CHAPTER X

THE SARACENS

Both the name Saracen and the name Moor came to be used in a sense much wider than their first significance. At first the Romans knew as "Saraceni," a single tribe of Arabs living near Mount Sinai. Later, the name Saracen was used by Europeans to mean any followers of the religion of Mahomet. Moors, "Mauri" or "dark men," was a name at first used only for a tribe that was also called Berbers, living along the northern edge of the Sahara desert, in Africa. But they were not of black skin, like the negroes, nor had they woolly hair. Their complexion was darkened only by the sun's burning power, and their hair was smooth. There were many of them in the forces that invaded Spain and put an end to the Visigoths' kingdom there early in the eighth century; and after a time all the Moslems, or Mahommedans, in Spain came to be known as Moors.

[Sidenote: Mahomet]

The story of the rise of Mahomet and the spread of the religion that he preached and the success of the armies by whose victories it was so dispersed is one of the most wonderful, perhaps it is actually the most astonishing, of all those that go to make up the great story.

The maker and preacher of the religion that we call, after him, Mahommedanism, or Mohammedanism, began his preaching early in the seventh century. He was a poor man, of no eminent family in Arabia. Arabia had already come under Jewish influence in some parts, and under Christian influence in others. Mahomet took the Bible as the basis of his preaching, but it seems that he did not understand it very well, {69} and he placed his own interpretation on much of it. He supposed himself to be the prophet, or apostle, chosen by the only God, whom he called Allah, to preach the true religion to the Arabians.

Abraham, as we saw in the first volume of this great story, was patriarch, or head, of a clan that came up out of the desert at first to Ur of the Chaldees. Mahomet seems to have claimed to preach the religion of Abraham. Moreover, there was a tradition that the Arabians were descended from that Ishmael of whom the Bible tells us, the son of Hagar, sent out into the wilderness, "whose hand was against every man and every man's hand against him." If we accept this story we shall perhaps wonder less that Mahommedanism was such a martial, such a fighting religion. Mahomet preached that its followers should fight to carry it over all the world.

You are not to understand from this, however, that it was a religion which set out to make proselytes, as we call them; that is, to convert others to the same way of thinking. In later days we shall find that the Saracens were not very eager that the Christians of the countries that they conquered should become Mahommedans, because it was their custom to tax, at a certain sum, every one not of their religion. They seem to have looked on this financial side of the affair as being of more importance to them than any salvation of the Christian people's souls.

But at the beginning of his preaching--or prophesying--Mahomet had hard work to make his doctrine accepted, and himself acknowledged as the prophet of the one and only God, even among his own people. He had to fly from his native city of Mecca to the neighbouring Medina. After a while he found supporters there, and by degrees they became so many that he was able to go back and take Mecca. Then, again by degrees, he was joined by so many of the {70} Arabian tribes that he was able to send armies beyond the bounds of Arabia, into Syria northward. They suffered defeat and check at times; but on the whole they were extraordinarily victorious.

For their success there were several causes, all quite easy to understand. They were a hardy people, accustomed to meagre fare and to hard living in the desert. They were very fine horsemen. The religion which their prophet preached to them promised untold joys in Paradise for those who died fighting against the enemies of Islam. (Islam was the prophet's name for the faith which he preached.) An intense belief in this happy future, after death, made them fearless in battle. Then they were a very poor people, and those against whom Mahomet sent them were far richer, and to the Moslem soldier loot from the enemy never was forbidden. They seem to have had a certain sense that some justice and mercy were due to the conquered, for the rule was that only four-fifths of the loot taken became the property of the conquerors. The conquered were left with a fifth.

And most of those against whom they went at first were weak, owing to lack of discipline and absence of strong government. The forces of the Eastern Empire in Asia Minor and of the Persians had been weakened by continuous fighting against each other. Syria had been so hammered between the two that it had little strength of its own. Egypt was feebly held. But it was not till after the death of the prophet that the armies carried the green flag of Islam east and west; and for a while after his death the succession to his religious leadership was much disputed.

