court then yourself, lord warden of the marches, whose very name
reminds us all of the blending of the races of Christ and of Islam,
and whose deeds of valor and chivalry of soul are sung by the poets
of Europe and of Asia. It was most fitting that an agreement between
our two powers should be intrusted to one who embodies in his own
person and in his career of service the qualities which both people
so deeply respect. The illustrious lord general of your Basileus is
as well known to Islam as to Rome itself. We cannot wonder and
complain if his people name him 'the Victorious,' for the most
redoubted soldiers of the Prophet have too often felt the weight of
his sword. Islam has never met any adversary whom it has reason to
hold in such respect. We well know the fiery zeal which burns within
his soul, and we can see in the despatch that has been read how
little to his taste is the proposal of amity that he has been ordered
to submit. But this shall not prevent our willingness to treat and
to agree to equitable terms. As Commander of the Faithful, we have
our own duties of peaceful government as well as the defence of our
realm in war. Our court has statesmen as well as warriors. Peace
hath its victories, as well as war. The proposals of your Basileus,
with whom we have as yet many bonds of good understanding, shall be
referred to our counsellors and not to our soldiers. Nicephorus,
'the Victorious,' has subdued in Crete a tribe who were but rebels to
our dynasty, outcasts and fugitives from our rule in Spain. Now that
he speaks words of peace, however little they seem natural to his
soldier's mouth, they shall be considered and answered by our men of
peace. When the time comes he may find in the sons of Arabia and
followers of the Prophet a zeal as fiery as that with which he
himself is consumed. When that day shall dawn, tell your illustrious
general that it is the daily prayer of the Commander of the Faithful
that God, the Just, the Almighty, may give the crown of glory to the
right."
The aged caliph was visibly affected by the effort he had made to
receive the mission; he sank back on his divan exhausted, and was
only prevented from fainting by the care of his son, Hakim, and the
staff around him. The durbar was hastily closed, and officers of the
mission withdrew with appropriate salaams and compliments. They were
now placed in the hands of the vizier's secretaries and the
librarian, Ibn Khaldun, who were directed to escort them to view the
chief sights of the capital. After exploring all the courts and
halls of the caliph's palace, they were taken to the famous mosque,
which still remains in part in the singular cathedral of Cordova.
The vast and stately Court of Oranges had recently been completed,
and was adorned with a thousand orange-trees in bloom, at which the
Byzantines gazed in delight and wonder. This splendid fruit was not
yet acclimatized in Europe, and had been introduced but recently into
Andalusia from Syria by the care of Abd-er-Rahman himself. Mixed
with roses from Damascus, the groves of oranges in the quadrangular
court, shaded with a rich cloister, seemed to the Romans a vision of
paradise. Close by rose the exquisite Campanile, which resembled the
lower part of that which we know as the Giralda at Seville, though it
was in a style of art more solid and severe. And the centre of the
Court of Oranges was occupied with the beautiful fountain of African
marbles, porcelain, and enamel, which the caliph had only finished
within a few years.
But all the surprise of the Romans was doubled as they entered the
great mosque itself, which was still being further enlarged and
adorned. They found themselves in a forest of marble columns bearing
arches in fantastic forms, with exquisite patterns traced in relief
and bright with enamel and gold. Again the deacon had recourse to
his note-book, and was anxious to learn their number and origin.
"There are said to be twelve hundred columns, arranged in eleven
aisles; and they have been collected from temples and palaces of the
ancients in Spain and Africa, or they have been carved by our
artificers from antique models," said the librarian, "but his
Highness, the Lord Hakim, is even now enlarging the aisles and
carrying them on to double their extent."
Thence the visitors were led into the chapel, adorned with mosaics
obtained from Byzantium direct, through the easy munificence of
Romanus himself. In the Ceca they were shown the pavement of pure
silver, and the exquisite marbles and alabaster with which the shrine
was adorned. By special grace of Prince Hakim they were even
permitted to look on the sacred copy of the Alcoran which had been
used by the Caliph Osman, the successor of the Prophet, and stained
with his blood when he fell. From the roof hung two hundred
chandeliers, containing ten thousand lamps. And as they passed out
into the court-yard from this forest of marble and gold, a vehement
debate arose between Michael, the protocolist, and the poetic deacon,
whether the solemn vaults of the Holy Wisdom of Justinian could hold
their own against the myriad shafts and arabesques of the mosque of
the Caliph Abd-er-Rahman.
