FOOTNOTES:

After Musa’s departure from Spain, and the murder of his son Abdelaziz,Ajubwas proclaimed by the Arabian and Moorish troops, governor of the Spanish peninsula; he fixed his residence at Cordova. Under him and his more immediate successors numerous colonies came over to Spain from various parts of the Saracen dominions in Asia and Africa; of these the royal legion of Damascus was planted at Cordova; that of Emesa at Seville; that of Chalcis at Jaen; that of Palestine at Algezire and Medina Sidonia. The Egyptian bands were permitted to share with the original conquerors their establishments of Murcia and Lisbon. The immigrants from Yemen and Persia were located round Toledo, and in the inland country; and ten thousand horsemen of Syria and Irak, the children of the purest and most noble Arabian tribes, settled in the fertile seats of Grenada.[70]

Ajub’ssuccessor in the government of Spain,El Horr Ben Abderrahmanresolved to annex to the dominionsunder his sway the Gallic province of Septimania or Languedoc, of which the eastern part, with Narbonne and Carcassone, was still remaining in the hands of the Visigoths; the western part, Aquitaine and Thoulouse having been severed from the Gothic kingdom in 508, by Clovis. But he was defeated and driven back by the Christians; in consequence of the ill-success of his operations, the Khalif removed him from the command, and namedEl Zamagovernor in his stead. That bold and skilful general speedily succeeded in reducing the whole of the Narbonnese province (720); whence he marched into Aquitaine, and laid siege to Thoulouse. Here he found a more formidable foe to encounter—theFranks, who were ultimately to check the further advance of Islam and its followers into the fairest provinces of Europe. The history of that nation, and of its successful leader against the Saracen invaders, forms the subject of the second part of this volume.

