A General History for Colleges and High Schools

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THE KORAN AND THE DOCTRINES OF ISLAM.--Before going on to trace the
conquests of the successors of Mohammed, we must form some acquaintance
with the religion of the great Prophet.

The doctrines of Mohammedanism, or Islam, which means "submission," are
contained in the Koran, the sacred book of the Moslems. They declare that
God has revealed himself through four holy men: to Moses he gave the
Pentateuch; to David, the Psalms; to Jesus, the Gospels; and to Mohammed,
the last and greatest of all the prophets, he gave the Koran.

"There is no God save Allah," is the fundamental doctrine of Islamism, and
to this is added the equally binding declaration that "Mohammed is the
Prophet of Allah." The faithful Moslem must also believe in the sacredness
and infallibility of the Koran. He is also required to believe in the
resurrection and the day of judgment, and an after-state of happiness and
of misery. Also he must believe in the absoluteness of the decrees of
God,--that he foreordains whatsoever comes to pass, and that nothing man
can do can change his appointments.

The Koran, while requiring assent to the foregoing creed, inculcates the
practice of four virtues. The first is prayer; five times each day must
the believer turn his face towards Mecca and engage in devotion. The
second requirement is almsgiving. The third is keeping the Fast of
Ramadan, which lasts a whole month. The fourth duty is making a pilgrimage
to Mecca.

ABUBEKR, FIRST SUCCESSOR OF MOHAMMED (632-634).--Upon the death of
Mohammed a dispute at once arose as to his successor; for the Prophet left
no children, nor had he designated upon whom his mantle should fall.
Abubekr, the Apostle's father-in-law, was at last chosen to the position,
with the title of Caliph, or Vicar, of the Prophet, although many thought
that the place belonged to Ali, the Prophet's cousin and son-in-law, and
one of his first and most faithful companions. This question of succession
was destined at a later period to divide the Mohammedan world into two
sects, animated by the most bitter and lasting hostility towards each
other. [Footnote: The Mohammedans of Persia, who are known as Shiites, are
the leaders of the party of Ali; while the Turks, known as Sunnites, are
the chief adherents of the opposite party.]

During the first part of his caliphate, Abubekr was engaged in suppressing
revolts in different parts of the peninsula. These commotions quieted, he
was free to carry out the last injunction of the Prophet to his followers,
which enjoined them to spread his doctrines by the sword, till all men had
confessed the creed of Islam, or consented to pay tribute to the Faithful.

THE CONQUEST OF SYRIA.--The country which Abubekr resolved first to reduce
was Syria. A call addressed to all the Faithful throughout Arabia was
responded to with the greatest alacrity and enthusiasm. From every quarter
the warriors flocked to Medina, until the desert about the city was
literally covered with their black tents, and crowded with men and horses
and camels. After invoking the blessing of God upon the hosts, Abubekr
sent them forward upon their holy mission.

Heraclius made a brave effort to defend the holy places against the
fanatical warriors of the desert, but all in vain. His armies were cut to
pieces. Seeing there was no hope of saving Jerusalem, he removed from that
city to Constantinople the True Cross, which he had rescued from the
Persians (see p. 390). "Farewell, Syria," were his words, as he turned
from the consecrated land which he saw must be given up to the followers
of the False Prophet.

THE CONQUEST OF PERSIA (632-641).--While one Saracen army was overrunning
Syria, another was busy with the subjugation of Persia. Enervated as this
country was through luxury, and weakened by her long wars with the Eastern
emperors, she could offer but feeble resistance to the terrible energy of
the Saracens.

Soon after the conquest of Persia, the Arabs crossed the mountains that
wall Persia on the north, and spread their faith among the Turanian tribes
of Central Asia. Among the most formidable of the clans that adopted the
new religion were the Turks. Their conversion was an event of the greatest
significance, for it was their swords that were destined to uphold and to
spread the creed of Mohammed when the fiery zeal of his own countrymen
should abate, and their arms lose the dreaded power which religious
fanaticism had for a moment imparted to them.

THE CONQUEST OF EGYPT (638).--The reduction of Persia was not yet fully
accomplished, when the Caliph Omar, the successor of Abubekr, commissioned
Amrou, the chief whose valor had won many of the cities of Palestine, to
carry the standard of the Prophet into the Valley of the Nile. Alexandria,
after holding out against the arms of the Saracens for more than a year,
was at length abandoned to the enemy. Amrou, in communicating the
intelligence of the important event to Omar, wrote him also about the
great Alexandrian Library, and asked him what he should do with the books.
Omar is said to have replied: "If these books agree with the Koran, they
are useless; if they disagree, they are pernicious: in either case they
ought to be destroyed." Accordingly the books were distributed among the
four thousand baths of the capital, and served to feed their fires for six
months.

