A.D. 744-50] royalty, expired in iron fetters in the dungeons of Haran. His two younger brothers, Saffah 42 and Almansor,43 eluded the search of the tyrant, and lay concealed at Cufa, till the zeal of the people and the approach of his eastern friends allowed them to expose their persons to the impatient public. On Friday, in the dress of a caliph, in the colours of the sect, Saffah proceeded with religious and military pomp to the mosque; ascending the pulpit, he prayed and preached as the lawful successor of Mahomet; and, after his departure, his kinsmen bound a willing people by an oath of fidelity. But it was on the banks of the Zab, and not in the mosque of Cufa, that this important controversy was determined. Every advantage appeared to be on the side of the white faction: the authority of established government; an army of an hundred and twenty thousand soldiers, [Marwan II. against a sixth part of that number; 43a and the presence and merit of the caliph Mervan, the fourteenth and last of the house of Ommiyah. Before his accession to the throne, he had deserved, by his Georgian warfare, the honourable epithet of the ass of Mesopotamia; 44 and he might have been ranked among the greatest princes, had not, says Abulfeda, the eternal order decreed that moment for the ruin of his family: a decree against which all human prudence and fortitude must struggle in vain. The orders of Mervan were mistaken or disobeyed; the return of his horse, from which he had dismounted on a necessary occasion,45 impressed the belief of his death; and the enthusiasm of the black squadrons was ably conducted by Abdallah, the uncle of his competitor. After an irretrieveable defeat, the caliph escaped to Mosul; but the colours of the Abbassides were displayed from the rampart; he suddenly repassed the Tigris, cast a melancholy look on his palace of Haran, crossed the Euphrates, abandoned the fortifications of Damascus, and, without halting in Palestine, pitched his last and fatal camp at Busir on the banks 42 [Abd Allah Abū-l-Abbās al-Saffah (the bloody), caliph 750-754.] 43 [Abū-Jafar Mansur, caliph 754-775.] 43a [So Tabari, ed. de Goeje, iii. 45.] 44 Al Hamar. He had been governor of Mesopotamia, and the Arabic proverb praises the courage of that warlike breed of asses who never fly from an enemy. The surname of Mervan may justify the comparison of Homer (Iliad v. 557, &c.), and both will silence the moderns, who consider the ass as a stupid and ignoble emblem (d'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 558). 45 [This motive seems to have been drawn from Persian sources-Gibbon took it from Herbelot. We must rather follow Tabari's account. Marwan sent his son with some troops back to the camp to rescue his money. This back movement was taken by the rest of the army as a retreat and they all took to flight. See Weil, op. cit. i. p. 701; Tabari, ed. de Goeje, iii. 38 sqq.ĺ Ommiades. Feb. 10 of the Nile.46 His speed was urged by the incessant diligence Fall of the of Abdallah, who in every step of the pursuit acquired strength A.D. 750, and reputation; the remains of the white faction were finally vanquished in Egypt; and the lance, which terminated the life and anxiety of Mervan, was not less welcome perhaps to the unfortunate than to the victorious chief. The merciless inquisition of the conqueror eradicated the most distant branches of the hostile race their bones were scattered, their memory was accursed, and the martyrdom of Hossein was abundantly revenged on the posterity of his tyrants. Fourscore of the Ommiades, who had yielded to the faith or clemency of their foes, were invited to a banquet at Damascus. The laws of hospitality were violated by a promiscuous massacre; the board was spread over their fallen bodies; and the festivity of the guests was enlivened by the music of their dying groans. By the event of the civil war the dynasty of the Abbassides was firmly established; but the Christians only could triumph in the mutual hatred and common loss of the disciples of Mahomet.47 Spain. Yet the thousands who were swept away by the sword of war Revolt of might have been speedily retrieved in the succeeding generation, A.D. 755 if the consequences of the revolution had not tended to dissolve the power and unity of the empire of the Saracens. In the proscription of the Ommiades, a royal youth of the name of Abdalrahman alone escaped the rage of his enemies, who hunted the wandering exile from the banks of the Euphrates to the valleys of mount Atlas. His presence in the neighbourhood of Spain revived the zeal of the white faction. The name and cause of the