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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Moslem and Frank, by Gustave Louis Strauss
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
-
-
-Title: Moslem and Frank;
-       or, Charles Martel and the rescue of Europe
-
-Author: Gustave Louis Strauss
-
-Release Date: October 6, 2020 [EBook #63390]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOSLEM AND FRANK ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Turgut Dincer, John Campbell and the Online
-Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
-book was produced from scanned images of public domain
-material from the Google Books project.)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-  TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
-
-  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
-
-  Footnote anchors are denoted by [number], and the footnotes have been
-  placed at the end of each chapter.
-
-  The original text on page 111 uses a Maltese Cross, displayed as ‘✠’
-  on this device, to indicate the year of that person’s death.
-
-  Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book.
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration: CHARLES MARTEL--BATTLE OF TOURS.
-
-_From a Picture by Steuben in the Imperial Gallery at Versailles,
-James Carter, Sc._]
-
-
-
-
-                              MOSLEM
-
-                                AND
-
-                               FRANK;
-
-             OR, CHARLES MARTEL AND THE RESCUE OF EUROPE
-                      FROM THE THREATENED YOKE
-                          OF THE SARACENS.
-
-                               BEING
-
-                  VOLUME I. OF THE HISTORIC SKETCHES.
-
-             DESIGNED FOR THE INSTRUCTION AND AMUSEMENT OF
-                           OLD AND YOUNG.
-
-                       BY G. L. STRAUSS, PH.D.
-
-
-                     In magnis voluisse sat est.
-
-
-                              LONDON:
-                    JOHN WEALE, 59, HIGH HOLBORN.
-                               1854.
-
-
-
-
-                              LONDON:
-              BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
-
-
-
-
-                              PREFACE.
-
-  “Story! bless you--I have none to tell.”--_Canning’s Knifegrinder._
-
-
-It is an old and trite saying: “Good wine needs no bush,” and even
-the finest and most flourishing bush will fail to put either body or
-flavor into the growth of a bad vintage. It is left to the reader of
-this little volume to decide whether or not the author has succeeded
-in producing an acceptable and readable book.
-
-  _July 1, 1854._
-
-
-
-
-                             CONTENTS.
-
-
-                              PART I.
-
-                           THE MOSLEMIN.
-                                                                Page
-  CHAPTER I.--Arabia and its inhabitants.--Life and doctrine
-                of Mohammed                                        1
-
-     ”   II.--The Khalifs from Abu Bekr to Hesham                 53
-
-
-                              PART II.
-
-                             THE FRANKS.
-
-  CHAPTER I.--The Frank Confederacy.--Clovis, the Founder of
-                the Frank Monarchy                                89
-
-     ”   II.--Decline of the Merovingian Princes.--The Mayors
-                of the Palace.--Pepin of Landen.--Pepin of
-                Heristal.--Charles Martel.--The Battle of
-                Tours                                            108
-
-
-
-
-                              PART I.
-
-                           THE MOSLEMIN.
-
-
-
-
-                             CHAPTER I.
-
-     ARABIA AND ITS INHABITANTS.--LIFE AND DOCTRINE OF MOHAMMED.
-
-
-The Arabian peninsula, called by the natives JESIRA-AL-ARAB, by the
-Persians and Turks ARABISTAN, forms the south-westernmost part of
-Asia. It is bounded on the north by Syria and the river Euphrates, on
-the east by the Persian Gulf, on the south by the Indian Ocean, on
-the west by the Red Sea, or Arabian Gulf. Including the north-eastern
-desert, it occupies an area ten times the extent of that of Great
-Britain and Ireland. The connecting link between Asia and Africa,
-to which latter continent it is joined by the Isthmus of Suez, it
-presents in its natural features, a faithful copy of its colossal
-tropical neighbour, modified, however, by the imprint of a strongly
-marked individual character, the result of its peculiar isolated
-position. The attempted derivation of the name of the country from
-EBER[1], the common progenitor of the Joctanites and Ismaelites--the
-two races which are assumed to constitute the great bulk of the
-native population of Arabia--is, at the best, but very problematical;
-that from the word ARABA, the name of a district of the province
-of Tehama, and which signifies a _level desert_, would seem to
-rest on a safer and more rational foundation, the far greater part
-of the country being indeed a dreary waste, a boundless level of
-sand, destitute of rivers, intersected by naked mountains, and
-barely relieved here and there by a shady grove or a green sward of
-aromatic herbs. The date-palm is often the solitary representative
-of vegetable life in these sterile tracts, which are scorched by
-a tropical sun, and hardly ever refreshed by a grateful shower.
-There are, however, some more favored districts, where the fertile
-soil produces dates and other palms, tamarinds, vines, rice, sugar,
-figs, tobacco, indigo, cotton, durra,[2] coffee, gum, benzoin,
-frankincense, manna, balsam, aloe, myrrh, spices, &c. The high lands
-in the south-west, that border on the Indian Ocean, are distinguished
-in this respect, above all other parts of Arabia, by a more temperate
-air, superior fertility, and comparative abundance of wood and
-water. No wonder, then, that the appellation _happy_, bestowed upon
-this blessed region by PTOLEMY, should have been generally adopted,
-although originating in a mistranslation of the word YEMEN, the
-Arabian name of this part of the peninsula, and which does not
-signify happy, but is simply meant to designate the land lying, with
-respect to the East, to the right of MECCA, just as AL-SHAM (Syria)
-means the land to the left of that city. PTOLEMY’S division of the
-country into the _sandy_, the _petraie_, and the _happy_ (_Arabia
-Deserta_, _Petræa_, and _Felix_), is, however, unknown to the
-Arabians themselves, who speak only of high land and low land. The
-epithet _stony_, so generally applied by geographers to the petraic
-division, is founded in error: PTOLEMY derived the word from PETRA,
-the name of the then flourishing capital of the Nabathæans, and not
-from the Greek word _petra_, a rock or stone. Ptolemy’s Arabia Petræa
-forms now part of the province of HEJAZ, along the coast of the Red
-Sea. YEMEN, as we have seen, occupies the south-western coast. On
-the south-eastern coast lies the maritime district of OMAN; on the
-Persian Gulf, the district of LAHSA: the inland space bears the name
-of NEGED, or NAGED.
-
-Arabia is the true native country of the horse, and remains even at
-the present time the seat of the purest and noblest races of that
-generous animal. Asses, oxen, sheep, goats, and the swift gazelle,
-are also indigenous; and so is the _camel_, the “ship of the desert,”
-nature’s most precious gift in the sands of Africa and Arabia.
-Monkies, pheasants, and pigeons inhabit the fertile districts.
-The lion, the panther, the hyena, the jackal, lurk in the desert.
-Ostriches, and pelicans are among the birds of Arabia; locusts, that
-“plague of the fields,” are among its insects. The coasts abound
-in fishes and tortoises; and the pearl-fishery flourishes more
-especially in the Persian Gulf.
-
-Among the mineral products may be mentioned iron, copper, lead,
-coals, asphaltum; and precious stones, as the agate, the onyx, the
-carnelion, &c. Some of the ancient geographers speak also of the soil
-of Arabia as being impregnated with gold; and though no mines of that
-precious metal are at present known in the peninsula, who can say but
-that the treasures of another California lie hidden there?
-
-The inhabitants of Arabia, whose present number may be estimated at
-about fifteen millions, are supposed to derive their origin partly
-from JOCTAN (in the Arabian language KAHTAN), one of the sons of
-EBER; and partly from ISMAEL, the son of Abraham and Hagar. The
-Joctanites, as the supposed original inhabitants of the country, have
-been called also true Arabians; the Ismaelites, as later immigrants,
-_mixed_ Arabians. The ISMAELITES are the BEDOWEENS, or BEDOUINS,
-of our time, who to the present day continue to rove through the
-interior and the north of Arabia, as they did in the remote times
-of Job and Sesostris, depending partly on their flocks, partly
-on the transit trade of the caravans, but chiefly on plunder;[3]
-which latter is by these wild sons of the desert looked upon in the
-light of an honorable profession rather than of a disgraceful and
-criminal pursuit. They are a fine race of men, of middle size, but
-well proportioned, vigorous, and active; they have regular features;
-their complexion is mostly dark, rarely of a lighter tint; their eyes
-sparkle with a fire and lustre unknown among us. They are brave,
-temperate, generous, and hospitable; enthusiastically addicted to
-eloquence and poetry. Rapine and revenge are the only dark spots in
-the national character of the Bedoween.
-
-The JOCTANITES are the HADDHESIES, or _settled_ Arabians, who from
-the earliest times have been collected into towns and villages, more
-especially in the maritime districts of the peninsula, employed in
-the labors of agriculture, trade, and commerce. Though the Arabian
-house-dwellers cannot be said to possess all the noble qualities of
-their brethren of the desert, still the description given above of
-the physical and moral character of the latter applies in a great
-measure equally to them; they are lively, intelligent, eloquent,
-and witty; and, with all their habitual haughty demeanour, more
-particularly to strangers, affable and agreeable in their manners and
-conversation.
-
-The principal nations of Arabia mentioned by the ancients, are,
-besides the SKENITES (_tent-dwellers_, or wandering tribes), the
-NABATHÆANS, in Arabia Petræa (Hejaz); the THAMUDITES and MINÆANS
-in Hejaz; the SABÆANS and HOMERITES, in Yemen; the HADHRAMITES,
-in Hadhramaut on the southern coast; the OMANITES, DACHARENIANS,
-and GERRHÆANS, in Oman and Ul-Ahsa, or Lahsa; the SARANIANS, in
-Neged; and the SARACENS, an obscure tribe on the borders of Egypt,
-and remarkable only from the circumstance that, perhaps from a
-fallacious[4] interpretation of the meaning of the word,--viz: as
-intended to indicate an Oriental situation--the application of the
-name has been gradually extended, first to the inhabitants of the
-Arabian peninsula generally, afterwards to all Mohammedans.
-
-The early history of the Arabians is shrouded in obscurity. That the
-JOCTANITES were not the true original inhabitants of the country,
-but simply later immigrants into it, would appear to result from the
-histories of the ancient Babylonian and Assyrian empires (however so
-little reliance we may feel inclined to place in these mythical and
-traditional histories); for we are told that Nimrod was attended by
-Arabian tribes--and in the list of the Babylonian kings we find six
-Arabian princes; and, again, among the auxiliaries of Ninus we find
-Arabs, under a prince named Ariæus. The HYKSOS, or Shepherd Kings,
-who are said to have invaded Egypt about 2075 B.C., and to have held
-sway in that country during more than 500 years, are also generally
-considered to have come from Arabia. The traditional history of
-Arabia mentions several kingdoms and dynasties. The two most ancient
-of these, dating their origin as far back as 2000 B.C., were, 1, the
-HOMERITE kingdom in Yemen, which, after a time, split into the two
-states of SABA, or SHEBA, and HADHRAMAUT. About 1572 B.C., these
-were re-united into one empire, which about 1075 B.C. was governed by
-BALKIS, the daughter of Hodhad, and who by some historians is thought
-to have been identical with the Queen of Sheba, the cotemporary of
-Solomon; 2, the State in Hejaz, in which the NABATHÆANS held superior
-sway.
-
-Protected on all sides by the seas of sand and water which encompass
-the peninsula, the Arabian people--or, at all events, the great body
-of the nation--had, at all times, escaped the yoke of a foreign
-conqueror. King Sesostris, of Egypt, is said to have subjected some
-tribes of Hejaz to his rule; but it would appear they speedily
-recovered their independence. All the attempts made at different
-times, by the rulers of Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, and Persia, to
-subjugate the Arabian peninsula, proved either altogether abortive,
-or, even where they partially succeeded, the conquest was only
-transient. Thus Arabia Petræa was subjugated, for a time, to the
-Assyrian sway in the eighth century B.C. by Pul, or Phul, and
-Sennacherib; but in the sixth century B.C. we find it in independent
-alliance with the Persian kings Cyrus and Cambyses. Alexander the
-Great had formed the plan to conquer and colonise the coasts of
-Arabia, and to prepare in this way the ultimate subjugation of the
-entire peninsula. The genius of the Græco-Macedonian conqueror, the
-immense material means of which he could dispose, and the possession
-of a powerful fleet (under Nearchus) promised a successful issue
-to the intended expedition: the death of Alexander (11th June, 323
-B.C.) averted the threatening danger.[5] The attempt which Antigonus
-and Demetrius made upon Arabia in 312 B.C. was a failure; and the
-trifling conquest achieved in 219 B.C. by Antiochus the Great, of
-Syria, was speedily wrested again from him by the natives. At a
-later period, the northern tribes of Arabia were engaged for a time,
-with varying fortunes, in desultory feuds with the Jews under the
-Maccabæans, or Makkabi.[6] The Romans also, that all-grasping nation,
-cast their covetous eyes upon the flourishing state of Petræa; but
-neither Scaurus nor Gabinius, neither Pompey nor Antony, nor even
-Augustus, could prevail against the difficulties of the country,
-and the stubborn valor of the roving tribes of the desert. Hunger,
-thirst, fatigue, and disease thinned the ranks of the proud legions
-more effectually still than the bow, the javelin, and the scymetar
-of the Bedoween; and after a last vain attempt under Ælius Gallus,
-Imperial Rome reluctantly relinquished for a time the coveted prize.
-In 106 A.D., Cornelius Palma, a lieutenant of Trajan, conquered
-the cities of Bostra and Petra, and subdued the Nabathæans. Trajan
-made, also, some naval inroads, and carried his incursions as far as
-Katif. Petra lost from this time its importance and splendor; Bostra
-becoming in its stead the principal seat of the commerce of the
-Euphrates and the Tigris. After the death of Trajan, the conquered
-tribes shook off again the Roman yoke. The Emperor Aurelian broke,
-indeed, the power of the Nabathæans in his celebrated campaign
-against Zenobia, the great Queen of Palmyra, (272 and 273 A.D.), and
-his triumphal car was followed by captive Arabian chiefs; but the
-Nabathæan _nation_, disdaining to bend to the Roman yoke, abandoned
-their homes, and fled to that great asylum of Arabian freedom, the
-desert.
-
-At the commencement of the sixth century, (502 A.D.), the Homerite
-kingdom of Yemen[7] was conquered by an Ethiopian prince, the Negus,
-or King, of Abyssinia,[8] and remained subject or tributary to the
-Christian princes of the latter country to the time of the conquest
-of Arabia by Chosroes I. (Nushirvan) of Persia (about 574 A.D.).
-Still, though Arabia was styled a Persian province, the sway of
-the Sassanides over the peninsula was more nominal than real: the
-tribes of the desert remained free, and even in Yemen, we find seven
-Princes of the Homerites successfully asserting and maintaining the
-independence of their mountains.[9]
-
-There is some reason to suppose that the original worship of the
-Arabs was that of _one_ God; clouded and tarnished, indeed, by many
-superstitious usages, and perhaps even by human sacrifices, yet
-free from gross idolatry. But this primitive religion was speedily
-supplanted by the adoration of the sun, the moon, and the fixed
-stars; a specious superstition which substitutes for the invisible,
-all-pervading, universal God, the most glorious of his creations,
-and may well find its excuse in the clear sky and boundless naked
-plains of Arabia, where the heavenly luminaries shine with a
-brighter lustre, displaying to the mind of the untutored son of
-the desert the visible image of a Deity. Intimately connected with
-this still primitive faith, was the belief in the wonderful powers
-and attributes of _meteoric stones_. The most renowned of these,
-called Hadjar-el-Aswad, is a square-shaped black stone, kept to the
-present day in Mecca in the Temple of the KAABA, and which has from
-time immemorial been, and remains still, the sacred object of the
-devout pilgrimages and adoration of the Arabs of all tribes. The
-Kaaba is a square building, thirty-four feet high, and twenty-seven
-broad; built, according to the Mohammedan tradition, by Abraham,
-and repeatedly restored, in after ages, by the Amalekites, by the
-Jorhamites, by Kassa, of the tribe of Koreish, &c.; and the last
-time by Sultan Mustapha, in 1630. Of the original building there
-remains thus at present only a small portion of wall, which is
-held most sacred. A spacious portico[10] encloses the quadrangle
-of the Kaaba. The holy stone, which is about four feet high, and
-set in silver, is fixed in the wall, in the southern corner. The
-Mohammedan tradition relates that this stone was brought to Abraham
-by the Angel Gabriel, whose tears over the sinfulness of man had
-changed its original white color to black! Hence Mahomet was induced
-to make it the Kebla[11] of prayer, and to enjoin the pilgrimage
-of the faithful to it and the Kaaba. Verily, the idolatry of the
-ancient Arabs, who worshipped the divine power in the _meteoric
-stone_, that had fallen from the skies in a manner miraculous to
-their untutored understanding, was more natural, and even far more
-rational, than the present worship of the same stone, based upon
-this wretched and most absurd legend! The transmigration of souls,
-the resurrection of bodies, and the invocation of departed spirits,
-formed also part of the religious belief of the ancient Arabs; the
-cruel practice of human sacrifices prevailed among them even up to
-the time of Mohammed, in the course of time the grossest idolatry
-became an important, and, in the end, a preponderating ingredient
-in Arabian worship; and the sacred Kaaba was defiled by the gradual
-introduction of three hundred and sixty idols of men, eagles, lions,
-and antelopes; among which stood most conspicuous the most popular of
-them, the statue of Hobal, fashioned of red agate by a Syrian artist,
-and holding in his hand seven arrows, without heads or feathers, the
-instruments and symbols of profane divination.[12]
-
-But, though each tribe, each family, nay every independent warrior,
-might freely create new idols and new rites of his fantastic worship,
-yet the nation, in every age, has bowed to the religion of Mecca, and
-to the superior sanctity of the Kaaba. An annual truce of two, or,
-according to some historians, four months, during which the swords
-of the Arabs were sheathed, both in foreign and domestic warfare,
-protected the holy pilgrimage to Mecca. The great fair held in
-connection with this pilgrimage induced those to come whom religious
-ardor failed to attract. This annual gathering of distant and hostile
-tribes contributed greatly to harmonise and refine the wild sons
-of the desert; the exchange of eloquence and poetry usual at these
-periods, could only heighten the humanizing and elevating influence
-of the custom. The fanaticism of the first Moslems abolished the
-fair, inflicting thereby one of the many evils that came in the
-train of Mohammed’s gigantic imposture. The rites which are, even in
-the present day, accomplished by the devout Moslems, are still the
-same they were in the days of the ancient idolators of Arabia. “At a
-respectful distance from the temple, they threw off their garments;
-seven times they went round the Kaaba, with quick steps, kissing each
-time the holy stone with deep reverence;[13] seven times they visited
-and adored the adjacent mountains; seven times they threw stones
-into the valley of Mina: and the pilgrimage was completed, as at the
-present hour, by a sacrifice of sheep and camels, and the burial of
-their hair and nails in the consecrated ground.”[14]
-
-It will be readily understood that the custody of the Kaaba must
-at all times have proved a most lucrative affair. No wonder, then,
-that the neighbouring tribes should have hotly contended for it.
-Originally the ISMAELITES held it for a long time, together with the
-dominion over Mecca, which resulted from it as a natural consequence.
-The JORHAMITES, a branch of the Joctanites, succeeded at last in
-ousting them from it; these again were expelled by the KHUZAITES,
-who promoted idolatry to a most formidable extent. In the middle of
-the fifth century, an Ismaelitic tribe, that of KOREISH, wrested the
-custody of the Kaaba, by fraud or force, from the Khuzaites. The
-sacerdotal office was entrusted by the Koreish to COSA, of the family
-of the HASHEMITES, and devolved through four lineal descents to
-ABDOL MOTALLEB, the grandfather of Mohammed.[15]
-
-The freedom which Arabia enjoyed, promised a safe asylum to the
-political and religious exiles and proscripts from the adjacent
-kingdoms. The intolerance of the Magian Persians had overturned the
-altars of Babylon, and compelled the votaries of Sabianism[16] to
-seek a refuge in the desert. The same fate befell the Magians in
-their turn, when the sword of Alexander had overthrown the Persian
-monarchy. Multitudes of Jews fled into Arabia, to escape the cruel
-persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes, and greater numbers still
-followed during the wars of Titus and Hadrian. To all these were
-added, at a later period, numerous sects of Christians, fleeing
-from that worst of all persecutions, that of their triumphant
-co-religionists, from whom they might chance to differ in some
-abstruse point of doctrine, or in some immaterial rite. Among
-the persecuted sects, we may mention here more particularly the
-Marcionites and the Manichæans, the Jacobites and Nestorians. The
-latter two sects had gained many proselytes in Yemen, and succeeded
-even in converting the princes of Hira and Gassan to their faith.
-The Jews, also, had made numerous and important converts to the
-Mosaic belief; and we have already seen how the intolerant zeal of a
-bigoted Jewish neophyte, DUNAAN, prince of the Homerites, suddenly
-interrupted the enjoyment of that absolute liberty of conscience
-which the Arabian _idolaters_ had hitherto granted to all creeds and
-all sects, and brought down upon Yemen an Abyssinian invasion to
-avenge the wrongs of the persecuted Christians.
-
-It was in this country, and among this people, so strangely and
-peculiarly constituted, that arose the apostle of a new faith,
-destined to knead the heterogeneous and hostile elements of the
-nation into one compact mass, and to hurl this with irresistible
-might against the adjacent empires, and even, far beyond the limits
-of the latter, against countries and nations formerly scarcely known
-by name even to the Arabian merchant.
-
-MAHOMET, or more properly MOHAMMED or MUHAMMED, (i.e. _the very
-famous_), the only son of Abdallah and Amina, was born at Mecca, on
-the 20th April, 571.[17] His father, ABDALLAH, was the best beloved
-of the thirteen sons of Abdol Motalleb, the son of Hashem, and chief
-of the family of that name; his mother, Amina, sprang from the noble
-race of the Zahrites. He had the misfortune to lose in his infancy,
-his father and mother, and his grandfather. His sole inheritance
-consisted in a house, an old female slave, and five camels. After the
-death of his grandfather, he was taken into the house of his uncle,
-Abu Taleb, who had succeeded Abdol Motalleb in the sacerdotal office.
-Here he was educated to commercial pursuits; and was, at the age of
-thirteen, sent with the caravan of his uncle to the fairs of Bosra,
-or Bostra,[18] and Damascus, in Syria. In his twentieth year[19] he
-fought in the ranks of the Koreish against some hostile tribes, and,
-by his valor, gained the appellation EL AMIN, i.e., _the faithful_,
-one of the five hundred and more surnames that have gradually been
-given to the Prophet of Islam. In his twenty-fifth year, Cadijah,
-a rich and noble widow of Mecca (according to some historians, of
-Bosra), engaged him as superintendent and manager to carry on the
-commercial affairs of her late husband. In this capacity he made a
-second journey to the fairs of Bosra and Damascus.[20]
-
-Nature had bestowed upon Mohammed the gift of personal beauty. His
-cotemporaries describe him as of commanding figure and majestic
-aspect; he had regular and most expressive features, piercing black
-eyes, an aquiline nose, and a well-formed mouth, with pearly teeth;
-his cheeks were tinged with the ruddy glow of robust health.[21] Art
-had imparted to his naturally black, flowing hair and beard a lighter
-chestnut hue. His captivating smile, his rich and sonorous voice,
-the graceful dignity of his gestures, the apparent frankness and
-heartiness of his manner, gained him the favorable attention of those
-whom he addressed. He possessed talents of a superior order--his
-perception was quick and active, his memory capacious and retentive,
-his imagination lively and daring, his judgment clear, rapid, and
-decisive, his courage dauntless;--and, whatever may be our opinion
-of the sincerity of his convictions, his tenacity of purpose in the
-pursuit of the great object of his life, and his patient endurance,
-cannot but extort our admiration. His natural eloquence was enhanced
-by the use of the purest dialect of Arabia, and adorned by the charm
-of a graceful elocution.
-
-Cadijah was a widow for the second time; she was in the fortieth year
-of her age--no wonder then, that a man so bountifully endowed by
-nature should speedily have gained her affection. She bestowed upon
-him her hand and her fortune, and restored him thereby to the station
-of his ancestors. Placed, henceforth, above the petty wants and cares
-of material subsistence, Mohammed had now full leisure to indulge
-his love of poetry and eloquence, and his natural predilection for
-contemplation. His marriage brought him into familiar contact with
-WARAKA (VERKA) BEN NAUFIL, a cousin of Cadijah. This Waraka, it would
-appear, had first exchanged the adoration of the heavenly bodies for
-the belief in the two principles of Zoroaster, (Ormuzd and Ahriman).
-This creed not satisfying his mind, he had embraced with fervor the
-monotheism of the Jews; but, disgusted with the absurdities of the
-Talmudists, he had seceded to the profession of the Christian faith,
-in which he had even assumed the priestly office. That he must have
-been a man of some talent and learning, is evident from the fact
-of his having translated the Old and New Testament from the Hebrew
-into the Arabic tongue. Now this man is usually mentioned by the
-historians of the time as the _pupil_ of Mohammed, and the _second
-convert_ to his new doctrine; but there are strong reasons to justify
-a belief that he was his _master_ and _teacher_, rather than his
-_pupil_ and _convert_.
-
-It has been intimated already, that the history of the life of
-Mohammed, up to the time when he proclaimed himself the apostle of
-a new faith, is obscure and doubtful. From the scanty data, and the
-conjectural and contradictory statements before us, we can only
-gather one fact as pretty certain, viz: that the prophet of Islam had
-enjoyed some rabbinical and priestly instruction. Now we have seen
-that Mohammed was an illiterate barbarian, and not likely, therefore,
-to derive from conversation with priests in foreign lands that
-knowledge of the maxims, tenets, and traditions of other religious
-communities, which is evidenced in the Koran and in the Sonna;[22]
-whereas Waraka had actually had a practical training in the divers
-beliefs of the Sabians, Magians, Jews, and Christians; and must, to
-judge by his translation of the New Testament, have been tolerably
-versed in the _letter_, at least, of the doctrine of Christ. From his
-repeated, and apparently conscientious, changes of faith, we have,
-perhaps, a right to conclude that he was a man sincerely in search of
-a religion that might satisfy his mind; nor need we wonder that the
-so-called “Christianity” of the seventh century should have failed
-to answer his expectations on this head. It would not be too much
-to say, indeed, that there existed really no “Christian” church at
-that period; the multitudinous contending sects who professed the
-_name_ of Christ had almost entirely forgotten his _pure doctrine_,
-and, more especially, the divine principle preached by him of
-universal charity and good-will to all men. The grossest idolatry
-had usurped the place of the simple worship, instituted by Jesus, of
-an All-wise, Almighty, and All-beneficent Being, without equal and
-without similitude; a new Olympus had been imagined, peopled with a
-crowd of martyrs, saints, and angels, in lieu of the ancient gods of
-paganism. There were found Christian sects impious enough to invest
-the wife of Joseph with the honors and attributes of a goddess;[23]
-relics, and carved and painted images, were objects of the most
-fervid adoration on the part of those whom the word of Christ
-commanded to address their prayer to the Living God alone.
-
-Surely, then, we may trust that it will not be imputed to us as a
-violation of the laws of probability, if we venture to assume that
-Waraka, finding his religious aspirations disappointed even in the
-Christian faith, conceived the idea of founding and propagating
-a doctrine of his own,--a species of eclectic extract from all
-other religions which he had successively professed; that, void
-perhaps of personal ambition, or conscious, rather, that he did not
-himself possess the most indispensable attributes and qualities of
-a religious and political reformer, he cast his eyes upon Mohammed,
-who, with his mind attuned to contemplation and to mystic thought,
-promised to prove a docile disciple, and whose personal beauty and
-grace seemed made to “persuade ere he ope’d his mouth;” and that he
-chose him as his organ, as the medium through which he might give
-currency to the coinage of his mind, content if the people would
-receive the fruits of his religious experience and ponderings as a
-new gospel, and cheerfully consenting to yield up the honors of the
-paternity to him who should succeed in rearing the infant religion.
-
-Waraka found in Mohammed a most zealous disciple, who considerably
-bettered the instructions which he received. From what we can gather
-from the scanty sources of information at our command, we think
-we may fix upon the year 606 A.D. as the period at which Mohammed
-first became the pupil of Waraka; but it was only five years after,
-in 611, that Waraka and himself had fully matured their plan to
-institute a new religion. Worthily to prepare himself for the
-assumption of the prophetic and apostolic office, Mohammed withdrew
-this year (as he had indeed done repeatedly before), several weeks,
-during the month of Ramadan, to the cave of Hera, three miles from
-Mecca. On the morning of the 24th Ramadan, Mohammed appeared before
-his wife, apparently greatly disturbed in mind. He called out to
-her to “wrap him up, to affuse him with cold water, as his soul
-was greatly troubled.” Having thus prepared her for his purpose,
-by exciting at once both her conjugal solicitude and her female
-curiosity, he proceeded to break to the amazed matron the great
-secret of his divine mission. He told her the angel Gabriel had,
-that night, appeared to him with a message from the Most High,
-appointing him, Mohammed, the sixth, greatest, and last of His chosen
-prophets,[24] to reveal His existence and to preach His law to the
-nations of the world. The angel had brought down with him a paper
-copy of the uncreated and eternal Koran, enclosed in a volume of
-silk and gems, and had proposed to reveal to him successively and
-at his (Mohammed’s) own discretion, the chapters and verses of that
-everlasting record of the law of God.
-
-Islam (i.e. _devout submission to the Divine Will_) he had been
-commanded by the angel to call the new faith which it was to be
-henceforward his mission to preach; and which, to use the felicitous
-language of Gibbon, is compounded of an eternal truth--viz., that
-_there is only one God_--and of a fiction necessary to further the
-ambitious designs of the self-appointed missionary of this new
-gospel--viz., that _Mohammed is the apostle and prophet of God_.
-Cadijah believed readily and implicitly--and no marvel either.
-Mohammed, to his honor be it written, had proved a most kind and
-attentive husband to the elderly matron who had raised him above the
-pressure of want. He had abstained--and till her death continued
-to abstain--from availing himself of the right of polygamy. He had
-proved his _truth_ to her by unvarying affection. How, then, could
-she possibly have doubted his word? To her grateful and loving eyes,
-he must have seemed more than a mere mortal; and she may even have
-deemed it by no means extraordinary that the Most High should appoint
-as his organ and missionary one so pure, so good, so _perfect_, as
-her husband appeared in _her_ sight.
-
-Cadijah’s conversion was speedily followed by the avowed declaration
-of Waraka in favor of the new doctrine. The ex-priest of Christ
-professed to see in Mohammed the _Paraclete_, or Comforter,
-promised in the Gospel, and even ventured to support this view upon
-etymological grounds of somewhat extraordinary character. The Arabic
-word _Mohammed_ is synonymous with the Greek περικλῠτὸς (i.e. _very
-famous_), which, by an easy change of letters, may be turned into
-παράκλητος!
-
-The next converts to Mohammed’s new faith were, his servant ZEID, who
-was positively bribed to it by the promise of freedom; his youthful
-cousin ALI BEN ABU TALEB, a boy of eleven, and not likely, therefore,
-to entertain any very deep religious conviction either way; and the
-wealthy and universally esteemed ABDALLAH BEN OTHMAN-AL-KOREISH,
-called afterwards ABU BEKR (i.e. _the father of the maiden_); most
-probably from the circumstance that his daughter AYESHA, born 613,
-became one of Mohammed’s wives after the death of Cadijah. By the
-weight and influence of Abu Bekr, ten of the most respectable
-citizens of Mecca were induced to join the creed of Islam, among whom
-were Othman, who became afterwards Mohammed’s son-in-law. It had
-taken three years to accomplish these fourteen private conversions;
-and, guided probably by the advice of Waraka, the prophet had not yet
-ventured upon a public profession and propaganda of his creed. In
-the beginning of 615, however, Waraka died; and the bolder spirit of
-Mohammed, freed from the restraining influence hitherto exercised by
-that cautious man, aspired henceforward openly to the dignity of the
-apostolic office.
