THE GLORY THAT WAS DAMASCUS
Early in 661 Muawiyah was proclaimed caliph at Jeru-
salem, but it was Damascus that he chose as his capital,
thus inaugurating its most glorious epoch. His first problem
was to pacify the empire and consolidate his control over
rebellious provinces. Hejaz was naturally lukewarm in its
loyalty to Muawiyah, as the Moslems of Mecca and Medina
never forgot that the Umayyads were late believers and
that their belief was one of convenience rather than con-
viction. But for the time being the cradle of Islam gave no
serious trouble. Syria was loyal to its former governor and
Egypt was firmly held.
Iraq, however, immediately and openly declared for al-Hasan, elder son of Ali and Fatimah. To its people he was the only legitimate successor of his assassinated father. In the course of a swift campaign Muawiyah secured from al-Hasan a definite renunciation of all claims, in return for a generous subsidy to be paid him for fife. He retired to an existence of ease and luxury in Medina and died eight years later after having married and divorced at least a hundred wives. His death may have been caused by tuberculosis or by poisoning connected with some harem intrigue, but his followers blamed it on the caliph and con- sidered al-Hasan 'lord of all the martyrs'. At his death, his claims passed to his brother al-Husayn, who did not dare assert them during the lifetime of Muawiyah.
After disposing of the Alid threat, Muawiyah brought Iraq to heel by naming a series of capable and heavy-handed governors who transplanted 50,000 troublesome Arabians and bedouins to eastern Persia and took other drastic measures to subject the turbulent province. With the territory of Islam temporarily pacified, Muawiyah's extra- ordinary energies sought new outlets in military campaigns by land and sea, thus resuming the course of Moslem expansion which had been interrupted by the two civil wars.
Eastward these campaigns resulted in completing the subjugation of Khurasan (663-671), crossing the Oxus and raiding Bukhara in Turkestan (674). Merv, Balkh, Herat and other cities which were to develop into brilliant centres of Islamic culture were captured. The army returned to Iraq laden with booty from the Turkish tribes of Trans- oxiana. They thus established the first contact between Arabs and Turks, destined to play a major role in later Islamic affairs.
To the west the city of Kairawan was established in Tunisia as a base for military operations against the Berbers. It was built partly with material taken from the ruins of Carthage. As the Berbers were Islamized, they were pressed into the Arab army and utilized in chasing the Byzantines out of Algeria. Brilliant as it was, this campaign, like that in Central Asia, was of no lasting significance, because it was not followed up by occupation. Here, as in Transoxiana, the work had to be done over again.
During the Umayyad period, as in the early Abbasid, the frontier between Arab and Byzantine lands was formed by the great ranges of the Taurus and Anti-Taurus. As the two hostile states stood face to face across this line, they first sought to keep each other off by turning the intervening stretch of land into a desolate terrain. Muawiyah con- tributed to the creation of this unclaimed waste zone. Later Umayyads pursued a different policy, aiming at establishing a footing there by rebuilding as fortresses abandoned or destroyed towns and building new ones. Thus grew a cordon of Moslem fortifications stretching from Tarsus in Cilicia to Malatya on the upper Euphrates. These fortresses were strategically situated at the inter- sections of military roads or the entrances of narrow passes. As the city commanding the southern entrance of the celebrated pass across the Taurus known as the Cilician Gates, Tarsus served as a base for major military campaigns against the territory of the Greeks. In Muawiyah's time and later a major campaign was undertaken every summer and a minor one every winter as a matter of routine. The objective, as in the case of the traditional bedouin raids, was booty, though the dim spectacle of Byzantium may have beckoned from the distance. At no time did Arabs establish a firm foothold in Asia Minor. Their main military energy followed the line of least resistance and was directed eastward and westward. The Taurus and Anti-Taurus blocked their northward expansion permanently. No part of Asia Minor ever became Arabic-speaking, and its basic population was never Semitic.
