Moawiyah died on the 6th April, 680. Ten years before his death he had seen his aspiring wishes crowned by the proclamation of his son, Yezid, as presumptive heir of the Saracen empire.[57] True, there had been some murmurs of discontent, and it had even required an armed demonstration against the holy cities of Mecca and Medina to enforce submission to the will of the Khalif: but Moawiyah’s vigor and address had triumphed over every obstacle. Accordingly, after the father’s death, the son was acknowledged as Khalif in every province of the vast empire; with some partial exceptions, indeed, in Arabia proper, and more particularly in Mecca and Medina. But Yezid had inherited none of his father’s qualities; he was a dissolute voluptuarian, and of a most tyrannical disposition withal. In the short time of a few months, the discontent of his subjects had risen to a threatening height; more especially in Arabia proper, and in the province of Irak, People’s eyes began to turn towards Hosein, the younger and only surviving son of Ali and Fatima, and head of the line of Hashem. Hosein had served with distinction in the siege of Constantinople; he had inherited some of his father’s spirit, and had disdainfully refused to acknowledge Yezid’s title. He was invited by a large body of the discontented in Irak, to come and place himself at their head; against the advice of his wife and many of his friends, he resolved to obey the call, and set out with a small retinue, consisting, chiefly of women and children. When he reached the confines of Irak, Obeidollah, the watchful and energetic governor of Cufa, had already crushed the insurrection in the bud. In the plains of Kerbela, Hosein found himself surrounded on all sides by a body of five thousand horse. Unconditional surrender or death was the only alternative offered to him; he chose the latter, and, after deeds of the most heroic valor, his generous band of devoted adherents were all slain, basely butchered from afar with arrows by their cowardly assailants: he, alone, still survived, though bleeding from many a wound. He seated himself at the door of his tent, enfolding his youngest son and his nephew, two beautiful children, in his arms; they were slain there, and their warm life-blood overflowed the hands of the hapless man. With a cry of grief and despair, he started up and threw himself in the midst of the foe. The soldiers fell back on every side, and, for a time, none dared to lay hands on the grandson of the prophet; but, at last, one of their leaders, the remorseless Shamer, urged them to the attack, and the heroic Hosein was slain, with three-and-thirty strokes of lances and swords. The dead body was trampled under foot by the inhuman wretches, and the severed head carried to the castle of Cufa, and thence forwarded to Damascus, that Yezid might look upon it and sleep in peace. An expedition was sent against the holy cities, which, after Hosein’s death, had acknowledged for their Khalif, Abdallah,[58] the son of the valiant Zobeir. Medina was taken, and the sisters and children of Hosein and Hassan were sent in chains to the throne of Damascus. Yezid was urged by his advisers to bury his fears for ever in the grave of the race of Ali and Fatima. Now, had Yezid been one of the Christian Cæsars of Byzantium, who “thought it no very great harm” to slay even their own kindred, or to deprive them of sight, or mutilate them in some other way, if undisputed empire could but be secured thereby, no doubt the advice would have been followed to the letter: but the grandson of the wild Henda was not altogether without some of the better feelings of human nature, and the Saracen Khalif had no convenient “patriarch,” or bishop, at hand to lull his troublesome conscience by the mockery of priestly absolution. The mourning family were honorably dismissed to Medina, and Yezid even strove to console them for the irreparable losses they had suffered at his father’s and his own hands.
