With the terrible retribution that followed the death of Othman, the tribal supremacy—and with it the control of the Moslem government—was transferred to the heads of the Meccan aristocracy of the clan of Abu-Sofian. The sincerity of their professions had long been doubted. The unwise appointments of Othman, a member of that family, was the principal cause of the popular discontent that culminated in his assassination. Weak and vacillating, his movements were directed by his uncle Hakem, who had betrayed the confidence of Mohammed, and had been ignominiously driven from the Hedjaz. Another Ommeyade, the father of Walid, Governor of Kufa, spat in the face of the Prophet, and had been executed as a felon, while the sacrilegious conduct of his worthy son had provoked a dangerous riot in the very mosque of his capital. Still another, Abdallah-Ibn-Sad, Governor of Egypt, raised to the coveted dignity of secretary of Mohammed, had perverted the texts of the Koran, and had fled and apostatized, thereby incurring the penalty of death. Under Muavia, the first Syrian Khalif, the outward ceremonies of religion were practised and the precepts of the Koran obeyed with apparent fidelity. But this conformity, palpably insincere, was largely the effect of policy. The orthodoxy of a people whose ancestors were for centuries the ministers of idolatrous worship, who resisted with every resource of contumely and violence the apostle of a new religion in his weakness, and assented reluctantly to his dogmas in his power, and whose political importance was directly dependent upon the maintenance of that religion, may, with propriety, be questioned. The Pagan traditions of his ancestors were predominant in the breast of Muavia. A decent reverence for the Koran, an apparent assent to its tenets, together with a politic and strict performance of the ceremonies of its ritual, concealed from his subjects all of the skepticism of his family, all of the abject superstition of his race. His palace swarmed with soothsayers and charlatans. Before engaging in any important undertaking, in the presence of public calamity, under the weight of domestic misfortune, he appealed for counsel to the arts of divination, denounced by Mohammed as a relic of idolatry and offensive to God. In his adherence to these heathen rites he was encouraged by the influence and example of his favorite consort, the mother of Yezid, a Bedouin of the tribe of the Beni-Kalb, who, amidst the luxurious pomp of the Syrian court, still pined for the coarse fare and untrammelled freedom of the Desert.
The Ommeyade Khalifs grudged no treasure and spared no toil in the adornment of their capital, the centre of their religion, the seat of their empire. To their political sagacity are to be attributed the massive fortifications which preserved the city from the encroachments of Persia and the plots of daring aspirants to imperial power. Their paternal beneficence was manifested by aqueducts and countless subterranean conduits which conveyed an unfailing supply of water into even the humblest dwellings of the poor. Their enlightened generosity relieved the suffering, encouraged the learned, promoted commerce, repressed fanaticism, dispelled the mists of ignorance. The white banner of their dynasty floated in triumph over the mosque of Medina, the towers of Bassora, the walls of Kairoan, the citadel of Toledo. In scientific acumen and literary renown the reputation of the court of Damascus was far inferior to that subsequently attained by the Khalifate of Bagdad. The genius of the Syrian seemed less adapted to the slow and plodding researches of the laboratory than to the noisy wrangles of theological controversy. But in the material enjoyments of life, in the pomp which invested the dignity of sovereign, in the riotous exhibition of sensual extravagance, Damascus was supreme. On occasions of ceremony the attire of the Khalif was of gold brocade, and only when he exercised the religious functions of his holy office incumbent on him as the head of Islam did he condescend to don the plain white vestments of his order. The menials of his household, even to the cooks, when they appeared before the Divan, were clad in damask. The devotees of pleasure were the favorite companions of the Successor of the Prophet. His days were passed at cock-fights and horse-races. The number of coursers which contended in these trials of speed was immense, sometimes amounting to the incredible figure of one thousand. His nights were amused by the tales of story-tellers, by the improvisations of poets, by the antics of buffoons, by the lascivious contortions of professional dancers. The barbaric orgies of the Bedouin tents were transferred to the palace of the khalifate, and supplemented with the polished vices of Egypt and the nameless iniquities of Rome and Constantinople. In the depth and frequency of his potations, the royal expounder of the Koran might well challenge the admiration of the seasoned revellers of Scandinavia. His drinking-horns were of enormous size. The wine used in the banquets was of the choice vintage of Tayif, a town in the vicinity of Mecca. Potent of itself, the effect of its draughts was heightened by the addition of musk and other aphrodisiacs. When the surfeited stomach could endure no more, emetics were employed to prolong the debauch and obviate its unpleasant consequences.
