BOOK I. THE CRUSADES
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. THE VALUE OF THE CRUSADES IN THE LIGHT OF
MODERN HISTORY. By the Reverend William Denton, M.A. 311
HISTORY IN OUTLINE OF THE CRUSADES (1096-1291 A.D.) 314
CHAPTER I
ORIGIN OF THE CRUSADES (306-1096 A.D.) 320
Early Christian pilgrimages, 322. Jerusalem under the Saracens,
324. Character of the pilgrims, 326. The Turks in power, 328.
Peter the Hermit, 330. The appeal of the emperor Alexius, 331.
Councils of Placentia and Clermont, 332. The frenzy of Europe,
334.
CHAPTER II
THE FIRST CRUSADE (1096-1147 A.D.) 338
Peter the Hermit and his rabble, 339. The leaders of the First
Crusade, 340. Alexius compels homage, 342. Numbers of the
crusaders, 343. The siege of Nicæa, 344. Battle of Dorylæum,
345. Principality of Edessa founded, 346. Siege of Antioch,
347. A typical miracle, 349. Jerusalem besieged, 351. The Arab
account, 352. Godfrey elected king, 353. Results of the First
Crusade, 356.
CHAPTER III
THE SECOND CRUSADE (1147-1189 A.D.) 358
St. Bernard, 358. Disasters of the Germans, 361. The French
failure, 362. The rise of Saladin, 364. Moslem accounts of the
battle of Tiberias, 374. The fall of Jerusalem, 376.
CHAPTER IV
THE THIRD CRUSADE (1189-1193 A.D.) 379
The Saladin tithe, 381. Barbarossa’s crusade and death, 382.
The siege of Acre or Ptolemais, 383. Geoffrey de Vinsauf’s
account of Acre, 383. Richard’s voyage, 386. The French sail
to Acre, 387. Dissension between the French and English kings,
388. Review of the siege, 390. The crusaders move on Jerusalem,
392. The enterprise abandoned, 396. Vinsauf’s account of
Richard at Joppa, 397. Peace between the kings, 402. End and
review of the Third Crusade, 404. Death of Saladin; Arab
eulogies, 407.
CHAPTER V
THE FOURTH TO THE SIXTH CRUSADES (1195-1229 A.D.) 410
Pope Celestine III promotes a crusade, 410. The Fourth (or
German) Crusade, 411. The Fifth Crusade, 413. Results of the
Fifth Crusade, 417. The Children’s Crusade, 419. The Sixth
Crusade, 422.
CHAPTER VI
THE LAST CRUSADES (1239-1314 A.D.) 431
Richard of Cornwall’s Crusade (the Seventh), 432. The Tatar
Crevasse, 433. The crusade of St. Louis (the Eighth), 434.
Battle of Mansura, 436. De Joinville’s account of the battle of
Mansura, 437. Results of Mansura, 441. St. Louis a prisoner,
442. Moslem account of St. Louis’ capture, 443. The Christians
quarrel among themselves, 448. History of Antioch, 449. Ravages
of Bibars, 450. Second crusade and death of Louis IX, 450.
Prince Edward leaves England, 451. Vain efforts of Gregory X,
452. Progress of the mamelukes, 453. Total loss of the Holy
Land, 454. Fate of the military orders, 456. Knights of St.
John, 456. The Templars in France, 457. In other countries,
458. Council at Vienne, 458. The order suppressed, 459. The
Crusades in the West, 459. The Teutonic Crusade, 460. The
attack on the Albigenses, 461. Western assaults on the Arabs,
463. Comparison of the two crusades, 466.
CHAPTER VII
CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES (1096-1291 A.D.) 467
Moral effects, 468. Political effects, 469. Influence upon
commerce, 471. Enrichment of cities, 472. Colonisation, 472.
Influence on industry, 474. The masons organise, 475. Gothic
architecture, 476. Sculpture and painting, 476. Herder’s
opinion of the Crusades, 477. Gibbon on the results of the
Crusades, 479.
APPENDIX
FEUDALISM (800-1450 A.D.) 481
Bryce and Hegel on feudalism, 482. Commencement of the feudal
régime, 483. Reciprocal obligations of vassal and lord, 484.
Feudal justice, 485. Ecclesiastical feudalism, 487. The Church
and the feudal army, 488. Serfs and villeins, 489. Anarchy and
violence; frightful condition of the peasants and some happy
results therefrom, 491. Geographic outlines of the kingdom
of Germany, 494. The transition from feudalism to monarchy,
494. Progress in Germany, 495. Influence of gunpowder, 497.
Monarchism in Italy, 497. In France, 498. In England, 499. The
papacy and feudalism, 500. Hegel on the rise of mankind through
feudalism, 500.
BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS 502
BOOK II. THE PAPACY
HISTORY IN OUTLINE OF THE PAPACY (42-1878 A.D.) 503
CHAPTER I
ORIGIN AND RISE OF THE PAPACY (42-842 A.D.) 519
The papacy in connection with the Frankish Empire, 524.
Gregory the Great, 531. Christian mythology, 534. Worship of
the Virgin, 535. Angels and devils, 536. Martyrs and relics,
536. Sanctity of the clergy, 537. State after death, 538.
Gregory’s successors, 539. Draper on the origin of iconoclasm,
544. Milman on iconoclasm, 545. The war of iconoclasm, 546.
Constantine Copronymus, 548. Third Council of Constantinople,
549. The war on monasteries, 550. Helena and Irene, 552. Second
Council of Nicæa, 552.
CHAPTER II
“THE NIGHT OF THE PAPACY”--CHARLEMAGNE TO OTTO THE GREAT
(740-985 A.D.) 555
Independence of the Roman bishops, 556. The appeal to the
Franks, 556. Charlemagne and the pope, 558. The donation from
Constantine, 559. Charlemagne’s third and fourth entrances into
Italy, 561. The realm of the popes, 562. The trial of the pope
and the crowning of Charlemagne, 563. Papal ambition after
Charlemagne, 565. The myth of the woman pope, 567. Rivalry
of Nicholas and Photius, 569. Synod at Constantinople, 570.
The false decretals, 571. Adrian II, 574. Pope Formosus, 577.
Theodora in power, 579. The infamous Marozia, 581. Rebellion of
Rome, 582. Pope John XII, 583. Trial of the pope, 583. Charles
Kingsley on temporal power, 587.
CHAPTER III
THE HIGH NOON OF THE PAPACY (985-1305 A.D.) 589
The dream of Otto III, 590. The German popes, 591. The college
of cardinals, 592. Milman on the mission of the papacy, 593.
Simony, 596. Celibacy of the clergy, 596. Gregory’s synod at
Rome, 597. Bryce on the consequences of the Concordat, 602.
Rival claimants, 602. Adrian IV _versus_ Barbarossa, 603.
Adrian’s firmness, 605. Two rival popes, 606. Innocent III,
607. The influence of the crusades on papal power, 608. The
autocracy of Innocent III, 610. Universal sway of the pope,
611. Milman’s estimate of Innocent III, 612. Frederick II at
war with the papacy, 614. Council at Lyons, 616. Accession of
Boniface VIII, 618. Philip the Fair overpowers the papacy, 618.
Hallam on the climax of papal power, 620.
CHAPTER IV
FROM EXILE TO SUPREMACY (1305-1513 A.D.) 623
Clement V, 624. The fate of the Templars, 625. John XXII to
Urban V, 626. The Great Schism of the West, 630. Relation of
the national churches to the state, 632. Moral condition of the
clergy, 633. The great councils of Pisa and Constance; John
Huss, 634. Milman on Nicholas V and the fall of Constantinople,
640. Popes to 1503, 642. Alexander VI, the Borgia, 644.
Estimates of Alexander VI, 645. Julius II, 647. Prevalence of
secularism in the Church, 648.
BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS 651
PART XII
THE HISTORY OF PARTHIANS,
SASSANIDS, AND ARABS
BASED CHIEFLY UPON THE FOLLOWING AUTHORITIES
ABDUL-LATIF, ABUL-FARAJ, ABULFEDA, MAX DUNCKER, I. GOLDZIHER,
A. VON GUTSCHMID, WILLIAM MUIR, TH. NÖLDEKE, L. A.
SÉDILLOT, L. VIARDOT, JULIUS WELLHAUSEN,
GUSTAV WEIL
TOGETHER WITH
A CHARACTERISATION OF THE SCOPE AND INFLUENCE
OF ARABIC HISTORY
BY
THEODOR NÖLDEKE
AN ESSAY ON
THE TRIBAL LIFE OF THE EPIC PERIOD
BY
JULIUS WELLHAUSEN
AND A STUDY OF
THE PRINCIPLES OF LAW IN ISLAM
BY
I. GOLDZIHER
WITH ADDITIONAL CITATIONS FROM
ARTEMIDORUS, BAILLY, BEN-HAZIL, THE HOLY BIBLE, DION CASSIUS, L. A.
SILVESTRE DE SACY, DIODORUS, R. DOZY, S. A. DUNHAM, EL-MAKIN,
ERATOSTHENES, EUSEBIUS OF CÆSAREA, EUTYCHIUS, E. GIBBON,
STANISLAS GUYARD, HAURÉAU, HERODOTUS, HUMBOLDT, JUSTIN,
HAJI KHALFA, IBN KHALDUN, KIESEWETTER, MAKRISI, AMMIANUS
MARCELLINUS, J. A. ST. MARTIN, H. H. MILMAN,
J. E. MONTUCLA, F. A. NEALE, S. OCKLEY, W.
G. PALGRAVE, PLINY, GIRAULT DE PRANGEY,
JOSEPH VON HAMMER-PURGSTALL,
IBN SAAD, SAMPIRO, W. C.
TAYLOR, GEORG WEBER,
JOSEPH WHITE
COPYRIGHT, 1904,
BY HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS.
_All rights reserved._
PARTHIANS, SASSANIDS, AND ARABS
[Illustration]
THE SCOPE AND INFLUENCE OF ARABIC HISTORY
WRITTEN SPECIALLY FOR THE PRESENT WORK
BY DR. TH. NÖLDEKE
Professor in the University of Strasburg, etc.
If there is a region in the world which constrains its inhabitants to
adopt a particular mode of life, that country is Arabia and the regions
that border it on the north, the Sinaitic peninsula and the Syrian and
Mesopotamian deserts. The great majority of the dwellers in these parts
are forced to lead a nomadic life by the fact that the spots in which
agriculture is possible are comparatively rare, and the infrequent rains,
which only extend over limited areas, provide pasture for their flocks
now in one part and now in another, but never for any length of time. The
whole character of the Bedouin is conditioned by this nomadic mode of
life (full of hardships and privations, though not laborious) with its
constant struggles with competitors for the prime necessaries of life.
The inhabitants of the oases, who are permanently settled in favoured
spots, differ from the Bedouins in many respects, but are nevertheless
strongly influenced by Bedouin modes of life and thought. Throughout
this vast area life runs its course in perpetual change, yet remains in
essentials ever the same. If one tribe perishes, migrates elsewhere, or
turns to agricultural pursuits somewhere in the vicinity of the desert,
its place is taken by another, which lives exactly as it had lived. The
course of history, however, has shown that intellectual forces were
existent in this desert race which seem to be lacking in others living
under precisely similar conditions, such as the Berbers of the Sahara.
ARABS PAST AND PRESENT
We have no certain knowledge of the relation in which the Semitic
tribes of the desert, whom we first meet with in the Old Testament
(Ishmaelites, Midianites, etc.), and who there appear as closely akin to
the Israelites, stand to the Arabs of later times. As far as we can tell,
however, they resemble them exactly. The son of the desert likes to
reap where he has not sown; he not only plunders the camels and smaller
cattle of alien tribes of Bedouins, but he devours the cornfields of
the peasants who dwell on the borders of the desert whenever he has a
chance, or carries off the garnered fruits of their toil. Thus in old
days the desert tribes on one occasion actually came across the Jordan
into central Palestine and utterly despoiled the inhabitants, until the
latter under the leadership of Gideon drove them forth and inflicted a
severe humiliation upon them (Judges 6-8). Somewhat later a horde of
Amalekite inhabitants of the Sinaitic peninsula invaded southern Judea
and Philistia, but were severely chastised by David, who was living there
in exile (1 Samuel xxx). Such tribes have often in like manner proved
extremely troublesome to the agricultural population on the margin of
the desert. But if the states to which these peasants belong will only
put forth a certain amount of exertion in defence of their territory
the danger is not serious; for at heart the Bedouins are not eminently
brave. In many cases peasants who will protect their own property can
successfully ward off these predatory incursions. The non-nomadic
settlers in the interior of Arabia, in particular, seem invariably to
have been more valiant than the nomadic tribes. The latter would find
it hard to do without the produce of agriculture and date-palm culture,
while the dwellers in the oases, if they desire to have any intercourse
with other regions, are obliged to keep on a friendly footing with the
Bedouins through whose haunts their trade routes lead. Hence treaties
are concluded in the interests of both parties, and the true Arab is an
observer of treaties.