The partial successes of Yezid’s generals against Abdallah did not prevent that indefatigable warrior from seizing upon Yemen, and establishing his power in Egypt. After a troubled reign of three years, Yezid died (683); and a few months after his death, his son and successor, Moawiyah II., preferred voluntary abdication to the desperate struggle which he foresaw it would cost to oust Abdallah from his usurped position. For a time, complete anarchy ensued: Obeidollah, the governor of Irak, attempted to found a new empire and a new dynasty, in Bassora, but he was ignominiously expelled by the people; and the provinces of Irak, Yemen, Hejaz, and Egypt, acknowledged the name and sovereignty of Abdallah. Even in Syria, a creature of Abdallah’s, Dehac, was, for a time, obeyed as vicegerent. At last, however, Mervan, of the line of Ommiyah, was saluted Khalif in Damascus (684), on condition, however, as he bound himself by oath, to name Kaled, Yezid’s younger son, his successor. Mervan speedily succeeded in subjecting Syria and Egypt to his sway. The people of Chorasan, where the Hashemites had gained considerable ascendancy, renounced their allegiance to the empire, proclaimed their independence, and elected the noble Salem their king. Soliman, the son of Zarad, excited a formidable insurrection in Arabia Proper, and in part of Syria, and proclaimed the deposition of both rival Khalifs; but he was defeated by Obeidollah. Mervan, forgetful of his oath, proclaimed his son, Abd-el-Malek, his successor; he fell by the dagger of his offended kinsman, Kaled (685). But Abd-el-Malek made good his claim to the succession, and set diligently about to strengthen his position in the provinces which his father had wrested from Abdallah’s grasp. In Abd-el-Malek the latter found an antagonist worthy of himself, both in valor and wile. The actual struggle between the two rivals was, however, postponed for a season by the appearance of a third party on the scene,—Mokhtar, another inspired prophet, and whose chances of establishing another new creed seemed, for a time, to promise rather fair; in fact, the city of Cufa, and part of the province of Irak, had acknowledged his divine mission, when Abdallah’s good sword proved him an impostor (686). The Greeks had, meanwhile, taken advantage of the distress and fears of the house of Ommiyah, but in their own paltry and pettifogging way; for instead of boldly drawing the sword to wrest Asia Minor, Palestine, and Syria from the enfeebled grasp of the divided Saracens, they were content with obtaining from Abd-el-Malek a considerable increase of the tribute.
Abd-el-Malek, relieved thus from his apprehensions of a war with the Eastern empire, could now turn his undivided attention to the impending struggle with the rival Khalif of Mecca. After five years’ fierce and doubtful contest, Abdallah was at length defeated in a decisive battle, and compelled to take refuge in Mecca; here he defended himself for seven months against Abd-el-Malek’s vastly superior forces. At last, in a general assault, the valiant son of Zobeir was slain; his fall decided that of the city, and the Saracen empire was thus again united under one ruler (692). As soon as Abd-el-Malek saw himself sole and undisputed Khalif, he threw off the badge of servitude to the Eastern empire, which the internal dissensions and troubles of the preceding years had compelled him to submit to. He discontinued the payment of the stipulated tribute, and even wrested another province, Armenia, from the feeble hands of the Byzantine Cæsars.
Hassan, the governor of Egypt, was charged with the task to reconquer the north of Africa. That brave and skilful commander, after having subdued the provinces of the interior, carried his victorious arms to the sea-coast, and took, by a sudden assault, the fortifications of Carthage, the metropolis of Africa (697). However, the unexpected arrival of a powerful Greek fleet, with a numerous and well-appointed army[59] on board, compelled the Arabian general to evacuate his recent conquest, and to retire to Cairoan. But Abd-el-Malek had resolved to annex North Africa to his dominions at any cost; he prepared therefore during the winter a powerful armament by sea and land, and in spring, 698, Hassan appeared once more before Carthage, and compelled the præfect and patrician John, who commanded the Greek forces, to evacuate the city; soon after, he defeated him again in the neighbourhood of Utica, and a precipitate embarkation alone saved the remains of the Byzantine army from absolute annihilation. Carthage was reduced to a heap of ruins. But Hassan had soon to encounter a more formidable enemy: a prophetess arose among the Moors, or Berbers, of the interior, and boldly challenged the Arabian invaders to make good their claim to the land which they had fondly deemed subdued with the expulsion of the Greeks. Cahina was the name of this extraordinary woman, who seemed to have discovered the secret of breathing into her people a spirit of enthusiasm superior even to the fanaticism of the Moslems. In a single day Africa was lost again to the Saracens, and the humbled Hassan retired to the confines of Egypt, where he expected, five years, the promised succour of the Khalif. But Queen Cahina’s order to destroy the cities, and to cut down the fruit-trees, filled the Christian population of the coast with apprehension and anger; and when Hassan at last made his reappearance in the province, he was hailed, even by the most zealous Catholics, as a deliverer and saviour. The royal prophetess boldly accepted battle; but she was slain, and her army was put to the rout (705). Still the spirit of resistance survived, and Hassan’s successor, the aged but fiery Musa Ben Nassir, had to quell a new insurrection of the Moorish tribes. He and his two sons, Abdallah and Abdelaziz, succeeded so well, however, that not only did the Berbers submit to the Khalif, but they even embraced the religion of Islam, and became henceforth as one people with their Arabian conquerors.
