and mournful recollection. A fleet of Saracens from the African coast
presumed to enter the mouth of the Tyber, and to approach a city which
even yet, in her fallen state, was revered as the metropolis of the
Christian world. The gates and ramparts were guarded by a trembling
people; but the tombs and temples of St. Peter and St. Paul were left
exposed in the suburbs of the Vatican and of the Ostian way. Their
invisible sanctity had protected them against the Goths, the Vandals,
and the Lombards; but the Arabs disdained both the gospel and the
legend; and their rapacious spirit was approved and animated by the
precepts of the Koran. The Christian _idols_ were stripped of their
costly offerings; a silver altar was torn away from the shrine of
St. Peter; and if the bodies or the buildings were left entire, their
deliverance must be imputed to the haste, rather than the scruples, of
the Saracens. In their course along the Appian way, they pillaged Fundi
and besieged Gayeta; but they had turned aside from the walls of Rome,
and by their divisions, the Capitol was saved from the yoke of the
prophet of Mecca. The same danger still impended on the heads of the
Roman people; and their domestic force was unequal to the assault of an
African emir. They claimed the protection of their Latin sovereign;
but the Carlovingian standard was overthrown by a detachment of the
Barbarians: they meditated the restoration of the Greek emperors; but
the attempt was treasonable, and the succor remote and precarious. Their
distress appeared to receive some aggravation from the death of their
spiritual and temporal chief; but the pressing emergency superseded the
forms and intrigues of an election; and the unanimous choice of Pope Leo
the Fourth was the safety of the church and city. This pontiff was born
a Roman; the courage of the first ages of the republic glowed in his
breast; and, amidst the ruins of his country, he stood erect, like one
of the firm and lofty columns that rear their heads above the fragments
of the Roman forum. The first days of his reign were consecrated to the
purification and removal of relics, to prayers and processions, and to
all the solemn offices of religion, which served at least to heal the
imagination, and restore the hopes, of the multitude. The public defence
had been long neglected, not from the presumption of peace, but from the
distress and poverty of the times. As far as the scantiness of his means
and the shortness of his leisure would allow, the ancient walls were
repaired by the command of Leo; fifteen towers, in the most accessible
stations, were built or renewed; two of these commanded on either side
of the Tyber; and an iron chain was drawn across the stream to impede
the ascent of a hostile navy. The Romans were assured of a short respite
by the welcome news, that the siege of Gayeta had been raised, and that
a part of the enemy, with their sacrilegious plunder, had perished in
the waves.
But the storm, which had been delayed, soon burst upon them with
redoubled violence. The Aglabite, who reigned in Africa, had inherited
from his father a treasure and an army: a fleet of Arabs and Moors,
after a short refreshment in the harbors of Sardinia, cast anchor
before the mouth of the Tyber, sixteen miles from the city: and their
discipline and numbers appeared to threaten, not a transient inroad, but
a serious design of conquest and dominion. But the vigilance of Leo had
formed an alliance with the vassals of the Greek empire, the free
and maritime states of Gayeta, Naples, and Amalfi; and in the hour of
danger, their galleys appeared in the port of Ostia under the command of
CÊsarius, the son of the Neapolitan duke, a noble and valiant youth, who
had already vanquished the fleets of the Saracens. With his principal
companions, CÊsarius was invited to the Lateran palace, and the
dexterous pontiff affected to inquire their errand, and to accept with
joy and surprise their providential succor. The city bands, in arms,
attended their father to Ostia, where he reviewed and blessed his
generous deliverers. They kissed his feet, received the communion with
martial devotion, and listened to the prayer of Leo, that the same God
who had supported St. Peter and St. Paul on the waves of the sea, would
strengthen the hands of his champions against the adversaries of his
holy name. After a similar prayer, and with equal resolution, the
Moslems advanced to the attack of the Christian galleys, which preserved
their advantageous station along the coast. The victory inclined to the
side of the allies, when it was less gloriously decided in their favor
by a sudden tempest, which confounded the skill and courage of the
stoutest mariners. The Christians were sheltered in a friendly harbor,
while the Africans were scattered and dashed in pieces among the rocks
and islands of a hostile shore. Those who escaped from shipwreck
and hunger neither found, nor deserved, mercy at the hands of their
implacable pursuers. The sword and the gibbet reduced the dangerous
multitude of captives; and the remainder was more usefully employed,
to restore the sacred edifices which they had attempted to subvert.