Abbassides had been first vindicated by the Persians; the 46 Four several places, all in Egypt, bore the name of Busir, or Busiris, so famous in Greek fable. The first, where Mervan was slain, was to the west of the Nile, in the province of Fium, or Arsinoe; the second in the Delta, in the Sebennytic nome; the third, near the pyramids; the fourth, which was destroyed by Diocletian (see above, vol. i. p. 439), in the Thebais. I shall here transcribe a note of the learned and orthodox Michaelis: Videntur in pluribus Ægypti superioris urbibus Busiri Coptoque arma sumpsisse Christiani, libertatemque de religione sentiendi defendisse, sed succubuisse quo in bello Coptos et Busuris diruta, et circa Esnam magna strages edita. Bellum narrant șed causam belli ignorant scriptores Byzantini, alioqui Coptum et Busirim_non_rebellasse dicturi, sed causam Christianorum suscepturi (Not. 211, p. 100). For the geography of the four Busirs, see Abulfeda (Descript. Ægypt. p. 9, vers. Michaelis. Gottinga, 1776, in 4to), Michaelis (Not. 122-127, p. 58-63), and d'Anville (Mémoire sur l'Egypte, p. 85, 147, 205). 47 See Abulfeda (Annal. Moslem. p. 136-145), Eutychius (Annal. tom. ii. p. 392, vers. Pocock), Elmacin (Hist. Saracen. p. 109-121), Abulpharagius (Hist. Dynast. p. 134-140), Roderic of Toledo (Hist. Arabum, c. 18, p. 33), Theophanes (Chronograph. p. 356, 357 [A.M. 6240, 6241], who speaks of the Abbassides under the names of Xparaviral and Mavpodópo), and the Bibliothèque of d'Herbelot, in the articles of Ommiades, Abbassides, Marvan, Ibrahim, Saffah, Abou Moslem. [Tabari, vol. iii. 44-51.] [A.D. 756] [A.D. 763] Triple division of the caliphate Magnificence of the caliphs. A.D. 750-960 West had been pure from civil arms; and the servants of the abdicated family still held, by a precarious tenure, the inheritance of their lands and the offices of government. Strongly prompted by gratitude, indignation, and fear, they invited the grandson of the caliph Hashem to ascend the throne of his ancestors; and, in his desperate condition, the extremes of rashness and prudence were almost the same. The acclamations of the people saluted his landing on the coast of Andalusia; and, after a successful struggle, Abdalrahman established the throne of Cordova, and was the father of the Ommiades of Spain, who reigned above two hundred and fifty years from the Atlantic to the Pyrenees.48 He slew in battle a lieutenant of the Abbassides, who had invaded his dominions with a fleet and army : the head of Ala, in salt and camphire, was suspended by a daring messenger before the palace of Mecca ;49 and the caliph Almansor rejoiced in his safety, that he was removed by seas and lands from such a formidable adversary. Their mutual designs or declarations of offensive war evaporated without effect ; but, instead of opening a door to the conquest of Europe, Spain was dissevered from the trunk of the monarchy, engaged in perpetual hostility with the East, and inclined to peace and friendship with the Christian sovereigns of Constantinople and France. The example of the Ommiades was imitated by the real or fictitious progeny of Ali, the Edrissites of Mauritania, and the more powerful Fatimites of Africa and Egypt. In the tenth century, the chair of Mahomet was disputed by three caliphs or commanders of the faithful, who reigned at Bagdad, Cairoan, and Cordova, excommunicated each other, and agreed only in a principle of discord, that a sectary is more odious and criminal than an unbeliever.50 Mecca was the patrimony of the line of Hashem, yet the 48 For the revolution of Spain, consult Roderic of Toledo (c. xviii. p. 34, &c.), the Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana (tom. ii. p. 30, 198), and Cardonne (Hist. de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne, tom. i. p. 180-197, 205, 272, 323, &c.). 49 [Others say the head was exposed at Kairawan; Dozy, Hist. des Musulm. d'Espagne, i. 367.] 50 I shall not stop to refute the strange errors and fancies of Sir William Temple (his works, vol. iii. p. 371-374, octavo edition) and Voltaire (Histoire Générale, c. xxviii. tom. ii. p. 124, 125, édition de Lausanne); concerning the division of the Saracen empire. The mistakes of Voltaire proceeded from the want of knowledge or reflection; but Sir William was deceived by a Spanish impostor, who has framed an apocryphal history of the conquest of Spain by the Arabs. [The Omayyad rulers of Spain called themselves emirs (Amir) for a century and three-quarters Abd arRahman III. (912-961) first assumed the higher title of caliph in 929. Thus it is incorrect to speak of two Caliphates, or a western