-
-We have already seen that Mohammed had informed Cadijah, and, of
-course, also his other disciples, that the chapters of the Koran were
-to be communicated to him by the angel Gabriel successively, and at
-his own discretion,--a master-stroke of policy evidently designed by
-the crafty Waraka to afford full time for the gradual concoction of
-the new creed, and worked out afterwards with such admirable skill by
-his illustrious pupil; indeed, the ingenuity of this provision may be
-said to be surpassed only by that of another saving maxim introduced
-into the angelic revelation, viz., that any text of the Koran is
-abrogated or modified by any subsequent passage,--which, of course,
-at once removed the inconvenience of contradictory texts. Gabriel was
-accordingly now made to descend again to Mohammed, and to command him
-in the name of the Most High to throw off the reserve which he had
-hitherto maintained, and to announce his mission in the open light
-of day. In obedience to this pretended command, the prophet of Islam
-invited forty members of the race of Hashem to a banquet. He placed
-before them, it is said, a lamb and a bowl of milk, and, after the
-frugal meal, addressed them as follows:--“Friends and kinsmen, I
-offer you, and I alone can offer, the most precious of gifts--the
-treasures of this world and of the world to come. God has commanded
-me to call you to His service. Who among you will support my burthen?
-Who among you will be my companion and my vizir?” A long silence of
-doubt and amazement followed this extraordinary allocution; it was
-broken at last by the impetuous Ali, then in the fourteenth year
-of his age. “O prophet!” he cried, “I am the man: whosoever rises
-against thee, I will dash out his teeth, tear out his eyes, break his
-legs, rip up his belly. O prophet! I will be thy vizir over them.”
-This response on the part of one so young, and the fierce threats
-which it contained, excited the merriment of the assembly, which
-was increased when Mohammed fervently embraced his young cousin,
-and declared most seriously that he accepted his offer. Abu Taleb,
-the father of Ali, was ironically exhorted to respect the superior
-dignity of his son, and to take care not to provoke his potent wrath.
-The prince of Mecca took the matter in a more serious light: he
-advised his nephew to relinquish his design, which he characterised
-as impious. “Spare your remonstrances,” replied the son of Abdallah;
-“were you to place the sun on my right hand and the moon on my left,
-you should not divert me from my course.”
-
-Braving the ridicule and the anger of the Hashemites, as well as the
-more determined and malignant hostility of the family Ommiyah and
-the other branches of the Koreish, Mohammed preached his doctrine
-henceforward publicly, with unflinching courage and untiring zeal,
-but for a long time with rather indifferent success, at least so far
-as his native city was concerned.
-
-Mecca was the sacred city of Arabia,--the seat of the great national
-temple. The annual pilgrimage of the devout Arabians to the shrines
-of the Kaaba, brought wealth to the coffers of the inhabitants of the
-favored city; and it was but natural, therefore, that the tribe of
-Koreish, who held the lucrative office of custodians of the sacred
-temple, should behold with indignation and dismay the attempt made
-by one from among themselves to subvert a religion so profitable to
-their interests. No wonder, then, that when Mohammed, some time after
-the banquet of the Hashemites, ventured to proclaim his pretended
-mission before a general assembly of the Koreish, he was received
-with a perfect storm of disapprobation, and ignominiously pelted with
-mud and stones.
-
-But the prophet of Islam was not the sort of man to be readily
-diverted from his fixed purpose. The indifferent success of his
-first public attempt rather increased his zeal than otherwise: in
-private converse and in public discourse, he incessantly urged the
-belief and worship of a sole Deity. He addressed impassioned orations
-to the citizens and pilgrims gathered within the holy precincts of
-the Kaaba, and the loudest clamor of his most violent antagonists
-did not always succeed in silencing his potent voice; and, indeed,
-after a time he had the satisfaction of beholding the gradual but
-steady increase of his little congregation of Unitarians. But
-the hostility of the Koreish assumed now a more decided and more
-dangerous character; and, had it not been for the powerful protection
-of Abu Taleb, who, though an uncompromising enemy to the attempted
-innovation of his nephew, continued to bestow on the son of Abdallah
-the affection of a parent, Mohammed would most probably have fallen
-a sacrifice to the rage of his enemies. But even the weight and
-influence of the Prince of Mecca could not always fully secure the
-safety of the apostle of the new creed, and Mohammed was repeatedly
-compelled to withdraw himself to various places of strength in the
-town and country. The more timid of his disciples were forced to seek
-in Ethiopia an asylum from the violence of religious faction. The
-conversion of his uncle HAMZA, gave the new faith, most opportunely,
-a powerful support in the family of Hashem; a perhaps still more
-important acquisition was made in the person of the fierce and
-inflexible OMAR, the PAUL of Islam. On the other hand, the branch of
-Ommiyah, and the rest of the tribe of Koreish, resolved to put the
-children of Hashem under a species of religious and civil interdict
-of the most stringent nature, till they should consent to deliver
-the person of Mohammed to the justice of the insulted gods. A decree
-was passed to this effect, and was suspended in the Kaaba before the
-eyes of the nation; the prophet and his most faithful followers were
-besieged, and subjected to the greatest hardships. A hollow truce had
-scarcely restored the appearance of concord, when the death of Abu
-Taleb (621) left the prophet abandoned to the power of his enemies,
-and compelled him to seek a refuge in Tayef, whither he proceeded,
-attended by his faithful Zeid. His somewhat incautious attempts to
-propagate his creed in that land of grapes excited against him the
-indignation of the inhabitants, who pelted him with stones and drove
-him back to Mecca, where he was permitted to dwell yet a little
-while under the protection of an influential citizen. Three days
-after the death of Abu Taleb, an equally severe loss had befallen
-Mohammed--that of Cadijah, by which the ties which bound him to his
-native city were greatly loosened.
-
-It is in this period that we may place the miraculous night of
-Mohammed’s ascension to heaven. Hitherto, Mohammed had been modestly
-content to place an intermediary between the Deity and himself.
-Probably reflecting, however, that the Jewish creed asserted direct
-and personal converse between Jehovah and Adam, Noah, Abraham, and
-Moses, and that he, the greatest and last of the prophets, and whose
-doctrine was to supersede all others, could not well afford to stand
-inferior in this respect to his predecessors, and anxiously desirous,
-moreover, to gain over the Jews, whom he wished to believe him the
-promised Messiah--he put forth one of the wildest flights of fancy
-that ever issued even from an Oriental brain:--A mysterious animal,
-the _Borak_ (the cherub of Islam), with human face, the ears of an
-elephant, the neck of a camel, the body of a horse, the tail of a
-mule, and the hoofs of a bullock, conveyed him at the dead of night
-from the temple of Mecca to that of Jerusalem, Gabriel and legions
-of angels attended him. From the temple of Jerusalem he was carried
-to the rock upon which Abraham intended to sacrifice Isaac, and
-thence on the wings of Gabriel successively to the seven heavens,
-where he exchanged civilities with the patriarchs, the prophets, and
-the angels. He saw the heavenly Lotos tree, with the four springs
-under it, flowing with water, honey, milk, and wine. Of the three
-former he tasted; the last he left untouched, in obedience to his
-own precepts.[25] He saw, also, the heavenly tabernacle, pitched in
-a straight line above the Kaaba, and hidden by a golden veil. The
-angels sang, “There is only one God, and Mohammed is the prophet
-of God.” The same resounded from behind the veil, and the voice of
-the Lord was heard saying, “My servants speak the words of truth;
-Mohammed is indeed the most beloved of my prophets and apostles,
-the most pious of my servants, the most perfect of created beings.”
-Beyond this part, Mohammed alone was permitted to proceed; he passed
-through seventy thousand veils of light and darkness, each of
-them a thousand years thick, and with a space of a thousand years
-intervening between every two of them. At last he reached the green
-barrier of green light with emerald lustre; he passed the veil of
-the Divine unity, and approached within two bow-shots of the throne
-of the Almighty, where he prostrated himself and adored. The hand
-of the Lord touched his shoulder, which made a sensation of cold
-come over him that pierced him to the heart. God commanded him now
-to impose upon his disciples the daily obligation of fifty prayers;
-which Mohammed would appear to have looked upon as an intolerable
-burthen, since he pleaded hard for an alleviation of it.[26] By his
-supplications he succeeded to reduce it, step by step, at last to
-the number of five, viz., one prayer at daybreak, one at noon, one
-in the afternoon, one in the evening, and one at the first watch
-of the night; but from these five obligatory prayers there was to
-be no dispensation of business or pleasure, of time or place. In
-this most important conversation, the Lord enjoined or sanctioned,
-also, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, the bestowal of a certain
-percentage of the property or revenue of a believer for the relief
-of the indigent and unfortunate, and the thirty days fast during the
-month of Ramadan. Then was given to Mohammed, with one drop from the
-throne, all wisdom, science, and knowledge of the ages past and the
-time to come; and the angelic choirs recited the two articles of
-belief, “There is only one God, and Mohammed is the apostle of God.”
-Mohammed was then finally dismissed; he again descended to Jerusalem,
-remounted the Borak, and returned to Mecca, having thus performed in
-the tenth part of a night the journey of many thousand years. Verily,
-in this precious tale we do not know which to admire most,--whether
-the audacity of the impostor who could concoct, or the gross
-credulity of the people who could believe it! Indeed, many endeavours
-have been made by some of the more rational of the Mohammedan doctors
-to deny that the prophet of Islam ever ventured to palm off this
-extravagant story upon his followers; and it has been attempted to
-make it appear that the narration of it relates to a mere dream or
-vision. These apologists overlook, however, the important fact that
-this pretended vision was put forward with all the authority of a
-divine revelation. Mohammed himself encouraged as much as in him lay
-the belief in the actual occurrence of the fact; which, with the
-Sonnites, indeed, is an article of faith, the pious AL JANNABI, among
-others, declaring that to deny this nocturnal journey of the prophet
-is to disbelieve the Koran.
-
-ABU SOPHIAN, the chief of the branch of Ommiyah, and the mortal
-foe of the line of Hashem, had succeeded to the principality of
-the republic of Mecca. This man resolved to bring the long-pending
-contest between the Koreish and the self-appointed apostle of the
-new creed to a speedy and decisive issue. He convened an assembly of
-the Koreishites and their allies, in which the death of Mohammed was
-resolved. To baffle the vengeance of the Hashemites, it was agreed
-that the guilt of his blood should be divided among the several
-tribes. A spy (duly converted afterwards into an angel by the crafty
-prophet) revealed the odious plot to Mohammed, who resolved on
-flight as the only means of escape from the malice of his enemies.
-In the night of the 13th September, 622,[27] Mohammed, accompanied
-by his friend Abu Bekr, escaped silently from his house, whilst the
-assassins, who were watching at the door, were deceived by the figure
-of Ali, who, covered with the green vestment of the apostle, reposed
-on the bed, securing thus, at the risk of his own life, the safe
-retreat of his illustrious and beloved cousin. When the deception
-practised upon them was at length revealed, the Koreishites dismissed
-the heroic youth unharmed.
-
-Mohammed and the companion of his flight took refuge first in the
-cave of Thor, about three miles from Mecca. Three days they remained
-concealed there, receiving every evening from the son and daughter of
-Abu Bekr a supply of food, and intelligence of the movements of their
-enemies. The Koreish explored every hiding-place in the neighbourhood
-of the city, with the exception of the cave in which the fugitives
-were hidden, and which the pious Moslem doctors would have us believe
-was protected from their scrutiny by the providential deceit of a
-spider’s web and a pigeon’s nest. When the first rigor of the pursuit
-had somewhat abated, the fugitives left the protection of their cave,
-and mounted their camels to pursue their flight to YATHREB, called
-afterwards MEDINA, or MEDINA AL NABI (i.e. _city of the prophet_).
-On the road, they were overtaken by the emissaries of the Koreish,
-who were, however, diverted from their murderous purpose by the
-eloquent appeals of the prophet: indeed it is stated by the Arabian
-historians that one of his pursuers passed over to him with seventy
-followers, and attended him to Medina.
-
-The city of Yathreb was inhabited chiefly by the tribes of
-the CHAREGITES and the AWSITES, and by two colonies of Jews,
-of a sacerdotal race, and who had introduced among their Arab
-fellow-citizens a taste for science and religion, which had gained
-Medina the name of the City of the Book. Now whether it might be
-that, owing to this circumstance, the preaching of Mohammed had made
-a deeper impression upon the pilgrims and merchants from Medina than
-upon his own fellow-citizens in Mecca; or that the Yathrebites,
-who were envious of the flourishing commerce of the latter city,
-would gladly avail themselves of the opportunity afforded by the
-bigoted zeal of the Koreish to attract to their own city the exiled
-disciples of Mohammed, and in fine perhaps that illustrious man
-himself--certain it is that at an early period of Mohammed’s mission,
-some of the noblest citizens of Medina, in a pilgrimage to the Kaaba,
-had been converted by his preaching, and had upon their return home
-diffused among their fellow-citizens the belief of God and his
-prophet. The Charegites and Awsites had hitherto lived in perpetual
-feud, interrupted only by temporary truces, which were broken on the
-slightest provocation. By the exhortations of these missionaries, the
-two tribes were henceforth united in faith and love. Ten Charegites
-and two Awsites were despatched to Mecca, where they held a secret
-and nocturnal interview with Mohammed on a hill in the suburbs;
-they protested for themselves and in the name of their wives, their
-children, and their absent brethren, an inviolable attachment to
-the person and doctrine of the prophet. At a later period, shortly
-before Mohammed’s forced departure from Mecca, seventy-three men and
-two women of Medina came to Mecca, and held a solemn conference with
-Mohammed, his kinsmen, and his disciples, on the same spot where
-the interview with the first embassy had taken place. They promised
-the prophet in the name of their city that should he be compelled
-to leave Mecca, they would receive him as their prince, and would
-place their lives and fortunes at his service for the defence and
-propagation of the new faith preached by him. Mohammed on his part
-promised never to abandon his new allies, even though the Koreish
-should repent and should recall him; he declared their blood to be
-as his blood, their ruin as his ruin, their friends as his friends,
-their foes as his foes; should they fall in his service, Paradise
-was to be their reward. A solemn league and covenant was made there
-and then between the two parties; this was ratified by the people of
-Medina, who, with the exception of the Jews, unanimously embraced the
-profession of Islam.
-
-It was accordingly to Medina that the exiled prophet directed his
-steps. After a rapid though perilous journey along the sea-coast,
-he reached Medina sixteen days after his flight from Mecca. He was
-received with acclamations of loyalty and devotion; his disciples
-who at various times had fled from Mecca, gathered round his person.
-To eradicate the seeds of jealousy that might spring up between
-the Moslems of his native city, and his new allies of Medina, he
-judiciously established a holy brotherhood between his principal
-followers, coupling always a MOHAGERIAN, or fugitive of Mecca, with
-an ANSAR, or auxiliary of Medina. It so falling out that Ali found
-himself without a peer, the prophet declared himself the companion
-and brother of the noble youth.
-
-Mohammed assumed now the exercise of the regal and sacerdotal office.
-He acquired by purchase a small piece of ground, on which he built a
-house and a mosque. The loyalty and devotion of his followers, and
-the unhesitating compliance and obedience which his decrees met with
-on the part of the inhabitants of Medina, convinced him that he was
-indeed the absolute prince and ruler of that city. But with this
-conviction the range of his ambition widened, he resolved to extend
-his creed and his power over all the tribes of Arabia, and even
-beyond the limits of his native land. He now threw off the cloak of
-toleration in which he had so carefully enfolded himself at Mecca.
-_There_ he had asserted the liberty of conscience, and disclaimed
-the use of religious violence; _here_, at Medina, he preached a war
-of extermination against whomsoever should continue in idolatry.[28]
-The commands and precepts, which Gabriel was now made to transmit
-to him, breathed a fierce and sanguinary spirit; the creed of Islam
-was to be propagated henceforth by the sword, and the unbelieving
-nations of the earth were to be pursued without mercy. To excite in
-his followers a spirit of martial ardor, he proclaimed the superior
-sanctity of the sword. “In the shade of the crossing scymitars
-Paradise is prefigured,” says Mohammed; “the sword is the key of
-heaven and of hell: a drop of blood shed in the cause of God, a night
-spent in arms, is of more avail than two months of fasting or prayer.
-Whosoever falls in battle, his sins are forgiven: at the day of
-judgment his wounds shall be resplendent as rubies, and odoriferous
-as musk; and the loss of his limbs shall be supplied by the wings
-of angels and cherubim.” Paradise was the glorious reward of the
-faithful who fell in battle, and death might thus actually become
-an object of hope and desire rather than of dread. Moreover, as the
-Koran inculcates also, in the most absolute sense, the tenets of fate
-and predestination, it would be little use for the devout Moslem to
-shirk his military duties through fear of being wounded or killed
-in battle, since his preordained fate would be sure to overtake
-him, even in his bed. And as Paradise was the portion of the fallen
-hero, so wealth and beauty rewarded the warrior who had escaped the
-dangers of the fight: the apostle gave his followers the license
-of embracing the female captives as their wives or concubines; he
-regulated by a law, divine, of course, like all the rest of his
-laws and precepts, the distribution of the spoil taken in battle,
-or in a conquered place: the whole was faithfully collected in one
-common mass, one-fifth of it was reserved for the prophet himself
-(doubtless, for pious and charitable uses), the remainder was shared
-among the soldiers, the shares of the slain devolving to their widows
-and orphans: a horseman received double the share of a foot-soldier.
-
-From the first months of his reign, he prepared for the holy warfare
-against Jews, Christians, and idolators. At the beginning of the
-year 623, his white banner was displayed before the gates of Medina.
-Faithful to the national character, he, the holy prophet of a creed
-which the nations of the world were invited to look upon as divine,
-went forth at the head of his pious followers, the future denizens
-of a Paradise which in his extravagant Oriental fancy he had placed
-beyond the seventh heaven, to waylay the peaceful merchant, and to
-rob and maim, or murder him, in the name and for the glory of the
-Most High.
-
-So he went forth at the head of three hundred and thirteen Moslems,
-to intercept the return of the great caravan from Syria to Mecca, a
-caravan of a thousand camels, led by Abu Sophian, with only thirty
-or forty followers. But the Koreish, alarmed for the safety of their
-merchandise and their provisions, hastened to the rescue. One hundred
-horse, and eight hundred and fifty foot, advanced from Mecca to about
-three stations from Medina. Here, in the fertile and famous vale
-of Beder, they met the band of the prophet. The disproportion of
-numbers was great; in Mohammed’s ranks were found only two horsemen:
-informed by his scouts that the caravan was approaching from the one,
-the Koreish from the other side, Mohammed had hesitated whether to
-seize upon an easy prey, or to venture on an encounter with vastly
-superior forces; but the reflection, that a success gained under
-disadvantageous circumstances, would, with an impulsive people like
-the Arabs, go far to prove his divine mission, and would embolden his
-adherents and discourage his enemies, he resolved to give battle.
-With Abu Bekr by his side, he took his station on a kind of throne or
-pulpit. The white veil of Ayesha, and two black banners, were borne
-before his host. “Courage, my children,” he exclaimed, “close your
-ranks; discharge your arrows, and the day is your own.” Perceiving,
-however, that the Moslems fainted in their onset, and were hard
-pressed by the superior numbers of the Koreish, he betook himself
-with a loud voice to pray the succour of Gabriel and a _legion_ of
-angels.[29] He then started from his throne, mounted his horse,
-and, casting a handful of sand into the air, exclaiming, “Let their
-faces be covered with confusion,” dashed against the hostile ranks.
-The Arabs were a most superstitious people; their fancy beheld the
-angelic warriors, or rather _felt_ their presence; the thunder of
-Mohammed’s voice revived the drooping spirits of his followers;
-whilst it carried confusion into the ranks of his enemies. The
-Koreish turned and fled. Seventy of the bravest were slain, and
-seventy captives fell into the hands of the victorious prophet, who
-had two of them put to death as a trifling instalment of the debt of
-revenge which he meant to exact from his foes and revilers. The other
-sixty-eight were restored for a ransom of four thousand drachms of
-silver. From the field of Beder, Mohammed started in pursuit of Abu
-Sophian’s caravan, which, despite of the swiftness of its flight,
-and the skill of its guides, was overtaken and captured. A booty of
-100,000 drachms of silver rewarded the pious robbers. But this great
-success had well nigh proved fatal to Mohammed and his creed, and
-to the city of refuge. The fierce resentment of Abu Sophian and of
-the Koreish, brought into the field against Mohammed a body of three
-thousand men, among whom were seven hundred armed with cuirasses,
-and two hundred on horseback; three thousand camels attended the
-march of this host. Abu Sophian advanced to within six miles of the
-north of Medina, where he encountered the prophet at the head of
-nine hundred and fifty followers, on Mount Ohud, (A.D. 624). The
-Koreish advanced in the form of a crescent. The right wing of the
-cavalry was led by Kaled, the fiercest and most redoubtable of the
-Arab warriors. Mohammed had made his dispositions with considerable
-skill; his troops were successful at first, and broke the centre of
-the enemy; but their eagerness to seize upon the spoils threw their
-ranks into disorder, and speedily deprived them of the advantage
-gained. Kaled, with his cavalry, attacked them in the flank and rear;
-Mohammed was wounded in the face with a javelin, and two of his teeth
-were shattered with a stone; Kaled exclaimed, with a loud voice, that
-the lying prophet was slain; and the followers of Islam, who looked
-in vain for the appearance of Gabriel and his angelic legion, to
-avenge the fall of “The beloved of God,” trembled and fled; still, in
-the midst of tumult and dismay, was heard the thunder of Mohammed’s
-voice, denouncing the impious tribe of the Koreish, as the murderers
-of God’s apostle, and calling down upon them the vengeance of heaven.
-Some of the most devoted followers of the prophet gathered bravely
-around him, and conveyed him to a place of safety. Seventy of the
-bravest defenders of Islam lay dead on the field, among them HAMZA,
-one of Mohammed’s uncles. The inhuman females of Mecca, who had
-accompanied the expedition, mangled their bodies, and the fierce
-HENDA, Abu Sophian’s wife, tasted the entrails of Hamza, with the
-relish of a cannibal. But Mohammed was not discouraged: his wounds
-had hardly been dressed, when the convenient Gabriel revealed to him
-that (for some unexplained cause) the powers of darkness had been
-permitted to prevail against him this once, and that Satan himself
-had fought in the ranks of the Koreish; he was, however, exhorted to
-persevere in his propaganda, and was assured of ultimate success. He
-rallied his troops, and even as early as the next day he led them
-forth again to battle; on this occasion the fight was, however, only
-of a desultory character, no great harm being done on either side.
-Still the result of it was, that the Koreish, having experienced the
-desperate valor of the Moslems, and more particularly of Ali and
-Omar, despaired of carrying Medina with their present forces, and
-retired to Mecca. But in the ensuing year (A.D. 625) Abu Sophian,
-having formed a league between the Koreish and several tribes of the
-desert, led a well-appointed host of ten thousand warriors against
-Medina. The number of the Mussulmans, however, had also considerably
-increased, and Mohammed’s army of three thousand men, awaited the
-attack of their foes, securely encamped before the city, and
-protected by a ditch and some field-works, which had been constructed
-under the guidance and superintendence of a Persian engineer. A
-general engagement being prudently declined by the prophet, the
-hostilities were confined to a number of single combats, in which
-Ali more especially signalised his formidable strength and prowess.
-Twenty days passed away in this desultory warfare, the apostle of God
-having, meanwhile, recourse to every artifice that his crafty mind
-could devise, to sow disunion in the camp of his enemies. A tempest
-of wind, rain, and hail, which overturned the tents of the besiegers,
-and which was, of course, duly claimed as a direct interposition of
-God in favor of his prophet, put the finishing stroke to the success
-of this insidious policy: the Koreish, deserted by their allies, were
-compelled to retire, and to relinquish, henceforth, the attempt to
-overcome Mohammed by force of arms. This last attack upon Medina is
-variously named from the _nations_ which marched under Abu Sophian’s
-banner, and from the _ditch_ which protected the Mussulman camp.
-
-During the earlier period of his mission, Mohammed had shown
-considerable leaning towards the Jews; he had selected Jerusalem for
-the _Kebla_ of prayer, and had endeavoured to form most of his tenets
-and precepts upon the model of the Mosaic ordinances. Indeed, there
-can be no doubt, but that it was for a time the great end and object
-of his ambition to be accepted by the Jews as their promised Messiah;
-nor can it be denied, that a deep political idea lay at the bottom of
-this desire. Had he succeeded in persuading the Jews to believe in
-his Messiahship, his apostolic course among the Arabs would have run
-much smoother, and many of the so-called Christian sects might have
-been readily gained over to his _mixtum compositum_, which might,
-indeed, be called a creed of creeds in the literal acceptation of the
-words.
-
-But the imposture was too shallow to take with so clear-sighted a
-people as the Jews unquestionably were: the pretended Messiah was
-repudiated by them with disdain, and the hostility of the Koreish
-against the son of Abdallah, was, in some degree, fomented and fanned
-by the Jews of Mecca. Hence the implacable and unrelenting hatred
-with which Mohammed pursued the unfortunate Israelites to the
-last moment of his life. That he changed the kebla of prayer from
-Jerusalem to Mecca, and that in his nocturnal journey to Heaven, he
-beheld the divine tabernacle in a straight line above the latter
-city, instead of Zion, where he undoubtedly originally intended to
-behold it,--could, at the most, provoke a smile of contempt and
-derision; but the appalling cruelties which he indicted, both upon
-individuals and upon entire tribes of the doomed nation, must fill
-the mind of the impartial explorer of history with deep indignation
-against the man who could _so_ avenge his offended vanity. His
-first exploit in this direction, was the expulsion of the KAINOKA
-tribe from Medina, where they had hitherto been permitted to dwell
-in peace, by the large toleration of the _Idolators_. The prophet
-of Islam seized the occasion of an accidental tumult, in which the
-Kainoka had taken part, to place before them the alternative of
-embracing his religion, or contending with him in battle. A _brave_
-challenge this, to the unfortunate Jews, to do battle with him,
-and which displayed in the fullest, though certainly not in the
-most favorable light, the _magnanimous_ disposition of the son of
-Abdallah, that has been so highly extolled by some historians. Still,
-even with the fearful odds of number and martial spirit against them,
-the feeble and unwarlike Israelites preferred the unequal contest to
-apostacy from the faith of their fathers. It was decided in fifteen
-days, of course with the total overthrow and capture of the whole
-tribe; and, had it not been that the Charegites, mindful of the
-friendship which once existed between them and their humble allies,
-the Kainoka, warmly interceded on behalf of the wretched captives,
-the prophet of God would have slain every one of them. As it was,
-they were despoiled of their homes and property; and driven forth,
-to the number of seven hundred men, with their wives and children,
-to seek a refuge on the confines of Syria, to which quarter the
-blessings of the new creed had not yet extended. The NADHIRITES were
-the next to feel the weight of his arm. In their case, indeed, some
-provocation had been given, as they had conspired to assassinate the
-prophet in a friendly interview. Protected by the walls of their
-castle (situated about three miles from Medina), they fought with
-such boldness and resolution, that Mohammed was fain to grant them an
-honorable capitulation.
-
-The war of the nations interrupted for a time Mohammed’s operations
-against the Jews; but even on the day that the confederated nations
-had abandoned the siege of Medina, he marched against the tribe of
-KORAIDHA. A campaign of twenty-five days sufficed to compel their
-surrender at discretion. They fondly believed that their old allies
-of Medina would, by their intercession, preserve them at least from
-the extreme measure of Mohammed’s wrath;--vain hope: fanaticism
-had made rapid progress among the Ansars. A venerable elder of
-the Charegite tribe, to whose judgment they referred their case,
-pronounced the penalty of death against them for their hostility to
-Islam. To the number of seven hundred they were led in chains to
-the market-place of Medina, where a grave had been dug to receive
-them; into this they were forced to descend, and the apostle of God
-indulged his vengeful mind with the sight of their slaughter and
-burial.... Verily, verily, the blackest and most atrocious of crimes
-are committed in the name of God. A few years after the extirpation
-of the Koraidha, Mohammed marched, at the head of two hundred horse,
-and fourteen hundred foot, against the ancient city of CHAIBAR, the
-seat of the Jewish power in Arabia. Chaibar was protected by eight
-strong castles, which were successively reduced by the Moslems in
-sixteen weeks, not, however, without considerable loss on the part of
-the conquerors. After the fall of the castles, the city was forced to
-surrender (628). The inhabitants had their lives granted to them, and
-permission to dwell in the land, on condition that they should pay
-to the prophet, an annual tribute of the one-half of their revenue.
-But the chief of Chaibar was subjected to the most cruel tortures,
-to force from him a confession of his hidden treasures; and when the
-100,000 pieces of gold, which had been concealed, were delivered
-up at last, he and several of the most notable of his people were
-mercilessly butchered in cold blood. It was in this campaign against
-Chaibar that Mohammed bestowed upon Ali, the surname of the “Lion
-of God,” gained by the slaughter of 150 Hebrews, who are stated to
-have fallen by the irresistible scymitar of Abu Taleb’s illustrious
-son.[30]
-
-The Jewess ASMA had offended the dignity of the prophet by some
-satirical strictures on his private life; he bribed a miserable blind
-Jew, named OMEIR, to assassinate her. This wretched tool murdered
-the ill-fated woman in her chamber, and nailed her body to the
-floor; having some misgivings of conscience, he accosted the prophet
-next morning while at prayer, and asked him whether God might not,
-perhaps, punish the crime perpetrated? whereupon the pious apostle
-bade him to be of good cheer, as the killing of a Jew, even if not
-at all times a meritorious act, was, at least, a matter of perfect
-indifference to the Ruler of the Universe! In the same way he deputed
-assassins to slay the learned Jew, ESHREF; in the name of God he
-sent them on their bloody errand! The venerable ABU AAS was murdered
-in his sleep at his bidding: the poor old man had reached his
-hundredth year, and might safely have been permitted to die in peace,
-but considerations of the kind weighed but little with the son of
-Abdallah; an insult to his apostolic dignity could only be washed off
-in the blood of the offender. But why sully our pages with the long
-list of private and public murders perpetrated by the command, or at
-the instigation of, this precious pretender to a divine mission, ...
-sufficient has been stated to illustrate the cruel and sanguinary
-disposition of the man.
-
-Mohammed had left Mecca most reluctantly, and only when flight alone
-could preserve his life from the swords of his then all-powerful
-enemies. The thought to revisit as a conqueror, the city and the
-holy temple of the Kaaba, was ever present to his mind. When the
-Jews, by their disdainful rejection of his advances, had turned his
-friendship into implacable hatred, he changed the kebla of prayer
-from Jerusalem to Mecca, clearly indicating thereby, that, whatever
-might be the merits of Medina, the holy city of the Kaaba stood still
-foremost in his affections. As soon as he had firmly established
-his empire over Medina, and some powerful tribes of the desert, and
-had destroyed or expelled the Jewish tribes of the Kainoka, the
-Nadhirites, and the Koraidha,[31] he projected a scheme for the
-conquest of Mecca, (towards the end of 627). Conscious that his
-power was not yet sufficiently great to prevail by force of arms, he
-craftily disguised his expedition against the city of his birth, in
-the form of a peaceful and pious pilgrimage. Seventy camels, chosen
-and bedecked for sacrifice, preceded the van of his host of 1400
-picked men. The captives who fell into his hands, in his advance to
-the territory of the sacred city, were dismissed without ransom, to
-carry to the Koreish the solemn assurance of his peaceful intentions.
-All that the good man wanted, was to be permitted to enter the city,
-with his 1400 armed followers, to sacrifice the camels which he
-had brought with him for the purpose, and to perform the customary
-seven circumambulations round the Kaaba. Of course, had the Koreish
-conceded these points, the rest would have been a task of easy
-accomplishment. But the Koreish had had opportunities sufficient to
-know the crafty tongue and the false heart of the son of Abdallah.
-They encountered him, therefore, in the plain, within a day’s journey
-of the city, with such numbers and with such resolution, that he was
-fain to abandon his purpose for the time, and even to consent to the
-conclusion of a ten years’ truce, with the Koreish and their allies.
