The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 5

E >> Edward Gibbon >> The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 5

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[Footnote 86: One of the most eminent Romans (Gratianus, magister
militum et Romani palatii superista) was accused of declaring,
Quia Franci nihil nobis boni faciunt, neque adjutorium praebent,
sed magis quae nostra sunt violenter tollunt. Quare non
advocamus Graecos, et cum eis foedus pacis componentes, Francorum
regem et gentem de nostro regno et dominatione expellimus?
Anastasius in Leone IV. p. 199.]

[Footnote 87: Voltaire (Hist. Generale, tom. ii. c. 38, p. 124)
appears to be remarkably struck with the character of Pope Leo
IV. I have borrowed his general expression, but the sight of the
forum has furnished me with a more distinct and lively image.]

But the storm, which had been delayed, soon burst upon them
with redoubled violence. The Aglabite, ^88 who reigned in
Africa, had inherited from his father a treasure and an army: a
fleet of Arabs and Moors, after a short refreshment in the
harbors of Sardinia, cast anchor before the mouth of the Tyber,
sixteen miles from the city: and their discipline and numbers
appeared to threaten, not a transient inroad, but a serious
design of conquest and dominion. But the vigilance of Leo had
formed an alliance with the vassals of the Greek empire, the free
and maritime states of Gayeta, Naples, and Amalfi; and in the
hour of danger, their galleys appeared in the port of Ostia under
the command of Caesarius, the son of the Neapolitan duke, a noble
and valiant youth, who had already vanquished the fleets of the
Saracens. With his principal companions, Caesarius was invited to
the Lateran palace, and the dexterous pontiff affected to inquire
their errand, and to accept with joy and surprise their
providential succor. The city bands, in arms, attended their
father to Ostia, where he reviewed and blessed his generous
deliverers. They kissed his feet, received the communion with
martial devotion, and listened to the prayer of Leo, that the
same God who had supported St. Peter and St. Paul on the waves of
the sea, would strengthen the hands of his champions against the
adversaries of his holy name. After a similar prayer, and with
equal resolution, the Moslems advanced to the attack of the
Christian galleys, which preserved their advantageous station
along the coast. The victory inclined to the side of the allies,
when it was less gloriously decided in their favor by a sudden
tempest, which confounded the skill and courage of the stoutest
mariners. The Christians were sheltered in a friendly harbor,
while the Africans were scattered and dashed in pieces among the
rocks and islands of a hostile shore. Those who escaped from
shipwreck and hunger neither found, nor deserved, mercy at the
hands of their implacable pursuers. The sword and the gibbet
reduced the dangerous multitude of captives; and the remainder
was more usefully employed, to restore the sacred edifices which
they had attempted to subvert. The pontiff, at the head of the
citizens and allies, paid his grateful devotion at the shrines of
the apostles; and, among the spoils of this naval victory,
thirteen Arabian bows of pure and massy silver were suspended
round the altar of the fishermen of Galilee. The reign of Leo
the Fourth was employed in the defence and ornament of the Roman
state. The churches were renewed and embellished: near four
thousand pounds of silver were consecrated to repair the losses
of St. Peter; and his sanctuary was decorated with a plate of
gold of the weight of two hundred and sixteen pounds, embossed
with the portraits of the pope and emperor, and encircled with a
string of pearls. Yet this vain magnificence reflects less glory
on the character of Leo than the paternal care with which he
rebuilt the walls of Horta and Ameria; and transported the
wandering inhabitants of Centumcellae to his new foundation of
Leopolis, twelve miles from the sea- shore. ^89 By his
liberality, a colony of Corsicans, with their wives and children,
was planted in the station of Porto, at the mouth of the Tyber:
the falling city was restored for their use, the fields and
vineyards were divided among the new settlers: their first
efforts were assisted by a gift of horses and cattle; and the
hardy exiles, who breathed revenge against the Saracens, swore to
live and die under the standard of St. Peter. The nations of the
West and North who visited the threshold of the apostles had
gradually formed the large and populous suburb of the Vatican,
and their various habitations were distinguished, in the language
of the times, as the schools of the Greeks and Goths, of the
Lombards and Saxons. But this venerable spot was still open to
sacrilegious insult: the design of enclosing it with walls and
towers exhausted all that authority could command, or charity
would supply: and the pious labor of four years was animated in
every season, and at every hour, by the presence of the
indefatigable pontiff. The love of fame, a generous but worldly
passion, may be detected in the name of the Leonine city, which
he bestowed on the Vatican; yet the pride of the dedication was
tempered with Christian penance and humility. The boundary was
trod by the bishop and his clergy, barefoot, in sackcloth and
ashes; the songs of triumph were modulated to psalms and
litanies; the walls were besprinkled with holy water; and the
ceremony was concluded with a prayer, that, under the guardian
care of the apostles and the angelic host, both the old and the
new Rome might ever be preserved pure, prosperous, and
impregnable. ^90