The pontiff, at the head of the citizens and allies, paid his grateful
devotion at the shrines of the apostles; and, among the spoils of this
naval victory, thirteen Arabian bows of pure and massy silver were
suspended round the altar of the fishermen of Galilee. The reign of Leo
the Fourth was employed in the defence and ornament of the Roman state.
The churches were renewed and embellished: near four thousand pounds
of silver were consecrated to repair the losses of St. Peter; and
his sanctuary was decorated with a plate of gold of the weight of two
hundred and sixteen pounds, embossed with the portraits of the pope
and emperor, and encircled with a string of pearls. Yet this vain
magnificence reflects less glory on the character of Leo than the
paternal care with which he rebuilt the walls of Horta and Ameria;
and transported the wandering inhabitants of CentumcellÊ to his
new foundation of Leopolis, twelve miles from the sea-shore. By his
liberality, a colony of Corsicans, with their wives and children, was
planted in the station of Porto, at the mouth of the Tyber: the falling
city was restored for their use, the fields and vineyards were divided
among the new settlers: their first efforts were assisted by a gift of
horses and cattle; and the hardy exiles, who breathed revenge against
the Saracens, swore to live and die under the standard of St. Peter. The
nations of the West and North who visited the threshold of the apostles
had gradually formed the large and populous suburb of the Vatican, and
their various habitations were distinguished, in the language of the
times, as the schools of the Greeks and Goths, of the Lombards and
Saxons. But this venerable spot was still open to sacrilegious insult:
the design of enclosing it with walls and towers exhausted all that
authority could command, or charity would supply: and the pious labor
of four years was animated in every season, and at every hour, by the
presence of the indefatigable pontiff. The love of fame, a generous
but worldly passion, may be detected in the name of the _Leonine city_,
which he bestowed on the Vatican; yet the pride of the dedication was
tempered with Christian penance and humility. The boundary was trod by
the bishop and his clergy, barefoot, in sackcloth and ashes; the
songs of triumph were modulated to psalms and litanies; the walls were
besprinkled with holy water; and the ceremony was concluded with a
prayer, that, under the guardian care of the apostles and the angelic
host, both the old and the new Rome might ever be preserved pure,
prosperous, and impregnable.
The emperor Theophilus, son of Michael the Stammerer, was one of the
most active and high-spirited princes who reigned at Constantinople
during the middle age. In offensive or defensive war, he marched in
person five times against the Saracens, formidable in his attack,
esteemed by the enemy in his losses and defeats. In the last of these
expeditions he penetrated into Syria, and besieged the obscure town of
Sozopetra; the casual birthplace of the caliph Motassem, whose father
Harun was attended in peace or war by the most favored of his wives and
concubines. The revolt of a Persian impostor employed at that moment the
arms of the Saracen, and he could only intercede in favor of a place for
which he felt and acknowledged some degree of filial affection. These
solicitations determined the emperor to wound his pride in so sensible a
part. Sozopetra was levelled with the ground, the Syrian prisoners were
marked or mutilated with ignominious cruelty, and a thousand female
captives were forced away from the adjacent territory. Among these a
matron of the house of Abbas invoked, in an agony of despair, the name
of Motassem; and the insults of the Greeks engaged the honor of her
kinsman to avenge his indignity, and to answer her appeal. Under the
reign of the two elder brothers, the inheritance of the youngest
had been confined to Anatolia, Armenia, Georgia, and Circassia; this
frontier station had exercised his military talents; and among his
accidental claims to the name of _Octonary_, the most meritorious are
the _eight_ battles which he gained or fought against the enemies of the
Koran. In this personal quarrel, the troops of Irak, Syria, and Egypt,
were recruited from the tribes of Arabia and the Turkish hordes; his
cavalry might be numerous, though we should deduct some myriads from the
hundred and thirty thousand horses of the royal stables; and the expense
of the armament was computed at four millions sterling, or one hundred
thousand pounds of gold. From Tarsus, the place of assembly,
the Saracens advanced in three divisions along the high road of
Constantinople: Motassem himself commanded the centre, and the vanguard
was given to his son Abbas, who, in the trial of the first adventures,
might succeed with the more glory, or fail with the least reproach. In
the revenge of his injury, the caliph prepared to retaliate a similar
affront. The father of Theophilus was a native of Amorium in Phrygia:
the original seat of the Imperial house had been adorned with privileges
and monuments; and, whatever might be the indifference of the people,
Constantinople itself was scarcely of more value in the eyes of the
sovereign and his court. The name of Amorium was inscribed on the
shields of the Saracens; and their three armies were again united
under the walls of the devoted city. It had been proposed by the wisest
counsellors, to evacuate Amorium, to remove the inhabitants, and to
abandon the empty structures to the vain resentment of the Barbarians.
