After Kaled’s recall from the Persian frontier, the war against the empire of the Magians was carried on languidly for several years. In 636, however, Omar sent a new commander, Said, with considerable reinforcements to the army on the Euphrates. After the murder of Chosroes II. and Cobad II., in 628, eight kings of Persia had followed each other in rapid succession, in the short space of three years. At last, a woman, Arzema, seized upon the throne; but, in 632, she was deposed, and the tiara transferred from her head to that of the grandson of Chosroes, Yezdegerd (III.), a boy of fifteen. A dying effort was now made by the Persians to drive back the Saracen invaders. An army of 120,000 men, with 30,000 regulars among them, was collected under Rustam, who, urged on by his youthful and inexperienced monarch, sought the Moslems in the plains of Cadesia, where Said had pitched his camp. The Mussulman forces numbered only 30,000; the fight was protracted for three whole days; it was bloody and obstinate in the extreme; the Saracens lost one clear fourth of their number; the fall of Rustam, on the third day, decided the fate of the battle and of Persia (636). The standard of the Sassanides (a leathern apron of a blacksmith, covered with a profusion of precious gems) fell into the hands of the conquerors. The province of Irak submitted to the Khalif, who secured his conquest by the foundation of the city of Basra, or Bassora, on the Shat-el-Arab (i.e., the river of the Arabs), which is formed by the junction of the Euphrates and Tigris. The Moslems crossed the latter river, and took and sacked Madayn, or Ctesiphon, the capital of the Persian empire; immense treasures fell here into their hands, more than sufficient indeed to enrich the whole host of naked Arabians beyond their most sanguine expectations. Many splendid works of art were destroyed by the ruthless hands of the ignorant sons of the desert. In one of the apartments of the white palace of Chosroes Nushirvan, was found a magnificent carpet of silk, with the picture of a garden embroidered on it in gold and precious stones, imitating the natural colors of the flowers, fruits, and shrubs depicted; Said preserved this splendid piece of workmanship, and sent it to the commander of the Faithful; but the precious gift found little favor in the sight of Omar; that cynical gentleman quietly ordered the picture to be destroyed, and divided the materials among his brethren of Medina: the intrinsic value of these materials may be conjectured from the fact, that Ali’s share alone was sold for twenty thousand drachms of silver. A new city, Cufa, was founded on the western side of the lower Euphrates, and the seat of government was removed to it from the despoiled Madayn. One Persian province after the other was compelled to submit to the Moslem sway; at Jalula, Yezdegerd nobly contended once more for the empire of his ancestors; in vain! the fanaticism of the Arabs proved stronger than the despair of the Persians. Said had been recalled, and Firuzan sent in his place; the courage of the Persian nation was not yet thoroughly subdued; 150,000 Persians attacked the Moslem host at Nehavend, about 230 miles south of Hamadan; but though Firuzan had only 30,000 Mussulmans to oppose to the overwhelming numbers of the Persians, and though the latter fought with true bravery, fate had decreed the downfall of the monarchy of the Sassanides: the Arabians gained “the victory of victories,” and the hapless Yezdegerd, worthy of a better fate, like Darius Codomannus, yielded up all hope of empire (642).[46] After the victory of Nehavend, the cities of Hamadan, Ispahan, Estachar (Persepolis), and many more, were readily reduced, and the conquest of Persia was achieved.