The recurring raids into Asia Minor did at last reach the capital, in 668, only thirty-six years after Muhammad's death. The army wintered at Chalcedon (the Asiatic suburb of Constantinople), where it suffered severely from want of provisions and from disease'. Muawiyah sent his pleasure-loving son Yazid with reinforcements early in 669, and the capital was besieged, doubtless with naval support. The siege was raised that summer, and the army withdrew with its booty. Again in 674 the Arabs reached the Straits, occupying the peninsula of Cyzicus, which projects from Asia Minor into the Sea of Marmara. For six years this spot served as a naval base for a Moslem fleet, as winter headquarters for the invading army and as a base for spring and summer attacks. The city was reportedly saved by the use of Greek fire, a newly invented highly combustible com- pound which would burn even on or under water. The inventor was a Syrian refugee from Damascus named Cal- linicus. This was perhaps the first time this 'secret weapon 5 was used. The Byzantines kept its formula unrevealed for several centuries, after which the Arabs acquired it; but it has since been lost. Greek accounts dilate on the disastrous effects of this fire on enemy ships. What was left of the Arab fleet was wrecked on the return journey, occasioned by the death of Muawiyah in 680.
To this period also belong several naval attacks on islands in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean waters, Cyprus was already securely in the Moslem fold. Rhodes was temporarily occupied in 672 and Crete in 674. Sicily was attacked first about 664 and repeatedly thereafter. The Arab fleet was an imitation of the Byzantine and was manned mostly by Syrians. The galley, with a minimum of twenty-five seats on each of the two lower decks, was the fighting unit. Each seat held two rowers; the hundred or more rowers in each ship were armed. Those who specialized in fighting took up their positions on the upper deck.
These campaigns, colossal as they were, did not make the commander-in-chief neglect domestic affairs. The financial administration of the state was left in capable and experienced Christian hands. All provincial expenses were met from local income, principally tribute from subject peoples ; only the balance went to the caliphal treasury. Such was the revenue that Muawiyah could double the pay of the soldiers, strengthen the Syrian frontier fortresses against the northern enemy, undertake projects of agri- culture and irrigation in Hejaz and appease rival factions through subsidies. In Syria he instituted a bureau of registry, a state chancery charged with preserving a copy of each official document dispatched and a postal service. He maintained a standing army of 60,000 at a yearly cost of 60 million dirhems.
Throughout his undertakings, peaceful or military, he was sustained by the unwavering loyalty of his Syrian subjects, natives and Arabian immigrants. The Syro- Arabs were mostly of South Arabian origin and had been Christianized. His wife, his physician and his court poet were Christians. Maronites and Jacobites brought their religious disputes before him. In Edessa he reportedly rebuilt a Christian church that had been demolished by an earthquake. By such acts of tolerance and magnanimity Muawiyah fastened his hold upon the hearts of the Syrians and firmly established the hegemony of their country in the Moslem empire.
Perhaps his most prominent talent was the political finesse which made him unerring in doing the right thing at the right time. This supreme statesmanship he defined in these words: 'I apply not my sword, where my lash suffices; nor my lash, where my tongue is enough. And even if there be but one hair binding me to my fellow men, I do not let it break. When they pull, I loosen; and if they loosen, I pull.' The letter he sent to al-Hasan inducing him to abdicate further illustrates this trait: 'I admit that because of your blood relationship you are more entitled to this high office than myself. And if I were sure of your greater ability to fulfil the duties involved, I would un- hesitatingly swear allegiance to you. Now, then, ask what you will.' Enclosed was a blank already signed by Muawiyah. This ability made his personal relations with his contemporaries frank and friendly, even when they were Alids or other opponents.
In the autumn of 679, six months before his death at the age of eighty, Muawiyah nominated his son Yazid as his successor, an unprecedented procedure in Islam. Yazid had been brought up by his mother partly in the desert around Palmyra, where her Christian tribe roamed. In the capital he also associated with Christians. In the desert the youth- ful prince became habituated to the chase, rough riding and hard life; in the city, to wine-bibbing and verse-making. The desert from this time on became the open-air school in which the young royal princes of the dynasty acquired manly virtues and pure Arabic — unadulterated with Aramaicisms — and incidentally escaped the recurring city plagues. That the caliph had had the nomination of his son in mind for some time may be inferred from his sending him as early as 669 against Constantinople, where Yazid's success served to dispel any doubts that the puritans might have entertained regarding his qualifications. And now Muawiyah, after being sure of the capital, summoned deputations from the provinces and took from them the oath of allegiance to his favourite son. Unsympathetic Iraqis were cajoled, coerced or bribed.
This master-stroke was a landmark in Islamic history. It introduced the hereditary principle, which was followed thereafter by the leading Moslem dynasties. It established a precedent enabling the reigning caliph to proclaim as his successor him among his sons or kinsmen whom he con- sidered competent and to exact for him an anticipatory oath of allegiance. The designation of a crown prince tended to promote stability and continuity and to discourage ambitious aspirants to the throne.