By a lamentable process of events it has come to pass that the nomads
have extended their domain considerably at the expense of the husbandman.
Even in Palestine the Bedouin tent-dweller now pastures his camels in
many spots where formerly the Israelite farmer sat under his own vine and
his own fig-tree and tilled his land with ox and ass.
THE NAME OF ARAB
The real meaning of the name “Arab” seems to be “desert.” It is first
met with, or so it seems, in varying forms in Assyrian inscriptions of
the ninth century.[1] In the Old Testament it cannot be identified with
certainty before the time of Jeremiah.[2] In the inscriptions of King
Darius Hystaspes, Arabaya appears to mean the Mesopotamian, Syrian, and
Sinaitic desert. Amongst the Greeks we meet with the terms “Arab, Arabia”
first in Æschylus (_Persians_ 316; _Prom._ 422), but the poet’s ideas of
the situation of the country are altogether mythical. Herodotus, on the
contrary, is fully conversant with it; he is specially interested in that
district, populated by Arabs, that constitutes the connection between
Palestine and Egypt which was of such importance to the Persian kingdom,
and not to it alone. His contemporary, Nehemiah, is quite familiar with
the name of “Arab” (Ch. 2, 19; 4, 7; 6, 16) and so is Xenophon. The
latter uses the name “Arabia” of the Mesopotamian desert in particular
(_Anab._ 1, 5, 1); and this very region is called “Arab” pure and simple
by the later Syrians. The name has survived from that day to this,
especially amongst the people themselves. It has long stood for both the
nationality and the language. It is true that even in times tolerably
remote Arab was understood to mean more particularly Bedouin; as is the
case even in Sabæan inscriptions. The latter are, however, more exactly
distinguished from the settled inhabitants of the country by the use of
the plural, in its old form _A’rab_, later more frequently _Orban_.
Many scholars assume that all civilised Semitic nations actually took
their rise from Arabia and are, as Sprenger[3] phrases it “Bedouin
deposits” (“_abgelagerte Beduinen_”). The question of whether, in the
last resort, Arabia was the original home of the Semites or whether they
migrated thither from Africa in primitive times is not affected by this
assumption.[4] In any case the language of the Hebrews and Aramæans
still bears traces of the fact that their forefathers were at one time
a nomadic race, which (with regard to the former at least) is to some
extent confirmed by Old Testament tradition. It is true that wherever we
have any historic record the contrast between these civilised peoples
and the dwellers in the desert is evident. But we can imagine that the
same thing happened with them as we may observe repeatedly in Arab
tribes of later days. They press forward, gradually in part and in part
rapidly, out of Arabia proper. The Syrian and Mesopotamian deserts,
barren as they seem to us, offer the nomads certain advantages over
the regions to the south. The rainfall is somewhat more copious. The
nomads come into closer contact with settled peoples, and much as the
Bedouin (proud of his freedom and happy in his leisure) may look down
upon the industrious peasant and even upon the artisan, yet the greater
security and the certainty of obtaining daily food prompts him to take to
husbandry in the region of verdure when opportunity offers. The process
was sometimes accompanied by violence towards the earlier settlers, but
it often came about peaceably. Thus one wave of Arabs slowly overtook
another. The names which predominate in the older portions of the Old
Testament (Ishmaelites, Midianites, etc.) soon fall into the background.
The appearance of the name “Arab” may be in itself an indication of the
arrival of fresh tribes in these regions.
THE ARABS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS
In the fourth century B.C. we find the Arab tribe of the Nabatæans to the
south of Palestine, and the same tribe soon afterwards formed a settled
state which extended eastwards from the ancient territory of Israel as
far as to Damascus, rose to a considerable height of civilisation, and
maintained a position of lax dependence upon Rome until Trajan destroyed
it in the year 106; certainly not to the real advantage of the empire.
In the first century of our era we meet with princes and nobles with
Arabic names in Edessa, Palmyra, Emesa, and Hatrá. The abundant store of
inscriptions at Palmyra shows that the greater part of the population
of this Aramaic-speaking trading city, encompassed on all sides by the
desert, was of Arab origin. It seems that during the gradual decay of the
Seleucid kingdom, Arabs in several cases acquired dominion over these
districts, just as at a later period members of various Bedouin tribes
rose to eminence in Syria and Mesopotamia, during the decadence of the
caliphate dynasty. Thus numerous settled Arab tribes lived in many parts
of Syria as Roman subjects. In process of time all these Arabs who dwelt
in towns or villages grew to be Aramæans; even before that they had
always used the Aramaic language in their inscriptions--where they did
not write in Greek--because Arabic was not then regarded as a suitable
language for use in writing.
At this time two new names for the Arabs came into existence, “Saracens”
and “Taits.” Ptolemy (5, 16) mentions Σαρακηνή as a district in the
Sinaitic peninsula.[5] The inhabitants of this district, who are unknown
to Arab tradition, must have made themselves notorious in the Roman
provinces in their vicinity; we can hardly suppose by other means than
predatory incursions by hindering the march of caravans or levying heavy
tolls upon them. Thus in that region all Bedouins came to be called
Saraceni (Σαρακηνοί), in Aramaic Sarkaje, usually with no very favourable
meaning. We meet with the latter form in a dialogue concerning Fate,
written about 210 A.D. by a pupil of Bardesanes.[6] The designation then
became general; thus it occurs very frequently in Ammianus Marcellinus.
The name “Saracen” continued to be used in the West in later times
probably rather through the influence of literature than by oral
tradition, and was applied to all Arabs, and even to all Moslems, without
distinction.
In precisely the same fashion and at exactly the same time the
designation “Taits” came to be used for all Arabs by the Syrians of
Edessa and the inhabitants of Babylonia. Only, while we know nothing
of a distinct tribe of Saracens, which must very early have ceased to
exist as such, we have plentiful and trustworthy information concerning
the Tai in Arab literature. Their principal seat was in northern Nejd,
but they spread abroad in many directions. Even now their name has not
wholly passed out of remembrance.[7] By degrees the Aramæans came to
style all Arabs “Tayaye,” and the Persians adopted the name from them.[8]
Amongst the latter it is pronounced Tadjik, Tazik, in its more ancient
form (with the Persian suffix), and Tazi in the later form.[9] The Arabs
themselves reckon the Tai among the tribes which were once settled in
the south of the Arabian peninsula. We are probably right in connecting
their appearance in the north with a fresh wave which carried quite a
number of the tribes of south Arabia into the northern districts; a
tribal migration of which Arab tradition has much to tell, and some of it
authentic.
The Arabs were known at that period only as a wholly savage race.
Ammianus says of them: “_natio perniciosa_” (14, 4, 7), “_nec amici nobis
unquam nec hostes optandi_” (14, 4, 1). The whole description, which he
gives from contemporary information (14, 4), is very instructive, though
somewhat one-sided and exaggerated in certain particulars. When he says
that the Saracens live upon flesh and milk, and that most of them are
unacquainted with wheat or wine, the statement agrees with that in the
not much later Syrian _Vita_ of Simeon Stylites[10] that many “Taits”
did not know what bread was, but lived entirely upon flesh. There can be
no question that the northern Bedouins, the only ones the author had in
mind, can seldom have had an opportunity of procuring dates. Bread is
an article of luxury in Arabia even at the present time. The Bedouins of
the Sinaitic district, with whom S. Nilus (fifth century A.D.) had to do,
were quite exceptionally barbarous.[11]
ARAB CIVILISATION
We have hitherto completely ignored the seats of higher civilisation
which were to be found in ancient times in the peninsula of Arabia.
As early as the second millennium B.C. southwest Arabia, the Yemen,
the country of the Sabæans and Himyars, which was well adapted for
agriculture on account of the regular rains of its tropical summer,
had developed a civilisation which has left, in the ruins of huge
buildings and numerous inscriptions, monuments which still excite our
admiration. The Greeks and Romans were not without justification when
they spoke of a εὐδαίμων Ἀραβία, Arabia Felix, though their ideas of
the character and extent of this “rich”[12] country were for the most
part tolerably vague.[13] But several passages in the Old Testament bear
witness to the high repute of the glory and splendour of the Sabæans.
This is particularly evident in the legend of the queen of Sheba’s
visit to Solomon (1 Kings x, 1-10). Not the least part of the wealth of
the Sabæans was due to their monopoly of the trade in certain fragrant
substances, especially in the incense which in old times was used in
immense quantities at sacrifices. These perfumes, especially incense,
are mentioned in various passages of the Old Testament, together with
gold and precious stones, as amongst the treasures of the Sabæans (1
Kings x, 2, 10; Jeremiah vi, 20; Ezekiel xxvii, 22; Isaiah lx, 6). These
and other products were carried to the north by Sabæan caravans (cf.
Isaiah lx, 6; Tobit vi, 16). In the inscriptions of northern Hijaz we
now have documentary evidence to prove that the Sabæans established
permanent trading-stations at a distance from their own country. At
the height of their prosperity they must have exercised a civilising
influence of no mean importance upon the rest of Arabia, especially upon
those parts of the west which they traversed in their regular journeys.
To them the Thamudæans, with whose buildings (known before only by the
report of Arab writers) the labours of Doughty and Euting have made
us acquainted, and the Nabatæans, who were closely connected with the
Thamudæans, probably owed the first elements of their culture. Written
characters, which came to the Sabæans from the north in very early days,
were by them disseminated in every kind of transmutation over large
portions of Arabia, as far as the neighbourhood of Damascus on the one
hand and Abyssinia on the other. Nevertheless, take it all in all,
the civilisation of the ancient Yemen bore little fruit for the world
beyond. The countries about the Mediterranean received no intellectual
stimulus worth speaking of from this remote region, nor did the old
Semitic civilisation, nor Iran, receive more. And since the glory of the
land of the Sabæans has departed its influence on other Arabs has become
insignificant.
The decadence of the nation was probably due to various causes. It is
certain that the Arab tradition which sees in it the effect of a single
catastrophe--the bursting of the dam at Marib, which was indispensable
for regular irrigation--is far from being an adequate explanation. The
bursting of the dam must itself have been the consequence of neglect
on the part of a degenerate race. But there may well be some truth in
the tradition, which connects the decline of this remarkable people,
indirectly, at least, with the great migration of Yemenite tribes to the
north. At that time--about the second century A.D.--a kind of retrograde
movement seems to have set in throughout the civilisation of a large part
of Arabia. At certain periods large numbers of Arabs had been able to
write, at least in rude characters, as is sufficiently proved by numerous
brief inscriptions; about the year 600 the art of writing in Arabia was
the secret of the few. Even in Yemen tolerably trustworthy traditions of
its palmy days survived only amongst individuals. The conquest of the
country by the hated Abyssinians (525 A.D.) probably shattered the last
remnants of national vigour, and the Persian conquest (about 570 A.D.)
failed to quicken it afresh. It is true that the civilisation of Yemen
was still superior to that of the rest of Arabia; for example, it carried
on a fairly important manufacture of weapons and materials for garments.
A dim consciousness still survived of great things that the country had
wrought. But, since there were no historic records of such, the later
Yemenites endeavoured to vindicate the fame of their forefathers by
extravagant inventions and to show that they had done far greater deeds
than were done by the Koreishites at the head of the Moslems.