Caliphate, until 929; the Emirate of Cordova is the correct designation.] Abbassides were never tempted to reside either in the birthplace or the city of the prophet. Damascus was disgraced by the choice, and polluted with the blood, of the Ommiades; and, after some hesitation, Almansor, the brother and successor of Saffah, laid the foundations of Bagdad,51 the Imperial seat of his posterity during a reign of five hundred years.52 The chosen spot is on the eastern bank of the Tigris, about fifteen miles above the ruins of Modain; the double wall was of a circular form; and such was the rapid increase of a capital, now dwindled to a provincial town, that the funeral of a popular saint might be attended by eight hundred thousand men and sixty thousand women of Bagdad and the adjacent villages. In this city of peace, 53 amidst the riches of the East, the Abbassides soon disdained the abstinence and frugality of the first caliphs, and aspired to emulate the magnificence of the Persian kings. After 51 The geographer d'Anville (l'Euphrate et le Tigre, p. 121-123), and the Orientalist d'Herbelot (Bibliothèque, p. 167, 168), may suffice for the knowledge of Bagdad. Our travellers, Pietro della Valle (tom. i. p. 688-698), Tavernier (tom. i. p. 230-238), Thévenot (part ii. p. 209-212), Otter (tom. i. p. 162-168), and Niebuhr (Voyage en Arabie, tom. ii. p. 239-271), have seen only its decay; and the Nubian geographer (p. 204), and the travelling Jew, Benjamin of Tudela (Itinerarium, p. 112-123, à Const. l'Empereur, apud Elzevir, 1633), are the only writers of my acquaintance, who have known Bagdad under the reign of the Abbassides. [See Ibn Serapion's description of the canals of Baghdad, translated and annotated by Mr. Le Strange, in the Journal of the Asiatic Society, N. S. vol. 27 (1895), p. 285 sqq., and Mr. Le Strange's sketch plan of the city (ib., opposite p. 33).] 52 The foundations of Bagdad were laid A.H. 145, A.D. 762; Mostasem [Mustasim, 1242-1258], the last of the Abbassides, was taken and put to death by the Tartars, A.H. 656, A.D. 1258, the 20th of February. 53 Medinat al Salem, Dar al Salem [Dār al-Salām]. Urbs pacis, or, as is more neatly compounded by the Byzantine writers, Eipnvoodis (Irenopolis). There is some dispute concerning the etymology of Bagdad, but the first syllable is allowed to signify a garden, in the Persian tongue; the garden of Dad, a Christian hermit, whose cell had been the only habitation on the spot. ["The original city as founded by the Caliph Al-Mansur was circular, being surrounded by a double wall and ditch, with four equidistant gates. From gate to gate measured an Arab mile (about one English mile and a quarter). This circular city stood on the western side of the Tigris, immediately above the point where the Sarat Canal, coming from the Nahr 'Isa, joined the Tigris, and the Sarat flowed round the southern side of the city.' "In the century and a half which had elapsed, counting from the date of the foundation of the city down to the epoch at which Ibn Serapion wrote, Baghdad had undergone many changes. It had never recovered the destructive effects of the great siege, when Al-Amin had defended himself, to the death, against the troops of his brother Al-Mamūn; and again it had suffered semi-depopulation by the removal of the seat of government to Samarra (A.D. 836-892). The original round city of Al-Mansūr had long ago been absorbed into the great capital, which covered ground measuring about five miles across in every direction, and the circular walls must, at an early date, have been levelled. The four gates, however, had remained, and had given their names to the first suburbs which in time had been absorbed into the Western town and become one half of the great City of Peace.' Mr. Guy Le Strange, loc. cit., pp. 288, 289-90.] i his wars and buildings, Almansor left behind him in gold and 54 Reliquit in ærario sexcenties millies mille stateres, et quater et vicies millies mille aureos aureos. Elmacin, Hist. Saracen. p. 126. I have reckoned the gold pieces at eight shillings, and the proportion to the silver as twelve to one. [But see Appendix 2.] But I will never answer for the numbers of Erpenius; and the Latins are scarcely above the savages in the language of arithmetic. 55 D'Herbelot, p. 530. Abulfeda, p. 154. Nivem Meccam apportavit, rem ibi aut nunquam aut rarissime visam. 56 Abulfeda, p. 184, 189, describes the splendour and liberality of Almamon. Milton has alluded to this Oriental custom : -Or where the gorgeous East, with richest hand, I have used the modern word lottery to express the Missilia of the Roman em- |