Despite his unparalleled contributions to the cause of Arabism and Islam, Muawiyah was no favourite with the Arab Moslem historians. Nor were his 'tyrannical' lieuten- ants. The explanation is not difficult to find. Most of those writers were Shiites or Iraqis or Medinese and thus anti- Umayyad. As historians they reflected the puritanical attitude which resented the fact that he was the man who secularized Islam and transformed the theocratic caliphate into a temporal sovereignty. He is blamed for several innovations abhorrent to pious conservatives. The fact remains that such was the example of energy, tolerance and astuteness he set before his successors that while many of them tried to emulate it few came near succeeding.
As long as the rule of powerful Muawiyah lasted, no Alids dared dispute his authority in an overt act; but the accession of the frivolous Yazid was an invitation to seces- sion or rebellion. In response to urgent and reiterated appeals from Iraqis, al-Husayn, younger son of Ali and Fatimah, now declared himself the legitimate caliph. At the head of a weak escort of devoted followers and relatives, including his harem, al-Husayn, who had hitherto resisted the solicitations of his Iraqi partisans and lived in retirement in Medina, set out from Mecca for Kufah. The governor, forewarned, posted patrols one of which, 4000 strong, inter- cepted al-Husayn at Kerbela and demanded his surrender. He refused and was killed, as were his band of 200. The day of his death (Muharram 10) has become a day of mourning in Shiah Islam. An annual passion play portrays his 'heroic 5 resistance and tragic martyrdom. His tomb in Kerbela is considered by Shiites the holiest place in the world, a pilgrimage to which is more meritorious than one to Mecca.
The elimination of al-Husayn did not end the struggle for the caliphate. Abdullah ibn-al-Zubayr, a son of the man who had fruitlessly disputed the title with Ali, was now proclaimed caliph in Hejaz. Quick to act, Yazid dis- patched against the Medinese dissidents a disciplinary force in which many Christian Syrians served. This force defeated ibn-al-Zubayr, who took refuge in Mecca. The Syrians attacked its traditionally inviolable soil, burning the Kabah and splitting into three pieces the Black Stone, a pre-Islamic fetish considered the holiest relic of Islam. Yazid's death late in 683 led to the suspension of operations.
Yazid was followed by his son Muawiyah II, a weak and sickly youth whose reign lasted only three months. His successor was an elderly cousin, Marwan I, whose South Arabian troops in 684 inflicted a crushing defeat on the North Arabian supporters of ibn-al-Zubayr. This claimant had now been proclaimed caliph not only in his home Hejaz but in Iraq, South Arabia and even parts of Syria. This victory ended the third civil war in Islam, but the anti- caliphate of ibn-al-Zubayr continued until Marwan's son and successor Abd-al-Malik sent against it his iron-handed general al-Hajjaj with 20,000 men. For six and a half months in 692 he besieged Mecca, finally killing ibn-al- Zubayr and sending his head to Damascus. With his death the last champion of primitive Islam passed away. Uthman was avenged. The new Syrian, secular, political orientation was secure. Mecca and Medina took back seats, and the his- tory of Arabia came to deal more with the effect of the outer world on the peninsula and less with the effect of the peninsula on the outer world. The mother 'island' had spent itself.
Abd-al-Malik committed to al-Hajjaj the government of Hejaz. This he held for a couple of years in the course of which he pacified not only that region but Yemen and other parts of Arabia. In 694 he was called to an even more difficult task, that of subduing Iraq, a seething cauldron of discontent. Zubayrites and Kharijites, as well as Shiites and other Alids, kept it in turmoil.
No sooner had al-Hajjaj received his appointment than he set out from Medina with a small mounted escort, crossed the desert by forced marches and arrived at Kufah dis- guised and unannounced. It was early dawn, time of prayer. Accompanied by only twelve cameleers and with his bow on his shoulder and sword at his side, he entered the mosque, removed the heavy turban which veiled his stern features and delivered a fiery oration which began, ' O people of Kufah. Certain am I that I see heads ripe for cutting, and verily I am the man to do it.' This former teacher who had taken up the warrior's sword was as good as his word. No neck proved too high for him to reach, no head too strong to crush. His task was to establish the ascendancy of the state over all elements within its frame- work — cost what it may. This he did. Human lives to the number of 120,000 are said to have been sacrificed by him ; 50,000 men and 30,000 women were found held in prison at his death. These undoubtedly exaggerated figures with the equally exaggerated reports about his tyranny, bloodthirstiness, gluttony and impiety indicate that what the historians — mostly Shiites or Sunnites of the Abbasid regime — have left us is a caricature rather than a portrayal of the man.
