134. Expansion of Islam in North Africa and Spain

Though repulsed before the impregnable walls of Constantinople, the Arabs continued to win new dominions in other North Africa parts of the Christian world. After their occupasubdued tion of Egypt, they began to overrun North Africa, which Justinian, little more than a century earlier, had reconquered from the Vandals. The Romanized provincials, groaning under the burdensome taxes imposed on them by the eastern emperors, made only a slight resistance to the Moslem armies. A few of the great cities held out for a time, but after the capture and destruction of Carthage in 698 A.D., Arab rule was soon established over the whole extent of the Mediterranean coast from Egypt to the Atlantic.

Arabs and
Berbers

Islam made in North Africa one of its most permanent conquests. After the coming of the Arabs many of the Christian inhabitants appear to have withdrawn to Spain and Sicily, leaving the field clear for the introduction of Arabian civilization. The Arabs who settled in North Africa gave their religion and government to the Berbers, as the natives of the country were called, and to some extent intermingled with them. Arabs and Berbers still comprise the population of North Africa, though their once independent states have now been absorbed by European powers.3

Subjugation
of Spain
begun,
711 A.D.

4

With North Africa in their hands the Moslems did not long delay the invasion of Spain. In 711 A.D. an army of Arabs and Berbers, under their leader Tarik, crossed the strait which still bears his name and for the first time confronted the Germans. The Visigothic kingdom,5 already much enfeebled, proved to be an easy prey. A single battle made the invaders masters of half of Spain. Within a few years their hosts swept northward

1 See page 330.

⚫ Morocco, Algeria, and Tunis belong to France; Tripoli, to Italy.

2 See page 245.

Gibal al Tarik, "the mountain of Tarik."

See pages 244-245.

to the Pyrenees. Only small districts in the northern part of the Spanish peninsula remained unconquered.

The Moslem

The Moslems were not stopped by the Pyrenees. Crossing these mountains, they captured many of the old Roman cities in the south of Gaul and then advanced to the north, attracted, apparently, by the booty to be advance in found in Christian monasteries and churches. In the vicinity of Tours they encountered the great army which Charles Martel, the chief minister of the Frankish king,' had collected to oppose their advance.

Gaul

Battle of
Tours,

732 A.D.

The battle of Tours seems to have continued for several days. Of its details we know nothing, though a Spanish chronicler tells us that the heavy infantry of the Franks stood "immovable as a wall, inflexible as a block of ice" against the desperate assaults of the Moslem horsemen. When the Franks, after the last day's fighting, wished to renew the struggle, they found that the enemy had fled, leaving a camp filled with the spoils of war. This engagement, though famous in history, was scarcely decisive. For some time afterward the Moslems maintained themselves in southern Gaul. It was the Frankish ruler, Pepin the Short, who annexed their possessions there and drove them back across the Pyrenees to Spain.2

135. The Caliphate and its Disruption, 632-1058 A.D.

The four

"Orthodox " caliphs,

632-661 A.D.

Only eighteen years after the battle of Tours, the Arabian Empire was divided into two rival and more or less hostile parts, which came to be called the Eastern and Western caliphates. The title of caliph, meaning "sucor "representative," had first been assumed by Mohammed's father-in-law, Abu Bekr, who was chosen to succeed the prophet as the civil and religious head of the Moslem world. After him followed Omar, who had been one of Mohammed's most faithful adherents, and then Othman and Ali, both sons-in-law of Mohammed. These 1 See page 306. 2 For Charlemagne's Spanish conquests, see page 309.

four rulers are sometimes known as the "Orthodox" caliphs, because their right to the succession was universally acknowledged by Moslems.

Ommiad caliphs at Damascus, 661-750 A.D.

After Ali's death the governor of Syria, Moawiya by name, succeeded in making himself caliph of the Moslem world. This usurper converted the caliphate into a hereditary, instead of an elective, office, and established the dynasty of the Ommiads.1 Their capital was no longer Medina in Arabia, but the Syrian city of Damascus. The descendants of Mohammed's family refused, however, to recognize the Ommiads as legitimate caliphs. In 750 A.D. a sudden revolt, headed by the party of the Abbasids,2 established a new dynasty. The Abbasids treacherously murdered nearly all the members of the Ommiad family, but one survivor escaped to Spain, where he founded at Cordova an independent Ommiad dynasty.3 North Africa, also, before long separated itself from Abbasid rule. Thus the once united caliphate, like the old Roman Empire, split in twain.

The Abbasids continued to reign over the Moslems in Asia for more than three hundred years. The most celebrated of

The Abbasid caliphs,

750-1058 A.D.

