In 786 the celebrated Harún er Rashíd, familiar to us as the hero of the ‘Arabian Nights,’ succeeded his father, El Hádí, in the caliphate.
This prince was illustrious alike for his military successes, and his munificent patronage of learning and science; and although his glory is sullied by one act of barbarity and jealous meanness—the murder of his friend and minister, Ja‘afer el Barmaki, and the whole of the Barmecide family—he seems to have well merited his title of Er Rashíd, “the Orthodox,” or “Upright.”
The cordial relations between the East and West, brought about by his alliance with the Emperor Charlemagne, were productive of much good to the Christian community in Syria and Palestine, and more especially in Jerusalem, where churches were restored, and hospices and other charitable institutions founded, by the munificence of the Frank emperor.
In the year 796 new and unexpected troubles came upon Palestine. A civil war broke out between two of the border-tribes—the Beni Yoktán and the Ismaelíyeh,—and the country was devastated by hordes of savage Bedawín. The towns and villages of the west were either sacked or destroyed, the roads were rendered impassable by hostile bands, and those places which had not suffered from the incursions of the barbarians were reduced to a state of protracted siege. Even Jerusalem itself was threatened, and, but for the bravery of its garrison, would have again been pillaged and destroyed. The monasteries in the Jordan valley experienced the brunt of the Arabs’ attack, and one after another was sacked; and, last of all, that of Már Saba—which, from its position, had hitherto been deemed impregnable—succumbed to a blockade, and many of the inmates perished.
On the death of Harún, his three sons contended fiercely for the throne; the Mussulman empire was again involved in civil dissensions, and Palestine, as usual, suffered most severely in the wars. The churches and monasteries in and around Jerusalem were again laid waste, and the great mass of the Christian population was obliged to seek safety in flight.
El Mamún having at last triumphed over his brothers, and established himself firmly in the caliphate, applied his mind with great ardour to the cultivation of literature, art, and science. It was at his expense, and by his orders, that the works of the Greek philosophers were translated into the Arabic language by ‘Abd el Messiah el Kendí, who, although a Christian by birth and profession, enjoyed a great reputation at the Court of Baghdád, where he was honoured with the title of Feilsúf el Islam—“The Philosopher of Mohammedanism.”
Since their establishment on the banks of the Tigris, the Abbasside caliphs had departed widely from the ancient traditions of their race; and the warlike ardour and stern simplicity, which had won so vast an empire for ‘Omar and his contemporaries, presently gave way to effeminate luxury and useless extravagance. But although this change was gradually undermining their power, and tending to the physical degeneracy of the race, it was not unproductive of good; and the immense riches and careless liberality of the caliphs attracted to the Court of Baghdád the learned men of the Eastern world. The Arabs were not an inventive, but they were eminently an acquisitive people, and,
“Græcia capta ferum victorem cepit,”
the nations conquered by their arms were made to yield up intellectual as well as material spoils. They had neither art, literature, nor science of themselves, and yet we are indebted to them for all three; for what others produced and neglected, they seized upon and made their own. Born in the black shapeless “tents of Shem,” and nursed amidst monotonous scenery, the Arabs could conceive no grander structure than the massive tetragonal Ka‘abah; but Persia was made to supply them with the graceful forms and harmonious colours suggested by the flower-gardens of Iran.[[38]] The art of painting, cultivated with so much success in Persia even at the present day, found but little favour with the iconoclast followers of Mohammed; but its influence is seen in the perfection to which mural decoration, writing, and illumination have been brought by the professors of Islam. Caligraphy has been cultivated in the East to an extent which can be scarcely conceived in this country; and the rules which govern that science are, though more precise, founded on æsthetic principles as correct as those of fine art-criticism here.
[38]. Nearly all the technical terms used in Arab architecture are Persian—an additional proof that the so-called Saracenic style is of foreign and not native origin.