The emperor embraced the more generous resolution of defending, in a
siege and battle, the country of his ancestors. When the armies drew
near, the front of the Mahometan line appeared to a Roman eye more
closely planted with spears and javelins; but the event of the action
was not glorious on either side to the national troops. The Arabs were
broken, but it was by the swords of thirty thousand Persians, who had
obtained service and settlement in the Byzantine empire. The Greeks
were repulsed and vanquished, but it was by the arrows of the Turkish
cavalry; and had not their bowstrings been damped and relaxed by the
evening rain, very few of the Christians could have escaped with the
emperor from the field of battle. They breathed at DorylÊum, at
the distance of three days; and Theophilus, reviewing his trembling
squadrons, forgave the common flight both of the prince and people.
After this discovery of his weakness, he vainly hoped to deprecate
the fate of Amorium: the inexorable caliph rejected with contempt his
prayers and promises; and detained the Roman ambassadors to be the
witnesses of his great revenge. They had nearly been the witnesses of
his shame. The vigorous assaults of fifty-five days were encountered by
a faithful governor, a veteran garrison, and a desperate people; and
the Saracens must have raised the siege, if a domestic traitor had not
pointed to the weakest part of the wall, a place which was decorated
with the statues of a lion and a bull. The vow of Motassem was
accomplished with unrelenting rigor: tired, rather than satiated,
with destruction, he returned to his new palace of Samara, in the
neighborhood of Bagdad, while the _unfortunate_ Theophilus implored the
tardy and doubtful aid of his Western rival the emperor of the Franks.
Yet in the siege of Amorium about seventy thousand Moslems had perished:
their loss had been revenged by the slaughter of thirty thousand
Christians, and the sufferings of an equal number of captives, who
were treated as the most atrocious criminals. Mutual necessity could
sometimes extort the exchange or ransom of prisoners: but in the
national and religious conflict of the two empires, peace was without
confidence, and war without mercy. Quarter was seldom given in the
field; those who escaped the edge of the sword were condemned to
hopeless servitude, or exquisite torture; and a Catholic emperor
relates, with visible satisfaction, the execution of the Saracens of
Crete, who were flayed alive, or plunged into caldrons of boiling oil.
To a point of honor Motassem had sacrificed a flourishing city, two
hundred thousand lives, and the property of millions. The same caliph
descended from his horse, and dirtied his robe, to relieve the distress
of a decrepit old man, who, with his laden ass, had tumbled into a
ditch. On which of these actions did he reflect with the most pleasure,
when he was summoned by the angel of death?
