Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume III.djvu/623

CALIPH 617 bellion caused by Talha and Zobair, All found himself confronted by Moawiyah, governor of Syria, one of Othman's relations, and a divi- sion of the Moslems was the consequence. AH was assassinated, and was succeeded by Has- san, his son, who resigned in favor of Moawiyah, and soon after died, as supposed by poison ad- ministered by his wife, at the instance of Moa- wiyah. Moawiyah founded the dynasty of the Ommiyades (from Ommiyah, his ancestor), the caliphs of Damascus (661). He obtained the allegiance of the countries conquered by Omar, and the acquiescence of Mecca and Medina to the nomination of his son Yezid as his succes- sor. He also made the caliphate hereditary in his own family. Hossein, brother of Hassan, was invited to assume the caliphate by the Moslems of Irak. While proceeding thither he was intercepted by a detachment sent by the governor of Cufah and killed, together with all his attendants. The hereditary line of the Ommiyades was broken by Merwan I., who transferred the caliphate to his own son, in- stead of the brother of Moawiyah II., to whom he had been appointed guardian. The reign of Abdel-Malek was signalized by the establish- ment of a regular coinage throughout the em- pire, and Walid I. discontinued the Greek lan- guage and characters in keeping the accounts of the revenue, and substituted the Arabic figures. Meantime the Shiahs or partisans of Ali became numerous, especially in the coun- tries bordering on Hindostan, where belief in the transmigration of souls was prevalent. They maintained that Ali, like Mohammed, would return to earth, and until then the right of succession was vested in the imams, his descendants. With these and other like doctrines, and by representing the Ommiyades as tyrants and usurpers, the Shiah emissaries gradually undermined the power of the Om- miyades. The descendants of Abbas, one of the uncles of Mohammed, joined the Shiahs for the overthrow of the Ommiyades. On the ac- cession of Merwan II. to the throne the empire became distracted with insurrections. Cufah deposed its Syrian governor, and proclaimed a caliph of its own. At Bassorah another rival was elevated, but was routed with great loss near Damascus. At length a descendant of Abbas marched into Syria and routed the army of Merwan, who fled to Egypt, where he was slain. Thus ended the dynasty of the eastern Ommiyades in 750, after a reign of 89 years. The Aliides were again dispossess- ed, and the Abbassides founded the dynasty of that name, whose caliphs transferred their seat to Bagdad. The accession of the Abbas- sides was characterized by so much cruelty and bloodshed as to gain for the first of them the appellation of Es-Safiah, the bloody. A younger son of Merwan II., Abderrahman, escaped to Spain, where he founded the dynasty of the Spanish Ommiyades. Though the Shiah missionaries preached the divine inspiration of the descendants of Ali, yet nei- ther the latter nor the Abbassides brought forward any other claims to the caliphate than the right of descent, the former from Fatima, the prophet's daughter, and from Ali, and the latter from Abbas, the uncle of the prophet and the last survivor of his com- panions, rejecting the claims of the Aliides in consequence of their descent from a woman, who had no right of succession. The Aliides in spite of their defeats were not discouraged, and with the aid of the Berbers they succeeded in establishing a caliphate in N. W. Africa. They afterward transferred their seat to Egypt (909). One of them, Hakem, assumed the title Biamri, "in my own right," instead of Billah, "by divine right," and declared himself an in- carnation of the Deity. Under the auspices of the Fatimites, and for the purpose of undermi- ning the power of the Abbassides, the famous lodge at Cairo was instituted from which em- anated the sect of the Assassins. (See ASSAS- SINS.) In 1171 the last of the Fatimite dynasty died. Abderrahman, the younger son of Mer- wan II., the Ommiyade, who had escaped to Spain, succeeded in raising himself to the cali- phate in that country, and his dynasty lasted for three centuries. In wealth and display they ful- ly equalled the Abbassides. They finally grew feeble and tyrannical, and their last caliph, Ha- shem III., was in 1031 deposed by the army, and with him terminated the dynasty of the Spanish Ommiyades. The Abbassides, enfee- bled by long subjection to a foreign body guard, originally composed of African, Circas- sian, and other slaves, who had made them- selves absolute masters of the caliphate, were overthrown by Hulaku on the capture of Bag- dad in 1258, and Mustasem, the last of the dy- nasty, was put to death. In 1264 Sultan Bi- bars, to give his claim to the throne some show of legitimacy, appointed one of the Abbassides as caliph, but with spiritual authority only. The latter in return invested him with tempo- ral dominion over all Moslem countries. But afterward, fearing that he might ascribe to himself temporal power as well, Bibars with- drew a part of his guard from the caliph, who succumbed before the Tartar governor of Bag- dad and fled to Egypt; Bibars appointed an- other in his place, whom he however treated as a prisoner. (See ABBASSIDES.) Although the caliph was the supreme temporal and spir- itual head, he could not decree any new dog- mas, and where the Koran did not reach the question at issue, it was to be decided from precedent, analogy, and tradition, and to be determined by the judges and ulemas rather than by the caliphs. The first successors of Mohammed are called the perfect caliphs. By the Sunnite Mohammedans the Turkish sultan is in some measure regarded as a successor of the caliphs, especially as possessing dominion over the four holy cities, Mecca, Medina, Jeru- salem, and Damascus. The following table gives the members of the different lines of ca- liphs, with the dates of their accession :