General Disorder following the Death of Mohammed—Regulations of Islam—Progress of the Moslem Arms—Northern Africa, the Land of the Evening—Its Fertility—Its Population—Expedition of Abdallah—Defeat of the Greeks—Invasion of Okbah—Foundation of Kairoan—March of Hassan—Ancient Carthage—Its Influence on Europe—Its Splendid Civilization—Its Maritime Power, its Colonies, its Resources—Description of the City—Its Architectural Grandeur—Its Harbors, Temples, and Public Edifices—Roman Carthage—Its Luxury and Depravity—Its Destruction by the Moslems—Wars with the Berbers—Musa appointed General—His Romantic History—His Character—He subdues Al-Maghreb—Africa incapable of Permanent Civilization.
The dissensions excited by the fierce hordes of Arabia, whose intolerance of authority and aversion to tribute had been with difficulty controlled by the mysterious influence of Mohammed, at his death broke forth with redoubled violence, and seriously threatened, for a time, not only the integrity of the Moslem empire, but even the existence and perpetuity of the recently established faith. With the exception of a few tribes which the ties of blood or considerations of personal interest, joined to their intimate commercial relations with the inhabitants of the Holy Cities, retained in a precarious allegiance, the whole population of the Peninsula rose at once in arms. Each petty chieftain, jealous of the central power, and endowed with an extravagant opinion of his own abilities as ruler and legislator, arrogated to himself divine authority, and aspired to the title and the prerogatives of a prophet of God. The populace, half idolatrous and half infidel at heart, and which had received the injunctions of the Koran with apparent enthusiasm and inward contempt, welcomed with joy each new revelation, as affording a prospective state of war and discord so thoroughly in consonance with its predatory instincts and turbulent character.
With this condition of affairs, whose gravity might well have appalled the mind of an experienced statesman, the executive ability and diplomatic tact of the first Khalif, a man bred to mercantile pursuits, yet admirably fitted by nature for the arduous duties of his exalted position, were found fully competent to deal. The insurgent armies were annihilated; the false prophets killed, driven into exile, or compelled to renounce their claims; the rebellious tribes were decimated, and their property seized as the legal spoils of war. With keen insight into the character of his countrymen, Abu-Bekr employed their fiery and indomitable spirit in the extension of Islam and the settlement and consolidation of its hitherto ill-defined and uncertain jurisdiction. The policy partially developed under his wise management was finally established and perfected by the iron will and martial genius of Omar. The latter realized thoroughly the paramount importance of preserving unimpaired the unity and prestige of his nation, whose victories, in brilliancy and political effect, had already surpassed those of any preceding conqueror, and bade fair to make the dominion of Islam coextensive with the world. In pursuance of this design, the spoils of conquest, the tribute of subjugated nations, the enormous rental of the plains of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, the rich harvests of the Valley of the Nile, the magnificent gifts of distant sovereigns—hoping to escape a visitation from the swarthy horsemen of the Desert—were all placed in a common fund, from which was pensioned every individual belonging to the Arab race, in regular gradation, the stipend increasing with years, dignity, and value of military service. No one was too insignificant to have his name inscribed upon the official registers at Medina; and even slaves, women, and newly-born infants were, as well as the most renowned warriors, regularly paid their stated allowance. In the various countries reduced by the prowess of the Moslems, the lands, though confiscated to the uses of the state, remained by special provision inalienable, and, while forming a part of the public domain, could not be acquired by those who had conquered them, and continued to be occupied and tilled by their former proprietors. By these regulations, also, the legal residence of the Arab was established and made perpetual in the Peninsula. Everywhere else, no matter what his rank or employment, he was but a sojourner, liable at any moment, without warning, to be summoned to battle with the infidel; and even viceroys of the Khalif could not purchase a foot of ground in the cities which they ruled with all but absolute power. While in the case of female captives, the most unbounded license was permitted and encouraged, the believer was particularly enjoined to select for his wives the daughters of some Arab clan; and his children, without exception, were early taught to assert their assumed superiority of birth, and to look down upon all foreigners, however illustrious they might be by descent, wealth, military distinction, or literary attainments.