It may occur to you to ask what need there was for a successor to such a position as that of Mahomet. He had preached his gospel. He had laid down the laws that were to be followed. Was not that enough? Why did he need a successor?

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The explanation is that while Mahomet was a great preacher, or prophet, he also held a position of leadership over the Arabs which we have no one word to express. Perhaps it can be stated best by saying simply that the Arabs did what he told them to do. It also looks as if he was wise enough to tell them to do things that they were not likely to object to doing. I suppose we may state that he was a ruler with the limits of his authority not very clearly defined. But his influence was very powerful, because he gave out, and probably believed, that whatever he told the people was put into his mouth by Allah, the only God, whose prophet he claimed to be.

This "only God" was a phrase that was often repeated by the Mahommedans in opposition to the "Trinity" of the Christians, to whom the Deity was revealed as being "three Persons and one God."

[Sidenote: The caliphs]

Therefore, if Mahomet had died without a successor to an authority in some part like his own, the people would have been quite at a loss for a guide and ruler. He was in fact succeeded by "caliphs," as they were, and as they still are, called, the word caliph actually meaning "successor" or "representative." The caliphs were supposed to be "representative" of Mahomet, to succeed to some of his authority, rather as the Popes of Rome were deemed to succeed to and be representative of the authority of St. Peter. They did not pretend to receive messages from Allah, as Mahomet had received them, but they would uphold the teaching of Mahomet; and their explanations of doubtful points in his teaching were likely to be accepted by all Mahommedans. And although they were not held in the same honour as Mahomet, they were regarded as rulers of the nation whom all men should obey for the sake of their good fortune both in this world and in the next.

Now, in Syria and in Asia Minor generally, the {72} population was probably far more nearly akin to the Arabians than to the Romans or the Greeks. It was from Arabia that the Semitic tribes had come into the country westward from the Euphrates and the Tigris and thence had spread over Syria and Palestine. The Saracens had little difficulty with them. The Persians had a stronger feeling of nationality and made more resistance, but before the middle of the seventh century Persia too was conquered.

The way of fighting of those early Arabian conquerors was to come sweeping down in cavalry charges on the enemy. Their weapons were the spear and the curved sword, called scimitar, with which they used to smite as they galloped. They were very quick in movement, and if they had a reverse they could withdraw and disappear over the desert so swiftly that it was almost impossible to deal them any really severe blows.

As they conquered lands where different methods of fighting were in use, they learned to adopt those that would be of value to them, but always their chief reliance was on the quick movement of their cavalry and on the cavalry charge, with the spear and scimitar; and even when they put on any defensive armour in addition to a light shield, it was of a fine mail, or steel network, only. It did not add greatly to their weight on horseback. The steel work of Damascus, the capital of Syria, and the edge that was set on the swordblades of that steel work, became famous very early.

They used the bow but little until the time when the Turk came into the story; but he is not there yet.

Perhaps the most wonderful testimony to the intelligence and enterprise of these children of the desert is that they fought a great and successful naval battle with the fleet of the Eastern Empire as early as 655. The Emperor himself was in command of the defeated fleet. In all likelihood most of the victors {73} were seamen of the Syrian coast who had become Mahommedans.

In one particular the rise of the Moslem power in Arabia, and its northward and eastward expansion, were possibly more of a relief to the Emperor at Constantinople than a menace. The Persians had continually been threatening and giving trouble on his eastern border. The Saracens attacked the Persians and within a very few years completely conquered them so that the Persians troubled the Empire no more. The Saracens seized Irak, which was the most beautiful and richest province of all Persia. They pushed further east, still conquering, into India, Tibet, and even to the borders of China.

[Sidenote: The Moors in Spain]

This was the first direction of their expansion, but almost at the same time they gained, easily, possession of Egypt, and then proceeded westward along that fertile strip of Northern Africa between the Mediterranean and the Sahara desert. Here they encountered, conquered, and converted to Mahommedanism that tribe of Berbers who were called the Moors, as I told you, and who were the conquerors of Spain.