With Motassem, the eighth of the Abbassides, the glory of his family and
nation expired. When the Arabian conquerors had spread themselves over
the East, and were mingled with the servile crowds of Persia, Syria,
and Egypt, they insensibly lost the freeborn and martial virtues of the
desert. The courage of the South is the artificial fruit of discipline
and prejudice; the active power of enthusiasm had decayed, and the
mercenary forces of the caliphs were recruited in those climates of the
North, of which valor is the hardy and spontaneous production. Of the
Turks who dwelt beyond the Oxus and Jaxartes, the robust youths, either
taken in war or purchased in trade, were educated in the exercises of
the field, and the profession of the Mahometan faith. The Turkish guards
stood in arms round the throne of their benefactor, and their chiefs
usurped the dominion of the palace and the provinces. Motassem, the
first author of this dangerous example, introduced into the capital
above fifty thousand Turks: their licentious conduct provoked the public
indignation, and the quarrels of the soldiers and people induced the
caliph to retire from Bagdad, and establish his own residence and the
camp of his Barbarian favorites at Samara on the Tigris, about twelve
leagues above the city of Peace. His son Motawakkel was a jealous and
cruel tyrant: odious to his subjects, he cast himself on the fidelity
of the strangers, and these strangers, ambitious and apprehensive, were
tempted by the rich promise of a revolution. At the instigation, or at
least in the cause of his son, they burst into his apartment at the hour
of supper, and the caliph was cut into seven pieces by the same swords
which he had recently distributed among the guards of his life and
throne. To this throne, yet streaming with a father's blood, Montasser
was triumphantly led; but in a reign of six months, he found only the
pangs of a guilty conscience. If he wept at the sight of an old tapestry
which represented the crime and punishment of the son of Chosroes, if
his days were abridged by grief and remorse, we may allow some pity to
a parricide, who exclaimed, in the bitterness of death, that he had lost
both this world and the world to come. After this act of treason, the
ensigns of royalty, the garment and walking-staff of Mahomet, were given
and torn away by the foreign mercenaries, who in four years created,
deposed, and murdered, three commanders of the faithful. As often as
the Turks were inflamed by fear, or rage, or avarice, these caliphs were
dragged by the feet, exposed naked to the scorching sun, beaten with
iron clubs, and compelled to purchase, by the abdication of their
dignity, a short reprieve of inevitable fate. At length, however, the
fury of the tempest was spent or diverted: the Abbassides returned to
the less turbulent residence of Bagdad; the insolence of the Turks
was curbed with a firmer and more skilful hand, and their numbers were
divided and destroyed in foreign warfare. But the nations of the East
had been taught to trample on the successors of the prophet; and the
blessings of domestic peace were obtained by the relaxation of strength
and discipline. So uniform are the mischiefs of military despotism, that
I seem to repeat the story of the prÊtorians of Rome.
While the flame of enthusiasm was damped by the business, the pleasure,
and the knowledge, of the age, it burnt with concentrated heat in the
breasts of the chosen few, the congenial spirits, who were ambitious of
reigning either in this world or in the next. How carefully soever the
book of prophecy had been sealed by the apostle of Mecca, the wishes,
and (if we may profane the word) even the reason, of fanaticism might
believe that, after the successive missions of Adam, Noah, Abraham,
Moses, Jesus, and Mahomet, the same God, in the fulness of time, would
reveal a still more perfect and permanent law. In the two hundred and
seventy-seventh year of the Hegira, and in the neighborhood of Cufa,
an Arabian preacher, of the name of Carmath, assumed the lofty and
incomprehensible style of the Guide, the Director, the Demonstration,
the Word, the Holy Ghost, the Camel, the Herald of the Messiah, who had
conversed with him in a human shape, and the representative of Mohammed
the son of Ali, of St. John the Baptist, and of the angel Gabriel. In
his mystic volume, the precepts of the Koran were refined to a more
spiritual sense: he relaxed the duties of ablution, fasting, and
pilgrimage; allowed the indiscriminate use of wine and forbidden food;
and nourished the fervor of his disciples by the daily repetition of
fifty prayers. The idleness and ferment of the rustic crowd awakened the
attention of the magistrates of Cufa; a timid persecution assisted
the progress of the new sect; and the name of the prophet became more
revered after his person had been withdrawn from the world. His twelve
apostles dispersed themselves among the Bedoweens, "a race of men," says
Abulfeda, "equally devoid of reason and of religion;" and the success
of their preaching seemed to threaten Arabia with a new revolution. The
Carmathians were ripe for rebellion, since they disclaimed the title
of the house of Abbas, and abhorred the worldly pomp of the caliphs of
Bagdad. They were susceptible of discipline, since they vowed a blind
and absolute submission to their Imam, who was called to the prophetic