The younger members of the mission were then conducted through a
country crowded with villas, gardens, and orchards, for an hour's
ride to the vast palace of Az-zahra, or "The Beautiful," built by the
great caliph for his favorite wife. It was constructed entirely of
marble of various hues--white, onyx, rose-colored, and green. The
courts and fountains were adorned with gold and enamels, and gardens
and shady cloisters stretched around. In the palace were four
thousand three hundred columns of marble. Into the great hall of the
caliphate were eight lofty doors, overlaid with plates of gold and
studded with precious stones. And the walls were adorned with carved
traceries in alternate squares of ebony and ivory. The separate
apartments numbered more than a thousand, and the service of the
palace was conducted by thirteen thousand male and six thousand
female domestics, while the guard and watch were kept by Slavonians
and Northern Janissaries, who were said to number no less than three
thousand seven hundred and fifty in all.
In the mean time the deacon, Michael, the protocolist, and other
secretaries were conducted by the librarian, Ibn Khaldun, to the
great library of the caliph, which at that time was reckoned as the
largest and most important collection in the civilized world, and was
said to contain four hundred thousand manuscripts. All the works
which had been collected by Haroun-al-Rashid and the caliphs of
Bagdad, by the Ommeyads of Damascus, as well as by the dynasty of
Spain, were here gathered together. Lexicons, biographies, grammars,
histories, geographies, rhetoric, works on chemistry, geometry,
medicine, astronomy, and poetry--all were in turn exhibited and
discussed.
But what impressed the diplomatists most strikingly was the great
library of Greek works, from Aristotle and Plato downward,
Theophrastus, Galen, Hippocrates, and Appollonius, and complete
collections of the astronomical and mathematical works of Archimedes,
Hipparchus, Eudoxus, Diophantus, and Ptolemy. These Greek
philosophers and physicists were far more highly valued and better
understood by the savants of Islam than by the Christians of the
empire. The deacon and his diplomatists were not so much astonished
to see in the book-cases of Cordova the entire works of Aristotle,
Theophrastus, Hipparchus, Galen, and Heron, as a modern scholar would
be, for these writers were still to be found for the most part in the
libraries of the empire. But they saw with pride and no small
surprise that the entire extant writings of the philosophers and
physicists of Greece were the ordinary equipment of a Saracen library.
The members of the mission were occupied for days in surveying the
capital of the great caliph--its resources, architectural,
mechanical, commercial, artistic, and literary. They were shown over
the great aqueduct which Abd-er-Rahman III. had recently erected to
convey to the city pure spring water from the mountains of the Sierra
Morena. His predecessors had already supplied Cordova with abundant
aqueducts, fountains, and baths, so that it almost vied with ancient
Rome in the age of the Antonines, and was quite as well supplied as
Byzantium in the age of Romanus. The new aqueduct had only been
completed twenty years before. It rose on three tiers of arches,
similar to those of the Aqua Claudia, which spans the Campagna at
Rome, and it discharged a constant river of pure water into a vast
central reservoir, which supplied public fountains and private
palaces. Every mansion of any importance had its garden, fountain,
and flowing rivulet. The hydraulic system was, indeed, more complete
than what Rome had known in the age of the Cæsars, for the Arabs of
Spain were the first engineers of that age. The poet and the young
guardsman were particularly delighted with the gardens of Rusafa,
which had been stocked with rare plants and flowers from all parts of
the world, especially from the gardens of Syria, Persia, India, and
Egypt. The orange, the lemon, citron, the almond, and the palm,
laurel, and myrtle, were cultivated in sheltered spots and were a
never-failing delight to the northern visitors. But that which most
fascinated the Byzantines were the wild animals confined in houses
connected with the gardens, especially the various kinds of gazelles
of the East, the golden-pheasants, the ostrich, the white ibis, the
cheetahs, and the lions. The young Varangian was quite excited out
of his natural placidity by a hunt of deer by the cheetah, as now
used in India, while the poet was equally excited by a kind of race
between antelopes which were allowed a free run in an enclosed course.
