is not in names or in words, in rites or in sacrifices; but in the nature of things, in the actual transactions of life, in unchristian customs, and anti-christian sentiments; and there is even that old black stone-idol, of which I said before in a figurative sense, that it has ever remained firmly fixed in the religion of Mahomet. The commencement of this religion was not marked by any contest about mysteries of faith, or points of doctrine; but by combats of another kind more congenial to the spirit of the Arabs, by a war which broke out between the party of Mahomet, and the hostile tribe which refused to acknowledge him for a prophet, and whose refusal occasioned his flight from Mecca. In this contest he drew the sword, fought courageously against the unbelievers, and by overpowering by force of arms all who refused to recognize him as a prophet, thought to prove his divine mission. He met however with much resistance, and had many factions to overcome, before he succeeded in subduing the various tribes of his nation. This contest lasted for ten years, up to the very moment of his death, when he died master of all Arabia. Shortly before that event, he wrote very insolent letters to the Emperor Heraclius, and to the great king of Persia, summoning them to acknowledge him for a Prophet, and to believe in his mission. Both gave rather evasive replies, than positive refusals;—so great was the terror which this new power of Hell had already struck into the world.
Immediately on the death of Mahomet, a great contest arose among his disciples. On one side Ali, his son-in-law, by marriage with his daughter Fatima, and on the other Abubeker, his father-in-law, whose daughter Ayesha was the surviving widow of the Prophet, and who was afterwards succeeded by Omar, contended with all the might of their respective adherents for superiority and dominion; and this bloody family-quarrel, which distracted the very infancy of the Arabian Empire, has produced among Mahometan nations a long and protracted religious schism, which has continued down to the present day. This was originally a mere personal dispute, and not a dogmatic controversy as among Christian sects; for the religion of Mahomet furnishes no matter for such controversies, as in reality it contains little of a doctrinal nature, and recognizes no dogmas but the two contained in the seven Arabic words of the well-known symbol of Islam:—“There is no God but God, and Mahomet is the Apostle of God.” The one of these is a declaration of the self-evident tenet of the unity of God, but levelled indirectly against the Christian dogma of the Trinity; while the other expresses the divine mission of Mahomet, and by calling forth a veneration that leads to the contempt and rejection of all things besides, has in a practical point of view, really established a new species of idolatry. Abubeker and Omar asserted that they alone were the
legitimate Caliphs and successors of Mahomet; and as the Partisans of Ali rejected the supplement founded on oral tradition, to the poems and maxims of the Prophet, they were stigmatized as schismatics by the opposite party. In Persia, the sect of Ali has remained predominant down to the present day; and as in that country, the ancient traditions and old national poetry have been partly preserved, and have been combined in a very peculiar manner with the tenets of Mahometanism, many bolder, freer, and less contracted notions have found their way among this people. Hence it is very possible that on a closer investigation, we could discover a great difference in the intellectual character of these two sects, not so much perhaps in religious doctrines, about which there is here little room for enquiry, as in moral feelings and views of life.
The progress of the Arabian conquests was not checked by these internal disputes. Five years after the death of Mahomet, and fifteen from the commencement of the Hegira, the city of Jerusalem was conquered by the arms of the Arabs; and in the eighteenth year of the same era, Egypt became a Mussulman province. The thirtieth year of the Hegira was not yet terminated, before the whole Empire of Persia was subdued, and its last monarch of the race of the Sassanides, Yezdegerd had perished in foreign parts, a suppliant and a fugitive. In the fiftieth year of the Hegira, Arabian vessels menaced
and beseiged Constantinople, which was indebted for its deliverance chiefly to the use of the Greek fire. In the ninetieth year of the same era, while on one side the Arabs extended their victorious arms over India, they subverted on the other the Visigoth kingdom in Spain and Portugal, and became masters of the whole Hesperian Peninsula, as far as those inaccessible mountains, in whose fastnesses a fugitive remnant of the ruling Goths, and of the old inhabitants of the country had intrenched themselves, thence to carry on that struggle for freedom, which till the final conquest of Granada, and the complete expulsion of the Moors from Spain, lasted for a period of eight hundred years. After the downfal of the first dynasty of Caliphs of the house of Ommiyah, and the subsequent accession of the Abbassides to the empire, a separate and independent Caliphate was established in Mussulman Spain, and lasted there for several ages. The Arabs had scarce achieved the conquest of Spain, when they aspired to the possession of the Visi-Goth and Burgundian provinces of France. But a term was at last put to the progress of their arms, by the mighty victory which the Frank hero, Charles Martel, gained between Tours and Poitiers, over their General Abderame, who fell on the field with the flower of his troops, in the twentieth year after the conquest of Spain, and in the hundred and tenth year of the Hegira. Thus did the arm of Charles Martel save and deliver
the Christian nations of the West, from the deadly grasp of all-destroying Islam. In Asia the universal dominion of the Arabs was more and more firmly consolidated, and the second of the Abbassides, Almansor, erected the city of Bagdad, or the new Babylon, not far from the country where the old was situated, and which was thenceforth the vast metropolis of an immense empire.[5]
The new religion and conquests of the Arabs may be considered in the light of a new migration of nations, as no inconsiderable portion of the Moorish population passed into Spain; and this Arabian migration has exerted in Asia
in Africa, a far more extensive influence on empire, language, manners, political institutions, and intellectual cultivation, than the invasion of the Germanic tribes has exercised in Europe. When we compare the immigrations of the Germanic tribes with those of the Arabs, and consider the violence which characterized the latter, the pernicious influence they have exerted on the human mind, and on civilization, and the despotism they have invariably introduced into political and domestic society, we may look upon the migrating tribes of Germany, almost as Colonies, which though originally they partook of a warlike character, yet inclined more and more and
to a peaceful nature, and ultimately assumed that spirit, when the tumult of intermediate anarchy had subsided, and Christianity had more intimately blended and finally incorporated the new settlers and the old inhabitants.
As the divine author of Christianity had promised his disciples, that the high power of God should ever abide with them, should guide and defend them; and that the assisting and counselling Spirit of truth, of peaceful order, and of active zeal should never be removed from them; the efficay of this divine promise was now manifested during this intermediate period of anarchy; and though in a different form from what it appeared in the earlier ages of the church, yet was it perfectly adapted to the exigencies of the time. The great problem of the age was first in this new agglomeration of nations, to endeavour to allay the agitated elements of society, till after that agitation had subsided, they should grow and strengthen into organic life and form; and next, to preserve the heritage of European science and letters, and thus sow the seeds of a richer and more flourishing harvest for future ages. And to effect this by the mild and genial influence of Christianity, was the object, the task, and the work of the distinguished ecclesiastics, bishops, dignitaries, and other apostolic men of those ages. The two great popes, Leo and Gregory, shone conspicuous above all their contemporaries, and were in that period of anarchy, a pillar of strength