[Footnote 88: De Guignes, Hist. Generale des Huns, tom. i. p.
363, 364. Cardonne, Hist. de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne, sous la
Domination des Arabs, tom. ii. p. 24, 25. I observe, and cannot
reconcile, the difference of these writers in the succession of
the Aglabites.]

[Footnote 89: Beretti (Chorographia Italiae Medii Evi, p. 106,
108) has illustrated Centumcellae, Leopolis, Civitas Leonina, and
the other places of the Roman duchy.]

[Footnote 90: The Arabs and the Greeks are alike silent
concerning the invasion of Rome by the Africans. The Latin
chronicles do not afford much instruction, (see the Annals of
Baronius and Pagi.) Our authentic and contemporary guide for the
popes of the ixth century is Anastasius, librarian of the Roman
church. His Life of Leo IV, contains twenty-four pages, (p. 175
- 199, edit. Paris;) and if a great part consist of superstitious
trifles, we must blame or command his hero, who was much oftener
in a church than in a camp.]

The emperor Theophilus, son of Michael the Stammerer, was
one of the most active and high-spirited princes who reigned at
Constantinople during the middle age. In offensive or defensive
war, he marched in person five times against the Saracens,
formidable in his attack, esteemed by the enemy in his losses and
defeats. In the last of these expeditions he penetrated into
Syria, and besieged the obscure town of Sozopetra; the casual
birthplace of the caliph Motassem, whose father Harun was
attended in peace or war by the most favored of his wives and
concubines. The revolt of a Persian impostor employed at that
moment the arms of the Saracen, and he could only intercede in
favor of a place for which he felt and acknowledged some degree
of filial affection. These solicitations determined the emperor
to wound his pride in so sensible a part. Sozopetra was levelled
with the ground, the Syrian prisoners were marked or mutilated
with ignominious cruelty, and a thousand female captives were
forced away from the adjacent territory. Among these a matron of
the house of Abbas invoked, in an agony of despair, the name of
Motassem; and the insults of the Greeks engaged the honor of her
kinsman to avenge his indignity, and to answer her appeal. Under
the reign of the two elder brothers, the inheritance of the
youngest had been confined to Anatolia, Armenia, Georgia, and
Circassia; this frontier station had exercised his military
talents; and among his accidental claims to the name of Octonary,
^91 the most meritorious are the eight battles which he gained or
fought against the enemies of the Koran. In this personal
quarrel, the troops of Irak, Syria, and Egypt, were recruited
from the tribes of Arabia and the Turkish hordes; his cavalry
might be numerous, though we should deduct some myriads from the
hundred and thirty thousand horses of the royal stables; and the
expense of the armament was computed at four millions sterling,
or one hundred thousand pounds of gold. From Tarsus, the place
of assembly, the Saracens advanced in three divisions along the
high road of Constantinople: Motassem himself commanded the
centre, and the vanguard was given to his son Abbas, who, in the
trial of the first adventures, might succeed with the more glory,
or fail with the least reproach. In the revenge of his injury,
the caliph prepared to retaliate a similar affront. The father
of Theophilus was a native of Amorium ^92 in Phrygia: the
original seat of the Imperial house had been adorned with
privileges and monuments; and, whatever might be the indifference
of the people, Constantinople itself was scarcely of more value
in the eyes of the sovereign and his court. The name of Amorium
was inscribed on the shields of the Saracens; and their three
armies were again united under the walls of the devoted city. It