-In the treaty drawn up to that effect,[32] he, the infallible
-prophet of God, the favored mortal raised by the Divine will to an
-equality with the cherubim and seraphim in the heavenly hierarchy,
-the trusted leader who had solemnly promised his believing followers,
-a triumphal entry into the stronghold of the most formidable and
-most dreaded of the enemies of Islam,--was obliged even to waive
-the title of Apostle of God, and to figure as plain Mohammed Abul
-Kasem. Still the Koreish granted him, for the ensuing year, the
-privilege of entering the city unarmed and as a friend, and of
-remaining three days to accomplish the rites of the pilgrimage--a
-fatal mistake on their part, and which they might have foreseen one
-so crafty as Mohammed would turn to excellent account. For the time
-being, however, the authority of the pretended prophet of God was
-considerably shaken, and some of the newly converted Bedoween tribes
-showed symptoms of disaffection. The successful campaign against
-Chaibar revived the faith and courage of his followers, and restored
-the wavering loyalty of the wandering tribes.
-
-After the conquest of Chaibar, Mohammed sent six embassies with
-letters to the neighbouring princes, calling upon them to embrace
-the religion of Islam: the seal of the letter bore the inscription,
-“Mohammed, the Apostle of God.” The Greek emperor, HERACLIUS,
-returning in triumph from the Persian war, received and entertained
-one of these ambassadors with great urbanity at Emesa. KOBAD II.,
-of Persia (SIROES)[33] tore the letter, and dismissed the envoy
-with ignominy. MOKAWKAS, the Byzantine governor of Memphis, a born
-Egyptian, and a Jacobite or Monophysite[34] in religion; and who, in
-the disorder of the Persian war, had aspired to independence, and
-thereby exposed himself to the resentment of Heraclius, declined,
-indeed, the proposal of a new religion, but accompanied his refusal
-with flattering compliments and with gifts; among other, two Coptic
-damsels, one of whom, Mary, became the favorite concubine of the
-prophet, to whom she bore a son, Ibrahim, who died, however, at the
-tender age of fifteen months. The King of Abyssinia also returned a
-polite answer. But HARIS, governor of Damascus, threatened war upon
-the presumptuous Arabian; and AMRU, prince of Gassan, a vassal of the
-Byzantine emperor, put the envoy to death, for which outrage Mohammed
-sent afterwards an army into Syria, with what results we shall see
-hereafter.
-
-According to the stipulations of the treaty of Hodaibeh, Mohammed was
-permitted to perform, towards the end of 628, at the head of a body
-of pious pilgrims, his three days’ devotion in the Kaaba; the Koreish
-retiring, meanwhile, to the hills. After the customary sacrifice,
-he evacuated the city on the fourth day; but in this short space of
-time, he had succeeded in sowing the seeds of division between the
-hostile chiefs, and to gain over to his cause KALED and AMROU, or
-AMRU, the future conquerors of Syria and Egypt. The interdiction of
-wine, and of dice and lotteries, falls in this period.
-
-It was after the return from this pilgrimage, that he sent an army
-of 3000 Moslems against Amru, prince of Gassan, and the Greeks. The
-army was led by ZEID, Mohammed’s freedman and one of his earliest
-disciples. At Muta, three days’ journey from Jerusalem, they met the
-Gassanides and the Greeks: a fierce and bloody battle ensued; Zeid
-fell fighting in the foremost ranks; the holy banner, which escaped
-from his relaxing grasp, was seized by JAAFAR, the leader appointed
-by Mohammed to succeed Zeid, in the event of the decease of the
-latter. Jaafar’s right hand was severed from his body by the sword
-of a Roman soldier; he shifted the standard to the left hand: this
-met the same fate; he embraced the holy banner with the bleeding
-stumps, and thus upheld it, till the tide of life ebbed away from
-fifty wounds. The vacant place was as worthily filled by ABDALLAH,
-the second successor appointed by the prophet in case of accident.
-He also fell, transfixed by the lance of a Roman. The battle was
-lost, the flower of the Moslem host annihilated, and the ambitions
-dreams of empire were dispelled at the very time when they seemed
-to promise fairest,--had not KALED, the recent convert of Mecca, at
-this critical juncture, rescued the falling standard, and assumed the
-command, with the same bravery as his predecessors, but with still
-greater prowess, and with greater success. Nine swords were broken
-in his hand; and every enemy that dared to approach him, was made to
-bite the dust by his invincible arm. Night put an end to the contest:
-in the nocturnal council of the camp, Kaled was chosen, or rather
-confirmed, leader of the gallant band of warriors, who had survived
-the carnage of the day. Death had been fearfully busy in the ranks of
-the Moslems; and the Greeks, though awed by the valor of Kaled, had
-still an immense superiority of number in their favor. Kaled wisely
-resolved, therefore, to save the wreck of his forces by a skilful
-retreat. His admirable combinations, and the dread inspired by his
-prowess, rescued the host of the faithful believers of Islam from
-all but certain destruction; and the well-earned gratitude of the
-prophet bestowed upon the hero of Muta, the glorious appellation of
-the “Sword of God,” a name destined after to ring many a time and oft
-as the knell of doom in the ears of the affrighted Christians.
-
-Mohammed had never ceased to meditate the conquest of Mecca, and his
-power was now, indeed, sufficiently great and solid to promise an
-easy accomplishment of this, the darling object of his ambition; but
-the ten years’ truce seemed an obstacle which it would not be easy to
-surmount. Notwithstanding, however, he silently prepared the means
-to carry his plans against the city of his birth into execution,
-should a favorable opportunity offer. The reverse which his forces
-had suffered at Muta, impelled the Koreish to furnish him with
-the desired pretext; they attacked one of the tribes confederated
-with Mohammed. Ten thousand soldiers were speedily gathered round
-the banner of the prophet, and led by him against the offending
-city. A rapid and secret march brought them almost within sight of
-Mecca, before the Koreish had the least notion of their approach.
-Unprepared as they were, it would have been sheer madness to contend
-against the overwhelming forces which now encompassed the city of
-the Kaaba: they resolved therefore to throw themselves upon the
-clemency of their triumphant exile. On the 11th of January, 630,
-the haughty chief of the house of Ommiyah presented the keys of the
-city; and confessed, under the scymitar of Omar, that the son of
-Abdallah was the apostle of the true God. The patriotic attachment
-which Mohammed unquestionably bore the city of his birth, and
-political considerations of a high order, stayed the avenging hand
-of the victorious outcast. Kaled had, indeed, slain twenty-eight of
-the inhabitants, ere the potent command of the prophet to spare the
-vanquished, could restrain his ruthless arm; but Mohammed blamed
-the cruelty of his lieutenant, and, though he proscribed eleven men
-and six women, few only were put to death by him. Among these was
-ABDOLUSA, who, after having embraced the faith of Islam, had relapsed
-into idolatry. ABDALLAH, once the secretary of Mohammed, and who
-had been employed by him to note down the fragmentary revelations
-imparted by Gabriel, had a narrow escape. The clear-sighted man had
-seen through the shallow imposture palmed upon the people by the
-pretended apostle; and he had imprudently boasted, that he also might
-claim the name and rank of a prophet, considering that he had it in
-his power to change, or to suppress, the holy revelations dictated to
-him by Mohammed. To escape the vengeance of his offended master, he
-had fled to Mecca, where he had, however, still continued to provoke
-his resentment by exposing and ridiculing his ignorance. When Mecca
-was taken, Abdallah fell prostrate at the feet of Mohammed, and
-implored his pardon. Othman, Abdallah’s foster-brother, entreated the
-prophet to spare the life of the humble penitent, a request which was
-at last most reluctantly granted, Mohammed declaring that he had so
-long hesitated, to allow time for some zealous disciple to strike the
-kneeling apostate dead at his feet.[35] The poet, HUIRES, paid the
-penalty of his satires on the Apostle of God: but SOHEIR more wisely
-purchased, not only forgiveness, but a rich reward in the bargain,
-by one of the grossest and most extravagant pieces of adulation that
-ever proceeded even from an Oriental pen.
-
-The Koreish and the other inhabitants of Mecca, professed the
-religion of Islam, and acknowledged the temporal and spiritual
-supremacy of the prophet. The 360 idols of the Kaaba were
-ignominiously broken; Mohammed assisting with his own hands, in the
-work of destruction, nay, even lending his august shoulders for Ali
-to mount upon, to accomplish the overthrow of some idols placed a
-little above ordinary reach. This meritorious feat was performed on
-a Friday; which day was, therefore, henceforward appointed by the
-prophet as the holy day of Islam.
-
-But it was by no means the intention of Mohammed to despoil the
-city of his birth, of the lucrative trade in religion to which it
-had hitherto been mainly indebted for its pre-eminence among the
-cities of Arabia. The people of Mecca were agreeably disappointed,
-when they beheld the Prophet of God solemnly consecrating again the
-purified Kaaba, and performing the customary circumambulations and
-sacrifices as of old. They were readily reconciled to the belief in a
-sole Deity, since their astute townsman assigned a local habitation
-on earth to the idea of the God whom he commanded them and the
-nations of the world to worship, and placed this habitation within
-the walls of their own city. Even the black stone was not forgotten
-by the crafty politician: his reverential touch cleansed it from the
-pollution of ages of idolatry, and restored it to the pristine purity
-and holiness of Gabriel’s celestial gift to Abraham; and to crown
-all, he still heightened the sanctity of the holy city, by enacting
-a perpetual law that no unbeliever should ever dare to set his foot
-within its sacred precincts.
-
-The conquest of Mecca secured Mohammed the allegiance of many of
-the Bedoween tribes, who, troubling themselves but little about
-religious opinions and controversies, readily gave their adhesion
-to the cause which the gods seemed to prosper. But some of the most
-important tribes of Hejaz, and more especially the people of Tayef,
-persisted in their idolatry, and a great confederacy was formed
-among them to break the power of Mohammed. The prophet resolved to
-meet the threatening danger; he collected a host of 12,000 men,
-well-armed and well-appointed; the confederates had not one-half the
-number to oppose him. But the skilful tactics of the pagans, and the
-overweening confidence of the Mussulmans, brought the apostle and
-his new faith to the verge of ruin. Having incautiously descended
-into the valley of HONAIN, the Moslems were suddenly attacked on all
-sides by the archers and slingers of the enemy, who occupied the
-heights; the ranks of the faithful were thrown into confusion by
-the unexpected and fierce onset of the foe; and the stoutest hearts
-among them quailed, when they saw themselves caught as in a net.
-The Koreish secretly rejoiced at the impending destruction of their
-conquerors, and even prepared to go over to the enemy. All seemed
-lost;--despairing of victory, the prophet, seeking a glorious death,
-urged his white mule against the wall of spears that encompassed
-him: his faithful followers dragged him back, and covered him with
-their persons from the thrusts and darts aimed at his breast. Three
-of these devoted followers fell dead at his feet;--but the moment of
-weak despair was past, and soon the thunder of his voice was heard
-again, reanimating the sinking courage of the Moslems, and striking
-terror into the hearts of the idolators. The Koreish forgot their
-treacherous intentions; the flying Mussulmans returned from all
-sides to the holy standard; and the attacks of the enemy were now
-everywhere vigorously repulsed. Defeat was changed into victory, and
-a merciless slaughter of the conquered and flying pagans, avenged
-the temporary disgrace of the followers of Islam. From the field
-of Honain, Mohammed marched without delay to Tayef, the centre and
-stronghold of the confederacy. He laid siege to that fortress; but
-the desperate valor of the inhabitants defeated all his efforts to
-effect its reduction; and after twenty days spent before it, he
-deemed it the wisest course to rest satisfied for the time with the
-victory of Honain, and not to court the chances of an inglorious
-defeat. He, therefore, raised the siege, and marched back to Mecca.
-In his operations against Tayef, he gave an instance of how cheap he
-held his own laws and precepts, where they happened to clash with
-his interests: he ordered the extirpation of all the fruit trees in
-the fertile lands round the city.
-
-In the division of the rich spoils of the expedition of Honain, he
-acted with consummate skill. Instead of excluding the Koreish from
-their share, to punish them for their ambiguous conduct during the
-campaign, he bestowed double measure upon them; the most disaffected
-of them all, Abu Sophian, being presented with no less than three
-hundred camels and twenty ounces of silver: no wonder, then, that
-that rapacious chief and his followers should have, henceforth,
-become sincere adherents to so profitable a creed. The old companions
-in arms of the prophet were reconciled to this manifest injustice
-in the distribution of the spoil, by artful flatteries and promises
-of heavenly rewards: his own share of the plunder (one-fifth) he
-assigned to the soldiers.[36]
-
-Although he had failed to reduce Tayef, yet by the extirpation of
-the fruit trees he had struck a severe blow against the people of
-that city; the fortifications had been considerably injured by the
-battering rams and the mining operations, so that there was ample
-reason to dread the event of a renewal of the siege. The people
-of Tayef resolved, therefore, to sue for peace; their deputies
-endeavoured to obtain favorable conditions, and, at least, the
-toleration of their ancient worship, though even only for a short
-period. Mohammed would not concede them even one day; at last they
-simply entreated to be excused from the obligation of prayer to the
-God of Islam; in vain: Mohammed was inexorable, and Tayef at length
-submitted to the harsh conditions imposed by the prophet. The idols
-were broken, their temples demolished, and all the tribes of Hejaz
-acknowledged the supreme rule of the son of Abdallah. The ruler
-of BAHREIN, the King of OMAN, and the King of the BENI GASSAN, in
-Syria, confessed the God of Mohammed, and submitted to the sway of
-the prophet. Yemen also, and the rest of the peninsula, was reduced
-to obedience by his victorious lieutenants, and the ambassadors who
-knelt before the throne of Medina, (631, hence called the year of the
-embassies), were, in the words of the Arabian proverb, “as numerous
-as the dates that fall from the palm-tree in the season of ripeness.”
-
-Absolute master of the whole of Arabia, the son of Abdallah resolved
-to subject Syria also to his sway; he solemnly declared war against
-the Empire of the East, and summoned the faithful to the holy
-standard. But the prospect of the difficulties and hardships of a
-march through the desert, during the intolerable heat of the summer,
-and, perhaps also, the recollection of Muta, discouraged the Moslems;
-and the most urgent solicitations of the apostle were disregarded,
-or met by more or less cogent excuses. Still the great champions of
-the faith, Ali, Omar, Othman, Kaled, Amru, Abu Bekr, Abu Obeidah,
-Abbas,[37] and many others, attended by trains of devoted followers,
-gathered round the prophet, and enabled him thus to take the field,
-at the head of ten thousand horse and twenty thousand foot.[38] After
-one of the most distressing marches through the desert, the Moslem
-host was compelled to halt midway near TABUC, ten days’ journey
-from Medina and Damascus. The hardships endured had considerably
-cooled the ardor of the faithful, and wisely declining to engage
-the disciplined forces of the Eastern empire with his wearied and
-dispirited followers, Mohammed contented himself with inviting
-the Greek Emperor once more to embrace his religion, and retired
-to Arabia; leaving a body of picked men, under the command of the
-intrepid Kaled, to prosecute the war. The valor and activity of that
-leader secured the submission of the tribes and cities from the
-Euphrates to Ailah, at the head of the Red Sea. Mohammed returned to
-Medina, where he pronounced a sentence of excommunication for fifty
-days against those who had been the most disobedient to his call. He
-then prepared for a great pilgrimage to Mecca, which he accomplished
-in the early part of 632, attended by 60,000 Moslems.[39] In this,
-his last visit to the city of his birth, he gave a great number of
-laws and precepts; and, among others, the interdiction of the private
-revenge of murder and other injuries.
-
-It has already been stated, that Mohammed’s health had been declining
-ever since the campaign of Chaibar, (see page 34, note); yet such
-was the strength and vigor of his constitution, that up to the time
-of his last and fatal illness, he remained equal to the physical and
-mental fatigues of his mission. However, soon after his return from
-the last pilgrimage to Mecca, he fell ill of an inflammatory fever,
-with occasional fits of delirium, which he endeavoured to combat
-by frequent affusions with cold water. When he became conscious of
-the fatal nature of his illness, he laid himself out to die, as
-an accomplished actor, like Octavianus Augustus. Leaning on his
-cousin and son-in-law, Ali,[40] and on his uncle, Abbas, or the son
-of the latter, Fadl, he dragged himself to the mosque to perform
-the functions of public prayer: from the pulpit he called upon his
-subjects freely and boldly to state any grievance that any one of
-them might have suffered at his hands, and to prefer any just claims
-against his estate. A safe challenge indeed: the victims of his lust
-of power and revenge were laid in their graves, and could not appear
-against him _there_; nor could _they_ prefer any claim against his
-estate, who had been despoiled by him or his lieutenants, in their
-predatory expeditions. No wonder then that the immaculate justice and
-piety of the Apostle of God, were fully attested by the silence of
-the congregation in presence of this challenge,--excepting a paltry
-claim of three drachms of silver, which was, of course, at once duly
-settled by Mohammed, with a profusion of thanks into the bargain,
-that the “creditor” had rather demanded payment in this world, than
-waited to accuse him at the judgment-seat of God!
-
-Up to the third day before his death, he continued to perform the
-function of public prayer; on that day his strength failed him, and
-he deputed Abu Bekr in his place, which was afterwards skilfully
-laid hold of by the latter and Ayesha, to found a claim to the
-successorship in the sacerdotal and regal office, in favor of Abu
-Bekr, to the prejudice of Ali.
-
-He then made his last dispositions, enfranchised his slaves,
-(seventeen men and eleven women), had alms distributed to the poor of
-Medina, and minutely directed the order of his funeral. He expressed
-a desire to dictate to his secretary a new divine book, the sum
-and accomplishment of all his revelations, and which, according to
-Mohammed’s convenient maxim, would have superseded the authority of
-the Koran, in all points in which its teachings might happen to clash
-with the rules and precepts laid down in the latter. As Mohammed had
-preached an eternal and immutable God, and had declared the substance
-of the Koran to be uncreated and eternal, the gross absurdity of
-attempting a new, revised, and amended edition of it, could not fail
-to strike the more rational among his disciples. They, with Omar at
-their head, firmly refused, therefore, to consent to the prophet’s
-anxiously expressed wish--a curious comment on the sincerity of their
-professed conviction of his divine mission, and his communings with
-the messenger of heaven, and for which, their _assumed_ belief that
-his mental faculties were, at the time, impaired by the effects of
-illness, afforded but an indifferent apology. Be this however as it
-may, the point was vehemently discussed between them and the more
-devout followers of the prophet; and the dispute, which was carried
-on in the chamber of the dying man, rose at last to such a pitch,
-that Mohammed reluctantly desisting from his desire, was forced to
-reprove the indecent vehemence of the disputants on either side.
-
-Even to the last moment of his life, Mohammed consistently carried
-out his system of deception. He told his friends about him, that
-he had received a last visit of Gabriel, who had now bidden an
-everlasting farewell to the earth. In a familiar discourse, he had
-once boasted of the peculiar and exclusive prerogative granted
-to him, that the angel of death should respectfully solicit his
-permission before he was to be allowed to take his soul. When he
-felt the near approach of his dissolution, he calmly informed the
-Moslem chiefs assembled round him, that the Great Destroyer had
-just preferred his request, and that he, Mohammed, had granted the
-permission asked! Stretched on a carpet spread upon the floor, and
-with his head reclining on the lap of Ayesha, the best beloved of his
-wives, he expired on the 7th day of June, 632.[41] His last words
-were: “O God!... pardon my sins.... Yes, ... I come, ... among my
-fellow-citizens on high.”
-
-His death dismayed his followers; the more fanatical among them
-could not bring themselves to believe in the actual departure of his
-spirit from this world. The idea of a trance, or of a resurrection
-after a few days’ apparent death, found ready credence with them.
-Omar, unsheathing his scymitar, threatened to strike off the heads
-of the infidels who should dare to affirm that the prophet was no
-more!--a curious comment upon his refusal to allow the dying prophet
-to re-write the Koran. At last, Abu Bekr succeeded in making them
-listen to reason: “Is it Mohammed,” he said, “or Mohammed’s God whom
-you worship? Has not the apostle himself predicted that he should
-experience the common fate of mortality?” This calm and rational
-address had the desired effect; the death of the prophet was admitted
-by all, and his body was piously interred by the hands of Ali, on the
-same spot on which he expired, and which is now surrounded by the
-great mosque of Medina. The story of the hanging coffin at Mecca is a
-vulgar and puerile invention, not worth the trouble of refutation.
-
-I have been led by the superior importance and interest which attach
-to the subject, to extend this chapter, perhaps, considerably beyond
-the limits compatible with the nature and size of the present work;
-still I cannot abstain from adding a short sketch of Mohammed’s
-habits of life, and a few brief remarks on the Koran.
-
-In his domestic life and intercourse, Mohammed was most simple
-and unassuming. The ruler of Arabia fed usually upon barley bread
-and dates; water was his ordinary drink, though he delighted, and
-occasionally indulged, in the taste of milk and honey; he never
-drank wine. The powerful chieftain who could command the services
-of thousands, did not disdain performing the menial offices of the
-household: he kindled the fire, swept the floor, milked the ewes, and
-mended with his own hands, his shoes and his woollen garment (the
-use of silk he rejected as too effeminate); nor was it an uncommon
-circumstance to see the Apostle of God barefoot. He slept on the
-bare ground, or on a carpet or straw mat spread upon the floor. He
-always performed, with the most rigorous strictness, the prayers
-and ablutions enjoined by the Koran. With the regal and sacerdotal
-office, he had assumed the reserve and austerity that befitted
-his high position; yet he would occasionally unbend in the circle
-of his friends, when he enchanted all around him by the graceful,
-though dignified, affability of his manners, and the charms of his
-conversation. He was passionately fond of fairy tales. He delighted
-in perfumes and cats, which latter partiality he shared with one of
-his cotemporaries, the learned Abu Horaira, who gained for himself
-the surname of “the father of a cat.” His hair, beard, and eyebrows,
-were the objects of his most anxious care and solicitude; he dyed
-them with considerable skill, a glossy light-chesnut color.
-
-He was most passionately addicted to the fair sex: in the indulgence
-of his amorous desires, he set his own laws at nought. The Arabians
-had enjoyed, from time immemorial, an unbounded licence of polygamy;
-the Koran limited the number of legitimate wives or concubines
-to _four_, the prophet had _seventeen_ wives; but then, Gabriel
-had descended with a special revelation, dispensing the favored
-apostle from the laws which he had imposed on the nation. ZEINEB,
-the beautiful wife of ZEID, his freedman and adopted son, excited
-his desire. The grateful husband consented to a divorce, and the
-prophet added her to the number of his wives; but as the filial
-relation in which the young woman stood to Mohammed, even though
-only by adoption, was likely to produce some scandal, and to
-raise some scruples in the minds of the faithful, the complaisant
-Gabriel descended with another verse of the Koran, appropriate to
-the occasion. Again, in the case of Mary, the Egyptian slave, the
-indefatigable angel was at hand to oblige the Apostle of God. Had
-Mohammed liked wine, there can be no doubt, but that Gabriel would
-have been ready with another verse of the Koran, to dispense the
-prophet from the restriction imposed upon all other mortals. A
-better proof than the nature of these successive “revelations,” so
-entirely subservient to the gratification of his passions, could not
-well be adduced, to show that Mohammed was not, as some good-natured
-historians would fain believe him to have been, the enthusiastic dupe
-of his own illusions, but simply a cool and calculating politician,
-who made the institution of a new religious system the basis and
-engine of his power and dominion; most probably, sincerely believing
-also, that he was really conferring an immense boon upon his people.
-His vengeful and sanguinary disposition, has been already fully
-exposed in the narration of his life. The impartiality of history
-relieves those darker touches in the picture of Mohammed’s character,
-by a trait of unaffected humanity. His decree that, in the sale of
-captives, mothers should never be separated from their children, may
-well, as Gibbon says, moderate the censure of the historian. How
-the thousands of hapless negro mothers that have had their children
-ruthlessly torn from their arms in _Christian_ America, would bless
-the memory of the Arabian legislator, could that humane decree of his
-find force and application in the Western Hemisphere!
-
-The KORAN is the sacred book of Islam; the successive “revelations”
-imparted to Mohammed, were diligently recorded by his disciples
-on palm-leaves, skins, and the shoulder-bones of mutton; and the
-fragments, or “pages,” were thrown into a domestic chest, in the
-custody of one of Mohammed’s wives. In 634, these fragments were
-collected and published by Abu Bekr; the sacred volume was revised
-by the Khalif Othman, in 651. It consists of 114 chapters (SURATS,
-_i.e._ stages or degrees), of very unequal lengths, and jumbled
-together without chronological order, or systematic arrangement.
-The chapters are made up of plagiarisms from the Bible, rabbinical
-and apocryphal legends, religious and moral precepts, descriptions
-of the joys of paradise and the torments of hell, declamations
-and rhapsodies. The style is, for the most part, inflated, rarely
-poetical, never sublime; yet Mohammed had the cool audacity to
-rest the truth of his mission on the incomparable merit of the
-Koran, as an intellectual, linguistic, and poetical performance.
-He blasphemously asserted, that God alone could have penned, or
-dictated, its divine contents; as no human, nor even an angelic
-intelligence, could possibly have conceived anything like them!!!
-
-The dogmatic part of the Koran (the IMAN), comprises the two articles
-of faith, viz., the belief in one God, and in his prophet Mohammed;
-and the four practical duties of Islam, viz., prayer, ablutions,
-fasting, and alms-giving: these duties are reduced to the level
-of mere mechanical performances, without one atom of spontaneity
-about them, and are looked upon by most Mohammedans as irksome
-tasks, which must be accomplished, however, to secure the reward
-of paradise; the formal permission granted to supply with sand the
-scarcity of water, so that the prescribed lustration of the hands,
-the face, and the body may be practised even in the arid desert,
-shows how little capable the legislator must have been to conceive
-and comprehend the true spirit and intention of his own ordinances.
-The Koran pronounces--of course: is there a religion that does
-not?--sentence of eternal damnation against all unbelievers; it
-imagines a gradation of seven inconveniently hot places, of which the
-highest and least uncomfortable is, of course, appropriated for the
-exclusive use of Mohammedans who have been lacking in piety during
-their mortal career; according to the less or greater gravity of
-their respective offences, they are condemned to remain denizens of
-this the mildest of the seven hells, for periods varying from 900 to
-9000 years, after which they are admitted to the joys of paradise.
-The place immediately beneath this purgatorial hell is assigned to
-the Christians; the hell next to this is allotted to the Jews,
-whom the prophet of Islam would indeed gladly have sent down lower,
-had he dared to treat monotheists worse than idolators; the Sabians
-inhabit the fourth, the Magians the fifth, the gross idolators the
-sixth hell; the deepest and hottest hell is destined to receive
-hypocrites in religion, and may therefore safely be assumed to be of
-larger dimensions and infinitely greater capacity than the other six
-together. The paradise of the Koran abounds in groves, fountains,
-and rivers; the blessed Moslems who are permitted to enter its gates
-will dwell in palaces of marble, eat artificial dainties and luscious
-fruits presented in dishes of gold, drink rich wines,[42] dress in
-robes of silk, adorned with pearls and diamonds, and have a numerous
-retinue of attendants; and above all, each Moslem will enjoy the
-society and possession of seventy-two Houris, or black-eyed girls,
-of resplendent beauty, blooming youth, virgin purity, and exquisite
-sensibility--rather a pleasant picture for a sensual people like the
-Arabians. To the female sex also the gates of paradise are open;
-but the privileges and enjoyments which may await the ladies of the
-Mohammedan faith, are not specified in the Koran. Still, we must not
-be unjust: above the vulgar joys and sensual pleasures borrowed from
-this world, Mohammed places the delights of familiar conversation
-with the sages, and he expressly declares that all meaner happiness
-will be forgotten and despised by the saints and martyrs who shall be
-permitted to behold the face of God.
-
-Mohammed’s assertion that the Koran was the production of the
-highest intelligence, and comprised within it the knowledge of all
-times, has, ever since the establishment of his creed, proved a bar
-to the intellectual culture and progress of his people and of the
-other nations who were induced or compelled to adopt his faith; his
-interdiction to reproduce the human face and form on canvas or in
-marble, or any other material, and which with singular poverty of
-invention he had devised as the only possible check to idolatry, has
-had the natural effect to suppress and extinguish in the Moslem
-nations the love of the fine arts. True, when conquest had placed the
-wealth of empires at the disposal of the sons of the Desert, many
-of Mohammed’s followers could not resist the natural longing after
-the treasures and enjoyments of science, art, and literature; and
-indeed the republic of letters is vastly indebted to many of them
-for their labors and researches in various fields of human lore,
-more especially in geography, history, philosophy, medicine, natural
-philosophy, chemistry, mathematics, and above all, arithmetic,
-algebra, geometry, and astronomy. But then, as A. W. VON SCHLEGEL,
-says, “All this was done, as it were, behind the back of the prophet,
-and the votaries of art, science, and literature, among the Arabians
-must, from a Koranic point of view, be regarded in the light of
-free-thinkers.”
-
-The ritual of the faith of Islam, and the interdictions decreed by
-the prophet, have been already incidentally touched upon in various
-parts of this chapter; we have therefore simply to add here that the
-Koran commands every faithful Moslem to visit, at feast once in his
-life, the holy city of Mecca, and the Kaaba.
-
-One great redeeming feature of the religion of Islam was that it was
-originally destitute of a priesthood, and repudiated monachism; the
-_Ulemas_ were simply intended to be the expounders and interpreters
-of the law.
-
-On Friday, the appointed day of public worship, when the faithful are
-assembled in the mosque, any respectable elder may ascend the pulpit
-to begin the prayer and pronounce the sermon: there is no need of a
-duly appointed priest. But, unfortunately, the Ulemas and Imams of
-the present day act very much in the capacity of an actual clergy:
-and there is indeed no great difference between fakirs and dervishes
-and Roman Catholic monks.
-
-The Koran contains also the civil and criminal code of the
-Mussulmans; the punishments decreed in it for injuries, offences, and
-crimes are mostly based upon the principle of retaliation.
-
-Briefly to sum up: though it must be admitted that the religion of
-Islam, calmly and dispassionately examined by the light of reason,
-contains, by the side of the grossest absurdities, the most palpable
-falsehoods, and the veriest rubbish, much also that is true and
-of sterling worth; and that it has exercised a certain civilising
-influence over the barbarous nations to whom it was first preached,
-yet few only will venture to deny that it lacks altogether the
-higher and most essential qualities of a universal faith. Even the
-basis whereon it rests, the great eternal truth of a sole Deity, is
-tarnished and clouded in it by the companionship which it is forced
-to bear to a miserable fiction placed by the side of it, and with
-equal attributes. There are some few, strange though it may appear,
-who almost regret that the victorious career of the Moslems should
-have been checked by LEO THE ISAURIAN and by CHARLES MARTEL. What
-would have become of Europe--what of civilisation, had the Moslems
-conquered? Let the admirers of Islam look at the state of the
-Mussulman nations of the present day: the fruit shows the quality of
-the tree. It is also a favorite argument with historians and others,
-to point to the _numbers_ of believers in Islam, and to the twelve
-centuries that the Mohammedan faith has endured, as convincing proofs
-of the _truth_ of that creed, or, at all events, of a preponderating
-amount of truth in it. If arguments of this kind are to apply, the
-Mormon faith also may claim admission among the “received” creeds;
-and the names of Joe Smith and Brigham Young may be expected, in
-the course of fifty years or so, to figure among the “prophets and
-apostles of religion.”
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[1] See Genesis, x. 25. EBER signifies a nomadic shepherd, one
-leading a roving pastoral life; it signifies, also, in Hebrew,
-_beyond_, _yon-side_, _the other side_: hence the name HEBREW, or
-EBREW, has been supposed also to be intended to designate immigrants
-into Canaan or Palestine from beyond the Euphrates.
-
-[2] A species of millet, which compensates to some extent the
-scarcity of European grains.
-
-[3] “The Arabian tribes are equally addicted to commerce and rapine,”
-as Pliny has it.
-
-[4] True, in the Arabic tongue the meaning of the words, of which the
-name _Saracens_ may be compounded, will bear out the signification of
-an _Oriental situation_. But the _western_ position of the Saracen
-tribe mentioned by Ptolemy, negatives the assumption of the Arabic
-origin of the word as applied in this sense. As Gibbon sagaciously
-remarks, the appellation being imposed by strangers, its meaning must
-be sought, not in the Arabic, but in a foreign language.