Whilst Persia was thus being added to the new Saracen empire, another province was snatched from the feeble emperor of Byzantium. Omar had cast his eyes upon Egypt. With only 4000 Arabs, the valiant Amru invaded that country, in June, 638; after a siege of thirty days, he took possession of Farmah, or Pelusium, the key of Egypt. The reduction of Babylon, on the Eastern bank of the Nile, opposite Memphis, the ancient capital of Egypt, took Amru seven months, although he had received a reinforcement of 4000 men. On the spot where Amru’s army had pitched their tents during the siege of Babylon, a new city arose, which forms now part of an extensive suburb of Cairo, or Al Cahira, i.e., the victorious, founded by the Fatimite Khalifs (Moez), in 970. Notwithstanding the capture of Babylon and Memphis, Amru would probably have been compelled to relinquish his attempt to conquer Egypt, had not the Jacobite (Monophysite) Copts under Mokawkas, who would have preferred the devil’s rule to that of their Melchite[47] tyrants, joined the invaders heart and soul. Under their guidance, and with their aid, Amru, who had, meanwhile, been considerably reinforced from Syria, marched from Memphis to Alexandria; which latter city was, after a series of preliminary combats, at last closely invested on the land side. As the sea remained open, Heraclius might have saved the great provision store of Byzantium, had he acted with the least energy; but the feeble old man contented himself with praying for the relief of the besieged city, and thought, perhaps, he had enlisted God on his side by appointing a priest (the patriarch Cyrus), to the præfecture of Egypt, and the conduct of the war. No wonder then that, notwithstanding a truly gallant defence by the inhabitants, the city was, after a siege of fourteen months, at length compelled to surrender (22nd of December, 640). Omar’s commands preserved Alexandria from the horrors of pillage. The story of the burning of the Alexandrian library by order of Omar, is absolutely void of foundation; the honor of the first invention of this calumnious lie belongs (of course) to a Christian historian, Abulpharagius, primate of the Jacobites, who wrote 600 years after the event: but a crowd of historians have since faithfully copied it, even to its most extravagantly absurd details.[48]
With the reduction of Alexandria, the conquest of Egypt was achieved, Amru carrying his victorious arms even beyond the boundaries of that country as far as Tripoli. To facilitate the communication between Egypt and Arabia, Omar constructed a canal from the Nile to the Red Sea. Omar, the now mighty ruler of a most extensive empire, was revolving new plans of conquest, when the dagger of Firuz, a Persian slave, who had been personally aggrieved by the Khalif, cut short his thread of life—and saved the world from subjugation; for what nation or empire could, at that time, have long or successfully withstood the impetuous tide, which, in the short space of ten years, had engulphed Syria, Persia, and Egypt; and was full vigorous enough to sweep over the whole earth, had but the master-mind which had hitherto with rare wisdom directed its enormous material force, continued to breathe an intelligent will into it. Omar died in November, 644: urged to name his successor, he had refused to do so, but had devolved the task of choosing a new Khalif, on Ali and five others of the most respectable companions of the prophet. The illustrious son of Abu Taleb might now, indeed, have ascended the vacant throne, had he deigned to promise a servile conformity, not only to the Koran and tradition, but also to the “sayings and doings” of his predecessors, Abu Bekr and Omar. This demand his proud spirit rejected with disdain. Othman, also a son-in-law of the prophet, and who had been his secretary, accepted the government with these restrictions. The new Khalif was but little made to sustain the weight of the Saracen empire. He was a weak and vacillating old man, and led entirely by unworthy favorites, more particularly by his secretary, Mervan; he was arrogant and overbearing withal, and in the space of a few brief years, he excited the dissatisfaction and indignation of even the most loyally disposed among his subjects. At last the universal discontent was gathering to a head. Resolved no longer to submit to the exactions of the wretched favorites on whom the Khalif had conferred power and station, the tribes rose in arms. From Cufa, from Bassora, from Egypt, from the Desert, they marched on Medina: they encamped about a league from the city, and dispatched a haughty summons to their sovereign to redress their grievances, or to give place to a more worthy prince. Othman promised reformation, and Ali’s generous intercession might have succeeded in healing the breach between the Khalif and his angry subjects; but Mervan’s perfidy, and the deep intrigues of the artful Ayesha, defeated all chances of reconciliation between the prince and the people. In vain Othman ascended the pulpit, publicly and solemnly to entreat Allah’s and the people’s forgiveness for his misrule; he was pelted with stones, and carried home half dead. The insurgents besieged him six weeks in his palace, intercepting his water and provisions. The helpless old man had to endure the grief of seeing himself forsaken and betrayed by those on whom his misplaced favor had bestowed wealth and power. Abandoning all hope, he calmly expected the approach of death: a desperate band of fanatical Charegites, with Mohammed, Ayesha’s brother, at their head, made their way into his palace. They found him seated, with the Koran in his lap; but neither the sacred book, nor his venerable aspect, could disarm the assassins. Othman fell, pierced with many wounds, 18th June, 655, in the eighty-second year of his age.