Nevertheless the fact remains that the civilisation of the Sabæans need
scarcely be taken into account in determining the place of Arabia in
history. It counts for less than the inferior civilisation of other
nations less remote from the main theatre of events. The principal
scene of the old quarrel of East and West, which had presented itself
so vividly to the eyes of the Greeks in the Persian wars, in the last
century before Christ was transferred to Syria and the countries about
the Euphrates and Tigris. The Arabs of the northern districts were drawn
into the struggle of the Romans with the Parthians and Persians. They
were always available for pillaging the enemy’s territory or harassing
their compatriots on the other side. It was hardly possible for the great
powers to rule the desert, and it would have been a somewhat thankless
task; but they could influence the Bedouins strongly by various indirect
methods. The Arab dynasties in the frontier districts were particularly
useful for the purpose; they occupied a position of independence none too
strict, and were invariably regarded with suspicion, but they could keep
their savage kinsmen, with whom they were constantly in touch, far more
effectually in check than regular imperial or royal officials could have
done.
In this connection the Christian phylarchs of the tribe of Ghassan are
worthy of special mention on the Roman side. Their capital was not far
from Damascus and they played a somewhat important part in the events
of the sixth century. On the Persian side there were for many years the
vassal kings of the tribe of Lakhm, which dwelt in the important city of
Hira, near the ancient Babylon. Both dynasties were respected and feared
nearly as far as the confines of Arabia. Some scattered monarchies had
likewise arisen in the interior of the country. In particular, we know
of some sovereigns of a family of the Kinda tribe, whose home was at
Hadramaut, far to the south; they ruled with vigour in various parts of
Arabia, much like the princes of the Haïl dynasty at the present day.
But this sovereignty was of no long duration. Arabia is not suited to
monarchy. The Bedouin has too strong a taste for independence; he is
averse even from peaceful enterprises for his own profit, if they call
for discipline and subordination. A government must be equally wise and
firm if it is to control the intractable nomad, with his loose ties
to the soil. The Bedouin clings to his family, his tribe, his race.
He yields willingly to the suggestions of the most distinguished and
experienced chiefs of his tribe, but only so far as he pleases. There
can be no question of a real government authority. This was the case
even in the few cities of the interior. The decisions of the heads of
families had considerable weight, but no coercive force. It might happen
that individuals or families held aloof from a campaign undertaken on
the initiative of the most distinguished men of the tribe, or turned
back before its object was attained, nor could any one prevent them
from so doing. They would perhaps have to endure scorn and mockery in
prose and verse, and to that the true Arab is as sensitive as he is
accessible to hyperbolical eulogy. In Arabia, then as now, peace never
prevailed for any length of time. Sometimes there were feuds between
large tribes or groups of tribes, sometimes quarrels within narrower
limits. Camel-lifting and the use of pasture and wells belonging to
another tribe constituted frequent grounds of quarrel. If blood were
shed (which usually happened unintentionally) it cried aloud for blood.
The Arab is not naturally blood-thirsty, but the passion of revenge for
his slaughtered kin can lash him to furious blood-thirstiness. Fear of
blood-revenge and the reflection that, in the peace which must ultimately
be concluded, wergild must be paid to the tribe that has suffered most
severely, in proportion to its losses, usually induce the combatants to
be careful not to slay too many enemies, even in the stricken field. A
murder or even a grievous injury may provoke long years of feud between
families closely akin.
A powerful corrective to lawlessness is, however, supplied by the sway of
custom and tradition. Authority (as has been intimated before) makes up
to a great extent for the lack of political restraints. Authority of this
character tells most strongly amongst a people of the aristocratic temper
which the Arabs share with other nomadic races. An alien has no natural
rights, but if any member of the tribe takes him under his protection he
gains that of the whole tribe, and consequently security for his life and
property.
THE KOREISH OF MECCA
By the year 600, and probably a considerable time before, the Koreish
of Mecca had attained a curious and exceptional position. There, in
an absolutely barren valley and near a spring of brackish water, a
sanctuary stood. Some families of the Fihr clan, which belonged to the
Bedouin tribe of Kinana, had settled round about it and established,
under the name of Koreish, a lax commonwealth of the kind frequently
found in Arabia. A considerable area in the immediate vicinity of their
sanctuary may possibly have been respected as holy ground, in which no
blood was to be shed, long before the Koreish took possession of it.
Thus secured from harm, and held in high esteem as the guardians of
the Kaaba (a small, square primitive house enclosed within a building
open to the sky), the Koreish had turned their attention to commerce.
They sent forth their caravans far and wide, as the Ishmaelites and
Sabæans had done of old.[14] Koreishites travelled as merchants to
Gaza, Jerusalem, and Damascus, to Hira on the Euphrates, to Sana in
Yemen, and even crossed the Red Sea to Abyssinia. By these means they
not only acquired considerable wealth according to Arab standards, but
what was of much greater value--a wider mental horizon than the Bedouins
and the inhabitants of the oases, and a knowledge of men and affairs.
Although they never quite attained a regular political organisation, yet
Wellhausen is right when he says, “We note something of an aristocratic
hereditary wisdom, as in the case of ancient Rome and Venice.”[15]
One consequence, it must be owned, of the practical temper and
sober-mindedness of the Koreish was that they produced no poet of any
note, while each and all of the poverty-stricken tribes of Bedouins about
them had great achievements in this field to show. Better fed than the
Bedouins (though by no means luxuriously) and not decimated by conflicts,
they increased more rapidly in numbers, and in Arabia the numerical
strength of a tribe has much to do with the esteem in which it is held.
Their prosperity allowed them to exercise a liberal hospitality, and the
hungry Bedouin appreciates highly the host who lets him for once eat his
fill. We may well conjecture that it was the Koreish who established the
connection between the annual pilgrimage to the mountain of Arafat, which
lay just beyond their holy ground and the valley of Mina, with the temple
of Mecca, which lay within it. Thus Mecca became the place where Arabs of
the most diverse tribes met together from far and near every year. Even
before the days of Islam the Koreish tribe was held in high esteem far
and wide. But, however much we may study the causes which raised them
above other Arabs, it still remains something of an enigma that this
torrid and barren eyrie should at that time have brought forth so large
a number of men, exclusive of the prophet, who, when their turn came
to be placed in circumstances wholly unfamiliar, acquitted themselves
magnificently as generals and statesmen. History sets us several problems
of a similar nature in the sudden appearance of many notable men at the
same spot.
At that time there were many survivals of barbarism among the inhabitants
of central Arabia. For instance, the practice of burying newborn
daughters alive was very general. The cost of feeding and bringing up
girls in that inhospitable country was a burden unwillingly borne;
probably the horrible manner in which they were got rid of had originally
some connection with religious ideas. In remote antiquity the Semites,
like many other nations, reckoned consanguinity only by the surest
guarantee, that of a common mother. Among the Arabs and other peoples we
find a relic of this view, otherwise abandoned long since, in the fact
that a man might regard his stepmother as part of his inheritance and
take her to wife. The father of the great Omar was the issue of such a
marriage.
ARAB POETRY
Nevertheless we cannot but observe a distinct intellectual advance among
the Arabs of the period we are now considering. This is specially marked
in the efflorescence of poetry. It is of a purely national character
and differs wholly from the poetry of northern Semitic races both in
structure and substance. We know it only in its fully developed form, the
oldest poems which have come down to us in tolerable preservation are
of precisely the same character as the later ones, but even they only
date back to the first half of the sixth century at farthest. All Arabic
poetry is rhymed, and rhyme predominates even in certain solemn modes
of speech not subject to strict metrical rule, such as the apothegms
of soothsayers. Now, seeing that this form of poetry, up to that time
everywhere unknown, springs into prominence in Latin and Greek poems of
a popular and devotional character after the fourth century, we are led
to conjecture that there may be a connection of some sort with occidental
poetry in the employment of this artistic method, which may very well
have come into use among the Arabs about the same time. The point of
common origin might be Palestine or Syria. Rhymed prose was probably the
original form. The whole matter is, however, beyond proof.
The acceptance of this conjecture would not impair the originality of
Arabic poetry. Among its great merits is the extremely fine feeling for
rhythm which the entirely illiterate Arab authors of these poems and of
the rhapsodies which were handed down orally display, by the careful
observance of metres which carry out the principle of quantity far more
strictly than those of Greek and Latin poetry. In substance these poems
generally turn upon the ordinary subjects and interests of Bedouin
life, though frequently idealising them; and loftier thoughts are not
seldom conspicuous. Some famous poets who took long journeys, sometimes
living among Christian surroundings at the courts of Arab vassal
kings, sometimes going as far as to Yemen, prepared the way for Islam
by disseminating ideas tinged with Christian thought. The spirit that
animates the noble tales of Arab heroes and worthies which originated
at this time points to an advance in culture. One singular institution
appears to have had very advantageous results; during certain months all
heathen Arabs observed a truce of God, in which arms were laid aside and
no blood was shed. During this period friends and foes met together at
certain times and places, originally, no doubt, to celebrate religious
rites. By degrees, however, the latter receded into the background;
negotiations were carried on, treaties concluded, the poets found an
audience, merriment and brisk traffic were the order of the day. Even in
the festival at Mecca, which retained more of its religious character,
the varied programme ran its round.[16]
RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT ARABS
Concerning the religion of the ancient Arabs we have no great amount of
knowledge. Wellhausen rightly entitles his admirable work on the subject
_Reste arabischen Heidenthums_. Nevertheless we can make certain of some
points of special importance with regard to our present consideration.
The heathen Arabs possessed many holy places and many ceremonial rites,
but very little earnest religious conviction. Excessively conservative
by nature, the people observed the customs of their fathers without
troubling their minds about their original significance, offered
sacrifices to the gods (rude stone fetiches for the most part), and
marched in procession round their sanctuaries, without counting much
upon their aid or standing in any great awe of them; they cried to the
dead, “Be not far from us,” without associating with the cry the idea of
a future life which alone gave it meaning. In the north the savage king
Mundhir ben Ma-assama (505-554) still sacrificed multitudes of Christian
captives in honour of the goddess of the planet Venus, even as the
Israelites had done long ago in honour of their God.[17] The Arabs of
the Sinaitic peninsula likewise offered human sacrifices to the planet
Venus,[18] and we have other accounts of similar human sacrifices among
the Arabs of the north. Possibly their close contact with Christians and
the adherents of other superior religions may have to some extent revived
the old Semitic religious zeal and fanaticism among the Arabs there.
Farther south we find only faint traces of human sacrifice and we may
regard it as practically extinct by the time of Mohammed.
In the meantime, however, the Arabs who had entered into closer relations
with the Roman Empire, and the majority of those who occupied a like
position towards Persia, had adopted at least a superficial form of
Christianity. There were also some Christians in the interior of Arabia,
while in the south Christianity had long since gained a considerable
following. It had been persecuted for a while by a Jewish ruler; it was
ultimately delivered by the Abyssinian conquest, but had made small
progress since then. Christianity as practised by the Syrians, or, worse
still, the Abyssinians, was not well adapted to win proselytes among the
Arabs. If only the disciplined strength of Rome had acted upon these
regions the case would probably have been different. There were Jews here
and there in Arabia, and like the Jews of Abyssinia most of them seem not
to have been genuine children of Israel, but native converts to Judaism.
The Arab Jews, though possessed of no great theological knowledge,
adhered strictly to their religion. The majority of Arabs was composed
of heathen who had outgrown their religion. There were probably men who
were conscious of the defects of this state of things, and recognised
that the Christians had in many points an advantage over the heathen.
We are told of certain persons from Mecca and its vicinity who adopted,
and even preached, a monotheistic faith more or less Christian, but the
details are very obscure. Certainly at the beginning of the seventh
century not even the profoundest and acutest observer could have foreseen
that in the heart of Arabia a religion was soon to arise and to result in
the establishment of an Arab empire destined to give new shape to vast
regions of the world, including the countries which had been the homes of
the oldest civilisations.
MOHAMMED
The man whose energy gave clear and practical expression to the obscure
impulse towards a purer religion arose amidst the worldly-wise Koreish.