FOOTNOTES:[43]Khalifet Resul Allah, i.e. lieutenant, or representative of the prophet of God.[44]Omar was the first to assume the additional title ofEmir al Mumenin, i.e. prince, or commander, of the faithful.[45]Jabalah had embraced the religion of Islam. On the occasion of the pilgrimage to Mecca, the irascible prince had dealt an Arabian, who had accidentally trod on the skirt of his long robe, a severe blow with his fist, which broke the bridge of the nose of the assaulted man. The Khalif Omar having demanded satisfaction for the aggrieved Moslem, and threatened the proud Gassanide chief with the application of the lex talionis, Jabalah, feeling highly indignant at the notion, fled, and returned to the profession of the Christian faith.[46]Yezdegerd fled finally to the territory of Tergana, on the Jaxartes. In an attempt which he made in 651, to invade his lost empire at the head of some Turkish tribes, he met his death, it would appear, at the hands of his barbarian allies. One of the daughters of Yezdegerd married Hassan, the son of Ali, and the other, Mohammed, the son of Abu Bekr.[47]The Nestorians and Jacobites bestowed on the self-styled Catholics of the Greek and Roman church, the name ofMelchites, orRoyalists, to mark that their faith, instead of resting on the basis of Scripture, reason, or tradition, had been established solely by the power of a temporal monarch.[48]“Six months,” the Worthy Jacobite says, “the 4000 baths of the city were heated with the volumes of paper and parchment.” These volumes must have been bulky indeed, and must have contained a surprising amount of latent heat, considering that, even admitting the library to have existed at the time, and conceding to it the largest number of volumes claimed by the most extravagant writers, viz., 720,000, one single volume per day must have sufficed to heat a public bath! Verily, verily, history is made the most inexact of all sciences. The flames which Cæsar was compelled to kindle in his defence, in the Bruchion (the Belgravia or Tyburnia of the city of Alexander); the havoc and depredation committed by the Alexandrian mob during the troubles of theshoes(so called from the circumstance that these terrible troubles, which are said to have lasted above twelve years [from 261 to 273A.D.], were first occasioned by a dispute between a soldier and a townsman about a pair of shoes); and the destruction inflicted on the Bruchion by Aurelian, in 273, cannot have left much behind of that portion of the splendid library of the Ptolemies which was kept in the museum. And the other portion of it, which was kept in the Temple of Serapis, to which latter place it is most probable the celebrated Pergamese library, presented by Marcus Antonius to Cleopatra, had also been sent, was totally destroyed in 389, in the reign of Theodosius I., by a bigoted Christian mob, under the leadership of the Archbishop Theophilus, a much more ignorant and brutal zealot than either Omar or Amru.[49]Othman’s foster-brother, the same whom Mohammed had so reluctantly pardoned after the taking of Mecca. He was renowned as the boldest and most dexterous horseman of Arabia.[50]Callinicus was either a native of Heliopolis, in Syria, or of Egypt. This clever chemist had been for a while in the service of the Khalif; but, offended at the slight estimation in which his science was held by the ignorant sons of the desert, he went over to the emperor, and placed in the hands of the Christians that marvellous and mysterious agent, theGreek fire, which afterwards repeatedly saved Constantinople from falling into the hands of its barbarian besiegers. It is certainly a curious coincidence, that, at a later period of history, Sultan Mohammed II. was most materially assisted in the reduction of the city of the Cæsars, by another man of science, the HungarianUrban, who, having been almost starved in the Greek service, had deserted to the Moslems, for whom he cast cannons of enormous size and weight of metal.[51]The victory of Bassora is therefore usually called the Day of the Camel; seventy men who successively held the bridle of the camel which carried Ayesha’s litter, were all either killed or more or less severely wounded.[52]That is, “God is great,” or “God is victorious.”[53]Abder-Rahman.[54]January; according to some historians, Midsummer, 660; others place the event in August, 661.[55]But many of the tribes revered the name and memory of Ali. His refusal to be bound by the tradition, or Sonna, became a kind of religious creed, and a wide and deep gulf was opened between two rival sects, theSonnites, or believers in the tradition, and theSchiites, or sectaries, who reject the tradition, regard Ali as theVicar of God, and his three predecessors as execrable usurpers. The religious discord of the friends and enemies of Ali may be said to be actually maintained still to the present day in the immortal hatred of the Schiite Persians, and the Sonnite Turks. The twelve Imams, or pontiffs, of the Persian church are Ali, Hassan, Hosein, and the lineal descendants of Hosein to the ninth generation. The curse against Ali and his adherents was abolished by Omar II., in 719.[56]The ruins of the ancient city of Carthage are about ten miles east of Tunis.[57]At least in Syria and Irak.[58]One of the most remarkable men of the period; he was said to unite the fierceness of the lion with the subtlety of the fox; his eventful life would furnish ample material for ten historic romances.[59]It would appear, from Leo Africanus, that a considerable body of Goths formed part of the army of relief.[60]Handalusia signifies, in Arabic, the country of the West; and the Arabs applied the name not only to the modern province of Andalusia, but to the whole peninsula of Spain. The attempted derivation of the name of Andalusia from the Vandals (Vandalusia) is most improbable.Lembketravels still farther out of the way of all rational probability, by assigning the etymological paternity of the name toAndalos, whom the Arabians number among Noah’s grandchildren.[61]649-672.[62]This would certainly seem to have been the true cause of Julian’s defection; the story of the seduction or violation of his daughter Florinda (surnamedla Cava, i.e., the wicked), lacks all true historic foundation.Mariana, the Jesuit historian, to whom we are chiefly indebted for this pretty tale, was too apt to draw on his lively imagination, where historical evidence failed him.[63]The place on which the Arabs landed is marked to the present day by the name of their chief Tarif (Tarifa); on the coast they bestowed the name of the Green Island (AlgesirasorAlgezire).[64]Musa had fought in Syria; he had assisted Moawiyah in the reduction of Cyprus (648), and had held the government of that island; he had subsequently been governor of Irak, and after this, governor of Egypt; Sardinia, Majorca, and Minorca, also had felt his presence.[65]Though some historians lead Musa (in 712) into the Narbonnese Gaul, there are strong reasons to reject this as an erroneous supposition; it is more than doubtful whether the old chief ever passed the Pyrenees.[66]The statement made by some historians, thatÆtiuspresented this table as a gift toTorismund, after the victory of Chalons (451), seems to rest on a very slender foundation; and so, I am inclined to think, do the 365 feet of gems and massive gold so liberally bestowed upon the table by Oriental writers. Another tradition substitutes, as the gift of the Roman patrician, the famous Missorium, or great golden dish for the service of the communion table, which is stated to have weighed 500 pounds, and to have been adorned with a profusion of gems.[67]Some historians make Musa arriveafterthe death of Walid; and some place the latter event a year later (715). The records of the period of the early Khalifs are so confused and contradictory that it is by no means easy always to ascertain the correct date of an event; the difficulty is considerably increased by the error into which some historians have fallen, of confounding the lunar year of the Mohammedans with the solar year of the Julian era. The common lunar year of the Hegira has 354 days; but the Mohammedans count, in a cyclus of 30 years, 11 leap years of 355 days (the 2nd, 5th, 7th, 10th, 13th, 16th, 18th, 21st, 24th, 25th and 29th years of the cyclus).[68]Of small size, of course.[69]In the separation of parties, thegreencolor was adopted by the Alides, or Fatimites, theblackcolor by the Abassides, and thewhitecolor by the Ommiades; these colors were displayed respectively by the several parties, not only in their standards but also in their garments and turbans.[70]Gibbon.