During the reign of Othman, the island of Cyprus was conquered by Moawiyah, in 647, and the island of Rhodes, in 654; from the latter island, the Saracens carried off the massy trunk and the huge fragments of the celebrated colossal statue of Apollo, which had been overthrown about 800 years before by an earthquake. The large and once populous country of Chorasan, the kingdom of the ancient Bactrians, was also “annexed” to the Saracen empire, during the reign of Othman. In 647, Abdallah[49] and Zobeir were sent with 40,000 Moslems to attempt the conquest of Africa. They advanced to the walls of Tripoli, and endeavoured to carry that maritime city by assault; they were, however, repulsed, and the approach of a numerous army under the Greek præfect Gregory, compelled them to raise the siege. By Zobeir’s skill and valor, the Arabs gained a complete and decisive victory over the hostile forces, the præfect himself being slain by the hand of Zobeir. The opulent city of Sufetula, situated 150 miles to the south of Carthage, fell into the hands of the victorious Arabs. Abdallah prudently rested content with the advantages gained; he accepted the offer of submission and tribute made on all sides by the provincials, and retreated to the confines of Egypt (648).
Ali had made a perhaps somewhat lukewarm effort to effect a reconciliation between Othman and his insurgent subjects. When matters had proceeded to extremities, he had sent his two sons, Hassan and Hosein, to the rescue of the besieged Khalif; and Hassan, the eldest of his sons, had, indeed, been wounded in the defence of that unfortunate prince. Still Ali had not been very energetic in his opposition to the rebels; and it is not uncharitable to suppose, that the death of Othman caused him no very bitter grief. Five days after the murder of the aged Khalif, Ali was proclaimed his successor by acclamation. The illustrious son of Abu Taleb was, indeed, a poet and a hero, but a most indifferent statesman. Telha and the valiant Zobeir, two of the most powerful of the Arabian chiefs, who had had a hand in Othman’s overthrow and death, and whose doubtful allegiance Ali ought to have secured by rich gifts and greater promises, saw themselves treated with studied coldness by the new Khalif, of whom they had vainly solicited the government of Irak, as the reward of their services. This impolitic conduct of Ali made them inclined to lend a willing ear to the advice and suggestions of the artful Ayesha, to raise the standard of revolt against Ali, and to charge him with the perpetration of the very crime which she had instigated, and they had lent their aid to execute! The two chiefs, and the widow of the prophet, escaped from Medina to Mecca, and from thence to Bassora; the unblushing woman, whose own brother had actually headed the assassins, had the almost incredible effrontery to send Othman’s bloody shirt to the governor of Syria, Moawiyah, Ali’s hereditary foe, and to call upon him to avenge Othman’s blood upon his murderer—Ali! The son of Abu Sophian was perfectly aware of the true circumstances of the case; but it suited his ambitious projects to appear to believe the infamous accusation against the august chief of the line of Hashem, the more so as Ali had expressed his intention to remove the head of the house of Ommiyah from the government of Syria. Moawiyah, therefore, exposed the bloody shirt of Othman in the principal mosque of Damascus, and denouncing Ali as the instigator of the sacrilegious deed, called upon the Faithful to rise and avenge the death of the holy martyr, whose lawful successor in the Khalifate he declared himself to be, in obedience, as he pretended, to the express command of the dying Othman. The appeal was numerously responded to, and the ruler of Syria saw himself speedily at the head of a formidable army; his friend, Amru, whom Ali had removed from the government of Egypt, espoused his cause. Telha and Zobeir seized upon Irak; 50,000 Moslems marched under their banner. At the head of 20,000 of his loyal Arabs, and 9,000 auxiliaries of Cufa, the Lion of God went to encounter his enemies. Under the walls of Bassora (2nd and 3rd November, 656) was fought the first battle of this civil war, which, destroying in internecine strife the flower of the nation of the desert, may well be said to have saved the world from the yoke of Islam; for had Ali been sole and undisputed master of the Saracen empire, even the fire of Callinicus[50] would have proved no effectual protection against the then irresistible tide of Moslem conquest, and, mayhap, the Isaurian might have indulged his iconoclastic propensities at the head of a congenial host of image-haters; nor would the west of Europe have escaped, and the champion of the cross, the Hammer of Christ, might, perchance, have figured in history as the Ilderim of Islam.