-
-[5] It would even appear that the confusion consequent upon the death
-of the great Macedonian, and upon the feuds and struggles for empire
-among his generals, was taken advantage of by the princes in the
-north of Arabia, to extend their dominion beyond the frontier of the
-peninsula. From the earliest times the wandering tribes had been in
-the habit, more particularly during the scarcity of winter, to extort
-the dangerous license of encamping on the skirts of Mesopotamia,
-Syria, and Egypt, and had often extended their incursions to the
-very heart of Chaldæa, or Babylonia (Irak). They now took formal
-possession of a part of the latter country (hence called to the
-present day IRAK-ARABI), and established in it a new Arabian state,
-the kingdom of HIRA. Tribes from Yemen emigrated to the territory of
-Syria, and established the state of GASSAN, in the country north of
-Damascus. We must not omit to mention, however, that some historians
-place the establishment of the states of Hira and Gassan at a much
-later period.
-
-[6] So named from Makkabi, i.e., _the hammer_; the appellation
-bestowed upon Judas, the liberator of the Jews from the Syrian yoke.
-
-[7] DUNAAN, prince of the Homerites, had been gained over to the
-Mosaic faith by the Jewish exiles who had found an asylum in Yemen.
-The new proselyte carried on a most vigorous persecution of the
-Christians in his dominions, and more particularly in the city of
-Negra, or Nag’ran, (situated between Saana and Mecca). The Christian
-king of Abyssinia, who preferred an hereditary claim to the crown of
-Yemen, as a descendant of BALKIS, Queen of Sheba, came to the rescue
-of his oppressed fellow-believers, and speedily deprived the Jewish
-proselyte of crown and life. He allied himself also with the Emperor
-Justinian for the overthrow of the Persian power; but he failed
-in his subsequent enterprise, and found himself incapable even of
-defending his Arabian conquests, which were wrested from him by the
-revolt and usurpation of ABRAHAH, once the slave of a Roman merchant
-of Adulis. The payment of a slight tribute alone acknowledged the
-supremacy of the Ethiopian prince. After a long and prosperous reign,
-the power of Abrahah was overthrown before the gates of Mecca, by
-Abdul Motalleb, the grandfather of Mohammed; and his children were
-finally despoiled by Chosroes Nushirvan, of Persia.
-
-[8] The Axumites, or Abyssinians, were, most probably, originally a
-colony of Arabs who had settled in Africa.
-
-[9] The same independence from the yoke of a foreign ruler is still
-preserved to the present day by the Arabians. The Sultan of Turkey
-exercises but a nominal sovereignty over Hedjaz and Neged; and the
-rise and exploits of that formidable sect of religious reformers,
-the WAHABYS, during the latter half of the last and in the present
-century, indicate sufficiently that it may only require the
-appearance of a great man among the Arabs, or the occurrence of some
-great event, to unite the wild sons of the desert once more into a
-mighty nation that may make its influence felt in the destinies of
-the world. Had not Egypt’s great ruler, Mehemet Ali, and his warlike
-son Ibrahim, stemmed for a time the progress, and crippled the power
-of the Wahabys, who knows but that the champion of Greek orthodoxy
-might have found his present ambitious projects opposed by a fiercer
-and more formidable antagonist than the effete race of Osman?
-
-[10] Called MEDJID-EL-HARAM, i.e., the holy Mosch.
-
-[11] A visible point of the horizon.
-
-[12] Gibbon.
-
-[13] The constant repetition of this act of pious devotion by so many
-myriads of pilgrims has had the effect of rendering the surface of
-the stone quite uneven.
-
-[14] Gibbon.
-
-[15] It was in the time when Abdol Motalleb held the sacerdotal
-office that Mecca was invested by an army of Africans, under the
-command of the Christian usurper of Yemen, Abrahah, the nominal
-vassal of the Abyssinian Negus. The valor of the Koreishites, or
-perhaps the want of provisions, compelled the investing host to
-a disgraceful retreat, and broke the power of the Abyssinians so
-effectually that the kingdom of Yemen became soon after an easy prey
-to the victorious arms of the great Chosroes of Persia. Had the
-_Christian_ Abrahah prevailed, the early feeble efforts of Mohammed
-to propagate his new doctrine would certainly have been crushed in
-the bud, and the fate of the world would have been changed.
-
-[16] Sabianism, though also based upon the adoration of the heavenly
-bodies, must not be confounded with the primitive and simple faith of
-the Arabians in the sun, the moon, and the stars; it was of a much
-more complex and recondite nature.
-
-[17] Some historians assign the year 569, others 570 (10th November),
-as the date of Mahomet’s birth. The date given in the text is,
-however, supported by the greater weight of historic authorities.
-
-[18] This Syrian city has been most strangely confounded by
-many historians with Bassora, or Basra, on the Shat-el-Arab, in
-Irak-Arabi. The latter city was only founded in 636, A.D., by
-the Khalif Omar, which makes the mistake the more glaring and
-inexplicable.
-
-[19] Some historians make Mohammed at the age of fourteen fight in
-defence of the Kaaba, which a hostile tribe threatened to snatch from
-the custody of the Koreish. They relate, also, how, at a later period
-of his life, when the Kaaba, having been tumbled down by a formidable
-torrent of rain, was rebuilding, the honor of fixing the sacred black
-stone in the wall devolved upon him; and they endeavour to trace a
-kind of causal connection between these incidents in the earlier
-life of Mohammed and the religious bias of his later years. But the
-_facts_ relied upon here partake too much of the nature of _fiction_,
-to make these speculative notions of much moment. Before his marriage
-with Cadijah, Mohammed was in a humble and dependent position; and
-from the time of his marriage up to when he took upon himself the
-apostolic office, he was simply a wealthy but obscure citizen.
-
-[20] Here, again, historians have sent Mohammed on a great many
-journeys through Syria, Irak-Arabi, and to the adjoining provinces of
-Persia and the Eastern Empire. They make him visit the courts, the
-camps, and the temples of the East, and hold converse with princes,
-bishops, and priests, more particularly with the Christian monks
-Bahira, Sergius, and Nestor. An attentive study of the historic
-sources at our command, and a careful examination of the life and
-writings of Mohammed, tend to negative altogether the truth of these
-pretended journeys and visits, which look very much like fictions got
-up by imaginative historians to supply some plausible explanation of
-the origin of Mohammed’s pretended mission--an explanation which may
-be found much nearer home, as I shall endeavour to show in the text.
-Here I will simply add that Mohammed, with all his talent, genius,
-and eloquence, was, like the immense majority of his fellow-citizens,
-an illiterate barbarian, who had not even been taught to read and
-write, and was totally unacquainted with any but his native tongue,
-and not likely, therefore, to profit much from converse with other
-nations.
-
-[21] The assertion that Mohammed was subject to epileptic fits is
-a base invention of the Greeks, who would seem to _impute_ that
-morbid affection to the apostle of a novel creed as a stain upon
-his moral character deserving the reprobation and abhorrence of
-the Christian world. Surely, these malignant bigots might have
-reflected that if Mohammed had really been afflicted with that dread
-disorder, Christian charity ought to have commanded them to pity his
-misfortune, rather than rejoice over it or pretend to regard it in
-the light of a sign of Divine wrath.
-
-[22] _Sonna_, custom or rule; the _oral law_ of the Mohammedans,--or,
-more correctly speaking, of the four orthodox sects of the
-Sonnites--a collection of 7275 traditions of the sayings and doings
-of Mohammed, made about 200 years after the Hegira, by Al Bochari,
-who selected them from a mass of three hundred thousand reports of a
-more doubtful or spurious character.
-
-[23] The so-called MARIANITES are even stated to have attempted the
-introduction of a heretical trinity into the church, by substituting
-the Virgin for the Holy Ghost.
-
-[24] The five preceding prophets were, in due gradation, Adam, Noah,
-Abraham, Moses, and Christus.
-
-[25] The interdiction of wine appeared, however, at a much later
-period, (628).
-
-[26] By the advice of Moses, it is somewhat inconsistently asserted
-considering that the founder of the Jewish creed, not being
-permitted, according to the tradition of the nocturnal journey,
-to proceed beyond the seventh heaven (if even so far, his proper
-appointed mansion being the sixth heaven) must have been, on the most
-moderate calculation, at 140,000,000 years’ distance from the throne
-of God.
-
-[27] This flight of the prophet, called the HEJIRA, (i.e.,
-_emigration_,) was deemed afterwards of such importance that it was
-instituted by Omar, the second Khalif, as the starting-point of the
-Mohammedan era, which was, however, made to commence about two months
-before, on the first day of that Arabian year, which coincides with
-July 16th, 622, A.D.
-
-[28] The conquered Christians were granted the security of their
-persons, the freedom of their trade, the property of their goods, and
-the toleration of their worship. For the treatment which the Jews met
-with at Mohammed’s hands, see the text.
-
-[29] Whether 1000, 3000, or 9000, the commentators of the Koran
-cannot agree. Considering that there were only 1000 Koreish in the
-field, of whom no more than seventy were slain, it would appear
-that Mohammed must either have entertained a most exalted idea of
-the valor of his former fellow-citizens, or rather a humble one of
-angelic prowess.
-
-[30] It was at the time of the expedition against Chaibar that
-Mohammed prohibited the eating of pork, and of the flesh of the ass,
-and also the cutting down of fruit-trees, more especially of palms.
-“Revere your aunt, the palm-tree,” says the Koran, “for it is made of
-the remainder of the clay of which Adam was formed.” Here in Chaibar,
-a Jewish female, named Zainab, avenged the cruelties inflicted by
-Mohammed upon her nation, by administering a slow poison to the
-pretended apostle, whose prophetic knowledge was in this instance
-lamentably at fault. To the effects of this poison he himself
-attributed the gradual decline of his health from this time, and his
-increasing infirmities; and both Abulfeda and Al Jannabi, zealous
-votaries of Islam though they are, frankly admit the humiliating
-fact. The hatred which he bore to the Jews, did not, however, prevent
-his adding to the number of his wives the fair Jewess Shafiya, who,
-upon the capitulation of Chaibar, was presented to him as worthy his
-acceptance.
-
-[31] The final campaign against Chaibar took place several months
-after the first attempt upon Mecca; but for the sake of connection it
-has been given in the text a little out of its chronological order.
-
-[32] Known as the treaty of Hodaibeh.
-
-[33] Chosroes II., who is mentioned in most histories as the monarch
-who received the envoys of Mohammed, had been murdered by his son
-Siroes, on the 28th February, 628, and could not therefore well have
-received the ambassador of Mohammed, who started at a later period of
-the year.
-
-[34] The sect of the _Monophysites_ asserted one incarnate nature
-in Christ; the name of Jacobites, by which they are mostly known,
-is derived from Jacobus Baradæus, Bishop of Edessa, who revived the
-expiring faction of the Monophysites (about 530).
-
-[35] Some historians dispose of Abdallah on this occasion by the
-scymitar of BESCHR, and assign to the Abdallah who in 647 invaded
-North Africa, a different origin (some assert the latter to have been
-the son of the martyr Jaafar who fell in the battle of Muta).
-
-[36] Mohammed’s vices were of a regal cast; avarice, the beggar’s
-vice, yet which so often sullies crowned heads, was not among his
-failings.
-
-[37] One of the uncles of the prophet, whose vigorous arm and
-immensely powerful voice had done good service to the cause in the
-fight of Honain.
-
-[38] Even this number reads very much like Oriental exaggeration, and
-may safely be reduced by the half.
-
-[39] Some writers say 90,000, others, 110,000; others, 114,000; some
-raise the number even to 130, 140, or 150,000; but then due allowance
-must be made for Oriental exaggeration; I think the number given in
-the text may be considered to come tolerably near the mark.
-
-[40] Ali was married to Fatima, the only one of Mohammed’s children
-who survived the prophet.
-
-[41] Some historians give the 6th, others the 8th, and others the
-17th of June, as the last day of Mohammed’s life.
-
-[42] Rather a curious comment on the interdiction of wine in this
-world.
-
-
-
-
-                             CHAPTER II.
-
-         THE KHALIFS[43] FROM ABU BEKR TO HASHEM (OR HESHAM).
-
-
-After the death of the prophet, his companions convened an assembly
-to deliberate on the choice of his successor, as Mohammed had
-abstained from expressing any explicit command or wish in this
-respect. Several competitors presented themselves, of whom Ali, Abu
-Bekr, and Omar were the most important. The illustrious son of Abu
-Taleb seemed indeed to combine in his own person every possible claim
-to the vacant throne of Arabia; he was chief, in his own right,
-of the family of Hashem, and hereditary prince of the city, and
-custodian of the Temple, of Mecca; the husband of Fatima, Mohammed’s
-favorite and only surviving daughter, might reasonably claim for
-himself and his two sons the inheritance of the prophet, who had
-always delighted in calling him his vizir and vicegerent; his valor
-and prowess had shone conspicuous in many a hard-fought battle; and
-even his enemies could not impeach the purity of his private life.
-But it so happened that Ali had drawn upon himself the implacable
-hatred of Ayesha: the conduct of this lady had, on one occasion, been
-rather _indiscreet_, to use the very mildest term, and Ali had urged
-his cousin to punish the frail fair. Mohammed was indeed inclined
-to jealousy, but the youth, beauty, and spirit of the daughter of
-Abu Bekr had established her empire over her husband’s affections so
-firmly that he rejected the clearest evidence of her faithlessness,
-inflicted a severe chastisement upon her accusers, and reproved Ali
-for his officiousness. Ayesha never forgave Ali the part he had
-played in this delicate affair, and the enmity she bore him was
-still heightened by her jealousy of Fatima, to whom she grudged the
-prophet’s paternal affection. Mohammed would most probably have
-named Ali his successor--and against the explicit nomination of the
-prophet, no voice would have dared a protest--but the artful daughter
-of Abu Bekr besieged his bed of sickness; and, turning the ascendant
-she had acquired over the uxorious man to excellent account, obtained
-from him that on the third day before his death, when he was no
-longer able to proceed to the mosque, he deputed Abu Bekr in his
-place to perform the function of public prayer, instead of charging
-Ali with that most honorable and important duty. After the death of
-Mohammed, she boldly asserted that he had “appointed” her father
-his successor in the royal and sacerdotal office. The Koreish, and
-more especially the branch of Ommiyah, the old enemies of the line
-of Hashem, eagerly espoused the cause of Abu Bekr. The Ansars of
-Medina, and a few of the Mohagerians of Mecca voted for Ali; the
-crafty Omar was watching the event; a rash proposal made by one of
-Ali’s supporters to let each party choose their own Khalif, and to
-divide the empire between them, brought the matter to an abrupt
-termination. Omar, discerning the danger which threatened the rising
-Saracen empire, if this proposal were acted upon, renounced his own
-pretensions; and, setting the regular forms of an election at naught,
-hailed Abu Bekr as the first Khalif. The people acquiesced, and
-Mecca, Medina, and most of the provinces of Arabia, acknowledged Abu
-Bekr as commander of the Faithful. The Hashemites, however, remained
-true to their chief, and Ali resisted for six months the cajoleries
-of the Khalif and the threats of Omar. But the death of his beloved
-Fatima subdued his haughty spirit, and he consented at length to
-submit to Abu Bekr’s rule. Strange enough, when Ali had made his
-submission, the old man offered to resign in his favor; an offer
-which was prudently declined.
-
-During the later part of Mohammed’s life, several other prophets had
-arisen in various parts of Arabia, and among them one of some note,
-and of no mean skill in the apostolic trade. His name was MOSEILAMA;
-the powerful tribe of Hanifa, in the city of Yamanah, in Neged,
-listened to his voice. Confident in his power, he coolly offered
-Mohammed a partition of the earth between them. The prophet of Islam
-treated the offer with disdain; but after his death, several tribes,
-who had unwillingly embraced his creed, seceded to the standard
-of the new prophet, who speedily became a formidable rival to the
-Khalif. Mohammed’s uncle Abbas and the fierce Kaled were dispatched
-against him by Abu Bekr; but though forty thousand Moslems followed
-their banner, the first action against Moseilama ended in the defeat
-of Abbas and Kaled, and the former of the two generals was severely
-wounded with a javelin. This defeat was, however, fearfully avenged
-by Kaled; ten thousand infidels were made to bite the dust, and
-the same javelin that had pierced Abbas, was sent, a messenger of
-death, to Moseilama’s heart, by the hand of an Ethiopian slave. The
-submission of the revolted tribes speedily followed, and the dread
-name of the _Sword of God_ was in itself sufficient to disarm all the
-other rebels who had risen in various parts of the peninsula.
-
-The victorious Kaled was now sent to the banks of the Euphrates,
-where he reduced the cities of Anbar and Hira (A.D. 632), and, having
-slain the last of the Mondars of the Arabian colony of Hira, and
-sent his son a captive to Medina, prepared to invade the Persian
-empire; but in the midst of his triumphant career, he was recalled
-and sent into Syria, to take the command of the army there, and,
-in conjunction with Abu Obeidah, to effect the reduction of that
-province of the Greek empire. Bosra, a strong city situated four
-days’ journey from Damascus, fell by his valor and by the treachery
-of the Greek governor ROMANUS. Damascus was besieged (633); and an
-army of 70,000 Greeks, who came to the relief of the hard-pressed
-city, under the command of WERDAN, was totally defeated and dispersed
-by 45,000 Moslems under Kaled, Amru, and Abu Obeidah, at AIZNADIN
-(13th July, 633). Still Damascus resisted stoutly for many months,
-sustained chiefly by the valor of a noble Greek named THOMAS. At
-length, however, the courage of the besieged gave way, and they
-surrendered to the mild Abu Obeidah (most probably in August, 634),
-who granted them personal safety, and free possession of their lands
-and houses, and to such of them as should prefer exile to the Moslem
-rule, the permission to depart with as much of their effects as they
-could carry away with them. But the fierce and cruel Kaled refused to
-ratify these terms of his fellow-commander: he slaughtered thousands
-of the unfortunate Damascenes; and, though he consented at last to
-abide by the terms of the capitulation, he only gave three days
-respite to the band of voluntary exiles who left Damascus under the
-leadership of the valiant Thomas. At the expiration of this term, he
-set out in pursuit at the head of four thousand horsemen; a miserable
-renegade, named JONAS, acted as guide. The hapless fugitives were
-overtaken, and ruthlessly cut down to the last being of either sex,
-with the solitary exception of the widow of the brave Thomas, who was
-sent by Kaled to carry a message of defiance to the throne of the
-Cæsars.
-
-Meanwhile the aged Abu Bekr, after a short reign of two years,
-had been gathered to his fathers; Ayesha’s influence and Omar’s
-craft had once more defeated Ali’s claims to the vacant throne;
-and Omar had gained the object of his ambition (24th July, 634).
-The new Khalif[44] proved himself worthy of this exalted position;
-his justice, his wisdom, his moderation, and his frugality form,
-even to the present day, among the _Sonnites_, the theme of the
-most enthusiastic praise; though by the _Shiites_ his memory is
-as bitterly reviled, and the appellation _Shitan Omar_, which the
-Persians so liberally bestow upon the second Khalif, shows the sense
-which they entertain of his machinations against the illustrious Ali.
-The son of Abu Taleb, however, submitted to Abu Bekr’s choice, and
-was comforted for the loss of empire by the most flattering marks
-of esteem and confidence on the part of the new commander of the
-Faithful.
-
-One of the first acts of Omar’s reign was to remove Kaled from the
-command of the Syrian army, under pretext of excessive cruelty,
-and of rashness in the pursuit of the Damascene exiles, but in
-reality because the Khalif bore a personal enmity to his invincible
-lieutenant. This made, however, practically, no difference in
-the conduct of the war; Kaled could command and obey with equal
-readiness, and Abu Obeidah was modest and sensible enough to guide
-himself in all important operations by the advice of his former
-chief. After the reduction of Damascus, the Arabs laid siege to
-Heliopolis (Baalbec) and Emesa, and speedily compelled these
-important cities to surrender (635). Heraclius made one last great
-effort to free Syria from these most unwelcome visitors; he sent
-four-score thousand veteran soldiers by sea and land to Antioch and
-Cæsarea; this host was considerably increased by the remains of the
-Syrian army, and by new levies in Syria and Palestine, and joined
-also by 60,000 Christian Arabs under the banner of JABALAH,[45] the
-last of the Gassanide princes. Upon Kaled’s prudent advice, Abu
-Obeidah resolved to retire to the skirts of Palestine and Arabia, and
-there to await the attack of the enemy. In the vicinity of Bosra,
-on the banks of the obscure river Yermuk (Hieromax), a fierce and
-bloody encounter took place, in which the Greek forces were totally
-routed (636); their Gassanide allies had already previously met with
-the same fate at the hands of the intrepid Kaled. After the victory
-of Yermuk, Abu Obeidah resolved to invest JERUSALEM (or ÆLIA, as the
-Romans called it); he first sent MOAWIYAH, Abu Sophian’s son, with
-the van of five thousand Arabs, to try a surprise; and this failing,
-he appeared himself, ten days after, with the whole army.
-
-After having endured four months the hardships of a siege, the
-garrison and people of the holy city offered to capitulate; but they
-demanded as a guarantee for the articles of security, that the Khalif
-should ratify them in person. Ali advised the Khalif to comply with
-this rather unusual demand; and Omar set out from Medina, mounted on
-a red camel, which carried, besides his person, a bag of corn, a bag
-of dates, a wooden dish, and a leathern bottle of water! Jerusalem
-immediately surrendered (637), and the Khalif returned promptly to
-Medina in the same simple manner in which he had come. The conquest
-of Syria was achieved the year after (638) by Abu Obeidah and Kaled,
-who reduced Antioch, Aleppo, Tripoli, Tyre, Acca (St. Jean d’Acre),
-Cæsarea, Ascelon, Hierapolis, and many other cities and strong
-places. Abu Obeidah died 639, of a fatal disease which carried off
-twenty-five thousand of the conquerors of Syria; the hero Kaled, the
-_Sword of God_, survived his fellow-commander about three years. The
-government of the conquered province was entrusted by Omar to the
-hands of Moawiyah, the chief of the family Ommiyah, and who became
-afterwards the founder of the Ommiade dynasty.
-
-After Kaled’s recall from the Persian frontier, the war against the
-empire of the Magians was carried on languidly for several years.
-In 636, however, Omar sent a new commander, SAID, with considerable
-reinforcements to the army on the Euphrates. After the murder of
-Chosroes II. and Cobad II., in 628, eight kings of Persia had
-followed each other in rapid succession, in the short space of three
-years. At last, a woman, ARZEMA, seized upon the throne; but, in 632,
-she was deposed, and the tiara transferred from her head to that
-of the grandson of Chosroes, YEZDEGERD (III.), a boy of fifteen. A
-dying effort was now made by the Persians to drive back the Saracen
-invaders. An army of 120,000 men, with 30,000 regulars among them,
-was collected under RUSTAM, who, urged on by his youthful and
-inexperienced monarch, sought the Moslems in the plains of CADESIA,
-where Said had pitched his camp. The Mussulman forces numbered only
-30,000; the fight was protracted for three whole days; it was bloody
-and obstinate in the extreme; the Saracens lost one clear fourth of
-their number; the fall of Rustam, on the third day, decided the fate
-of the battle and of Persia (636). The standard of the Sassanides
-(a leathern apron of a blacksmith, covered with a profusion of
-precious gems) fell into the hands of the conquerors. The province
-of Irak submitted to the Khalif, who secured his conquest by the
-foundation of the city of BASRA, or BASSORA, on the Shat-el-Arab
-(_i.e._, the river of the Arabs), which is formed by the junction
-of the Euphrates and Tigris. The Moslems crossed the latter river,
-and took and sacked MADAYN, or CTESIPHON, the capital of the Persian
-empire; immense treasures fell here into their hands, more than
-sufficient indeed to enrich the whole host of naked Arabians beyond
-their most sanguine expectations. Many splendid works of art were
-destroyed by the ruthless hands of the ignorant sons of the desert.
-In one of the apartments of the white palace of Chosroes Nushirvan,
-was found a magnificent carpet of silk, with the picture of a garden
-embroidered on it in gold and precious stones, imitating the natural
-colors of the flowers, fruits, and shrubs depicted; Said preserved
-this splendid piece of workmanship, and sent it to the commander of
-the Faithful; but the precious gift found little favor in the sight
-of Omar; that cynical gentleman quietly ordered the picture to be
-destroyed, and divided the materials among his brethren of Medina:
-the intrinsic value of these materials may be conjectured from the
-fact, that Ali’s share alone was sold for twenty thousand drachms
-of silver. A new city, CUFA, was founded on the western side of
-the lower Euphrates, and the seat of government was removed to it
-from the despoiled Madayn. One Persian province after the other was
-compelled to submit to the Moslem sway; at Jalula, Yezdegerd nobly
-contended once more for the empire of his ancestors; in vain! the
-fanaticism of the Arabs proved stronger than the despair of the
-Persians. Said had been recalled, and FIRUZAN sent in his place;
-the courage of the Persian nation was not yet thoroughly subdued;
-150,000 Persians attacked the Moslem host at NEHAVEND, about 230
-miles south of Hamadan; but though Firuzan had only 30,000 Mussulmans
-to oppose to the overwhelming numbers of the Persians, and though the
-latter fought with true bravery, fate had decreed the downfall of
-the monarchy of the Sassanides: the Arabians gained “the victory of
-victories,” and the hapless Yezdegerd, worthy of a better fate, like
-Darius Codomannus, yielded up all hope of empire (642).[46] After
-the victory of Nehavend, the cities of Hamadan, Ispahan, Estachar
-(Persepolis), and many more, were readily reduced, and the conquest
-of Persia was achieved.
-
-Whilst Persia was thus being added to the new Saracen empire, another
-province was snatched from the feeble emperor of Byzantium. Omar
-had cast his eyes upon Egypt. With only 4000 Arabs, the valiant
-AMRU invaded that country, in June, 638; after a siege of thirty
-days, he took possession of Farmah, or Pelusium, the key of Egypt.
-The reduction of Babylon, on the Eastern bank of the Nile, opposite
-Memphis, the ancient capital of Egypt, took Amru seven months,
-although he had received a reinforcement of 4000 men. On the spot
-where Amru’s army had pitched their tents during the siege of
-Babylon, a new city arose, which forms now part of an extensive
-suburb of Cairo, or AL CAHIRA, _i.e._, the victorious, founded by
-the Fatimite Khalifs (MOEZ), in 970. Notwithstanding the capture
-of Babylon and Memphis, Amru would probably have been compelled
-to relinquish his attempt to conquer Egypt, had not the Jacobite
-(Monophysite) Copts under Mokawkas, who would have preferred the
-devil’s rule to that of their Melchite[47] tyrants, joined the
-invaders heart and soul. Under _their_ guidance, and with _their_
-aid, Amru, who had, meanwhile, been considerably reinforced from
-Syria, marched from Memphis to ALEXANDRIA; which latter city was,
-after a series of preliminary combats, at last closely invested on
-the land side. As the sea remained open, Heraclius might have saved
-the great provision store of Byzantium, had he acted with the least
-energy; but the feeble old man contented himself with _praying_
-for the relief of the besieged city, and thought, perhaps, he had
-enlisted God on his side by appointing a _priest_ (the patriarch
-CYRUS), to the præfecture of Egypt, and the conduct of the war.
-No wonder then that, notwithstanding a truly gallant defence by
-the inhabitants, the city was, after a siege of fourteen months,
-at length compelled to surrender (22nd of December, 640). Omar’s
-commands preserved Alexandria from the horrors of pillage. The story
-of the burning of the Alexandrian library by order of Omar, is
-absolutely void of foundation; the honor of the first invention of
-this calumnious lie belongs (of course) to a Christian historian,
-ABULPHARAGIUS, primate of the Jacobites, who wrote 600 years after
-the event: but a crowd of historians have since faithfully copied it,
-even to its most extravagantly absurd details.[48]
-
-With the reduction of Alexandria, the conquest of Egypt was achieved,
-Amru carrying his victorious arms even beyond the boundaries of
-that country as far as Tripoli. To facilitate the communication
-between Egypt and Arabia, Omar constructed a canal from the Nile to
-the Red Sea. Omar, the now mighty ruler of a most extensive empire,
-was revolving new plans of conquest, when the dagger of FIRUZ, a
-Persian slave, who had been personally aggrieved by the Khalif, cut
-short his thread of life--and saved the world from subjugation; for
-what nation or empire could, at that time, have long or successfully
-withstood the impetuous tide, which, in the short space of ten
-years, had engulphed Syria, Persia, and Egypt; and was full vigorous
-enough to sweep over the whole earth, had but the master-mind which
-had hitherto with rare wisdom directed its enormous material force,
-continued to breathe an intelligent will into it. Omar died in
-November, 644: urged to name his successor, he had refused to do
-so, but had devolved the task of choosing a new Khalif, on Ali and
-five others of the most respectable companions of the prophet. The
-illustrious son of Abu Taleb might now, indeed, have ascended the
-vacant throne, had he deigned to promise a servile conformity, not
-only to the Koran and tradition, but also to the “sayings and doings”
-of his predecessors, Abu Bekr and Omar. This demand his proud spirit
-rejected with disdain. OTHMAN, also a son-in-law of the prophet,
-and who had been his secretary, accepted the government with these
-restrictions. The new Khalif was but little made to sustain the
-weight of the Saracen empire. He was a weak and vacillating old man,
-and led entirely by unworthy favorites, more particularly by his
-secretary, MERVAN; he was arrogant and overbearing withal, and in
-the space of a few brief years, he excited the dissatisfaction and
-indignation of even the most loyally disposed among his subjects. At
-last the universal discontent was gathering to a head. Resolved no
-longer to submit to the exactions of the wretched favorites on whom
-the Khalif had conferred power and station, the tribes rose in arms.
-From Cufa, from Bassora, from Egypt, from the Desert, they marched on
-Medina: they encamped about a league from the city, and dispatched a
-haughty summons to their sovereign to redress their grievances, or
-to give place to a more worthy prince. Othman promised reformation,
-and Ali’s generous intercession might have succeeded in healing
-the breach between the Khalif and his angry subjects; but Mervan’s
-perfidy, and the deep intrigues of the artful Ayesha, defeated all
-chances of reconciliation between the prince and the people. In
-vain Othman ascended the pulpit, publicly and solemnly to entreat
-Allah’s and the people’s forgiveness for his misrule; he was pelted
-with stones, and carried home half dead. The insurgents besieged him
-six weeks in his palace, intercepting his water and provisions. The
-helpless old man had to endure the grief of seeing himself forsaken
-and betrayed by those on whom his misplaced favor had bestowed wealth
-and power. Abandoning all hope, he calmly expected the approach of
-death: a desperate band of fanatical Charegites, with Mohammed,
-Ayesha’s brother, at their head, made their way into his palace. They
-found him seated, with the Koran in his lap; but neither the sacred
-book, nor his venerable aspect, could disarm the assassins. Othman
-fell, pierced with many wounds, 18th June, 655, in the eighty-second
-year of his age.
-
-During the reign of Othman, the island of Cyprus was conquered by
-Moawiyah, in 647, and the island of Rhodes, in 654; from the latter
-island, the Saracens carried off the massy trunk and the huge
-fragments of the celebrated colossal statue of Apollo, which had
-been overthrown about 800 years before by an earthquake. The large
-and once populous country of Chorasan, the kingdom of the ancient
-Bactrians, was also “annexed” to the Saracen empire, during the reign
-of Othman. In 647, ABDALLAH[49] and ZOBEIR were sent with 40,000
-Moslems to attempt the conquest of Africa. They advanced to the walls
-of Tripoli, and endeavoured to carry that maritime city by assault;
-they were, however, repulsed, and the approach of a numerous army
-under the Greek præfect Gregory, compelled them to raise the siege.
-By Zobeir’s skill and valor, the Arabs gained a complete and decisive
-victory over the hostile forces, the præfect himself being slain by
-the hand of Zobeir. The opulent city of Sufetula, situated 150 miles
-to the south of Carthage, fell into the hands of the victorious
-Arabs. Abdallah prudently rested content with the advantages gained;
-he accepted the offer of submission and tribute made on all sides by
-the provincials, and retreated to the confines of Egypt (648).