Flouted at first by his sober-minded fellow tribesmen, he gradually won
the victory for his faith, and died the temporal and spiritual ruler of
Arabia. To the very combination of qualities to some extent contradictory
in his character, he owed his success with such a race as this. He firmly
believed in his mission and was unscrupulous in his choice of means;
he was a cataleptic visionary, and a great statesman; steadfast in his
fundamental convictions and often weak and vacillating in details, he had
great practical sagacity and was incapable of keen logical abstraction;
he had a bias towards asceticism and a temperament strongly sensuous.
We not only have the fullest accounts of Mohammed’s whole character, but
we possess his authentic work, the _Koran_, which he preached in the name
of his God; and yet the extraordinary, attractive, and repulsive man
remains in many respects an enigma. He had come across much of Judaism
and Christianity, but by verbal report only. For though it remains an
open question whether Mohammed was actually ignorant of reading and
writing, it is certain that he had neither read the Bible nor any other
books. The persons from whom he gathered his information concerning the
older monotheistic religions must have been somewhat unlettered folk.
This holds good of his Christian instructors more particularly. Certain
Judæo-Christian ideas, however, had early laid powerful hold upon him;
resurrection, judgment, heaven and hell, strict monotheism and the vanity
and culpability of all forms of idolatry. Feeling in himself the divine
call, he uttered the thought that possessed him as the word of God; that
which the prophets of Israel had done in exceptional cases became with
him the set form of his teaching. We may be but ill pleased with the
grossness of imagination, the lack of logic, the undeniable poverty of
thought, and much besides in the _Koran_, but this was not the effect
it wrought upon his hearers, especially when once their attention had
been riveted. It was all new to them, they were thrilled with terror
and delight by those gross representations of hell and heaven, to these
naïve people the weakness of the reasoning was not apparent, while
the strenuousness of assertion took full effect. Moreover they heard
only scattered fragments at a time. The revelation of the _Koran_ was
accomplished gradually, it extended over a period of more than twenty
years, and thus the monotony that repels us was not realised.
But, as has already been said, Mohammed met with small success in
his native town, although he was joined by some of the best and most
earnest-minded men, like Saad ben Abi Wakkas and Omar. It was not
until he took a step unprecedented among the Arabs, and, abandoning
his own tribe, migrated with his handful of Meccan followers to dwell
among the inhabitants of Yathreb, that he gained a firm footing. The
latter, palm-dressers and husbandmen, were a vigorous race, but not
intellectually equal to the Koreish. They had given proof of their
valour chiefly by perpetual civil broils between the two clans of which
they consisted. Through their Jewish neighbours they were at least
superficially acquainted with many of the religious ideas with which
Mohammed was occupied. The prophet soon gained a large following among
them. He established peace within their borders, they recognised him
(though not without some exceptions) as their leader, and together with
the companions of his wanderings constituted at first the bulk and
afterwards the flower of his army.
Mohammed conquered the Meccans mainly by paralysing their caravan trade.
When, in the eighth year after his departure from his native town, he
made his triumphal entry into it once more, it needed only one great
encounter with certain Bedouin tribes to bring the whole of Arabia to his
feet and to his faith. If the Bedouins had concluded binding alliances
against him in defence of the religious usages of their forefathers
and (what was still more important to them) their own independence, he
would have laboured in vain; but the inability of the pure Arab to unite
for common action and act under discipline, even for the attainment of
great ends, made it possible for him to bring one tribe after another
over to his side by force or friendly means. He even contrived to turn
to practical account the old connection between his family and the
tent-dwelling Choza’a in the neighbourhood of Mecca. He retained old
customs wherever it was possible so to do, instinctively rather than by
deliberate intention. Thus even the greater part of the heathen worship
of Mecca was adapted in externals to monotheism and incorporated _bona
fide_ into Islam. The first important successes, especially the battle
of Bedr (a great battle according to Arab notions), in which the men
of Mecca lost about seventy dead and seventy wounded, made a deep and
immediate impression: success is the test of proselytisers. The costly
presents which Mohammed gave out of his spoils to such distinguished men
as had not at once become converts at heart also wrought effectively;
in most cases a genuine conversion followed in time. One fact (among
others), by which we can estimate the striking impression the prophet
produced upon the Arabs, is that as each tribe submitted or adopted his
religion it renounced the right of retaliation for the blood shed in the
struggle. Under other circumstances this renunciation of blood-revenge,
or of wergild at least, would have seemed to the Arab the lowest depth
of humiliation. But hard as it might be for the Arabs in general to
acknowledge the prophet as their lord, there was at that time no pagan
who would have fought in earnest for his religion. At the utmost, an
old woman here and there raised a clamour when Mohammed destroyed her
idols. Compare this with the fashion in which other Semites fought for
their faith, in which the Arabs themselves afterwards fought for Islam.
Hence, it is evident that, as has been said, the Arabs of that period had
outgrown their religion.
SUCCESSORS OF MOHAMMED
But Mohammed was scarcely dead (632) before the existence of his religion
and his empire was again called in question. He had left no instructions
as to how the government was to be carried on after his death. A ruler
was indeed promptly set up to succeed him. Yathreb, now called Medinat
an nabi (the city of the prophet), or merely Medina (the city), was
the capital as before, but the simple-minded proposal of the Medinese
that they should have one sovereign and the people of Mecca another was
rejected with decision by the latter. Abu-Bekr, Mohammed’s most intimate
friend, and the father of his favourite wife, became his successor or
vicegerent (_khalifa_, caliph). This is another proof of the high esteem
the Koreish enjoyed; for it was a matter of common knowledge that the
Arabs would never submit to a non-Koreishite.
For a while, however, most of them displayed but little inclination to
remain subjects of the new ecclesiastical state. The utmost concession
they would make was to profess their willingness to continue to perform
the _salat_[19] five times a day, but they would henceforth no longer
submit to pay an annual quota of their cattle or dates in taxes. Nearly
all the old friends of the prophet, even Omar, who now wielded the
greatest authority next to the caliph, despaired of subduing the Arabs
again. And here we recognise once more the faith that moves mountains
in fullest and most effective action. Abu-Bekr was not a man of lofty
intellect, but he was firmly convinced that what Mohammed had preached
was pure truth, that his orders must be obeyed absolutely, and that
God would then give his religion the victory. And the event proved him
right. He even insisted on weakening the army of which he had such sore
need by despatching a body of troops for an expedition to the north
which was by no means urgently necessary, merely because Mohammed had
given orders for it, not foreseeing his own death. But otherwise the
difficult task of once more subjugating the Arabs was prosecuted with
the utmost vigour. Their inability to combine voluntarily for any great
object was more patent than ever. Their scattered forces could not
withstand a foe united under a single command and with a definite aim in
view. The separate tribes were speedily subdued, in most cases without
recourse to the strong arm. The inhabitants of the district of Yamama
offered frantic resistance; they were tillers of the soil and followers
of Maslama (called by the Mohammedans in scorn _Musailima_, or “little
Maslama”), who had set himself up as an opposition prophet in Mohammed’s
later years. They fought for their settled homes and their faith, and the
battle against Maslama was far more sanguinary than any previous conflict.
The second conquest of Arabia could scarcely have been achieved had not
the Koreish stood by Abu-Bekr to a man. The leaders, who for years had
striven against the prophet in the stricken field and lost their nearest
kin in the struggle, had begun to realise (some of them before the taking
of Mecca and the majority directly after) that they would gain enormously
in power and consequence by the supremacy of a Koreishite. Mohammed’s
marvellous success had made most of them to a certain extent believers.
Several of those who had been his most zealous opponents afterwards fell
or were severely wounded as champions of his religion. The commander who
bore the brunt of the battle for the subjugation of the rebel Arabs,
displaying an equal measure of sagacity and energy, was a Koreishite,
Khalid ben al-Walid, the same who had been mainly responsible for the
victory of the Koreish over the hosts of Mohammed at Mount Ohod, close by
Medina, eight years before.
MOSLEM CONQUESTS
Arabia was hardly reconquered before the great invasion of other
countries began. The prophet himself had set on foot some enterprises
against Syria, but without any particular result. The great thing now
to be accomplished was to transform the Arab hordes from recalcitrant
subjects into joyful warriors of God by the twofold prospect of earthly
spoil and heavenly rewards. Here we recognise the hand of Omar, to whom
the sovereignty passed directly on the death of Abu-Bekr soon after.
The wars of conquest which he inaugurated were crowned with brilliant
success. It is worth while to consider the subject briefly in detail.
Troublesome enemies as the Arab tribes had often proved to the subjects
of the Roman and Persian empires, no one had ever dreamed that they could
constitute a menace to either. It is true that when the Moslem inroads
began, the districts first affected were in a sorry plight. The frequent
wars between the Romans and Persians had sorely enfeebled both empires,
and this was more particularly the case with the last great war, which
had lasted from 607 to 628. Large areas of Roman territory, especially in
Palestine, Syria, and Egypt, had been frightfully ravaged and occupied
for years by the Persians. The valiant and wily emperor Heraclius,
however, succeeded in turning the tide of fortune, and ultimately
dictated terms of peace to the Persians on their own soil. After that the
Persian empire had been torn asunder by quarrels over the succession.
Both empires had lost the Arab outpost they once possessed. The Persians
had annihilated the Roman vassal kingdom of the Ghassanids, and their
own subject dynasty in Hira (which had latterly adopted the Christian
faith) had been dethroned by King Chosroes II. The folly of this was
soon apparent. The Bedouins of the Shaiban tribe utterly routed the
royal armies of Persia at Ibu Kar on the frontiers of Babylonia, probably
at the very time when the king’s forces were pursuing their victorious
progress through the distant west. It was not a great battle, and
probably its only direct consequence was that the unwarlike peasants of
neighbouring districts were pillaged by the Bedouins; but a victory over
an army composed in part of regular troops gave the Arabs confidence.
This very Shaiban tribe distinguished itself in the first Moslem advance
into Persian territory.
Nevertheless there is much that remains enigmatical in the immense
success that attended the Moslems. Their armies were not very large.
The emperor Heraclius was an able man, with all the prestige of victory
behind him. When the great struggle of Moslem and Persian began, the
civil wars of the empire were over, and it had a powerful leader--not
indeed in Yezdegerd, its youthful monarch, but in the mighty prince
Rustem, who had procured the crown for him. The great financial straits
to which both empires were unquestionably reduced must have had its
effect upon the number and efficiency of their troops, but that they were
still good for something is clear from the fact that both the decisive
battle on the river Yarmuk (August, 636) in which the Romans were
defeated, and that of Kadisiya (end of 636 or beginning of 637) in which
a like fate waited on the Persian arms, lasted for several days. The
resistance offered must have been very obstinate. The Roman and Persian
armies may have included irregular troops of various kinds, but they
certainly consisted largely of disciplined soldiers under experienced
officers. The Persians brought elephants into the field, as well as their
dreaded mounted cuirassiers. Among the Arabs there was no purely military
order of battle; they fought in the order of their clans and tribes.
This, though it probably insured a strong feeling of comradeship, was by
no means an adequate equivalent for regular military units. Freiherr von
Kremer[20] rightly sees in the salat a substitute, to some extent, for
military drill. In that ceremony the Arabs, hitherto wholly unaccustomed
to discipline, were obliged _en masse_ to repeat the formulæ with strict
exactitude after their leader and to copy every one of his movements, and
any man who was unable to perform the salat with the congregation was
none the less bound to strict compliance with the form of prayer in which
he had been instructed. But the main factor was the powerful corporate
feeling of the Moslem, the ever increasing enthusiasm for the faith even
in those who had at first been indifferent, and the firm conviction that
the warriors for the holy cause, though death in the field would prevent
them from taking a share in the spoils of victory on earth, would yet
partake of the most delightful of terrestrial joys in heaven. Thus the
masterless Arabs, who, for all their turn for boasting, had but little
stomach for heroic deeds, were transformed into the irresistible warriors
of Allah. It was the highest triumph of Semitic religious zeal, a
manifestation on a vast scale that among the Arabs the sense of religion
had only slumbered, to awaken when occasion arose with true Semitic fury.
The same thing has since come to pass again and again on a smaller scale.