The rebels were totally defeated; Telha and Zobeir, with 10,000 of their host, were slain; and Ayesha, who, seated in a litter perched on the back of a camel,[51] had braved the dangers of the field, animating the troops by her presence, and cheering them on with her voice, fell a captive into the hands of the man whom, with implacable hatred, she had pursued so many years, and whom she had so grievously injured; but the generous Ali disdained warring with women. Mohammed’s widow was treated with every respect due to her rank, and speedily dismissed to her proper station at the tomb of the prophet. The victorious Khalif, having in vain offered the most favorable terms of accommodation to Moawiyah and Amru, took the field against them at the head of 70,000 men, in the spring of 657. The plain of Siffin, on the western bank of the Euphrates, formed the field of ninety actions or skirmishes, in a desultory warfare of one hundred and ten days. The forces of the Ommiyah chief, are said to have amounted to more than 120,000 men; among them many of the veterans of the Persian, Syrian, and Egyptian campaigns; 45,000 of that gallant band paid with their lives for the ambition of their chief; 25,000 of Ali’s brave and loyal followers lay slain by their side—a rare crop of blossoms for the garden of the destroyer. The Lion of God was everywhere foremost in the fight; his ponderous two-edged sword, wielded with irresistible force, made fearful havoc in the hostile ranks; every time he smote a rebel, he shouted his war-cry “Allah Akbar!”[52] and the Arabian and Persian historians tell us with all gravity, that “in the tumult of a nocturnal battle, that tremendous exclamation was heard no less than four hundred times.” Making all due allowance for Oriental exaggeration, and striking one nought off the account, enough still remains to make the feat a most respectable achievement indeed.
The magnanimous Ali had proposed to settle the dispute between him and Moawiyah by single combat; but to encounter so formidable a champion would truly have been sheer madness on the part of the prince of Damascus; he therefore declined the Khalif’s courteous invitation. The chief of the line of Ommiyah was not so redoubtable a warrior as Ali, but he was a much better politician than the true and lawful commander of the Faithful; clearly foreseeing that the decision of the sword must in the end inevitably turn against him, he devised a stratagem to discomfit his dreaded antagonist, which being based upon a crafty appeal to the reverential and superstitious feelings of Ali’s followers, might reasonably be expected to have a fair chance of success. The Khalif had resolved to terminate the long-pending struggle by a decisive battle; the troops were in presence, and the fight was on the point of being engaged, when a solemn appeal to the books of the Koran, which Moawiyah exposed on the foremost lances, made a considerable portion of Ali’s forces pause in their onset; emissaries of the prince of Damascus had long been busy in the unsuspecting Ali’s ranks; his refusal to hold the tradition, and the sayings and acts of Abu Bekr and Omar as equally binding with the precepts of the Koran, was regarded by many of his own followers as rank heresy; and so it occurred that at the very time when victory seemed secure in his grasp, the Khalif saw himself suddenly abandoned by the greater half of his forces, and even compelled by the vile rabble to submit his indefeasible right to a so-called “arbitration;” Moawiyah being permitted to appoint his friend and fellow-rebel, Amru, as arbiter on his part, whilst Ali was forced by the treacherous crew around him to name Musa, the cadi of Cufa, a mixture in equal parts of stupidity and conceit, to act on his behalf. The result was such as might have been foreseen; the decision was in favor of Moawiyah. Ali indignantly refused to be bound by it, as it was but too patent that the whole “arbitration” had been a disgraceful juggle from the beginning. But he was abandoned by a great many of his former adherents, and compelled to retreat to Cufa. Still he nobly carried on the struggle against the vastly superior forces of his enemies, and though Amru snatched Egypt from him, though Persia and Yemen were subdued or seduced by his crafty rival of Damascus, the final issue of the struggle might yet have been in his favor, had he not been foully murdered by a Charegite,[53] who with two other fanatics had agreed to give peace to their troubled country by the removal of Ali, Moawiyah, and Amru. Each of the three assassins chose his victim, poisoned his dagger, and secretly repaired to the scene of action; but the stroke was fatal only to the lawful Khalif, though the prince of Damascus also was dangerously hurt, and the deputy of the viceroy of Egypt paid with his life for the honor of being mistaken for the illustrious Amru (661).[54] The dying Ali mercifully commanded his children to dispatch his murderer by a single stroke. His eldest son, Hassan, was indeed saluted Khalif, by the party who had faithfully adhered to the banner of the Lion of God, but he was prevailed upon by Moawiyah to resign his pretensions, and the son of Abu Sophian was acknowledged the lawful commander of the Faithful; and Ali’s name was ordered to be cursed from the pulpit.[55]
The rule of the new Khalif was marked, upon the whole, by wisdom and moderation. Moawiyah disdained the simplicity of manners which had distinguished his predecessors; he dressed in costly silks, surrounded himself with a brilliant court, kept eunuchs for the guard of his harem, and set the prophet’s precepts at naught in the matter of wine-drinking. He would indeed shrink from no crime where his political interests were or seemed concerned; and the poisoning of Hassan, who had fondly, but foolishly, hoped that the son of Abu Sophian would forget that the title of Khalif had graced his name for however so short a period of time, and the base murders of Kaled’s son, Abderrahman, and of the bold-spoken Hadjir Ben Hadad, who had dared publicly to protest against the cursing of Ali’s name and memory, are by no means the only blots on the reputation of the founder of the Ommiade dynasty; but he was not cruel and blood-thirsty from mere wantonness of disposition, and, as princes go, he was altogether rather a favorable sample of the class than otherwise.