In the midst of the festivities and the hospitalities a sudden event
plunged the whole city in gloom. The aged caliph, exhausted by the
effort he had made to receive with dignity the envoys of Nicephorus,
had been seized with a succession of fainting fits, in the course of
which he had died. His death had been concealed even from the
foreign mission until the succession of his son, Hakim II., had been
duly secured. And this was carried out with great energy and
despatch by the Grand Vizier Ahmed and the commander-in-chief, the
Emir Ghalib. In due time the new caliph, having been recognized by
the heads of the army, the mosques, and the administration, received
in audience Digenes and his officers and suite. After official
compliments and addresses, Hakim admitted Digenes to a private
audience. With all the zeal of his father for good government,
peace, prosperity, and order, the new Commander of the Faithful had
an even greater devotion to art, science, and literature, and was
conscious that he had a harder task and inferior powers. In reply to
the felicitations of the lord warden on the glory of the late
caliph's rule, and on the noble empire to which he had now succeeded,
Hakim replied, with a sigh:
"Yes, my royal father ruled over his realm for fifty years; and those
who look at the power, wealth, renown, and splendor of his caliphate
may be disposed to call him one of the happiest of men, with a double
measure of the goodness of Allah. But I, who have lived in his home
and for long years shared his duties, know too well that he was the
most sombre, if not one of the most miserable of men. His favorite
wife, for whom the palace of Az-zahra was built and after whom it was
named, died before it was completed, and since the death of my elder
brother, our father was never seen to smile."
"But was not your brother killed in the hour of victory?" said
Digenes.
"Not my eldest brother, Abdallah. He had been so infatuated as to
put himself at the head of a revolt, and suffered himself to be
proclaimed as caliph by rebels. When defeated and captured, our
father in solemn council decided that he must die the death of a
traitor to Islam. Our sacred faith is being put in peril by treason
in the families of the descendants of the Prophet. It was held to be
fatal to our empire of the West if treason were suffered to prosper
in the house of the Ommeyads of Andalusia. I myself, my mother and
my sisters, threw ourselves on our knees in tears at my father's feet
and implored his mercy for my brother, who had been formally named as
his successor. It was not to be. He said, 'I am caliph first, and
father afterwards. As father I shall weep tears of blood for my son
all my life, but as caliph I must purge this fair land of a traitor!'
So our brother was bowstrung in the court of the palace, and my
father never had a happy day after. Here, see," said Hakim, with
tears filling his eyes, "this is a paper attached to my father's
testament. It runs thus, and is inscribed in his own scholarly hand:
'Fifty years have I been on this throne. Riches, honors, pleasures
have been poured on me, and I have drained them all to the dregs.
The sovereigns who are my rivals respect me or fear me--both envy me;
for all that men desire has been showered on me by Allah, the
Bountiful, the All-merciful. But in all these years of apparent
felicity, I can only count fourteen days wherein I have been truly
happy. My son, meditate on this, and judge at their true value human
grandeur, this world, and man's life.'"
"Our priests talk thus," said Digenes, "but I never heard of an
emperor who spoke such words."
"Remember," said Hakim, "that a caliph who descends from the Prophet
and occupies his place, is at once a Prophet of Allah and sovereign
lord--priest, king, and commander!"
The whole mission were present at the funeral of the great caliph,
which was conducted with extraordinary magnificence. Forty thousand
troopers in full array on black barbs guarded the procession from the
palace to the royal burial-place in the hills outside the walls. The
whole population of the city, the suburbs, and the country round came
to honor their deceased chief. Banners and trophies of war were
displayed in profusion. The funeral procession itself was on foot.
First came long files of imaums, sheiks, and learned elders, then a
crowd of dervishes, who chanted dirges of plaintive sound, slaves,
attendants, and ministers, and, at last, Hakim, the new caliph, on
foot and alone before the bier. The coffin of Abd-er-Rahman was
covered with a carpet that had once been a relic in the mihrab of
Mecca: it was borne on a platform raised on the shoulders of twelve
gigantic guards in the uniform of the palace troops. The envoys of
Rome gazed on a sight which, accustomed as they were to the vast
extent of Constantinople, and to the vehemence of a Byzantine
populace, astonished them both by the enormous numbers of the people
and by their frenzied expressions of grief. The deacon roundly
insisted that more than one million of men and women had witnessed or
taken part in the funeral ceremony. As the bier of the great caliph
approached the crowd, and even long after it had passed, cries of
grief and despair, of Asiatic pungency, and wild notes of agony
re-echoed along the streets and across the squares of the city.
"We have seen the passing of a great man--of an emperor truly beloved
by his people," said Michael, the protocolist, in a low voice, to the
deacon. "What would the funeral of our own beloved lord and master
be like, think ye, my friend? Ay, and what would be the funeral of
his successor, if successor he is to have? Is it certain that Christ
and His Blessed Mother have ordained that the Cross shall prevail
over the Crescent forever?"