The comprehensive and exacting laws of Omar, which arbitrarily determined questions of legislation and finance, the marshalling of armies, the adjustment of territorial disputes, the arrangement of the household, and the offices of religion, laid the foundation for the future greatness of Islam. By his edict the date of the Hegira was fixed. His inflexible sense of justice inflicted the humiliating punishment of the lash, prescribed by law for drunkenness, upon beggar and noble alike. The Code which bears his name is remarkable, even in an age of fanaticism, for the severe restrictions it imposed on the personal liberty of Jews and Christians, the only sectaries to whom Moslem clemency permitted the practice of their rites and customs.
The assassination of Omar in the prime of manhood, and before his great designs had been fully matured, was the signal for feuds, conspiracies, and every form of domestic convulsion, fomented by tribal jealousy, ancient prejudice, and disappointed ambition; disturbances which the weak and vacillating spirit of his successor was unable to repress. Yet, despite the disadvantages arising from the intellectual impotence of Othman, the constitution of the Mussulman theocracy possessed sufficient vitality to retard dissolution for a considerable time. The glorious traditions of a decade of uninterrupted victory were not easily forgotten. The trophies wrested from the despised and hated foe were displayed in every city and village; his banners drooped in the courts of every mosque; the harem, the street, the bazaar, swarmed with captives from the most distant climes; while the annual distribution from the public treasury evidenced at once the wealth and weakness of the infidel and the paternal generosity of the conqueror. The Persian monarchy which had successfully withstood the attacks of consul, dictator, and emperor, supported by the discipline and inexhaustible resources of Roman power, had fallen, after two great battles, before the impetuous valor of the Moslem hosts. Palestine, with its hallowed associations, its memories of all that is most sacred in the annals of Christianity, its scenes of divine miracle and mystery, of privation, suffering, and triumphant glory, was in the hands of the Mussulman, whose sacrilegious footsteps daily defiled the precincts of Gethsemane and Golgotha, and whose call to prayer arose from a magnificent shrine erected upon the site of the ruined temple of Solomon. The Greek Emperor, after a reign of extraordinary vicissitudes which had, in some degree, retrieved the vanished prestige of the Roman arms deprived in rapid succession of the choicest realms of his empire, was now virtually a prisoner, protected only by the Bosphorus and the impregnable walls of his capital. Egypt, the depository of traditions of incalculable antiquity, had submitted, after a brief and determined struggle, to the common fate of nations, and the banners of Islam floated in triumph from the towers of Alexandria and Memphis. It was with a feeling of awe and wonder that the fierce, untutored Arab gazed upon the monuments of this strange and, to him, enchanted land. Before him were the Pyramids, rising in massive grandeur upon the borders of the Desert; the stupendous temples; the mural paintings, whose brilliant coloring was unimpaired after the lapse of fifty centuries; the groups of ponderous sphinxes, imposing even in their mutilation; the speaking statues, which, facing the East, with the first ray of light saluted the coming day; the obelisks, sculptured upon shaft and pedestal with the eternal records of long extinguished dynasties; the vast subterranean tombs, whose every sarcophagus was a gigantic monolith; and the effigies of the old Egyptian kings, personifications of dignity and power, holding in their hands the symbols of time and eternity, or grasping, in lieu of the sceptre, that emblematic staff, which, more potent than the wand of the mightiest magician, has controlled the destinies of millions of men, and which became in turn the wand of the Grecian hierophant in the mysteries of Eleusis, the lituus of the Roman augur, and the crosier of the Catholic archbishop. At his feet rolled the turbid flood of the mysterious river, to whose periodical inundation was due the civilization of that venerable country. The anticipation of this phenomenon had necessitated the study of astronomy; its overflow had developed