Abbasid caliphs was Harun-al-Rashid (Aaron the Just), a contemporary of Charlemagne, to whom the Arab ruler sent several presents, including an elephant and a water-clock which struck the hours. The tales of Harun-al-Rashid's magnificence, his gold and silver, his silks and gems, his rugs and tapestries, reflect the luxurious life of the Abbasid rulers. Gradually, however, their power declined, and in 1058 A.D. the Seljuk Turks, recent converts to Islam, deprived them of their power. A Turkish chieftain, with the title of "King of the East and West," then took the place of the Arabian caliph, though the latter remained the religious head of Islam. He lost even this spiritual author

1 So called from a leading family of Mecca, to which Moawiya belonged. So called from Abbas, an uncle of Mohammed.

This was at first known as the emirate of Cordova, but in 929 A.D. it became the caliphate of Cordova. See the map facing page 306.

4 See page 333.

ity, just two centuries later, when the Mongols from central Asia overran the Turkish dominions.1

The Abbasids removed their capital from Damascus to Bagdad on the banks of the middle Euphrates. The new city, under the fostering care of the caliphs, grew with Bagdad great rapidity. Its population in the ninth century is said to have reached two millions. For a time it was the largest and richest city in the Moslem world. How its splendor impressed the imagination may be seen from the stories of the Thousand and One Nights. After the extinction of the Abbasid caliphate, its importance as the religious and political center of Islam declined. But memories of the former grandeur of Bagdad still cling to it, and even to-day it is referred to in Turkish official documents as the "glorious city."

of the

It was a very great misfortune for the eastern world when the Arabian Empire passed under the control of rude Asiatic peoples. The Turks accepted Islam, but they Extinction did little to preserve and extend Arabian civilization. The stagnant, non-progressive condition of the East at the present time is largely due to the misgovernment of its Turkish conquerors.

136. Arabian Civilization

Arabian

Empire a misfortune

The Arabs

of civilization

The great Moslem cities of Bagdad, Damascus, Cairo, and Cordova were not only seats of government for the different divisions of the Arabian Empire; they were also the centers of Arabian civilization. The conquests as absorbers of the Arabs had brought them into contact with highly developed peoples whose culture they absorbed and to some extent improved. They owed most to Persia and, 1 See page 485. Descendants of the Abbasids subsequently took up their abode in Egypt. Through them the claim to the caliphate passed in 1538 A.D. to the Ottoman Turks. The Sultan at Constantinople still calls himself caliph of the Moslem world. However, in 1916 A.D. the Grand Sherif of Mecca, a descendant of Mohammed, led a revolt against the Turks, captured Mecca and Medina, and proclaimed Arab independence. Should the European war end in favor of the Allies, the caliphate will undoubtedly go back to the Arabs.

Popularly called the Arabian Nights.

after Persia, to Greece, through the empire at Constantinople. In their hands there was somewhat the same fusion of East and West as Alexander the Great had sought to accomplish.1 Greek science and philosophy mingled with the arts of Persia and other Oriental lands. Arabian civilization, for about four centuries under the Ommiad and Abbasid caliphs, far surpassed anything to be found in western Europe.

Many improvements in agriculture were due to the Arabs. They had a good system of irrigation, practiced rotation of Agriculture to graft and produce new varieties of plants and fruits. From the Arabs we have received cotton, flax, hemp, buckwheat, rice, sugar cane, and coffee, various vegetables, including asparagus, artichokes, and beans, and such fruits as melons, oranges, lemons, apricots, and plums.

crops, employed fertilizers, and understood how

The Arabs excelled in various manufactures. Damascus was famous for its brocades, tapestries, and blades of tempered Manufac- steel. The Moorish cities in Spain had also their turing special productions: Cordova, leather; Toledo, armor; and Granada, rich silks. Arab craftsmen taught the Venetians to make crystal and plate glass. The work of Arab potters and weavers was at once the admiration and despair of its imitators in western Europe. The Arabs knew the secrets of dyeing and they made a kind of paper. Their textile fabrics and articles of metal were distinguished for beauty of design and perfection of workmanship. European peoples during the early Middle Ages received the greater part of their manufactured articles of luxury through the Arabs.2

The products of Arab farms and workshops were carried far and wide throughout medieval lands. The Arabs were keen. merchants, and Mohammed had expressly encouraged commerce by declaring it agreeable to God. The Arabs traded with India, China, the East Indies (Java

Commerce

1 See page 126.

The European names of some common articles reveal the Arabic sources from which they were first derived. Thus, damask comes from Damascus, muslin from Mosul, gauze from Gaza, cordovan (a kind of leather) from Cordova, and morocco leather from North Africa.