[43]Khalifet Resul Allah, i.e. lieutenant, or representative of the prophet of God.

[44]Omar was the first to assume the additional title ofEmir al Mumenin, i.e. prince, or commander, of the faithful.

[45]Jabalah had embraced the religion of Islam. On the occasion of the pilgrimage to Mecca, the irascible prince had dealt an Arabian, who had accidentally trod on the skirt of his long robe, a severe blow with his fist, which broke the bridge of the nose of the assaulted man. The Khalif Omar having demanded satisfaction for the aggrieved Moslem, and threatened the proud Gassanide chief with the application of the lex talionis, Jabalah, feeling highly indignant at the notion, fled, and returned to the profession of the Christian faith.

[46]Yezdegerd fled finally to the territory of Tergana, on the Jaxartes. In an attempt which he made in 651, to invade his lost empire at the head of some Turkish tribes, he met his death, it would appear, at the hands of his barbarian allies. One of the daughters of Yezdegerd married Hassan, the son of Ali, and the other, Mohammed, the son of Abu Bekr.

[47]The Nestorians and Jacobites bestowed on the self-styled Catholics of the Greek and Roman church, the name ofMelchites, orRoyalists, to mark that their faith, instead of resting on the basis of Scripture, reason, or tradition, had been established solely by the power of a temporal monarch.

[48]“Six months,” the Worthy Jacobite says, “the 4000 baths of the city were heated with the volumes of paper and parchment.” These volumes must have been bulky indeed, and must have contained a surprising amount of latent heat, considering that, even admitting the library to have existed at the time, and conceding to it the largest number of volumes claimed by the most extravagant writers, viz., 720,000, one single volume per day must have sufficed to heat a public bath! Verily, verily, history is made the most inexact of all sciences. The flames which Cæsar was compelled to kindle in his defence, in the Bruchion (the Belgravia or Tyburnia of the city of Alexander); the havoc and depredation committed by the Alexandrian mob during the troubles of theshoes(so called from the circumstance that these terrible troubles, which are said to have lasted above twelve years [from 261 to 273A.D.], were first occasioned by a dispute between a soldier and a townsman about a pair of shoes); and the destruction inflicted on the Bruchion by Aurelian, in 273, cannot have left much behind of that portion of the splendid library of the Ptolemies which was kept in the museum. And the other portion of it, which was kept in the Temple of Serapis, to which latter place it is most probable the celebrated Pergamese library, presented by Marcus Antonius to Cleopatra, had also been sent, was totally destroyed in 389, in the reign of Theodosius I., by a bigoted Christian mob, under the leadership of the Archbishop Theophilus, a much more ignorant and brutal zealot than either Omar or Amru.

[49]Othman’s foster-brother, the same whom Mohammed had so reluctantly pardoned after the taking of Mecca. He was renowned as the boldest and most dexterous horseman of Arabia.

[50]Callinicus was either a native of Heliopolis, in Syria, or of Egypt. This clever chemist had been for a while in the service of the Khalif; but, offended at the slight estimation in which his science was held by the ignorant sons of the desert, he went over to the emperor, and placed in the hands of the Christians that marvellous and mysterious agent, theGreek fire, which afterwards repeatedly saved Constantinople from falling into the hands of its barbarian besiegers. It is certainly a curious coincidence, that, at a later period of history, Sultan Mohammed II. was most materially assisted in the reduction of the city of the Cæsars, by another man of science, the HungarianUrban, who, having been almost starved in the Greek service, had deserted to the Moslems, for whom he cast cannons of enormous size and weight of metal.