For the rest, so far as we can tell, the Arab tribes were not all alike
concerned in these wars of conquest. The great camel-breeding tribes
of the highlands of the interior, in particular, seem to have taken a
much smaller share in them than the tribes of the northern districts of
Yemen. It was a point of the utmost importance that the supreme command
was almost throughout in the hands of men of the Koreish, who at that
time proved themselves a race of born rulers. They led Islam from victory
to victory, proving themselves good Moslems on the whole, but without
renouncing their worldly wisdom. Above all we are constrained to admire
the skill, caution, and boldness with which, from his headquarters at
Medina, Omar directed the campaigns and the rudiments of reorganisation
in conquered countries.
This unpolished and rigidly orthodox man, who lived with the utmost Arab
simplicity while an incalculable revenue was flowing into the treasury
of the empire, proved one of the greatest and wisest of sovereigns.
His injunction that the Arabs should acquire no landed property in the
conquered countries, but should everywhere constitute a military caste
in the pay of the state, was grandly conceived, but proved impracticable
in the long run. Some of the Christian Arabs at first fought against
the Moslem, but without any very great zeal. The majority of them soon
exchanged a Christianity that had never gone very deep for the national
religion. The great tribe of the Taghlib in the Mesopotamian desert was
almost the only one in which Christianity retained its ascendency for any
length of time, but it nevertheless fully participated in the fortunes of
the Moslem empire, and even there the older faith gradually passed away,
as it seems to have done among all Arabs of pure blood.
The victories of the Moslems under Omar were continued under his
successor Othman. Syria, Mesopotamia, Babylonia,[21] Assyria, the greater
part of Iran proper, Egypt, and some more of the northern parts of Africa
were already conquered. The inhabitants of the Roman provinces had almost
everywhere submitted to the conquerors without a struggle; in some cases
they had even made overtures to them. The deplorable Christological
disputes contributed largely to this result: the bulk of the Syrians and
Copts were Monophysites and were consequently persecuted in many ways by
the adherents of the Council of Chalcedon, who had gained the ascendency
at Constantinople. Moreover in other respects the Roman government
of the period was not qualified to inspire its Semitic and Egyptian
subjects with any great devotion. The rule of the Arabs, though severe,
at first was just, and above all they scrupulously observed all treaties
whatsoever concluded with them. And the inhabitants of those countries
were accustomed to subjection. It is, however, unlikely that they did the
victors much positive service beyond occasionally acting as spies, and
we must not lay too much stress upon the subjugation of what was on the
whole an unwarlike race. Even in Iran, where Islam was confronted by far
stronger opposition on national and religious grounds, the bulk of the
population, especially in rural districts, offered at most a desultory
resistance, while the victors had still many a battle to fight with the
forces of the king and the nobles.
CIVIL WARS AMONG THE MOSLEMS
This career of conquest was interrupted by the great civil wars. The
Arabs knew of nothing between entire liberty and absolute monarchy.
The latter was the form which the caliphate first took, but it was
universally assumed that the ruler was bound to abide strictly by
the laws of religion. When Othman, grown old and feeble, was led by
excessive nepotism and other causes into a breach of the latter, the
result was a rebellion, in which he ultimately perished (656). The murder
was followed by years of civil broils, and some decades later the whole
thing was enacted afresh. The war was waged under religious pretexts,
and to some extent from religious motives; but it was in the main a
struggle for sovereignty between various members of the Koreish. Tribal
animosities old and new were brought into play, and induced the tribes
to throw in their lot with one or other of the leading parties. The
outcome of the two great civil wars was that in each case the ablest man
placed himself at the head of the empire; the first to do so, after the
murder of Ali, Mohammed’s son-in-law, being the Omayyad Moawiya, son of
Abu Sufyan, the leader of the heathen of Mecca against Mohammed. In his
reign Damascus, where he had lived as governor for many years before,
became the capital in place of Medina. The victor in the second instance
was Abd al-Melik, of another branch of the Omayyad family. They were
both men of great capacity but essentially worldly-minded. One of the
prophet’s grandsons, a son of Ali, had made his peace, while another,
Husain by name, fell in a foolish attempt at rebellion (680); though he
was thenceforth regarded as a martyr, and much blood was shed to avenge
his death on the rulers _de facto_. The pious stood aloof, sorrowful or
indignant, but the sovereignty remained in the hands of the Omayyads.
To Europe these civil wars were nothing short of salvation. Had they
not checked the career of Arab conquest, Islam might even then have
subjugated Asia Minor, the Balkan peninsula, and the whole of Spain, and
spread beyond it to Gaul and remoter lands.
The Arabs of that period knew how to conquer and to hold fast what they
had won; for organisation they had less aptitude. Wherever they could
they left administration, and taxation more especially, as they found it.
At first the register of taxes was kept in Greek in the former dominions
of Rome, and in Persian in those of Persia; and not until after more than
half a century did the Arabic language become predominant in official
book-keeping. The Omayyads had gained the mastery by the loyalty of
the Arabs of Syria; they were tied to Syria, and the great tracts of
territory to the east were hard to rule from thence. Moreover the Moslems
of Babylonia, in many respects a more important province, were on the
whole hostile to them. And, what was worse, the old lack of discipline
among the Arabs had manifested itself strongly in a new form. Instead
of small clans being at feud with one another, as had usually been the
case in former days, they had ranged themselves in large and mutually
hostile groups. One of these was composed of the Arabs of Yemen (real or
reputed), two others of the tribes which claimed descent from Ishmael,
the Mudhar and Rabia. If a caliph or a caliph’s vicegerent sided with the
Yemen he had the Mudhar against him; if he favoured the Rabia the Mudhar
were likewise hostile, etc. In the remoter provinces the hostile Arabs
sometimes waged regular wars with one another on their own account. To
add to this, there were risings of fanatics of various kinds. None but
the ablest of the Omayyads (and on the whole they were an able dynasty)
could maintain even tolerable order in the vast empire which extended its
borders farther and farther when once the civil wars were over. The brief
reign of a weakling or a libertine was enough to spoil everything. The
purely Arab empire lacked the elements of stability.
Meanwhile, however, great masses of the conquered peoples had gone over
to Islam. Temporal advantages on the one hand, and on the other the
suitability of this coarse-grained religion to the Semites, and probably
to the less educated Egyptians too, led steadily to the abandonment of a
Christianity which in these parts was but little superior to Islam. But
in Iran also the new religion soon made great advances on its own merits,
though in some places (it must be admitted) very much at the expense of
the purity of its pristine character. The national pride of the Arabs
could not endure the practical application of the theoretical precept
of Islam that all believers should be on an absolutely equal footing.
The new converts remained Moslems of the second class, and, in certain
districts at least, they felt the distinction bitterly. Even at the time
of the second great civil war these so-called “clients” (_mawali_) had
on one occasion played a prominent part, though only as the tools of an
ambitious Arab.
The action of a “client” population of this sort was fraught with far
greater consequences when another Koreishite family--the Abbasids,
descendants of an uncle of Mohammed--rose up against the Omayyads. One
of their great emissaries placed himself at the head of the Moslem
natives of eastern Persia (Khorasan) and by the help of these Iranians
the Abbasids secured the throne (750). The change must be regarded as
in great measure a strong reaction of the Persian element against the
Arab. The long succession of great oriental empires had been interrupted
by an empire purely Arab, and the sequence was now renewed. The seat
of government was once more transferred to Babylonia; Baghdad took the
place of Babylon and Ctesiphon. The great offices of state were already
largely filled by persons of other than Arab descent. The old Arab pride
of birth was outraged by the fact that no weight was now attached to
the consideration of whether the mother of the ruler had been a free
woman or a slave, and that thus the Arab strain of the reigning dynasty
became more and more interfused with foreign blood as time went on.
A second Persian reaction is signalised by the victory won, after a
protracted struggle, by the caliph Mamun, the son of a Persian woman,
over his brother Amin, whose mother was of the stock of the Abbasids
(813). Mamun’s troops were nearly all of them Persians. Their leader, the
Persian Tahir, founded the first semi-independent sovereignty on Iranian
soil. The forms of government remained Arab to a great extent, and Arabic
likewise remained the official language, but genuine Arabdom receded more
and more into the background. Above all, professional troops recruited
from the peoples of the East, or even of the far West, had almost wholly
superseded the Arab levies.
The process of Arabisation went on apace, in the north Semitic countries,
Egypt, and even in great tracts of the “Occident” (Maghreb),[22] but
this Arab-speaking population, with its profession of Islam and its
preponderance of non-Arabic elements, differed widely in thought and
feeling from the Arabs of pure blood, who from that time forward were
represented (much as they were before the days of Islam) almost entirely
by the Bedouins and dwellers in the oases of Arabia and a few places in
Africa. The great historic rôle of the pure Arab was played out. But
this neo-Arabic nationality gave more or less of the same character to
all Islamite countries. This holds good in great measure of Iran and the
countries that bordered on it to the northeast, south and southeast,
in so far as they fell under the influence of the Arab religion.[23]
Nevertheless the eastern provinces of the caliphate no more adopted the
Arab tongue (which gained the mastery in the principal countries of the
western half and even in a great part of the Maghreb) than the eastern
half of the Roman Empire had adopted the Latin tongue at the time that
the west was almost completely Romanised. The Arab tongue exercised a
profound influence none the less upon the Persians and all such nations
as drew their culture from Persia. It was not for nothing that even
in the last-named country Arabic was long the language of government,
religion, erudition, and poetry, and so remained to some extent even
after the native language had reasserted itself. Persian (and Hindustani,
Kurdish, etc., likewise) had borrowed largely from Arabic, especially in
the department of abstract terms--a thing we should not have expected in
view of the antiquity of Persian civilisation and the newness of that of
Arabia. The influence of Arabic is apparent even in the remotest branches
of modern Persian literature, just as all Teutonic languages bear traces
of the profound influence of Latin, which formerly occupied a position in
Europe analogous in many respects to that of Arabic in Islamite countries.
INFLUENCE OF PERSIA ON THE MOSLEMS
But if the Arab spirit modified the spirit of Persia in many ways, the
converse action was no less strong, possibly stronger. Many political
institutions, the forms of polite society, nay, of town life as a whole,
luxury, art, and even the fashion of dress, came to the Arabs from
Persia. In the Omayyad period Arabic poetry remains in essentials true
to the methods of the old heathen Bedouin poets; though side by side
with them--and more particularly in the works of the best poets--we
mark the gradual growth of a more elegant style, suited to the more
cultivated tastes of the towns, and even of a courtly school of poetry.
Even in later times, however, the methods of the elder poets found many
imitators. But after the Abbasid period the writers of Arabic poems,
taken as a whole, were no longer men of pure Arab descent; many were
freedmen or of humble origin and Persian or Aramaic nationality. Thus
during the Moslem period even the native poets of Persia began by writing
in Arabic, and hence the rising school of Persian poetry adhered closely
to the traditions of the Arabic school, both in metre and all points
of structure, and in subject-matter and verbal expression. Unhappily
it showed itself equally ready to imitate the artificiality into which
Arabic poetry had sunk at that period. It is true, indeed, that from
the outset Persian poetry displayed certain distinctive features, and
that its noblest achievement, the national epic, is, broadly speaking,
original, though even there Arabic influence is potent in the details.
The lustre of Arab culture, especially as displayed in the large cities
of Babylonia, the central province, arose from a liberal intermixture of
Persian and Arab elements. In some of these cities Persian was actually
spoken by the bulk of the population, at least in the early centuries
of Islamism. The influence of Byzantine civilisation on that of Arabia,
though far slighter, should not be overlooked. For centuries the upper
classes of Babylonia, luxurious and often frivolous as they were,
maintained a high level of intellectual activity. The gift of expressing
oneself in elegant Arabic with Persian charm and Persian wit was held in
the highest esteem. Similar centres of superior culture existed in other
Arabic-speaking countries right across to Spain, and for a time even in
Sicily. Through all the wide domains of Islam men travelled much, partly
to complete their education and acquire the polish of the man of the
world, partly for pure love of travel and thirst of adventure. Public and
private societies of _beaux-esprits_ and scholars existed in every town
of any importance. A brisk trade by land and sea did much to insure the
rapid interchange of commodities between regions the most remote, even
such as lay far beyond the pale of Islamism, and the result of trade was
the accumulation of vast wealth in the great cities. Thither also flowed
the taxes levied _per fas et nefas_, upon the inhabitants of the plains.
