The Two Sieges of Constantinople by the Arabs—Their Invasion of France, and Defeat by Charles Martel— Civil War of the Ommiades and Abbassides—Learning of the Arabs—Luxury of the Caliphs—Naval Enterprises on Crete, Sicily, and Rome—Decay and Division of the Empire of the Caliphs—Defeats and Victories of the Greek Emperors.
Limits of the Arabian conquests
When the Arabs first issued from the desert, they must have
been surprised at the ease and rapidity of their own
success. But when they advanced in the career of victory to
the banks of the Indus and the summit of the Pyrenees; when
they had repeatedly tried the edge of their scymetars and the
energy of their faith, they might be equally astonished that
any nation could resist their invincible arms; that any
boundary should confine the dominion of the successor of the
prophet. The confidence of soldiers and fanatics may indeed
be excused, since the calm historian of the present hour,
who strives to follow the rapid course of the Saracens, must
study to explain by what means the church and state were
saved from this impending, and, as it should seem, from this
inevitable, danger. The deserts of Scythia and Sarmatia
might be guarded by their extent, their climate, their
poverty, and the courage of the northern shepherds; China
was remote and inaccessible; but the greatest part of the
temperate zone was subject to the Mahometan conquerors, the
Greeks were exhausted by the calamities of war and the loss
of their fairest provinces, and the Barbarians of Europe
might justly tremble at the precipitate fall of the Gothic
monarchy. In this inquiry I shall unfold the events that
rescued our ancestors of Britain, and our neighbours of Gaul,
from the civil and religious yoke of the Koran; that
protected the majesty of Rome, and delayed the servitude of
Constantinople; that invigorated the defence of the
Christians, and scattered among their enemies the seeds of
division and decay.
First siege of Constantinople by the Arabs, A.D. 668-675
Forty-six years after the flight of Mahomet from Mecca, his
disciples appeared in arms under the walls of
Constantinople. (1) They were animated by a genuine or
fictitious saying of the prophet, that, to the first army
which besieged the city of the Caesars, their sins were
forgiven: the long series of Roman triumphs would be
meritoriously transferred to the conquerors of New Rome; and
the wealth of nations was deposited in this well-chosen seat
of royalty and commerce. No sooner had the caliph Moawiyah
suppressed his rivals and established his throne, than he
aspired to expiate the guilt of civil blood, by the success
and glory of this holy expedition; (2) his preparations by
sea and land were adequate to the importance of the object;
his standard was entrusted to Sophian, a veteran warrior,
but the troops were encouraged by the example and presence
of Yezid, the son and presumptive heir of the commander of
the faithful. The Greeks had little to hope, nor had their
enemies any reason of fear, from the courage and vigilance
of the reigning emperor, who disgraced the name of
Constantine, and imitated only the inglorious years of his
grandfather Heraclius. Without delay or opposition, the
naval forces of the Saracens passed through the unguarded
channel of the Hellespont, which even now, under the feeble
and disorderly government of the Turks, is maintained as the
natural bulwark of the capital. (3) The Arabian fleet cast
anchor, and the troops were disembarked near the palace of
Hebdomon, seven miles from the city. During many days, from
the dawn of light to the evening, the line of assault was
extended from the golden gate to the eastern promontory and
the foremost warriors were impelled by the weight and effort
of the succeeding columns. But the besiegers had formed an
insufficient estimate of the strength and resources of
Constantinople. The solid and lofty walls were guarded by
numbers and discipline: the spirit of the Romans was
rekindled by the last danger of their religion and empire:
the fugitives from the conquered provinces more successfully
renewed the defence of Damascus and Alexandria; and the
Saracens were dismayed by the strange and prodigious effects
of artificial fire. This firm and effectual resistance
diverted their arms to the more easy attempt of plundering
the European and Asiatic coasts of the Propontis; and, after
keeping the sea from the month of April to that of
September, on the approach of winter they retreated
fourscore miles from the capital, to the Isle of Cyzicus, in
which they had established their magazine of spoil and
provisions. So patient was their perseverance, or so
languid were their operations, that they repeated in the six
following summers the same attack and retreat, with a
gradual abatement of hope and vigour, till the mischances of
shipwreck and disease, of the sword and of fire, compelled
them to relinquish the fruitless enterprise. They might
bewail the loss, or commemorate the martyrdom, of thirty
thousand Moslems, who fell in the siege of Constantinople;
and the solemn funeral of Abu Ayub, or Job, excited the
curiosity of the Christians themselves. That venerable Arab,
one of the last of the companions of Mahomet, was numbered
among the ansars, or auxiliaries, of Medina, who sheltered
the head of the flying prophet. In his youth he fought, at
Beder and Ohud, under the holy standard: in his mature age
he was the friend and follower of Ali; and the last remnant
of his strength and life was consumed in a distant and
dangerous war against the enemies of the Koran. His memory
was revered; but the place of his burial was neglected and
unknown, during a period of seven hundred and eighty years,
till the conquest of Constantinople by Mahomet the Second.
A seasonable vision (for such are the manufacture of every
religion) revealed the holy spot at the foot of the walls
and the bottom of the harbour; and the mosch of Ayub has been
deservedly chosen for the simple and martial inauguration of
the Turkish sultans. (4)
Peace and tribute, A.D. 677.
The event of the siege revived, both in the East and West,
the reputation of the Roman arms, and cast a momentary shade
over the glories of the Saracens. The Greek ambassador was
favourably received at Damascus, a general council of the
emirs or Koreish: a peace, or truce, of thirty years was
ratified between the two empires; and the stipulation of an
annual tribute, fifty horses of a noble breed, fifty slaves,
and three thousand pieces of gold, degraded the majesty of
the commander of the faithful. (5) The aged caliph was
desirous of possessing his dominions, and ending his days in
tranquillity and repose: while the Moors and Indians
trembled at his name, his palace and city of Damascus was
insulted by the Mardaites, or Maronites, of Mount Libanus,
the firmest barrier of the empire, till they were disarmed
and transplanted by the suspicious policy of the Greeks. (6) After the revolt of Arabia and Persia, the house of Ommiyah. (7) was reduced to the kingdoms of Syria and Egypt: their
distress and fear enforced their compliance with the
pressing demands of the Christians; and the tribute was
increased to a slave, a horse, and a thousand pieces of
gold, for each of the three hundred and sixty-five days of
the solar year. But as soon as the empire was again united
by the arms and policy of Abdalmalek, he disclaimed a badge
of servitude not less injurious to his conscience than to
his pride; he discontinued the payment of the tribute; and
the resentment of the Greeks was disabled from action by the
mad tyranny of the second Justinian, the just rebellion of
his subjects, and the frequent change of his antagonists and
successors. Till the reign of Abdalmalek, the Saracens had
been content with the free possession of the Persian and
Roman treasures, in the coins of Chosroes and Caesar. By
the command of that caliph, a national mint was established,
both for silver and gold, and the inscription of the Dinar,
though it might be censured by some timorous casuists,
proclaimed the unity of the God of Mahomet. (8) Under the
reign of the caliph Walid, the Greek language and characters
were excluded from the accounts of the public revenue. (9) If
this change was productive of the invention or familiar use
of our present numerals, the Arabic or Indian ciphers, as
they are commonly styled, a regulation of office has
promoted the most important discoveries of arithmetic,
algebra, and the mathematical sciences. (10)
Second siege of Constantinople, A.D. 716-718.
Whilst the caliph Walid sat idle on the throne of Damascus,
whilst his lieutenants achieved the conquest of Transoxiana
and Spain, a third army of Saracens overspread the provinces
of Asia Minor, and approached the borders of the Byzantine
capital. But the attempt and disgrace of the second siege
was reserved for his brother Soliman, whose ambition appears
to have been quickened by a more active and martial spirit.
In the revolutions of the Greek empire, after the tyrant
Justinian had been punished and avenged, an humble
secretary, Anastasius or Artemius, was promoted by chance or
merit to the vacant purple. He was alarmed by the sound of
war; and his ambassador returned from Damascus with the
tremendous news, that the Saracens were preparing an
armament by sea and land, such as would transcend the
experience of the past, or the belief of the present age.
The precautions of Anastasius were not unworthy of his
station, or of the impending danger. He issued a peremptory
mandate, that all persons who were not provided with the
means of subsistence for a three years' siege should
evacuate the city: the public granaries and arsenals were
abundantly replenished; the walls were restored and
strengthened; and the engines for casting stones, or darts,
or fire, were stationed along the ramparts, or in the
brigantines of war, of which an additional number was
hastily constructed. To prevent is safer, as well as more
honourable, than to repel, an attack; and a design was
meditated, above the usual spirit of the Greeks, of burning
the naval stores of the enemy, the cypress timber that had
been hewn in Mount Libanus, and was piled along the
sea-shore of Phoenicia, for the service of the Egyptian
fleet. This generous enterprise was defeated by the
cowardice or treachery of the troops, who, in the new
language of the empire, were styled of the Obsequian Theme.
(11) They murdered their chief, deserted their standard in
the Isle of Rhodes, dispersed themselves over the adjacent
continent, and deserved pardon or reward by investing with
the purple a simple officer of the revenue. The name of
Theodosius might recommend him to the senate and people;
but, after some months, he sunk into a cloister, and
resigned, to the firmer hand of Leo the Isaurian, the urgent
defence of the capital and empire. The most formidable of
the Saracens, Moslemah, the brother of the caliph, was
advancing at the head of one hundred and twenty thousand
Arabs and Persians, the greater part mounted on horses or camels; and the successful sieges of Tyana, Amorium, and Pergamus, were of sufficient duration to exercise their skill and to elevate their hopes. At the well-known passage
of Abydus, on the Hellespont, the Mahometan arms were transported, for the first time, from Asia to Europe. From thence, wheeling round the Thracian cities of the Propontis, Moslemah invested Constantinople on the land side, surrounded his camp with a ditch and rampart, prepared and planted his engines of assault, and declared, by words and actions, a patient resolution of expecting the return of seed-time and harvest, should the obstinacy of the besieged prove equal to his own. The Greeks would gladly have ransomed their religion and empire, by a fine or assessment of a piece of gold on the head of each inhabitant of the
city; but the liberal offer was rejected with disdain, and the presumption of Moslemah was exalted by the speedy approach and invincible force of the natives of Egypt and Syria. They are said to have amounted to eighteen hundred
ships: the number betrays their inconsiderable size; and of the twenty stout and capacious vessels, whose magnitude impeded their progress, each was manned with no more than one hundred heavy-armed soldiers. This huge armada proceeded on a smooth sea, and with a gentle gale, towards the mouth of the Bosphorus; the surface of the strait was overshadowed, in the language of the Greeks, with a moving forest, and the same fatal night had been fixed by the Saracen chief for a general assault by sea and land. To allure the confidence of the enemy, the emperor had thrown aside the chain that usually guarded the entrance of the
harbour; but while they hesitated whether they should seize the opportunity, or apprehend the snare, the ministers of destruction were at hand. The fire-ships of the Greeks were launched against them; the Arabs, their arms, and vessels,
were involved in the same flames; the disorderly fugitives were dashed against each other or overwhelmed in the waves; and I no longer find a vestige of the fleet, that had threatened to extirpate the Roman name. A still more fatal
and irreparable loss was that of the caliph Soliman, who died of an indigestion, (12) in his camp near Kinnisrin or Chalcis in Syria, as he was preparing to lead against Constantinople the remaining forces of the East. The brother of Moslemah was succeeded by a kinsman and an enemy; and the throne of an active and able prince was degraded by the useless and pernicious virtues of a bigot. ! While he started and satisfied the scruples of a blind conscience, the siege was continued through the winter by the neglect,
rather than by the resolution of the caliph Omar. (13) The winter proved uncommonly rigorous: above a hundred days the ground was covered with deep snow, and the natives of the
sultry climes of Egypt and Arabia lay torpid and almost lifeless in their frozen camp. They revived on the return of spring; a second effort had been made in their favour; and their distress was relieved by the arrival of two numerous
fleets, laden with corn, and arms, and soldiers; the first from Alexandria, of four hundred transports and galleys; the second of three hundred and sixty vessels from the ports of Africa. But the Greek fires were again kindled; and if the destruction was less complete, it was owing to the experience which had taught the Moslems to remain at a safe distance, or to the perfidy of the Egyptian mariners, who deserted with their ships to the emperor of the Christians. The trade and navigation of the capital were restored; and
the produce of the fisheries supplied the wants, and even the luxury, of the inhabitants. But the calamities of famine and disease were soon felt by the troops of Moslemah, and as the former was miserably assuaged, so the latter was
dreadfully propagated, by the pernicious nutriment which hunger compelled them to extract from the most unclean or unnatural food. The spirit of conquest, and even of enthusiasm, was extinct: the Saracens could no longer struggle, beyond their lines, either single or in small parties, without exposing themselves to the merciless retaliation of the Thracian peasants. An army of Bulgarians was attracted from the Danube by the gifts and promises of Leo; and these savage auxiliaries made some atonement for the evils which they had inflicted on the empire, by the defeat and slaughter of twenty-two thousand Asiatics. A report was dexterously scattered, that the Franks, the unknown nations of the Latin world, were arming by sea and land in the defence of the Christian cause, and their formidable aid was expected with far different sensations in the camp and city. Failure and retreat of the Saracens At length, after a siege of thirteen months, (14) the hopeless Moslemah received from the caliph the welcome permission of retreat. The march of the Arabian cavalry over the Hellespont and through the provinces of Asia, was executed without delay or molestation; but an army of their brethren had been cut in pieces on the side of Bithynia, and the remains of the fleet were so repeatedly damaged by tempest and fire, that only five galleys entered the port of Alexandria to relate the tale of their various and almost incredible disasters. (15)
Invention and use of the Greek fire.