office by the voice of God and the people. Instead of the legal tithes,
he claimed the fifth of their substance and spoil; the most flagitious
sins were no more than the type of disobedience; and the brethren were
united and concealed by an oath of secrecy. After a bloody conflict,
they prevailed in the province of Bahrein, along the Persian Gulf:
far and wide, the tribes of the desert were subject to the sceptre,
or rather to the sword of Abu Said and his son Abu Taher; and these
rebellious imams could muster in the field a hundred and seven thousand
fanatics. The mercenaries of the caliph were dismayed at the approach
of an enemy who neither asked nor accepted quarter; and the difference
between, them in fortitude and patience, is expressive of the change
which three centuries of prosperity had effected in the character of the
Arabians. Such troops were discomfited in every action; the cities of
Racca and Baalbec, of Cufa and Bassora, were taken and pillaged; Bagdad
was filled with consternation; and the caliph trembled behind the veils
of his palace. In a daring inroad beyond the Tigris, Abu Taher advanced
to the gates of the capital with no more than five hundred horse. By
the special order of Moctader, the bridges had been broken down, and the
person or head of the rebel was expected every hour by the commander of
the faithful. His lieutenant, from a motive of fear or pity, apprised
Abu Taher of his danger, and recommended a speedy escape. "Your master,"
said the intrepid Carmathian to the messenger, "is at the head of thirty
thousand soldiers: three such men as these are wanting in his host:" at
the same instant, turning to three of his companions, he commanded the
first to plunge a dagger into his breast, the second to leap into the
Tigris, and the third to cast himself headlong down a precipice. They
obeyed without a murmur. "Relate," continued the imam, "what you have
seen: before the evening your general shall be chained among my dogs."
Before the evening, the camp was surprised, and the menace was executed.
The rapine of the Carmathians was sanctified by their aversion to the
worship of Mecca: they robbed a caravan of pilgrims, and twenty thousand
devout Moslems were abandoned on the burning sands to a death of hunger
and thirst. Another year they suffered the pilgrims to proceed without
interruption; but, in the festival of devotion, Abu Taher stormed the
holy city, and trampled on the most venerable relics of the Mahometan
faith. Thirty thousand citizens and strangers were put to the sword;
the sacred precincts were polluted by the burial of three thousand dead
bodies; the well of Zemzem overflowed with blood; the golden spout was
forced from its place; the veil of the Caaba was divided among these
impious sectaries; and the black stone, the first monument of the
nation, was borne away in triumph to their capital. After this deed of
sacrilege and cruelty, they continued to infest the confines of Irak,
Syria, and Egypt: but the vital principle of enthusiasm had withered at
the root. Their scruples, or their avarice, again opened the pilgrimage
of Mecca, and restored the black stone of the Caaba; and it is needless
to inquire into what factions they were broken, or by whose swords they
were finally extirpated. The sect of the Carmathians may be considered
as the second visible cause of the decline and fall of the empire of the
caliphs.
Chapter LII: More Conquests By The Arabs.--Part V.
The third and most obvious cause was the weight and magnitude of the
empire itself. The caliph Almamon might proudly assert, that it
was easier for him to rule the East and the West, than to manage a
chess-board of two feet square: yet I suspect that in both those games
he was guilty of many fatal mistakes; and I perceive, that in the
distant provinces the authority of the first and most powerful of the
Abbassides was already impaired. The analogy of despotism invests the
representative with the full majesty of the prince; the division and
balance of powers might relax the habits of obedience, might encourage
the passive subject to inquire into the origin and administration of
civil government. He who is born in the purple is seldom worthy to
reign; but the elevation of a private man, of a peasant, perhaps, or
a slave, affords a strong presumption of his courage and capacity.
The viceroy of a remote kingdom aspires to secure the property and
inheritance of his precarious trust; the nations must rejoice in the
presence of their sovereign; and the command of armies and treasures
are at once the object and the instrument of his ambition. A change was
scarcely visible as long as the lieutenants of the caliph were content
with their vicarious title; while they solicited for themselves or their
sons a renewal of the Imperial grant, and still maintained on the coin
and in the public prayers the name and prerogative of the commander of
the faithful. But in the long and hereditary exercise of power, they
assumed the pride and attributes of royalty; the alternative of peace
or war, of reward or punishment, depended solely on their will; and the
revenues of their government were reserved for local services or
private magnificence. Instead of a regular supply of men and money, the
successors of the prophet were flattered with the ostentatious gift of
an elephant, or a cast of hawks, a suit of silk hangings, or some pounds
of musk and amber.