Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/278

258 A K A B I A [HISTORY. C9S A D the last remnants of the Byzantine empire were obliterated from the%o uthern shores of the Mediterranean, and Africa was no ess closely and permanently annexed to the Arab empire than WCMi.-K.IlUW 11 UlCOOtl^Vy WJ. 1/1.1. > / ^ ., the invasion of Spain. At the order of Miisa, his lieutenant, lank, crossed the straits which yet bear his name 711 A.D.; and soon after disembarking in Andalusia, met and defeated the armies ol Spain in the decisive battle of Xeres, where Roderick, last 01 the Gothic kings, lost his crown and life. Tarik, 16,000 of whose soldiers are said to have remained on the field, requested and re ceived fresh troops, with which he speedily reduced Malaga, Granada, Cordova, Seville, and finally the Spanish capital, Toledo, itself. Musa now followed in person, took the command somewhat abruptly from his lieutenant, received the submission of Saragossa and Barcelona, reached the Pyrenees, and reduced the whole of Spain, Galicia excepted, to an Arab dependency. His own recall and disgrace, the result of court intrigue and royal ingratitude, stayed awhile the further spread of the Arab torrent. Invasion of But in 731 A.D. the celebrated Mahometan general, Abd-er- I- rance. Rahman, at the head of a numerous army, crossed the Pyrenees, and by the victories, or rather massacres, of Aries and Bordeaux, re duced the whole of France south of the Loire. But at Tours he met the main French army, commanded by Charles Martel, mayor of the palace, and founder of the Carlovingian dynasty. Here, in a bloody battle of seven days, the tide was turned. Abd-er-Rahman himself fell, and his troops" were dispersed, and iled, never to return. Not long after, 759 A.D. , Pepin, son of Charles, delivered France from the lingering vestiges of Mahometan rule. Spain, however, remained for more than five centuries an Arab settlement ; and her language, literature, and usages bear even yet the imprint of those who ruled her so long. Sicily too, Candia, Rhodes, Cyprus, Malta, Sardinia, and even Corsica, with other islands of less note in the Mediterranean, became each in turn, though none for long, Arab possessions. In Asia Minor, on the contrary, on the shores of the Black Sea, and east of Samarkand, the Arab invaders, in spite of brave and reiterated attempts, two of which, 670 and 717 A.D., were directed against Constantinople itself, were never able to make good their footing. But at the close of the Benoo-Omeyyah dynasty, Extent of 755 A.D., their empire comprised the whole basin of the Mediter- the Arab ranean, with the exception of its northern side ; in Africa its only empire, limits were the great central desert, in Asia the plateau of Kobi and the Indus, and throughout almost all these regions the Arab element either remained absolutely predominant down to our own time, or has at least left distinct traces of its existence. Jaternnl "We must now give a brief glance at the internal condition and organisa- institutions of this vast empire, which were such as to afford tion, from the very first no favoui-able omen of political stability. Mahomet, when dying, not only omitted to name a successor, but, worse still, designated no electors ; and through all the centuries of Arab rule the conditions both of elective and of hereditary right were never accurately defined. Hence the early rivalries, already alluded to, between the "Ansar" and the " Mohajireen ; " and hence, not long after, the yet more dangerous contention between the family of Omeyyah, from which Othman, the third Mahometan caliph, descended, and the kindred house of Hashim, the more immediate relatives of the prophet. Meanwhile, within the ranks of Hashim. itself, Ali, nephew of Mahomet, and husband of Fatimah, his only daughter, denying every right of free election, advanced his own special title to the throne by the presumed claim of nearness of blood, a title persistently xirged by his descendants, and for centuries a constant source of dissension and weakness in the empire. Nor, whilst the nomination of the caliph himself, the centre and keystone of the Arab political edifice, was thus left un defined, were the remaining details of the construction at all preciser in their character. No accurate line of demarcation separated the executive from the judicial, or these again from the financial depart ment ; no municipal organisations were established or even acknow ledged; absolute despotism was the only form of government, whether primary or delegated, in the capital as in the provinces ; actual resistance and revolt the only remedies against its abuse. Such an empire might conquer, but could not govern, at least for long. Internal These inherent evils manifested themselves by their unmistake- liistory. able bad effects from the very first. Once only, when Abu-Bekr The first died, 634 A.D., after only two years of reign, the elective accession four of Omar, the austerest, but also the most capable of all the early caliphs. Arab rulers, was sanctioned by an almost unanimous approval ; though even then the restless intrigues of the ambitious and iin- principled Ali inade themselves manifest. After a glorious reign of ten years, the conqueror of Syria, Persia, and Egypt, perished, Gl A.D., assassinated by a Persian slave, Firooz by name; and Othrnan, son of Affan, of the noble family of Abd-esh-Shems, was elected in his place. The twelve years of his administration were ceaselessly disturbed bv the insubordination of Ali and his partisans, who at last, impatient of delay, broke into the residence of the ancient caliph at