In the two sieges, the deliverance of Constantinople may be chiefly ascribed to the novelty, the terrors, and the real efficacy of the Greek fire. (16) The important secret of compounding and directing this artificial flame was imparted by Callinicus, a native of Heliopolis in Syria, who deserted from the service of the caliph to that of the emperor. (17)
The skill of a chemist and engineer was equivalent to the succour of fleets and armies; and this discovery or improvement of the military art was fortunately reserved for the distressful period, when the degenerate Romans of the East were incapable of contending with the warlike enthusiasm and youthful vigour of the Saracens. The historian who presumes to analyze this extraordinary composition
should suspect his own ignorance and that of his Byzantine
guides, so prone to the marvellous, so careless, and, in
this instance, so jealous of the truth. From their obscure,
and perhaps fallacious, hints it should seem that the
principal ingredient of the Greek fire was the naphtha, (18) or liquid bitumen, a light, tenacious, and inflammable oil,
(19) which springs from the earth, and catches fire as soon
as it comes in contact with the air. The naphtha was
mingled, I know not by what methods or in what proportions,
with sulphur and with the pitch that is extracted from
evergreen firs. (20) From this mixture, which produced a
thick smoke and a loud explosion, proceeded a fierce and
obstinate flame, which not only rose in perpendicular
ascent, but likewise burnt with equal vehemence in descent
or lateral progress; instead of being extinguished, it was
nourished and quickened by the element of water; and sand,
urine, or vinegar, were the only remedies that could damp
the fury of this powerful agent, which was justly
denominated by the Greeks the liquid, or the maritime, fire.
For the annoyance of the enemy, it was employed with equal
effect, by sea and land, in battles or in sieges. It was
either poured from the rampart in large boilers, or launched
in red-hot balls of stone and iron, or darted in arrows and
javelins, twisted round with flax and tow, which had deeply
imbibed the inflammable oil; sometimes it was deposited in
fire-ships, the victims and instruments of a more ample
revenge, and was most commonly blown through long tubes of
copper which were planted on the prow of a galley, and
fancifully shaped into the mouths of savage monsters, that
seemed to vomit a stream of liquid and consuming fire. This
important art was preserved at Constantinople, as the
palladium of the state: the galleys and artillerymight
occasionally be lent to the allies of Rome; but the
composition of the Greek fire was concealed with the most
jealous scruple, and the terror of the enemies was increased
and prolonged by their ignorance and surprise. In the
treaties of the administration of the empire, the royal
author (21) suggests the answers and excuses that might best
elude the indiscreet curiosity and importunate demands of
the Barbarians. They should be told that the mystery of the
Greek fire had been revealed by an angel to the first and
greatest of the Constantines, with a sacred injunction, that
this gift of Heaven, this peculiar blessing of the Romans,
should never be communicated to any foreign nation; that the
prince and the subject were alike bound to religious silence
under the temporal and spiritual penalties of treason and
sacrilege; and that the impious attempt would provoke the
sudden and supernatural vengeance of the God of the
Christians. By these precautions, the secret was confined,
above four hundred years, to the Romans of the East; and at
the end of the eleventh century, the Pisans, to whom every
sea and every art were familiar, suffered the effects,
without understanding the composition, of the Greek fire.
It was at length either discovered or stolen by the
Mahometans; and, in the holy wars of Syria and Egypt, they
retorted an invention, contrived against themselves, on the
heads of the Christians. A knight, who despised the swords
and lances of the Saracens, relates, with heartfelt
sincerity, his own fears, and those of his companions, at
the sight and sound of the mischievous engine that
discharged a torrent of the Greek fire, the feu Gregeois, as
it is styled by the more early of the French writers. It
came flying through the air, says Joinville, (22) like a
winged long-tailed dragon, about the thickness of a
hogshead, with the report of thunder and the velocity of
lightning; and the darkness of the night was dispelled by
this deadly illumination. The use of the Greek, or, as it
might now be called, of the Saracen fire, was continued to
the middle of the fourteenth century, (23) when the
scientific or casual compound of nitre, sulphur, and
charcoal, effected a new revolution in the art of war and
the history of mankind. (24)
Invasion of France by the Arabs, A.D. 721, etc
Constantinople and the Greek fire might exclude the Arabs
from the eastern entrance of Europe; but in the West, on the
side of the Pyrenees, the provinces of Gaul were threatened
and invaded by the conquerors of Spain. (25) The decline of
the French monarchy invited the attack of these insatiate
fanatics. The descendants of Clovis had lost the
inheritance of his martial and ferocious spirit; and their
misfortune or demerit has affixed the epithet of lazy to the
last kings of the Merovingian race. (26) They ascended the
throne without power, and sunk into the grave without a
name. A country palace, in the neighbourhood of Compiegne
(27) was allotted for their residence or prison: but each
year, in the month of March or May, they were conducted in a
wagon drawn by oxen to the assembly of the Franks, to give
audience to foreign ambassadors, and to ratify the acts of
the mayor of the palace. That domestic officer was become
the minister of the nation and the master of the prince. A
public employment was converted into the patrimony of a
private family: the elder Pepin left a king of mature years
under the guardianship of his own widow and her child; and
these feeble regents were forcibly dispossessed by the most
active of his bastards. A government, half savage and half
corrupt, was almost dissolved; and the tributary dukes, and
provincial counts, and the territorial lords, were tempted
to despise the weakness of the monarch, and to imitate the
ambition of the mayor. Among these independent chiefs, one
of the boldest and most successful was Eudes, duke of
Aquitain, who in the southern provinces of Gaul usurped the
authority, and even the title of king. The Goths, the
Gascons, and the Franks, assembled under the standard of
this Christian hero: he repelled the first invasion of the
Saracens; and Zama, lieutenant of the caliph, lost his army
and his life under the walls of Thoulouse. The ambition of
his successors was stimulated by revenge; they repassed the
Pyrenees with the means and the resolution of conquest. The
advantageous situation which had recommended Narbonne (28) as the first Roman colony, was again chosen by the Moslems:
they claimed the province of Septimania or Languedoc as a
just dependence of the Spanish monarchy: the vineyards of
Gascony and the city of Bourdeaux were possessed by the
sovereign of Damascus and Samarcand; and the south of
France, from the mouth of the Garonne to that of the Rhone,
assumed the manners and religion of Arabia.
Expedition and victories of Abderame, A.D. 731.
But these narrow limits were scorned by the spirit of
Abdalraman, or Abderame, who had been restored by the caliph
Hashem to the wishes of the soldiers and people of Spain.
That veteran and daring commander adjudged to the obedience
of the prophet whatever yet remained of France or of Europe;
and prepared to execute the sentence, at the head of a
formidable host, in the full confidence of surmounting all
opposition either of nature or of man. His first care was
to suppress a domestic rebel, who commanded the most
important passes of the Pyrenees: Manuza, a Moorish chief,
had accepted the alliance of the duke of Aquitain; and
Eudes, from a motive of private or public interest, devoted
his beauteous daughter to the embraces of the African
misbeliever. But the strongest fortresses of Cerdagne were
invested by a superior force; the rebel was overtaken and
slain in the mountains; and his widow was sent a captive to
Damascus, to gratify the desires, or more probably the
vanity, of the commander of the faithful. From the Pyrenees,
Abderame proceeded without delay to the passage of the Rhone
and the siege of Arles. An army of Christians attempted the
relief of the city: the tombs of their leaders were yet
visible in the thirteenth century; and many thousands of
their dead bodies were carried down the rapid stream into
the Mediterranean Sea. The arms of Abderame were not less
successful on the side of the ocean. He passed without
opposition the Garonne and Dordogne, which unite their
waters in the Gulf of Bourdeaux; but he found, beyond those
rivers, the camp of the intrepid Eudes, who had formed a
second army and sustained a second defeat, so fatal to the
Christians, that, according to their sad confession, God
alone could reckon the number of the slain. The victorious
Saracen overran the provinces of Aquitain, whose Gallic
names are disguised, rather than lost, in the modern
appellations of Perigord, Saintonge, and Poitou: his
standards were planted on the walls, or at least before the
gates, of Tours and of Sens; and his detachments overspread
the kingdom of Burgundy as far as the well-known cities of
Lyons and Besancon. The memory of these devastations (for
Abderame did not spare the country or the people) was long
preserved by tradition; and the invasion of France by the
Moors or Mahometans affords the groundwork of those fables,
which have been so wildly disfigured in the romances of
chivalry, and so elegantly adorned by the Italian muse. In
the decline of society and art, the deserted cities could
supply a slender booty to the Saracens; their richest spoil
was found in the churches and monasteries, which they
stripped of their ornaments and delivered to the flames: and
the tutelar saints, both Hilary of Poitiers and Martin of
Tours, forgot their miraculous powers in the defence of
their own sepulchres. (29) A victorious line of march had
been prolonged above a thousand miles from the rock of
Gibraltar to the banks of the Loire; the repetition of an
equal space would have carried the Saracens to the confines
of Poland and the Highlands of Scotland; the Rhine is not
more impassable than the Nile or Euphrates, and the Arabian
fleet might have sailed without a naval combat into the
mouth of the Thames. Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran
would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her
pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the
sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet. (30)
Defeat of the Saracens by Charles Martel, A.D. 732.
From such calamities was Christendom delivered by the genius
and fortune of one man. Charles, the illegitimate son of
the elder Pepin, was content with the titles of mayor or
duke of the Franks; but he deserved to become the father of
a line of kings. In a laborious administration of
twenty-four years, he restored and supported the dignity of
the throne, and the rebels of Germany and Gaul were
successively crushed by the activity of a warrior, who, in
the same campaign, could display his banner on the Elbe, the
Rhone, and the shores of the ocean. In the public danger he
was summoned by the voice of his country; and his rival, the
duke of Aquitain, was reduced to appear among the fugitives
and suppliants.
"Alas!" exclaimed the Franks, "what a misfortune! what an indignity! We have long heard of the name and conquests of the Arabs: we were apprehensive of their attack from the East; they have now conquered Spain, and invade our country on the side of the West. Yet their numbers, and (since they have no buckler) their arms, are inferior to our own."
"If you follow my advice," replied the prudent mayor of the palace, "you will not interrupt their march, nor precipitate your attack. They are like a torrent, which it is dangerous to stem in its career. The thirst of riches, and the consciousness of success, redouble their valour, and valour is of more avail than arms or numbers. Be patient till they have loaded themselves with the encumbrance of wealth. The possession of wealth will divide their councils and assure your victory."