Al-Hajjaj had to his credit several constructive achievemerits. He had old canals dug and new ones opened. He built a new capital — Wasit — midway between Kufah and Basrah. He introduced regulations to reform currency, taxes and measures. He is credited, perhaps wrongly, with introducing orthographical signs into the Koran to indicate vowel sounds and to distinguish between similar-appearing consonants in order to prevent incorrect reading of the sacred text. Justifiable or not, the repressive measures he took restored order in Kufah and Basrah, hotbeds of dis- content and opposition. The state authority was likewise firmly established along the eastern coast of Arabia, including hitherto independent Oman. His viceroyalty also embraced Persia, where his forces practically eliminated the most dangerous Kharijite sect and even penetrated into India. His success depended upon the faithful support of his Syrian troops, in whom his confidence — like his loyalty to the Umayyad house — knew no bounds.
During the reigns of Abd-al-Malik (685-705) and his four sons the Umayyad dynasty in Damascus reached the meridian of its power and glory. The Islamic empire attained its greatest expansion, from the shores of the Atlantic and the Pyrenees to the Indus and the confines of China — an extent greater than that of the Roman empire at its height. At no time before or after did the Arabs control so large a territory. It was during this period that the definitive subjugation of Transoxiana, the reconquest and pacification of North Africa and the acquisition of the Iberian peninsula were accomplished. To this era also belong the Arabicization of the state administration, the introduction of the first purely Arab coinage, the develop- ment of a system of postal service and the erection of such architectural monuments as the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, the holiest sanctuary in Islam after those of Mecca and Medina.
Syria's severance from the Byzantine empire considerably reduced its maritime trade, but that was somewhat compensated for by new markets opened by the acquisition of Persia and Central Asia. Commercial vessels plied the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean as far as Ceylon, as well as the Mediterranean. Abd-al-Malik founded a shipyard at Tunis, while his son Hisham transferred the main naval yard from Acre to Tyre. Commerce, especially by land, flourished, as did Syrian agriculture, despite the greed of the exchequer. Prosperity spread.
It was under Abd-al-Malik that hostilities with the Byzantines were renewed. While ibn-al-Zubayr was con- testing the caliphate, Abd-al-Malik paid tribute to the 'tyrant of the Romans' and to his Christian allies the Mardaites, an obscure highland people who had spread from the Taurus and Amanus ranges into the fastnesses of Lebanon and occupied its chief strategic points as far as Palestine. Mount Lebanon then must have been very sparsely populated and thickly wooded; only the part bordering on the maritime plain was fairly settled. Around these Mardaites as nucleus, fugitives and malcontents gathered. In northern Lebanon they were fused with the Maronites. They furnished scouts and irregular troops to the Byzantines and constituted a thorn in the side of the Arabs, to whom mountain warfare was never palatable. Like his predecessor Muawiyah I, Abd-al-Malik found it expedient to buy them off rather than suffer their marauds or divert his military strength from conquest abroad to policing Syria. With his internal foes thus bribed to remain quiet, he was able to resume periodic attacks on the Greeks of Asia Minor and defeat them in battle. The Maronites themselves in 694 routed a Byzantine army which attempted to end their autonomy. Armenia, which had been overrun while Muawiyah was governor of Syria but had taken advantage of ibn-al-Zubayr's debacle to revolt, was again reduced under Abd-al-Malik.
North Africa too had to be reconquered at this time. Both Berber resistance and Byzantine authority were ended in a series of land campaigns with naval support. Under Musa ibn-Nusayr, son of a Syrian Christian captured by Khalid ibn-al-Walid, it was divorced from Egypt and made a separate province held directly under the caliph at Damas- cus. Musa extended its boundaries westward as far as Tangier and brought the Berbers permanently into the fold of Islam and into the advancing Moslem armies. The sub- jugation of North Africa as far as the Atlantic opened the way for the conquest of Spain in subsequent reigns.