What a contrast does all this splendor and profligacy present to the frugal habits, patriarchal simplicity, and homely virtues of the early khalifs! What a change from the humble domestic offices performed by the Arabian Prophet, who often himself prepared his frugal meal and mended his tattered sandals! How different from the dignified reserve and earnest piety of Abu-Bekr; how strange when compared with the stoical demeanor and abstemious life of Omar, who entered Jerusalem at the head of his victorious army in a garb inferior to that of the meanest soldier, and whom an ambassador of the King of Persia found asleep, surrounded by beggars, upon the steps of the Great Mosque of Medina! And yet a century had not elapsed from the Hegira to the period when the Ommeyades of Syria reached the meridian of their greatness and their power.
The liberty enjoyed by women at this period was much greater than that subsequently conceded them by Mohammedan law. The lax manners of the Desert had not yet been completely subjected to the restrictions demanded by new social conditions. During the reigns of the first khalifs, the barbarous practice which countenanced the traffic in and service of eunuchs was unknown. Later, however, the close intercourse with the Byzantine and Persian courts suggested and encouraged the custom. But it would seem from accounts transmitted by the writers of the time that the institution of these guardians produced no marked effect upon the prevailing immorality; and the fidelity of even the modern eunuch is, as every adventurous Oriental traveller knows, far from incorruptible. Princes visited clandestinely the harems of their subjects, and celebrated in licentious verse, without concealment of name or opportunity, the charms of their mistresses. Ladies of the royal household intrigued openly with the poets and singers of the court. With such examples before them, the inferior orders of the people could hardly be expected to preserve even the appearance of virtue. As a matter of fact, in no country was society more corrupt, and the name of Syrian was everywhere a synonym of effeminacy, infidelity, and vice.
But the excesses of the Khalifs of Damascus, scandalous as they were, became trifling faults in the eyes of the pious Moslem when he considered the horrible acts of sacrilege of which these sovereigns were guilty. The generals of Yezid, after the battle of Harra which avenged the murder of Othman and decided the fate of Arabia, delivered up the city of Medina to pillage. A massacre, so cruel as to provoke the indignation of an age accustomed to scenes of butchery and violence, was perpetrated by the infuriated soldiery. A thousand infants were born of the outrages of that fatal day to be branded for life with the epithet of the “Children of Harra.” The troopers of the Syrian army, encumbered with their horses, fastened them amidst gibes and curses in the mosque; the mosque founded by Mohammed upon the spot of propitious augury, where his favorite camel had halted at the termination of the flight from Mecca. There, tethered between the pulpit, whence the texts of the Koran had fallen from the lips of the Prophet upon the attentive ears of multitudes of believers, and the tomb where his remains had been reverently laid by the hands of his companions, the restless horses defiled the place holiest on earth to the Mussulman save the Kaaba alone. The survivors of Bedr, whom the favor of Mohammed and the veneration of the populace had exalted to the rank of an ecclesiastical nobility, perished to a man. At the siege of Mecca, which soon followed, the privileges that, from time immemorial, had protected the sacred territory from insult were violated, and the mosque, set on fire by order of the commander of the army, was, with the Kaaba, entirely consumed.