This subtle policy is perhaps a refinement of the Arabian writers; and the situation of Charles will suggest a more narrow and selfish motive of procrastination — the secret desire of humbling the pride and wasting the provinces of the rebel duke of Aquitain. It is yet more probable, that the delays of Charles were inevitable and reluctant. A standing army was unknown under the first and second race; more than half the kingdom was now in the hands of the Saracens: according to their respective situation, the Franks of Neustria and Austrasia were too conscious or too careless of the impending danger; and the voluntary aids of the Gepidae and Germans were separated by a long interval from the standard of the Christian general. No sooner had he collected his forces, than he sought and found the enemy in the centre of France, between Tours and Poitiers. His well-conducted march was covered with a range of hills, and Abderame appears to have been surprised by his unexpected presence. The nations of Asia, Africa, and Europe, advanced with equal ardour to an encounter which would change the history of the world. In the six first days of desultory combat, the horsemen and archers of the East maintained their advantage: but in the closer onset of the seventh day, the Orientals were oppressed by the strength and stature of the Germans, who, with stout hearts and iron hands, (31) asserted the civil and religious freedom of their posterity. The epithet of Martel, the Hammer, which has been added to the name of Charles, is expressive of his weighty and irresistible strokes: the valour of Eudes was excited by resentment and emulation; and their companions, in the eye of history, are the true Peers and Paladins of French chivalry. After a bloody field, in which Abderame was slain, the Saracens, in the close of the evening, retired to their camp. In the disorder and despair of the night, the various tribes of Yemen and Damascus, of Africa and Spain, were provoked to turn their arms against each other: the remains of their host were suddenly dissolved, and each emir consulted his safety by a hasty and separate retreat. At the dawn of the day, the stillness of a hostile camp was suspected by the victorious Christians: on the report of their spies, they ventured to explore the riches of the vacant tents; but if we except some celebrated relics, a small portion of the spoil was restored to the innocent and lawful owners. The joyful tidings were soon diffused over the Catholic world, and the monks of Italy could affirm and believe that three hundred and fifty, or three hundred and seventy-five, thousand of the Mahometans had been crushed by the hammer of Charles, (32) while no more than fifteen hundred Christians were slain in the field of Tours. But this incredible tale is sufficiently disproved by the caution of the French general, who apprehended the snares and accidents of a pursuit, and dismissed his German allies to their native forests. The inactivity of a conqueror betrays the loss of strength and blood, and the most cruel execution is inflicted, not in the ranks of battle, but on the backs of a flying enemy. They retreat before the Franks. Yet the victory of the Franks was complete and final; Aquitain was recovered by the arms of Eudes; the Arabs never resumed the conquest of Gaul, and they were soon driven beyond the Pyrenees by Charles Martel and his valiant race. (33) It might have been expected that the saviour of Christendom would have been canonized, or at least applauded, by the gratitude of the clergy, who are indebted to his sword for their present existence. But in the public distress, the mayor of the palace had been compelled to apply the riches, or at least the revenues, of the bishops and abbots, to the relief of the state and the reward of the soldiers. His merits were forgotten, his sacrilege alone was remembered, and, in an epistle to a Carlovingian prince, a Gallic synod presumes to declare that his ancestor was damned; that on the opening of his tomb, the spectators were affrighted by a smell of fire and the aspect of a horrid dragon; and that a saint of the times was indulged with a pleasant vision of the soul and body of Charles Martel, burning, to all eternity, in the abyss of hell. (34)
Elevation of the Abbassides, A.D. 746-750.
The loss of an army, or a province, in the Western world,
was less painful to the court of Damascus, than the rise and
progress of a domestic competitor. Except among the
Syrians, the caliphs of the house of Ommiyah had never been
the objects of the public favour. The life of Mahomet
recorded their perseverance in idolatry and rebellion: their
conversion had been reluctant, their elevation irregular and
factious, and their throne was cemented with the most holy
and noble blood of Arabia. The best of their race, the
pious Omar, was dissatisfied with his own title: their
personal virtues were insufficient to justify a departure
from the order of succession; and the eyes and wishes of the
faithful were turned towards the line of Hashem, and the
kindred of the apostle of God. Of these the Fatimites were
either rash or pusillanimous; but the descendants of Abbas
cherished, with courage and discretion, the hopes of their
rising fortunes. From an obscure residence in Syria, they
secretly despatched their agents and missionaries, who
preached in the Eastern provinces their hereditary
indefeasible right; and Mohammed, the son of Ali, the son of
Abdallah, the son of Abbas, the uncle of the prophet, gave
audience to the deputies of Chorasan, and accepted their
free gift of four hundred thousand pieces of gold. After
the death of Mohammed, the oath of allegiance was
administered in the name of his son Ibrahim to a numerous
band of votaries, who expected only a signal and a leader;
and the governor of Chorasan continued to deplore his
fruitless admonitions and the deadly slumber of the caliphs
of Damascus, till he himself, with all his adherents, was
driven from the city and palace of Meru, by the rebellious
arms of Abu Moslem. (35) That maker of kings, the author, as
he is named, of the call of the Abbassides, was at length
rewarded for his presumption of merit with the usual
gratitude of courts. A mean, perhaps a foreign, extraction
could not repress the aspiring energy of Abu Moslem. Jealous
of his wives, liberal of his wealth, prodigal of his own
blood and of that of others, he could boast with pleasure,
and possibly with truth, that he had destroyed six hundred
thousand of his enemies; and such was the intrepid gravity
of his mind and countenance, that he was never seen to smile
except on a day of battle. In the visible separation of
parties, the green was consecrated to the Fatimites; the
Ommiades were distinguished by the white; and the black, as
the most adverse, was naturally adopted by the Abbassides.
Their turbans and garments were stained with that gloomy
colour: two black standards, on pike staves nine cubits long,
were borne aloft in the van of Abu Moslem; and their
allegorical names of the night and the shadow obscurely
represented the indissoluble union and perpetual succession
of the line of Hashem. From the Indus to the Euphrates, the
East was convulsed by the quarrel of the white and the black
factions: the Abbassides were most frequently victorious;
but their public success was clouded by the personal
misfortune of their chief. The court of Damascus, awakening
from a long slumber, resolved to prevent the pilgrimage of
Mecca, which Ibrahim had undertaken with a splendid retinue,
to recommend himself at once to the favour of the prophet and
of the people. A detachment of cavalry intercepted his
march and arrested his person; and the unhappy Ibrahim,
snatched away from the promise of untasted royalty, expired
in iron fetters in the dungeons of Haran. His two younger
brothers, Saffah and Almansor, eluded the search of the
tyrant, and lay concealed at Cufa, till the zeal of the
people and the approach of his Eastern friends allowed them
to expose their persons to the impatient public. On Friday,
in the dress of a caliph, in the colours of the sect, Saffah
proceeded with religious and military pomp to the mosch:
ascending the pulpit, he prayed and preached as the lawful
successor of Mahomet; and after his departure, his kinsmen
bound a willing people by an oath of fidelity. But it was
on the banks of the Zab, and not in the mosch of Cufa, that
this important controversy was determined. Every advantage
appeared to be on the side of the white faction: the
authority of established government; an army of a hundred
and twenty thousand soldiers, against a sixth part of that
number; and the presence and merit of the caliph Mervan, the
fourteenth and last of the house of Ommiyah. Before his
accession to the throne, he had deserved, by his Georgian
warfare, the honourable epithet of the ass of Mesopotamia;
(36) and he might have been ranked amongst the greatest
princes, had not, says Abulfeda, the eternal order decreed
that moment for the ruin of his family; a decree against
which all human fortitude and prudence must struggle in
vain. The orders of Mervan were mistaken, or disobeyed: the
return of his horse, from which he had dismounted on a
necessary occasion, impressed the belief of his death; and
the enthusiasm of the black squadrons was ably conducted by
Abdallah, the uncle of his competitor. After an irretrievable
defeat, the caliph escaped to Mosul; but the colours of the
Abbassides were displayed from the rampart; he suddenly
repassed the Tigris, cast a melancholy look on his palace of
Haran, crossed the Euphrates, abandoned the fortifications
of Damascus, and, without halting in Palestine, pitched his
last and fatal camp at Busir, on the banks of the Nile. (37)
His speed was urged by the incessant diligence of Abdallah,
who in every step of the pursuit acquired strength and
reputation:Fall of the Ommiades, A.D. 750, February 10 the remains of the white faction were finally
vanquished in Egypt; and the lance, which terminated the
life and anxiety of Mervan, was not less welcome perhaps to
the unfortunate than to the victorious chief. The merciless
inquisition of the conqueror eradicated the most distant
branches of the hostile race: their bones were scattered,
their memory was accursed, and the martyrdom of Hossein was
abundantly revenged on the posterity of his tyrants.
Fourscore of the Ommiades, who had yielded to the faith or
clemency of their foes, were invited to a banquet at
Damascus. The laws of hospitality were violated by a
promiscuous massacre: the board was spread over their fallen
bodies; and the festivity of the guests was enlivened by the
music of their dying groans. By the event of the civil war,
the dynasty of the Abbassides was firmly established; but
the Christians only could triumph in the mutual hatred and
common loss of the disciples of Mahomet. (38)
Revolt of Spain, A.D. 755.
Yet the thousands who were swept away by the sword of war
might have been speedily retrieved in the succeeding
generation, if the consequences of the revolution had not
tended to dissolve the power and unity of the empire of the
Saracens. In the proscription of the Ommiades, a royal
youth of the name of Abdalrahman alone escaped the rage of
his enemies, who hunted the wandering exile from the banks
of the Euphrates to the valleys of Mount Atlas. His
presence in the neighbourhood of Spain revived the zeal of
the white faction. The name and cause of the Abbassides had
been first vindicated by the Persians: the West had been
pure from civil arms; and the servants of the abdicated
family still held, by a precarious tenure, the inheritance
of their lands and the offices of government. Strongly
prompted by gratitude, indignation, and fear, they invited
the grandson of the caliph Hashem to ascend the throne of
his ancestors; and, in his desperate condition, the extremes
of rashness and prudence were almost the same. The
acclamations of the people saluted his landing on the coast
of Andalusia: and, after a successful struggle, Abdalrahman
established the throne of Cordova, and was the father of the
Ommiades of Spain, who reigned above two hundred and fifty
years from the Atlantic to the Pyrenees. (39) He slew in
battle a lieutenant of the Abbassides, who had invaded his
dominions with a fleet and army: the head of Ala, in salt
and camphire, was suspended by a daring messenger before the
palace of Mecca; and the caliph Almansor rejoiced in his
safety, that he was removed by seas and lands from such a
formidable adversary. Their mutual designs or declarations
of offensive war evaporated without effect; but instead of
opening a door to the conquest of Europe, Spain was
dissevered from the trunk of the monarchy, engaged in
perpetual hostility with the East, and inclined to peace and
friendship with the Christian sovereigns of Constantinople
and France. Triple division of the caliphate The example of the Ommiades was imitated by the
real or fictitious progeny of Ali, the Edrissites of
Mauritania, and the more powerful fatimites of Africa and
Egypt. In the tenth century, the chair of Mahomet was
disputed by three caliphs or commanders of the faithful, who
reigned at Bagdad, Cairoan, and Cordova, excommunicating
each other, and agreed only in a principle of discord, that
a sectary is more odious and criminal than an unbeliever.
(40)
Magnificence of the caliphs, A.D. 750-960.
Mecca was the patrimony of the line of Hashem, yet the
Abbassides were never tempted to reside either in the
birthplace or the city of the prophet. Damascus was
disgraced by the choice, and polluted with the blood, of the
Ommiades; and, after some hesitation, Almansor, the brother
and successor of Saffah, laid the foundations of Bagdad, (41)
the Imperial seat of his posterity during a reign of five
hundred years. (42) The chosen spot is on the eastern bank of
the Tigris, about fifteen miles above the ruins of Modain:
the double wall was of a circular form; and such was the
rapid increase of a capital, now dwindled to a provincial
town, that the funeral of a popular saint might be attended
by eight hundred thousand men and sixty thousand women of
Bagdad and the adjacent villages. In this city of peace,
(43) amidst the riches of the East, the Abbassides soon
disdained the abstinence and frugality of the first caliphs,
and aspired to emulate the magnificence of the Persian
kings. After his wars and buildings, Almansor left behind
him in gold and silver about thirty millions sterling: (44)
and this treasure was exhausted in a few years by the vices
or virtues of his children. His son Mahadi, in a single
pilgrimage to Mecca, expended six millions of dinars of
gold. A pious and charitable motive may sanctify the
foundation of cisterns and caravanseras, which he
distributed along a measured road of seven hundred miles;
but his train of camels, laden with snow, could serve only
to astonish the natives of Arabia, and to refresh the fruits
and liquors of the royal banquet. (45) The courtiers would
surely praise the liberality of his grandson Almamon, who
gave away four fifths of the income of a province, a sum of
two millions four hundred thousand gold dinars, before he
drew his foot from the stirrup. At the nuptials of the same
prince, a thousand pearls of the largest size were showered
on the head of the bride, (46) and a lottery of lands and
houses displayed the capricious bounty of fortune. The
glories of the court were brightened, rather than impaired,
in the decline of the empire, and a Greek ambassador might
admire, or pity, the magnificence of the feeble Moctader.