Of course there was no lack of misery in the great cities of the Arab
world, any more than in those of Europe and America at the present day.
ARAB RECORDS AND TRADITIONS
The Moslems very early began to hand down biographical records of the
prophet, at first by oral, but in the main authentic tradition. More
important still to the whole Moslem world was the transmission and
collection of precepts covering the whole of life, which pretended to
be preserved in the exact form in which they had been uttered by the
prophet or made current by his act.[24] It is of the utmost advantage
to us to-day that the history of Mohammed’s successors, of their great
conquests, and of the empire, follows so immediately upon his own. The
several records used to be handed on with the names of those who vouched
for them, from the first eye-witness down to the last teller of the tale,
variations of statement being placed close side by side. In this way
narratives told from the point of view of absolutely different parties
have come down to us side by side, many of them dealing with the most
important events of the first centuries of Islam, so that historical
criticism is frequently in a position to ascertain the main features
of what really took place with far greater certainty than if the Arabs
themselves had proceeded to draw up a regular history and had manipulated
their authorities in their own fashion. The tradition of the deeds and
adventures of the ancient heroes of Arabia, too, was carefully cherished,
and much of it has come down to us.
ARAB LEARNING
In this, as in all branches of exact learning of the Moslems, the Arabic
language stands alone at first and even in later times occupies the
foremost place, whether the student immediately concerned was of pure
Arab descent (which was probably very seldom the case) or of mixed or
foreign blood. This holds good of the sciences related to theology,
above all, and of all branches of knowledge taught in the schools. Not
one of the sciences properly so called was evolved by the Arabs (and
the word may be taken in the most comprehensive sense) out of their own
inner consciousness, not even grammar, the first branch of learning to
assume the form of an exact science; some of the fundamental conceptions
involved in it originated in the logic of Aristotle. This science,
arising, as it did, out of the necessity of expounding the _Koran_
and ancient poetry and the desire to preserve the classic tongue of
the Bedouins, which was liable to rapid alteration in the lands they
had conquered, developed then, it is true, on very independent lines.
Above all, Arab philosophy is wholly dependent upon Greek works, most
of them translated from the original by Syrians or known through Syrian
versions.[25] Even Islamite dogmatism found itself constrained to adopt
the methods of the pagan philosophy of Greece.
The men who laid the foundations of Arab learning were for the most part
not of Arab descent, though exceptions are more numerous than is commonly
supposed. Sibawaih, who drew up the first great compendium of the Arabic
language, was a Persian; though practically all he did was to compile
what he had heard from his teachers, the chief of whom, Khalil, was in
all likelihood a pure-blooded Arab. And this work, upon which that of
later schools made little advance as far as the substance is concerned,
is very clumsy in form, and as unsystematic as though he had been of pure
Arab descent. Exact systematisation is a hard thing for the true Semite
to compass. The ascendency exercised by the Arabic language during the
centuries in which the intellectual life of Islamite countries was in its
glory is best seen from the fact that even those Persians who claimed
precedence for their own nation set forth their opinions to that effect
in Arabic works.
In this place it is of course impossible to enter upon the history
of Arab learning; we can only insist upon one single point, namely
that (at least in the branches of scholarship which were held in the
highest esteem) the culmination was reached early, and they were then
treated of in countless works--compendiums, abstracts, commentaries, and
versifications--without any particular variation in the subject-matter.
How far medicine, natural science, and mathematics were advanced beyond
the stage which the Greeks (and it may be, the Hindus) had attained by
works written in Arabic I am not in a position to say.[26] The average
standard of the very numerous chronicles in Arabic is considerably higher
than that of the Latin chronicles of the Middle Ages, because, for one
thing, the writers of the former were men in the thick of actual life,
some of them indeed men of considerable consequence, while the latter
were generally written in monasteries. We even come upon the rudiments of
historical criticism, or at least of a comprehensive historical survey.
The number of Arabic works containing the biography of eminent men,
scholars, poets, and so forth, is positively amazing, as is the wealth
of anthologies of every kind, in which poetry alternates with prose. In
their works on literary history, again, they are in the habit of giving
many specimens of the poems of the particular writers discussed. Among
these anthologies and works on the history of literature are some of
remarkable merit and of the highest value to us.
Furthermore we are much beholden to Arab authors of works on geography.
These are almost all based upon actual observation and written with a
practical aim; and thus have a great advantage over mere scholastic
works. Wherever geography assumes a strictly scientific form, however, it
is indebted to the system of Ptolemy.
Moslem philosophy (of which the most notable exponents were men of
non-Arab descent, Persians, Spaniards, etc., though they all wrote in
Arabic as a matter of course) is entirely an emanation from that of
Greece, although it rises here and there to the exposition of grand
original ideas. The same holds good even of mysticism, which is at bottom
in sharp opposition to scientific speculation. Originally an alien growth
among the Arabs, with its roots partly in neo-Platonism and Christianity,
partly in Hindu and Persian soil, it nevertheless attained a notable
development among the Moslems. All speculation was kept within strict
limits by the dominant religion. More liberal spirits (of which there
were never many) were forced to observe the utmost caution in their
utterances; although there was probably more freedom of thought in Islam
than in Christian Europe.
But whatever judgment we may pass upon Arabic scientific literature as
a whole, however readily we may concede that in proportion to its vast
bulk the part played by originality is small, while that played by the
repetition of repetitions is very large indeed, it is nevertheless, on
the whole, greatly superior to the contemporary literature of Europe.
There we should seek in vain for such works as, _e.g._, the great
_Book of Songs_, which sets before us in varied guise the course of
Arabic poetry down to late Moslem days, and the lives and doings of
the Arabs of old time and of the later courts (tenth century) alike;
or the geographical work of Mukaddasi (tenth century), the works of
Biruni (a Persian from the neighbourhood of what is now Khiva, tenth
and eleventh centuries) on chronology and other subjects, which are
equally remarkable for their keen observation and strictly scientific
temper; the geographical dictionary of Yakut (a man of Byzantine lineage
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries); the politico-historical
_Introduction to the Chronicle of Ibn Khaldun_ (of Tunis, fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries) and many others. Not until close upon the dawn of
the Renaissance does Europe gradually assert her decisive superiority
over the East in every sphere of intellectual life. Arabic literature is
of peculiar and supreme importance to ourselves because its vast store
presents to us a comprehensive and vivid picture of life and thought in
wide regions of the nearer East. Without it we should find the oriental
peoples of antiquity far harder to understand. From this point of view
the study of Arabic is of even greater importance as an aid to the right
comprehension of the Old Testament and the cuneiform inscriptions than it
is, on purely linguistic grounds, for the interpretation of the Hebrew
and Assyrian languages.
INFLUENCE OF THE ARABS UPON EUROPE
The principal effect of Arab learning upon that of Europe consists in
this--that a few Greek works which had been translated into Arabic and a
few Arabic works which had followed in the footsteps of the Greek, were
translated into Latin either from the original or through the medium
of Hebrew versions, and thus became text-books to the Europeans. The
original ideas of Arabic writers on medicine and mathematics may also
have been imparted to western nations by translations of their writings.
In all likelihood a European now and again studied medicine under the
direct guidance of an oriental physician. Translations of certain Arabic
books of tales and fables, native to India in the first instance, were
widely circulated in Europe. Arabic poetry scarcely influenced that of
Europe at all, at the utmost a few Romance verse-forms may be imitated
from those of later Arabic poetry. Generally speaking we cannot but say
that, in the region of intellectual activity, the influence of the Moslem
on the Christian world was far slighter than we should have expected,
considering the innumerable points of contact between the two in Spain,
Sicily, the scene of the Crusades, and elsewhere. On the other hand, the
Europeans borrowed many details of outward culture and luxury from the
Orientals.
LATER EVENTS OF ARABIC CIVILIZATION
During the early period of the Abbasid dynasty the Arab empire continued
to expand more and more. It is true that the perpetual wars with
Byzantium did not result in any permanent conquests in Asia Minor; but
Islam, and with it a certain process of Arabisation, advanced with giant
strides, especially in the East. This advance continued even while the
caliphate fell lower and lower and its power passed to other despots,
most of them not even of Arab descent, who usually treated the caliph
with a show of reverence as their lord, but practically took little heed
of him. Moreover, the Abbasids never ruled over Spain, whither an Omayyad
had fled to found there an empire of his own, which soon attained a high
degree of prosperity. Other empires, either absolutely independent of the
caliphate, or actually hostile to it, presently arose in their places.
But the glory of Arab civilisation suffered no great eclipse, even when
the caliphs were mere puppets in the hands of the Buids, who had come
as mercenaries from the semi-barbaric mountain tract of Gilan in Iran
and had established a mighty empire (tenth century). Even the terrible
Turkish migration, which led to the rise of the far mightier empire of
the Seljuks, left much unharmed. The brisk and joyous life of a refined
civilisation still shines forth from the pages of Hariri’s _Makamat_
(eleventh century). The Crusades did indeed bring greater misery than
ever upon the wretched land of Palestine, but on the whole they affected
the nations of Islam far less than those which adhered to the church of
Rome. The attacks of the Mongols were the first shock which destroyed
the fairest flower of Islamite civilisation. Traces of the ravages
perpetrated by these monsters are visible to this day. The destruction
of Baghdad (1258) inflicted a terrible blow upon Arab culture. At that
time the caliphate was in reality a petty state having for its capital a
metropolis with which Constantinople alone could vie in importance.
The end of the caliphate coincided with and marked the close of the
glorious period of the Arab empire. Even before it came to pass, the
Mongols had annihilated the flourishing civilisation of the East by
destroying the great cities there, and massacring their inhabitants.
A remnant of Arab culture found refuge in Egypt, whither happily the
Mongols did not penetrate.
Yet even this conquest actually promoted the spread of Islam. The Mongols
settled among the Moslems and soon went over to Islam themselves. The
greater part of Asia Minor had already been won over by the Seljuks to
Turkish nationality and the faith of Islam, and from thence arose the
empire of the Ottoman Turks, for centuries the terror of Europe. At the
very time when Islamism, after a protracted struggle, was thrust forth
from Spain, the fierce and fanatical worshippers of the God of Arabia
bore the banner of his prophet far on the way towards Europe. And while
warriors fought for the glory of Allah, Arabic learning was zealously
pursued in the theological schools of the Ottoman empire, as it had
been in the Middle Ages, and there was much instruction and literary
labour after the older Arabic and Persian model, and now and again a
work of real scientific value came into being. This mediæval pursuit
of learning still prevails wherever Islam holds sway, and its sphere,
though circumscribed in Europe, is of vast extent in Asia and Africa,
and still continues to expand. It is true that in many Islamite countries
the influence of modern Europe makes itself felt even in learning, but
it does not go deep, and the genuine Moslem scholar still treads closely
in the footprints of the true believers, his predecessors. And Mecca,
the home of the prophet, with his sanctuary and his school of theology,
is to this day the religious centre for all who admit his claims, and
recite the Arabic formulæ of the salat, and listen--though in most
cases without the faintest comprehension--to the Arabic _Book of God_.
Thither the pious pilgrim makes his way once in his life at least, if he
possibly can, nor does he neglect to visit at the same time Mohammed’s
grave at Medina. This constant gathering of pilgrims from every quarter
at Mecca, and the influence exercised upon their native countries by
the theologians who settled there, either temporarily or permanently,
are of the utmost importance to the unity and strength of Islam, or, at
least, of the creed it involves, which is that held by far the greater
number of Semitic races. The language of the Holy City is Arabic, but the
population is a mixture of the most diverse elements of nationality.[27]
LATER ISLAMITE MOVEMENTS
The Arabs of Arabia (as has been said before) have long since lost
the place in the history of the world which they once occupied under
circumstances wholly exceptional. Only twice since then has a strong
movement made itself felt in at least the nearest of Islamite lands. In
the tenth century the Karmates, a secret sect of Persian origin, hostile
to the Abbasid caliphs and, at bottom, to Islam altogether, established
themselves firmly in a part of northeastern Arabia, very difficult
of access. Their leaders succeeded in winning over many Bedouins by
the prospect of booty, and thus caravans of pilgrims were frequently
massacred or robbed of all they possessed; some of the large cities of
Babylonia were several times captured and pillaged; Mecca itself was
taken during the pilgrim festival; the sacrosanct Black Stone carried
off (930), and an end put to pilgrimages for a time. These proceedings
were accomplished by much bloodshed. The Black Stone was ultimately
restored after an interval of twenty-one years, on payment of a heavy
ransom. The Karmates were secretly in league with the Fatimites, the
anti-caliph dynasty in Africa, which claimed descent from Ali and Fatima,
the daughter of Mohammed. They sank back into insignificance by slow
degrees.[28] A connection of some sort exists between the above-mentioned
occurrences and the migration of certain Bedouin tribes, under the
auspices of the Fatimites, from Arabia to Upper Egypt and remoter parts
of northern Africa, where they committed great ravages (eleventh century).