Under Abd-al-Malik the administration of the expanding empire was strengthened. Arabic began to replace Greek and Persian as the official language of the government bureaus. Thus in the couse of a millennium three written languages succeeded each other in Syria : Aramaic, Greek and Arabic. With the change of language went a change in coinage. At first the Byzantine coinage found current in Syria at the time of conquest was left undisturbed. Next occasional koranic superscriptions were stamped on the coins. A number of gold and silver pieces were struck in imitation of Byzantine and Persian types, and some copper pieces were issued on which the portrait of the king holding a cross was replaced by that of the caliph brandishing a sword. But it was not until 695, under Abd-al-Malik, that the first purely Arabic dinars and dirhems were struck.
It was this caliph, moreover, who developed a regular postal service designed primarily to meet the needs of government officials and their correspondence. In this he built on the foundation laid by his great predecessor Muawiyah I. Abd-al-Malik promoted the service through a well-organized system knitting together the various parts of his far-flung empire. To this end relays of horses were used between Damascus and the provincial capitals. Post- masters were installed, charged among other duties with the task of keeping the caliph posted on all important happenings in their respective territories.
Other changes in this period involved taxes and fiscal matters. In theory the only tax incumbent on a Moslem, no matter what his nationality might be, was the alms tax, but in practice only the Moslem of Arabian origin usually enjoyed this privilege. Taking advantage of the theory, new converts to Islam, particularly from Iraq, began under the Umayyads to desert their farms and villages and head for the cities with the hope of enlisting in the Arab army. From the standpoint of the treasury the movement con- stituted a double loss, for at conversion the taxes were sup- posedly reduced and upon joining the army a special subsidy was due. As a measure of remedy al-Hajjaj ordered such men restored to their farms and reimposed the high tribute originally paid, the equivalent of the land tax and poll tax. This policy restored the revenues but caused widespread resentment among converts.
Abd-al-Malik was succeeded by his son al-Walid I (705- 715). The new caliph resolved to put an end to the effrontery of the Mardaites, and put his brother Maslamah in charge of a punitive operation. Maslamah attacked the trouble- some people in their own headquarters and demolished their capital. Some perished, others migrated to Anatolia, and of those who remained some joined the Syrian army and fought under the banner of Islam.
It was the generals of al-Hajjaj who brought about the final reduction of the regions now called Turkestan, Afghani- stan, Baluchistan and the Punjab. Qutaybah ibn-Muslim, governor of Khurasan under the viceroy, within a decade after his appointment in 704 reduced Balkh, Bukhara and Samarkand and extended nominal Moslem rule as far as the Jaxartes. Meanwhile, a column of 6000 Syrian troops reduced Sind (the lower valley and delta of the Indus) and in 713 took Multan in the southern Punjab and reached the foot of the Himalaya range. Multan was the seat of a great Buddhist shrine from which enormous plunder was secured. It became the capital of Arab India and the out- post of Islam there.
At the opposite extreme of the empire, an Arab-Berber army crossed the Strait of Gibraltar in 710 in a raid for plunder. Encouraged by its success and by dynastic trouble in the Visigothic kingdom of Spain, Musa ibn-Nusayr in 711 dispatched his freedman Tariq with 7000 men, most of whom were, like him, Berbers. They met 25,000 Visigoths and — aided by treachery of disgruntled nobles — routed them. This turned out to be a decisive victory. The march of Moslem arms throughout the peninsula went on un- checked. Tariq with the bulk of the army headed toward the capital Toledo. On his way he sent detachments against neighbouring towns. Seville, a strongly fortified city, was by-passed. Cordova, future resplendent capital of Moslem Spain, fell through treachery. Malaga offered no resistance. Toledo was betrayed by Jewish residents. In less than six months the Berber raider found himself master of half of Spain.
Musa did not relish the idea of having all the honour and booty go to his lieutenant. He arrived in Spain in 712 with an army of 10,000 Arabians and Syrians, attacking the towns avoided by Tariq. Near Toledo he caught up with his former slave, whom he whipped and chained for refusing to obey a halt order early in the campaign. The triumphal march was then resumed. Soon Saragossa in the north was reached and occupied. The highlands of Aragon, Leon and Galicia would have come next but for an order from, al- Walid in distant Damascus. The caliph charged his viceroy with the same offence for which the viceroy had disciplined his subordinate — acting independently of his superior.