had been proposed by the wisest counsellors, to evacuate Amorium,
to remove the inhabitants, and to abandon the empty structures to
the vain resentment of the Barbarians. The emperor embraced the
more generous resolution of defending, in a siege and battle, the
country of his ancestors. When the armies drew near, the front
of the Mahometan line appeared to a Roman eye more closely
planted with spears and javelins; but the event of the action was
not glorious on either side to the national troops. The Arabs
were broken, but it was by the swords of thirty thousand
Persians, who had obtained service and settlement in the
Byzantine empire. The Greeks were repulsed and vanquished, but
it was by the arrows of the Turkish cavalry; and had not their
bowstrings been damped and relaxed by the evening rain, very few
of the Christians could have escaped with the emperor from the
field of battle. They breathed at Dorylaeum, at the distance of
three days; and Theophilus, reviewing his trembling squadrons,
forgave the common flight both of the prince and people. After
this discovery of his weakness, he vainly hoped to deprecate the
fate of Amorium: the inexorable caliph rejected with contempt his
prayers and promises; and detained the Roman ambassadors to be
the witnesses of his great revenge. They had nearly been the
witnesses of his shame. The vigorous assaults of fifty- five
days were encountered by a faithful governor, a veteran garrison,
and a desperate people; and the Saracens must have raised the
siege, if a domestic traitor had not pointed to the weakest part
of the wall, a place which was decorated with the statues of a
lion and a bull. The vow of Motassem was accomplished with
unrelenting rigor: tired, rather than satiated, with destruction,
he returned to his new palace of Samara, in the neighborhood of
Bagdad, while the unfortunate ^93 Theophilus implored the tardy
and doubtful aid of his Western rival the emperor of the Franks.
Yet in the siege of Amorium about seventy thousand Moslems had
perished: their loss had been revenged by the slaughter of thirty
thousand Christians, and the sufferings of an equal number of
captives, who were treated as the most atrocious criminals.
Mutual necessity could sometimes extort the exchange or ransom of
prisoners: ^94 but in the national and religious conflict of the
two empires, peace was without confidence, and war without mercy.
Quarter was seldom given in the field; those who escaped the edge
of the sword were condemned to hopeless servitude, or exquisite
torture; and a Catholic emperor relates, with visible
satisfaction, the execution of the Saracens of Crete, who were
flayed alive, or plunged into caldrons of boiling oil. ^95 To a
point of honor Motassem had sacrificed a flourishing city, two
hundred thousand lives, and the property of millions. The same
caliph descended from his horse, and dirtied his robe, to relieve
the distress of a decrepit old man, who, with his laden ass, had
tumbled into a ditch. On which of these actions did he reflect
with the most pleasure, when he was summoned by the angel of
death? ^96

[Footnote 91: The same number was applied to the following
circumstance in the life of Motassem: he was the eight of the
Abbassides; he reigned eight years, eight months, and eight days;
left eight sons, eight daughters, eight thousand slaves, eight
millions of gold.]

[Footnote 92: Amorium is seldom mentioned by the old geographers,
and to tally forgotten in the Roman Itineraries. After the vith
century, it became an episcopal see, and at length the metropolis
of the new Galatia, (Carol. Scto. Paulo, Geograph. Sacra, p.
234.) The city rose again from its ruins, if we should read
Ammeria, not Anguria, in the text of the Nubian geographer. (p.
236.)]