Abd-el-Malek was the first Khalif to establish a national mint, both for silver and gold coin (695); the gold coins were imitations of the Roman gold denar, with an inscription proclaiming the unity of the God of Mohammed; the Arabs called these gold coins, dinars; their value was about eight shillings sterling. It would appear they struck also double, and half, dinars. The silver coin might represent a value of fivepence or sixpence English money. Abd-el-Malek died in 705. He was succeeded by his son Walid, a prince who, indeed, did not inherit the activity, vigor, and decision of his father; but was, on the other hand, free also from the cruelty and the low avarice that stained the character of Abd-el-Malek. Walid loved and encouraged arts and sciences, and more especially architecture: he built the splendid mosque of the Ommiades at Damascus, at an expense of half a million sterling; he rebuilt also Mohammed’s mosque at Medina, on a larger and more magnificent scale. He had the good fortune to be served by clever ministers and great generals, whose energy, valor, and enterprise amply made up for the personal indolence and inactivity of the Khalif, and imparted a glory to his reign, rivalling that of Omar’s. One of his lieutenants, Catibah (the camel driver), added to the Saracen empire the spacious regions between the Oxus, the Jaxartes, and the Caspian sea, with the rich and populous commercial cities Carizme, Bochara, and Samarcand (707-710). From Samarcand, the victorious general sent his master a daughter of Phirouz, or Firuz, the son of the unfortunate Yezdegerd, the last of the Sassanide rulers of Persia, who became Walid’s wife. Mohammed, one of Catibah’s colleagues, displayed the banner of Islam on the opposite banks of the Indus (712); and in the same year, Fargana, the residence of the Chagan of the Turks, was taken by Catibah, who advanced as far as Cashgar, where he received an embassy from the Emperor of China. Walid’s brother, Moslemah, one of the most redoubtable of the Mussulman warriors known to history, defeated the Chazars in the Caucasus, and annexed Galatia and other parts of Asia Minor to the empire of his brother (710). But the greatest and most glorious conquest was that of Spain. As early as the time of Othman, the Arabs had cast a longing eye upon the fair land of Handalusia,[60] and their piratical squadrons had more than once ravaged the Spanish coast. The Gothic king, Wamba, had defeated one of their expeditionary corps in 675. Since that time no further attempt had been made on the kingdom of the Visigoths; but the latter, beholding with apprehension the establishment of the Arabian power in North Africa, had, in 697, aided the Byzantine emperor in the attempted relief of Carthage. The king of Spain possessed on the African coast the fortress of Ceuta (Septa or Septum), one of the columns of Hercules, which is divided by a narrow strait from the opposite pillar or point on the European coast. This fortress was held at the beginning of the eighth century by the Gothic Count Julian, brother-in-law of Oppas, archbishop of Toledo and Seville, whose brother, Witiza, was then king of Spain. In 709, Musa made an attempt to reduce Ceuta, and subdue the small portion of Mauritania which was still wanting to the conquest of North Africa; but he was repulsed by Count Julian with considerable loss, and would most probably have relinquished his project upon Spain, had not internal dissensions among the Gothic magnates unexpectedly opened to him a fair prospect of success. King Witiza had attempted to reform the truly appalling licentiousness of the Spanish clergy, and to curb the overgrown power of the nobility; but lacking both the crafty wile of the eleventh Louis of France, and the strong despotic will of the Tudors of England, his well-meant efforts simply led to his own deposition (710), which he survived only a few months. The clergy and nobility elected a king after their own heart, in the person of Roderic, a grandson of King Reccaswinth (or Receswinth[61]). The two sons of Witiza, and their uncle Oppas, conspired to overthrow the new monarch, who, it would appear, had been indiscreet enough to express his intention of removing Count Julian from his Andalusian and Mauritanian commands, the moment he should think himself sufficiently powerful to give due force to his royal decrees.[62] The threatened count was readily induced to join the party of the conspirators; but dreading lest the force which they could bring into the field, should prove unavailing against the monarch’s power, he, who had hitherto been the staunchest defender of his country, did not hesitate to betray her to the Saracen foe, and to open wide the portals that had been entrusted to his honor and patriotism to guard. He and his fellow-conspirators endeavored to soothe the misgivings of conscience with Musa’s deceptive assurance, that he did not intend to establish himself in Spain, but would rest content with a share of the spoil.
