his own countrymen should abate, and their arms lose the dreaded power which religious fanaticism had for a moment imparted to them.
The Conquest of Egypt (638).—The reduction of Persia was not yet fully accomplished, when the Caliph Omar, the successor of Abubekr, commissioned Amrou, the chief whose valor had won many of the cities of Palestine, to carry the standard of the Prophet into the Valley of the Nile. Alexandria, after holding out against the arms of the Saracens for more than a year, was at length abandoned to the enemy. Amrou, in communicating the intelligence of the important event to Omar, wrote him also about the great Alexandrian Library, and asked him what he should do with the books. Omar is said to have replied: "If these books agree with the Koran, they are useless; if they disagree, they are pernicious: in either case they ought to be destroyed." Accordingly the books were distributed among the four thousand baths of the capital, and served to feed their fires for six months.
The Conquest of Northern Africa (643–689).—The lieutenants of the Caliphs were obliged to do much and fierce fighting before they obtained possession of the oft-disputed shores of North Africa. They had to contend not only with the Graeco Roman Christians of the coast, but to battle also with the idolatrous Moors of the interior. Furthermore, all Europe had begun to feel alarm at the threatening advance of the Saracens; so now Roman soldiers from Constantinople, and Gothic warriors from Italy and Spain hastened across the Mediterranean to aid in the protection of Carthage, and to help arrest the alarming progress of these wild fanatics of the desert.
But all was of no avail. Destiny had allotted to the followers of the Apostle the land of Hannibal and Augustine. Carthage was taken and razed to the ground, and the entire coast from the Nile to the Atlantic was forced to acknowledge the authority of the Caliphs. By this conquest all the countries of Northern Africa, whose history for a thousand years had been intertwined with that of the opposite shores of Europe, and which at one time seemed destined to share in the career of freedom and progress opening to the peoples of that continent, were drawn back into the fatalism, the despotism, and the stagnation of the East. From being an extension of Europe, they became once more an extension of Asia.
Attacks upon Constantinople.—Only fifty years had now passed since the death of Mohammed, but during this short time his standard had been carried by the lieutenants of his successors through Asia to the Hellespont on the one side, and across Africa to the Straits of Gibraltar on the other. From each of these two points, so remote from each other, the fanatic warriors of the desert were casting longing glances across those narrow passages of water which alone separated them from the single continent that their swift coursers had not yet traversed, or whence the spoil of the unbelievers had not yet been borne to the feet of the Vicar of the Prophet of God. We may expect to see the Saracens at one or both of these points attempt the invasion of Europe.
The first attempt was made in the East (in 668), where the Arabs endeavored to gain control of the Bosporus, by wresting Constantinople from the hands of the Eastern emperors. But the capital was saved through the use, by the besieged, of a certain bituminous compound, called Greek Fire. In 716, the city was again besieged by a powerful Moslem army; but its heroic defence by the Emperor Leo III. saved the capital for several centuries longer to the Christian world.
The Conquest of Spain (711).—While the Moslems were thus being repulsed from Europe at its eastern extremity, the gates of the continent were opened to them by treachery at the western, and they gained a foothold in Spain. At the great battle of Xeres (711), Roderic, the last of the Visigothic kings, was hopelessly defeated, and all the peninsula, save some mountainous regions in the northwest, quickly submitted to the invaders. Thus some of the fairest provinces of Europe were lost to Christendom for a period of nearly eight hundred years.
No sooner had the subjugation of the country been effected than multitudes of colonists from Arabia, Syria, and North Africa crowded into the peninsula, until in a short time the provinces of Seville, Cordova, Toledo, and Granada became Arabic in dress, manners, language, and religion.
Invasion of France: Battle of Tours (732).—Four or five years after the conquest of Spain, the Saracens crossed the Pyrenees, and established themselves upon the plains of Gaul. This advance of the Moslem hosts beyond the northern wall of Spain was viewed with the greatest alarm by all Christendom. It looked as though the followers of Mohammed would soon possess all the continent. As Draper pictures it, the Crescent, lying in a vast semi-circle upon the northern shore of Africa and the curving coast of Asia, with one horn touching the Bosporus and the other the Straits of Gibraltar, seemed about to round to the full and overspread all Europe.
In the year 732, exactly one hundred years after the death of the great Prophet, the Franks, under their renowned chieftain, Charles, and their allies met the Moslems upon the plains of Tours in the centre of Gaul, and committed to the issue of a single battle the fate of Christendom and the future course of history. The desperate valor displayed by the warriors of both armies was worthy of the prize at stake. Abderrahman, the Mohammedan leader, fell in the thick of the fight, and night saw the complete discomfiture of the Moslem hordes. The loss that the sturdy blows of the Germans had inflicted upon them was enormous, the accounts of that age swelling the number killed to the impossible figures of 375,000. The disaster at all events was too overwhelming to permit the Saracens ever to recover from the blow, and they soon retreated behind the Pyrenees.
The young civilization of Europe was thus delivered from an appalling danger, such as had not threatened it since the fearful days of Attila and the Huns. The heroic Duke Charles who had led the warriors of Christendom to the glorious victory was given the surname Martel, the " Hammer," in commemoration of the mighty blows of his huge battle-axe.
