Lord Mithra, too, would have been primarily the sun, primarily an embodiment of the light shining down to us through the sky from that central essence which alone can say, "I am that I am," and not, as in the Lord Christ, a humble, suffering, poor and despised man lifted up into Godhead.
CHAPTER II
IF THE MOORS HAD WON THE BATTLE
OF TOURS
The most tremendous contingencies in all history—the determination of the fate of whole continents, whole civilizations, by a single incident—are sometimes the occurrences that are most completely and signally ignored by the ordinary citizen. For instance, it does not occur to the man on the street that but for a turn in the tide of battle on a certain October day in the year 732, on a sunny field in northern-central France, he, the man on the street, would to-day be a devout Mussulman, listening at evening for the muezzin's call from a neighboring minaret, abjuring pork and every alcoholic beverage, and shunning stocks and all kinds of speculation as prohibited forms of gambling.
Islamism would to-day, but for a single hard-fought battle and its issue, probably be the established form of religion in all Europe. Even England would have been unable to resist the onset of the impetuous Arabs, once they had established themselves in triumph from the Tagus to the Vistula; and the conversion of all Europe would have carried with it the Moslemizing of the new world—supposing, indeed, that America had up to this time been discovered under Moorish auspices, which is unlikely.
Europe was certainly nearer to conquest by the Moors in the eighth century than most people suppose. There are few finer or more heroic episodes in history than the extraordinary series of conquests by means of which, a handful of fanatical Arabs, inspired by the prophet Mohammed, carried, with fire and sword, the faith of Islam over the world, until, within two hundred years of the date of the prophet's birth, it reigned from the shores of the Atlantic to the banks of the Indus. Horde after horde of impetuous warriors of the Crescent had arisen. Their purpose, frankly, was to convert the world, and convert it by force. Cutting themselves off from their bases of supply, and relying upon an alliance of miracle and rapine to sustain them, their triumphant campaigns were one continuous and colossal Sherman's march to the sea.
They struck Europe at the east, and also by way of the west. Greek fire checked them at the gates of Constantinople in the east, but they overran all northern Africa, crossed the Straits of Gibraltar, and flowed like a torrent over Spain and southern France. By the year 731, as Gibbon truly says, the whole south of France, from the mouth of the Garonne to that of the Rhone, had assumed the manners and religion of Arabia.
Abd-er-Rahman, the conqueror, reigned supreme in southwestern Europe. Spain and Portugal had been annexed to Asia, and now the turn of France had surely come.