Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/435

OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 418 After the fall of the Persian kingdom, the river Oxus divided ^Tr"^*!^?* the territories of the Saracens and of the Turks. This narrow an*- ^^- ^ boundary was soon overleaped by the spirit of the Arabs ; the governors of Chorasan extended their successive ini'oads ; and one of their triumphs was adorned with the buskin of a Turkish queen, which she dropped in her precipitate flight beyond the hills of Bochara.^" But the final conquest of Transoxiana/*^ as well as of Spain, was reserved for the glorious reign of the inac- tive Walid ; and the name of Catibah, the camel-driver, declares [Kutaiba] the origin and merit of his successful lieutenant. While one of his colleagues displayed the first Mahometan banner on the banks of the Indus,*^ the spacious regions between the Oxus, the Jax- artes, and the Caspian Sea, were reduced by the arms of Catibah [a d 704-15] to the obedience of the prophet and of the caliph. ^"^ A tribute of tAvo millions of pieces of gold was imposed on the infidels ; ■•" It was valued at 2000 pieces of gold, and was the prize of Obeidollah the son of Ziyad, a name afterwards infamous by the murder of Hosein (Ockley's History of the Saracens, vol. ii. p. 142, 143). His brother Salem was accompanied by his wife, the first Arabian woman (a.d. 680) who passed the Oxus ; she borrowed, or rather stole, the crown and jewels of the princess of the Sogdians (p. 231, 232). [The queen (khatuii or "lady, she is called) whose slippers enriched the son of Ziyad c. A.D. 674 was still alive and reigning more than 30 years later, when Kutaiba came to conquer her realm (Narshaki).] ^ A part of Abulfeda's Geography is translated by Greaves, inserted in Hudson's collection of the minor Geographers (tom. iii.), and entitled Descriptio Chorasmite et Afawaralnahrae, id est, regionum extra iluvium, Oxum, p. 80. The name of Transoxiaiia, softer in sound, equivalent in sense, is aptly used by Petit de la Croix (Hist, de Gengiscan, &c.) and some modern Orientalists, but they are mis- taken in ascribing it to the writers of antiquity. [For the conquest of Transoxiana, Tabari (see next note) gives the main thread. Rut we have a very important source, which has only recently been utilized, in a work of Narshaki of Bokhara who wrote in A.u. 943, known through a Persian translation in possession of the Royal Asiatic Society. It is a topographical and historical description of Bokhara, and has been used by A. Vamb6ry for his History of Bokhara, and by M. L. Cahun for his Introduction a I'Histoire de I'Asie (1896). The text was edited in 1892 by Schefer. ] '* [Mohammad ibn Kasim was the able general who advanced beyond the Indus (a.d. 709-714). Advancing through Mekran (the subjugation of which country he completed), Mohammad captured the city of Daibal on the coast, a very difficult achievement, which created a great sensation. Then crossing the Indus he defeated an Indian army under a chief named Daher ; and advancing northward on the left bank of the Indus took one after another the towns of Brahmanabad, Daur, Alor, Savendary, and finally reached the sacred city of Multan on the Hyphasis. This fell after a long siege. It is not quite correct to say (as in the text) that the Moslems appeared now for the first time on the banks of the Indus. In Moawiya's caliphate, Muhallab had advanced to the Indus from the side of Kabul. In the same caliphate, the conquest of Afghanistan and Baluchistan was completed ; Kandahar was taken in the north and Cosdar in the south.] ™ The conquests of Catibah are faintly marked by Elmacin (Hist. Saracen, p. 84), d'Herbelot (Bibliot. Orient. Caibah Samarcand Valid), and de Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 58, 59). [They are fully recounted by Tabari. See Weil, i. p.