-
-Ali had made a perhaps somewhat lukewarm effort to effect a
-reconciliation between Othman and his insurgent subjects. When
-matters had proceeded to extremities, he had sent his two sons,
-HASSAN and HOSEIN, to the rescue of the besieged Khalif; and Hassan,
-the eldest of his sons, had, indeed, been wounded in the defence of
-that unfortunate prince. Still Ali had not been very energetic in
-his opposition to the rebels; and it is not uncharitable to suppose,
-that the death of Othman caused him no very bitter grief. Five days
-after the murder of the aged Khalif, Ali was proclaimed his successor
-by acclamation. The illustrious son of Abu Taleb was, indeed, a poet
-and a hero, but a most indifferent statesman. TELHA and the valiant
-ZOBEIR, two of the most powerful of the Arabian chiefs, who had had a
-hand in Othman’s overthrow and death, and whose doubtful allegiance
-Ali ought to have secured by rich gifts and greater promises, saw
-themselves treated with studied coldness by the new Khalif, of whom
-they had vainly solicited the government of Irak, as the reward of
-their services. This impolitic conduct of Ali made them inclined
-to lend a willing ear to the advice and suggestions of the artful
-Ayesha, to raise the standard of revolt against Ali, and to charge
-_him_ with the perpetration of the very crime which _she_ had
-instigated, and _they_ had lent their aid to execute! The two chiefs,
-and the widow of the prophet, escaped from Medina to Mecca, and
-from thence to Bassora; the unblushing woman, whose own brother had
-actually headed the assassins, had the almost incredible effrontery
-to send Othman’s bloody shirt to the governor of Syria, Moawiyah,
-Ali’s hereditary foe, and to call upon him to avenge Othman’s blood
-upon his murderer--_Ali!_ The son of Abu Sophian was perfectly aware
-of the true circumstances of the case; but it suited his ambitious
-projects to _appear_ to believe the infamous accusation against the
-august chief of the line of Hashem, the more so as Ali had expressed
-his intention to remove the head of the house of Ommiyah from the
-government of Syria. Moawiyah, therefore, exposed the bloody shirt
-of Othman in the principal mosque of Damascus, and denouncing Ali as
-the instigator of the sacrilegious deed, called upon the Faithful to
-rise and avenge the death of the holy martyr, whose lawful successor
-in the Khalifate he declared himself to be, in obedience, as he
-pretended, to the express command of the dying Othman. The appeal was
-numerously responded to, and the ruler of Syria saw himself speedily
-at the head of a formidable army; his friend, AMRU, whom Ali had
-removed from the government of Egypt, espoused his cause. Telha and
-Zobeir seized upon Irak; 50,000 Moslems marched under their banner.
-At the head of 20,000 of his loyal Arabs, and 9,000 auxiliaries of
-Cufa, the Lion of God went to encounter his enemies. Under the walls
-of Bassora (2nd and 3rd November, 656) was fought the first battle of
-this civil war, which, destroying in internecine strife the flower of
-the nation of the desert, may well be said to have saved the world
-from the yoke of Islam; for had Ali been sole and undisputed master
-of the Saracen empire, even the fire of Callinicus[50] would have
-proved no effectual protection against the then irresistible tide
-of Moslem conquest, and, mayhap, the Isaurian might have indulged
-his iconoclastic propensities at the head of a congenial host of
-image-haters; nor would the west of Europe have escaped, and the
-champion of the cross, the _Hammer_ of Christ, might, perchance, have
-figured in history as the _Ilderim_ of Islam.
-
-The rebels were totally defeated; Telha and Zobeir, with 10,000 of
-their host, were slain; and Ayesha, who, seated in a litter perched
-on the back of a camel,[51] had braved the dangers of the field,
-animating the troops by her presence, and cheering them on with her
-voice, fell a captive into the hands of the man whom, with implacable
-hatred, she had pursued so many years, and whom she had so grievously
-injured; but the generous Ali disdained warring with women.
-Mohammed’s widow was treated with every respect due to her rank, and
-speedily dismissed to her proper station at the tomb of the prophet.
-The victorious Khalif, having in vain offered the most favorable
-terms of accommodation to Moawiyah and Amru, took the field against
-them at the head of 70,000 men, in the spring of 657. The plain of
-SIFFIN, on the western bank of the Euphrates, formed the field of
-ninety actions or skirmishes, in a desultory warfare of one hundred
-and ten days. The forces of the Ommiyah chief, are said to have
-amounted to more than 120,000 men; among them many of the veterans of
-the Persian, Syrian, and Egyptian campaigns; 45,000 of that gallant
-band paid with their lives for the ambition of their chief; 25,000
-of Ali’s brave and loyal followers lay slain by their side--a rare
-crop of blossoms for the garden of the destroyer. The Lion of God
-was everywhere foremost in the fight; his ponderous two-edged sword,
-wielded with irresistible force, made fearful havoc in the hostile
-ranks; every time he smote a rebel, he shouted his war-cry “Allah
-Akbar!”[52] and the Arabian and Persian historians tell us with all
-gravity, that “in the tumult of a nocturnal battle, that tremendous
-exclamation was heard no less than four hundred times.” Making all
-due allowance for Oriental exaggeration, and striking one nought off
-the account, enough still remains to make the feat a most respectable
-achievement indeed.
-
-The magnanimous Ali had proposed to settle the dispute between him
-and Moawiyah by single combat; but to encounter so formidable a
-champion would truly have been sheer madness on the part of the
-prince of Damascus; he therefore declined the Khalif’s courteous
-invitation. The chief of the line of Ommiyah was not so redoubtable
-a warrior as Ali, but he was a much better politician than the true
-and lawful commander of the Faithful; clearly foreseeing that the
-decision of the sword must in the end inevitably turn against him,
-he devised a stratagem to discomfit his dreaded antagonist, which
-being based upon a crafty appeal to the reverential and superstitious
-feelings of Ali’s followers, might reasonably be expected to have
-a fair chance of success. The Khalif had resolved to terminate the
-long-pending struggle by a decisive battle; the troops were in
-presence, and the fight was on the point of being engaged, when a
-solemn appeal to the books of the Koran, which Moawiyah exposed on
-the foremost lances, made a considerable portion of Ali’s forces
-pause in their onset; emissaries of the prince of Damascus had long
-been busy in the unsuspecting Ali’s ranks; his refusal to hold the
-tradition, and the sayings and acts of Abu Bekr and Omar as equally
-binding with the precepts of the Koran, was regarded by many of
-his own followers as rank heresy; and so it occurred that at the
-very time when victory seemed secure in his grasp, the Khalif saw
-himself suddenly abandoned by the greater half of his forces, and
-even compelled by the vile rabble to submit his indefeasible right
-to a so-called “arbitration;” Moawiyah being permitted to appoint
-his friend and fellow-rebel, Amru, as arbiter on _his_ part, whilst
-Ali was forced by the treacherous crew around him to name MUSA, the
-cadi of Cufa, a mixture in equal parts of stupidity and conceit, to
-act on his behalf. The result was such as might have been foreseen;
-the decision was in favor of Moawiyah. Ali indignantly refused to be
-bound by it, as it was but too patent that the whole “arbitration”
-had been a disgraceful juggle from the beginning. But he was
-abandoned by a great many of his former adherents, and compelled
-to retreat to Cufa. Still he nobly carried on the struggle against
-the vastly superior forces of his enemies, and though Amru snatched
-Egypt from him, though Persia and Yemen were subdued or seduced by
-his crafty rival of Damascus, the final issue of the struggle might
-yet have been in his favor, had he not been foully murdered by a
-Charegite,[53] who with two other fanatics had agreed to give peace
-to their troubled country by the removal of Ali, Moawiyah, and Amru.
-Each of the three assassins chose his victim, poisoned his dagger,
-and secretly repaired to the scene of action; but the stroke was
-fatal only to the lawful Khalif, though the prince of Damascus also
-was dangerously hurt, and the deputy of the viceroy of Egypt paid
-with his life for the honor of being mistaken for the illustrious
-Amru (661).[54] The dying Ali mercifully commanded his children to
-dispatch his murderer by a single stroke. His eldest son, HASSAN, was
-indeed saluted Khalif, by the party who had faithfully adhered to the
-banner of the Lion of God, but he was prevailed upon by Moawiyah to
-resign his pretensions, and the son of Abu Sophian was acknowledged
-the lawful commander of the Faithful; and Ali’s name was ordered to
-be cursed from the pulpit.[55]
-
-The rule of the new Khalif was marked, upon the whole, by wisdom
-and moderation. Moawiyah disdained the simplicity of manners which
-had distinguished his predecessors; he dressed in costly silks,
-surrounded himself with a brilliant court, kept eunuchs for the
-guard of his harem, and set the prophet’s precepts at naught in the
-matter of wine-drinking. He would indeed shrink from no crime where
-his political interests were or seemed concerned; and the poisoning
-of Hassan, who had fondly, but foolishly, hoped that the son of
-Abu Sophian would forget that the title of Khalif had graced his
-name for however so short a period of time, and the base murders of
-Kaled’s son, Abderrahman, and of the bold-spoken Hadjir Ben Hadad,
-who had dared publicly to protest against the cursing of Ali’s
-name and memory, are by no means the only blots on the reputation
-of the founder of the Ommiade dynasty; but he was not cruel and
-blood-thirsty from mere wantonness of disposition, and, as princes
-go, he was altogether rather a favorable sample of the class than
-otherwise.
-
-The first acts of his reign were to put down the rebellious
-Charegites, and to quell an insurrection of the people of Bassora.
-The three first Khalifs had resided at Medina; political and
-strategic considerations had induced Ali to transfer the seat of
-his government to Cufa. Moawiyah made Damascus his capital, partly
-because Syria was the stronghold of his power, and partly--and this
-was unquestionably the principal reason--because his residence at
-Medina would have materially interfered with the accomplishment
-of the project nearest and dearest to his heart; viz., to change
-the elective monarchy to an hereditary kingdom. When he had firmly
-established his throne, he prepared a powerful expedition by sea and
-land against Constantinople (668); he entrusted the chief command
-to the veteran SOPHIAN, and sent his own son Yezid to encourage the
-troops by his presence and example. But though the supineness of the
-Greeks permitted them to invest the city of the Cæsars by sea and
-land, the Saracens met with a more vigorous resistance than they had
-anticipated; the solid and lofty walls of Byzantium, energetically
-defended by a numerous and well-disciplined army, and by a people
-aroused for a time to deeds of heroic devotion, by the danger which
-threatened to overthrow the last bulwark of their nationality and
-their religion, and the prodigious effect of the fire of Callinicus,
-defeated all attempts to carry the city by assault; and the Arabs,
-finding it a much easier task to plunder the European and Asiatic
-coasts of the Propontis, carried on the operations of the siege more
-and more languidly, till, at last, having kept the sea from April
-to September, they retreated, on the approach of winter, to the
-isle of Cyzicus, about eighty miles from the capital. However, they
-renewed the attempt six successive summers, until the enormous losses
-which they had suffered by fire and sword, and by the mischances of
-shipwreck and disease, compelled them finally to abandon the bootless
-enterprise (675). This failure dimmed for a time the glory of the
-Saracen arms, whilst it seemed to restore the former prestige of the
-Roman name. The destruction of his fleets, and the annihilation of
-his armies, had subdued the proud spirit of Moawiyah; the aged Khalif
-had the mortification of seeing himself insulted in his city and
-palace of Damascus by the warlike Maronites, or Mardaites, of Mount
-Lebanon; and he felt desirous of ending his days in tranquillity and
-repose: he consented therefore to a peace, or truce, of thirty years
-with the emperor Constantine IV. Pogonatus, in which he indeed was
-permitted to retain possession of the north-western part of Asia
-Minor, the island of Cyprus, and the isles of the Greek Archipelago,
-but in which the majesty of the commander of the Faithful was wofully
-degraded, by the stipulation of an annual tribute to the Court of
-Byzantium of three thousand pieces of gold, fifty slaves, and fifty
-horses of a noble breed (677).
-
-Moawiyah’s arms were more successful in other quarters. His
-lieutenant, OBEIDAH, invaded the territories of the Turks, in
-673, and made considerable conquests in Central Asia; and a large
-portion of North Africa was added to the Saracen empire by AKBAH,
-who conquered Tripoli and Barca, founded the city of Cairoan, about
-fifty miles south of Carthage,[56] in 671, and advanced to the verge
-of the Atlantic and the Great Desert. But the universal defection of
-the Africans and Greeks, whom he had conquered, recalled him from the
-shores of the Atlantic, where he was already meditating a descent on
-Spain. Surrounded on all sides by hostile multitudes, and despairing
-of succour, the gallant Akbah, and his small force of brave men, had
-no other resource left them but to die an honorable death,--they
-fell to the last man. ZUHEIR, sent with a new army, avenged the fate
-of his predecessor; he vanquished the natives in many battles, but
-was himself overthrown in the end by a powerful army, sent from
-Constantinople to the relief of Carthage which he was besieging.
-
-Moawiyah died on the 6th April, 680. Ten years before his death he
-had seen his aspiring wishes crowned by the proclamation of his son,
-YEZID, as presumptive heir of the Saracen empire.[57] True, there
-had been some murmurs of discontent, and it had even required an
-armed demonstration against the holy cities of Mecca and Medina to
-enforce submission to the will of the Khalif: but Moawiyah’s vigor
-and address had triumphed over every obstacle. Accordingly, after
-the father’s death, the son was acknowledged as Khalif in every
-province of the vast empire; with some partial exceptions, indeed, in
-Arabia proper, and more particularly in Mecca and Medina. But Yezid
-had inherited none of his father’s qualities; he was a dissolute
-voluptuarian, and of a most tyrannical disposition withal. In the
-short time of a few months, the discontent of his subjects had risen
-to a threatening height; more especially in Arabia proper, and in
-the province of Irak, People’s eyes began to turn towards HOSEIN,
-the younger and only surviving son of Ali and Fatima, and head of
-the line of Hashem. Hosein had served with distinction in the siege
-of Constantinople; he had inherited some of his father’s spirit,
-and had disdainfully refused to acknowledge Yezid’s title. He was
-invited by a large body of the discontented in Irak, to come and
-place himself at their head; against the advice of his wife and many
-of his friends, he resolved to obey the call, and set out with a
-small retinue, consisting, chiefly of women and children. When he
-reached the confines of Irak, OBEIDOLLAH, the watchful and energetic
-governor of Cufa, had already crushed the insurrection in the bud.
-In the plains of Kerbela, Hosein found himself surrounded on all
-sides by a body of five thousand horse. Unconditional surrender or
-death was the only alternative offered to him; he chose the latter,
-and, after deeds of the most heroic valor, his generous band of
-devoted adherents were all slain, basely butchered from afar with
-arrows by their cowardly assailants: he, alone, still survived,
-though bleeding from many a wound. He seated himself at the door of
-his tent, enfolding his youngest son and his nephew, two beautiful
-children, in his arms; they were slain there, and their warm
-life-blood overflowed the hands of the hapless man. With a cry of
-grief and despair, he started up and threw himself in the midst of
-the foe. The soldiers fell back on every side, and, for a time, none
-dared to lay hands on the grandson of the prophet; but, at last, one
-of their leaders, the remorseless SHAMER, urged them to the attack,
-and the heroic Hosein was slain, with three-and-thirty strokes of
-lances and swords. The dead body was trampled under foot by the
-inhuman wretches, and the severed head carried to the castle of Cufa,
-and thence forwarded to Damascus, that Yezid might look upon it and
-sleep in peace. An expedition was sent against the holy cities,
-which, after Hosein’s death, had acknowledged for _their_ Khalif,
-ABDALLAH,[58] the son of the valiant Zobeir. Medina was taken, and
-the sisters and children of Hosein and Hassan were sent in chains to
-the throne of Damascus. Yezid was urged by his advisers to bury his
-fears for ever in the grave of the race of Ali and Fatima. Now, had
-Yezid been one of the _Christian_ Cæsars of Byzantium, who “thought
-it no very great harm” to slay even their own kindred, or to deprive
-them of sight, or mutilate them in some other way, if undisputed
-empire could but be secured thereby, no doubt the advice would have
-been followed to the letter: but the grandson of the wild Henda was
-not altogether without some of the better feelings of human nature,
-and the _Saracen_ Khalif had no convenient “patriarch,” or bishop, at
-hand to lull his troublesome conscience by the mockery of priestly
-absolution. The mourning family were honorably dismissed to Medina,
-and Yezid even strove to console them for the irreparable losses they
-had suffered at his father’s and his own hands.
-
-The partial successes of Yezid’s generals against Abdallah did not
-prevent that indefatigable warrior from seizing upon Yemen, and
-establishing his power in Egypt. After a troubled reign of three
-years, Yezid died (683); and a few months after his death, his son
-and successor, MOAWIYAH II., preferred voluntary abdication to the
-desperate struggle which he foresaw it would cost to oust Abdallah
-from his usurped position. For a time, complete anarchy ensued:
-Obeidollah, the governor of Irak, attempted to found a new empire
-and a new dynasty, in Bassora, but he was ignominiously expelled
-by the people; and the provinces of Irak, Yemen, Hejaz, and Egypt,
-acknowledged the name and sovereignty of Abdallah. Even in Syria, a
-creature of Abdallah’s, DEHAC, was, for a time, obeyed as vicegerent.
-At last, however, MERVAN, of the line of Ommiyah, was saluted Khalif
-in Damascus (684), on condition, however, as he bound himself by
-oath, to name Kaled, Yezid’s younger son, his successor. Mervan
-speedily succeeded in subjecting Syria and Egypt to his sway. The
-people of Chorasan, where the Hashemites had gained considerable
-ascendancy, renounced their allegiance to the empire, proclaimed
-their independence, and elected the noble SALEM their king. SOLIMAN,
-the son of Zarad, excited a formidable insurrection in Arabia Proper,
-and in part of Syria, and proclaimed the deposition of both rival
-Khalifs; but he was defeated by Obeidollah. Mervan, forgetful of his
-oath, proclaimed his son, ABD-EL-MALEK, his successor; he fell by
-the dagger of his offended kinsman, Kaled (685). But Abd-el-Malek
-made good his claim to the succession, and set diligently about
-to strengthen his position in the provinces which his father had
-wrested from Abdallah’s grasp. In Abd-el-Malek the latter found an
-antagonist worthy of himself, both in valor and wile. The actual
-struggle between the two rivals was, however, postponed for a season
-by the appearance of a third party on the scene,--MOKHTAR, another
-inspired prophet, and whose chances of establishing _another_ new
-creed seemed, for a time, to promise rather fair; in fact, the city
-of Cufa, and part of the province of Irak, had acknowledged his
-divine mission, when Abdallah’s good sword proved him an impostor
-(686). The Greeks had, meanwhile, taken advantage of the distress
-and fears of the house of Ommiyah, but in their own paltry and
-pettifogging way; for instead of boldly drawing the sword to wrest
-Asia Minor, Palestine, and Syria from the enfeebled grasp of the
-divided Saracens, they were content with obtaining from Abd-el-Malek
-a considerable increase of the tribute.
-
-Abd-el-Malek, relieved thus from his apprehensions of a war with
-the Eastern empire, could now turn his undivided attention to the
-impending struggle with the rival Khalif of Mecca. After five years’
-fierce and doubtful contest, Abdallah was at length defeated in a
-decisive battle, and compelled to take refuge in Mecca; here he
-defended himself for seven months against Abd-el-Malek’s vastly
-superior forces. At last, in a general assault, the valiant son of
-Zobeir was slain; his fall decided that of the city, and the Saracen
-empire was thus again united under one ruler (692). As soon as
-Abd-el-Malek saw himself sole and undisputed Khalif, he threw off
-the badge of servitude to the Eastern empire, which the internal
-dissensions and troubles of the preceding years had compelled him to
-submit to. He discontinued the payment of the stipulated tribute, and
-even wrested another province, Armenia, from the feeble hands of the
-Byzantine Cæsars.
-
-HASSAN, the governor of Egypt, was charged with the task to reconquer
-the north of Africa. That brave and skilful commander, after having
-subdued the provinces of the interior, carried his victorious arms
-to the sea-coast, and took, by a sudden assault, the fortifications
-of Carthage, the metropolis of Africa (697). However, the unexpected
-arrival of a powerful Greek fleet, with a numerous and well-appointed
-army[59] on board, compelled the Arabian general to evacuate his
-recent conquest, and to retire to Cairoan. But Abd-el-Malek had
-resolved to annex North Africa to his dominions at any cost; he
-prepared therefore during the winter a powerful armament by sea and
-land, and in spring, 698, Hassan appeared once more before Carthage,
-and compelled the præfect and patrician John, who commanded the Greek
-forces, to evacuate the city; soon after, he defeated him again in
-the neighbourhood of Utica, and a precipitate embarkation alone
-saved the remains of the Byzantine army from absolute annihilation.
-Carthage was reduced to a heap of ruins. But Hassan had soon to
-encounter a more formidable enemy: a prophetess arose among the
-MOORS, or BERBERS, of the interior, and boldly challenged the Arabian
-invaders to make good their claim to the land which they had fondly
-deemed subdued with the expulsion of the Greeks. CAHINA was the name
-of this extraordinary woman, who seemed to have discovered the secret
-of breathing into her people a spirit of enthusiasm superior even
-to the fanaticism of the Moslems. In a single day Africa was lost
-again to the Saracens, and the humbled Hassan retired to the confines
-of Egypt, where he expected, five years, the promised succour of
-the Khalif. But Queen Cahina’s order to destroy the cities, and to
-cut down the fruit-trees, filled the Christian population of the
-coast with apprehension and anger; and when Hassan at last made his
-reappearance in the province, he was hailed, even by the most zealous
-Catholics, as a deliverer and saviour. The royal prophetess boldly
-accepted battle; but she was slain, and her army was put to the
-rout (705). Still the spirit of resistance survived, and Hassan’s
-successor, the aged but fiery MUSA BEN NASSIR, had to quell a new
-insurrection of the Moorish tribes. He and his two sons, ABDALLAH and
-ABDELAZIZ, succeeded so well, however, that not only did the Berbers
-submit to the Khalif, but they even embraced the religion of Islam,
-and became henceforth as one people with their Arabian conquerors.
-
-Abd-el-Malek was the first Khalif to establish a national mint, both
-for silver and gold coin (695); the gold coins were imitations of
-the Roman gold denar, with an inscription proclaiming the unity of
-the God of Mohammed; the Arabs called these gold coins, _dinars_;
-their value was about eight shillings sterling. It would appear they
-struck also double, and half, dinars. The silver coin might represent
-a value of fivepence or sixpence English money. Abd-el-Malek died in
-705. He was succeeded by his son WALID, a prince who, indeed, did not
-inherit the activity, vigor, and decision of his father; but was, on
-the other hand, free also from the cruelty and the low avarice that
-stained the character of Abd-el-Malek. Walid loved and encouraged
-arts and sciences, and more especially architecture: he built the
-splendid mosque of the Ommiades at Damascus, at an expense of half
-a million sterling; he rebuilt also Mohammed’s mosque at Medina,
-on a larger and more magnificent scale. He had the good fortune to
-be served by clever ministers and great generals, whose energy,
-valor, and enterprise amply made up for the personal indolence
-and inactivity of the Khalif, and imparted a glory to his reign,
-rivalling that of Omar’s. One of his lieutenants, CATIBAH (_the camel
-driver_), added to the Saracen empire the spacious regions between
-the Oxus, the Jaxartes, and the Caspian sea, with the rich and
-populous commercial cities Carizme, Bochara, and Samarcand (707-710).
-From Samarcand, the victorious general sent his master a daughter of
-PHIROUZ, or FIRUZ, the son of the unfortunate Yezdegerd, the last of
-the Sassanide rulers of Persia, who became Walid’s wife. Mohammed,
-one of Catibah’s colleagues, displayed the banner of Islam on the
-opposite banks of the Indus (712); and in the same year, Fargana,
-the residence of the Chagan of the Turks, was taken by Catibah,
-who advanced as far as Cashgar, where he received an embassy from
-the Emperor of China. Walid’s brother, MOSLEMAH, one of the most
-redoubtable of the Mussulman warriors known to history, defeated
-the Chazars in the Caucasus, and annexed Galatia and other parts
-of Asia Minor to the empire of his brother (710). But the greatest
-and most glorious conquest was that of Spain. As early as the time
-of Othman, the Arabs had cast a longing eye upon the fair land of
-_Handalusia_,[60] and their piratical squadrons had more than once
-ravaged the Spanish coast. The Gothic king, WAMBA, had defeated one
-of their expeditionary corps in 675. Since that time no further
-attempt had been made on the kingdom of the Visigoths; but the
-latter, beholding with apprehension the establishment of the Arabian
-power in North Africa, had, in 697, aided the Byzantine emperor in
-the attempted relief of Carthage. The king of Spain possessed on the
-African coast the fortress of CEUTA (_Septa_ or _Septum_), one of
-the columns of Hercules, which is divided by a narrow strait from
-the opposite pillar or point on the European coast. This fortress
-was held at the beginning of the eighth century by the Gothic Count
-JULIAN, brother-in-law of OPPAS, archbishop of Toledo and Seville,
-whose brother, WITIZA, was then king of Spain. In 709, Musa made an
-attempt to reduce Ceuta, and subdue the small portion of Mauritania
-which was still wanting to the conquest of North Africa; but he was
-repulsed by Count Julian with considerable loss, and would most
-probably have relinquished his project upon Spain, had not internal
-dissensions among the Gothic magnates unexpectedly opened to him a
-fair prospect of success. King Witiza had attempted to reform the
-truly appalling licentiousness of the Spanish clergy, and to curb
-the overgrown power of the nobility; but lacking both the crafty
-wile of the eleventh Louis of France, and the strong despotic will
-of the Tudors of England, his well-meant efforts simply led to his
-own deposition (710), which he survived only a few months. The clergy
-and nobility elected a king after their own heart, in the person of
-RODERIC, a grandson of King RECCASWINTH (or Receswinth[61]). The two
-sons of Witiza, and their uncle Oppas, conspired to overthrow the
-new monarch, who, it would appear, had been indiscreet enough to
-express his intention of removing Count Julian from his Andalusian
-and Mauritanian commands, the moment he should think himself
-sufficiently powerful to give due force to his royal decrees.[62]
-The threatened count was readily induced to join the party of the
-conspirators; but dreading lest the force which they could bring
-into the field, should prove unavailing against the monarch’s power,
-he, who had hitherto been the staunchest defender of his country, did
-not hesitate to betray her to the Saracen foe, and to open wide the
-portals that had been entrusted to his honor and patriotism to guard.
-He and his fellow-conspirators endeavored to soothe the misgivings of
-conscience with Musa’s deceptive assurance, that he did not intend to
-establish himself in Spain, but would rest content with a share of
-the spoil.
-
-As soon as Musa had obtained Walid’s sanction to the contemplated
-enterprise, he sent off an expedition of only four vessels, with
-five hundred men on board, to explore the coast of the coveted land.
-TARIF ABU ZARA, the commander of this force, landed on the opposite
-side of the strait, and marched eighteen miles into the interior,
-to the castle and town of the traitor Count of Ceuta[63] (July
-710). His glowing report of the wealth of the country, decided Musa
-to send over a more powerful expedition under the command of his
-freedman, TARIK BEN ZAYAD. The miserable Julian supplied the means of
-transport. Five thousand Arabs and seven thousand Moors landed at the
-European pillar of Hercules, Mount Calpe, which became, henceforth,
-the Mountain of Tarik--_Gebel al Tarik_, a name corrupted afterwards
-into the present appellation of Gibraltar (April, 711). Here Tarik
-formed a strongly entrenched camp, and gathered around him the
-friends of Julian, and also many Jews who were fired with the most
-deadly hatred against their Christian persecutors, that had, for more
-than a century, oppressed and hunted down this doomed people with a
-malignity such as religious fanaticism alone can excite and sustain.
-Counts EDECO and THEODEMIR, who had been commanded by the king to
-expel the intruders, were defeated with great slaughter; and a
-seasonable reinforcement from Africa swelled Tarik’s ranks to above
-30,000 men. Roderic, conscious at last of the magnitude of the danger
-that threatened to overwhelm his throne and his people, gathered the
-flower of the Gothic nation around him, and marched at the head of
-100,000 men to encounter the foreign invaders. In the neighbourhood
-of Cadiz, at Xeres de la Frontera, on the Guadelete, the hostile
-armies met. Three days were spent in desultory, though bloody
-fighting; on the fourth day, the actual battle commenced. When night
-spread her sable wings, and bade the slaughter cease for a while,
-more than half of the Saracen forces lay stretched dead on the ground
-they had come to conquer; and had not the vile defection of the
-most reverend father in God, the Archbishop of Toledo, and his two
-nephews, to whom Roderic’s generous or foolish (it may be read both
-ways) confidence had entrusted the most important post, broken the
-ranks of the Christians, the severed head of Musa’s freedman might
-have graced the battlements of Toledo. As it was, it took three days
-to scatter the remains of the Gothic army; and many a Saracen, and
-many a Christian traitor to his country, had to bite the dust before
-Tarik could pen his laconic “Praise be to Allah!--we have conquered.”
-(July 19-26, 711). The hapless king of the Goths was either slain in
-the fight or drowned in the waters of the Guadalquivir. The field
-of Xeres decided the fate of the Gothic monarchy; nearly the whole
-of Spain submitted to Tarik with such extraordinary rapidity, that
-the good old Musa, envious of his freedman’s success and fame, bade
-him arrest his victorious course, until he himself should arrive to
-gather the last and fairest fruits of the victory. Tarik, however,
-added Cordova and Toledo, the capital of the Gothic kingdom, to the
-list of his conquests, and advanced as far as the Bay of Biscay,
-where the failure of land at last compelled him to stop. Here he
-received an angry and imperious summons from his jealous chief; who
-had, meanwhile, himself crossed over from Africa, at the head of ten
-thousand Arabs and eight thousand Moors, and had taken Seville, and
-was besieging Merida. The latter city, though valiantly defended,
-was at last compelled to surrender. Midway between Merida and
-Toledo, Tarik met his chief, who received him with cold and stately
-formality, and demanded a strict account of the treasures of the
-conquered kingdom. The unfortunate lieutenant speedily found that
-Musa would not readily forgive his presumption of subduing Spain in
-the absence of his general: he saw himself ignominiously deprived of
-his command, and thrown into prison; and Musa carried his resentment
-so far, that he ordered the conqueror of Spain to be publicly
-scourged. Walid’s imperative commands compelled Musa to restore Tarik
-to his position; and the valiant man, who had been so ungenerously
-and unworthily treated by the jealous old chief, assisted him with
-his accustomed zeal, in achieving the conquest of the still unsubdued
-parts of the peninsula. At the end of 712, all resistance had ceased
-on the part of the Christians, with the exception of the valiant
-prince THEODEMIR, who defended himself several months longer in
-Orihuela, and obtained, at last, most favorable terms from Musa’s
-son, Abdelaziz, (5th April, 713); and the invincible PELAGIUS, or
-PELAYO, and PETRUS, who, in the Asturian, Gallician, and Biscayan
-vallies, laid the foundation of a new Christian empire in Spain;
-destined, after a time, to renew the struggle and ultimately to expel
-the foreign invaders.
-
-MUSA was a very old man--but though the coloring of his beard, and
-other little expedients of art, might fail to obliterate the physical
-ravages wrought by eighty-eight years of life, and by the fatigues
-and privations of fifty campaigns[64]--yet the vigor of his mind,
-and the youthful ardor that fired his breast, remained unimpaired:
-and, like that marvellous old man of a later period, great DANDOLO,
-the approach of ninety found him revolving enterprises of stupendous
-magnitude; aye, no less than the conquest of Gaul, Italy, Germany,
-and the Greek empire. He was preparing to pass the Pyrenees,[65]
-and bid the kingdom of the Franks cease to exist, when an imperious
-command from Damascus, called both him and Tarik thither, to render
-an account of their proceedings to the commander of the faithful.
-Tarik obeyed; Musa delayed complying with the Khalif’s summons, until
-a second and still more peremptory message left the old chief no
-other alternative but obedience or open rebellion: and, as his own
-loyalty, or that of his troops, put the latter out of question, he
-set at once diligently about preparing for his return to Damascus.
