Upon the death of Mohammed, Abu Beker, the father of Ayeshah, was elected to the supreme power, but refused to be called king or God’s vicar on earth, assuming only that of Caliph, that is to say Successor, and by this title the Arab sovereigns have ever since been designated. He was indifferent to riches, to all pomp and luxuries; his Arab establishment was of the simplest kind: his retinue consisting of a camel and a black slave.
The Golden Age of the Saracens was the twelve years, A. D. 632–644, comprised in the reigns of Abu Beker and Omar—a period of uninterrupted harmony and external conquest. Though Mohammed was dead, the sword of Islam was not buried with him; for Khaled, surnamed the Sword of God, now advanced to sustain the fame of former conquests. Within a year, Moseilma, a rival, and hence a false prophet, was slain, the rebellion subdued, the empire of Islam firmly reëstablished in Arabia; the scattered leaves gathered for the Koran; and an army for the subjugation of Syria and the East.
It was a strangely opportune hour for the fierce warriors of the desert. The Romans and the Persians were almost always engaged in warfare and their last and most terrible war was contemporary with the preaching of Mohammed.
Under the great Khosru a war began which lasted more than twenty years and exhausted both nations and left them a more easy prey to the Saracens. The Asiatic provinces fell under his victorious armies and, as in the days of Darius, the Persian Empire extended to the Mediterranean and the Ægean Seas. When Heradius in 610 A. D. came to the throne of Constantinople, he was compelled to submit to the sight of a Persian army encamped at Chalcedon; but after some years’ preparation, he entered on a series of campaigns which places his name beside those of Hannibal and Belisarius. Leaving his own dominions, he struck at the very heart of his enemy’s country, and by a series of victories, one of them gained on the site of Nineveh, he utterly overthrew the Persian power, till Khosru was slain by his own subjects and a peace was concluded. Heradius returned to Constantinople leaving Persia torn by contending factions. The Prophet had been diligently watching from his safe retreat the course of the war which is alluded to in the Koran, and now the hour had come for the Saracens to strike their fatal blow.
In the second year of his reign, therefore, Abu Beker prepared for the great enterprise contemplated by Mohammed—the conquest of Syria.—Under this general name was included all the country lying on the north of Arabia and extending from the Mediterranean and the Euphrates. This had long been a land of promise to them. It was a land of abundance. From it they had drawn their chief supplies of corn. Its cities had long been chief marts for the merchandise of their caravans; its seaports still were the centers of an opulent and widely extended commerce. This summons was sent to the chiefs of Arabia Petrea, and Arabia Felix: “In the name of the Most Merciful God * * * to all true believers, health, happiness and the blessing of God. Praise be to God and to Mohammed his prophet. This is to inform you that I intend to send an army of the faithful into Syria, to deliver that country from the infidels, and I remind you that to fight for the true faith is to obey God.”
This call to the conquest of nations in the name of the most merciful God is tender compared with the prayers which is now being daily offered up by the Mohammedans regarding the Armenians: “O Allah! make their children orphans, and defile their abodes. Cause their feet to slip, give them and their families, their households and their women, their children and their relations by marriage, their brothers and their friends, their possessions and their race, their wealth and their lands as booty to the Moslems, O Lord of all creatures.”
Has the spirit of Islam changed any during the last twelve hundred years? certainly not, except it be as much for the worse as the Turk is more lustful and cruel than the Saracen.
Speedily the plains about Medina were covered with the encampments of the chiefs who had responded from all Arabia, in hope of the rich booty to be had from conquered cities and provinces. From the brow of a hill, Abu Beker reviewed the army on the point of departure. His heart swelled with pride, as he gazed on the passing multitudes; the glittering arms; the squadrons of horsemen; the lengthening line of camels, and called to mind the handful of men that followed Mohammed a fugitive from Mecca. Scarce ten years had elapsed, and now a mighty host assembled at the summons of his successor, and distant empires were threatened by the sword of Islam. He lifted up his voice and prayed God to make these troops valiant and victorious. Then giving the word to march, the tents were struck, the camels laden, and in a little while the army poured forth in a long, continuous train over hill and valley.
The “Scourge of God” was let loose against the nations. Before long an immense cavalcade of horses, mules and camels came pouring in with the booty from the first victory over a body of troops sent by the Emperor Heradius to observe them and harass their march.
Soon four armies were in the field; Jerusalem and Damascus were doomed and fate hastened on its march to Persia in the person of Khaled, “The Sword of God” with an army of ten thousand men. He besieged the city of Hira; stormed its palaces; slew the king in battle; subdued the kingdom; imposed on it an annual tribute of seventy thousand pieces of gold; the first tribute ever levied by Moslems on a foreign land, and sent the same to Medina. City after city fell before him. Nothing seemed able to withstand his arms. Planting his victorious standard on the banks of the Euphrates, he wrote to the Persian monarch calling upon him to embrace the faith or pay tribute. “If you refuse both, I will come upon you with a host who love death as much as you do life.”