"The caliph's whole army," says the historian Abulfeda, "both horse and foot, was under arms, which together made a body of one hundred and sixty thousand men. His state officers, the favourite slaves, stood near him in splendid apparel, their belts glittering with gold and gems. Near them were seven thousand eunuchs, four thousand of them white, the remainder black. The porters or door-keepers were in number seven hundred. Barges and boats, with the most superb decorations, were seen swimming upon the Tigris. Nor was the palace itself less splendid, in which were hung up thirty-eight thousand pieces of tapestry, twelve thousand five hundred of which were of silk embroidered with gold. The carpets on the floor were twenty-two thousand. A hundred lions were brought out, with a keeper to each lion. (47) Among the other spectacles of rare and stupendous luxury was a tree of gold and silver spreading into eighteen large branches, on which, and on the lesser boughs, sat a variety of birds made of the same precious metals, as well as the leaves of the tree. While the machinery affected spontaneous motions, the several birds warbled their natural harmony. Through this scene of magnificence, the Greek ambassador was led by the vizier to the foot of the caliph's throne." (48)
In the West, the Ommiades of Spain supported, with equal pomp, the title of commander of the faithful. Three miles from Cordova, in honour of his favourite sultana, the third and greatest of the Abdalrahmans constructed the city, palace, and gardens of Zehra. Twenty-five years, and above three millions sterling, were employed by the founder: his liberal taste invited the artists of Constantinople, the most skilful sculptors and architects of the age; and the buildings were sustained or adorned by twelve hundred columns of Spanish and African, of Greek and Italian marble. The hall of audience was encrusted with gold and pearls, and a great basin in the centre was surrounded with the curious and costly figures of birds and quadrupeds. In a lofty pavilion of the gardens, one of these basins and fountains, so delightful in a sultry climate, was replenished not with water, but with the purest quicksilver. The seraglio of Abdalrahman, his wives, concubines, and black eunuchs, amounted to six thousand three hundred persons: and he was attended to the field by a guard of twelve thousand horse, whose belts and scymetars were studded with gold. (49)
Consequences on private and public happiness.
In a private condition, our desires are perpetually
repressed by poverty and subordination; but the lives and
labours of millions are devoted to the service of a despotic
prince, whose laws are blindly obeyed, and whose wishes are
instantly gratified. Our imagination is dazzled by the
splendid picture; and whatever may be the cool dictates of
reason, there are few among us who would obstinately refuse
a trial of the comforts and the cares of royalty. It may
therefore be of some use to borrow the experience of the
same Abdalrahman, whose magnificence has perhaps excited our
admiration and envy, and to transcribe an authentic memorial
which was found in the closet of the deceased caliph.
"I have now reigned above fifty years in victory or peace; beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honours, power and pleasure, have waited on my call, nor does any earthly blessing appear to have been wanting to my felicity. In this situation, I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: they amount to Fourteen:—O man! place not thy confidence in this present world!" (50)
The luxury of the caliphs, so useless to their private happiness, relaxed the nerves, and terminated the progress, of the Arabian empire. Temporal and spiritual conquest had been the sole occupation of the first successors of Mahomet; and after supplying themselves with the necessaries of life, the whole revenue was scrupulously devoted to that salutary work. The Abbassides were impoverished by the multitude of their wants, and their contempt of economy. Instead of pursuing the great object of ambition, their leisure, their affections, the powers of their mind, were diverted by pomp and pleasure: the rewards of valour were embezzled by women and eunuchs, and the royal camp was encumbered by the luxury of the palace. A similar temper was diffused among the subjects of the caliph. Their stern enthusiasm was softened by time and prosperity. they sought riches in the occupations of industry, fame in the pursuits of literature, and happiness in the tranquillity of domestic life. War was no longer the passion of the Saracens; and the increase of pay, the repetition of donatives, were insufficient to allure the posterity of those voluntary champions who had crowded to the standard of Abubeker and Omar for the hopes of spoil and of paradise.
Introduction of learning among the Arabians, A.D. 754, etc, 813, etc.
Under the reign of the Ommiades, the studies of the Moslems were confined to the interpretation of the Koran, and the eloquence and poetry of their native tongue. A people continually exposed to the dangers of the field must esteem
the healing powers of medicine, or rather of surgery; but the starving physicians of Arabia murmured a complaint that
exercise and temperance deprived them of the greatest part
of their practice. (51) After their civil and domestic wars, the subjects of the Abbassides, awakening from this mental lethargy, found leisure and felt curiosity for the acquisition of profane science. This spirit was first encouraged by the caliph Almansor, who, besides his knowledge of the Mahometan law, had applied himself with success to the study of astronomy. But when the sceptre devolved to Almamon, the seventh of the Abbassides, he completed the designs of his grandfather, and invited the
muses from their ancient seats. His ambassadors at Constantinople, his agents in Armenia, Syria, and Egypt, collected the volumes of Grecian science at his command they were translated by the most skilful interpreters into the
Arabic language: his subjects were exhorted assiduously to peruse these instructive writings; and the successor of Mahomet assisted with pleasure and modesty at the assemblies and disputations of the learned.
"He was not ignorant," says Abulpharagius, "that they are the elect of God, his best and most useful servants, whose lives are devoted to the improvement of their rational faculties. The mean ambition of the Chinese or the Turks may glory in the industry of their hands or the indulgence of their brutal appetites. Yet these dexterous artists must view, with hopeless emulation, the hexagons and pyramids of the cells of a beehive: (52) these fortitudinous heroes are awed by the superior fierceness of the lions and tigers; and in their amorous enjoyments they are much inferior to the vigour of the grossest and most sordid quadrupeds. The teachers of wisdom are the true luminaries and legislators of a world, which, without their aid, would again sink in ignorance and barbarism." (53)
The zeal and curiosity of Almamon were imitated by succeeding princes of the line of Abbas: their rivals, the Fatimites of Africa and the Ommiades of Spain, were the patrons of the learned, as well as the commanders of the faithful; the same royal prerogative was claimed by their independent emirs of the provinces; and their emulation diffused the taste and the rewards of science from Samarcand and Bochara to Fez and Cordova. The vizier of a sultan consecrated a sum of two hundred thousand pieces of gold to the foundation of a college at Bagdad, which he endowed with an annual revenue of fifteen thousand dinars. The fruits of instruction were communicated, perhaps at different times, to six thousand disciples of every degree, from the son of the noble to that of the mechanic: a sufficient allowance was provided for the indigent scholars; and the merit or industry of the professors was repaid with adequate stipends. In every city the productions of Arabic literature were copied and collected by the curiosity of the studious and the vanity of the rich. A private doctor refused the invitation of the sultan of Bochara, because the carriage of his books would have required four hundred camels. The royal library of the Fatimites consisted of one hundred thousand manuscripts, elegantly transcribed and splendidly bound, which were lent, without jealousy or avarice, to the students of Cairo. Yet this collection must appear moderate, if we can believe that the Ommiades of Spain had formed a library of six hundred thousand volumes, forty-four of which were employed in the mere catalogue. Their capital, Cordova, with the adjacent towns of Malaga, Almeria, and Murcia, had given birth to more than three hundred writers, and above seventy public libraries were opened in the cities of the Andalusian kingdom. The age of Arabian learning continued about five hundred years, till the great eruption of the Moguls, and was coeval with the darkest and most slothful period of European annals; but since the sun of science has arisen in the West, it should seem that the Oriental studies have languished and declined. (54)
Their real progress in the sciences.
In the libraries of the Arabians, as in those of Europe, the
far greater part of the innumerable volumes were possessed
only of local value or imaginary merit. (55) The shelves were
crowded with orators and poets, whose style was adapted to
the taste and manners of their countrymen; with general and
partial histories, which each revolving generation supplied
with a new harvest of persons and events; with codes and
commentaries of jurisprudence, which derived their authority
from the law of the prophet; with the interpreters of the
Koran, and orthodox tradition; and with the whole
theological tribe, polemics, mystics, scholastics, and
moralists, the first or the last of writers, according to
the different estimates of sceptics or believers. The works
of speculation or science may be reduced to the four classes
of philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and physic. The
sages of Greece were translated and illustrated in the
Arabic language, and some treatises, now lost in the
original, have been recovered in the versions of the East,
(56) which possessed and studied the writings of Aristotle and Plato, of Euclid and Apollonius, of Ptolemy,
Hippocrates, and Galen. (57) Among the ideal systems which have varied with the fashion of the times, the Arabians
adopted the philosophy of the Stagirite, alike intelligible
or alike obscure for the readers of every age. Plato wrote
for the Athenians, and his allegorical genius is too closely
blended with the language and religion of Greece. After the
fall of that religion, the Peripatetics, emerging from their
obscurity, prevailed in the controversies of the Oriental
sects, and their founder was long afterwards restored by the
Mahometans of Spain to the Latin schools. (58) The physics, both of the Academy and the Lycaeum, as they are built, not on observation, but on argument, have retarded the progress of real knowledge. The metaphysics of infinite, or finite,
spirit, have too often been enlisted in the service of
superstition. But the human faculties are fortified by the
art and practice of dialectics; the ten predicaments of
Aristotle collect and methodize our ideas, (59) and his
syllogism is the keenest weapon of dispute. It was
dexterously wielded in the schools of the Saracens, but as
it is more effectual for the detection of error than for the
investigation of truth, it is not surprising that new
generations of masters and disciples should still revolve in
the same circle of logical argument. The mathematics are
distinguished by a peculiar privilege, that, in the course
of ages, they may always advance, and can never recede. But
the ancient geometry, if I am not misinformed, was resumed
in the same state by the Italians of the fifteenth century;
and whatever may be the origin of the name, the science of
algebra is ascribed to the Grecian Diophantus by the modest
testimony of the Arabs themselves. (60) They cultivated with
more success the sublime science of astronomy, which
elevates the mind of man to disdain his diminutive planet
and momentary existence. The costly instruments of
observation were supplied by the caliph Almamon, and the
land of the Chaldaeans still afforded the same spacious
level, the same unclouded horizon. In the plains of Sinaar,
and a second time in those of Cufa, his mathematicians
accurately measured a degree of the great circle of the
earth, and determined at twenty-four thousand miles the
entire circumference of our globe. (61) From the reign of the
Abbassides to that of the grandchildren of Tamerlane, the
stars, without the aid of glasses, were diligently observed;
and the astronomical tables of Bagdad, Spain, and Samarcand,
(62) correct some minute errors, without daring to renounce
the hypothesis of Ptolemy, without advancing a step towards
the discovery of the solar system. In the Eastern courts,
the truths of science could be recommended only by ignorance
and folly, and the astronomer would have been disregarded,
had he not debased his wisdom or honesty by the vain
predictions of astrology. (63) But in the science of
medicine, the Arabians have been deservedly applauded. The
names of Mesua and Geber, of Razis and Avicenna, are ranked
with the Grecian masters; in the city of Bagdad, eight
hundred and sixty physicians were licensed to exercise their
lucrative profession: (64) in Spain, the life of the Catholic
princes was entrusted to the skill of the Saracens, (65) and
the school of Salerno, their legitimate offspring, revived
in Italy and Europe the precepts of the healing art. (66) The
success of each professor must have been influenced by
personal and accidental causes; but we may form a less
fanciful estimate of their general knowledge of anatomy, (67)
botany, (68) and chemistry, (69) the threefold basis of their
theory and practice. A superstitious reverence for the dead
confined both the Greeks and the Arabians to the dissection
of apes and quadrupeds; the more solid and visible parts
were known in the time of Galen, and the finer scrutiny of
the human frame was reserved for the microscope and the
injections of modern artists. Botany is an active science,
and the discoveries of the torrid zone might enrich the
herbal of Dioscorides with two thousand plants. Some
traditionary knowledge might be secreted in the temples and
monasteries of Egypt; much useful experience had been
acquired in the practice of arts and manufactures; but the
science of chemistry owes its origin and improvement to the
industry of the Saracens. They first invented and named the
alembic for the purposes of distillation, analyzed the
substances of the three kingdoms of nature, tried the
distinction and affinities of alcalis and acids, and
converted the poisonous minerals into soft and salutary
medicines. But the most eager search of Arabian chemistry
was the transmutation of metals, and the elixir of immortal
health: the reason and the fortunes of thousands were
evaporated in the crucibles of alchemy, and the consummation
of the great work was promoted by the worthy aid of mystery,
fable, and superstition.