-He confided the government of Spain to his son, ABDELAZIZ; that of
-Africa, to his son, ABDALLAH. Taking with him immense treasures in
-gold and silver, and, among others, the famous emerald table of
-Solomon, encircled with pearls and gems--a spoil of the Romans from
-the east, and which, it would appear, had fallen into the hands of
-Alaric, in the sack of Rome[66] (410, A.D.); and attended by thirty
-Gothic princes, 400 nobles, and 18,000 male and female captives of
-humbler degree, he set out from Ceuta on his way to Damascus. At
-Tiberias, in Palestine, he received a private message from SULEIMAN,
-or SOLIMAN, the brother and presumptive heir of Walid, informing him
-that the Khalif was dying, and commanding him, as he valued Soliman’s
-friendship, to reserve his triumphal entry into Damascus for the
-inauguration of the new reign.
-
-Musa, who might deem Soliman’s anger less dangerous than the
-resentment of the Khalif should he recover, disregarded the
-injunction, and pursued his march to Damascus, where he arrived just
-in time to afford the dying Walid the gratification of beholding
-the spoils of Africa and of Spain,[67] soon after which, the most
-powerful of the Khalifs bowed his head to the stroke of the mighty
-master of kings and emperors (October, 714). His successor, SOLIMAN,
-was an able and energetic prince, but of a despotic and ruthless
-disposition. Musa was arraigned at the judgment seat of the new
-Khalif, for abuse of power and disobedience to orders. The unworthy
-treatment which the victor of Xeres had suffered at the hands of his
-jealous chief, was avenged by a similar indignity inflicted upon the
-latter: the veteran commander was publicly scourged, and then kept
-waiting a whole day before the palace gate, till the “_mercy_” of
-Soliman accorded him a sentence of exile to Mecca. He was, moreover,
-adjudged to pay to the public treasury, a fine of 200,000 pieces of
-gold. Afraid lest the sons of the despoiled and insulted old man,
-should attempt to avenge the injuries of their father, the worthy
-son of Abd-el-Malek secretly dispatched to Africa and Spain, decrees
-commanding the extermination of Musa’s family; and, by a refinement
-of cruelty worthy of a Caligula, Caracalla, or Justinian II., he
-had the head of Abdelaziz presented to the bereaved father, with an
-insulting question, whether he knew the features of the rebel? “I
-know his features,” exclaimed the hapless old man, in a paroxysm of
-grief and indignation; “he was loyal and true. May the same fate
-overtake the base authors of his death!” -- -- -- Musa’s death, a
-few weeks after, of the anguish of a broken heart, spared Soliman an
-additional crime. The victor of Xeres fared but little better than
-his ancient commander; though, indeed, he was not made to expiate
-by death, imprisonment, or exile, the great services which he had
-rendered his country. CATIBAH, who had every reason to dread a
-similar fate as Musa’s and Tarik’s, rose in arms against the jealous
-tyrant of Damascus, and had the good fortune to meet with a glorious
-death on the battle field.
-
-Soliman resolved to render his reign famous by the overthrow of the
-Greek empire, and the conquest of Constantinople. His preparations,
-both by land and sea, were made on a gigantic scale. His brother,
-the redoubtable MOSLEMAH, invaded Asia Minor at the head of 70,000
-foot and 50,000 horse, with an immense train of camels, (716). The
-city of Tyana fell into the hands of the Moslems, and Amorium was
-closely besieged by them. The troops in Amorium were commanded at
-the time by General LEO, a native of Isauria. The original name of
-this remarkable man, was KONON; his father had come over from Asia
-Minor to Thrace, and had settled as a grazier there. He must have
-acquired considerable wealth in that lucrative business, since he
-could afford a gift of 500 sheep to the Imperial camp, to procure
-for his son admission into the guards of Justinian. The personal
-strength of the young soldier, and his dexterity in all martial
-exercises attracted the notice of the emperor, who speedily advanced
-him to the higher grades of military rank. Anastasius II. confided
-to him the command of the Anatolian legions, and it was in this
-capacity that he defended Amorium against the Saracens. One of those
-sudden revolutions so frequent in the Byzantine court, compelled
-Anastasius to hand over the sceptre to an obscure officer of the
-revenue, who assumed the name of Theodosius III. General Leo refused
-to acknowledge the new emperor, and managed so skilfully, that
-not only did the troops under his command invest _him_ with the
-imperial purple, but the Arabs, it would appear, accorded him and
-his army free and undisturbed departure from Amorium. He marched
-upon Constantinople, and Theodosius seeing himself in danger of
-being abandoned by the very troops who had so recently exalted him,
-willingly resigned to the hands of the general and emperor of the
-Oriental troops, the sceptre which, moreover, he had accepted with
-extreme reluctance only. He was permitted to retire with his son
-to the shelter of a monastery, where he had ample time to paint
-golden letters, an occupation which marvellously suited the natural
-indolence of his disposition.
-
-LEO, third of the name, who figures in history usually as the
-_Isaurian_, or the _Iconoclast_, was fully aware of the intention of
-the Arabs to attempt the reduction of Constantinople; he, therefore,
-made every preparation which military experience could suggest,
-or engineering skill devise, to give them a fitting reception. In
-July, 717, after the reduction of Pergamus, Moslemah transported
-his army from Asia to Europe, across the Hellespont or Dardanelles,
-at the most narrow part of the passage (from Abydos to Sestos); and
-thence, wheeling his troops round Gallipoli, Heraclea, and the other
-Thracian cities of the Propontis, or Sea of Marmara, he invested
-Constantinople on the land side. An offer made by the Greeks, to
-purchase the withdrawal of the besieging forces by the payment of a
-piece of gold for each inhabitant of the city, was contemptuously
-rejected; and Moslemah pushed on the operations of the siege with the
-greatest vigor, but without any corresponding success, the Isaurian
-repelling every attack with a bravery and determination, such as the
-Saracens had but little expected to see displayed by the apparently
-effete Greeks. Moslemah’s hopes were swelled high, however, by the
-arrival of the navies of Syria and Egypt, to the number of 1800
-vessels,[68] with 50,000 men on board. The Saracen commander fixed a
-night for a general assault by land and sea, and proudly boasted that
-by the morning the city should be his. When that morning came, the
-Greek fire had done its work; and scarce a vestige remained of the
-proud fleet, or of those who had manned it; and ten thousand Arabs
-and Persians slain, bore witness how fiercely Moslemah had assaulted
-the defences of Byzantium, and how bravely and vigorously the
-Isaurian and his gallant troops had repulsed the hostile multitudes.
-From this check, Moslemah essayed in vain to recover: he became soon
-painfully conscious that the conviction of invincibility, which had
-hitherto so materially contributed to the great successes of the
-Saracen arms, was, if not altogether destroyed, at least considerably
-shaken. His assaults were now repulsed with apparent ease almost,
-and all his attempts at surprises were defeated by the ever watchful
-Isaurian. One hope still remained to restore the ancient supremacy
-of the Moslem arms: Khalif Soliman had gathered a formidable host
-of Arabians, Persians, and Turks, and was preparing to lead them
-to his brother’s assistance. The eyes of both the besiegers and
-the besieged were anxiously turned towards the Khalif’s camp near
-Chalcis (or Kinnisrin) in Syria; and Leo was endeavoring, by gifts
-and promises, to attract an army of Bulgarians from the Danube to pit
-them against the Saracens; and thus, perchance, to free the Byzantine
-empire from all danger, by the mutual destruction of its Barbarian
-foes. But it so happened that the Commander of the Faithful could
-not command his appetite; a meal of two scores or so of eggs, and
-a matter of six or seven pounds of figs, followed up by a dessert
-of marrow and sugar, proved too much for even his well-seasoned
-stomach; he paid with his life the penalty of his gluttony (717).
-He had appointed his cousin, OMAR BEN ABDELAZIZ, to succeed him in
-the khalifate. Omar, second of the name, was a most estimable man,
-but a very indifferent prince; much fitter, indeed, to be the head
-of a monastery of ascetics, than of a powerful empire. The first act
-of his reign was to order the cessation of the Syrian armaments,
-which might have been a wise measure, had it been accompanied by the
-recall of Moslemah and his forces from the siege of Constantinople.
-His neglect of the latter measure entailed upon the unfortunate
-natives of the sultry climes of Egypt and Arabia, the unspeakable
-hardships of a most severe winter, passed in a frozen camp. In spring
-(718), he made an effort to relieve their wants, and to fill up the
-gaps which cold, famine, and disease had made in the ranks of the
-besieging army. Two numerous fleets were sent on this errand, one
-from Alexandria, the other from the ports of Africa. They succeeded,
-indeed, in landing the stores and reinforcements, but they found it
-as vain to contend against the Greek fire, as the armada which, the
-year before, had so proudly threatened to erase the Roman name from
-among the nations. Meanwhile, the Bulgarians had been bribed into an
-alliance with the Greek emperor, and these savage auxiliaries proved
-formidable antagonists to the exhausted and half-starved Asiatics.
-Still the intrepid Moslemah was not dismayed, and although he was
-compelled to relinquish all further attempts upon the defences of the
-city, he defeated, on his part, all attacks made on his camp: until,
-at length, Khalif Omar sent him the welcome order to raise the siege,
-(August, 718). The retreat of the Arabian forces was effected without
-delay or molestation; but of the fleet, tempests destroyed what the
-fire of Callinicus had spared, and of 700 vessels that had proudly
-sailed forth, five only returned to the port of Alexandria, to tell
-the sad tale of the disastrous loss of their companions. Byzantium
-was saved, and the victorious Isaurian found himself at liberty to
-prepare for his meditated warfare against canvas, wood, brass, and
-marble.
-
-The good and pious Omar distinguished his reign chiefly by the
-abolition or “repeal” of the curse against Ali and his adherents
-which had for nearly sixty years been daily pronounced from the
-pulpits (719). By this act of simple justice, and by his somewhat
-hasty and incautious attempts to reform the fearful abuses which had
-crept into the administration of the empire under his predecessors,
-he excited the determined hostility of his own family, and of the
-Vizirs and high officers of state. A dose of poison removed him
-(720). His successor, YEZID II., had none of his virtues, but most
-of the vices of his other predecessors of the line of Ommiyah. It
-was in the reign of this prince, and in that of his successor, that
-the family Hashem, in two of its branches, viz. the ALIDES, or
-FATIMITES, i.e. the descendants of Ali and Fatima, and the ABASSIDES,
-that is the descendants of Abbas, the uncle of the prophet, began to
-urge their claims to the throne of the Khalifa. Indeed, Mohammed,
-the great grandson of Abbas, was secretly acknowledged as the true
-commander of the Faithful, by a considerable body of the inhabitants
-of Chorasan, and his son IBRAHIM was even enabled to hoist the black
-flag of the Abassides[69] in that province; the gloomy banner was
-triumphantly borne onward by ABU MOSLEM, the intrepid and invincible
-champion of the Abassides, the _King-maker_ of the East, but, who
-was fated at last, like the English King-maker, to experience the
-usual gratitude of princes. From the Indus to the Euphrates, the
-East was convulsed by the fearful struggle between the white and the
-black factions, and the fairest provinces of Asia were deluged with
-blood to void the ancient quarrel between Ommiyah and Hashem, and to
-decide which of two equally vile races of despots had the _better
-right_ to trample on God’s fair creation. The struggle terminated for
-a time in 750, with the overthrow and almost total extirpation of the
-Ommiades--but of this hereafter.
-
-YEZID died in 722 or 723, of grief for the death of a favorite
-concubine. He was succeeded by his brother HESHAM, a prince not
-altogether destitute of good qualities. Hesham had to contend against
-the Fatimite ZEID, the grandson of Hassan, who was, however, speedily
-overcome, and had to pay with his life the penalty of his ambition.
-The struggle against the more successful Abassides has been mentioned
-in the preceding paragraph.
-
-After Musa’s departure from Spain, and the murder of his son
-Abdelaziz, AJUB was proclaimed by the Arabian and Moorish troops,
-governor of the Spanish peninsula; he fixed his residence at Cordova.
-Under him and his more immediate successors numerous colonies came
-over to Spain from various parts of the Saracen dominions in Asia and
-Africa; of these the royal legion of Damascus was planted at Cordova;
-that of Emesa at Seville; that of Chalcis at Jaen; that of Palestine
-at Algezire and Medina Sidonia. The Egyptian bands were permitted to
-share with the original conquerors their establishments of Murcia
-and Lisbon. The immigrants from Yemen and Persia were located round
-Toledo, and in the inland country; and ten thousand horsemen of Syria
-and Irak, the children of the purest and most noble Arabian tribes,
-settled in the fertile seats of Grenada.[70]
-
-AJUB’S successor in the government of Spain, EL HORR BEN ABDERRAHMAN
-resolved to annex to the dominions under his sway the Gallic
-province of Septimania or Languedoc, of which the eastern part,
-with Narbonne and Carcassone, was still remaining in the hands of
-the Visigoths; the western part, Aquitaine and Thoulouse having
-been severed from the Gothic kingdom in 508, by Clovis. But he was
-defeated and driven back by the Christians; in consequence of the
-ill-success of his operations, the Khalif removed him from the
-command, and named EL ZAMA governor in his stead. That bold and
-skilful general speedily succeeded in reducing the whole of the
-Narbonnese province (720); whence he marched into Aquitaine, and
-laid siege to Thoulouse. Here he found a more formidable foe to
-encounter--the FRANKS, who were ultimately to check the further
-advance of Islam and its followers into the fairest provinces of
-Europe. The history of that nation, and of its successful leader
-against the Saracen invaders, forms the subject of the second part of
-this volume.
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[43] _Khalifet Resul Allah_, i.e. lieutenant, or representative of
-the prophet of God.
-
-[44] Omar was the first to assume the additional title of _Emir al
-Mumenin_, i.e. prince, or commander, of the faithful.
-
-[45] Jabalah had embraced the religion of Islam. On the occasion of
-the pilgrimage to Mecca, the irascible prince had dealt an Arabian,
-who had accidentally trod on the skirt of his long robe, a severe
-blow with his fist, which broke the bridge of the nose of the
-assaulted man. The Khalif Omar having demanded satisfaction for the
-aggrieved Moslem, and threatened the proud Gassanide chief with the
-application of the lex talionis, Jabalah, feeling highly indignant
-at the notion, fled, and returned to the profession of the Christian
-faith.
-
-[46] Yezdegerd fled finally to the territory of Tergana, on the
-Jaxartes. In an attempt which he made in 651, to invade his lost
-empire at the head of some Turkish tribes, he met his death, it would
-appear, at the hands of his barbarian allies. One of the daughters of
-Yezdegerd married Hassan, the son of Ali, and the other, Mohammed,
-the son of Abu Bekr.
-
-[47] The Nestorians and Jacobites bestowed on the self-styled
-Catholics of the Greek and Roman church, the name of _Melchites_,
-or _Royalists_, to mark that their faith, instead of resting on the
-basis of Scripture, reason, or tradition, had been established solely
-by the power of a temporal monarch.
-
-[48] “Six months,” the Worthy Jacobite says, “the 4000 baths of the
-city were heated with the volumes of paper and parchment.” These
-volumes must have been bulky indeed, and must have contained a
-surprising amount of latent heat, considering that, even admitting
-the library to have existed at the time, and conceding to it the
-largest number of volumes claimed by the most extravagant writers,
-viz., 720,000, one single volume per day must have sufficed to heat
-a public bath! Verily, verily, history is made the most inexact
-of all sciences. The flames which Cæsar was compelled to kindle
-in his defence, in the Bruchion (the Belgravia or Tyburnia of the
-city of Alexander); the havoc and depredation committed by the
-Alexandrian mob during the troubles of the _shoes_ (so called from
-the circumstance that these terrible troubles, which are said to
-have lasted above twelve years [from 261 to 273 A.D.], were first
-occasioned by a dispute between a soldier and a townsman about a pair
-of shoes); and the destruction inflicted on the Bruchion by Aurelian,
-in 273, cannot have left much behind of that portion of the splendid
-library of the Ptolemies which was kept in the museum. And the other
-portion of it, which was kept in the Temple of Serapis, to which
-latter place it is most probable the celebrated Pergamese library,
-presented by Marcus Antonius to Cleopatra, had also been sent, was
-totally destroyed in 389, in the reign of Theodosius I., by a bigoted
-Christian mob, under the leadership of the Archbishop Theophilus, a
-much more ignorant and brutal zealot than either Omar or Amru.
-
-[49] Othman’s foster-brother, the same whom Mohammed had so
-reluctantly pardoned after the taking of Mecca. He was renowned as
-the boldest and most dexterous horseman of Arabia.
-
-[50] Callinicus was either a native of Heliopolis, in Syria, or of
-Egypt. This clever chemist had been for a while in the service of the
-Khalif; but, offended at the slight estimation in which his science
-was held by the ignorant sons of the desert, he went over to the
-emperor, and placed in the hands of the Christians that marvellous
-and mysterious agent, the _Greek fire_, which afterwards repeatedly
-saved Constantinople from falling into the hands of its barbarian
-besiegers. It is certainly a curious coincidence, that, at a later
-period of history, Sultan Mohammed II. was most materially assisted
-in the reduction of the city of the Cæsars, by another man of
-science, the Hungarian URBAN, who, having been almost starved in the
-Greek service, had deserted to the Moslems, for whom he cast cannons
-of enormous size and weight of metal.
-
-[51] The victory of Bassora is therefore usually called the Day of
-the Camel; seventy men who successively held the bridle of the camel
-which carried Ayesha’s litter, were all either killed or more or less
-severely wounded.
-
-[52] That is, “God is great,” or “God is victorious.”
-
-[53] Abder-Rahman.
-
-[54] January; according to some historians, Midsummer, 660; others
-place the event in August, 661.
-
-[55] But many of the tribes revered the name and memory of Ali. His
-refusal to be bound by the tradition, or Sonna, became a kind of
-religious creed, and a wide and deep gulf was opened between two
-rival sects, the _Sonnites_, or believers in the tradition, and the
-_Schiites_, or sectaries, who reject the tradition, regard Ali as the
-_Vicar of God_, and his three predecessors as execrable usurpers. The
-religious discord of the friends and enemies of Ali may be said to be
-actually maintained still to the present day in the immortal hatred
-of the Schiite Persians, and the Sonnite Turks. The twelve Imams,
-or pontiffs, of the Persian church are Ali, Hassan, Hosein, and the
-lineal descendants of Hosein to the ninth generation. The curse
-against Ali and his adherents was abolished by Omar II., in 719.
-
-[56] The ruins of the ancient city of Carthage are about ten miles
-east of Tunis.
-
-[57] At least in Syria and Irak.
-
-[58] One of the most remarkable men of the period; he was said to
-unite the fierceness of the lion with the subtlety of the fox; his
-eventful life would furnish ample material for ten historic romances.
-
-[59] It would appear, from Leo Africanus, that a considerable body of
-Goths formed part of the army of relief.
-
-[60] Handalusia signifies, in Arabic, the country of the West;
-and the Arabs applied the name not only to the modern province
-of Andalusia, but to the whole peninsula of Spain. The attempted
-derivation of the name of Andalusia from the Vandals (Vandalusia)
-is most improbable. LEMBKE travels still farther out of the way of
-all rational probability, by assigning the etymological paternity
-of the name to _Andalos_, whom the Arabians number among Noah’s
-grandchildren.
-
-[61] 649-672.
-
-[62] This would certainly seem to have been the true cause of
-Julian’s defection; the story of the seduction or violation of his
-daughter Florinda (surnamed _la Cava_, i.e., the wicked), lacks all
-true historic foundation. _Mariana_, the Jesuit historian, to whom we
-are chiefly indebted for this pretty tale, was too apt to draw on his
-lively imagination, where historical evidence failed him.
-
-[63] The place on which the Arabs landed is marked to the present day
-by the name of their chief Tarif (Tarifa); on the coast they bestowed
-the name of the Green Island (_Algesiras_ or _Algezire_).
-
-[64] Musa had fought in Syria; he had assisted Moawiyah in the
-reduction of Cyprus (648), and had held the government of that
-island; he had subsequently been governor of Irak, and after this,
-governor of Egypt; Sardinia, Majorca, and Minorca, also had felt his
-presence.
-
-[65] Though some historians lead Musa (in 712) into the Narbonnese
-Gaul, there are strong reasons to reject this as an erroneous
-supposition; it is more than doubtful whether the old chief ever
-passed the Pyrenees.
-
-[66] The statement made by some historians, that _Ætius_ presented
-this table as a gift to _Torismund_, after the victory of Chalons
-(451), seems to rest on a very slender foundation; and so, I am
-inclined to think, do the 365 feet of gems and massive gold so
-liberally bestowed upon the table by Oriental writers. Another
-tradition substitutes, as the gift of the Roman patrician, the famous
-Missorium, or great golden dish for the service of the communion
-table, which is stated to have weighed 500 pounds, and to have been
-adorned with a profusion of gems.
-
-[67] Some historians make Musa arrive _after_ the death of Walid;
-and some place the latter event a year later (715). The records of
-the period of the early Khalifs are so confused and contradictory
-that it is by no means easy always to ascertain the correct date of
-an event; the difficulty is considerably increased by the error into
-which some historians have fallen, of confounding the lunar year of
-the Mohammedans with the solar year of the Julian era. The common
-lunar year of the Hegira has 354 days; but the Mohammedans count,
-in a cyclus of 30 years, 11 leap years of 355 days (the 2nd, 5th,
-7th, 10th, 13th, 16th, 18th, 21st, 24th, 25th and 29th years of the
-cyclus).
-
-[68] Of small size, of course.
-
-[69] In the separation of parties, the _green_ color was adopted
-by the Alides, or Fatimites, the _black_ color by the Abassides,
-and the _white_ color by the Ommiades; these colors were displayed
-respectively by the several parties, not only in their standards but
-also in their garments and turbans.
-
-[70] Gibbon.
-
-
-
-
-                             PART II.
-
-                           THE FRANKS.
-
-
-
-
-                            CHAPTER I.
-
-  THE FRANK CONFEDERACY.--CLOVIS, THE FOUNDER OF THE FRANK MONARCHY.
-
-
-A great deal of labor and ingenuity has been wasted in futile
-endeavors to trace the origin of a _distinct_ Frank nation; however,
-after exhausting every possible means of research, and every probable
-and improbable suggestion of fancy, the most rational writers are
-now agreed in looking upon the supposed existence of a distinct
-FRANK nation as a myth,[71] and in believing that the name of
-_Franks_ or _Freemen_ was assumed, most probably about the middle
-of the third century after Christ, by a _league of several Germanic
-nations_, of whom the most important were the SIGAMBRIANS and the
-CATTI. The former constituted, with the BRUCTERI, the CHAMAVIANS,
-the CHATTUARII, and perhaps also part of the BATAVIANS, the _lower_
-branch of the confederacy; towards the end of the third century their
-settlements extended along the eastern bank of the Rhine, from the
-Lippe down to the mouth of the great German river; they occupied
-also the island of the Batavians, and the land between the Rhine and
-Meuse, and down to the Scheld. From the settlement of the Sigambrians
-on the _Yssel_ or _Sala_, this branch of the confederacy received
-the name of the _Salian_[72] Franks. The CATTI, the AMBSIVARIANS,
-and some other tribes, (including perhaps even the HERMUNDURI, or
-THURINGIANS?) constituted the _upper_ branch of the confederacy.
-
-The upper Franks extended their settlements from the lands between
-the Mein and Lippe gradually along both banks of the Rhine, from
-Mayence to Cologne; and, although repeatedly driven back by the
-Romans, they ultimately retained possession of the left bank of the
-river; whence they were also called _Riparian_ or _Ripuarian_ Franks
-(from the Latin _ripa_, bank, shore).
-
-The Franks repeatedly invaded Gaul, more particularly in the reigns
-of Valerian[73] (253-260), and of Gallienus (260-268); and though
-the Romans boast of numerous victories achieved at the time against
-them, under the leadership of Posthumus, the general of Valerian,
-but who afterwards usurped the empire in Gaul,[74] yet it is certain
-that the Franks not only carried their devastations from the Rhine
-to the foot of the Pyrenees, but numbers of them actually crossed
-these mountains, and ravaged Spain during twelve years; when they had
-exhausted that unfortunate country, they seized on some vessels in
-the ports of Spain, and crossed over to the coast of Africa, where
-their sudden appearance created the utmost consternation. The Emperor
-Probus defeated the Franks in 277, and transported a colony of them
-to the sea-coast of Pontus, where he established them with a view
-of strengthening the frontier against the inroads of the Alani. But
-impelled by their unconquerable love of country and freedom, they
-seized on a number of vessels in one of the harbors of the Euxine,
-sailed boldly through the Bosphorus and the Hellespont, and, cruising
-along the coast of the Mediterranean, made frequent descents upon
-the coasts of Asia, Greece, and Africa, and actually took and sacked
-the opulent city of Syracuse, in the island of Sicily; whence they
-proceeded to the Columns of Hercules, where they made their way into
-the Atlantic, and coasting round Spain and Gaul, reached the British
-Channel, sailed through it, and landed ultimately in safety, and
-richly laden with spoil, on the Batavian shore.
-
-In 287, the Menapian CARAUSIUS, who usurped the imperial purple in
-Britain, granted to the Franks the island of the Batavians, and the
-land between Meuse and Scheld. CONSTANTIUS (293), and CONSTANTINE
-(313), expelled them from these provinces; the Ripuarians also felt
-the heavy hand of Constantine, and of his son CRISPUS; the latter
-expelled them for a time from the left bank of the Rhine. But Julian
-found both the Salians and the Ripuarians in their old places; and,
-though successful against both (357 and 358), contented himself with
-the partial expulsion of the Ripuarians and the Chamavians, leaving
-the Sigambrians in quiet possession of the island of the Batavians,
-and the extensive district of Brabant, which they had occupied, on
-condition that they should henceforth hold themselves subjects and
-auxiliaries of the Roman empire. However, the expelled tribes soon
-made their reappearance on the banks of the Rhine, and, at the end of
-the fourth century, the Franks had regained complete possession of
-their old quarters.
-
-Stilicho, the great minister and general of the contemptible
-Honorius, made it one of the first acts of his administration to
-secure the alliance of the warlike Franks against the enemies of
-Rome (395). He succeeded so well, it would appear, that the Franks
-actually handed over to the discretion of his justice, one of their
-kings or dukes,[75] Marcomir, who was accused of having violated the
-faith of treaties; the accused prince was exiled to Tuscany, his
-brother SUNNO, who attempted to avenge the insult which he deemed
-had been put upon the nation by this degradation of the dignity of
-one of its chiefs, met with a harsher fate at the hands of his own
-countrymen: he was slain by them; and the princes whom Stilicho had
-appointed, were cheerfully acknowledged. The fact that Stilicho
-himself was of German (Vandalian) extraction, may account in some
-degree for this extraordinary subserviency of the Franks to the will
-and wishes of the master of the Western Empire. On this occasion, the
-Franks had engaged to protect the province of Gaul against invasion
-from the side of Germany. An opportunity of proving their sincerity
-and fidelity to Rome, or perhaps rather to the great minister who
-had made the treaty of alliance with them, offered in the year 406,
-when the confederated nations of the VANDALS, the ALANI, the SUEVI,
-and the BURGUNDIANS, were moving in a body to the Rhine with the
-intention of invading Gaul; and most honestly and valiantly indeed
-did the Franks acquit themselves of the duty undertaken by them. It
-so happened that the Vandals were the first to make their appearance
-on the bank of the river; proudly relying on their numbers they
-attempted to force the passage, without awaiting the coming up of
-the other confederated nations. They paid the penalty of their
-rashness; twenty thousand of them were slain, among them their king,
-GODIGISCLUS; and the opportune arrival of the ALANI, whose squadrons
-trampled down the infantry of the Franks, alone saved the nation of
-the Vandals from total destruction. Attacked by the combined forces
-of the confederates, the Franks were at last compelled to give way.
-On the 31st December, 406, the Suevi, the Alani, the Vandals, and the
-Burgundians, crossed the frozen Rhine without further opposition, and
-thus entered the defenceless provinces of Gaul, where the Burgundians
-formed a lasting settlement, the other nations of the confederacy
-proceeding subsequently further on to Spain and Lusitania.
-
-History leaves us in the dark as to the period when the Franks first
-submitted to the sway of _hereditary_ princes; but this much seems
-certain, that it must have been long before the time of Pharamond;
-and also that their long-haired kings[76] did not derive the name of
-_Merovingians_, from Meroveus, the grandson of Pharamond, but either
-from some more ancient Meroveus; or perhaps from _Merve_, the name
-which the Meuse receives after its union with the Waal (an arm of the
-Rhine); or from the same name of a castle near Dortrecht, supposed to
-have been the family seat of the Frankian kings.
-
-It would appear that PHARAMOND, the son of Marcomir, was elevated
-on the buckler,[77] about 410, and that his son CLODION succeeded
-him in 428. It is somewhat doubtful whether these two kings held
-sway over the Ripuarians as well as over the Salians, or even over
-all the nations which constituted the league of the latter. Clodion
-had his residence at _Dispargum_ (Duisborch?[78]), in Brabant,
-somewhere between Louvain and Brussels. Soon after his accession,
-this prince invaded Belgic Gaul, took Tournay and Cambray, and
-advanced as far as the river Somme. He was surprised and defeated in
-the plains of Artois, by ÆTIUS, the general of the Western empire
-(430); but that astute politician deemed it the wiser course to
-secure the friendship of the powerful leader of the warlike Franks,
-and therefore conceded to him free possession of the conquered
-province. _Clodion_ died about 448 (450?) He left two sons who
-disputed his succession. All we can gather from the very confused and
-contradictory accounts of this period, is that the younger of the two
-sons, whose name is not mentioned, was raised on the buckler by the
-Ripuarian, the elder, MERVEY or MEROVEUS,[79] by the Salian Franks;
-and that the former joined ATTILA in his invasion of Gaul, and fought
-on the side of the Huns in the great battle of Chalons (451); whilst
-Meroveus, with his Salians joined the standard of Ætius, and combated
-on the side of the Romans and Visigoths. Mervey’s son, CHILDERIC,
-offended the Franks by his excesses and his arbitrary proceedings:
-he was deposed by them, and was compelled to seek a refuge at the
-court of the King of the Thuringians, BISINUS or BASINUS. The
-Franks having thus disposed of their king, proceeded to bestow the
-royal dignity upon ÆGIDIUS, the Roman master-general of Gaul, who,
-after the compelled abdication and the most suspicious death of the
-Emperor MAJORIAN, in 461, had refused to acknowledge the successor
-forced upon the acceptance of the Roman Senate by the all-powerful
-Patrician RICIMER, the instigator of Majorian’s fall, and had
-assumed the sovereignty over the _remnant_ of the Gallic province
-which still obeyed the Roman sway. However, a few years after, the
-Franks, who found the Roman system of taxation more oppressive and
-objectionable than any act of Childeric’s, recalled that prince,
-and, under his guidance, expelled the “tax-gatherers” (465). Ægidius
-acquiesced with a good grace in a change which he had not the power
-to oppose. Childeric had been most hospitably entertained by King
-BISINUS; but the _hospitality_ extended to him by the wife of that
-monarch, Queen BASINA, was, by all accounts, still more _liberal_
-than that shown to the interesting guest by her worthy husband.
-After Childeric’s restoration, Basina left her husband, and rejoined
-her lover: the fruit of this voluntary union was CLOVIS, who, at
-the age of fifteen, succeeded, by his father’s death, to the rule
-of that portion of the Salian territory, over which Childeric had
-held sway, and which was confined to the island of the Batavians,
-with the ancient dioceses of Tournay and Arras; for the custom of
-the Franks to divide the treasures and territories of a deceased
-duke or king equally among his sons, had had the natural effect
-to split the kingdom of Pharamond into several parts independent
-of each other. CLOVIS combined with an insatiable ambition, all
-the qualities requisite to satisfy that all-absorbing passion. His
-personal bravery was controlled and directed by cool and consummate
-prudence. He wielded the _francisca_ (the battle-axe of the Franks)
-with formidable strength and skill; and he did not hesitate, when
-occasion required, to make his own soldiers feel the weight of
-his arm and the precision of his aim. He subjected the barbarians
-whom he commanded to the strict rules of a severe discipline which
-he enforced with unbending rigor. A crafty and astute politician,
-he was endowed with the most essential requisites for success,
-_patience_ and _perseverance_. In the pursuit and accomplishment of
-his ambitious designs, he trampled on every law of God and nature: no
-feeling of pity ever stayed, no fear of retribution ever restrained,
-his murderous hands. He was indeed the worthy progenitor of a line of
-princes fit to take the proudest place among the highest aristocracy
-of crime, to put to the blush the _Neros_, the _Caligulas_, the
-_Domitians_, the _Caracallas_, the _Elagabalus_ of imperial Rome, and
-to rank with the _Bourbons_, the _Hapsburgs_ and the _Tudors_. At the
-age of twenty, he made war upon SYAGRIUS, the son of Ægidius, who had
-inherited from his father the city and diocese of Soissons, and whose
-sway was acknowledged also by the cities and territories of Rheims,
-Troyes, Beauvais and Amiens. In alliance with his cousin RAGNACHAR,
-King of the Franks of Cambray, and some other Merovingian princes,
-he defeated Syagrius at Soissons, and reduced in the brief space of
-a few months the remnant of the Roman dominion in Gaul, and which
-had survived ten years the extinction of the Western empire (486).