[Footnote 93: In the East he was styled, (Continuator Theophan.
l. iii. p. 84;) but such was the ignorance of the West, that his
ambassadors, in public discourse, might boldly narrate, de
victoriis, quas adversus exteras bellando gentes coelitus fuerat
assecutus, (Annalist. Bertinian. apud Pagi, tom. iii. p. 720.)]

[Footnote 94: Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 167, 168) relates one of
these singular transactions on the bridge of the River Lamus in
Cilicia, the limit of the two empires, and one day's journey
westward of Tarsus, (D'Anville, Geographie Ancienne, tom. ii. p.
91.) Four thousand four hundred and sixty Moslems, eight hundred
women and children, one hundred confederates, were exchanged for
an equal number of Greeks. They passed each other in the middle
of the bridge, and when they reached their respective friends,
they shouted Allah Acbar, and Kyrie Eleison. Many of the
prisoners of Amorium were probably among them, but in the same
year, (A. H. 231,) the most illustrious of them, the forty two
martyrs, were beheaded by the caliph's order.]

[Footnote 95: Constantin. Porphyrogenitus, in Vit. Basil. c. 61,
p. 186. These Saracens were indeed treated with peculiar severity
as pirates and renegadoes.]

[Footnote 96: For Theophilus, Motassem, and the Amorian war, see
the Continuator of Theophanes, (l. iii. p. 77 - 84,) Genesius (l.
iii. p. 24 - 34.) Cedrenus, (p. 528 - 532,) Elmacin, (Hist.
Saracen, p. 180,) Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 165, 166,) Abulfeda,
(Annal. Moslem. p. 191,) D'Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orientale, p. 639,
640.)]

With Motassem, the eighth of the Abbassides, the glory of
his family and nation expired. When the Arabian conquerors had
spread themselves over the East, and were mingled with the
servile crowds of Persia, Syria, and Egypt, they insensibly lost
the freeborn and martial virtues of the desert. The courage of
the South is the artificial fruit of discipline and prejudice;
the active power of enthusiasm had decayed, and the mercenary
forces of the caliphs were recruited in those climates of the
North, of which valor is the hardy and spontaneous production.
Of the Turks ^97 who dwelt beyond the Oxus and Jaxartes, the
robust youths, either taken in war or purchased in trade, were
educated in the exercises of the field, and the profession of the
Mahometan faith. The Turkish guards stood in arms round the
throne of their benefactor, and their chiefs usurped the dominion
of the palace and the provinces. Motassem, the first author of
this dangerous example, introduced into the capital above fifty
thousand Turks: their licentious conduct provoked the public
indignation, and the quarrels of the soldiers and people induced
the caliph to retire from Bagdad, and establish his own residence
and the camp of his Barbarian favorites at Samara on the Tigris,
about twelve leagues above the city of Peace. ^98 His son
Motawakkel was a jealous and cruel tyrant: odious to his
subjects, he cast himself on the fidelity of the strangers, and
these strangers, ambitious and apprehensive, were tempted by the
rich promise of a revolution. At the instigation, or at least in
the cause of his son, they burst into his apartment at the hour
of supper, and the caliph was cut into seven pieces by the same
swords which he had recently distributed among the guards of his
life and throne. To this throne, yet streaming with a father's
blood, Montasser was triumphantly led; but in a reign of six
months, he found only the pangs of a guilty conscience. If he
wept at the sight of an old tapestry which represented the crime
and punishment of the son of Chosroes, if his days were abridged
by grief and remorse, we may allow some pity to a parricide, who
exclaimed, in the bitterness of death, that he had lost both this
world and the world to come. After this act of treason, the
ensigns of royalty, the garment and walking-staff of Mahomet,
were given and torn away by the foreign mercenaries, who in four
years created, deposed, and murdered, three commanders of the
faithful. As often as the Turks were inflamed by fear, or rage,
or avarice, these caliphs were dragged by the feet, exposed naked
to the scorching sun, beaten with iron clubs, and compelled to
purchase, by the abdication of their dignity, a short reprieve of
inevitable fate. ^99 At length, however, the fury of the tempest
was spent or diverted: the Abbassides returned to the less
turbulent residence of Bagdad; the insolence of the Turks was
curbed with a firmer and more skilful hand, and their numbers
were divided and destroyed in foreign warfare. But the nations
of the East had been taught to trample on the successors of the
prophet; and the blessings of domestic peace were obtained by the
relaxation of strength and discipline. So uniform are the
mischiefs of military despotism, that I seem to repeat the story
of the praetorians of Rome. ^100

