They came, working eastward along that strip of Africa fringing the Mediterranean, along which we saw the Vandals working westward. And just as the Vandals, who conquered all that African strip, were invited into Africa, from Spain, in order to help the master, as he then was, of that Africa against his enemies, so now these Saracens and Moors were invited, in the early part of the eighth century, into Spain, from Africa, to help one of the rival parties who were disputing about the succession to the throne. They, like the Vandals, stayed a good deal longer than their hosts had intended, and with a far different position in the country than those hosts had designed for them. But they were a people so important in the making of this greatest of great stories that we must give them a new chapter to themselves and to their own particular story.
CHAPTER X
THE SARACENS
Both the name Saracen and the name Moor came to be used in a sense much wider than their first significance. At first the Romans knew as "Saraceni," a single tribe of Arabs living near Mount Sinai. Later, the name Saracen was used by Europeans to mean any followers of the religion of Mahomet. Moors, "Mauri" or "dark men," was a name at first used only for a tribe that was also called Berbers, living along the northern edge of the Sahara desert, in Africa. But they were not of black skin, like the negroes, nor had they woolly hair. Their complexion was darkened only by the sun's burning power, and their hair was smooth. There were many of them in the forces that invaded Spain and put an end to the Visigoths' kingdom there early in the eighth century; and after a time all the Moslems, or Mahommedans, in Spain came to be known as Moors.
Mahomet
The story of the rise of Mahomet and the spread of the religion that he preached and the success of the armies by whose victories it was so dispersed is one of the most wonderful, perhaps it is actually the most astonishing, of all those that go to make up the great story.
The maker and preacher of the religion that we call, after him, Mahommedanism, or Mohammedanism, began his preaching early in the seventh century. He was a poor man, of no eminent family in Arabia. Arabia had already come under Jewish influence in some parts, and under Christian influence in others. Mahomet took the Bible as the basis of his preaching, but it seems that he did not understand it very well, and he placed his own interpretation on much of it. He supposed himself to be the prophet, or apostle, chosen by the only God, whom he called Allah, to preach the true religion to the Arabians.
Abraham, as we saw in the first volume of this great story, was patriarch, or head, of a clan that came up out of the desert at first to Ur of the Chaldees. Mahomet seems to have claimed to preach the religion of Abraham. Moreover, there was a tradition that the Arabians were descended from that Ishmael of whom the Bible tells us, the son of Hagar, sent out into the wilderness, "whose hand was against every man and every man's hand against him." If we accept this story we shall perhaps wonder less that Mahommedanism was such a martial, such a fighting religion. Mahomet preached that its followers should fight to carry it over all the world.
You are not to understand from this, however, that it was a religion which set out to make proselytes, as we call them; that is, to convert others to the same way of thinking. In later days we shall find that the Saracens were not very eager that the Christians of the countries that they conquered should become Mahommedans, because it was their custom to tax, at a certain sum, every one not of their religion. They seem to have looked on this financial side of the affair as being of more importance to them than any salvation of the Christian people's souls.