SARACEN CONQUESTS IN
THE EAST
The first countries assailed were the Oriental possessions of the Byzantine Empire. In the reign of Abu-beker, Syria and Mesopotamia were subdued by Arabian armies. Under the next caliph, Omar, Egypt was conquered and Northern Africa overrun. The Arabs, or Saracens, as they were also called, met with comparatively little resistance in the Oriental countries, the countries beyond Mount Taurus; and this may be accounted for by the fact that these were the parts of the Roman Empire in which both Roman law and Christianity had taken least hold.
Thus the Eastern Empire was shorn of all its Oriental possessions; and even the farther East—Persia and the lands beyond, to India—was added to the Moslem dominion.
THE FURY OF CONQUEST
IN THE WEST
In the West, however, a stout resistance was encountered. The Saracens besieged Constantinople, against which they carried on a siege of eight years (A.D. 668-675); but every assault was repelled by torrents of terrible Greek fire. A second siege, forty years afterward, met a like result. In North Africa, too, they encountered long and obstinate resistance; but finally the whole northern coast—Cyrene, Tripoli, Carthage—was subdued; and in A. D. 710 a host of turbaned Arabs, with unsheathed scimitars, under Tarik-ben-Zaid, crossed the narrow strait into Spain and landed on the rock which commemorates the name of their leader (“Gibraltar,” i. e., Jebel Tarik, the Mountain of Tarik).
SUBJUGATION OF SPAIN AND
SOUTHERN GAUL
It will be remembered that a Visigothic kingdom had been established in Spain; but Roderick, the “last of the Goths,” was defeated on the field of Xeres, and the Saracens established themselves firmly in Spain. In the course of a few years they had possession of the whole peninsula, with the exception of the mountainous districts in the north, where the little Christian kingdom of the Asturias maintained itself.
The ambition of the Saracens now overleaped the Pyrenees. They obtained a foothold in Southern Gaul; and after a time an able Saracen commander, Abd-el-rahman, led a powerful Mohammedan army northward to subdue the land of the Franks. As far as the Loire everything fell before him, and it seemed that all Europe would come under Moslem sway.
THEIR DEFEAT BY
CHARLES MARTEL
It was in the hour of need that Charles Martel appeared as a champion for Christendom. Gathering a powerful army, he met the Saracens between Tours and Poitiers (pwät-yea´). A desperate battle, which lasted for seven days, ensued; but on the seventh day the Saracens were defeated with great slaughter, A.D. 732.