As soon as Musa had obtained Walid’s sanction to the contemplated enterprise, he sent off an expedition of only four vessels, with five hundred men on board, to explore the coast of the coveted land. Tarif Abu Zara, the commander of this force, landed on the opposite side of the strait, and marched eighteen miles into the interior, to the castle and town of the traitor Count of Ceuta[63] (July 710). His glowing report of the wealth of the country, decided Musa to send over a more powerful expedition under the command of his freedman, Tarik Ben Zayad. The miserable Julian supplied the means of transport. Five thousand Arabs and seven thousand Moors landed at the European pillar of Hercules, Mount Calpe, which became, henceforth, the Mountain of Tarik—Gebel al Tarik, a name corrupted afterwards into the present appellation of Gibraltar (April, 711). Here Tarik formed a strongly entrenched camp, and gathered around him the friends of Julian, and also many Jews who were fired with the most deadly hatred against their Christian persecutors, that had, for more than a century, oppressed and hunted down this doomed people with a malignity such as religious fanaticism alone can excite and sustain. Counts Edeco and Theodemir, who had been commanded by the king to expel the intruders, were defeated with great slaughter; and a seasonable reinforcement from Africa swelled Tarik’s ranks to above 30,000 men. Roderic, conscious at last of the magnitude of the danger that threatened to overwhelm his throne and his people, gathered the flower of the Gothic nation around him, and marched at the head of 100,000 men to encounter the foreign invaders. In the neighbourhood of Cadiz, at Xeres de la Frontera, on the Guadelete, the hostile armies met. Three days were spent in desultory, though bloody fighting; on the fourth day, the actual battle commenced. When night spread her sable wings, and bade the slaughter cease for a while, more than half of the Saracen forces lay stretched dead on the ground they had come to conquer; and had not the vile defection of the most reverend father in God, the Archbishop of Toledo, and his two nephews, to whom Roderic’s generous or foolish (it may be read both ways) confidence had entrusted the most important post, broken the ranks of the Christians, the severed head of Musa’s freedman might have graced the battlements of Toledo. As it was, it took three days to scatter the remains of the Gothic army; and many a Saracen, and many a Christian traitor to his country, had to bite the dust before Tarik could pen his laconic “Praise be to Allah!—we have conquered.” (July 19-26, 711). The hapless king of the Goths was either slain in the fight or drowned in the waters of the Guadalquivir. The field of Xeres decided the fate of the Gothic monarchy; nearly the whole of Spain submitted to Tarik with such extraordinary rapidity, that the good old Musa, envious of his freedman’s success and fame, bade him arrest his victorious course, until he himself should arrive to gather the last and fairest fruits of the victory. Tarik, however, added Cordova and Toledo, the capital of the Gothic kingdom, to the list of his conquests, and advanced as far as the Bay of Biscay, where the failure of land at last compelled him to stop. Here he received an angry and imperious summons from his jealous chief; who had, meanwhile, himself crossed over from Africa, at the head of ten thousand Arabs and eight thousand Moors, and had taken Seville, and was besieging Merida. The latter city, though valiantly defended, was at last compelled to surrender. Midway between Merida and Toledo, Tarik met his chief, who received him with cold and stately formality, and demanded a strict account of the treasures of the conquered kingdom. The unfortunate lieutenant speedily found that Musa would not readily forgive his presumption of subduing Spain in the absence of his general: he saw himself ignominiously deprived of his command, and thrown into prison; and Musa carried his resentment so far, that he ordered the conqueror of Spain to be publicly scourged. Walid’s imperative commands compelled Musa to restore Tarik to his position; and the valiant man, who had been so ungenerously and unworthily treated by the jealous old chief, assisted him with his accustomed zeal, in achieving the conquest of the still unsubdued parts of the peninsula. At the end of 712, all resistance had ceased on the part of the Christians, with the exception of the valiant prince Theodemir, who defended himself several months longer in Orihuela, and obtained, at last, most favorable terms from Musa’s son, Abdelaziz, (5th April, 713); and the invincible Pelagius, or Pelayo, and Petrus, who, in the Asturian, Gallician, and Biscayan vallies, laid the foundation of a new Christian empire in Spain; destined, after a time, to renew the struggle and ultimately to expel the foreign invaders.
Musa was a very old man—but though the coloring of his beard, and other little expedients of art, might fail to obliterate the physical ravages wrought by eighty-eight years of life, and by the fatigues and privations of fifty campaigns[64]—yet the vigor of his mind, and the youthful ardor that fired his breast, remained unimpaired: and, like that marvellous old man of a later period, great Dandolo, the approach of ninety found him revolving enterprises of stupendous magnitude; aye, no less than the conquest of Gaul, Italy, Germany, and the Greek empire. He was preparing to pass the Pyrenees,[65] and bid the kingdom of the Franks cease to exist, when an imperious command from Damascus, called both him and Tarik thither, to render an account of their proceedings to the commander of the faithful. Tarik obeyed; Musa delayed complying with the Khalif’s summons, until a second and still more peremptory message left the old chief no other alternative but obedience or open rebellion: and, as his own loyalty, or that of his troops, put the latter out of question, he set at once diligently about preparing for his return to Damascus. He confided the government of Spain to his son, Abdelaziz; that of Africa, to his son, Abdallah. Taking with him immense treasures in gold and silver, and, among others, the famous emerald table of Solomon, encircled with pearls and gems—a spoil of the Romans from the east, and which, it would appear, had fallen into the hands of Alaric, in the sack of Rome[66] (410, A.D.); and attended by thirty Gothic princes, 400 nobles, and 18,000 male and female captives of humbler degree, he set out from Ceuta on his way to Damascus. At Tiberias, in Palestine, he received a private message from Suleiman, or Soliman, the brother and presumptive heir of Walid, informing him that the Khalif was dying, and commanding him, as he valued Soliman’s friendship, to reserve his triumphal entry into Damascus for the inauguration of the new reign.