Want of erudition, taste, and freedom..
But the Moslems deprived themselves of the principal
benefits of a familiar intercourse with Greece and Rome, the
knowledge of antiquity, the purity of taste, and the freedom
of thought. Confident in the riches of their native tongue,
the Arabians disdained the study of any foreign idiom. The
Greek interpreters were chosen among their Christian
subjects; they formed their translations, sometimes on the
original text, more frequently perhaps on a Syriac version;
and in the crowd of astronomers and physicians, there is no
example of a poet, an orator, or even an historian, being
taught to speak the language of the Saracens. (70) The
mythology of Homer would have provoked the abhorrence of
those stern fanatics: they possessed in lazy ignorance the
colonies of the Macedonians, and the provinces of Carthage
and Rome: the heroes of Plutarch and Livy were buried in
oblivion; and the history of the world before Mahomet was
reduced to a short legend of the patriarchs, the prophets,
and the Persian kings. Our education in the Greek and Latin
schools may have fixed in our minds a standard of exclusive
taste; and I am not forward to condemn the literature and
judgment of nations, of whose language I am ignorant. Yet I
know that the classics have much to teach, and I believe
that the Orientals have much to learn; the temperate dignity
of style, the graceful proportions of art, the forms of
visible and intellectual beauty, the just delineation of
character and passion, the rhetoric of narrative and
argument, the regular fabric of epic and dramatic poetry.
(71) The influence of truth and reason is of a less ambiguous
complexion. The philosophers of Athens and Rome enjoyed the
blessings, and asserted the rights, of civil and religious
freedom. Their moral and political writings might have
gradually unlocked the fetters of Eastern despotism,
diffused a liberal spirit of inquiry and toleration, and
encouraged the Arabian sages to suspect that their caliph
was a tyrant, and their prophet an impostor. (72) The
instinct of superstition was alarmed by the introduction
even of the abstract sciences; and the more rigid doctors of
the law condemned the rash and pernicious curiosity of
Almamon. (73) To the thirst of martyrdom, the vision of
paradise, and the belief of predestination, we must ascribe
the invincible enthusiasm of the prince and people. And the
sword of the Saracens became less formidable when their
youth was drawn away from the camp to the college, when the
armies of the faithful presumed to read and to reflect. Yet
the foolish vanity of the Greeks was jealous of their
studies, and reluctantly imparted the sacred fire to the
Barbarians of the East. (74)
Wars of al Rashid against the Romans, A.D. 781-805.
In the bloody conflict of the Ommiades and Abbassides, the
Greeks had stolen the opportunity of avenging their wrongs
and enlarging their limits. But a severe retribution was
exacted by Mohadi, the third caliph of the new dynasty, who
seized, in his turn, the favourable opportunity, while a
woman and a child, Irene and Constantine, were seated on the
Byzantine throne. An army of ninety-five thousand Persians
and Arabs was sent from the Tigris to the Thracian
Bosphorus, under the command of Harun, (75) or Aaron, the second son of the commander of the faithful. His encampment
on the opposite heights of Chrysopolis, or Scutari, informed
Irene, in her palace of Constantinople, of the loss of her
troops and provinces. With the consent or connivance of
their sovereign, her ministers subscribed an ignominious
peace; and the exchange of some royal gifts could not
disguise the annual tribute of seventy thousand dinars of
gold, which was imposed on the Roman empire. The Saracens
had too rashly advanced into the midst of a distant and
hostile land: their retreat was solicited by the promise of
faithful guides and plentiful markets; and not a Greek had
courage to whisper, that their weary forces might be
surrounded and destroyed in their necessary passage between
a slippery mountain and the River Sangarius. Five years
after this expedition, Harun ascended the throne of his
father and his elder brother; the most powerful and vigorous
monarch of his race, illustrious in the West, as the ally of
Charlemagne, and familiar to the most childish readers, as
the perpetual hero of the Arabian tales. His title to the
name of Al Rashid (the Just) is sullied by the extirpation
of the generous, perhaps the innocent, Barmecides; yet he
could listen to the complaint of a poor widow who had been
pillaged by his troops, and who dared, in a passage of the
Koran, to threaten the inattentive despot with the judgment
of God and posterity. His court was adorned with luxury and
science; but, in a reign of three-and-twenty years, Harun
repeatedly visited his provinces from Chorasan to Egypt;
nine times he performed the pilgrimage of Mecca; eight times
he invaded the territories of the Romans; and as often as
they declined the payment of the tribute, they were taught
to feel that a month of depredation was more costly than a
year of submission. But when the unnatural mother of
Constantine was deposed and banished, her successor,
Nicephorus, resolved to obliterate this badge of servitude
and disgrace. The epistle of the emperor to the caliph was
pointed with an allusion to the game of chess, which had
already spread from Persia to Greece.
"The queen (he spoke of Irene) considered you as a rook, and herself as a pawn. That pusillanimous female submitted to pay a tribute, the double of which she ought to have exacted from the Barbarians. Restore therefore the fruits of your injustice, or abide the determination of the sword."
At these words the ambassadors cast a bundle of swords before the foot of the throne. The caliph smiled at the menace, and drawing his scymetar, samsamah, a weapon of historic or fabulous renown, he cut asunder the feeble arms of the Greeks, without turning the edge, or endangering the temper, of his blade. He then dictated an epistle of tremendous brevity:
"In the name of the most merciful God, Harun al Rashid, commander of the faithful, to Nicephorus, the Roman dog. I have read thy letter, O thou son of an unbelieving mother. Thou shalt not hear, thou shalt behold, my reply."
It was written in characters of blood and fire on the plains of Phrygia; and the warlike celerity of the Arabs could only be checked by the arts of deceit and the show of repentance. The triumphant caliph retired, after the fatigues of the campaign, to his favourite palace of Racca on the Euphrates: (76) but the distance of five hundred miles, and the inclemency of the season, encouraged his adversary to violate the peace. Nicephorus was astonished by the bold and rapid march of the commander of the faithful, who repassed, in the depth of winter, the snows of Mount Taurus: his stratagems of policy and war were exhausted; and the perfidious Greek escaped with three wounds from a field of battle overspread with forty thousand of his subjects. Yet the emperor was ashamed of submission, and the caliph was resolved on victory. One hundred and thirty-five thousand regular soldiers received pay, and were inscribed in the military roll; and above three hundred thousand persons of every denomination marched under the black standard of the Abbassides. They swept the surface of Asia Minor far beyond Tyana and Ancyra, and invested the Pontic Heraclea, (77) once a flourishing state, now a paltry town; at that time capable of sustaining, in her antique walls, a month's siege against the forces of the East. The ruin was complete, the spoil was ample; but if Harun had been conversant with Grecian story, he would have regretted the statue of Hercules, whose attributes, the club, the bow, the quiver, and the lion's hide, were sculptured in massy gold. The progress of desolation by sea and land, from the Euxine to the Isle of Cyprus, compelled the emperor Nicephorus to retract his haughty defiance. In the new treaty, the ruins of Heraclea were left forever as a lesson and a trophy; and the coin of the tribute was marked with the image and superscription of Harun and his three sons. (78) Yet this plurality of lords might contribute to remove the dishonour of the Roman name. After the death of their father, the heirs of the caliph were involved in civil discord, and the conqueror, the liberal Almamon, was sufficiently engaged in the restoration of domestic peace and the introduction of foreign science.
The Arabs subdue the isle of Crete, A.D. 823.
Under the reign of Almamon at Bagdad, of Michael the
Stammerer at Constantinople, the islands of Crete (79) and
Sicily were subdued by the Arabs. The former of these
conquests is disdained by their own writers, who were
ignorant of the fame of Jupiter and Minos, but it has not
been overlooked by the Byzantine historians, who now begin
to cast a clearer light on the affairs of their own times.
(80) A band of Andalusian volunteers, discontented with the climate or government of Spain, explored the adventures of the sea; but as they sailed in no more than ten or twenty
galleys, their warfare must be branded with the name of piracy. As the subjects and sectaries of the white party,
they might lawfully invade the dominions of the black
caliphs. A rebellious faction introduced them into
Alexandria; (81) they cut in pieces both friends and foes, pillaged the churches and the moschs, sold above six thousand Christian captives, and maintained their station in
the capital of Egypt, till they were oppressed by the forces
and the presence of Almamon himself. From the mouth of the
Nile to the Hellespont, the islands and sea-coasts both of
the Greeks and Moslems were exposed to their depredations;
they saw, they envied, they tasted the fertility of Crete,
and soon returned with forty galleys to a more serious
attack. The Andalusians wandered over the land fearless and
unmolested; but when they descended with their plunder to
the sea-shore, their vessels were in flames, and their
chief, Abu Caab, confessed himself the author of the
mischief. Their clamours accused his madness or treachery.
"Of what do you complain?" replied the crafty emir. "I have brought you to a land flowing with milk and honey. Here is your true country; repose from your toils, and forget the barren place of your nativity."
"And our wives and children?"
"Your beauteous captives will supply the place of your wives, and in their embraces you will soon become the fathers of a new progeny."
The first habitation was their camp, with a ditch and rampart, in the Bay of Suda; but an apostate monk led them to a more desirable position in the eastern parts; and the name of Candax, their fortress and colony, has been extended to the whole island, under the corrupt and modern appellation of Candia. The hundred cities of the age of Minos were diminished to thirty; and of these, only one, most probably Cydonia, had courage to retain the substance of freedom and the profession of Christianity. The Saracens of Crete soon repaired the loss of their navy; and the timbers of Mount Ida were launched into the main. During a hostile period of one hundred and thirty-eight years, the princes of Constantinople attacked these licentious corsairs with fruitless curses and ineffectual arms.
and of Sicily, A.D. 827-878.
The loss of Sicily (82) was occasioned by an act of
superstitious rigour. An amorous youth, who had stolen a nun
from her cloister, was sentenced by the emperor to the
amputation of his tongue. Euphemius appealed to the reason
and policy of the Saracens of Africa; and soon returned with
the Imperial purple, a fleet of one hundred ships, and an
army of seven hundred horse and ten thousand foot. They
landed at Mazara near the ruins of the ancient Selinus; but
after some partial victories, Syracuse (83) was delivered by
the Greeks, the apostate was slain before her walls, and his
African friends were reduced to the necessity of feeding on
the flesh of their own horses. In their turn they were
relieved by a powerful reinforcement of their brethren of
Andalusia; the largest and western part of the island was
gradually reduced, and the commodious harbour of Palermo was
chosen for the seat of the naval and military power of the
Saracens. Syracuse preserved about fifty years the faith
which she had sworn to Christ and to Caesar. In the last
and fatal siege, her citizens displayed some remnant of the
spirit which had formerly resisted the powers of Athens and
Carthage. They stood above twenty days against the
battering-rams and catapultae, the mines and tortoises of
the besiegers; and the place might have been relieved, if
the mariners of the Imperial fleet had not been detained at
Constantinople in building a church to the Virgin Mary. The
deacon Theodosius, with the bishop and clergy, was dragged
in chains from the altar to Palermo, cast into a
subterraneous dungeon, and exposed to the hourly peril of
death or apostasy. His pathetic, and not inelegant,
complaint may be read as the epitaph of his country. (84)
From the Roman conquest to this final calamity, Syracuse,
now dwindled to the primitive Isle of Ortygea, had
insensibly declined. Yet the relics were still precious;
the plate of the cathedral weighed five thousand pounds of
silver; the entire spoil was computed at one million of
pieces of gold, (about four hundred thousand pounds
sterling,) and the captives must outnumber the seventeen
thousand Christians, who were transported from the sack of
Tauromenium into African servitude. In Sicily, the religion
and language of the Greeks were eradicated; and such was the
docility of the rising generation, that fifteen thousand
boys were circumcised and clothed on the same day with the
son of the Fatimite caliph. The Arabian squadrons issued
from the harbours of Palermo, Biserta, and Tunis; a hundred
and fifty towns of Calabria and Campania were attacked and
pillaged; nor could the suburbs of Rome be defended by the
name of the Caesars and apostles. Had the Mahometans been
united, Italy must have fallen an easy and glorious
accession to the empire of the prophet. But the caliphs of
Bagdad had lost their authority in the West; the Aglabites
and Fatimites usurped the provinces of Africa, their emirs
of Sicily aspired to independence; and the design of
conquest and dominion was degraded to a repetition of
predatory inroads. (85)
Invasion of Rome by the Saracens, A.D. 846.
