Chapter LII: More Conquests By The Arabs.—Part IV

Under the reign of Almamon at Bagdad, of Michael the Stammerer at
Constantinople, the islands of Crete 79 and Sicily were subdued
by the Arabs. The former of these conquests is disdained by their
own writers, who were ignorant of the fame of Jupiter and Minos,
but it has not been overlooked by the Byzantine historians, who
now begin to cast a clearer light on the affairs of their own
times. 80 A band of Andalusian volunteers, discontented with the
climate or government of Spain, explored the adventures of the
sea; but as they sailed in no more than ten or twenty galleys,
their warfare must be branded with the name of piracy. As the
subjects and sectaries of the white party, they might lawfully
invade the dominions of the black caliphs. A rebellious faction
introduced them into Alexandria; 81 they cut in pieces both
friends and foes, pillaged the churches and the moschs, sold
above six thousand Christian captives, and maintained their
station in the capital of Egypt, till they were oppressed by the
forces and the presence of Almamon himself. From the mouth of the
Nile to the Hellespont, the islands and sea-coasts both of the
Greeks and Moslems were exposed to their depredations; they saw,
they envied, they tasted the fertility of Crete, and soon
returned with forty galleys to a more serious attack. The
Andalusians wandered over the land fearless and unmolested; but
when they descended with their plunder to the sea-shore, their
vessels were in flames, and their chief, Abu Caab, confessed
himself the author of the mischief. Their clamors accused his
madness or treachery. “Of what do you complain?” replied the
crafty emir. “I have brought you to a land flowing with milk and
honey. Here is your true country; repose from your toils, and
forget the barren place of your nativity.” “And our wives and
children?” “Your beauteous captives will supply the place of your
wives, and in their embraces you will soon become the fathers of
a new progeny.” The first habitation was their camp, with a ditch
and rampart, in the Bay of Suda; but an apostate monk led them to
a more desirable position in the eastern parts; and the name of
Candax, their fortress and colony, has been extended to the whole
island, under the corrupt and modern appellation of Candia. The
hundred cities of the age of Minos were diminished to thirty; and
of these, only one, most probably Cydonia, had courage to retain
the substance of freedom and the profession of Christianity. The
Saracens of Crete soon repaired the loss of their navy; and the
timbers of Mount Ida were launched into the main. During a
hostile period of one hundred and thirty-eight years, the princes
of Constantinople attacked these licentious corsairs with
fruitless curses and ineffectual arms.

79 (return) [ The authors from whom I have learned the most of
the ancient and modern state of Crete, are Belon, (Observations,
&c., c. 3-20, Paris, 1555,) Tournefort, (Voyage du Levant, tom.
i. lettre ii. et iii.,) and Meursius, (Creta, in his works, tom.
iii. p. 343-544.) Although Crete is styled by Homer, by
Dionysius, I cannot conceive that mountainous island to surpass,
or even to equal, in fertility the greater part of Spain.]

80 (return) [ The most authentic and circumstantial intelligence
is obtained from the four books of the Continuation of
Theophanes, compiled by the pen or the command of Constantine
Porphyrogenitus, with the Life of his father Basil, the
Macedonian, (Scriptores post Theophanem, p. 1-162, a Francisc.
Combefis, Paris, 1685.) The loss of Crete and Sicily is related,
l. ii. p. 46-52. To these we may add the secondary evidence of
Joseph Genesius, (l. ii. p. 21, Venet. 1733,) George Cedrenus,
(Compend. p. 506-508,) and John Scylitzes Curopalata, (apud
Baron. Annal. Eccles. A.D. 827, No. 24, &c.) But the modern
Greeks are such notorious plagiaries, that I should only quote a
plurality of names.]

81 (return) [ Renaudot (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 251-256,
268-270) had described the ravages of the Andalusian Arabs in
Egypt, but has forgot to connect them with the conquest of
Crete.]