THE CONQUEST OF NORTHERN AFRICA (643-689).--The lieutenants of the Caliphs
were obliged to do much and fierce fighting before they obtained
possession of the oft-disputed shores of North Africa. They had to contend
not only with the Graeco-Roman Christians of the coast, but to battle also
with the idolatrous Moors of the interior. Furthermore, all Europe had
begun to feel alarm at the threatening advance of the Saracens; so now
Roman soldiers from Constantinople, and Gothic warriors from Italy and
Spain hastened across the Mediterranean to aid in the protection of
Carthage, and to help arrest the alarming progress of these wild fanatics
of the desert.

But all was of no avail. Destiny had allotted to the followers of the
Apostle the land of Hannibal and Augustine. Carthage was taken and razed
to the ground, and the entire coast from the Nile to the Atlantic, was
forced to acknowledge the authority of the Caliphs. By this conquest all
the countries of Northern Africa, whose history for a thousand years had
been intertwined with that of the opposite shores of Europe, and which at
one time seemed destined to share in the career of freedom and progress
opening to the peoples of that continent, were drawn back into the
fatalism, the despotism, and the stagnation of the East. From being an
extension of Europe, they became once more an extension of Asia.

ATTACKS UPON CONSTANTINOPLE.--Only fifty years had now passed since the
death of Mohammed, but during this short time his standard had been
carried by the lieutenants of his successors through Asia to the
Hellespont on the one side, and across Africa to the Straits of Gibraltar
on the other. From each of these two points, so remote from each other,
the fanatic warriors of the desert were casting longing glances across
those narrow passages of water which alone separated them from the single
continent that their swift coursers had not yet traversed, or whence the
spoil of the unbelievers had not yet been borne to the feet of the Vicar
of the Prophet of God. We may expect to see the Saracens at one or both of
these points attempt the invasion of Europe.

The first attempt was made in the East (in 668), where the Arabs
endeavored to gain control of the Bosporus, by wresting Constantinople
from the hands of the Eastern emperors. But the capital was saved through
the use, by the besieged, of a certain bituminous compound, called Greek
Fire. In 716, the city was again besieged by a powerful Moslem army; but
its heroic defence by the Emperor Leo III. saved the capital for several
centuries longer to the Christian world.

THE CONQUEST OF SPAIN (711).--While the Moslems were thus being repulsed
from Europe at its eastern extremity, the gates of the continent were
opened to them by treachery at the western, and they gained a foothold in
Spain. At the great battle of Xeres (711), Roderic, the last of the
Visigothic kings, was hopelessly defeated, and all the peninsula, save
some mountainous regions in the northwest, quickly submitted to the
invaders. Thus some of the fairest provinces of Europe were lost to
Christendom for a period of nearly eight hundred years.

No sooner had the subjugation of the country been effected than multitudes
of colonists from Arabia, Syria, and North Africa crowded into the
peninsula, until in a short time the provinces of Seville, Cordova,
Toledo, and Granada became Arabic in dress, manners, language, and
religion.

INVASION OF FRANCE: BATTLE OF TOURS (732).--Four or five years after the
conquest of Spain, the Saracens crossed the Pyrenees, and established
themselves upon the plains of Gaul. This advance of the Moslem hosts
beyond the northern wall of Spain was viewed with the greatest alarm by
all Christendom. It looked as though the followers of Mohammed would soon
possess all the continent. As Draper pictures it, the Crescent, lying in a
vast semi-circle upon the northern shore of Africa and the curving coast
of Asia, with one horn touching the Bosporus and the other the Straits of
Gibraltar, seemed about to round to the full and overspread all Europe.

In the year 732, exactly one hundred years after the death of the great
Prophet, the Franks, under their renowned chieftain, Charles, and their
allies met the Moslems upon the plains of Tours in the centre of Gaul, and
committed to the issue of a single battle the fate of Christendom and the
future course of history. The desperate valor displayed by the warriors of
both armies was worthy of the prize at stake. Abderrahman, the Mohammedan
leader, fell in the thick of the fight, and night saw the complete
discomfiture of the Moslem hordes. The loss that the sturdy blows of the
Germans had inflicted upon them was enormous, the accounts of that age
swelling the number killed to the impossible figures of 375,000. The
disaster at all events was too overwhelming to permit the Saracens ever to
recover from the blow, and they soon retreated behind the Pyrenees.