The first acts of his reign were to put down the rebellious Charegites, and to quell an insurrection of the people of Bassora. The three first Khalifs had resided at Medina; political and strategic considerations had induced Ali to transfer the seat of his government to Cufa. Moawiyah made Damascus his capital, partly because Syria was the stronghold of his power, and partly—and this was unquestionably the principal reason—because his residence at Medina would have materially interfered with the accomplishment of the project nearest and dearest to his heart; viz., to change the elective monarchy to an hereditary kingdom. When he had firmly established his throne, he prepared a powerful expedition by sea and land against Constantinople (668); he entrusted the chief command to the veteran Sophian, and sent his own son Yezid to encourage the troops by his presence and example. But though the supineness of the Greeks permitted them to invest the city of the Cæsars by sea and land, the Saracens met with a more vigorous resistance than they had anticipated; the solid and lofty walls of Byzantium, energetically defended by a numerous and well-disciplined army, and by a people aroused for a time to deeds of heroic devotion, by the danger which threatened to overthrow the last bulwark of their nationality and their religion, and the prodigious effect of the fire of Callinicus, defeated all attempts to carry the city by assault; and the Arabs, finding it a much easier task to plunder the European and Asiatic coasts of the Propontis, carried on the operations of the siege more and more languidly, till, at last, having kept the sea from April to September, they retreated, on the approach of winter, to the isle of Cyzicus, about eighty miles from the capital. However, they renewed the attempt six successive summers, until the enormous losses which they had suffered by fire and sword, and by the mischances of shipwreck and disease, compelled them finally to abandon the bootless enterprise (675). This failure dimmed for a time the glory of the Saracen arms, whilst it seemed to restore the former prestige of the Roman name. The destruction of his fleets, and the annihilation of his armies, had subdued the proud spirit of Moawiyah; the aged Khalif had the mortification of seeing himself insulted in his city and palace of Damascus by the warlike Maronites, or Mardaites, of Mount Lebanon; and he felt desirous of ending his days in tranquillity and repose: he consented therefore to a peace, or truce, of thirty years with the emperor Constantine IV. Pogonatus, in which he indeed was permitted to retain possession of the north-western part of Asia Minor, the island of Cyprus, and the isles of the Greek Archipelago, but in which the majesty of the commander of the Faithful was wofully degraded, by the stipulation of an annual tribute to the Court of Byzantium of three thousand pieces of gold, fifty slaves, and fifty horses of a noble breed (677).
Moawiyah’s arms were more successful in other quarters. His lieutenant, Obeidah, invaded the territories of the Turks, in 673, and made considerable conquests in Central Asia; and a large portion of North Africa was added to the Saracen empire by Akbah, who conquered Tripoli and Barca, founded the city of Cairoan, about fifty miles south of Carthage,[56] in 671, and advanced to the verge of the Atlantic and the Great Desert. But the universal defection of the Africans and Greeks, whom he had conquered, recalled him from the shores of the Atlantic, where he was already meditating a descent on Spain. Surrounded on all sides by hostile multitudes, and despairing of succour, the gallant Akbah, and his small force of brave men, had no other resource left them but to die an honorable death,—they fell to the last man. Zuheir, sent with a new army, avenged the fate of his predecessor; he vanquished the natives in many battles, but was himself overthrown in the end by a powerful army, sent from Constantinople to the relief of Carthage which he was besieging.