[Footnote 97: M. de Guignes, who sometimes leaps, and sometimes
stumbles, in the gulf between Chinese and Mahometan story, thinks
he can see, that these Turks are the Hoei-ke, alias the Kao-tche,
or high-wagons; that they were divided into fifteen hordes, from
China and Siberia to the dominions of the caliphs and Samanides,
&c., (Hist. des Huns, tom. iii. p. 1 - 33, 124 - 131.)]

[Footnote 98: He changed the old name of Sumera, or Samara, into
the fanciful title of Sermen-rai, that which gives pleasure at
first sight, (D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 808.
D'Anville, l'Euphrate et le Tigre p. 97, 98.)]

[Footnote 99: Take a specimen, the death of the caliph Motaz:
Correptum pedibus pertrahunt, et sudibus probe permulcant, et
spoliatum laceris vestibus in sole collocant, prae cujus acerrimo
aestu pedes alternos attollebat et demittebat. Adstantium
aliquis misero colaphos continuo ingerebat, quos ille objectis
manibus avertere studebat ..... Quo facto traditus tortori fuit,
totoque triduo cibo potuque prohibitus ..... Suffocatus, &c.
(Abulfeda, p. 206.) Of the caliph Mohtadi, he says, services ipsi
perpetuis ictibus contundebant, testiculosque pedibus
conculcabant, (p. 208.)]

[Footnote 100: See under the reigns of Motassem, Motawakkel,
Montasser, Mostain, Motaz, Mohtadi, and Motamed, in the
Bibliotheque of D'Herbelot, and the now familiar Annals of
Elmacin, Abulpharagius, and Abulfeda.]