It was in 710, less than a hundred years after Mahomet became a power in his native Arabia, that they went over into Spain to help the King of the Visigoths, or one of the claimants to the Visigothic throne, against his rival.

The Gothic power was broken by these dissensions, and the conquerors had no great trouble in making good their conquest over the whole of Spain, always excepting those strong mountainous places in the Pyrenees where the Basques still live--a different people from any that have entered Spain within the knowledge of our historical records. Perhaps they are of the same race as the Celts--either as the Brythons or as that older branch called Goidels--of whom {74} a remnant held out in Wales, Ireland, Cornwall, and Brittany.

The Saracens had this advantage--call it luck, if you please--that they came upon enemies whose government was weak, who were not united or brought together by any feeling of patriotism or love of their country or nation. The Roman soldiers, at the time when the legions were made up of free citizens who owned land, had been able to feel that they were fighting for their own property. But all that feeling had long passed from the armies of the seventh and eighth centuries. The Saracens had, in their religion, a sentiment which gave them union, and inspired them with the idea that they were all fighting for the same cause. We have seen how the prospect of joy in Paradise, if they should die in battle, gave them courage. Therefore, when we take these facts into consideration, their quick and extensive victories do not appear so incredible. Their hordes must have seemed almost invincible to the greatly alarmed people of Europe as they went so easily through Spain; but when they pushed up through the Pyrenees and came against a really strong and well-governed people in the Franks they made no further way; they were defeated. They were rolled back again across the Pyrenees and left to make good their Empire in Spain.

[Sidenote: Moors independent of Bagdad]

They had this sentiment and inspiration common to them all--their fighting religion; but the caliphs of Mahomet never showed any of that power of organisation, any of that capacity for governing a great empire from a single centre, which had been so remarkable in the Romans during the first hundred years or so after the birth of Christ. The capital, or chief place of residence of the caliphs, became, after a while, Bagdad, on the Euphrates. It was more central and convenient, no doubt, than a city in the Arabian desert. But, first of all, the ruler of the {75} African province tried to assert himself as independent of the caliph; then the ruler of Spain, more distant still from the centre, claimed independence more strongly and successfully; and so it was also with other provinces in the circumference of the wide and constantly widening Empire. The links, as we say, of the Empire chain were not very solid or strong. But there was always this in common, to help keep all together--their religion. If the caliph in Bagdad had little or no control over the doings of the Moorish ruler of Spain, if the latter made war and peace and so on as seemed good to him without referring for orders to headquarters, the caliph still had some influence over him and his followers in religious matters, as being the representative and successor of Mahomet, who was Allah's prophet.

It was very like the power which the Roman Church, with the Pope at its head, had over the Christians. The Roman Empire, in a military sense, and in the sense of having Rome as the centre of its government and laws, had gone to pieces. There was no more "appealing unto Cæsar," or to any authority at Rome, from the decision of a court of law in some far-off province--as St. Paul appealed at Cæsarea--but still the Pope had his far-reaching power. The officials of government had gone from the cities of Gaul or of Britain or wherever it might be; but the clergy remained, and grew more and more in number, and the authority of the Pope of Rome--or even of the Pope from Avignon or Ravenna, for sometimes, as we shall see, he was obliged to fly from Rome--had its power over these clergy and through them over the laity. Ever since Constantine had made Christianity the State religion they had been servants and officials, in this manner, of the dying Empire and of the growing Church. The caliph's power was a like power, because he was the successor of Mahomet, though it {76} was never, in its spiritual influence, of equal power with that of the successor of St. Peter. But the two may be compared, and the comparison is very interesting.

