In the East the active partisan, Abu Muslim, had raised the black flag of the Abbasids and had appeared clad in black in company with his followers at the most splendid feasts. “Under the embers,” said Nasr, governor of Khorasan, to the caliph when he begged help against the house of Abbas and its champion, Abu Muslim, “I see red coals that will soon burst into flame and suffocate or consume the wisest, body and trunk. As wood nurses fire to flame, so incendiary speeches precipitate war, and in astonishment I ask, is the family of Omayyah awake or asleep?”
After Nasr had suffered numerous attacks from Abu Muslim he received from the caliph reinforcements under the general Nabata. But when the latter with ten thousand Syrians was defeated by Abu Muslim’s forces, under Kahtaba Nasr fled with the rest of his troops to Hamadan. He did not live to reach the ancient city, and his successor to the governorship surrendered to Kahtaba who was just returning from a second victory near Ispahan, on condition that himself and his Syrian followers should receive full pardon. The black flag of Abbasids now waved in all the lands east of the Tigris, and for the family of Omayyah the decisive hour had arrived. Kahtaba perished on the blood-soaked battle-field of Kerbela; but his son Hasan, who succeeded his father to the command, completely defeated the Syrian army, which was led by the brave governor Hobaira. It was now the turn of Cufa to display the black banner and in that city Abul-Abbas, the head of the Abbasids, was proclaimed caliph.
When the news of these events reached the warlike Merwan, he gathered together his entire military force and after causing Ibrahim, the eldest of the Abbasid brothers, to be put to death in his prison at Haram, advanced to meet the enemy. On the river Zab, not far from the ruins of Nineveh, where once in the neighbourhood of Arbela and Gaugamela the fate of the Persian kingdom and its reigning house had been decided, took place the great battle which wrested from the Omayyads the sceptre of supremacy in the East, and gave the first impulse toward the dissolution of the entire kingdom (January 25th, 750). Fortune which had so long been favourable to Merwan now deserted him; beset by treachery and ill-chance, he fled from the battle-field to Hims and Damascus, whither but few of the soldiers that made up his mighty forces could follow him, those who escaped the sword of the enemy finding death in the waters of the stream. Abdallah then began a triumphal march through all the towns and countries that lay between Mosul and Syria. Merwan, after having appointed his son-in-law Walid governor, fled at his approach to Palestine. Here he learned that the black flag was also flying in Damascus, where the terrible Abdallah, nicknamed “As-Saffan, the Shedder of Blood,” had celebrated his entrance by putting to death the newly appointed governor Walid, and he again sought flight—into Egypt this time. But insurrection had reached even the peaceful Nile valley, and in an unsuccessful engagement with the opposing factionists Merwan II came to a violent end while seeking refuge in a church at Busir, in Upper Egypt.
[661-750 A.D.]
With Merwan’s death the last support to the unity of the kingdom was removed. Weak and unpopular as were many of the rulers of the Omayyad dynasty, their sway nevertheless extended from the Indus and the Iaxartes to the western coast of the Pyrenean peninsula, and from the Caucasus to the Bay of Aden. Sole founders and perpetuators of the Islamite kingdom in the three divisions of the ancient world, the early fame of the Omayyads served to gloss over many a fault in their later representatives, lending a lustre to their names which according to their contemporaries did not rightfully belong to them. Now that Abul-Abbas had become established in Damascus, the central point round which the whole political life of the Moslems had revolved was lost; and Islamism was henceforth to break up into ever widening smaller circles in which each unit was free to develop individually, until the Mohammedan world should be again reduced to that condition of dismemberment which had at first prevailed among the tribes of the Arabian peninsula. There were indeed among the caliphs of Damascus some to whom virtues and the ability to rule were not denied by later writers. Omar II’s piety and love of justice, and the court life of Yazid II, bright with all the lustre that benevolence, poetry, and brilliant feasts could shed upon it, received full meed of praise from poets and true believers. By borrowing from the Byzantines their methods of administration and their Greek-Roman culture, by attracting to their court physicians, architects, and mathematicians, and enriching the simple life of the inhabitants of the desert with the arts and conveniences of civilisation, they showed future rulers how to weld together native and foreign constituents so that great results might be obtained, to unite many and diverse elements into one specific whole. But a stain rested upon the name of the Omayyads that, in the opinion of true believers, could never be wiped away. The blood of Ali and his family still dyed their hands, they had driven the sacred line of Mohammed from the seat of honour, and they had covered the head of Hosein with ridicule and contempt. These sins could not be expiated by any single act; they constituted a perpetual curse that must descend from one generation to another of the race, dividing families by dissensions and internal feuds until the whole dynasty should finally be overthrown.d
CHAPTER VII. THE ARABS IN EUROPE
[711-961 A.D.]
In the progress of conquest from the north and south, the Goths and the Saracens encountered each other on the confines of Europe and Africa. In the opinion of the latter, the difference of religion is a reasonable ground of enmity and warfare. As early as the time of Othman, their piratical squadrons had ravaged the coasts of Andalusia; nor had they forgotten the relief of Carthage by the Gothic succours. In that age, as well as in the present, the kings of Spain were possessed of the fortress of Ceuta; one of the columns of Hercules, which is divided by a narrow strait from the opposite pillar or point of Europe. A small portion of Mauretania was still wanting to the African conquest; but Musa, in the pride of victory, was repulsed from the walls of Ceuta by the vigilance and courage of Count Julian, the general of the Goths. From his disappointment and perplexity Musa was relieved by an unexpected message from the Christian chief, who offered his place, his person, and his sword, to the successors of Mohammed, and solicited the disgraceful honour of introducing their arms into the heart of Spain.