While the flame of enthusiasm was damped by the business,
the pleasure, and the knowledge, of the age, it burnt with
concentrated heat in the breasts of the chosen few, the congenial
spirits, who were ambitious of reigning either in this world or
in the next. How carefully soever the book of prophecy had been
sealed by the apostle of Mecca, the wishes, and (if we may
profane the word) even the reason, of fanaticism might believe
that, after the successive missions of Adam, Noah, Abraham,
Moses, Jesus, and Mahomet, the same God, in the fulness of time,
would reveal a still more perfect and permanent law. In the two
hundred and seventy-seventh year of the Hegira, and in the
neighborhood of Cufa, an Arabian preacher, of the name of
Carmath, assumed the lofty and incomprehensible style of the
Guide, the Director, the Demonstration, the Word, the Holy Ghost,
the Camel, the Herald of the Messiah, who had conversed with him
in a human shape, and the representative of Mohammed the son of
Ali, of St. John the Baptist, and of the angel Gabriel. In his
mystic volume, the precepts of the Koran were refined to a more
spiritual sense: he relaxed the duties of ablution, fasting, and
pilgrimage; allowed the indiscriminate use of wine and forbidden
food; and nourished the fervor of his disciples by the daily
repetition of fifty prayers. The idleness and ferment of the
rustic crowd awakened the attention of the magistrates of Cufa; a
timid persecution assisted the progress of the new sect; and the
name of the prophet became more revered after his person had been
withdrawn from the world. His twelve apostles dispersed
themselves among the Bedoweens, "a race of men," says Abulfeda,
"equally devoid of reason and of religion;" and the success of
their preaching seemed to threaten Arabia with a new revolution.
The Carmathians were ripe for rebellion, since they disclaimed
the title of the house of Abbas, and abhorred the worldly pomp of
the caliphs of Bagdad. They were susceptible of discipline, since
they vowed a blind and absolute submission to their Imam, who was
called to the prophetic office by the voice of God and the
people. Instead of the legal tithes, he claimed the fifth of
their substance and spoil; the most flagitious sins were no more
than the type of disobedience; and the brethren were united and
concealed by an oath of secrecy. After a bloody conflict, they
prevailed in the province of Bahrein, along the Persian Gulf: far
and wide, the tribes of the desert were subject to the sceptre,
or rather to the sword of Abu Said and his son Abu Taher; and
these rebellious imams could muster in the field a hundred and
seven thousand fanatics. The mercenaries of the caliph were
dismayed at the approach of an enemy who neither asked nor
accepted quarter; and the difference between, them in fortitude
and patience, is expressive of the change which three centuries
of prosperity had effected in the character of the Arabians.
Such troops were discomfited in every action; the cities of Racca
and Baalbec, of Cufa and Bassora, were taken and pillaged; Bagdad
was filled with consternation; and the caliph trembled behind the
veils of his palace. In a daring inroad beyond the Tigris, Abu
Taher advanced to the gates of the capital with no more than five
hundred horse. By the special order of Moctader, the bridges had
been broken down, and the person or head of the rebel was
expected every hour by the commander of the faithful. His
lieutenant, from a motive of fear or pity, apprised Abu Taher of
his danger, and recommended a speedy escape. "Your master," said
the intrepid Carmathian to the messenger, "is at the head of
thirty thousand soldiers: three such men as these are wanting in
his host: " at the same instant, turning to three of his
companions, he commanded the first to plunge a dagger into his
breast, the second to leap into the Tigris, and the third to cast
himself headlong down a precipice. They obeyed without a murmur.

"Relate," continued the imam, "what you have seen: before the
evening your general shall be chained among my dogs." Before the
evening, the camp was surprised, and the menace was executed. The
rapine of the Carmathians was sanctified by their aversion to the
worship of Mecca: they robbed a caravan of pilgrims, and twenty
thousand devout Moslems were abandoned on the burning sands to a
death of hunger and thirst. Another year they suffered the
pilgrims to proceed without interruption; but, in the festival of
devotion, Abu Taher stormed the holy city, and trampled on the
most venerable relics of the Mahometan faith. Thirty thousand
citizens and strangers were put to the sword; the sacred
precincts were polluted by the burial of three thousand dead
bodies; the well of Zemzem overflowed with blood; the golden
spout was forced from its place; the veil of the Caaba was
divided among these impious sectaries; and the black stone, the
first monument of the nation, was borne away in triumph to their
capital. After this deed of sacrilege and cruelty, they continued
to infest the confines of Irak, Syria, and Egypt: but the vital
principle of enthusiasm had withered at the root. Their
scruples, or their avarice, again opened the pilgrimage of Mecca,
and restored the black stone of the Caaba; and it is needless to
inquire into what factions they were broken, or by whose swords
they were finally extirpated. The sect of the Carmathians may be
considered as the second visible cause of the decline and fall of
the empire of the caliphs. ^101

[Footnote 101: For the sect of the Carmathians, consult Elmacin,
(Hist. Sara cen, p. 219, 224, 229, 231, 238, 241, 243,)
Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 179 - 182,) Abulfeda, (Annal. Moslem.
p. 218, 219, &c., 245, 265, 274.) and D'Herbelot, (Bibliotheque
Orientale, p. 256 - 258, 635.) I find some inconsistencies of
theology and chronology, which it would not be easy nor of much
importance to reconcile.