The young civilization of Europe was thus delivered from an appalling
danger, such as had not threatened it since the fearful days of Attila and
the Huns. The heroic Duke Charles who had led the warriors of Christendom
to the glorious victory was given the surname _Martel_, the "Hammer,"
in commemoration of the mighty blows of his huge battle-axe.

CHANGES IN THE CALIPHATE.--During the century of conquests we have traced,
there were many changes in the caliphate. Abubekr was followed by Omar
(634-644), Othman (644-655), and Ali (655-661), all of whom fell by the
hands of assassins, for from the very first dissensions were rife among
the followers of the Prophet. Ali was the last of the four so-called
"Orthodox Caliphs," all of whom were relatives or companions of the
Prophet.

Moawiyah, a usurper, was now recognized as Caliph (661). He succeeded in
making the office hereditary, instead of elective, as it hitherto had
been, and thus established what is known as the dynasty of the Ommiades
[Footnote: So called from Ommaya, an ancestor of Moawiyah.], the rulers of
which family for nearly a century issued their commands from the city of
Damascus.

The house of the Ommiades was overthrown by the adherents of the house of
Ali, who established a new dynasty (750), known as that of the Abbassides,
so called from Abbas, an uncle of Mohammed. The new family, soon after
coming to power, established the seat of the royal residence on the lower
Tigris, and upon the banks of that river founded the renowned city of
Bagdad, which was destined to remain the abode of the Abbasside Caliphs
for a period of five hundred years,--until the subversion of the house by
the Tartars of the North.

The golden age of the caliphate of Bagdad covers the latter part of the
eighth and the ninth century of our era, and was illustrated by the reign
of the renowned Haroun-al-Raschid (786-809), the hero of the Arabian
Nights. During this period science, philosophy, and literature were most
assiduously cultivated by the Arabian scholars, and the court of the
Caliphs presented in culture and luxury a striking contrast to the rude
and barbarous courts of the kings and princes of Western Christendom.

THE DISMEMBERMENT OF THE CALIPHATE.--"At the close of the first century of
the Hegira," writes Gibbon, "the Caliphs were the most potent and absolute
monarchs of the globe. The word that went forth from the palace at
Damascus was obeyed on the Indus, on the Jaxartes, and on the Tagus."
Scarcely less potent was the word that at first went forth from Bagdad.
But in a short time the extended empire of the Abbassides, through the
quarrels of sectaries and the ambitions of rival aspirants for the honors
of the caliphate, was broken in fragments, and from three capitals--Bagdad
upon the Tigris, Cairo upon the Nile, and Cordova upon the Guadalquivir--
were issued the commands of three rival Caliphs, each of whom was regarded
by his adherents as the sole rightful spiritual and civil successor of the
Apostle. All, however, held the great Arabian Prophet in the same
reverence, all maintained with equal zeal the sacred character of the
Koran, and all prayed with their faces turned toward the holy city of
Mecca.

SPREAD OF THE RELIGION AND LANGUAGE OF THE ARABS.--Just as the Romans
Romanized the peoples they conquered, so did the Saracens Saracenize the
populations of the countries subjected to their authority. Over a large
part of Spain, over North Africa, Egypt, Syria, Babylonia, Persia,
Northern India, and portions of Central Asia, were spread--to the more or
less perfect exclusion of native customs, speech, and worship--the
manners, the language, and the religion of the Arabian conquerors.
[Footnote: Beyond the eastern edge of Mesopotamia, the Arabs failed to
impress their language upon the subjected peoples, or in any way, save in
the matter of creed, to leave upon them any important permanent trace of
their conquests.]

In Arabia no religion was tolerated save the faith of the Koran. But in
all the countries beyond the limits of the peninsula, freedom of worship
was allowed (save to _idolaters_, who were to be "rooted out");
unbelievers, however, must purchase this liberty by the payment of a
moderate tribute. Yet notwithstanding this toleration, the Christian and
Zoroastrian religions gradually died out almost everywhere throughout the
domains of the Caliphs. [Footnote: The number of Guebers, or fire-
worshippers, in Persia at the present time is estimated at from 50,000 to
100,000. About the same number may be counted in India, the descendants of
the Guebers who fled from Persia at the time of the Arabian invasion. They
are there called Parsees, from the land whence they came.]