In the sufferings of prostrate Italy, the name of Rome
awakens a solemn and mournful recollection. A fleet of
Saracens from the African coast presumed to enter the mouth
of the Tyber, and to approach a city which even yet, in her
fallen state, was revered as the metropolis of the Christian
world. The gates and ramparts were guarded by a trembling
people; but the tombs and temples of St. Peter and St. Paul
were left exposed in the suburbs of the Vatican and of the
Ostian way. Their invisible sanctity had protected them
against the Goths, the Vandals, and the Lombards; but the
Arabs disdained both the gospel and the legend; and their
rapacious spirit was approved and animated by the precepts
of the Koran. The Christian idols were stripped of their
costly offerings; a silver altar was torn away from the
shrine of St. Peter; and if the bodies or the buildings were
left entire, their deliverance must be imputed to the haste,
rather than the scruples, of the Saracens. In their course
along the Appian way, they pillaged Fundi and besieged
Gayeta; but they had turned aside from the walls of Rome,
and by their divisions, the Capitol was saved from the yoke
of the prophet of Mecca. The same danger still impended on
the heads of the Roman people; and their domestic force was
unequal to the assault of an African emir. They claimed the
protection of their Latin sovereign; but the Carlovingian
standard was overthrown by a detachment of the Barbarians:
they meditated the restoration of the Greek emperors; but
the attempt was treasonable, and the succour remote and
precarious. (86) Their distress appeared to receive some
aggravation from the death of their spiritual and temporal
chief; but the pressing emergency superseded the forms and
intrigues of an election; and the unanimous choice of Pope
Leo the Fourth (87) was the safety of the church and city.
This pontiff was born a Roman; the courage of the first ages
of the republic glowed in his breast; and, amidst the ruins
of his country, he stood erect, like one of the firm and
lofty columns that rear their heads above the fragments of
the Roman forum. The first days of his reign were
consecrated to the purification and removal of relics, to
prayers and processions, and to all the solemn offices of
religion, which served at least to heal the imagination, and
restore the hopes, of the multitude. The public defence had
been long neglected, not from the presumption of peace, but
from the distress and poverty of the times. As far as the
scantiness of his means and the shortness of his leisure
would allow, the ancient walls were repaired by the command
of Leo; fifteen towers, in the most accessible stations,
were built or renewed; two of these commanded on either side
of the Tyber; and an iron chain was drawn across the stream
to impede the ascent of a hostile navy. The Romans were
assured of a short respite by the welcome news, that the
siege of Gayeta had been raised, and that a part of the
enemy, with their sacrilegious plunder, had perished in the
waves.
Victory and reign of Leo IV, A.D. 849.
But the storm, which had been delayed, soon burst upon them
with redoubled violence. The Aglabite, (88) who reigned in
Africa, had inherited from his father a treasure and an
army: a fleet of Arabs and Moors, after a short refreshment
in the harbours of Sardinia, cast anchor before the mouth of
the Tyber, sixteen miles from the city: and their discipline
and numbers appeared to threaten, not a transient inroad,
but a serious design of conquest and dominion. But the
vigilance of Leo had formed an alliance with the vassals of
the Greek empire, the free and maritime states of Gayeta,
Naples, and Amalfi; and in the hour of danger, their galleys
appeared in the port of Ostia under the command of
Caesarius, the son of the Neapolitan duke, a noble and
valiant youth, who had already vanquished the fleets of the
Saracens. With his principal companions, Caesarius was
invited to the Lateran palace, and the dexterous pontiff
affected to inquire their errand, and to accept with joy and
surprise their providential succour. The city bands, in
arms, attended their father to Ostia, where he reviewed and
blessed his generous deliverers. They kissed his feet,
received the communion with martial devotion, and listened
to the prayer of Leo, that the same God who had supported
St. Peter and St. Paul on the waves of the sea, would
strengthen the hands of his champions against the
adversaries of his holy name. After a similar prayer, and
with equal resolution, the Moslems advanced to the attack of
the Christian galleys, which preserved their advantageous
station along the coast. The victory inclined to the side
of the allies, when it was less gloriously decided in their
favour by a sudden tempest, which confounded the skill and
courage of the stoutest mariners. The Christians were
sheltered in a friendly harbour, while the Africans were
scattered and dashed in pieces among the rocks and islands
of a hostile shore. Those who escaped from shipwreck and
hunger neither found, nor deserved, mercy at the hands of
their implacable pursuers. The sword and the gibbet reduced
the dangerous multitude of captives; and the remainder was
more usefully employed, to restore the sacred edifices which
they had attempted to subvert. The pontiff, at the head of
the citizens and allies, paid his grateful devotion at the
shrines of the apostles; and, among the spoils of this naval
victory, thirteen Arabian bows of pure and massy silver were
suspended round the altar of the fishermen of Galilee. The
reign of Leo the Fourth was employed in the defence and
ornament of the Roman state. The churches were renewed and
embellished: near four thousand pounds of silver were
consecrated to repair the losses of St. Peter; and his
sanctuary was decorated with a plate of gold of the weight
of two hundred and sixteen pounds, embossed with the
portraits of the pope and emperor, and encircled with a
string of pearls. Yet this vain magnificence reflects less
glory on the character of Leo than the paternal care with
which he rebuilt the walls of Horta and Ameria; and
transported the wandering inhabitants of Centumcellae to his
new foundation of Leopolis, twelve miles from the sea-
shore. (89) By his liberality, a colony of Corsicans, with
their wives and children, was planted in the station of
Porto, at the mouth of the Tyber: the falling city was
restored for their use, the fields and vineyards were
divided among the new settlers: their first efforts were
assisted by a gift of horses and cattle; and the hardy
exiles, who breathed revenge against the Saracens, swore to
live and die under the standard of St. Peter. The nations
of the West and North who visited the threshold of the
apostles had gradually formed the large and populous suburb
of the Vatican, and their various habitations were
distinguished, in the language of the times, as the schools
of the Greeks and Goths, of the Lombards and Saxons. But
this venerable spot was still open to sacrilegious insult:
the design of enclosing it with walls and towers exhausted
all that authority could command, or charity would supply:
and the pious labor of four years was animated in every
season, and at every hour, by the presence of the
indefatigable pontiff. The love of fame, a generous but
worldly passion, Foundation of the Leonine city, A.D. 852. may be detected in the name of the Leonine
city, which he bestowed on the Vatican; yet the pride of the
dedication was tempered with Christian penance and humility.
The boundary was trod by the bishop and his clergy,
barefoot, in sackcloth and ashes; the songs of triumph were
modulated to psalms and litanies; the walls were besprinkled
with holy water; and the ceremony was concluded with a
prayer, that, under the guardian care of the apostles and
the angelic host, both the old and the new Rome might ever
be preserved pure, prosperous, and impregnable. (90)
The Amorian war between Theophilus and Motassem, A.D. 838.
The emperor Theophilus, son of Michael the Stammerer, was
one of the most active and high-spirited princes who reigned
at Constantinople during the middle age. In offensive or
defensive war, he marched in person five times against the
Saracens, formidable in his attack, esteemed by the enemy in
his losses and defeats. In the last of these expeditions he
penetrated into Syria, and besieged the obscure town of
Sozopetra; the casual birthplace of the caliph Motassem,
whose father Harun was attended in peace or war by the most
favoured of his wives and concubines. The revolt of a
Persian impostor employed at that moment the arms of the
Saracen, and he could only intercede in favour of a place for
which he felt and acknowledged some degree of filial
affection. These solicitations determined the emperor to
wound his pride in so sensible a part. Sozopetra was
levelled with the ground, the Syrian prisoners were marked
or mutilated with ignominious cruelty, and a thousand female
captives were forced away from the adjacent territory.
Among these a matron of the house of Abbas invoked, in an
agony of despair, the name of Motassem; and the insults of
the Greeks engaged the honour of her kinsman to avenge his
indignity, and to answer her appeal. Under the reign of the
two elder brothers, the inheritance of the youngest had been
confined to Anatolia, Armenia, Georgia, and Circassia; this
frontier station had exercised his military talents; and
among his accidental claims to the name of Octonary, (91) the
most meritorious are the eight battles which he gained or
fought against the enemies of the Koran. In this personal
quarrel, the troops of Irak, Syria, and Egypt, were
recruited from the tribes of Arabia and the Turkish hordes;
his cavalry might be numerous, though we should deduct some
myriads from the hundred and thirty thousand horses of the
royal stables; and the expense of the armament was computed
at four millions sterling, or one hundred thousand pounds of
gold. From Tarsus, the place of assembly, the Saracens
advanced in three divisions along the high road of
Constantinople: Motassem himself commanded the centre, and
the vanguard was given to his son Abbas, who, in the trial
of the first adventures, might succeed with the more glory,
or fail with the least reproach. In the revenge of his
injury, the caliph prepared to retaliate a similar affront.
The father of Theophilus was a native of Amorium (92) in
Phrygia: the original seat of the Imperial house had been
adorned with privileges and monuments; and, whatever might
be the indifference of the people, Constantinople itself was
scarcely of more value in the eyes of the sovereign and his
court. The name of AMORIUM was inscribed on the shields of
the Saracens; and their three armies were again united under
the walls of the devoted city. It had been proposed by the
wisest counsellors, to evacuate Amorium, to remove the
inhabitants, and to abandon the empty structures to the vain
resentment of the Barbarians. The emperor embraced the more
generous resolution of defending, in a siege and battle, the
country of his ancestors. When the armies drew near, the
front of the Mahometan line appeared to a Roman eye more
closely planted with spears and javelins; but the event of
the action was not glorious on either side to the national
troops. The Arabs were broken, but it was by the swords of
thirty thousand Persians, who had obtained service and
settlement in the Byzantine empire. The Greeks were
repulsed and vanquished, but it was by the arrows of the
Turkish cavalry; and had not their bowstrings been damped
and relaxed by the evening rain, very few of the Christians
could have escaped with the emperor from the field of
battle. They breathed at Dorylaeum, at the distance of
three days; and Theophilus, reviewing his trembling
squadrons, forgave the common flight both of the prince and
people. After this discovery of his weakness, he vainly
hoped to deprecate the fate of Amorium: the inexorable
caliph rejected with contempt his prayers and promises; and
detained the Roman ambassadors to be the witnesses of his
great revenge. They had nearly been the witnesses of his
shame. The vigorous assaults of fifty- five days were
encountered by a faithful governor, a veteran garrison, and
a desperate people; and the Saracens must have raised the
siege, if a domestic traitor had not pointed to the weakest
part of the wall, a place which was decorated with the
statues of a lion and a bull. The vow of Motassem was
accomplished with unrelenting rigour: tired, rather than
satiated, with destruction, he returned to his new palace of
Samara, in the neighbourhood of Bagdad, while the unfortunate
(93) Theophilus implored the tardy and doubtful aid of his
Western rival the emperor of the Franks. Yet in the siege of
Amorium about seventy thousand Moslems had perished: their
loss had been revenged by the slaughter of thirty thousand
Christians, and the sufferings of an equal number of
captives, who were treated as the most atrocious criminals.
Mutual necessity could sometimes extort the exchange or
ransom of prisoners: (94) but in the national and religious
conflict of the two empires, peace was without confidence,
and war without mercy. Quarter was seldom given in the
field; those who escaped the edge of the sword were
condemned to hopeless servitude, or exquisite torture; and a
Catholic emperor relates, with visible satisfaction, the
execution of the Saracens of Crete, who were flayed alive,
or plunged into cauldrons of boiling oil. (95) To a point of
honour Motassem had sacrificed a flourishing city, two
hundred thousand lives, and the property of millions. The
same caliph descended from his horse, and dirtied his robe,
to relieve the distress of a decrepit old man, who, with his
laden ass, had tumbled into a ditch. On which of these
actions did he reflect with the most pleasure, when he was
summoned by the angel of death? (96)
Disorders of the Turkish guards, A.D. 841-870, etc.