Musa left his son in command and slowly made his way overland toward Syria. His princely train comprised, besides his staff, 400 of the Visigothic royalty and aristocracy, wearing their crowns and girdled with gold belts, followed by a long retinue of slaves and captives loaded with treasures of booty. The triumphal passage through North Africa and southern Syria was extolled by Arab chroniclers . At Tiberias Musa received orders from Sulayman, brother and heir of the sick caliph, to delay his arrival at the capital so that it might synchronize with his accession to the caliphal throne. Evidently Musa ignored the orders. In February 715 he made his impressive entry into Damascus and was received by the caliph with great dignity and pomp in the courtyard of the newly and magnificently built Umayyad Mosque, adjoining the caliphal palace. If any single episode can exemplify the zenith of Umayyad glory, it is this memorable day on which such booty was displayed and such numbers of Western princes and fair-haired European captives were seen offering homage to the commander of the believers. Nevertheless Sulayman disciplined Musa and humiliated him. After making him stand until exhausted in the sun, he dismissed him from office and confiscated his property. Musa met the same fate that many a successful general and administrator in Islam met. The conqueror of Africa and Spain was last heard of begging for sustenance in a remote village of Hejaz.
Spain was now incorporated in the Syrian empire. Musa's successors carried on the work of rounding out the conquered territory in the east and north. Half a dozen years after the landing of the first Arab troops on Spanish soil, their successors stood facing the towering and mighty Pyrenees. Such seemingly unprecedented conquest would not have been possible but for internal weakness and dis- sension. The population of the country was Spanish- Roman ; the rulers were Teutonic Visigoths (West Goths) who had occupied the land in the early fifth century. They ruled as absolute, often despotic, monarchs. For years they professed Arian Christianity and did not adopt Catholicism, the denomination of their subjects, until the latter part of the following century. The lowest stratum of the society was held in serfdom and slavery and, with the persecuted Jews, contributed to the facility with which the conquest was achieved.
Al-Walid had pressed the offensive against Byzantium, taking Tyana, the strongest fortress in Cappadocia, and preparing a great expedition against Constantinople itself. No sooner had Sulayman (715-717) succeeded his brother than he undertook to expedite the departure of this expedi- tion under Maslamah, supported by a fleet. Constantinople was blockaded by land and sea in the late summer of 716. Of all the Arab attacks on the capital this was unquestionably the most threatening and the best recorded. The besiegers used naphtha and siege artillery. But the defending emperor, Leo the Isaurian, was a capable and vigorous soldier of humble Syrian origin from Marash. He was probably born a subject of the caliph and knew Arabic as perfectly as Greek. While the besieged were hard pressed, the besiegers were equally harassed. Pestilence, Greek fire, scarcity of provisions and attacks from Bulgars wrought havoc among them. The rigours of an unusually severe winter added their share. Yet Maslamah stubbornly persisted. Neither such hardships nor the death of the caliph seemed to deter him. But the order of the new caliph, Umar ibn-Abd-al- Aziz (717-720), he had to heed. The army withdrew in a pitiful state. The fleet, or what was left of it, was wrecked by a tempest on its way back. The Syrian-born emperor was hailed as the saviour of Christian Europe from Moslem Arabs.
The new caliph, Umar II, was in several respects unique among the Umayyads. His piety, frugality and simplicity contrasted sharply with the luxurious worldliness of his cousins. His ideal was to follow in the footsteps of his maternal grandfather, the second orthodox caliph, whose namesake he was. During his brief reign the theologians had their day. Hence the saintly reputation he acquired in Moslem history. Umar abolished the practice introduced by Muawiyah of cursing Ali from the pulpit at the Friday prayers. He introduced fiscal reforms which failed of survival because they lowered the revenue collected from converts, as Berbers, Persians and others flocked to Islam for the pecuniary privileges that accrued. His unworldly but well-intentioned enactment nevertheless substantially contributed toward the treatment as equals of Arab and non-Arab Moslems and the ultimate fusion of the sons of conquerors and conquered.
Yazid II (720-724), a son of Abd-al-Malik, was a frivolous misfit who spent most of his time with his two favourite singing girls. When one of them choked on a grape which he had playfully tossed into her mouth, the passionate young caliph fretted himself to death. He was succeeded by still another brother, Hisham (724-743), rightly considered by Arab historians the last statesman of the house of Umayyah. Hisham's governors had to re-conquer the territory in Central Asia overrun by Qutaybah, extending his sway as far as Kashgar. This city constituted the limit of Arab expansion eastward. The Umayyad army was modelled on the Byzantine, and in outfit and armour the Arab warrior was hard to distinguish from his Greek counterpart. The cavalry used plain, rounded saddles like the ones still in fashion in the Near East. The heavy artillery comprised ballista, mangonel and battering-ram. Such heavy engines, together with the baggage, were transported on camels behind the army.
