The way of fighting of those early Arabian conquerors was to come sweeping down in cavalry charges on the enemy. Their weapons were the spear and the curved sword, called scimitar, with which they used to smite as they galloped. They were very quick in movement, and if they had a reverse they could withdraw and disappear over the desert so swiftly that it was almost impossible to deal them any really severe blows.
As they conquered lands where different methods of fighting were in use, they learned to adopt those that would be of value to them, but always their chief reliance was on the quick movement of their cavalry and on the cavalry charge, with the spear and scimitar; and even when they put on any defensive armour in addition to a light shield, it was of a fine mail, or steel network, only. It did not add greatly to their weight on horseback. The steel work of Damascus, the capital of Syria, and the edge that was set on the swordblades of that steel work, became famous very early.
They used the bow but little until the time when the Turk came into the story; but he is not there yet.
Perhaps the most wonderful testimony to the intelligence and enterprise of these children of the desert is that they fought a great and successful naval battle with the fleet of the Eastern Empire as early as 655. The Emperor himself was in command of the defeated fleet. In all likelihood most of the victors were seamen of the Syrian coast who had become Mahommedans.
In one particular the rise of the Moslem power in Arabia, and its northward and eastward expansion, were possibly more of a relief to the Emperor at Constantinople than a menace. The Persians had continually been threatening and giving trouble on his eastern border. The Saracens attacked the Persians and within a very few years completely conquered them so that the Persians troubled the Empire no more. The Saracens seized Irak, which was the most beautiful and richest province of all Persia. They pushed further east, still conquering, into India, Tibet, and even to the borders of China.
The Moors in Spain
This was the first direction of their expansion, but almost at the same time they gained, easily, possession of Egypt, and then proceeded westward along that fertile strip of Northern Africa between the Mediterranean and the Sahara desert. Here they encountered, conquered, and converted to Mahommedanism that tribe of Berbers who were called the Moors, as I told you, and who were the conquerors of Spain.
It was in 710, less than a hundred years after Mahomet became a power in his native Arabia, that they went over into Spain to help the King of the Visigoths, or one of the claimants to the Visigothic throne, against his rival.
The Gothic power was broken by these dissensions, and the conquerors had no great trouble in making good their conquest over the whole of Spain, always excepting those strong mountainous places in the Pyrenees where the Basques still live—a different people from any that have entered Spain within the knowledge of our historical records. Perhaps they are of the same race as the Celts—either as the Brythons or as that older branch called Goidels—of whom a remnant held out in Wales, Ireland, Cornwall, and Brittany.
The Saracens had this advantage—call it luck, if you please—that they came upon enemies whose government was weak, who were not united or brought together by any feeling of patriotism or love of their country or nation. The Roman soldiers, at the time when the legions were made up of free citizens who owned land, had been able to feel that they were fighting for their own property. But all that feeling had long passed from the armies of the seventh and eighth centuries. The Saracens had, in their religion, a sentiment which gave them union, and inspired them with the idea that they were all fighting for the same cause. We have seen how the prospect of joy in Paradise, if they should die in battle, gave them courage. Therefore, when we take these facts into consideration, their quick and extensive victories do not appear so incredible. Their hordes must have seemed almost invincible to the greatly alarmed people of Europe as they went so easily through Spain; but when they pushed up through the Pyrenees and came against a really strong and well-governed people in the Franks they made no further way; they were defeated. They were rolled back again across the Pyrenees and left to make good their Empire in Spain.