[Sidenote: Charlemagne]

So now we have brought the story to a point when we may very well pause a moment and take a look at the map, to see how things have been arranging themselves--to ask ourselves "Who's who?" in A.D. 800 and "Who has what?" It is on Christmas Day of that year that the mighty Charlemagne, the greatest king of the Franks, is consecrated Emperor by the Pope at Rome. That fact in itself tells a story.

But as for the world map of that time, you will remember how it was with our England, that the Anglo-Saxons, or one or other of those tribes from Jutland, held all the east; that the boundaries of Wessex went far west, where England is at its broadest; that Mercia was the Middle England, and that in the north was Northumbria, which went up to the southern limits of the Picts and Scots in Caledonia. The West Country, as we call it now, and Wales and the West of Cumberland, as well as Ireland, were still in the hands of the Celts.

There were Celts too on the Continent, in Brittany, and in parts of Spain.

Spain itself, with little exception, was held by the Moors, but of course the Gothic and Roman population, whom the conquering Moors found there, still remained there too. The Saracens also had all that Northern African strip as far east as Libya and Egypt. They had Egypt itself, Palestine, Syria and away to the east into India and so out of our picture. In Asia Minor they kept up a continual contest for many years with the Eastern Empire.

That Eastern Empire itself has become a poor possession in comparison with its extent at the date of the Roman Empire's division. It has a hold on the extreme South of Italy and it also claims the islands {77} of Sardinia, Sicily, and of the Ægean Sea. It holds Asia Minor as far south as the borders of Mesopotamia and northwards to the Black Sea; but in those regions it is continually menaced by the Saracens. What we now call Turkey in Europe is within the Empire, and also the greater part of Thrace. It retains Greece; but of Macedonia it has scarcely any grip. Various barbarian tribes, Slavs, Serbs, Bulgars, have possession of the country up to the Danube.

[Illustration: CHARLEMAGNE'S SWORD. (From the Imperial Treasury, Vienna.)]

And as for the rest of the map, all that matters, all that does not belong to the north-eastern barbarians, falls into the Empire of Charlemagne. Pepin, King of the Franks before Charlemagne, had all that we call France and further had our Switzerland, Bavaria and, in the north, the present Holland and Belgium. He also was king of considerable territory east of the Rhine. But under Charlemagne those large possessions were very largely increased, eastward, and northward, and southward. Southward he held Italy right down to Naples. Eastward he had all the old Roman province of Illyricum; that is to say that his sovereignty extended to the Danube. Northward of the Danube, where that great river makes its southward bend, he held Bohemia. He had the land of the {78} Saxons up to and beyond the Elbe. He ruled over Denmark and the south of Scandinavia.

The whole of the centre of the picture, in fact, is included in this Carolingian Empire, as it was called, from Carolus, the Latin form of Charles. And Charlemagne had been consecrated Emperor by the Pope at Rome. The Visigoths had been Christians, but they had not been orthodox Christians according to the opinion of the Church of Rome. They had been Arians; that is, followers of what the Roman Church considered the wrong and heretical opinion of a certain bishop called Arius. The Roman Church and the Pope of Rome could not have used the clergy of the Visigoths as their agents; the Pope could not have acted through such agents or worked with them. But he did, and he could, act through the Frankish clergy: and you see over how large a space of the world he could thus act and make his power felt.

In the Eastern Empire the Patriarch at Constantinople was the head of the Christian power. The Pope's authority did not extend there. Neither had it authority in Spain under the Mahommedan Moors. Indeed a large number of the Romans and Goths in Spain became Mahommedans, in order to enjoy the privileges and the lighter taxes which the Moslems imposed on Mahommedans. But the Pope had this very strong position as the head of the Church all over Charlemagne's Empire and beyond--for he was obeyed in Britain and in Ireland.

The great Empire of the great Charlemagne was not fated to last very long, as you will see; but it had served to help in establishing over all the central part of Europe the authority of the Church at Rome; and when it broke up, that authority was still maintained over the broken pieces of the Empire, no matter under what king they fell. Charlemagne repaid the Pope well for his consecration at Rome on Christmas Day of the year 800.

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