THE DEFECTS OF ISLAM.--Civilization certainly owes a large debt to the
Saracens. They preserved and transmitted much that was valuable in the
science of the Greeks and the Persians (see p. 472). They improved
trigonometry and algebra, and from India they borrowed the decimal system
of notation and introduced it into the West.

Many of the doctrines of Islam, however, are most unfavorable to human
liberty, progress, and improvement. It teaches fatalism, and thus
discourages effort and enterprise. It allows polygamy and pelts no
restraint upon divorce, and thus destroys the sanctity of the family life.
It permits slavery and fosters despotism. It inspires a blind and bigoted
hatred of race and creed, and thus puts far out of sight the salutary
truth of the brotherhood of man. Because of these and other scarcely less
prominent defects in its teachings, Islam has proved a blight and curse to
almost every race embracing its sterile doctrines.

Mohammedism is vastly superior, however, either to fetichism or idolatry,
and consequently, upon peoples very low in the scale of civilization, it
has an elevating influence. Thus, upon the negro tribes of Central Africa,
where it is to-day spreading rapidly, it is acknowledged to have a
civilizing effect.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

CHARLEMAGNE AND THE RESTORATION OF THE EMPIRE IN THE WEST.

GENERAL REMARKS.--In the foregoing chapter we traced the rise and decline
of the power of the Saracens. We saw the Semitic East roused for a moment
to a life of tremendous energy by the miracle of religious enthusiasm, and
then beheld it sinking rapidly again into inaction and weakness,
disappointing all its early promises. Manifestly the "Law" is not to go
forth from Mecca. The Semitic race is not to lead the civilization of the
world.

But returning again to the West, we discover among the Teutonic barbarians
indications of such youthful energy and life, that we are at once
persuaded that to them has been given the future. The Franks, who, with
the aid of their confederates, withstood the advance of the Saracens upon
the field of Tours, and saved Europe from subjection to the Koran, are the
people that first attract our attention. It is among them that a man
appears who makes the first grand attempt to restore the laws, the order,
the institutions of the ancient Romans. Charlemagne, their king, is the
imposing figure that moves amidst all the events of the times; indeed, is
the one who makes the events, and renders the period in which he lived an
epoch in universal history. The story of this era affords the key to very
much of the subsequent history of Europe.

HOW DUKE PEPIN BECAME KING OF THE FRANKS--Charles Martel, whose tremendous
blows at Tours earned for him his significant surname (see p. 399),
although the real head of the Frankish nation, was nominally only an
officer of the Merovingian court. He died without ever having borne the
title of king, notwithstanding he had exercised all the authority of that
office.

But Charles's son Pepin, called _le Bref_ (the Short), on account of
his diminutive stature, aspired to the regal title and honors. He resolved
to depose his titular master, and to make himself king. Not deeming it
wise, however, to do this without the sanction of the Pope, he sent an
embassy to represent to him the state of affairs, and to solicit his
advice. Mindful of recent favors that he had received at the hands of
Pepin, the Pope gave his approval to the proposed scheme by replying that
it seemed altogether reasonable that the one who was king in power should
be king also in name. This was sufficient. Chilperic--such was the name of
the Merovingian king--was straightway deposed, and placed in a monastery;
while Pepin, whose own deeds together with those of his illustrious father
had done so much for the Frankish nation and for Christendom, was anointed
and crowned king of the Franks (752), and thus became the first of the
Carolingian line, the name of his illustrious son Charlemagne giving name
to the house.

BEGINNING OF THE TEMPORAL POWER OF THE POPES.--In the year 754 Pope
Stephen II., who was troubled by the Lombards (see p. 374), besought
Pepin's aid. Quick to return the favor which the head of the Church had
rendered him in the establishment of his power as king, Pepin straightway
crossed the Alps with a large army, expelled the Lombards from their
recent conquests, and made a donation to the Pope of these captured cities
and provinces (755).

This famous gift may be regarded as having laid the basis of the temporal
power of the Popes; for though Pepin probably did not intend to convey to
the Papal See the absolute sovereignty of the transferred lands, after a
time the Popes claimed this, and finally came to exercise within the
limits of the donated territory all the rights and powers of independent
temporal rulers. So here we have the beginning of the celebrated _Papal
States_, and of the story of the Popes as temporal princes.