XIV
The Conquest of Aleppo
Some months have passed, and the scene changes to Asia. Nicephorus
Phocas was now in supreme command of an immense host echelonned along
the Cilician frontier, having its headquarters at Cæsaria in
Cappadocia. He bluntly refused the offer of the politic prefect to
occupy the prefecture within the city, and he had his quarters placed
in the centre of the great camp, which lay in the plain beyond.
Cæsaria was at that epoch a great and splendid city of the empire,
well situated on a branch of the noble river Halys, and within sight
of the snowy peak of Mount Argæus, the highest point of the Taurus
range. But Nicephorus disdained both for himself and his army the
comforts of a luxurious city, to which he had forbidden all access by
the troops. As a wealthy and populous centre of trade, as the point
of junction for all the great highways, north, west, and south,
Cæsaria formed an admirable base for a great expedition. The general
himself had for his own use a small and simple camp-tent, rudely
equipped, and in no respect superior to the rest of the service
baggage. Near it stood a larger tent, in which he held councils and
conferred with his staff and officers of rank.
His return to Byzantium after the conquest of Crete, and his ovation
in the Hippodrome, where he presented to the Basileus the aged
kouropas of Crete and his son, Anernas, as prisoners of war, had
called out such an explosion of popular enthusiasm that the inner
cabinet of the Sacred Palace was alarmed, and Bringas, the
parakeimomenos, was filled with jealousy and rage. Unable to stem
the torrent of public favor towards the victorious commander, Bringas
persuaded the emperor to order Nicephorus to the Asian frontier. The
wily eunuch took care to load with honors and titles the enemy whom
he was sending as far as possible from the capital. Romanus heaped
on his victorious general magnificent presents, overwhelmed him with
gracious words, and gave him a rank equivalent to "generalissimo of
the army-corps of the east." The interviews between the soldier and
the sovereign had been of a sort little known in the Sacred Palace.
Debauchery, excitement, and exhausting fatigues had wasted the
splendid frame of Romanus. Pale, with wild eyes in their sunken
sockets, and limbs trembling in all their joints, the young Basileus
received his great officer with all the grace and good-nature for
which he was conspicuous. He lavished on him every honor and every
promise that he could imagine as likely to tempt the veteran; and,
without sharing the jealousy of the court eunuch and without
understanding his device, Romanus pressed on Nicephorus the command
of the eastern armies.
"My Lord Basileus," said the soldier, "I have done my duty to my God,
and to my sovereign, and by the blessing of Christ and His Mother in
heaven, I gave the best years of my life to this empire of Rome. I
am now about to retire to take thought of my own soul, to atone for
the life of battle, of blood, and ruin in which it has been passed.
I am resolved to take vows of monkhood, and to end the bitter dregs
of life that are left to me in a hermitage on Mount Athos. My lord,
when you next summon me, you will learn that I am no longer your
officer, but the solitary servant of Christ and of her who bore Him."
Neither entreaties nor promises nor commands could move the stubborn
soul of the soldier. He left the presence with the barest observance
of the prescribed ceremonies, saying: "Do not forget, mighty king of
Rome, that there is in heaven above us a King over all kings, and on
earth, beside each of us, there is the angel of death, who but waits
the signal from on high to strike."
As Nicephorus stalked away down the corridor amid lines of excubitors
and cubiculars, who could hardly decide whether to honor the great
hero of the day, or to slight the enemy of the all-powerful eunuch, a
chamberlain from the empress brought him a summons to attend her in
private audience. With a muttered excuse Nicephorus passed on with
hastened strides. But at a turn of the corridor Theophano herself,
radiant with smiles and in all the charm of her superb grace,
confronted the veteran in his very path, and beckoned him into her
closet alone.
"I overheard your terrible resolve," she said, in a voice thrilling
with entreaty as well as indignation, "but I will not believe that
one who is the only hope and bulwark of our country can deliver it
over to the sons of Hagar and the followers of the False Prophet.
Will you rest in peace in your cell, and whine out your Kyrie,
eleison, when you see the accursed Chamdas defile the altars of God
and chant prayers to Allah under the dome of the Holy Wisdom? Did
the Mother of God vouchsafe you power to gain such glorious victories
over the camel-driver and his race that you thus abandon her people
and her shrines to the abomination of desolation?" And she looked
down on him, majestic and inspired, like the Cumæan Sibyl in
Raphael's fresco at Rome.