The Arabs and Berbers in Spain had started crossing the Pyrenees to raid the convents and churches of France, with varying success. Narbonne had been captured in 720 and was later converted into a huge citadel with an arsenal, but an assault on Toulouse in 721 failed. In 732 a full-scale invasion commenced with a victory over the duke of Aquitaine and the storming of Bordeaux. Between Tours and Poitiers the French under Charles Martel turned back the invaders at what proved to be the high-water mark of Moslem conquest in western Europe. Despite this setback, Arab raids in other directions continued. In 734 Avignon was captured; nine years later Lyons was pillaged. These were the last accessions made under the Umayyad caliphs.
In 732, when Arab expansion was checked at the Loire just a century after the death of Muhammad, the Umayyad caliphs ruled an empire extending from the Bay of Biscay to the Indus and the confines of China and from the Aral Sea to the cataracts of the Nile. The capital of this huge domain was Damascus, the oldest living city, set like a pearl in an emerald girdle of gardens watered by snow-fed brooks. The city overlooked a plain stretching south-westward to that venerable patriarch of Lebanon crests, Mount Hermon, called by the Arabs al-Jabal al-Shaykh (the grey-haired peak), because of its turban of perpetual snow. In the centre of the city stood the Umayyad Mosque, a gem of architecture that still attracts lovers of beauty. Near by lay the green-domed palace where the caliph held his formal audiences, flanked by his relatives, with courtiers, poets and petitioners ranged behind.
Caliphal life in Damascus was fully regal in contrast with that of Medina, which had been on the whole simple and patriarchal. Relations with the Umayyad caliphs began to be regulated by protocol. Ceremonial clothes with the name of the caliph and religious sentences embroidered on their borders came into use. The evenings of the caliph were set apart for entertainment and social intercourse. Muawiyah I enjoyed listening to tales and drinking rose sherbet, but his successors preferred stronger beverages and livelier amusements. Yazid I and Hisham's successor al- Walid II were confirmed drunkards, and the frivolous diversions of Yazid II have already been noted. Debauched parties were held in the desert palaces, far from censorious eyes. Several caliphs and courtiers engaged in more innocent pastimes such as hunting, dicing and horse-racing. Polo was introduced from Persia probably toward the end of the Umayyad period. Cock-fights were not infrequent. The chase was always popular, at first with saluki dogs, later with cheetahs. Al-Walid I was one of the first caliphs to institute and patronize public horse-races.
The harem of the caliphal household apparently enjoyed a relatively large measure of freedom. They undoubtedly appeared veiled in public, veiling being an ancient Semitic custom sanctioned by the Koran. The harem system, with its concomitant auxiliary of eunuchs, was not fully instituted until after the death of Hisham.
The city of Damascus cannot have changed much in character and tone of life since its Umayyad days. Then, as now, in its narrow covered streets the Damascene with his baggy trousers, heavy turban and red pointed shoes rubbed shoulders with the sun-tanned bedouin in his flowing gown surmounted by a head shawl encircled by a band. A few women, all veiled, crossed the streets ; others stole glimpses through the latticed windows of their homes overlooking the bazaars and public squares. There was no right or left rule of way, no part of the passage reserved for riders or pedestrians. Amidst the confused crowd an aristocrat might be seen on horseback cloaked in a silk robe and armed with a sword. The screaming voices of sherbet sellers and sweet- meat vendors competed with the incessant tramp of passers- by and of donkeys and camels laden with the varied products of the desert and the town. The entire city atmosphere was charged with all kinds of smell. The demand on eye, ear and nose must have been overwhelming.
As in Horns, Aleppo and other towns the Arabians lived in separate quarters of their own according to their tribal affiliations. The door of the house usually opened from the street into a courtyard in which an orange or citron tree flourished beside a large basin with a flowing jet emitting intermittently a veil-like spray. It was the Umayyads who, to their eternal glory, supplied Damascus with a water system unexcelled in its day and still functioning. The luxurious gardens outside of Damascus, al-Ghutah, owe their very existence to the Barada river, which rushes from the north to fling tassels of silver streams across the plain. Its canals spread freshness and fertility throughout the city. About sixty remaining public baths, some with mosaics and decorated tiles, testify to the richness and distribution of its water supply.