ACCESSION OF CHARLEMAGNE.--Pepin died in the year 768, and his kingdom
passed into the hands of his two sons, Carloman and Charles; but within
three years the death of Carloman and the free votes of the Franks
conferred the entire kingdom upon Charles, better known as Charlemagne, or
"Charles the Great."

HIS CAMPAIGNS.--Charlemagne's long reign of nearly half a century--he
ruled forty-six years--was filled with military expeditions and conquests,
by which he so extended the boundaries of his dominions, that at his death
they embraced the larger part of Western Europe. He made fifty-two
military campaigns, the chief of which were against the Lombards, the
Saracens, and the Saxons. Of these we will speak briefly.

Among Charlemagne's first undertakings was a campaign against the
Lombards, whose king, Desiderius, was troubling the Pope. Charlemagne
wrested from Desiderius all his possessions, shut up the unfortunate king
in a monastery, and placed on his own head the iron crown of the Lombards.
While in Italy he visited Rome, and, in return for the favor of the Pope,
confirmed the donation of his father, Pepin (774).

[Illustration: CHARLEMAGNE. (Head of a bronze equestrian statuette.)]

In the ninth year of his reign Charlemagne gathered his warriors for a
crusade against the Saracens in Spain. He crossed the Pyrenees, and
succeeded in wresting from the Moslems all the northeastern corner of the
peninsula. As he was leading his victorious bands back across the
Pyrenees, the rear of his army under the lead of the renowned paladin
Roland, while hemmed in by the walls of the Pass of Roncesvalles, was set
upon by the wild mountaineers (the Gascons and Basques), and cut to pieces
before Charlemagne could give relief. Of the details of this event no
authentic account has been preserved; but long afterwards it formed the
favorite theme of the tales and songs of the Troubadours of Southern
France.

But by far the greater number of the campaigns of Charlemagne were
directed against the pagan Saxons, who almost alone of the German tribes
still retained their ancient idolatry. Thirty years and more of his reign
were occupied in these wars across the Rhine. Reduced to submission again
and again, as often did the Saxons rise in desperate revolt. The heroic
Witikind was the "second Arminius" (see p. 308) who encouraged his
countrymen to resist to the last the intruders upon their soil. Finally,
Charlemagne, angered beyond measure by the obstinacy of the barbarians,
caused 4500 prisoners in his hands to be massacred in revenge for the
contumacy of the nation. The Saxons at length yielded, and accepted
Charlemagne as their sovereign, and Christianity as their religion.

RESTORATION OF THE EMPIRE IN THE WEST (800).--An event of seemingly little
real moment, yet, in its influence upon succeeding affairs, of the very
greatest importance, now claims our attention. Pope Leo III. having called
upon Charlemagne for aid against a hostile faction at Rome, the king soon
appeared in person at the capital, and punished summarily the disturbers
of the peace of the Church. The gratitude of Leo led him at this time to
make a most signal return for the many services of the Frankish king. To
understand his act a word of explanation is needed.

For a considerable time a variety of circumstances had been fostering a
growing feeling of enmity between the Italians and the emperors at
Constantinople. Disputes had arisen between the churches of the East and
those of the West, and the Byzantine rulers had endeavored to compel the
Italian churches to introduce certain changes and reforms in their
worship, which had aroused the most determined opposition of the Roman
bishops, who denounced the Eastern emperors as schismatics and heretics.
Furthermore, while persecuting the orthodox churches of the West, these
unworthy emperors had allowed the Christian lands of the East to fall a
prey to the Arabian infidels.

Just at this time, moreover, by the crime of the Empress Irene, who had
deposed her son Constantine VI., and put out his eyes, that she might have
his place, the Byzantine throne was vacant, in the estimation of the
Italians, who contended that the crown of the Caesars could not be worn by
a woman. Confessedly it was time that the Pope should exercise the power
reposing in him as Head of the Church, and take away from the heretical
and effeminate Greeks the Imperial crown, and bestow it upon some strong,
orthodox, and worthy prince in the West.

Now, among all the Teutonic chiefs of Western Christendom, there was none
who could dispute the claims to the honor with the king of the Franks, the
representative of a most illustrious house, and the strongest champion of
the young Christianity of the West against her pagan foes. Accordingly, as
Charlemagne was participating in the festivities of Christmas Day in the
Cathedral of St. Peter at Rome, the Pope approached the kneeling king,--
who declared afterwards that he was wholly ignorant of the designs of his
friend,--and placing a crown of gold upon his head, proclaimed him emperor
of the Romans, and the rightful and consecrated successor of Caesar
Augustus and Constantine (800).

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