With Motassem, the eighth of the Abbassides, the glory of
his family and nation expired. When the Arabian conquerors
had spread themselves over the East, and were mingled with
the servile crowds of Persia, Syria, and Egypt, they
insensibly lost the freeborn and martial virtues of the
desert. The courage of the South is the artificial fruit of
discipline and prejudice; the active power of enthusiasm had
decayed, and the mercenary forces of the caliphs were
recruited in those climates of the North, of which valour is
the hardy and spontaneous production. Of the Turks (97) who dwelt beyond the Oxus and Jaxartes, the robust youths,
either taken in war or purchased in trade, were educated in
the exercises of the field, and the profession of the
Mahometan faith. The Turkish guards stood in arms round the
throne of their benefactor, and their chiefs usurped the
dominion of the palace and the provinces. Motassem, the
first author of this dangerous example, introduced into the
capital above fifty thousand Turks: their licentious conduct
provoked the public indignation, and the quarrels of the
soldiers and people induced the caliph to retire from
Bagdad, and establish his own residence and the camp of his
Barbarian favourites at Samara on the Tigris, about twelve
leagues above the city of Peace. (98) His son Motawakkel was a jealous and cruel tyrant: odious to his subjects, he cast
himself on the fidelity of the strangers, and these
strangers, ambitious and apprehensive, were tempted by the
rich promise of a revolution. At the instigation, or at
least in the cause of his son, they burst into his apartment
at the hour of supper, and the caliph was cut into seven
pieces by the same swords which he had recently distributed
among the guards of his life and throne. To this throne,
yet streaming with a father's blood, Montasser was
triumphantly led; but in a reign of six months, he found
only the pangs of a guilty conscience. If he wept at the
sight of an old tapestry which represented the crime and
punishment of the son of Chosroes, if his days were abridged
by grief and remorse, we may allow some pity to a parricide,
who exclaimed, in the bitterness of death, that he had lost
both this world and the world to come. After this act of
treason, the ensigns of royalty, the garment and
walking-staff of Mahomet, were given and torn away by the
foreign mercenaries, who in four years created, deposed, and
murdered, three commanders of the faithful. As often as the
Turks were inflamed by fear, or rage, or avarice, these
caliphs were dragged by the feet, exposed naked to the
scorching sun, beaten with iron clubs, and compelled to
purchase, by the abdication of their dignity, a short
reprieve of inevitable fate. (99) At length, however, the
fury of the tempest was spent or diverted: the Abbassides
returned to the less turbulent residence of Bagdad; the
insolence of the Turks was curbed with a firmer and more
skilful hand, and their numbers were divided and destroyed
in foreign warfare. But the nations of the East had been
taught to trample on the successors of the prophet; and the
blessings of domestic peace were obtained by the relaxation
of strength and discipline. So uniform are the mischiefs of
military despotism, that I seem to repeat the story of the
praetorians of Rome. (100)
Rise and progress of the Carmathians, A.D. 890-951.
While the flame of enthusiasm was damped by the business,
the pleasure, and the knowledge, of the age, it burnt with
concentrated heat in the breasts of the chosen few, the
congenial spirits, who were ambitious of reigning either in
this world or in the next. How carefully soever the book of
prophecy had been sealed by the apostle of Mecca, the
wishes, and (if we may profane the word) even the reason, of
fanaticism might believe that, after the successive missions
of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Mahomet, the same
God, in the fullness of time, would reveal a still more
perfect and permanent law. In the two hundred and
seventy-seventh year of the Hegira, and in the neighbourhood
of Cufa, an Arabian preacher, of the name of Carmath,
assumed the lofty and incomprehensible style of the Guide,
the Director, the Demonstration, the Word, the Holy Ghost,
the Camel, the Herald of the Messiah, who had conversed with
him in a human shape, and the representative of Mohammed the
son of Ali, of St. John the Baptist, and of the angel
Gabriel. In his mystic volume, the precepts of the Koran
were refined to a more spiritual sense: he relaxed the
duties of ablution, fasting, and pilgrimage; allowed the
indiscriminate use of wine and forbidden food; and nourished
the fervour of his disciples by the daily repetition of fifty
prayers. The idleness and ferment of the rustic crowd
awakened the attention of the magistrates of Cufa; a timid
persecution assisted the progress of the new sect; and the
name of the prophet became more revered after his person had
been withdrawn from the world. His twelve apostles
dispersed themselves among the Bedoweens,
"a race of men," says Abulfeda, "equally devoid of reason and of religion;"
and the success of their preaching seemed to threaten Arabia with a new revolution. The Carmathians were ripe for rebellion, since they disclaimed the title of the house of Abbas, and abhorred the worldly pomp of the caliphs of Bagdad. They were susceptible of discipline, since they vowed a blind and absolute submission to their Imam, who was called to the prophetic office by the voice of God and the people. Instead of the legal tithes, he claimed the fifth of their substance and spoil; the most flagitious sins were no more than the type of disobedience; and the brethren were united and concealed by an oath of secrecy. Their miltary exploits, A.D. 900, etc. After a bloody conflict, they prevailed in the province of Bahrein, along the Persian Gulf: far and wide, the tribes of the desert were subject to the sceptre, or rather to the sword of Abu Said and his son Abu Taher; and these rebellious imams could muster in the field a hundred and seven thousand fanatics. The mercenaries of the caliph were dismayed at the approach of an enemy who neither asked nor accepted quarter; and the difference between them, in fortitude and patience, is expressive of the change which three centuries of prosperity had effected in the character of the Arabians. Such troops were discomfited in every action; the cities of Racca and Baalbec, of Cufa and Bassora, were taken and pillaged; Bagdad was filled with consternation; and the caliph trembled behind the veils of his palace. In a daring inroad beyond the Tigris, Abu Taher advanced to the gates of the capital with no more than five hundred horse. By the special order of Moctader, the bridges had been broken down, and the person or head of the rebel was expected every hour by the commander of the faithful. His lieutenant, from a motive of fear or pity, apprised Abu Taher of his danger, and recommended a speedy escape.
"Your master," said the intrepid Carmathian to the messenger, "is at the head of thirty thousand soldiers: three such men as these are wanting in his host:"
at the same instant, turning to three of his companions, he commanded the first to plunge a dagger into his breast, the second to leap into the Tigris, and the third to cast himself headlong down a precipice. They obeyed without a murmur.
"Relate," continued the imam, "what you have seen: before the evening your general shall be chained among my dogs."
Before the evening, the camp was surprised, and the menace was executed. The rapine of the Carmathians was sanctified by their aversion to the worship of Mecca: they robbed a caravan of pilgrims, and twenty thousand devout Moslems were abandoned on the burning sands to a death of hunger and thirst. Another year they suffered the pilgrims to proceed without interruption; They pillage Mecca, A.D. 929. but, in the festival of devotion, Abu Taher stormed the holy city, and trampled on the most venerable relics of the Mahometan faith. Thirty thousand citizens and strangers were put to the sword; the sacred precincts were polluted by the burial of three thousand dead bodies; the well of Zemzem overflowed with blood; the golden spout was forced from its place; the veil of the Caaba was divided among these impious sectaries; and the black stone, the first monument of the nation, was borne away in triumph to their capital. After this deed of sacrilege and cruelty, they continued to infest the confines of Irak, Syria, and Egypt: but the vital principle of enthusiasm had withered at the root. Their scruples, or their avarice, again opened the pilgrimage of Mecca, and restored the black stone of the Caaba; and it is needless to inquire into what factions they were broken, or by whose swords they were finally extirpated. The sect of the Carmathians may be considered as the second visible cause of the decline and fall of the empire of the caliphs. (101)
Revolt of the provinces, A.D. 800-936.
The third and most obvious cause was the weight and
magnitude of the empire itself. The caliph Almamon might
proudly assert, that it was easier for him to rule the East
and the West, than to manage a chess-board of two feet
square: (102) yet I suspect that in both those games he was
guilty of many fatal mistakes; and I perceive, that in the
distant provinces the authority of the first and most
powerful of the Abbassides was already impaired. The
analogy of despotism invests the representative with the
full majesty of the prince; the division and balance of
powers might relax the habits of obedience, might encourage
the passive subject to inquire into the origin and
administration of civil government. He who is born in the
purple is seldom worthy to reign; but the elevation of a
private man, of a peasant, perhaps, or a slave, affords a
strong presumption of his courage and capacity. The viceroy
of a remote kingdom aspires to secure the property and
inheritance of his precarious trust; the nations must
rejoice in the presence of their sovereign; and the command
of armies and treasures are at once the object and the
instrument of his ambition. A change was scarcely visible
as long as the lieutenants of the caliph were content with
their vicarious title; while they solicited for themselves
or their sons a renewal of the Imperial grant, and still
maintained on the coin and in the public prayers the name
and prerogative of the commander of the faithful. But in
the long and hereditary exercise of power, they assumed the
pride and attributes of royalty; the alternative of peace or
war, of reward or punishment, depended solely on their will;
and the revenues of their government were reserved for local
services or private magnificence. Instead of a regular
supply of men and money, the successors of the prophet were
flattered with the ostentatious gift of an elephant, or a
cast of hawks, a suit of silk hangings, or some pounds of
musk and amber. (103)
The independent dynasties.
After the revolt of Spain from the temporal and spiritual
supremacy of the Abbassides, the first symptoms of
disobedience broke forth in the province of Africa.
Ibrahim, the son of Aglab, the lieutenant of the vigilant
and rigid Harun, bequeathed to the dynasty of A.D. 800-941. the Aglabites the inheritance of his name and power. The indolence or policy of the caliphs dissembled the injury and loss, and pursued only with poison the founder of A.D. 829-907. the Edrisites, (104) who erected the kingdom and city of Fez on the shores of the Western ocean. (105) In the East, the first dynasty was that
of A.D. 813-872. the Taherites; (106) the posterity of the valiant Taher, who, in the civil wars of the sons of Harun, had served with too much zeal and success the cause of Almamon, the younger
brother. He was sent into honourable exile, to command on
the banks of the Oxus; and the independence of his
successors, who reigned in Chorasan till the fourth
generation, was palliated by their modest and respectful
demeanour, the happiness of their subjects and the security
of their frontier. They were supplanted by one of those
adventures so frequent in the annals of the East, who left
his trade of a brazier (from whence the name of A.D. 872-902. Soffarides) for the profession of a robber. In a nocturnal visit to the treasure of the prince of Sistan, Jacob, the son of Leith, stumbled over a lump of salt, which he unwarily tasted with
his tongue. Salt, among the Orientals, is the symbol of
hospitality, and the pious robber immediately retired
without spoil or damage. The discovery of this honourable
behaviour recommended Jacob to pardon and trust; he led an
army at first for his benefactor, at last for himself,
subdued Persia, and threatened the residence of the
Abbassides. On his march towards Bagdad, the conqueror was
arrested by a fever. He gave audience in bed to the
ambassador of the caliph; and beside him on a table were
exposed a naked scymetar, a crust of brown bread, and a bunch
of onions.
"If I die," said he, "your master is delivered from his fears. If I live, this must determine between us. If I am vanquished, I can return without reluctance to the homely fare of my youth."