Changes in the Caliphate.—During the century of conquests we have traced, there were many changes in the caliphate. Abubekr was followed by Omar (634–644), Othman (644–655), and Ali (655–661), all of whom fell by the hands of assassins, for from the very first dissensions were rife among the followers of the Prophet. Ali was the last of the four so-called "Orthodox Caliphs," all of whom were relatives or companions of the Prophet.
Moawiyah, a usurper, was now recognized as Caliph (661). He succeeded in making the office hereditary, instead of elective, as it hitherto had been, and thus established what is known as the dynasty of the Ommiades,[2] the rulers of which family for nearly a century issued their commands from the city of Damascus.
The house of the Ommiades was overthrown by the adherents of the house of Ali, who established a new dynasty (750), known as that of the Abbassides, so called from Abbas, an uncle of Mohammed. The new family, soon after coming to power, established the seat of the royal residence on the lower Tigris, and upon the banks of that river founded the renowned city of Bagdad, which was destined to remain the abode of the Abbasside Caliphs for a period of five hundred years,—until the subversion of the house by the Tartars of the North.
The golden age of the caliphate of Bagdad covers the latter part of the eighth and the ninth century of our era, and was illustrated by the reign of the renowned Haroun-al-Raschid (786–809), the hero of the Arabian Nights. During this period science, philosophy, and literature were most assiduously cultivated by the Arabian scholars, and the court of the Caliphs presented in culture and luxury a striking contrast to the rude and barbarous courts of the kings and princes of Western Christendom.
The Dismemberment of the Caliphate.—"At the close of the first century of the Hegira," writes Gibbon, "the Caliphs were the most potent and absolute monarchs of the globe. The word that went forth from the palace at Damascus was obeyed on the Indus, on the Jaxartes, and on the Tagus." Scarcely less potent was the word that at first went forth from Bagdad. But in a short time the extended empire of the Abbassides, through the quarrels of sectaries and the ambitions of rival aspirants for the honors of the caliphate, was broken in fragments, and from three capitals— Bagdad upon the Tigris, Cairo upon the Nile, and Cordova upon the Guadalquivir—were issued the commands of three rival Caliphs, each of whom was regarded by his adherents as the sole rightful spiritual and civil successor of the Apostle. All, however, held the great Arabian Prophet in the same reverence, all maintained with equal zeal the sacred character of the Koran, and all prayed with their faces turned toward the holy city of Mecca.
Spread of the Religion and Language of the Arabs.—Just as the Romans Romanized the peoples they conquered, so did the Saracens Saracenize the populations of the countries subjected to their authority. Over a large part of Spain, over North Africa, Egypt, Syria, Babylonia, Persia, Northern India, and portions of Central Asia, were spread—to the more or less perfect exclusion of native customs, speech, and worship—the manners, the language, and the religion of the Arabian conquerors.[3]
In Arabia no religion was tolerated save the faith of the Koran. But in all the countries beyond the limits of the peninsula, freedom of worship was allowed (save to idolaters, who were to be "rooted out"); unbelievers, however, must purchase this liberty by the payment of a moderate tribute. Yet notwithstanding this toleration, the Christian and Zoroastrian religions gradually died out almost everywhere throughout the domains of the Caliphs.[4]
The Defects of Islam.—Civilization certainly owes a large debt to the Saracens. They preserved and transmitted much that was valuable in the science of the Greeks and the Persians (see p. 472). They improved trigonometry and algebra, and from India they borrowed the decimal system of notation and introduced it into the West.
Many of the doctrines of Islam, however, are most unfavorable to human liberty, progress, and improvement. It teaches fatalism, and thus discourages effort and enterprise. It allows polygamy and puts no restraint upon divorce, and thus destroys the sanctity of the family life. It permits slavery and fosters despotism. It inspires a blind and bigoted hatred of race and creed, and thus puts far out of sight the salutary truth of the brotherhood of man. Because of these and other scarcely less prominent defects in its teachings, Islam has proved a blight and curse to almost every race embracing its sterile doctrines.
Mohammedism is vastly superior, however, either to fetichism or idolatry, and consequently, upon peoples very low in the scale of civilization, it has an elevating influence. Thus, upon the negro tribes of Central Africa, where it is to-day spreading rapidly, it is acknowledged to have a civilizing effect.
- ↑ The Mohammedans of Persia, who are known as Shiites, are the leaders of the party of Ali; while the Turks, known as Sunnites, are the chief adherents of the opposite party.
- ↑ So called from Ommaya, an ancestor of Moawiyah.
- ↑ Beyond the eastern edge of Mesopotamia, the Arabs failed to impress their language upon the subjected peoples, or in any way, save in the matter of creed, to leave upon them any important permanent trace of their conquests.
- ↑ The number of Guebers, or fire-worshippers, in Persia at the present time is estimated at from 50,000 to 100,000. About the same number may be counted in India, the descendants of the Guebers who fled from Persia at the time of the Arabian invasion. They are there called Parsees, from the land whence they came.