The loss of Sicily 82 was occasioned by an act of superstitious
rigor. An amorous youth, who had stolen a nun from her cloister,
was sentenced by the emperor to the amputation of his tongue.
Euphemius appealed to the reason and policy of the Saracens of
Africa; and soon returned with the Imperial purple, a fleet of
one hundred ships, and an army of seven hundred horse and ten
thousand foot. They landed at Mazara near the ruins of the
ancient Selinus; but after some partial victories, Syracuse 83
was delivered by the Greeks, the apostate was slain before her
walls, and his African friends were reduced to the necessity of
feeding on the flesh of their own horses. In their turn they were
relieved by a powerful reenforcement of their brethren of
Andalusia; the largest and western part of the island was
gradually reduced, and the commodious harbor of Palermo was
chosen for the seat of the naval and military power of the
Saracens. Syracuse preserved about fifty years the faith which
she had sworn to Christ and to Caesar. In the last and fatal
siege, her citizens displayed some remnant of the spirit which
had formerly resisted the powers of Athens and Carthage. They
stood above twenty days against the battering-rams and
catapultoe, the mines and tortoises of the besiegers; and the
place might have been relieved, if the mariners of the Imperial
fleet had not been detained at Constantinople in building a
church to the Virgin Mary. The deacon Theodosius, with the bishop
and clergy, was dragged in chains from the altar to Palermo, cast
into a subterraneous dungeon, and exposed to the hourly peril of
death or apostasy. His pathetic, and not inelegant, complaint may
be read as the epitaph of his country. 84 From the Roman conquest
to this final calamity, Syracuse, now dwindled to the primitive
Isle of Ortygea, had insensibly declined. Yet the relics were
still precious; the plate of the cathedral weighed five thousand
pounds of silver; the entire spoil was computed at one million of
pieces of gold, (about four hundred thousand pounds sterling,)
and the captives must outnumber the seventeen thousand
Christians, who were transported from the sack of Tauromenium
into African servitude. In Sicily, the religion and language of
the Greeks were eradicated; and such was the docility of the
rising generation, that fifteen thousand boys were circumcised
and clothed on the same day with the son of the Fatimite caliph.
The Arabian squadrons issued from the harbors of Palermo,
Biserta, and Tunis; a hundred and fifty towns of Calabria and
Campania were attacked and pillaged; nor could the suburbs of
Rome be defended by the name of the Caesars and apostles. Had the
Mahometans been united, Italy must have fallen an easy and
glorious accession to the empire of the prophet. But the caliphs
of Bagdad had lost their authority in the West; the Aglabites and
Fatimites usurped the provinces of Africa, their emirs of Sicily
aspired to independence; and the design of conquest and dominion
was degraded to a repetition of predatory inroads. 85

82 (return) [ Theophanes, l. ii. p. 51. This history of the loss
of Sicily is no longer extant. Muratori (Annali d’ Italia, tom.
vii. p. 719, 721, &c.) has added some circumstances from the
Italian chronicles.]

83 (return) [ The splendid and interesting tragedy of Tancrede
would adapt itself much better to this epoch, than to the date
(A.D. 1005) which Voltaire himself has chosen. But I must gently
reproach the poet for infusing into the Greek subjects the spirit
of modern knights and ancient republicans.]

84 (return) [ The narrative or lamentation of Theodosius is
transcribed and illustrated by Pagi, (Critica, tom. iii. p. 719,
&c.) Constantine Porphyrogenitus (in Vit. Basil, c. 69, 70, p.
190-192) mentions the loss of Syracuse and the triumph of the
demons.]

85 (return) [ The extracts from the Arabic histories of Sicily
are given in Abulfeda, (Annal’ Moslem. p. 271-273,) and in the
first volume of Muratori’s Scriptores Rerum Italicarum. M. de
Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 363, 364) has added some
important facts.]

In the sufferings of prostrate Italy, the name of Rome awakens a
solemn 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. 86 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 87
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.

86 (return) [ One of the most eminent Romans (Gratianus, magister
militum et Romani palatii superista) was accused of declaring,
Quia Franci nihil nobis boni faciunt, neque adjutorium praebent,
sed magis quae nostra sunt violenter tollunt. Quare non advocamus
Graecos, et cum eis foedus pacis componentes, Francorum regem et
gentem de nostro regno et dominatione expellimus? Anastasius in
Leone IV. p. 199.]

87 (return) [ Voltaire (Hist. Generale, tom. ii. c. 38, p. 124)
appears to be remarkably struck with the character of Pope Leo
IV. I have borrowed his general expression, but the sight of the
forum has furnished me with a more distinct and lively image.]

But the storm, which had been delayed, soon burst upon them with
redoubled violence. The Aglabite, 88 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 Caesarius, the son of the Neapolitan duke, a noble and
valiant youth, who had already vanquished the fleets of the
Saracens. With his principal companions, Caesarius 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 Centumcellae to his new foundation of
Leopolis, twelve miles from the sea-shore. 89 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. 90

88 (return) [ De Guignes, Hist. Generale des Huns, tom. i. p.
363, 364. Cardonne, Hist. de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne, sous la
Domination des Arabs, tom. ii. p. 24, 25. I observe, and cannot
reconcile, the difference of these writers in the succession of
the Aglabites.]

89 (return) [ Beretti (Chorographia Italiae Medii Evi, p. 106,
108) has illustrated Centumcellae, Leopolis, Civitas Leonina, and
the other places of the Roman duchy.]

90 (return) [ The Arabs and the Greeks are alike silent
concerning the invasion of Rome by the Africans. The Latin
chronicles do not afford much instruction, (see the Annals of
Baronius and Pagi.) Our authentic and contemporary guide for the
popes of the ixth century is Anastasius, librarian of the Roman
church. His Life of Leo IV, contains twenty-four pages, (p.
175-199, edit. Paris;) and if a great part consist of
superstitious trifles, we must blame or command his hero, who was
much oftener in a church than in a camp.]