Medinah, and murdered him there, 656 A. D. Stained with blood, Ali usurped the throne ; while Aye- shah, daughter of Abu-Bekr, and widow of the prophet, collected round her the avengers of the blood of Othman, and the first civil war of Islam was inaugurated by a hard-fought battle, known as the " Day of the Camel," near Bosrah, 656 A.D. Ayeshah was de feated ; but the cause of Othman was soon after taken up by his talented kinsman, Muawwiyah, governor of Syria, who in tho battle, or rather series of battles, fought near Sofeyn, on the upper Euphrates, 658-9 A.D., broke the strength of Ali s faction. Driven from Syria, Egypt, and Arabia, Ali retired to Cufa, where an assassin s dagger avenged on his own person the crime by which he had opened the way to ill-gotten and precarious power, 660 A.D. Muawwiyah, left by his rival s death sole though not undisputed Ommiado emeer-el-moomeneen, or "ruler of the faithful," fixed his seat of caliphs, government at Damascus, where he and the fourteen succeeding princes of his line ruled for eighty-nine years. Victorious abroad, his dynasty, generally called by European authors the " Ommiade," from the name of Omeyyah, father of the race, was for its first forty years harassed by frequent insurrections within the limits of the empire. The initial disturbances from which all that succeeded directly or indirectly took rise, were due to the intrigues of the two sons of Ali, Hasan and Hoseyn, both of whom were deeply imbued with Persian superstition, and who thereby soon gave the schism that they headed a religious as well as a political character. After the death of the lazy and contemptible Hasan, his younger Revolt of and more active but equally faithless brother Hoseyn, raised the Hoseyn and standard of revolt in the eastern provinces, where he hoped to the Ali gather round him his Persian auxiliaries ; but before he could draw family, his followers to a head he was met at Kerbela, on the Euphrates, by the well-organised troops of the caliph Yezeed, son of Muawwiyah, and perished miserably, 680 A.D. His descendants and kinsmen, for there were many, continued, however, now one of them, now another, to revive the pretensions of their family ; and for more than a century they disquieted the empire, especially on its eastern and soiithern frontiers, with sedition and rebellion. At last their evident defection from orthodox belief, joined to the extravagance and licentiousness both of their teaching and practice, so dis gusted the Arab race that scarcely any adherents were left them, except among the Moorish tribes of northern Africa, where their influence, founded on the strangest impostures, predominated for a time, and in the still more congenial soil of Persia. There indeed the sect obtained a permanent footing and ultimate supremacy. Thus originated and thus was perpetuated the first and widest spread of Mahometan schisms ; the adherents of the legitimate caliphate and the orthodox doctrine assuming the name of Soon- nees " or "Traditionalists," while the sectaries of Ali are known as " Sheeah " or " Separatists " to this day. . More formidable, however, to the Damascus princes, though sooner Revolt of extinguished, was the revolt of Abd- Allah, son of Zobeyr, a brave Abd-Allah but narrow-minded leader, and nearly connected by blood with Ebn- Mahomet himself. Supported by the townsmen of Mecca and Zobeyr : Medinah, besides a great proportion of the northern or " Mustareb" tribes, he was for more than ten years acknowledged as caliph by half the Arab world, till slain by Hajjaj Ebn-Yousef, the greatest of the Syrian generals, during the storming of Mecca by the Damascene troops, 692 A.D. The intrepid but ferocious Mukhtar, at first a supporter of Abd-Allah but afterwards his rival, and head of the " Khowarij " or " seceders," maintained a separate revolt on his own account in Cufa, till slain in battle by Musaab, son of Zobeyr, brother of Abd-Allah. The " Khowarij, " however brave and well-meaning though visionary men, some of whom were nothing else than over-zealous Mahometan priests or reformers ; others, sectaries of Ali and his family ; others, again, free-thinkers of repub lican tendency found a new and successful leader in the courageous Shebeeb, a native of Hasa, who for several years maintained their cause on the upper Euphrates, while the revolt of a large portion of the Ommiado army itself, in the extreme east of the empire, where the caliph s own general, Abd-er-Rahman, headed the insub ordination, shook the empire to its foundations. But over these and other enemies triumphed the military and administrative skill of Hejjaj ; and it was only under him, the scourge of rebels, and pillar of the Ommiade caliphs, 705 A.D., that anything like real internal tranquillity was even for a brief period given to the empire. Half hereditary, half elective, the family of Omeyyah numbered Decline of fifteen successive princes on the throne, mostly men of talent, able Ommiade administrators, and some of them distinguished authors and poets, dynasty But their personal merits were unavailing against the downward progress of disorganisation, the necessaiy result of an essentially defective system of government, and rapid territorial extension out of all proportion with the means of consolidation ; and the latter years of their dynasty present a melancholy scene of turbulence and confusion. Then appeared a new enemy, more dangerous than any of the preceding, to the Damascus sceptre, in the person of Ibrahim, great-grandson of Abbas, the uncle of the Prophet, who after long

and secret intrigues, now gave himself out as the acknowledged