"There are swords as good as mine," muttered the veteran, visibly
abashed and humbled, "and younger men than I, who have not my sins to
wash out."
"Nicephorus, victor, hero," she cried with rapture, seizing his
brawny hand in both of hers, "the army will follow none but you!
You, you are the hero of all Rome and of all its tributary races.
The rest are boys or martinets. Save us, protect us, comfort us, or
we poor women may yet be swept into the harems of the infamous
libertines of Islam!"
Nicephorus was speechless; a shudder shook his huge breast, but he
could find no words.
"Have you no eyes?" she whispered, with that silver tone of
fascination that was her peculiar secret and gift; "have you not seen
that wine, lechery, and furious sports have marked that fribble you
have just left to a premature doom? He will never see another
summer. And when I am no longer Augusta, who will protect me and my
babes? To whom could I look but to the hero whom all Roman men
delight to follow, whom all Roman women trust and honor--trust and
love?" she whispered, looking into his eyes and drawing herself
slowly towards him till she gathered him in her arms and sobbed upon
his shoulder. "Go to the Asian frontier, crush the Hagarene! You
shall have from the palace absolute power and authority, military and
civil. You shall be the true Basileus in the field, before you
return to be the Basileus in the palace!" Then she rushed away in
tears, and left the chieftain quite dazed, drunk with perplexity, and
mad with passion.
So Nicephorus took up the command on the eastern frontier, having
received from the Basileus and his ministers plenary authority to
raise and equip an army, with power over all the forces and all the
reserves of the empire, civil and military, in any theme of Asia.
For some months he worked incessantly at his task, and mustered the
most powerful army known to his age.
Nicephorus was now seated in the larger tent, to which he had
summoned in council his chief officers. First came Basil Digenes,
the warden of the marches, again chief of the general's staff.
Beside him was Bardas Skleros, commander of the Armenian guard, Leon
Balantes, Bourtzes, and other generals, and last entered the
illustrious John Tzimisces, the rival and ultimate successor of
Nicephorus. An Armenian noble of the highest rank--his real nickname
was Tchemeschguig, or the Little, a sound which no Greek throat could
utter--John was the hero of a hundred desperate combats. His courage
was even more reckless and romantic than that of Nicephorus, and, as
a mere cavalry leader, he was almost the equal of the great chief.
Short of stature, he had prodigious strength, with the activity and
suppleness of an acrobat. Matchless in all military exercises, and
unrivalled in the lists, his frankness, generosity, and affable
temper made him the idol of men, while his fiery beauty, grace, and
high spirits made him the idol of women. In the matter of
temperance, chastity, and piety, John was the very opposite of
Nicephorus.
Nicephorus opened the council thus:
"My comrades and commanders of the eastern corps, I have summoned you
to hear the plan of campaign, and to take counsel as to the task
before each contingent of our host. The latest field state shows
that we have a force of all arms of two hundred and thirteen thousand
men, of whom forty-two thousand are cavalry, with one hundred and
twelve thousand horses, mules, asses, and camels; and these are in
cantonments along the range of Taurus over against Cilicia, extending
nearly one hundred Roman miles. The details of the numbers and their
exact position of encampment will remain for the present known only
to myself and my secretaries. When the hour of advance has come, due
orders will be issued to the commands which are to invade the enemy
and to those which will remain in reserve."
"And may we know the day and the line of the advance, my lord
general?" broke in the impetuous John Tzimisces.
"The day and the place of invasion, my noble friend," said
Nicephorus, with a dry smile, "must remain known to God above--and to
me. In a campaign such as this we must rely on overwhelming numbers
and lightning rapidity of execution to secure our end. The divided
state of the Hagarenes will prevent them from meeting us in great
pitched battles. But it is a vast territory in which they are
settled, and the most difficult to invade in all God's earth. It
bristles with forts on inaccessible rocks, with mountain defiles and
dense woods, and is defended by a girdle of fortified towns. We have
to pour down over these passes on all sides at once, like the snows
in spring when they rush down the gorges of Taurus; we must overwhelm
these forts and towns like a sudden flood, and all Cilicia will be
again within the fold of Rome--and of Christ!"
"And when we have won back Cilicia we shall have gained but a corner
of the empire of Chamdas, whose realm reaches to the Euphrates,"
broke in Bourtzes, somewhat surlily.