Musa, who might deem Soliman’s anger less dangerous than the resentment of the Khalif should he recover, disregarded the injunction, and pursued his march to Damascus, where he arrived just in time to afford the dying Walid the gratification of beholding the spoils of Africa and of Spain,[67] soon after which, the most powerful of the Khalifs bowed his head to the stroke of the mighty master of kings and emperors (October, 714). His successor, Soliman, was an able and energetic prince, but of a despotic and ruthless disposition. Musa was arraigned at the judgment seat of the new Khalif, for abuse of power and disobedience to orders. The unworthy treatment which the victor of Xeres had suffered at the hands of his jealous chief, was avenged by a similar indignity inflicted upon the latter: the veteran commander was publicly scourged, and then kept waiting a whole day before the palace gate, till the “mercy” of Soliman accorded him a sentence of exile to Mecca. He was, moreover, adjudged to pay to the public treasury, a fine of 200,000 pieces of gold. Afraid lest the sons of the despoiled and insulted old man, should attempt to avenge the injuries of their father, the worthy son of Abd-el-Malek secretly dispatched to Africa and Spain, decrees commanding the extermination of Musa’s family; and, by a refinement of cruelty worthy of a Caligula, Caracalla, or Justinian II., he had the head of Abdelaziz presented to the bereaved father, with an insulting question, whether he knew the features of the rebel? “I know his features,” exclaimed the hapless old man, in a paroxysm of grief and indignation; “he was loyal and true. May the same fate overtake the base authors of his death!” — — — Musa’s death, a few weeks after, of the anguish of a broken heart, spared Soliman an additional crime. The victor of Xeres fared but little better than his ancient commander; though, indeed, he was not made to expiate by death, imprisonment, or exile, the great services which he had rendered his country. Catibah, who had every reason to dread a similar fate as Musa’s and Tarik’s, rose in arms against the jealous tyrant of Damascus, and had the good fortune to meet with a glorious death on the battle field.
Soliman resolved to render his reign famous by the overthrow of the Greek empire, and the conquest of Constantinople. His preparations, both by land and sea, were made on a gigantic scale. His brother, the redoubtable Moslemah, invaded Asia Minor at the head of 70,000 foot and 50,000 horse, with an immense train of camels, (716). The city of Tyana fell into the hands of the Moslems, and Amorium was closely besieged by them. The troops in Amorium were commanded at the time by General Leo, a native of Isauria. The original name of this remarkable man, was Konon; his father had come over from Asia Minor to Thrace, and had settled as a grazier there. He must have acquired considerable wealth in that lucrative business, since he could afford a gift of 500 sheep to the Imperial camp, to procure for his son admission into the guards of Justinian. The personal strength of the young soldier, and his dexterity in all martial exercises attracted the notice of the emperor, who speedily advanced him to the higher grades of military rank. Anastasius II. confided to him the command of the Anatolian legions, and it was in this capacity that he defended Amorium against the Saracens. One of those sudden revolutions so frequent in the Byzantine court, compelled Anastasius to hand over the sceptre to an obscure officer of the revenue, who assumed the name of Theodosius III. General Leo refused to acknowledge the new emperor, and managed so skilfully, that not only did the troops under his command invest him with the imperial purple, but the Arabs, it would appear, accorded him and his army free and undisturbed departure from Amorium. He marched upon Constantinople, and Theodosius seeing himself in danger of being abandoned by the very troops who had so recently exalted him, willingly resigned to the hands of the general and emperor of the Oriental troops, the sceptre which, moreover, he had accepted with extreme reluctance only. He was permitted to retire with his son to the shelter of a monastery, where he had ample time to paint golden letters, an occupation which marvellously suited the natural indolence of his disposition.