Under the administration of the succeeding khalifs of the House of Ommeyah, the mad freaks of these unworthy chiefs of Islam attained the climax of extravagance and sacrilege. Exhausted by debauchery and careless of public opinion, they sent their boon companions and their concubines, muffled in the royal robes, to repeat the morning prayer from the pulpit of the mosque. They degraded their sacred office by the assumption of mean disguises, the better to penetrate the interior of the houses of their neighbors, inviolable in the sight of every sincere Mussulman. They maintained and publicly caressed animals whose contact the law of Islam declared unclean. Their lives were sullied with incests and every physical abomination. The reverent Moslem will not tread upon a piece of paper, for fear it may be inscribed with a sentence from the Koran; but so little regard did the scoffing Ommeyade princes entertain for its sacred texts that they used it as a target for their arrows. Each was noted for his predilection for some favorite vice. Al-Walid I. was seldom sober, and suffered no day to pass without a drunken orgy. Yezid II. starved himself on account of the death of a female slave. The conduct of Al-Walid II. was a strange compound of the tricks of a buffoon and the vagaries of a lunatic. In absolute defiance of the prejudices of his fellow-Mussulmans, he insisted that his dogs should accompany his retinue on the Pilgrimage to Mecca. Although, by virtue of his office, the leader of the great Pilgrim caravan, who was expected to afford an edifying example of piety to his followers and direct the customary devotional exercises, so little did he appreciate the duties of the occasion that he delegated his spiritual authority to one of his friends, and was with difficulty dissuaded from erecting a tent on the very summit of the Kaaba, wherein he might the more publicly outrage the feelings of the inhabitants of the Holy City by scenes of drunkenness and riot. A pet monkey, which had been christened Abu-Kais, was an inseparable companion of his revels. He quaffed the strong wine of Tayif from the same cup as his royal master, and with him shared alike the pleasures of intoxication and the depression consequent upon prolonged indulgence. The Khalif presented his strange associate to grave ambassadors as a venerable and learned Jew whom the justice of the Almighty had overtaken, and who, under the spell of enchantment, was now expiating, in the form of an unclean animal, a life of hypocrisy and sin. When the Khalif rode abroad, Abu-Kais accompanied him, clad in silk, and mounted on a donkey magnificently caparisoned. But it happened one day that Abu-Kais, having imbibed too freely of his master’s liquor, was thrown from his steed and broke his neck. The grief of Al-Walid for the loss of the monkey was for weeks the jest of the capital. Abu-Kais was, to the great scandal of the faithful, honored with the rites of Moslem burial, and the Khalif, whose poetic talent was far above mediocrity, composed some plaintive verses as a well-merited tribute to his conviviality and wisdom.
I have dwelt at some length upon the description of Damascus because of the close and significant resemblance of the political, social, religious, and military institutions of Syria to those of Mohammedan Spain. In the population of the latter country the Syrian element greatly preponderated in influence, if not in numbers. The first Khalif of Andaluz was the last scion of the race of the Ommeyades. The feuds, the prejudices, the traditions, of both nations were identical. The Syrian exile ever retained in affectionate remembrance the scenes and events of his childhood. His armies were marshalled in the same order as were those which went forth to victory under the white banner of Muavia and Al-Walid. His cities were laid out in imitation of the irregular lines and labyrinthine streets of the Syrian capital. His palaces were constructed by architects familiar with the splendid edifices which were the crowning ornament of the Eastern Khalifate. The mosaics that sparkled around the Kiblah of the Great Temple of the West were the handiwork of the same school of Byzantine artists whose creations had adorned the stately dome which rose over the site of the ancient Church of St. John the Baptist. The Koran, whose leaves dyed with the life-blood of Othman were long exhibited with the garments of the martyred Khalif in the Djalma of Damascus, was for more than two centuries the object of a veneration approaching to idolatry, rendered by countless myriads of worshippers, attracted from every quarter of the globe by the marvels and the sanctity of the Mosque of Cordova.
The gross and offensive ridicule of everything connected with religion and with a life passed in strict accordance with the principles of moral rectitude, so popular at the court of Damascus, would have been considered impolitic and ill-bred by the polished society whose cities lined the shores of the Tagus and the Guadalquivir. But education and skepticism were almost equally diffused throughout the Peninsula, and there was, in fact, but little difference in the opinions concerning the divine origin and authenticity of the Koran entertained by the Moslem of Syria and the Moslem of Spain. Nor was the influence of the occult sciences less prominent in the West than in the East. Superior intelligence, which brought emancipation from many of the vices of superstition, did not seem to perceptibly diminish the confidence inspired by the mummeries and impostures of the wizard and the astrologer.
The Spanish Arabs, following the example of their Syrian brethren, raised woman to a position equally removed from the one she so ignominiously occupied in earlier and in later times, as the giddy toy of man or the abject slave of religious credulity. The voice of the princesses of Syria not infrequently decided the policy of the Divan. The ladies of Cordova were the chosen advisers of the monarch; the friends of philosophers; the learned associates of great physicians, astronomers, generals, and diplomatists. Free from the excessive prodigality, the defiant blasphemy, the extravagant follies of the Syrian dynasty, the sovereigns of the Western Khalifate suffered no opportunity to escape which would, even indirectly, secure for their subjects the substantial benefits of commerce, the manifold advantages of science, the pleasures of art, the consolations of literature; while they at the same time, actuated by a lofty ambition not confined by the limits of their own dominions, fostered those noble aspirations and incentives to progress which promote the generous emulation of nations.