-Syagrius fled to Thoulouse, where he flattered himself to find a safe
-asylum; but in vain: ALARIC II., the son of the great EURIC, was a
-minor, and the men who governed the kingdom of the Visigoths in his
-name, were but too readily intimidated by the threats of Clovis, and
-pusillanimously delivered up the hapless fugitive to certain death. A
-few years after (491), Clovis enlarged his dominions towards the east
-by the ample diocese of Tongres. In 498, he married the Burgundian
-princess CLOTILDA, who, in the midst of an Arian court, had been
-educated in the Nicean faith.[80] Clotilda’s endeavors to convert her
-husband to Christianity were not very successful at first, though he
-consented to the baptism of his first-born son; the sudden death of
-the infant, which the ignorant and superstitious Pagan was inclined
-to attribute to the anger of his gods, had well-nigh proved fatal to
-any further attempt at conversion; still the beauty and blandishments
-of the pious queen succeeded at last in overcoming the scruples and
-apprehensions of her husband, and gaining his consent to a repetition
-of the experiment: this time the infant survived, and Clovis began
-to listen with greater favor to the exhortations of his Christian
-spouse.
-
-In the year 496, the Alemanni,[81] who occupied both banks of the
-Rhine, from the source of that river to its conflux with the Mein and
-the Moselle, and had spread themselves over the modern provinces of
-Alsace and Lorraine, invaded the territories of SIGEBERT, the king of
-the Ripuarian Franks, who had his seat at Cologne. Sigebert, unable
-to resist the invaders single-handed, invoked the powerful aid of his
-cousin, Clovis, and the latter hastened at once to the rescue. He
-encountered the invaders in the plain of TOLBIAC (_Zülpich_), about
-twenty-four miles from Cologne. A fierce battle ensued. For several
-hours it raged with unabated fury, without any decided advantage
-being gained by either party; at length the Franks gave way, and the
-Alemanni raised shouts of victory. Clovis saw his dream of power and
-ambition rapidly fading away; in his extremity he invoked the God
-of Clotilda and the Christians, to grant him the victory over his
-enemies, which service he vowed duly to acknowledge, by consenting
-to be baptised.[82] Resolved, however, to do his share also towards
-the achievement of the victory which he was imploring the Christian
-Lord of Hosts to vouchsafe him, he rallied his discomfited troops,
-and placing himself at their head, led them on again to the attack,
-and by his valor and conduct, succeeded in restoring the battle. The
-franciscas, and the heavy swords of the Franks, made fearful havoc
-in the hostile ranks; the king, and many of the most valiant chiefs
-of the Alemanni, were slain, and ere evening the power of one of
-the fiercest and most warlike nations of Germany, was annihilated.
-Pursued by the victorious Franks into the heart of their forests, the
-Alemanni were forced to submit to the yoke of the conqueror; some
-of their tribes fled to the territory of the Gothic king of Italy,
-THEODORIC, who assigned them settlements in Rhætia, and interceded,
-with his brother-in-law,[83] in favor of the conquered nation.
-
-In his distress, Clovis had vowed to adore the God of the Christians,
-if He would succour him; the danger past, and the victory achieved,
-the perfidious Frank would gladly have made light of his vow, but
-for the incessant importunities of Clotilda, and of Remigius, the
-Catholic bishop of Rheims. On the day of Christmas in the same year,
-(496), Clovis was baptised in the Cathedral of Rheims with 3000 of
-his warlike subjects; and the remainder of the Salians speedily
-followed the example. As the kings of the Goths, Burgundians, and
-Vandals were Arians, and even the Greek emperor, Anastasius, was not
-quite free from the taint of heresy; the Bishop of Rome, ANASTASIUS
-II., overjoyed at the conversion of the powerful king of the Franks
-to the Nicean faith, hailed the neophyte as the “_Most Christian
-King_.”
-
-The conversion of Clovis to the Catholic faith stood him in excellent
-need in his schemes of further aggrandisement. His arms were
-henceforward supported by the favor and zeal of the Catholic clergy,
-more especially in the discontented cities of Gaul, under the sway of
-the Arian kings of the Visigoths and the Burgundians. The Armoricans,
-or Bretons, in the north-western provinces of Gaul, who had hitherto
-bravely and successfully resisted all attempts of the _Pagan_ chief
-to conquer them, were now gradually induced to submit to an equal and
-honorable union with a Christian people, governed by a _Catholic_
-king (497-500); and the remnants of the Roman troops (most of them
-of barbarian extraction), also acknowledged the sway of Clovis,
-on condition of their being permitted to retain their arms, their
-ensigns, and their peculiar dress and institutions.
-
-Clotilda had never ceased to urge her husband to make war upon
-her uncle Gundobald, the murderer of her father. Her other uncle,
-GODEGESIL, had been permitted by his rapacious brother to retain the
-dependent principality of Geneva. But fearful lest Gundobald should
-treat him in the end the same as he had his other brothers, he lent
-a willing ear to the suggestions of his niece, and the tempting
-offers of the Frankish king, and entered into a secret compact with
-the latter to betray and abandon the cause of his brother on the
-first favorable opportunity. Hereupon Clovis declared war against
-the King of Burgundy, and invaded his territories: in the year 500
-or 501, the armies of the Franks and the Burgundians met between
-Langres and Dijon. The treacherous desertion, at the decisive moment,
-of Godegesil and the troops of Geneva, saved Clovis from defeat.
-Apprehensive of the disaffection of the Gauls, Gundobald abandoned
-the castle of Dijon, and the important cities of Lyons and Vienna,
-to the king of the Franks, and continued his flight till he had
-reached Avignon; but here he made a stand, and defended the city
-with such skill and vigor, that Clovis ultimately consented to a
-treaty of peace, which made the king of Burgundy tributary to him,
-and stipulated the cession of the province of Vienna to Godegesil,
-as a reward for his treachery. A garrison of 5000 Franks was left
-at Vienna, to secure the somewhat doubtful allegiance of Godegesil,
-and also to protect the latter against the vengeance of his offended
-brother. But Gundobald, unscrupulous and truculent though he was
-in the pursuit of his grasping policy, was yet not lacking wisdom.
-As soon as the conclusion of the peace with Clovis had restored
-to him the remnant of his kingdom, he applied himself to gain the
-affections of his Roman and Gallic subjects, by the promulgation of
-a code of wise and impartial laws[84] (502), and to conciliate the
-Catholic prelates by artful promises of his approaching conversion
-from the errors of the Arian heresy. Having strengthened his
-position, moreover, by alliances with the kings of the Ostrogoths
-and Visigoths, he suddenly invaded the territories which Clovis had
-compelled him to cede to his brother, and surprised Vienna and its
-Frankish garrison ere his brother was even fully aware of his hostile
-intentions. Godegesil sought refuge in a church; but the protection
-of the holy precincts availed him nought; he was struck down dead at
-the altar by his remorseless brother. The provinces of Geneva and
-Vienna were re-united to the Burgundian kingdom; the captive Franks
-were sent to the king of the Visigoths, who settled them in the
-territory of Thoulouse. Clovis, who could now no longer rely upon the
-assistance of a traitor in the camp of Gundobald, deemed it the wiser
-course to submit to the altered state of affairs, and to content
-himself with the alliance and the promised military service of the
-King of Burgundy.
-
-Already before the Burgundian war, Clovis had cast his covetous
-eyes upon the fair provinces of the south of Gaul, which were
-held by ALARIC II., the King of the Visigoths. Here, also, the
-disaffection of the Catholic Gauls and Romans promised the best
-chances of success. Some paltry border-squabble was eagerly laid
-hold of by Clovis to pick a quarrel with the King of the Visigoths,
-and war seemed at the time inevitable between the two nations; when
-Theodoric, Alaric’s father-in-law,[85] interposed his good offices,
-and succeeded, by a well-timed threat of an armed intervention,
-in restraining the aggressive spirit of the Frankish King, (498).
-A personal interview was proposed between Clovis and Alaric: it
-was held on the border of the two states, in a small island of the
-Loire, near Amboise. The two kings met in right royal fashion: they
-embraced, feasted together, indulged in a profusion of protestations
-of mutual regard and brotherly affection, and parted full of
-smiles--and mutual hatred and distrust.
-
-Had Alaric pursued the same wise course as Gundobald, he might have
-found in the affection of the people under his sway, a safe shield
-against Frank aggression. But, unfortunately, the Arian could not
-forbear from inflicting upon his dissenting subjects, those petty
-acts of tyranny in which dominant sects delight, and which are always
-sure to create a deeper and more lasting disaffection than any act
-of political oppression. The Catholic clergy in Aquitaine laid
-their complaints against their Arian sovereign, before the Catholic
-King of the Franks; and besought the latter to come to the aid of
-his co-religionists, and free them from the yoke of their Gothic
-tyrants. Clovis eagerly seized the pretext. In a general assembly
-of the Frankish chiefs and the Catholic prelates held at Paris, he
-declared his intention not to permit the Arian heretics to retain
-possession any longer of the fairest portion of Gaul. Alaric did his
-best to prepare for the coming struggle; the army which he collected
-was much more numerous, indeed, than the military power which
-Clovis could bring against him; but, unfortunately, a long peace
-had enervated the descendants of the once so formidable warriors of
-the first Alaric. They were unable to sustain the fierce shock of
-the Franks, who totally overthrew and routed them in the battle of
-Vouglé, near Poitiers, in 507. Alaric himself fell by the hand of his
-rival; Angoulême, Bordeaux, Thoulouse, submitted to the conqueror,
-and the whole of Aquitaine acknowledged his sway, (508); and he
-would have succeeded in driving the Visigoths beyond the Pyrenean
-mountains, had not the King of Italy thrown the shield of his power
-over the discomfited nation. The Franks and their Burgundian allies
-were besieging Arles and Carcassone, when the valiant HIBBAS,
-Theodoric’s general, appeared on the scene with a powerful and
-well-appointed army of Ostrogoths. He defeated the victors of Vouglé,
-and compelled the ambitious King of the Franks to raise the siege
-of the two cities, and to lend a willing ear to proposals of an
-advantageous peace. He then overthrew and slew the bastard GESALIC,
-who had usurped the throne of the Visigoths, to the exclusion of
-Alaric’s infant son, AMALARIC. The latter was now proclaimed King
-of Spain and Septimania, under the guardianship of his grandfather,
-Theodoric: Clovis being permitted to retain possession of the land
-from the Cevennes and the Garonne to the Loire, whilst the Provence
-was annexed to the dominions of the King of Italy, who thus did not
-disdain despoiling his own grandson of one of the finest provinces of
-his kingdom.
-
-The Emperor Anastasius, overjoyed at the humiliation inflicted by
-Clovis upon the Goths, bestowed upon the King of the Franks the
-dignity and ensigns of the Roman consulship! (510); which, though
-in reality a mere empty title, yet invested that monarch, in the
-eyes of his Roman and Gallic subjects, with the prestige of Imperial
-authority.
-
-Clovis seeing himself thus in undisputed possession of the greater
-part of Gaul, thought the time had come to unite the several Frankish
-tribes into one nation, under his sceptre. But, knowing full well
-that his Franks would not follow him in an open war against his own
-kindred of the race of Pharamond, he coolly planned the assassination
-of the whole family. SIGEBERT, the king of the Ripuarians, had proved
-himself a most faithful ally of his Salian cousin; and in the last
-campaign against the Visigoths, he had sent to his aid a powerful
-contingent of his Ripuarians, under the command of his own son,
-CHLODERIC. Clovis excited the ambition and cupidity of the latter,
-and succeeded in persuading him to murder his own father; when the
-horrid deed was perpetrated, the wretched son, intent upon securing
-the powerful support of the Salian king, offered him part of the
-treasures of the murdered man. The “fair cousin” sent him word to
-keep his treasures, and simply to show them to his ambassadors,
-that he, Clovis, might rejoice in the prosperity of his cousin;
-but, when the assassin of his father had lifted up the heavy lid
-of one of the boxes, and was bending down to take out some of the
-precious articles which it held, he was slain in his turn by one of
-the _ambassadors_ of Clovis. That most Christian king afterwards
-solemnly protested to the Ripuarians that Chloderic, the assassin of
-his father, had fallen by the hand of some unknown avenger, and that
-he, Clovis, was innocent of the death of either of them. “Surely,”
-he exclaimed, with well affected horror and indignation, “no one
-would dare to deem _me_ guilty of that most horrible of all crimes,
-the murder of my own kindred!” The Ripuarians believed him, and
-acknowledged him their king, by raising him on a shield. The next
-victims were CHARARIC, the king of the Morinic Franks, in Belgium,
-and his son. Chararic, had refused his aid to Clovis, in the campaign
-against Syagrius; the fact had, indeed, occurred rather long ago, but
-still it answered the purpose of the unscrupulous son of Childeric.
-Chararic and his son, having fallen into his hands by the grossest
-treachery, were despoiled of their treasures and their long hair, and
-ordained priests. When the son, endeavoring to console his father,
-could not refrain from indignant invectives against the author of
-their misery, the pious king of the Salians calmly ordered both
-of them to be slain, as they had “dared to rebel against the will
-of the Most High!” There remained still the family of the Cambray
-princes, consisting of three brothers, viz., RAGNACHAR, RICHAR, and
-RIGNOMER. The pretext in their case was that they still continued
-Pagans. Clovis bribed some of the chiefs of the tribe with _spurious_
-gold; they fell unawares upon Ragnachar and Richar, bound them, and
-delivered them into the hands of their “loving cousin.” Addressing
-the hapless Ragnachar, that monstrous villain exclaimed, “How dare
-you bring disgrace upon our noble family, by submitting to the
-indignity of bonds!” and, with a blow of his battle-axe, he spared
-the wretched captive the trouble of a reply; then turning to the
-brother of the butchered man, “Hadst thou defended thy brother,” he
-cried, “they could not have bound him;” and an instant after, the
-blood and brains of the brothers had mingled their kindred streams
-on the weapon of the most Christian king. When the wretches who had
-betrayed their princes into the hands, of the assassin, came to
-complain that the price of their treachery had been paid in _base
-coin_, he told them, traitors deserved no better reward, and bade
-them be gone, lest he should feel tempted to avenge upon them the
-blood of his murdered relations.
-
-Rignomer was disposed of by private assassination, and Clovis might
-now exclaim: “At last I am king of the Franks.” The worthy bishop
-of Tours, the chronicler of this, and some of the following reigns
-of the Merovingians, whilst coolly relating these horrid crimes of
-his hero, piously informs us that success in all his undertakings
-was vouchsafed to Clovis by the Most High, and that his enemies
-were delivered up into his hands, _because he walked with a sincere
-heart in the ways of the Lord, and did that which was right in his
-sight_!![86] What a pity that this godly monarch was not permitted to
-walk a little longer in the ways of the Lord: an additional score or
-so of murders would surely have achieved canonisation for him. But
-the most orthodox and most Christian king was suddenly called away
-from the scene of his glorious exploits; at the very time when he was
-revolving mighty schemes of further aggrandisement, and planning,
-as preliminary step, the assassination of Gundobald, the king of
-Burgundy, and of Theudes, the regent of Spain, (511). His four sons
-divided his kingdom between them; THEODORIC, (Thierry) the eldest,
-received the Eastern part, _Austrasia_,[87] (Francia orientalis),
-and also part of Champagne, and the conquests of Clovis south of the
-Loire; he established the seat of his government at Metz; CLODOMIR’S
-seat was at Orleans; CLOTAIRE’S at Soissons; CHILDEBERT’S at Paris;
-the share of the latter was called _Neustria_ or _Neustrasia_
-(Francia occidentalis), a name which was afterwards used to designate
-the whole of the territories occupied by the Franks between the
-mouths of the Rhine and the Loire, the Meuse, and the sea.
-
-It is not my intention to smear my pages with the blood and mire
-of the lives and acts of the Merovingian princes. We will content
-ourselves here with a brief glance at the principal events and
-incidents connected with the progress of the Frank empire during the
-two hundred years that intervene between the death of Clovis and the
-accession of Charles, afterwards surnamed _Martel_, as Mayor of the
-Palace.
-
-In the year 523, the three sons of Clotilda, invited by their
-unforgiving mother, invaded Burgundy, and attacked the son and
-successor of Gundobald, SIGISMOND, whose conversion to the Catholic
-faith has gained him, in the lying annals penned by the clerical
-historians of the period, the name of a saint and a martyr, though
-he had imbrued his hands in the blood of his own son, an innocent
-youth whom he had basely sacrificed to the pride of his second
-wife! Sigismond lost a battle and fell soon after into the hands
-of the sons of Clotilda, who carried him to Orleans, and had him
-buried alive together with his wife and two of his children--an
-excellent proof that they had not _degenerated_. Sigismond’s
-brother, GONDEMAR, defeated the invaders in the battle of Vienna,
-where Clodomir fell. This gave Gondemar a few years’ respite, as
-the two brothers, Clotaire and Childebert, were busy sharing the
-inheritance of Clodomir.[88] But, in 534, the brothers invaded
-Burgundy again; when Gondemar lost his crown and his liberty, and
-the fair Burgundian provinces became the patrimony of the Merovingian
-princes. In the year 530, Theodoric and Clotaire conquered and
-annexed the territories of the Thuringians, thus extending their
-dominion to the banks of the Unstrut. Rhætia and Provence also fell
-into the hands of the successors of Clovis. Theudobald, the grandson
-and second successor of Theodoric, or Thierry, died in 554; as he
-left no heir, Clotaire and Childebert shared his dominions between
-them; Childebert’s death, in 558, without male heirs, left Clotaire
-in sole and undisputed possession of the Frankish empire, which now
-extended from the Atlantic and the Pyrenees to the Unstrut. After
-having added to the list of his crimes the murder of his son Chramus,
-and also of the wife and the two daughters of the latter, King
-Clotaire died in 560. His kingdom was again divided between his four
-sons, CHARIBERT, GUNTRAM, SIGEBERT, and CHILPERIC; the eldest of the
-brothers, Charibert, died in 567. As he left no heir, his territories
-were divided between the three surviving brothers. But Chilperic was
-dissatisfied with his share, and this led to a series of civil wars,
-which terminated only in 613, when Clotaire II., the son of Chilperic
-and Fredegonda, re-united in his hands the entire empire of the
-Franks.
-
-It would be difficult to crowd a greater number of more appalling
-and atrocious crimes, within the short space of half a century,
-than were committed by the Merovingians, from the time of the death
-of Charibert up to the re-union of the empire under Clotaire II.;
-the names of Chilperic, of Fredegonda,[89] of Brunehilda,[90] of
-Theuderic,[91] and last, though not least, of the monster Clotaire
-(second of the name) deserve, indeed, prominent places in the great
-criminal calendar of the world’s history.
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[71] Still we must not omit to state that the lays of ancient
-Germany, and the old Chronicles of the country, exhibit singular
-agreement in the reproduction of the popular tradition which makes
-the _nation of the Franks_ come from Troy. However, after all, this
-makes no great difference, as even the most strenuous believers in
-the existence of a distinct nation of Franks, fully admit that as
-early as the third century (the time when the name of the Franks
-first appears in history) that name included _several_ Germanic
-nations. By some the Thuringians are given as a _branch_ of the Frank
-nation.
-
-[72] Some, however, derive the name from the Old German word
-_saljan_, i.e. to grant, in reference to part of the territory
-occupied by the Salian Franks having been _granted_ to them by the
-Romans (by CARAUSIUS, in 287, confirmed at a later period by JULIAN
-the Apostate). LEO derives the name from the Celtic word, _Sal_, i.e.
-the sea.
-
-[73] Valerian was taken prisoner by SAPOR, King of Persia, in 260,
-who is said to have treated the fallen emperor with the greatest
-indignity. Valerian died in captivity.
-
-[74] He was one of the _nineteen_ usurpers who rose against Gallienus
-in the several provinces of the empire. The writers of the Augustan
-history have magnified the number to _thirty_.
-
-[75] History names PHARAMOND as the first _King_ of the Franks;
-the author of the _Gesta Francorum_ makes that prince the son of
-Marcomir, the king mentioned in the text; and there appears to be
-little doubt indeed, but that the Franks had established the right
-of hereditary succession somewhat before the time of Clodion, the
-reputed son of Pharamond.
-
-[76] The fashion of long hair was among the Franks for a time, the
-somewhat exclusive privilege of the royal family; the members of
-which wore their locks hanging down in flowing ringlets on their back
-and shoulders; while the rest of the nation were obliged to shave the
-hind part of the head, and to comb the hair over the forehead.
-
-[77] Elevation on a buckler was the ceremony by which the Franks
-invested their chosen leader with military command.
-
-[78] According to some historians and geographers, Duisburg, on the
-right bank of the Rhine.
-
-[79] Most historians make Meroveus, the _younger_ of the two sons
-of Clodion; and, after his father’s death, they send him to Rome
-to implore the protection of Ætius. Now, it is next to impossible
-that the _beardless youth_, whom Priscus states to have seen at Rome
-(about 449 or 450), could have been Meroveus, since the _son_ of that
-prince, CHILDERIC, was within ten years after exiled by the Franks
-on account of his excesses and his despotic sway. The young man whom
-Priscus saw was most probably Childeric, who may have been sent to
-Rome by his father, Meroveus, to renew the alliance which Clodion had
-made with Ætius.
-
-[80] The kingdom of the Burgundians, which had been established in
-407 (see page 93), was divided, in 470, among the four sons of king
-GONDERIC; HILPERIC, or CHILPERIC, the father of Clotilda, fixed his
-residence at Geneva; GUNDOBALD at Lyons; GODEGESIL at Besançon,
-and GODEMAR at Vienne (in Dauphiné). A war broke out between the
-brothers, in which Gundobald conquered and took prisoner Hilperic
-and Godemar; the latter committed suicide; the former was put to
-death by his inhuman brother Gundobald, and his wife and his two sons
-shared his fate; his two daughters were spared, and one of them,
-Clotilda, was brought up at the court of Lyons; and, as chance would
-have it, in the _Catholic_ faith, though Gundobald himself, like most
-of the Christian princes of the time, professed the Arian doctrine,
-Gundobald would gladly have refused Clovis the hand of his niece,
-had he dared to brave the anger of the powerful Frankish chief.
-Clotilda, on her part, was overjoyed at the prospect of an alliance
-with a King, whose ambition might be turned to good account for the
-pursuit of her own vengeful projects against the murderer of her
-father; with a pagan, whose conversion to the Nicean creed would gain
-her beloved Catholic church a formidable champion against the hated
-Arian heretics. Gundobald had scarcely parted with his niece, and her
-father’s treasures, when the pious princess displayed her Christian
-spirit, by ordering her Frankish escort to burn down the Burgundian
-villages through which they were passing, and when she saw the flames
-rising, and heard the despairing cries of the unfortunates who were
-thus being deprived of their homes, she lifted up her voice, and
-praised the God of Athanasius--the _holy_ Chlotildis!
-
-[81] The Alemanni were also, like the Franks, a league of several
-Germanic nations, among whom the Teneteri, the Usipetes, and most
-probably a portion of the Suevi, were the most important. The
-favorite etymology of the name, _Allemanni_ or _All-Men_, as meant
-to denote at once the various lineage, and the common bravery of
-the component members of the league, is a little fanciful perhaps,
-yet not more so, or rather not quite so much so, as some other
-etymologies of the name indulged in by the learned.
-
-[82] The invocation as given by Gregory of Tours, is rather _naïve_.
-Jesu Christe, quem Chlotildis prædicat esse filium Dei vivi, qui
-dare auxilium laborantibus, victoriamque in te sperantibus tribuere
-diceris, tuæ opis gloriam devotus efflagito: ut si mihi victoriam
-super hos hostes indulseris, et expertus fuero illam virtutem, quam
-de te populus tuo nomine dicatus probasse se prædicat, credam tibi et
-in nomine tuo baptizer. _Invocavi enim deos meos, sed ut experior,
-elongati sunt ab auxilio meo: unde credo eos nullius potestatis, qui
-tibi obedientibus non succurrunt._ A pretty plain hint: no victory,
-no belief, no baptism!
-
-[83] Theodoric had lately married ALBOFLEDA (Audofleda, or
-Andefleda), the sister of Clovis.
-
-[84] _Lex Gudebalda_--“_La loy Gombette_.”--Drawn up by AREDIUS.
-
-[85] Alaric was married to Theodoric’s daughter THEUDOGOTHA, or
-THEODICHUSA.
-
-[86] Prosternabat enim quotidie Deus hostes ejus sub manu ipsius,
-et augebat regnum ejus, _eo quod ambularet recto corde coram eo, et
-faceret, quæ placita erant in oculis ejus_. Gregor. Hist. lib. II.,
-cap. 40.
-
-[87] Austrasia comprised the old Salian possessions in Belgium, and
-the territories of the Ripuarians and the Alemanni.
-
-[88] Clodomir had left three sons, who were brought up by their
-grandmother, Clotilda. The two brothers having got possession of two
-of their nephews, calmly resolved to kill them. Clotaire sheathed
-his dagger in the breast of one of them, the other embraced the
-knees of his uncle Childebert, and besought him to spare his life.
-The tears of the innocent child moved even the harsh Childebert
-to pity; he entreated his brother to spare him; but that monster
-remained deaf to all prayers, and threatened even to make Childebert
-share the fate of the helpless boy, should he continue any longer to
-withhold him from his murderous hands: Childebert thereupon pushed
-back the poor innocent, and Clotaire’s dagger speedily sent him to
-rejoin his brother (532). The third of the children of Clodomir was,
-indeed, saved from his uncle’s clutches; but he deemed it necessary
-afterwards to embrace the ecclesiastical profession, in order to
-secure his safety.
-
-[89] Fredegonda was first Chilperic’s concubine, subsequently,
-after the murder of Galsuintha, his wife. After a career of blood
-and crime, of which history affords but few parallels, she died in
-579, at the height of prosperity and power, tranquilly in her bed,
-properly shriven, of course, and with a promise of paradise. Had the
-female monster been but a little more liberal to the _Church_, who
-knows but the Calendar of the Saints might contain an additional name.
-
-[90] Brunehilda was the daughter of Athanagild, King of Spain,
-and the wife of Sigebert, King of Austrasia. She was in every
-respect a worthy pendant to Fredegonda; but her final fate was very
-different from that of her more fortunate rival, whom she survived
-about sixteen years. In the year 613, she fell into the hands of
-Fredegonda’s son, Clotaire, who inflicted upon the aged woman the
-most horrible tortures, and had her finally tied, with one arm
-and one leg, to the tail of a wild horse, and thus dragged along
-over a stony road until death took mercy upon her. And all these
-people _professed_ the religion of Christ, and were surrounded by
-numbers of _most pious_ bishops! but then, the _Church_ has always
-been indulgent to those who could and would remember her with rich
-endowments. Moreover, many of the bishops of that period were
-themselves such monstrous villains that little or no remonstrance
-could be expected from _them_ against any royal crime, however so
-atrocious.--To give one instance out of many: a bishop of Clermont,
-wishing to compel a priest of his diocese to cede to him a small
-estate held by the latter, and which he refused to part with, had the
-unfortunate man shut up in a coffin, with a decaying corpse, and the
-coffin placed in the vault of the church!
-
-[91] Theuderic, or Thierry, was the younger son of Sigebert’s son
-Childebert; he murdered his elder brother, Theudebert, and the infant
-son of the latter, Meroveus (612). He died a year after, and two of
-his own boys, Sigebert and Corbus, met the same fate at the hands of
-Clotaire.
-
-
-
-
-                            CHAPTER II.
-
-  DECLINE OF THE MEROVINGIAN PRINCES.--THE MAYORS OF THE PALACE.--PEPIN
-  OF LANDEN.--PEPIN OF HERISTAL.--CHARLES MARTEL.--THE BATTLE OF TOURS.
-
-
-When the Roman empire had ceased to exist, the Frankish kings had,
-in imitation of the Roman rulers, begun to surround themselves
-with a court, and a great many high officers, and charges had been
-created, among the most important of which may be mentioned the
-office of Lord High Chancellor (archicancellarius, referendarius);
-Lord High Chamberlain, or High Treasurer (thesaurarius, camerarius);
-Master of the royal stables (marescalchus); Lord Justice (comes
-palatii); Steward of the royal household (senescalchus); and more
-particularly that of Mayor of the palace (præfectus palatii, or
-major-domus, or comes domûs regiæ). The functions of the latter
-officer had originally been confined to the general superintendence
-of the palace, and the administration of the royal domains; but had
-speedily been extended also to the command of the household troops.
-In the course of the domestic wars between the Merovingian princes,
-the mayors of the palace had gradually acquired a power and influence
-second only to that of the king; so that, after the assassination of
-Sigebert, in 575, GOGO, the then mayor of the palace of Austrasia,
-had actually been named regent during the minority of Sigebert’s son,
-Childebert. So powerful indeed had these domestic officers grown,
-that Clotaire II. was positively forced to bind himself by oath to
-WARNACHAR, the mayor of the palace of Burgundy, to leave him for his
-life in undisturbed possession of his office; he was obliged also to
-acknowledge the learned and valiant ARNULF, the Austrasian, mayor
-of the palace, and subsequently--when that officer embraced the
-ecclesiastical profession, and became Bishop of Metz--the energetic
-Pepin of Landen,[92] as his representative with sovereign powers in
-Austrasia. Even when Clotaire had ceded the kingdom of Austrasia to
-his son DAGOBERT (622), Pepin continued to exercise almost unlimited
-sway in that part of the Frankish empire. After Clotaire’s death,
-in 623, Dagobert succeeded also to the Neustrian kingdom; and in
-631, after his brother Charibert’s death,[93] who had held some
-of the south-western provinces, he became sole king of France. He
-died in 638; he was a compound of sensuality and indolence; still
-his character and life were not stained with the horrible crimes
-perpetrated by his predecessors, and more particularly by his own
-father; he was the last of the descendants of Clovis, who exhibited
-even the faintest spark of that fierce and energetic spirit which
-made the founder of the Frank monarchy, however so abhorrent as a
-_man_, yet _respectable_, and even _great_, as a _king_. Dagobert
-built and richly endowed the Church of St. Denys, which gained him
-the surname “The Great,” from a grateful clergy; but history has
-refused to register the ill-deserved epithet. Pepin of Landen died a
-year after his king (689). His son, _Grimoald_, deemed the power of
-his family already so firmly established, that, taking advantage of
-the tender age of Dagobert’s sons, Sigebert (second of the name in
-the list of the Merovingian kings), and Clovis (II.), he attempted to
-deprive them of their father’s succession, and to place his own son
-(Childebert) on the throne; both father and son paid with their lives
-the failure of the ambitious plan. But the overthrow of Grimoald led
-simply to a change of persons; the power of the mayors of the palace
-remained undiminished, and from this time forward, the Merovingian
-kings were mere ciphers. “They ascended the throne without power, and
-sunk into the grave without a name.” (Gibbon.) Sigebert died in 650;
-his brother Clovis six years after. One of the sons of the latter,
-Clotaire (III.), succeeded to the Neustrian, another, Childeric
-(II.), to the Austrasian part of the empire. After Clotaire’s death,
-in 670, the third brother, Theodoric, or Thierry (III.), was for a
-short time king of Neustria; but he was speedily dispossessed by his
-brother Childeric (or to speak more correctly, _his_ mayor of the
-palace was compelled to give way to Childeric’s mayor of the palace).
-Childeric was murdered in 673; when Thierry was reinstated in
-Neustria, Austrasia being given to Dagobert (II.), a son of Sigebert
-II., but who had hitherto been kept out of his inheritance.