From the height where he stood, the descent would not have been so soft or harmless: a timely death secured his own repose and that of the caliph, who paid with the most lavish concessions the retreat of his brother Amrou to the palaces of Shiraz and Ispahan. The Abbassides were too feeble to contend, too proud to forgive: they invited the powerful dynasty of A.D. 874-999. the Samanides, who passed the Oxus with ten thousand horse so poor, that their stirrups were of wood: so brave, that they vanquished the Soffarian army, eight times more numerous than their own. The captive Amrou was sent in chains, a grateful offering to the court of Bagdad; and as the victor was content with the inheritance of Transoxiana and Chorasan, the realms of Persia returned for a while to the allegiance of the caliphs. The provinces of Syria and Egypt were twice dismembered by their Turkish slaves, The Toulonides, A.D. 868-905. of the race of Toulon and Ilkshid. The Ikshidites, A.D. 934-968. (107) These Barbarians, in religion and manners the countrymen of Mahomet, emerged from the bloody factions of the palace to a provincial command and an independent throne: their names became famous and formidable in their time; but the founders of these two potent dynasties confessed, either in words or actions, the vanity of ambition. The first on his death-bed implored the mercy of God to a sinner, ignorant of the limits of his own power: the second, in the midst of four hundred thousand soldiers and eight thousand slaves, concealed from every human eye the chamber where he attempted to sleep. Their sons were educated in the vices of kings; and both Egypt and Syria were recovered and possessed by the Abbassides during an interval of thirty years. In the decline of their empire, Mesopotamia, with the important cities of Mosul and Aleppo, was occupied by the Arabian princes of the tribe of The Hamadanites, A.D. 892-1001. Hamadan. The poets of their court could repeat without a blush, that nature had formed their countenances for beauty, their tongues for eloquence, and their hands for liberality and valour: but the genuine tale of the elevation and reign of the Hamadanites exhibits a scene of treachery, murder, and parricide. At the same fatal period, the Persian kingdom was again usurped by the dynasty of A.D. 933-1055. the Bowides, by the sword of three brothers, who, under various names, were styled the support and columns of the state, and who, from the Caspian Sea to the ocean, would suffer no tyrants but themselves. Under their reign, the language and genius of Persia revived, and the Arabs, three hundred and four years after the death of Mahomet, were deprived of the sceptre of the East.
Fallen state of the caliphs of Bagdad, A.D. 936, etc.
Rahadi, the twentieth of the Abbassides, and the thirty-ninth of the successors of Mahomet, was the last who deserved the title of commander of the faithful; (108) the last (says Abulfeda) who spoke to the people, or conversed with the learned; the last who, in the expense of his household, represented the wealth and magnificence of the ancient caliphs. After him, the lords of the Eastern world were reduced to the most abject misery, and exposed to the blows and insults of a servile condition. The revolt of the provinces circumscribed their dominions within the walls of Bagdad: but that capital still contained an innumerable multitude, vain of their past fortune, discontented with their present state, and oppressed by the demands of a treasury which had formerly been replenished by the spoil and tribute of nations. Their idleness was exercised by faction and controversy. Under the mask of piety, the rigid followers of Hanbal (109) invaded the pleasures of domestic life, burst into the houses of plebeians and princes, the wine, broke the instruments, beat the musicians, and dishonoured, with infamous suspicions, the associates of
every handsome youth. In each profession, which allowed room for two persons, the one was a votary, the other an antagonist, of Ali; and the Abbassides were awakened by the clamorous grief of the sectaries, who denied their title,
and cursed their progenitors. A turbulent people could only be repressed by a military force; but who could satisfy the avarice or assert the discipline of the mercenaries themselves? The African and the Turkish guards drew their
swords against each other, and the chief commanders, the emirs al Omra, (110) imprisoned or deposed their sovereigns, and violated the sanctuary of the mosch and harem. If the
caliphs escaped to the camp or court of any neighbouring prince, their deliverance was a change of servitude, till they were prompted by despair to invite the Bowides, the sultans of Persia, who silenced the factions of Bagdad by their irresistible arms. The civil and military powers were assumed by Moezaldowlat, the second of the three brothers, and a stipend of sixty thousand pounds sterling was assigned by his generosity for the private expense of the commander of the faithful. But on the fortieth day, at the audience of
the ambassadors of Chorasan, and in the presence of a trembling multitude, the caliph was dragged from his throne to a dungeon, by the command of the stranger, and the rude hands of his Dilamites. His palace was pillaged, his eyes
were put out, and the mean ambition of the Abbassides aspired to the vacant station of danger and disgrace. In the school of adversity, the luxurious caliphs resumed the grave and abstemious virtues of the primitive times.
Despoiled of their armour and silken robes, they fasted, they prayed, they studied the Koran and the tradition of the Sonnites: they performed, with zeal and knowledge, the functions of their ecclesiastical character. The respect of
nations still waited on the successors of the apostle, the oracles of the law and conscience of the faithful; and the weakness or division of their tyrants sometimes restored the Abbassides to the sovereignty of Bagdad. But their misfortunes had been embittered by the triumph of the Fatimites, the real or spurious progeny of Ali. Arising from the extremity of Africa, these successful rivals extinguished, in Egypt and Syria, both the spiritual and temporal authority of the Abbassides; and the monarch of the Nile insulted the humble pontiff on the banks of the Tigris.
Enterprises of the Greeks, A.D. 960.
In the declining age of the caliphs, in the century which elapsed after the war of Theophilus and Motassem, the hostile transactions of the two nations were confined to some inroads by sea and land, the fruits of their close vicinity and indelible hatred. But when the Eastern world was convulsed and broken, the Greeks were roused from their lethargy by the hopes of conquest and revenge. The
Byzantine empire, since the accession of the Basilian race, had reposed in peace and dignity; and they might encounter with their entire strength the front of some petty emir, whose rear was assaulted and threatened by his national foes
of the Mahometan faith. The lofty titles of the morning star, and the death of the Saracens, (111) were applied in
the public acclamations to Nicephorus Phocas, a prince as renowned in the camp, as he was unpopular in the city. In the subordinate station of great domestic, or general of the East, Reduction of Crete. he reduced the Island of Crete, and extirpated the nest of pirates who had so long defied, with impunity, the majesty of the empire. (112) His military genius was
displayed in the conduct and success of the enterprise, which had so often failed with loss and dishonour. The Saracens were confounded by the landing of his troops on safe and level bridges, which he cast from the vessels to
the shore. Seven months were consumed in the siege of Candia; the despair of the native Cretans was stimulated by the frequent aid of their brethren of Africa and Spain; and after the massy wall and double ditch had been stormed by
the Greeks a hopeless conflict was still maintained in the streets and houses of the city. The whole island was subdued in the capital, and a submissive people accepted, without resistance, the baptism of the conqueror. (113) Constantinople applauded the long-forgotten pomp of a triumph; but the Imperial diadem was the sole reward that could repay the services, or satisfy the ambition, of Nicephorus.
The Eastern conquests of Nicephorus Phocas and John Zimisces, A.D. 963-975.
After the death of the younger Romanus, the fourth in lineal
descent of the Basilian race, his widow Theophania
successively married Nicephorus Phocas and his assassin John
Zimisces, the two heroes of the age. They reigned as the
guardians and colleagues of her infant sons; and the twelve
years of their military command form the most splendid
period of the Byzantine annals. The subjects and
confederates, whom they led to war, appeared, at least in
the eyes of an enemy, two hundred thousand strong; and of
these about thirty thousand were armed with cuirasses: (114) a train of four thousand mules attended their march; and their evening camp was regularly fortified with an enclosure
of iron spikes. A series of bloody and undecisive combats
is nothing more than an anticipation of what would have been
effected in a few years by the course of nature; but I shall
briefly prosecute the conquests of the two emperors from the
hills of Cappadocia to the desert of Bagdad. The sieges of
Mopsuestia and Tarsus, Cilicia. in Cilicia, first exercised the skill and perseverance of their troops, on whom, at this moment, I shall not hesitate to bestow the name of Romans. In the
double city of Mopsuestia, which is divided by the River
Sarus, two hundred thousand Moslems were predestined to
death or slavery, (115) a surprising degree of population, which must at least include the inhabitants of the dependent districts. They were surrounded and taken by assault; but
Tarsus was reduced by the slow progress of famine; and no
sooner had the Saracens yielded on honourable terms than they
were mortified by the distant and unprofitable view of the
naval succours of Egypt. They were dismissed with a
safe-conduct to the confines of Syria: a part of the old
Christians had quietly lived under their dominion; and the
vacant habitations were replenished by a new colony. But
the mosch was converted into a stable; the pulpit was
delivered to the flames; many rich crosses of gold and gems,
the spoils of Asiatic churches, were made a grateful
offering to the piety or avarice of the emperor; and he
transported the gates of Mopsuestia and Tarsus, which were
fixed in the walls of Constantinople, an eternal monument of
his victory. After they had forced and secured the narrow
passes of Mount Amanus, Invasion of Syria. the two Roman princes repeatedly carried their arms into the heart of Syria. Yet, instead of assaulting the walls of Antioch, the humanity or superstition of Nicephorus appeared to respect the ancient metropolis of the East: he contented himself with drawing round the city a line of circumvallation; left a stationary army; and instructed his lieutenant to expect, without impatience, the return of spring. But in the depth of winter, in a dark and rainy night, an adventurous subaltern, with three hundred soldiers, approached the rampart, applied his scaling-ladders, occupied two adjacent towers, stood firm against the pressure of multitudes, and bravely maintained his post till he was relieved by the tardy, though effectual, support of his reluctant chief. Recovery of Antioch. The first tumult of slaughter and rapine subsided; the reign of Caesar and of Christ was restored; and the efforts of a hundred thousand Saracens, of the armies of Syria and the fleets of Africa, were consumed without effect before the walls of Antioch. The royal city of Aleppo was subject to Seifeddowlat, of the dynasty of Hamadan, who clouded his past glory by the precipitate retreat which abandoned his kingdom and capital to the Roman invaders. In his stately palace, that stood without the walls of Aleppo, they joyfully seized a well-furnished magazine of arms, a stable of fourteen hundred mules, and three hundred bags of silver and gold. But the walls of the city withstood the strokes of their battering-rams: and the besiegers pitched their tents on the neighbouring mountain of Jaushan. Their retreat exasperated the quarrel of the townsmen and mercenaries; the guard of the gates and ramparts was deserted; and while they furiously charged each other in the market-place, they were surprised and destroyed by the sword of a common enemy. The male sex was exterminated by the sword; ten thousand youths were led into captivity; the weight of the precious spoil exceeded the strength and number of the beasts of burden; the superfluous remainder was burnt; and, after a licentious possession of ten days, the Romans marched away from the naked and bleeding city. In their Syrian inroads they commanded the husbandmen to cultivate their lands, that they themselves, in the ensuing season, might reap the benefit; more than a hundred cities were reduced to obedience; and
eighteen pulpits of the principal moschs were committed to the flames to expiate the sacrilege of the disciples of Mahomet. The classic names of Hierapolis, Apamea, and Emesa, revive for a moment in the list of conquest: the emperor Zimisces encamped in the paradise of Damascus, and accepted the ransom of a submissive people; and the torrent was only stopped by the impregnable fortress of Tripoli, on the sea-coast of Phoenicia. Passage of the Euphrates. Since the days of Heraclius, the Euphrates, below the passage of Mount Taurus, had been impervious, and almost invisible, to the Greeks. The river yielded a free passage to the victorious Zimisces; and the historian may imitate the speed with which he overran the once famous cities of Samosata, Edessa, Martyropolis, Amida, (116) and Nisibis, the ancient limit of the empire in the neighbourhood of the Tigris. His ardour was quickened by the desire of grasping the virgin treasures of Ecbatana, (117) a well-known name, under which the Byzantine writer has concealed the capital of the Abbassides. The consternation of the fugitives had already diffused the terror of his name; but the fancied riches of Bagdad had already been dissipated by the avarice and prodigality of domestic tyrants. Danger of Bagdad. The prayers of the people, and the stern demands of the lieutenant of the Bowides, required the caliph to provide for the defence of the city. The helpless Mothi replied, that his arms, his revenues, and his provinces, had been torn from his hands, and that he was ready to abdicate a dignity which he was unable to support. The emir was inexorable; the furniture of the palace was sold; and the paltry price of forty thousand pieces of gold was instantly consumed in private luxury. But the apprehensions of Bagdad were relieved by the retreat of the Greeks: thirst and hunger guarded the desert of Mesopotamia; and the emperor, satiated with glory, and laden with Oriental spoils, returned to Constantinople, and displayed, in his triumph, the silk, the aromatics, and three hundred myriads of gold and silver. Yet the powers of the East had been bent, not broken, by this transient hurricane. After the departure of the Greeks, the fugitive princes returned to their capitals; the subjects disclaimed their involuntary oaths of allegiance; the Moslems again purified their temples, and overturned the idols of the saints and martyrs; the Nestorians and Jacobites preferred a Saracen to an orthodox master; and the numbers and spirit of the Melchites were inadequate to the support of the church and state. Of these extensive conquests, Antioch, with the cities of Cilicia and the Isle of Cyprus, was alone restored, a permanent and useful accession to the Roman empire. (118)
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