And in the eighteenth century the puritanic movement of Abd al-Wahhab
arose in the heart of Arabia, with the object of restoring Islam to its
pristine purity and repudiating all innovations that had crept in by
lapse of time, from the veneration of the tombs of saints to the smoking
of tobacco. The Wahhabees brought the greater part of Arabia, inclusive
of the holy cities, under their influence for a while, exacted a minute
observation of the precepts of religion, bore strict rule in all things,
and established a condition of peace such as that country, predestinate
to lawlessness, had not known since the days of the caliphate. The
Wahhabees were heretics inasmuch as they did not regard the “catholic”
principle, which had won acceptance in Islam, that all things adopted
by the consensus of the whole church were binding upon all men; though
of course the fiction was kept up that this consensus was invariably in
harmony with the original character of the faith. They, on the contrary,
held in all seriousness the principle, which was universally recognised
in theory, that every innovation in the sphere of religion was wholly
reprehensible.
The great simplicity of the religion of Mohammed made it possible to
effect the restoration of its pristine purity in a far higher degree
than the mighty efforts of the sixteenth and subsequent centuries could
effect a return to primitive Christianity; and besides, the conditions
of contemporary life in Arabia were not widely different from those that
had prevailed in the time of the prophet. A few of the theologians of
the Ottoman empire actually recognised the Wahhabees as orthodox. These
fanatical zealots were, however, obnoxious to the Turkish government for
more reasons than one, and hence their power was broken by Muhammed Ali
of Egypt, after a desperate struggle. Wahhabism actually exists to this
day in the interior of Arabia, but under two mutually hostile dynasties
and (in spite of having occasionally sent its emissaries as far as India)
without any great prospect of spreading. It is firmly rooted only among
the non-nomadic Arabs. The Bedouins never obey a Wahhabee ruler except
under compulsion. They are at all times loath to serve a master, and
though animated by the Moslem spirit, they are very negligent in the
performance of their religious duties. They do not even hesitate to
extort all they possibly can from pilgrim caravans, either by openly
waylaying them or by levying toll for the privilege of passing through
their territory. Taken as a whole, the life of the Bedouin of to-day
still bears a strong resemblance to that of his ancestors long ago, but
his intellectual level seems to have sunk from the height it maintained
at the time of Mohammed. Even the number of places in Arabia suitable for
agriculture appears to have diminished through the neglect and decay of
irrigation.
The fact that a few points on the coast are of some importance to
European commerce and politics is of no consequence to the country as a
whole, at least for the present.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Delitzsch, _Wo lag das Paradies_, pp. 295; 304 ff.; Schrader,
_Keilschrift und Geschichtsforschung_, pp. 202, 261.
[2] In Jeremiah iii, 2 and xxv, 24; Ezekiel xxvii, 21; xxx, 5; Jeremiah
xiii, 20 (from the end of the Captivity); Jeremiah xxi, 13, ערב
is “desert.”
[3] _Die alte Geographie Arabiens_, p. 293. Berne, 1875.
[4] Cf. S. A. Barton. _A Sketch of Semitic Origins_ (New York, 1902), Ch.
1, where the various opinions of the subject are compared.
[5] Var. Σαρακηνοί as a tribe.
[6] Cureton, _Spicilegium Syriacum_, 16 ult.
[7] The powerful Shammar of the present day, some who live in Nejd, the
ancient home of the tribe, and some in the Mesopotamian desert, belong to
the Tai.
[8] That whole peoples should be called after certain frontier tribes
by neighbouring nations is not altogether an unusual phenomenon, as
everybody knows.
[9] These forms have to a certain extent survived to our own day, as the
name of an Iranian people in Transirania and elsewhere, who accepted the
Arab religion earlier than their neighbours and were consequently called
“Arabs.” In the same way later Syrians often call all Moslems “Taits.”
[10] _Acta Martyr._ ed. St. Ev. Assemani, 2, 345, 1.
[11] Migne, _Patrol. græca_, 79, LXXIX, 611 _seqq._
[12] The proper translation of εὐδαὶμων in this connection. The usual
_felix_ or the Horatian _beatus_ (_Carm._ 1, 29, 1) is like our “happy,”
too strong.
[13] The name was extended to the whole peninsula, a country extremely
poor as a whole. Ἀραβία ἔρημος, _Arabia Deserta_, stood only for the
Syrian desert, and the Arab country to the southwest, with Petra as its
capital, is Ἀραβία Πετραία, _Arabia Petræa_, as in Ptolemy, and elsewhere.
[14] Genesis xxxvii, 25.
[15] _Reste arabischen Heidenthums_, II, 93.
[16] For a lively description of it see Wellhausen, _Reste_, II, 89
_seqq._
[17] See, for example, Joshua xi, 20; 1 Samuel xv, 33.
[18] S. Nilus in Migne, _Patrol. græca_, 79, lxxix, 611 _seqq._
[19] The translation of _salat_ by “prayer” gives rise to
misunderstandings. It is a religious exercise performed according to
strict rule, with set formulæ and ceremonies (bending of the body,
prostration, etc.). Voluntary prayer is _du’a_.
[20] The historical works of this admirable scholar deserve the strongest
recommendation, particularly his _Culturgeschichte des Orients unter den
Chalifen_, 2 vols. Vienna, 1875-1877.
[21] Babylonia (Arab Irak) should not be included, as is often done,
in the term Mesopotamia, which last should be restricted to the very
different region to the north, known in Arabic as Jezira.
[22] The portions of northern Africa west of Egypt and the Moslem parts
of western Europe (Spain).
[23] “All men are become Arabs” was said in the year 728 or 729, in
reference to an Iranian stock converted to Islam. Those who thus spoke
would have used the word _Tadjik_ for _Arab_ (_vide supra_, p. 4); the
Arabic chronicle restores _Arab_.
[24] Goldziher has rendered a most important service by proving how
slight the importance of this form is on purely historic grounds, and
how everything that passed as valid in certain circles was ascribed
without more ado to the prophet himself. See particularly Part II of his
_Muhammedanische Studien_ (Halle, 1890).
[25] But “the most precious heritage in art, poetry, and history, which
the Greek spirit has bequeathed to us was never accessible to Orientals.”
(T. J. de Boer, _Geschichte der philosophie in Islam_, Stuttgart 1901, p.
26.)
[26] The Arabs deserve great credit for the mere fact that they adopted
that brilliant invention, the Hindu numerical system, and passed it on to
the Europeans. It is singular that the latter continued so frequently to
employ the extremely inconvenient Roman numerals.
[27] Cf. Snoucke-Hurgronge, _Mekka_ (two parts, The Hague, 1888 and 1889).
[28] Cf. de Goeje, _Mem. sur les Carmathes de Bahraïn et les Fatimides_
(Leide, 1886). In this connection we may observe that in our own days the
Dutch, with de Goeje at their head, have rendered far greater services
in the elucidation of the history and geography of the Arabs than the
schools of any of the great nations.
[Illustration]
HISTORY IN OUTLINE OF PARTHIANS, SASSANIDS, AND ARABS
We turn back now to the scene of the earlier history, turning back in
time also. The events of three great empires will pass quickly before
the view, the period of time involved being more than seventeen hundred
years. The territories occupied by the peoples under consideration were
wide, and the peoples themselves successively dominated the eastern
world, and contested supremacy there with Rome. Of the Parthians and
Sassanids it must be said that, while important in holding Rome back,
they had otherwise an inconsiderable influence in the West; moreover,
Rome could not have retained the Orient even had she conquered it. As
regards the culture influence of the Parthians and Sassanids in Europe,
this was virtually _nil_. The case is quite different when we come to the
Arabs. Here was a race which not only became dominant in the East, but
seriously threatened to overthrow and supplant the entire civilisation
of Europe; and which, foiled in this, retained supremacy in the East
and developed an indigenous culture that powerfully influenced all
Christendom.
It must be understood that the relations between the Parthians,
Sassanids, and Arabs is geographical and chronological rather than
ethnological. The Parthians were overthrown by the Sassanids, and the
Sassanids by the Arabs. The three peoples successively ruled over similar
territories, and their histories may advantageously be considered in
sequence; but it will be understood that they represented different
races and bore to one another merely the relation of the conquered to
the conqueror. An outline of the history of Armenia is appended, to give
completeness to the subject, much as we gave chronologies of various
other minor nations of Western Asia in a previous volume.
THE PARTHIAN EMPIRE
(250 B.C.-228 A.D.)
B.C. During the reign of the Seleucid king Antiochus II,
Diodotus, viceroy of Bactria, seizes the northeastern provinces
and assumes the title of king. The formation of this kingdom is
not agreeable to the chiefs of the desert tribes who, under the
Seleucid rule, have never felt direct control, and some of them
migrate into Parthia. Among them are two brothers, Arsaces and
Tiridates, of the Parnians. In a quarrel which arises between
them and Pherecles, presumably satrap of Astauene, the latter
is slain and Arsaces is proclaimed king in Asaak, northwest of
Parthia.
250 Foundation of an independent monarchy by =Arsaces I=.
Antiochus, on account of civil and foreign wars, is unable to
proceed against Arsaces.
248 Death of Arsaces. His brother, =Tiridates=, succeeds,
taking the name of Arsaces, which is also borne by all his
successors as a throne name. They take the title of “king of
kings.”
242 After defeat of Seleucus Callinicus at Ancyra, Tiridates
invades Parthia, slays the eparch Andragores, and takes
possession of the province. He next seizes Hyrcania, and causes
a large army to oppose Seleucus.
238 Decisive victory of Tiridates over Seleucus. The latter
is obliged to return to Antioch on account of civil war, and
Tiridates is enabled to consolidate his kingdom.
211 Death of Tiridates. His son, =Arsaces II=, sometimes, but
incorrectly, called =Artabanus=, succeeds.
209 Antiochus the Great wins a victory over Arsaces on the
summit of Mount Labus. The Parthians retire to Sirynca and are
besieged by Antiochus. Surrender of Sirynca, and treaty of
peace. Arsaces retains Parthia, but is reduced to a vassal of
Antiochus. Parthia remains undisturbed for some years.
191 =Phriapatius= or =Arsaces (III) Philadelphus= succeeds
his father. Owing to the decay of Seleucid power, he acts as
protector of the Greeks in his kingdom.
176 =Phraates I= or =Arsaces (IV) Theopator= succeeds his
father. He conquers the Mardians.
171 Phraates dies, leaving the throne to his brother,
=Mithridates I= or =Arsaces (V) Epiphanes=, who at once annexes
several satrapies of Bactria to his kingdom. He holds court in
Hyrcania.
155 At death of King Eucratides of Bactria, Mithridates
continues the conquest of that country. The Hindu Kush becomes
the eastern boundary of Parthia. Mithridates turns to the west.
147 The province of Babylonia is wrested from the Seleucids.
The East is finally lost to the Macedonians.
139 Capture of Demetrius II of Syria, who has attempted to
establish himself in Mesopotamia.
138 Successful campaign in Elymais. Death of Mithridates. He
has made Parthia a great power. His son, =Phraates II= or
=Arsaces (VI) Euergetes=, succeeds. He adds Margiana to the
kingdom. The seat of the kingdom is transferred to Media.
130 Antiochus Sidetes begins a vigorous campaign against the
Parthians, whom he defeats in a great battle on the Upper Zab.
Babylon and Ecbatana are recovered.
129 The Parthians make secret terms with the Medes and attack
Antiochus, whose host is annihilated and he himself slain.