a perfect system of irrigation, and a complicated body of laws, which regulated the distribution of its fertilizing waters; its subsidence had required a thorough acquaintance with the rules of geometry and mensuration; and the noxious vapors arising from its steaming deposits demanded the speedy disinfection and embalming of all putrescent animal matter, a precaution which was rigidly enforced by established custom and the inexorable precepts of religion. The initiations of the priesthood, the jealously treasured maxims of its occult knowledge, the attributes of its innumerable deities, all bore an intimate relation to the waters of the Nile, whose recurring and invariable changes also indicated the seasons of the Egyptian year, which were measured by the harvests. The influence produced by the sight of these marvels upon the destiny of the simple Arab, whose horizon had hitherto been defined by the shifting sands and quivering vapors of the Desert, by whom the grandeur and symmetry of architectural design were undreamt of, and whose ideas of decoration were limited to the barbaric tracery of an earthen jar or the coarse patterns of the primitive loom, was incalculable. As every civilization is but an adaptation to new conditions of elements more or less perceptible in those which have preceded it, so it was with that of the Arabs. Their architecture, mainly indebted for its beauty to the selection of designs from the vegetable world and the skilful combination of geometrical forms, may in this respect justly lay claim to originality. Nevertheless, in the groundwork of its finest edifices, the practised eye can easily detect the foreign influence by which the efforts of its artisans have been inspired; and the characteristics of Persian, Egyptian, Carthaginian, and Byzantine are prominent in the solid walls, the graceful curves, and the sparkling mosaics of the builders’ masterpieces which adorn the widely-separated provinces of the Mohammedan empire.
It was during the reign of Othman that the attention of the Moslems was first seriously directed to the northern coast of Africa, a region which, extending from the Nile to the Atlantic, comprised a territory of one thousand miles in length by five hundred in breadth in its largest diameter. In its approaches, which were made over burning sands, it exhibited the familiar phenomena of the Desert. The greater portion of its vast area was susceptible of cultivation, and contiguous plantations and gardens marked, with an unbroken line of verdure, the possessions of the once magnificent and still important cities which in the days of her glory acknowledged the authority and claimed the protection of the imperial metropolis of Carthage. Here the most abundant harvests, the most luscious fruits, rewarded, with but trifling exertion, the industry of the husbandman. Luxuriant pastures, through which meandered sparkling brooks fed by perennial springs, sustained large numbers of cattle and sheep. The date flourished in such variety that it was only by its shape and stone that its species could be determined. The soil was favorable to the olive, and oil formed an important article of export. It was indeed a land of promise, renowned in history, celebrated in myth and legend; the Ophir of Holy Writ; the scene of the sufferings of Marius, Regulus, and Cato; where originated many of the most charming fictions of classic mythology; the home of Danaus, Antæus, and Atlas; for centuries the abode of Tyrian civilization; the seat successively of Punic splendor, Roman luxury, Vandal license, and Christian faith. In its capital Hamilcar had prepared for the descent upon Sicily which had secured the mastery of the Mediterranean, and Hannibal had planned the campaign which humbled the pride of the Eternal City; the land which had received in its bosom refugees from Palestine and Arabia, the founders and supporters of a new and glorious empire; the see of St. Augustine; the enchanted Garden, where dwelt the beautiful daughters of Erebus and Night; where the gigantic portal marked by the two famous columns pointed out to the Phœnician mariner the way to the Cassiterides—
“Abyla atque Calpe.”
Carthaginian enterprise for ages bartered its manufactures for the tin of Britain and the luxuries of Syria; under the Romans, for four centuries, its agricultural products maintained in profligate idleness the degenerate inhabitants of Italy.