[51]The victory of Bassora is therefore usually called the Day of the Camel; seventy men who successively held the bridle of the camel which carried Ayesha’s litter, were all either killed or more or less severely wounded.

[52]That is, “God is great,” or “God is victorious.”

[53]Abder-Rahman.

[54]January; according to some historians, Midsummer, 660; others place the event in August, 661.

[55]But many of the tribes revered the name and memory of Ali. His refusal to be bound by the tradition, or Sonna, became a kind of religious creed, and a wide and deep gulf was opened between two rival sects, theSonnites, or believers in the tradition, and theSchiites, or sectaries, who reject the tradition, regard Ali as theVicar of God, and his three predecessors as execrable usurpers. The religious discord of the friends and enemies of Ali may be said to be actually maintained still to the present day in the immortal hatred of the Schiite Persians, and the Sonnite Turks. The twelve Imams, or pontiffs, of the Persian church are Ali, Hassan, Hosein, and the lineal descendants of Hosein to the ninth generation. The curse against Ali and his adherents was abolished by Omar II., in 719.

[56]The ruins of the ancient city of Carthage are about ten miles east of Tunis.

[57]At least in Syria and Irak.

[58]One of the most remarkable men of the period; he was said to unite the fierceness of the lion with the subtlety of the fox; his eventful life would furnish ample material for ten historic romances.

[59]It would appear, from Leo Africanus, that a considerable body of Goths formed part of the army of relief.

[60]Handalusia signifies, in Arabic, the country of the West; and the Arabs applied the name not only to the modern province of Andalusia, but to the whole peninsula of Spain. The attempted derivation of the name of Andalusia from the Vandals (Vandalusia) is most improbable.Lembketravels still farther out of the way of all rational probability, by assigning the etymological paternity of the name toAndalos, whom the Arabians number among Noah’s grandchildren.

[61]649-672.

[62]This would certainly seem to have been the true cause of Julian’s defection; the story of the seduction or violation of his daughter Florinda (surnamedla Cava, i.e., the wicked), lacks all true historic foundation.Mariana, the Jesuit historian, to whom we are chiefly indebted for this pretty tale, was too apt to draw on his lively imagination, where historical evidence failed him.

[63]The place on which the Arabs landed is marked to the present day by the name of their chief Tarif (Tarifa); on the coast they bestowed the name of the Green Island (AlgesirasorAlgezire).

[64]Musa had fought in Syria; he had assisted Moawiyah in the reduction of Cyprus (648), and had held the government of that island; he had subsequently been governor of Irak, and after this, governor of Egypt; Sardinia, Majorca, and Minorca, also had felt his presence.

[65]Though some historians lead Musa (in 712) into the Narbonnese Gaul, there are strong reasons to reject this as an erroneous supposition; it is more than doubtful whether the old chief ever passed the Pyrenees.

[66]The statement made by some historians, thatÆtiuspresented this table as a gift toTorismund, after the victory of Chalons (451), seems to rest on a very slender foundation; and so, I am inclined to think, do the 365 feet of gems and massive gold so liberally bestowed upon the table by Oriental writers. Another tradition substitutes, as the gift of the Roman patrician, the famous Missorium, or great golden dish for the service of the communion table, which is stated to have weighed 500 pounds, and to have been adorned with a profusion of gems.

[67]Some historians make Musa arriveafterthe death of Walid; and some place the latter event a year later (715). The records of the period of the early Khalifs are so confused and contradictory that it is by no means easy always to ascertain the correct date of an event; the difficulty is considerably increased by the error into which some historians have fallen, of confounding the lunar year of the Mohammedans with the solar year of the Julian era. The common lunar year of the Hegira has 354 days; but the Mohammedans count, in a cyclus of 30 years, 11 leap years of 355 days (the 2nd, 5th, 7th, 10th, 13th, 16th, 18th, 21st, 24th, 25th and 29th years of the cyclus).

[68]Of small size, of course.

[69]In the separation of parties, thegreencolor was adopted by the Alides, or Fatimites, theblackcolor by the Abassides, and thewhitecolor by the Ommiades; these colors were displayed respectively by the several parties, not only in their standards but also in their garments and turbans.

[70]Gibbon.

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