Phraates compelled to attack the Scythians, whom he had invited
to assist him against Antiochus. They have arrived too late,
and, as Phraates refuses to pay them, they begin to ravage the
country.
128 Death of Phraates in a disastrous battle with the
Scythians. His uncle, =Artabanus I= or =Arsaces (VII) Nicator=,
son of Phriapatius, succeeds. The Scythians withdraw, content
with their victory; Artabanus pays them tribute. There appear
to have been rival kings in this and the following reign.
Perhaps they are Scythians. The usurpers are suppressed.
Artabanus dies (date unknown), after a short reign, in battle
with the Tochari, and is succeeded by his son, =Mithridates
(II) the Great= or =Arsaces (VIII) Theos Euergetes=. He
wages many wars, and wins victories from the Scythians. Lost
territory is recovered. The Euphrates is fixed as the western
boundary of the kingdom.
94 Mithridates puts Tigranes II on the disputed throne of
Greater Armenia.
92 Sulla, proprætor of Cilicia, meets the ambassador of
Mithridates on the Euphrates, seeking the Roman alliance in
some connection with the Parthian schemes against Syria. First
contact of Parthia with Rome. Mithridates at war with Laodice,
queen of Commagene.
88 About this date Mithridates captures Demetrius III and his
army, dies shortly afterwards, and is succeeded by =Artabanus
II= or =Arsaces IX=. He is the last to bear title “king of
kings,” which passes to Tigranes II of Armenia.
77 =Sinatruces= or =Arsaces (X) Autocrator=, an exile living
with the Scythian tribe of the Sacarances, is placed on the
throne at the age of eighty. Continual wars with Tigranes, who
conquers Media, ravages Arbela and Nineveh, and compels the
cession of Adiabene and Nisibis.
73 Mithridates of Pontus appeals in vain to both Sinatruces and
Tigranes for help against Rome.
70 =Phraates III= succeeds his father.
69 Phraates declines to help Mithridates of Pontus, whom
Tigranes has joined. Tigranes offers to restore his Median
conquests to Phraates if he will assist. Phraates hesitates, but
66 accepts overtures of Pompey, and, with the younger Tigranes,
who has quarrelled with his father, prepares to invade Armenia.
Phraates besieges Artaxarta, but leaves the younger Tigranes
to continue. Defeat of Tigranes by his father. The former
flees to Pompey. The elder Tigranes surrenders to Pompey,
and the younger is put in chains. Phraates demands Tigranes’
deliverance, but it is refused. Phraates recovers Media and
resumes title “king of kings.”
64 While Pompey is in Syria, Phraates attacks and defeats the
elder Tigranes. Pompey refuses to interfere, but sends umpires
to settle the dispute.
57 Murder of Phraates by his two sons, who divide the kingdom.
=Orodes= or =Hyrodes I= takes Parthia, and =Mithridates III=
takes Media. The latter is soon expelled for his cruelty, and
Orodes reigns alone. Mithridates expects the Romans to restore
him, but they are compelled to go to Egypt to restore Ptolemy
XI.
55 He attacks Orodes alone, who flees, but with the help of
Surenas,
54 captures Mithridates in Babylon and puts him to death.
Crassus takes advantage of this civil strife to invade Parthia.
53 Great defeat of the Romans at Carrhæ by Surenas. Orodes
makes peace with Armenia. He puts Surenas to death through
jealousy.
52 Unsuccessful Parthian invasion of Syria.
51 Cassius defeats the Parthians at Antigonia.
50 The satrap of Mesopotamia raises a revolt in favour of
Pacorus, son of Orodes. Pacorus is recalled by Orodes and Syria
is evacuated. Orodes associates Pacorus with him on the throne.
After the battle of Philippi, Labienus, who has been sent from
Rome to obtain help from Orodes, advises him to seize Syria.
40 Pacorus, Labienus, and a large army attack Syria, which
falls into Parthian hands. All the Phœnician cities except
Tyre submit. The Parthians appear in Palestine and the country
rises against Herod and Phasael. Hyrcanus deposed and Antigonus
substituted. The cities of Asia Minor except Stratonicea open
their gates to Labienus.
39 Ventidius, Antony’s general, drives Labienus from Asia
Minor. Capture and execution of Labienus.
38 Complete rout of the Parthians and death of Pacorus at
battle of Cyrrhestica. The Parthians evacuate Syria.
37 Orodes, in grief at Pacorus’ loss, resigns crown to his son
=Phraates IV=. He at once murders his brothers and then his
father, his own son, and all possible claimants of the throne.
He removes the capital to Ctesiphon. Many of the nobles flee to
Antony, who plans a war against Parthia.
36 Antony appears in Atropatene and besieges the capital. The
expedition proves a failure.
33 Rebellion against Phraates, culminating
32 in an unknown usurper taking the throne. He is succeeded in
a few months by =Tiridates II=.
30 After battle of Actium, which draws the Roman troops from
Media, and Parthia, the Parthians seize Media and Armenia and
put Artaxes II on the Armenian throne. Phraates regains his
kingdom for a short time. Tiridates flees to Syria, where he is
protected by Octavian.
27 Tiridates, with the help of the Arabs, surprises Phraates
and compels him to flee. Phraates finally persuades the
Scythians to help him and
26 Phraates is reinstated. Tiridates flees to Augustus,
carrying Phraates’ younger son with him.
23 Augustus restores Phraates’ son to him. Civil war rages in
Parthia.
20 Augustus visits the East. Phraates, in fear, returns Roman
captives and the ensigns taken from Crassus and Antony, to
Augustus.
10 Phraates sends his family to Rome in order to remove causes
of civil strife, keeping only his favourite wife Urania,
an Italian slave girl presented by Augustus, and her child
Phraates or Phraataces.
2 About this date Urania and =Phraates V= (or =Phraataces=)
murder Phraates IV. Phraataces expels Artavasdes III from
Armenia and puts Tigranes IV on the throne. He also deposes
Ariobarzanes II of Atropatene (Media), who was established
on that throne by Augustus about 10 B.C. A line of Parthian
princes succeed in Atropatene.
A.D.
1 Augustus makes terms with Phraates, who resigns all claims on
Armenia and sends his sons to Rome as hostages.
2 Phraataces marries his mother, in consequence of which
4 he is deposed and takes refuge in Rome. The Parthians bring
back an exiled prince, =Orodes II=, and make him king. He
proves a cruel ruler, and for this reason about
9 is murdered. The Parthians apply to Rome and receive =Vonones
I=, eldest son of Phraates IV, as their king. His long
residence in Rome and foreign sympathies make him unpopular in
Parthia, and
11 =Artabanus III=, an Arsacid on his mother’s side and who
had been king of Media (Atropatene), is set up as a pretender.
He is unsuccessful at first, but finally defeats Vonones at
Ctesiphon. The latter flees and is chosen king of Armenia in
16. Tiberius persuades him to give up this throne.
19 After death of Germanicus, Artabanus begins to treat the
Romans with contempt, and places his son Arsaces on the throne
of Armenia. He makes so severe a ruler that
35 the Parthians apply to Tiberius, who finds himself compelled
to interfere. He induces Pharasmanes, king of Iberia, to put
forward his brother Mithridates as a claimant to the Armenian
throne. War results.
36 A widespread revolt instigated by Tiberius puts Tiridates,
grandson of Phraates IV, on the throne and Artabanus flees.
37 Artabanus comes to terms with Rome and is restored.
40 Death of Artabanus. His son =Vardanes= succeeds, but is
deposed
41 by =Gotarzes=, chief official of Artabanus.
42 Vardanes recovers throne, owing to Gotarzes’ cruelties.
Civil war results.
43 Vardanes captures Seleucia, and Gotarzes retires to Hyrcania.
45 Gotarzes makes unsuccessful attempt to regain throne.
46 Vardanes murdered while hunting. Gotarzes again takes throne.
47 On account of Gotarzes’ misrule, the Parthians ask Claudius
to give them Meherdates (Mithridates V) son of Vonones as king.
50 Gotarzes captures Meherdates on his way to Parthia.
51 Death of Gotarzes succeeded by =Vonones II=, formerly king
of Media and probably brother of Artabanus III.
54 Death of Vonones succeeded by his eldest son, =Vologases I=,
who is the son of a concubine; but to compensate his brothers,
Vologases puts Pacorus on the throne of Media and Tiridates on
that of Armenia--having deposed Radamistus the usurper from
the latter country. A son of Vardanes contests the throne with
Vologases and apparently has the upper hand for a while.
55 The Romans compel the Parthians to evacuate Armenia.
58 Vologases again attacks Armenia and brings on war with Rome.
Revolt of Hyrcania. Corbulo destroys Artaxarta and occupies
Tigranocerta (59).
61 Peace restored in Hyrcania.
62 War with Rome resumed. The Romans are repulsed.
63 Corbulo crosses the Euphrates, and the Parthians sue for
peace.
72 The Alani drive Pacorus of Media from his throne.
75 The Alani enter Parthia. Vologases appeals in vain to
Vespasian.
78 About this date Vologases dies. He seems to have been
succeeded by two kings, =Vologases II= and =Pacorus II=,
probably brothers, and reigning together.
81 =Artabanus IV= appears to be the king in this year. He
protects Terentius Maximus, who pretends to be Nero. Parthia is
torn with civil wars.
93 Pacorus II is sole king.
110 Pacorus sells the crown of Edessa to Abgar VII. Death of
Pacorus. His brother (or perhaps son) =Chosroes= or =Osroes=
succeeds. Vologases II reappears as a rival king, also a
=Mithridates= or =Meherdates VI=. Parthia is completely upset
with civil war which goes on until
113 Chosroes wrests Armenia from King Exedares and gives it to
Parthamariris, both sons of Pacorus.
114 The emperor Trajan, indignant at Chosroes’ act, seizes
Armenia and makes it a Roman province.
115 Trajan takes Ctesiphon and Seleucia.
116 Revolt in Parthia with Mithridates VI at its head. Death of
Mithridates, and his son Sinatruces takes his place. Chosroes
regains Nisibis, Seleucia, and Edessa.
117 Trajan crowns =Parthamaspates= king of Parthia, deposing
Chosroes. Death of Trajan. Hadrian withdraws Roman soldiers and
Chosroes recovers throne. Parthamaspates expelled.
130 About this date Chosroes dies and Vologases II rules as
sole king. The influence of Rome preserves peace in the kingdom.
148 Death of Vologases, aged ninety-six, having reigned
seventy-one years. =Vologases III= succeeds. He continues the
peace with Rome until,
162 when, after death of Antoninus Pius, Vologases enters
Armenia and expels the king. The greatest war between Rome and
Parthia ensues.
164 Aridius Cassius drives Vologases from Syria, enters
Babylonia, and burns Seleucia, the most important city of the
East.
165 Great plague, originating in Parthia, spreads over the
whole world.
166 Peace with Rome. Mesopotamia becomes a Roman province.
Parthia begins steadily to decline.
191 Death of Vologases III. =Vologases IV= succeeds.
194 Vologases permits the Medes to assist Orrhœne in revolt
against the Romans.
196 The Parthians ravage Mesopotamia.
199 Severus surprises the Parthians and takes Seleucia, Coche,
and Ctesiphon.
201 Siege of Atra by Severus, who is compelled to raise it.
209 Vologases succeeded by his son, =Vologases V=.
213 His brother, =Artabanus (IV)=, appears as a claimant of the
throne. Civil war.
215 Caracalla demands the surrender of Tiridates, brother of
Vologases IV, who has taken refuge with Vologases V. The latter
refuses to give him up. Caracalla declares war, and the exile
is delivered up. Artabanus gains the upper hand and holds
Ctesiphon. Caracalla declares war on Artabanus on the latter’s
refusal to give his daughter to the Roman emperor.
216 The Romans penetrate to Arbela.
217 On death of Caracalla an immense Parthian force invades
Mesopotamia. Macrinus defeated and purchases peace.
222 Artabanus replaces his brother over the whole of Parthia.
224 Ardashir, the Sassanian king of Persis (or Persia), invades
Parthia, taking several cities.
227 Battle of Hormizdjan. Victory of Ardashir and death of
Artabanus.
228 Ardashir completes his conquest. End of the Parthian empire.