Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/515

OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 498 upon -'^^a the apostates who have professed and deserted the law of Mahomet. The martyrs of Cordova provoked the sentence of the cadhi by the pubUc confession of their inconstancy, or their passionate invectives against the pex'son and religion of the prophet. '^^ At the end of the first century of the Hegira, the caliphs were JJ'^^*™?^" the most potent and absolute monarchs of the globe. Their ^"pts.^ prerogative was not circumscribed, either in right or in fact, by the power of the nobles, the freedom of the commons, the privi- leges of the church, the votes of a senate, or the memory of a free constitution. The authority of the companions of Mahomet expired with their lives ; and the chiefs or emirs of the Arabian tribes left behind, in the desert, the spirit of equality and inde- pendence. The regal and sacerdotal characters were united in the successors of Mahomet ; and, if the Koran was the rule of their actions, they were the supreme judges and interpreters of that divine book. They reigned by the right of conquest over the nations of the East, to whom the name of liberty was unknown, and who were accustomed to applaud in their tyrants the acts of violence and severity that were exercised at their own expense. Under the last of the Ommiades, the Arabian empire extended two hundred days' journey from east to west, from the confines of Tartary and India to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. And, if we retrench the sleeve of the I'obe, as it is styled by their writers, the long and narrow province of Africa, the solid and compact dominion from Fargana to Aden, from Tarsus to Surat, will spread on every side to the measure of four or five months of the march of a caravan. ^^^ We should vainly seek the indissoluble union and easy obedience that pervaded the government of Augustus and the Antonines ; but the progress of the Mahome- tan religion diffused over this ample space a general resemblance of manners and opinions. The language and laws of the Koran 249a [The quarto ed. gives /or.] 250 The martyrs of Cordova (a.d. 850, &c. ) are commemorated and justified by St. Eulogius, who at length fell a victim himself. A synod, convened by the caliph, ambiguously censured their rashness. The moderate Fleury cannot reconcile their conduct with the discipline of antiquity, toutefois I'autorit^ de I'^glise, &c. (Pleury, Hist. Eccl^s. tom. x. p. 415-522, particularly p. 451, 508, 509). Their authentic acts throw a strong though transient light on the Spanish church in the ixth century. 261 See the article Eslamiah (as we say Christendom) in the Bibliothfeque Orien- tale (p. 325). This chart of the Mahometan world is suited by the author, Ebn Alwardi, to the year of the Hegira 385 (a.d. 995). Since that time, the losses in Spain have been overbalanced by the conquests in India, Tartary, and European Turkey.