The further extremity of this region, which the poetic nomenclature of the Oriental had designated by the name of Al-Maghreb, “The Land of the Evening,” was the wealthier and more productive; but its storm-swept coast had subordinated its trade to the superior commercial advantages of the eastern half, now Tunis and Tripoli, which was known as Ifrikiyah. A prefect appointed by the court of Constantinople administered the government of these colonies, in the name of the Emperor, but his jurisdiction was confined to a narrow belt of territory, beyond which roamed at will bands of ferocious and hardy barbarians, some of whom had no settled habitation; while a considerable number dwelt in the slopes and defiles of the Atlas Mountains, eking out a miserable subsistence by a superficial cultivation of the soil and a precarious traffic with their scarcely less civilized neighbors. The population of this province was, owing to repeated immigration and invasion, and the consequent admixture of races, of the most heterogeneous character. Along the coast, the elegance of the Grecian type, occasionally modified by the dignified features and martial bearing of the Roman, whose physical traits had been partially preserved by the frequent renewal of garrisons and the importation of colonists from Italy and Constantinople, largely predominated. Further inland appeared, in the swarthy complexions, blue eyes, and auburn locks, the cross between Vandal and Mauritanian, side by side with the unmistakable lineaments of the Syrian and the Jew. But most numerous of all, the most formidable in war, the most perfidious in peace, were the Berbers, whose origin tradition has variously assigned to Europe, Assyria, Arabia, Ethiopia, and Palestine. Whatever may have been the home of this undoubtedly Semitic race, their affinity with the Arabs was most conspicuous and remarkable. Generous, brave, patient of suffering, prodigal of hospitality, reverential to the aged, loyal to their kindred, impatient of restraint, merciless in revenge, their character was an epitome of the rugged virtues and cruel vices of the roving barbarian. The fighting qualities of this people, joined to the inaccessible nature of their haunts, and, in no small degree, aided by their poverty, had always secured for them immunity from conquest. Political reverses had never been able to efface their national peculiarities. Under persecution, while apparently conforming to the public faith, they remained, in reality, fetich worshippers. The long dominations of Phœnician, Roman, Byzantine, Teuton had effected no alteration in their language—the Arabic alone has been able to engross about a third of the terms of their guttural idiom. Their polity resembled a republic, where each village was independent and governed by a chieftain elected by the people. Time and again they had mustered for service against the Emperor armies of thirty and forty thousand men; but the first defeat dissolved their confederacy; and the rival chiefs returned with increased avidity to the plunder and massacre of their allies and friends. Their perfidy, which excited the unwilling admiration of nations long practised in the arts of deceit, and which was experienced to their cost by the Romans in the war with Jugurtha, was, without doubt, in a measure responsible for the proverbial reputation for duplicity—the “Punica fides”—of Carthage. Originally idolaters, believers in sorcery and divination, and adorers of the Sun and of Fire, their intercourse with their neighbors, considering its irregular and transitory character, had been singularly productive of changes in religious belief. The emissaries of Christianity had, with but indifferent success, disseminated among them the mysteries of their faith; but to the doctrines of the Pentateuch and the Talmud they lent a willing ear, and the tenets of Judaism, although not a little tinctured with the traditions of Pagan mythology, nominally received the assent of the entire Berber nation. The peculiar type of the Hebrew, insensibly diversified elsewhere by the associations of commercial intercourse, and by the influence of soil, climate, and the operation of laws more or less favorable to the fusion of races, had, in the wilds of Northern Africa, found a congenial locality for its preservation. The exiles who had escaped the persecutions of Titus and Hadrian had settled there and prospered. Laying aside their proverbial reserve, they had joined to their hereditary inclination for traffic an unwonted disposition to acquire proselytes; and their opinions had infected, to a greater or less extent, the population of the coast as well as that of the interior, from the Greater Syrtis to the Pillars of Hercules. Their relations and acquaintance extended not only to the extreme Orient, but were sustained with the semi-barbarous courts of Europe; and their sympathies with their brethren of Semitic origin, assisted by the community of ideas, habits, and mode of life of the Berber tribes, contributed, in a degree which cannot be overestimated, to the establishment and preservation of the Western empire of Islam.
In the year 647, the covetous glances of the government at Medina were turned towards the rich plantations and populous settlements of Al-Maghreb; and the predatory inroads which had hitherto vexed its borders were, for the first time, superseded by a systematic and determined attempt at conquest. The weakness and partiality of Othman, with whom the aggrandizement of his family was a paramount consideration, had removed the famous Amru from the viceroyalty of Egypt, and invested with its administration Abdallah-Ibn-Sa’d, the foster-brother of the Khalif, a warrior of experience and courage and the finest horseman of his nation, but a man whose renown had been sullied by the crime of apostasy, and who had used an employment of confidence to ridicule and revile the inspired teachings and sacred character of the Prophet.