A society whose religious teachers are atheists and hypocrites, the contempt of whose rulers is constantly manifested towards a faith to which they are solely indebted for their authority and whose wickedness has become proverbial, can hardly survive the first resolute attempt at its overthrow. And so it happened with the Ommeyades at Damascus. Not only in Syria, but to the uttermost bounds of the khalifate, the stories of the vices and skepticism of the Commander of the Faithful were heard with disgust and horror. The law-abiding were scandalized by the orgies of the court. The descendants of those who had perished at Harra and Mecca, the remnant of the recalcitrant non-conformists of Persia, the seditious populace which had felt the iron hand of the governors of Irac, were inflamed with the desire and the hope of vengeance. The devout Mussulman, who conscientiously observed the injunctions of the Koran and to whom the traditions of Islam were sacred as connected with the life and sayings of the Prophet, was shocked at the blasphemy which the Successor of Mohammed did not hesitate to utter, even within the precincts of the mosque and before the very altar of God. From time to time the popular indignation was displayed in insurrections, which, being spontaneous and deficient in organization and leadership, were crushed without difficulty. But under the reign of Merwan II., the fourteenth khalif of the dynasty, a formidable rebellion broke out in Persia. The descendants of Abbas, the uncle of Mohammed and the grandfather of Ali, openly laid claim to the throne of the Orient. Their party was supported by Abu-Muslim, the greatest military commander of the age. Attached for generations to the memory of Ali, the Persians flocked by thousands to the camp of the insurgents, and the pretender, Abul-Abbas, having established his authority over the eastern provinces, moved westward to the conquest of Syria. Aware, when too late, of the magnitude of the impending danger, which at first had been despised, the Khalif brought into requisition the entire resources of his empire to repel the invasion. In the plains of the Zab, a tributary of the Tigris, and not far from the site of ancient Nineveh, the two armies met in a conflict upon whose result were staked the destinies of the two great factions of Islam. The valor of the Abbasides, aided by the treason which pervaded the ranks of the enemy, prevailed; the forces of Merwan were routed; and the foundations of a new empire were laid which was destined to eclipse, by the glories of Bagdad, the dazzling and meretricious splendor of the court of Damascus. And now a frightful proscription was inaugurated. Even the schismatics, whose lukewarm support had incurred the suspicions of the Ommeyades, were unable to escape the sword of the conqueror. It soon became evident that the fury of the Abbasides would be satisfied only with the absolute extermination of the hostile faction. The deposed Khalif, Merwan, who had fled to Egypt, was defeated in a skirmish and killed. Every member of his house whose rank was sufficiently exalted to inspire the usurper with apprehensions was ruthlessly murdered. Where open violence did not avail, the basest treachery was employed. Abdallah, the uncle of Abul-Abbas, by affording some of the exiles assistance, had succeeded in gaining the confidence of the proscribed faction. He solemnly promised an asylum to all who would resort to Damascus and invoke his protection. Deluded by his professions, many left their hiding-places, where they had been in comparative security, to expose themselves to the designs of a perfidious enemy. When all had arrived who could be induced to confide in him, Abdallah gave a banquet in honor of his distinguished protegés, which more than seventy of the Ommeyades attended. In the midst of the festivities, at a given signal, a band of soldiers burst in upon the assembly, and the unhappy guests were massacred. Rugs and curtains were thrown over their prostrate bodies; the revelry was renewed; and the partisans of the Abbasides toasted the monster whose ferocious cunning had cut off his most dangerous adversaries by the sacrifice of the rites of hospitality. Within the tent of the Bedouin the life of his most deadly enemy is sacred. But to the Arab of Syria or Persia no promise was binding, no engagement was inviolable, where his interests or his ambition were concerned. Thus had the fatal influence of Roman and Byzantine manners vitiated the nature of a people whose sense of manly dignity and personal honor had for ages been conspicuous amidst the wide-spread depravity of Asia.