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,
91 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 92 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 Dorylaeum, 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 93 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: 94 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. 95 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? 96

91 (return) [ The same number was applied to the following
circumstance in the life of Motassem: he was the eight of the
Abbassides; he reigned eight years, eight months, and eight days;
left eight sons, eight daughters, eight thousand slaves, eight
millions of gold.]

92 (return) [ Amorium is seldom mentioned by the old geographers,
and to tally forgotten in the Roman Itineraries. After the vith
century, it became an episcopal see, and at length the metropolis
of the new Galatia, (Carol. Scto. Paulo, Geograph. Sacra, p.
234.) The city rose again from its ruins, if we should read
Ammeria, not Anguria, in the text of the Nubian geographer. (p.
236.)]

93 (return) [ In the East he was styled, (Continuator Theophan.
l. iii. p. 84;) but such was the ignorance of the West, that his
ambassadors, in public discourse, might boldly narrate, de
victoriis, quas adversus exteras bellando gentes coelitus fuerat
assecutus, (Annalist. Bertinian. apud Pagi, tom. iii. p. 720.)]

94 (return) [ Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 167, 168) relates one of
these singular transactions on the bridge of the River Lamus in
Cilicia, the limit of the two empires, and one day’s journey
westward of Tarsus, (D’Anville, Geographie Ancienne, tom. ii. p.
91.) Four thousand four hundred and sixty Moslems, eight hundred
women and children, one hundred confederates, were exchanged for
an equal number of Greeks. They passed each other in the middle
of the bridge, and when they reached their respective friends,
they shouted Allah Acbar, and Kyrie Eleison. Many of the
prisoners of Amorium were probably among them, but in the same
year, (A. H. 231,) the most illustrious of them, the forty two
martyrs, were beheaded by the caliph’s order.]

95 (return) [ Constantin. Porphyrogenitus, in Vit. Basil. c. 61,
p. 186. These Saracens were indeed treated with peculiar severity
as pirates and renegadoes.]

96 (return) [ For Theophilus, Motassem, and the Amorian war, see
the Continuator of Theophanes, (l. iii. p. 77-84,) Genesius (l.
iii. p. 24-34.) Cedrenus, (p. 528-532,) Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen,
p. 180,) Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 165, 166,) Abulfeda, (Annal.
Moslem. p. 191,) D’Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orientale, p. 639, 640.)]

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
97 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. 98 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. 99 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 praetorians of Rome. 100

97 (return) [ M. de Guignes, who sometimes leaps, and sometimes
stumbles, in the gulf between Chinese and Mahometan story, thinks
he can see, that these Turks are the Hoei-ke, alias the Kao-tche,
or high-wagons; that they were divided into fifteen hordes, from
China and Siberia to the dominions of the caliphs and Samanides,
&c., (Hist. des Huns, tom. iii. p. 1-33, 124-131.)]

98 (return) [ He changed the old name of Sumera, or Samara, into
the fanciful title of Sermen-rai, that which gives pleasure at
first sight, (D’Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 808.
D’Anville, l’Euphrate et le Tigre p. 97, 98.)]

99 (return) [ Take a specimen, the death of the caliph Motaz:
Correptum pedibus pertrahunt, et sudibus probe permulcant, et
spoliatum laceris vestibus in sole collocant, prae cujus acerrimo
aestu pedes alternos attollebat et demittebat. Adstantium aliquis
misero colaphos continuo ingerebat, quos ille objectis manibus
avertere studebat..... Quo facto traditus tortori fuit, totoque
triduo cibo potuque prohibitus..... Suffocatus, &c. (Abulfeda, p.
206.) Of the caliph Mohtadi, he says, services ipsi perpetuis
ictibus contundebant, testiculosque pedibus conculcabant, (p.
208.)]

100 (return) [ See under the reigns of Motassem, Motawakkel,
Montasser, Mostain, Motaz, Mohtadi, and Motamed, in the
Bibliotheque of D’Herbelot, and the now familiar Annals of
Elmacin, Abulpharagius, and Abulfeda.]

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. 101

101 (return) [ For the sect of the Carmathians, consult Elmacin,
(Hist. Sara cen, p. 219, 224, 229, 231, 238, 241, 243,)
Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 179-182,) Abulfeda, (Annal. Moslem. p.
218, 219, &c., 245, 265, 274.) and D’Herbelot, (Bibliotheque
Orientale, p. 256-258, 635.) I find some inconsistencies of
theology and chronology, which it would not be easy nor of much
importance to reconcile. * Note: Compare Von Hammer, Geschichte
der Assassinen, p. 44, &c.—M.]