-
-After the death of Dagobert in 678, the Austrasians refused to submit
-to Thierry, the King of Neustria and Burgundy, or rather to his
-haughty mayor of the palace, EBROIN. PEPIN D’HERISTAL, the grandson
-of Pepin of Landen, and his cousin, MARTIN, were at the head of the
-insurgent Austrasian nobility. Martin fell into the hands of Ebroin,
-and was killed. Ebroin himself was soon after assassinated, (682).
-His successor, GISELMAR, defeated Pepin at Namur, but the Austrasian
-notwithstanding maintained his position. The Neustrian nobility,
-discontented with the rule of Giselmar’s successor, BERTHAR or
-BERCHAR, ultimately called Pepin to their aid.
-
-Berthar, and his puppet, Thierry, were defeated by the Austrasian
-ruler in the famous battle of Testry, near Peronne and St. Quentin,
-in 687. Berthar was slain as he fled from the field of battle: and
-although the _name_ of king was left to Thierry, he was compelled
-to acknowledge Pepin as _sole_, _perpetual_, and _hereditary_ Mayor
-of the Palace, in the three kingdoms of Neustria, Austrasia, and
-Burgundy, under the style and title of Duke and Prince of the Franks,
-(Dux et Princeps Francorum). Pepin was now, to all intents and
-purposes, the actual ruler of the Frankish empire--king in all but
-the name. The nominal sovereigns had, henceforth, a residence[94]
-assigned them, which they dared not even quit without the sanction
-of their master; nay, even the paltry consolation of the pomp and
-glitter of royalty was not vouchsafed them--except once a year in
-the month of March,[95] when the royal puppet was conducted in state
-in the old Frankish fashion, in a waggon drawn by two oxen, to the
-great annual assembly of the nation; to give audience to foreign
-ambassadors, or to receive plaints and petitions--and to place his
-organ of speech, for a time, at the disposal of the Mayor of the
-Palace, and give utterance to the replies or decisions of the real
-ruler of France. The assembly over, the “King” was reconducted to
-his residence or prison, where a feeble retinue and a strong guard
-insulted the fallen majesty of the house of Clovis. It would even
-appear, that the civil list assigned to the “King,” was only a
-precarious grant, and that the nominal master of three kingdoms,
-was often left without the means of defraying the expenses of his
-_humble_ household.[96] The epithet of the “_do-nothing kings_,” (les
-rois fainéans) has been felicitously applied to the last princes of
-the Merovingian line. Besides Thierry III, (✠621), three of them
-lived in the reign of Pepin of Heristal, viz: Clovis III, (✠695);
-Childebert III, (✠711); and Dagobert III., all of them minors.
-
-Pepin was an able and energetic ruler; he restored in some measure
-the respect of the law. Liberal rewards secured him the allegiance
-of the nobility; munificent endowments to churches and monasteries,
-and the aid and encouragement which he gave to the Christian
-missionaries, who were endeavoring to convert the heathen Germans,
-gained him the favor and support of the clergy: his good sword put
-down the discontented; and last, though certainly not least, he
-deserved the grateful affection of the people by alleviating their
-burthens, and by protecting them, in some measure, against the
-despotic oppression of the nobility. The expulsion of some Christian
-missionaries from Friesland, gave Pepin a pretext for endeavoring to
-subject the Frisons to the Frankish sway. He invaded Friesland in
-689, and defeated the Frison duke, or prince, Radbodus, at Dorestadt,
-or Dorsted; in consequence of which defeat, the latter was compelled
-to cede West Friesland to the Duke of the Franks; but all attempts to
-obtain the conversion of Radbodus[97] to Christianity failed.
-
-In 697, a new war broke out between the Duke of the Franks and the
-Prince of the Frisons,[98] in which the latter is stated to have been
-again defeated, and compelled to acknowledge, by the payment of an
-annual tribute, the supremacy of the Franks. It is added, also, that
-he gave his daughter in marriage to Pepin’s son Grimoald.
-
-Pepin of Heristal made also several expeditions, though, it would
-appear, with indifferent success only, against the Alemanni, the
-Thuringians, and the Bojoarii, or Bavarians, who had taken advantage
-of the internal dissensions and disorder of the Frankish empire, to
-shake off the yoke of their masters.
-
-In the beginning of the year 714, Pepin fell seriously ill, at
-his estate Jopila, on the Meuse. He sent for his only surviving
-(legitimate) son, GRIMOALD, whom he had made (after the death of his
-friend Nordbert) major domûs in Neustria, and (after the death of
-DROGO, another of his sons) Duke of Burgundy and Champagne, and whom
-he intended to name his successor in the government of the entire
-monarchy. But on his way to his father, Grimoald was assassinated at
-Liège, in the church of St. Lambert, by a Frison; at the instigation,
-it would appear, of some discontented nobles. He left an illegitimate
-infant son, Theudoald, or Theudebaud. Pepin was unfortunately
-persuaded by his wife, the ambitious PLECTRUDIS[99], who expected
-to wield the government during the minority of her little grandson,
-to name this infant his successor, instead of either of his own two
-illegitimate sons (Charles and Childebrand)[100], and of whom the
-latter, more especially, possessed his father’s great qualities, and
-that amount of physical and intellectual vigor indispensable to keep
-together and to rule over an empire composed of such heterogeneous
-and antagonistic elements, as the Frankish. Soon after this fatal
-step, which, we may safely assume the love of his country and of his
-glory, would never have permitted the aged ruler to take, had not his
-faculties been greatly impaired at the time by long illness and by
-the bitter grief of his son’s death, Pepin of Heristal died on the
-16th of December, 714.
-
-He had scarcely departed life when Plectrudis, who dreaded the
-aspiring genius of Charles, had the latter seized, and confined
-in the city of Cologne. She now deemed herself in safe possession
-of the government; but she was soon awakened from her ambitious
-dream. The Neustrians were indignant that they should thus be handed
-over to the sway of a child and to the rule of a woman: they could
-bear _infant-kings_, indeed, but they refused to put up with an
-_infant mayor of the palace_. They, therefore, made RAGANFRIED, a
-powerful Neustrian noble, their mayor of the palace, and prepared
-to resist by force of arms, any attempt which Plectrudis might
-make to compel their submission. The widow of Pepin showed indeed
-that, if she had had the ambition to seize the sceptre, she had
-also the spirit to wield, and the requisite energy to defend it.
-She collected a powerful army, and sent the puppet-King Dagobert
-(III.), and his infant minister Theudebaud, with it against, what she
-was pleased to call, the Neustrian rebels. But the fortune of war
-declared against her: the Austrasian forces were totally routed by
-Raganfried, and “King” Dagobert fell into the hands of the Neustrian
-mayor of the palace. The infant on whose tiny shoulders Pepin’s
-ill-judged partiality, or uxoriousness, had thrown the burthen of
-three kingdoms, died soon after this reverse (715). Radbodus took
-advantage of the position of affairs, to re-annex West Friesland
-to his dominions; and, in conjunction with the Saxons, invaded the
-Frankish territories from the north east, whilst the Merovingian
-princes of Aquitaine ravaged them in the south west; the Alemanni and
-the Bavarians threw off the Frankish yoke, and resumed their ancient
-independence. Matters were looking dark indeed for the house of the
-Pepins, and though Mistress Plectrudis most gallantly braved the
-storm, her utmost efforts could have availed but little against such
-a multitude of foes, had not Pepin’s son, Charles, meanwhile found
-his way out of the prison to which the ambition of his father’s widow
-had confined him.
-
-CHARLES, who was destined afterwards to play so important a part in
-history, was, at this time, about 25 years of age (he was born in
-690). Nature had been most bountiful to him: tall even among the tall
-nation of the Franks, of a most commanding figure, and of a compact
-and beautifully symmetrical frame, he might be said to present in
-his physical conformation a compound of Hercules and Antinöus; his
-features were regular and expressive, and the lightning glance of
-his large blue eyes reflected, as in a mirror, the energy of his
-mind and the vigor of his intellect. He possessed enormous bodily
-strength combined with surprising agility. The remembrance of his
-great father, and his own manly beauty and grace, gained him the
-hearts of the Austrasians; and he soon found himself at the head
-of a formidable body of troops, with which he proceeded first to
-attack the Frisons, but with rather indifferent success, it would
-appear, as, we find Radbodus and his Frisons soon after laying siege
-to Cologne, in conjunction with the Neustrians under Raganfried.
-Plectrudis, however, purchased the retreat of the besieging forces;
-and the Frisons and Neustrians having separated again, Charles fell
-upon the latter at Ambleva. But, although he exhibited all the
-qualities of a great general, and that the fearful execution which
-his heavy sword did in the hostile ranks struck terror into the foe,
-and made ever after his war-cry “Here Charles and his sword,” ring
-as the prelude of inevitable defeat on the affrighted ears of his
-enemies: yet the superiority of numbers was too great on the side
-of Raganfried, and the battle terminated at last rather in favor of
-the Neustrians than otherwise (716). Soon after his capture by the
-Neustrians, Dagobert had passed from his royal prison to the grave
-(715), and another unlucky scion of the race of Pharamond, the Monk
-Daniel, had been dragged from the repose of his cloistral cell, to
-figure, as Chilperic II., in the line of the “titular” kings of
-France. Charles would have acquiesced in the arrangement, had not
-Raganfried steadily refused to acknowledge him as Duke of Austrasia;
-he determined, therefore, to appeal once more to the decision
-of arms. A fierce and sanguinary battle was fought between the
-Austrasians and the Neustrians, at Vincy, between Arras and Cambray
-(21st of March, 717): and this time, Charles’ valor and generalship
-were rewarded with a brilliant and decisive victory, which made him
-master of the country up to Paris. But, wisely declining to pursue
-his conquests in this quarter, and to court perhaps the chance of
-a defeat far away from his resources, he led his victorious army
-swiftly back to the Rhine, and compelled Plectrudis to give up to
-him the city of Cologne, and his paternal treasures; which latter he
-turned to excellent account in increasing the number and efficiency
-of his forces. Plectrudis took refuge in Bavaria.
-
-Though the Merovingian princes had lost all real power in the state,
-yet there still attached to the name of the family a prestige in the
-eyes of the nation, which rendered the continued existence of “Kings”
-chosen from among the descendants of Clovis, a matter of political
-necessity. Charles wisely resolved therefore, to put himself in this
-respect on equal terms with Raganfried; and he accordingly invested
-with the insignia of a sham royalty another scion of the long-haired
-line, yclept Clotaire, fourth of that name. An expedition against
-the Saxons, to chastise them for their predatory incursions into the
-Frankish territories, was eminently successful, and the son of Pepin
-displayed his victorious banner on the Weser (718); but receiving
-information that Raganfried had made an alliance against him with
-the valiant EUDES, Duke of Aquitaine (of Merovingian descent), and
-dreading lest the united power of the two might prove too strong
-for him, he resolved to attack the former before a junction of the
-allied forces could be effected, and accordingly led his army with
-his accustomed celerity from the banks of the Weser to the banks of
-the Seine. After totally routing Raganfried at Soissons (719), he
-compelled Paris to surrender. The wretched Chilperic[101] sought
-refuge with his ally, Eudes. Charles marched on to the Loire, and
-was preparing to carry his arms into Aquitaine, when the death of
-Clotaire led to an arrangement with Chilperic, who, acknowledging
-Charles as major domûs in the three kingdoms, was permitted to
-continue in the enjoyment of his fictitious royalty. In the same
-year still (719), Charles was delivered by death from another of his
-opponents, Radbodus, the brave duke of the Frisons. He promptly took
-advantage of this event to re-annex West Friesland to the Frankish
-dependencies, and to induct Bishop Willibrod into his see of Utrecht,
-from which Radbodus had kept him excluded.
-
-In the year 720, Chilperic was gathered to his fathers; Charles
-replaced him by a child of the Merovingian race, taken from the
-monastery of Lala (Thierry IV.) In 721 Charles crossed the Rhine at
-the head of a powerful army, to subject the Alemanni, the Bavarians,
-and the Thuringians again to the Frankish sway. As he saw in the
-conversion of these stubborn nations to Christianity one of the
-most efficient means to secure their allegiance in future, he had
-himself attended by Winifried,[102] and other missionaries, who,
-now that they were supported by the arms of the Frankish chief, were
-brilliantly successful in their missionary labors, in some of the
-very places among others, where they had on former occasions been
-treated with derision and contumely, or whence they had been forcibly
-expelled.
-
-In 722, Charles drove the Saxons from the Hassian (Hessian) district
-which they had invaded; but when he followed them into their own
-country, with the intention of subjecting them altogether to his
-sway, he experienced such determined resistance that he wisely
-resolved to leave them alone. In 725, he compelled the Suabians and
-Alemanni, and their duke, LANTFRIED, to acknowledge his sovereignty.
-
-Since 553, after the extinction of the Gothic kingdom of Italy, the
-Agilolfingian dukes of Bavaria “enjoyed” the “protection”[103] of the
-Frankish kings; although, whenever the dissensions among the members
-of that amiable family, or the contentions among the mayors of the
-palace, afforded a fitting opportunity, the Bavarians invariably
-took occasion to “thank” them for their protection, and to decline
-further favors. But the persuasive force of Pepin of Heristal, and
-of his son Charles, fully succeeded in the end in restoring the
-amicable relations between the two nations, to the old footing. Duke
-Theodo II., a most pious prince, who greatly favored and furthered
-the extension of Christianity in his dominions, committed the
-capital blunder so common at the time (and so natural withal)--to
-divide his dominions between his three sons, Theodoald (Theudebaud),
-Theudebert, and Grimoald. Theudebaud had married Pilitrudis, the fair
-daughter of Plectrudis; he died in 716, and his brother Grimoald
-deemed it no harm to marry the beautiful widow of the departed; but
-Saint Corbinian happened to think very differently; and his zealous
-exhortations, and the fearful picture which he drew of the pains
-and penalties that awaited him who should have committed, what
-the holy man was pleased to call, “incest,”[104] frightened poor
-Duke Grimoald into giving his consent to a divorce from his dearly
-beloved wife. Mistress Pilitrudis, however, was by no means pleased
-with the pusillanimous conduct of her second husband; and the exile
-of the meddlesome ecclesiastic speedily showed him, that a woman
-offended may prove more than a match _even_ for a priest and a saint.
-Theudebert also died (724), leaving behind a son, named HUGIBERT, and
-a daughter, named GUNTRUDIS, and who was married to LIUTPRAND, King
-of the Lombards. After his second brother’s death, Grimoald seized
-upon his dominions to the prejudice of his nephew. Hugibert, finding
-all his remonstrances disregarded, claimed the intercession of the
-Duke of the Franks, in his capacity as Protector of Bavaria. Charles
-accepted the offer of mediator between the contending parties; and
-called upon Grimoald to deliver up to Hugibert the provinces which he
-was unjustly withholding from him. Grimoald refusing, Charles entered
-Bavaria at the head of his army, and the Bavarian duke was defeated
-and slain in the first battle (725). Hugibert now succeeded to the
-government of all Bavaria,[105] with the exception, however, of a
-large slice of the Northern provinces, which he ceded to Charles in
-reward of his services.[106] The unfortunate Pilitrudis was despoiled
-by the “magnanimous” victor of all she possessed, except a mule, or
-donkey, to carry her to Pavia to her relations. A new irruption of
-the Saxons, called Charles again to the Weser; he defeated and drove
-back the invaders (729). Whilst he was thus occupied on the Saxon
-frontier, the Suabians and Alemanni took advantage of his absence,
-to throw off once more the yoke of the Franks. Charles confounded
-them, however, by the rapidity of his movements; he appeared on the
-Mein before they were well aware that he had left the banks of the
-Weser. The battle which ensued, terminated in the total defeat of the
-“rebels;” Duke Lantfried was slain, and the humbled nation submitted
-to the rule of the conqueror (730).
-
-We are now approaching the most important and most interesting
-period in the life and career of Charles, viz., his encounter with
-the Saracens; we will, therefore, resume here the thread of the
-history of the Moslem invasion, broken off at page 88, where we
-left the Saracen general, El Zama, laying siege to Thoulouse. A
-branch of the Merovingian family, descended from Clotaire’s (II.)
-younger son Charibert (631), had established the independent[107]
-duchy of Aquitaine in the south of France. At the time of the Arab
-invasion, EUDES (Eudo, or Odo), an able and energetic prince, was
-Duke of Aquitaine. This prince, seeing his capital threatened by the
-Moslems, collected a numerous army of Gascons, Goths, and Franks, and
-marched bravely to the rescue. He attacked the Arabs under the walls
-of Thoulouse, and succeeded in inflicting on them a most disastrous
-defeat (721). El Zama fell in the battle, and the discomfited Moslems
-were saved from total destruction only by the prudence and valor
-of ABDALRAHMAN BEN ABDALLAH (Abderrahman, or Abderame), a veteran
-officer, whom they had elected by acclamation in the place of their
-late general.
-
-The Khalif, however, did not ratify the choice of the army, but named
-ANBESA to the government of Spain. The new governor advanced again
-into Aquitaine in 725; he took Carcassone by storm, and penetrated
-as far as Burgundy; but the valiant Eudes succeeded ultimately in
-driving him back, and also in defeating several subsequent attempts
-of the Arabs to gain possession of Aquitaine.
-
-In the year 730, the Khalif Hesham, yielding to the wishes of the
-people and the army of Spain, restored Abdalrahman to the government
-of that part of the Arab dominions. That daring and ambitious
-commander proposed to subject to his sway, not only Aquitaine, but
-the entire Frank empire; and collected a formidable host to carry his
-resolve into execution. But, at the very threshold of his enterprise,
-he met with an obstacle which, though he indeed triumphantly overcame
-it, yet cannot be denied to have exercised a powerful adverse
-influence upon its final issue. This was the rebellion of OTHMAN,
-or MUNUZA, a Moorish chief, who, as governor of Cerdagne, held the
-most important passes of the Pyrenees. The fortune of war had placed
-the beauteous daughter of Eudes in the hands of Munuza; and the
-political Duke of Aquitaine, justly appreciating the advantages of
-an alliance with the man who might be said to hold the keys of his
-house, had willingly consented to accept the African misbeliever for
-his son-in-law. The skill, rapidity, and decision, of Abdalrahman’s
-movements undoubtedly disconcerted the strategic combinations of
-the two allies, and Munuza was overcome and slain, ere Eudes could
-hasten to his assistance; the head of the rebel, and the daughter of
-the Duke of Aquitaine, were sent to Damascus. But much precious time
-was consumed, and a great number of combatants were lost, in this
-unexpected prelude to the invasion of France. However, immediately
-after the overthrow of Munuza, Abdalrahman advanced rapidly to the
-Rhone, crossed that river, and laid siege to Arles; Eudes attempted
-to relieve the beleaguered city, but his army was totally routed, and
-Arles fell into the hands of the invaders (731). Abdalrahman speedily
-conquered the greater part of Aquitaine, and advanced to Bordeaux.
-The intrepid Eudes met him once more, at the head of a numerous army;
-but neither the valor and skill of the Christian leader nor the
-bravery of his troops could save them from a most disastrous defeat.
-Bordeaux fell, and the Saracens overran the fairest provinces of
-France (732). Charles, who would most probably have remained deaf to
-the most urgent entreaties of Eudes, whom he regarded in the light
-of a rival, comprehended the necessity of a speedy and vigorous
-action, from the moment that he saw his own dominions threatened.
-He, therefore, rapidly collected his faithful Austrasians and the
-auxiliary contingents of the Alemanni, the Thuringians, and the
-Bavarians; and ordered the Neustrian and Burgundian nobles to join
-him with their followers; and although many of the _Burgundian_
-nobles hung back, yet a most powerful host of the nations of Germany
-and Gaul gathered under the banner of the Christian leader, who was
-joined also by Eudes and the remains of the Aquitanian army. In the
-centre of France, between Tours and Poitiers, the Franks and the
-Moslems met, in the month of October, 732. Six days were spent in
-desultory warfare, and many a gallant heart had ceased to beat, ere
-as the red sun of the seventh day rose, the day on which it was to
-be decided whether mosque or cathedral should prevail in Europe. The
-battle raged fiercely from noon till eventide; the fiery sons of the
-South fought with tenfold their accustomed valor, and Abdalrahman
-emulated the glory of Kaled “the Sword of God.” The Germans stood
-firm as rocks, and fought as heroes; and the heavy battle-axe of
-Charles, wielded with irresistible strength, spread death and
-dismay in the Arabian ranks; the mighty strokes which the Christian
-hero dealt with that formidable weapon, gained him the epithet of
-_Martel_, the _Hammer_. Eudes, burning with the resentment of former
-defeats, strove to rival the prowess of his ally. Still, for many
-hours, the balance hung equipoised. The life-blood of thousands of
-Christians and thousands of Moslems, that had ere just raced so
-fiercely through its channels, mingled in sluggish streams on the
-ground. Evening set in, and still the contest raged with unabated
-fury; the Orientals had, indeed, repeatedly been forced to give
-way to the superior weight and strength of the Germans but their
-heroic chief had as often rallied them and led them on again to death
-and glory. At length, a German spear struck him to death: his fall
-decided the fate of the battle; the Saracens, disheartened by the
-loss of their great commander, retired to their camp. There was no
-leader left among them of sufficient renown and authority to replace
-the fallen hero; despairing of their ability to renew the fight next
-day with the slightest chance of success, they resolved upon a hasty
-retreat; and taking with them the richest and most portable portion
-of their spoil, they abandoned their camp in the middle of the night.
-
-Next morning, when Charles was marshalling forth his troops to
-renew the contest, his spies both surprised and rejoiced him with
-the welcome intelligence that the enemy were in full retreat to the
-south. The victory gained was decisive and final: the torrent of
-Arabian conquest was rolled back; and Europe was rescued from the
-threatened yoke of the Saracens. But the losses of the Christians
-also had been very great, and Charles wisely declined incurring
-with his sadly diminished forces, the possible mischances of a
-pursuit.[108]
-
-Leaving to Eudes the task of reconquering his own land from the
-flying foe, Charles proceeded now to call the Burgundian nobles
-to account for their hesitation and lukewarmness in his cause. To
-secure their future allegiance, he placed officers of his into
-the Burgundian cities and castles; to little purpose, however, it
-would appear, as their presence did not prevent the discontented
-Burgundian nobles, a few years after, from calling in the Saracens,
-and actually delivering the city of Avignon into the hands of JUSSUF
-BEN ABDALRAHMAN, the Arabian governor of Narbonne (735).
-
-In 734, Charles defeated Poppo, the Duke of the Frisons, and regained
-the western part of Friesland. In 735, Duke Eudes died, and as his
-two sons, HUNOLD and HATTO, quarrelled about the succession, Charles
-proffered his “armed mediation,” and settled the dispute finally by
-naming Hunold Duke of Aquitaine, after having exacted and obtained
-from that prince an oath of allegiance, not to the nominal king of
-the Franks, but to himself personally, and to his two sons of his
-first marriage, Carloman and Pepin. In 736, Charles had to repel
-another invasion of the Saxons, which prevented him from proceeding
-to Burgundy against the disaffected nobles and their allies, the
-Arabs; he sent, however, his brother Childebrand. In 737, he came
-himself; he speedily reduced Avignon, and expelled the Arabs from the
-Burgundian territory; the nobility and clergy, who had treasonably
-conspired against him with the enemy, or had acted in a hostile
-manner to him, he deprived of their possessions, bishoprics, &c.,
-which he bestowed upon his friends and followers.[109] In 738 he
-advanced into Septimania, and laid siege to Narbonne. He totally
-defeated Omar Ben Kaled, the Arabian general, who was marching to the
-relief of the beleaguered city; but the governor of Narbonne defended
-the place so valiantly and successfully, that the Franks were
-compelled to raise the siege. However, though Septimania remained
-in the hands of the Arabs till 755, when Pepin, the son of Charles
-Martel, recovered it, an effectual and final check had been put to
-their further advance into France.
-
-In 737, King Thierry died; but so firmly was the power of Charles
-Martel established now, that he could safely neglect to name a
-successor to the dead “monarch;” nay, in 741, he actually proceeded
-before a general assembly of the nobility and the army, to divide his
-dominions between his two sons of his first marriage (with Rotrudis),
-bestowing Austrasia, with Suabia and Thuringia, upon the elder,
-Carloman; Neustria, Burgundy, and Provence, upon the younger, Pepin.
-His son Grypho, whom Suanehilda had borne him, he excluded at first
-from all participation in his succession; subsequently he assigned
-him also a portion, which, after his death, led to the oppression and
-imprisonment of the youth by his elder brothers. In the same year
-(741) Charles was, on his return from a kind of pilgrimage to St.
-Denys, seized with a violent fever, of which he died at Carisiacum,
-or Quiercy, on the Oise, on the 22nd October.
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[92] Pepin of Landen was the son of Carloman, a Frank noble of
-Brabant. Pepin’s daughter, Begga, was married to Arnulf’s son,
-Ansgesil; from this marriage sprang Pepin d’Heristal, the father of
-Charles Martel.
-
-[93] However, two natural sons of Charibert founded, after the death
-of the latter, the semi-independent duchy of Aquitaine, in a more
-restricted sense, with the capital, Thoulouse.
-
-[94] Mamaccæ (Mommarques) on the Oise between Compiègne and Noyon.
-
-[95] Pepin of Heristal restored the annual national assembly of the
-Franks, which had fallen in desuetude since the days of Ebroin; when
-the younger Pepin, the son of Charles Martel, finally added the _name
-of King_ to the exercise of the royal power which he wielded, he
-changed the month of meeting from March to May; the _Campus Martius_
-became accordingly a _Campus Majus_.
-
-[96] Nam et opes et potentia regni penes palatii præfectos, qui
-Majores Domûs dicebantur, et _ad quos summa imperii pertinebat_,
-tenebantur; neque regi aliud relinquebatur quam ut regis tantum
-nomine contentus, speciem dominantis effingeret, legatos audiret,
-eisque abeuntibus _responsa, quæ erat edoctus vel etiam_ JUSSUS, _ex
-sua velut potestate redderet_; cum præter inutile regis nomen et
-_præcarium vitæ stipendium_, quod ei præfectus aulæ, prout videbatur,
-exhibebat, nihil aliud proprium possideret.--Einhardi, (Eginhart,)
-Vita Caroli Magni; Pertz, Monumenta Germaniæ Historica, Tomus II., p.
-444.
-
-[97] At one time, it would appear, the Frison prince was on the point
-of consenting to his baptism; he had already placed one foot in
-the baptismal font, when it occurred to him to ask the officiating
-bishop (Wolfram, of Sens), “where his ancestors were gone to?” “To
-Hell,” was the unhesitating reply of the bigoted priest; whereupon
-the honest heathen exclaimed: “Then I will rather be damned with them
-than saved without them,” and withdrew his foot.
-
-[98] Perhaps in some measure in consequence of the consecration of
-the missionary WILLIBROD, as bishop of Utrecht (696)?
-
-[99] Of the race of the Bojoarian Agilolfingians.
-
-[100] ALPAIS, or ALPHEIDA, was the mother of these two sons.
-
-[101] Raganfried had most likely perished on his flight.
-
-[102] Better known as Boniface, the Apostle of the Germans. He was
-sent by Charles to Rome to obtain the episcopal ordination, that
-he might be able to act with greater ecclesiastical authority in
-the newly converted districts; on the 30th November, 723, Pope
-Gregory II. (715-731) ordained him bishop, after he had given in
-his “profession of faith,” which was approved of by Gregory as
-strictly orthodox. The pope furnished him then with letters and
-credentials to Christian princes and ecclesiastics, and to the
-heathen princes and nations of Germany, and also with faithful
-copies of the ordinances, creed, ritual, and regulations of the
-Romish Church; and the Christian missionary was thus converted into
-the Popish legate. By his base monkish truckling to the authority
-of Rome this narrow-minded zealot, who sought in idle formalities
-and ceremonies the _spirit_ of the word of Christ, which he was
-totally unable to conceive and comprehend, turned the new Christian
-church in Germany into a dependence of the Papal see, and thus
-prepared ages of bloodshed and misery for that devoted country. He
-carried his “submissiveness” to Rome so far that he actually asked
-instructions in that quarter as to whether, on which part of the
-body, and with which finger he might, or was to, make the sign of
-the cross during the delivery of his sermons. No wonder, indeed, his
-“mission” succeeded only when backed by the sword. He was murdered by
-the Frisons, in 755. Apart from his narrow-minded bigotry, he was an
-estimable man, full of honest and disinterested zeal.
-
-[103] The ingenuity displayed by man in the invention of specious
-terms to disguise the plain and simple fact of the domination of one
-being or nation over another, is truly marvellous.
-
-[104] What a blessing a Primate like St. Corbinian would have been to
-that tender-conscienced casuist, Henry VIII. of England.
-
-[105] Of course, under Frankish protection.
-
-[106] Or as the dower of SUANEHILDA, Theudebaud’s daughter of a
-former marriage, whom Charles espoused on this occasion.
-
-[107] Virtually independent.
-
-[108] The idle and incredibly extravagant tale told by Paul
-Warnefried and Anastasius of 350,000 or 375,000 Arabs slain in this
-battle, to 1500 Christians, has been faithfully copied by most
-historians. One should think a moment’s reflection would suffice to
-show the absolute impossibility of these numbers. Where on earth
-was a governor of Spain, a recent conquest of the Saracens, to find
-the 450,000 men (for 100,000 are stated to have escaped) to lead
-into France; and where was he to find, in a thinly populated region,
-such as that country was in the time of Charles Martel, the means of
-subsistence for such a host? His chief of the commissariat must have
-been a rare genius indeed. And as to the number of _fifteen hundred_
-Christians slain, this looks very much like the “one man killed and
-four men slightly wounded,” to “one thousand of the enemy slain,” of
-some of our modern bulletins. Striking off a nought from the number
-of the Saracens, and adding one to that of the Christians may bring
-us somewhat nearer the truth.
-
-[109] Charles Martel was not over-nice, it would appear, in the
-bestowal of ecclesiastical preferments and estates; it mattered very
-little indeed to him whether the recipient was a priest or a layman,
-or even whether he could read and write. He also laid his impious
-hands repeatedly upon the revenues of the church, and applied them
-to the necessities of the state, or to pay his soldiers. No wonder
-then that a sainted bishop of the times, EUCHERIUS, of Orleans,
-should have been indulged with a pleasant vision of the body and soul
-of the wicked prince burning in the deepest abyss of hell--rather
-scurvy treatment, though, on the part of a Christian clergy, of a
-prince who, whatever might be his foibles as a man, and his vices as
-a king--(and it must be admitted, he had a goodly share of them)--had
-yet the merit of being the saviour of Christendom. (A synod held
-at Quiercy, in 858, had the calm impudence to communicate this
-interesting and flattering statement, accompanied by some others of
-the same stamp, to Lewis, King of Germany, grandson of Charlemagne!)
-
-
-                            END OF VOL. I.
-
-
-                               LONDON:
-               BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
-
-
-
-
-  TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
-
-  Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
-  corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
-  the text and consultation of external sources.
-
-  Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,
-  and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.
-
-  Pg 11: ‘same fate befel’ replaced by ‘same fate befell’.
-  Pg 16: ‘attuned to comtemplation’ replaced by
-         ‘attuned to contemplation’.
-  Pg 39: ‘granted, Mahommed’ replaced by ‘granted, Mohammed’.
-  Pg 54: ‘let each party chose’ replaced by ‘let each party choose’.
-  Pg 58: ‘recal from the Persian’ replaced by ‘recall from the Persian’.
-  Pg 59: ‘Musulmans to oppose’ replaced by ‘Mussulmans to oppose’.
-  Pg 59: ‘decreed the downfal’ replaced by ‘decreed the downfall’.
-  Pg 74: ‘But Abd-eb-Malek had’ replaced by ‘But Abd-el-Malek had’.
-  Pg 85: ‘by the recal of’ replaced by ‘by the recall of’.
-  Pg 104: ‘CHLODOMIR’S seat’ replaced by ‘CLODOMIR’S seat’.
-  Pg 124: ‘the beleagured city’ replaced by ‘the beleaguered city’.
-
-  Footnote 88: ‘children of Coldomir’ replaced by ‘children of Clodomir’.
-
-
-
-
-
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