"Khalid gathered camels and made them drink plentifully. Enroute the soldiers drew water from slain camels' bellies and fed their horses on camels' milk. This commissary was exhausted when Khalid's troops reached the main Arab army on the Yarmuk River sixty miles southwest of Damascus. There, say the Moslem historians, 40,000 (25,000?) Arabs defeated 240,000 (50,000?) Greeks in one of the innumerable decisive battles of history (634).

"Omar (Umar Abu Hafsa ibn al-Khattab) (581-644) had been the chief advisor and support of Abu Bekr and had earned such repute that no one protested when the dying Caliph named him as successor.

"Yet Omar was the very opposite of his friend:-tall, broad shouldered, and passionate -- agreeing with him only in frugal simplicity, bald head, and dyed beard. Time and responsibility had matured him into a rare mixture of hot temper and cool judgment.

"Having beaten a Bedouin unjustly, he begged the Bedouin -- in vain -- to inflict an equal number of strokes upon him. He was a severe puritan, demanding strict virtue of every Moslem. He carried about with him a whip wherewith he beat any Mohammedan whom he caught infringing the Koranic code.

"Tradition reports that he scourged his son to death for repeated drunkenness. Moslem historians tell us that he owned but one shirt and one mantle, patched and repatched -- that he lived on barley bread and dates, and drank nothing but water -- that he slept on a bed of palm leaves, hardly better than a hair shirt -- and that his sole concern was the propagation of the faith by letters and by arms.

"When a Persian satrap came to pay homage to Omar he found the conqueror of the East asleep among beggars on the steps of the Medina mosque.

"The Arabs, ever skillful horsemen, proved superior to the cavalry, as well as the infantry, of the Persians and the Greeks. Nothing in early medieval armament could withstand their weird battle cries, their bewildering maneuvers, their speed. They took care to choose level battle grounds favorable to the tactical movements of their mounts.

"In 635 Damascus was taken, in 636 Antioch, in 638 Jerusalem. By 640 all Syria was in Moslem hands. By 641 Persia and Egypt were conquered.

"The Patriarch Sophronius agreed to surrender Jerusalem if the Caliph would come in person to raitfy the terms of capitulation. Omar consented and traveled from Medina in stately simplicity, armed with a sack of corn, a bag of dates, a gourd of water, and a wooden dish.

"Khalid, Abu Obeida, and other leaders of the Arab army went out to welcome him. He was displeased by the finery of their raiment and the ornate trappings of their steeds. He flung a handful of gravel upon them, crying:-'Begone! Is it thus attired that ye come out to meet me?'

"He received Sophronius with kindness and courtesy, imposed an easy tribute on the vanquished, and confirmed the Christians in the peaceful possession of all their shrines.

"Christian historians relate that he accompanied the Patriarch in a tour of Jerusalem. During his ten days' stay he chose the site for the mosque that was to be known by his name.

"Women joined in the movement but not in numbers adequate to Arab zeal. The conquering males rounded out their harems with Christian and Jewish concubines, and reckoned the children of such unions legitimate.

"By such industry and reckoning the 'Arabs' in Syria and Persia were half a million by 644. Omar forbade the conquerors to buy or till land. He hoped that outside of Arabia they would remain a military caste, amply supported by the state, but vigorously preserving their martial qualities.

"His prohibitions were ignored after his death and almost nullified by his generosity in life. He divided the spoils of victory eighty per cent to the army, twenty per cent to the nation.

"The minority of men, having the majority of brains, soon gathered in the majority of goods in this rapidly growing Arab wealth. The Quraish nobles built rich palaces in Mecca and Medina. Zobeir had palaces in several cities, with 1000 horses and 10,000 slaves. Abd-er-Rahman had 1000 camels, 10,000 sheep, 400,000 dinars ($1,912,000).

"Othman ibn Affan was an old man of kindly intent. He rebuilt and beautified the Medina mosque and supported the generals who now sprad Moslem arms to Herat and Kabul, Balkh and Tiflis, and through Asia Minor to the Black Sea. But it was his misfortune to be a loyal member of the aristocratic Umayyad clan which in the early days had been among Mohammed's proudest foes.

"The Umayyads flocked to Medina to enjoy the fruits of their relationship to the old Caliph. He could not refuse their importunity. Soon a dozen lucrative offices warmed the hands of men who scorned the puritanism and simplicity of pious Moslems.

"Islam, relaxing in victory, divided into ferocious factions:-'Refugees' from Mecca vs 'Helpers' from Medina -- the ruling cities of Mecca and Medina vs the fast-growing Moslem cities of Damascus, Kufa, and Basra -- the Quraish aristocracy vs the Bedouin democracy -- the Prophet's Hashimite clan led by Ali vs the Umayyad clan led by Mnawiya, son of Mohammed's chief enemy Abu Sufyan, but now governor of Syria.

"In 654 a converted Jew began to preach a revolutionary doctrine at Basra that Mohammed would return to life, that Ali was his only legitimate successor, that Othman was a usurper and his appointees a set of godless tyrants. Driven from Basra, the rebel went to Karfa. Driven from Karfa, he fled to Egypt, where his preaching found passionate audience. Five hundred Egyptian Moslems made their way to Medina as pilgrims and demanded Othman's resignation. Refused, they blockaded him in his palace.

"In effect his war against Ali sought to restore the Quraish oligarchy to the power and leadership that had been taken from them by Mohammed.

"Ali's reorganized forces met Muawiya's army at Siffin on the Euphrates (657). Ali was prevailing when Muawiya's general Amr ibn al-As raised copies of the Koran on the points of his soldiers' lances and demanded arbitration 'according to the word of Allah'-- presumably by rules laid down in the sacred book.

"Yielding to the insistence of his troops, Ali agreed. Arbitrators were chosen and were allowed six months to decide the issue while the armies returned to their homes.

"Part of Ali's men now turned against him and formed a separate army and sect as Khariiji or Seceders. They argued that the caliph should be elected and removable by the people.

"Some of them were religious anarchists who rejected all government except that of God. All of them denounced the worldliness and luxury of the new ruling classes in Islam.

"Ali tried to win them back by suasion but failed. Their piety became fanaticism and issued in acts of disorder and violence. Finally Ali declared war upon them and suppressed them.

"In due time the arbitrators agreed that both Ali and Muawiya should withdraw their claims to the caliphate. Ali's representative announced the deposition of Ali. Amr, however, instead of making a similar withdrawal for Muawiya, proclaimed him Caliph. Amid this chaos a Kharijite came upon Ali near Kufa and pierced his brain with a poisoned sword (661).

"Muawiya received the reluctant allegiance of all Islam. But for his own security, and because Medina was now too far from the center of Moslem population and power, he made Damascus his capital.

"The Quraish aristocracy, through Abu Sufyan's son, had won their war against Mohammed. The theocratic 'republic' of the Successors became a secular hereditary monarchy.

"He had won his power first through appointment as governor of Syria by the virtuous Omar -- then by leading the reaction against the murder of Othman -- then by intrigues so subtle that forces had seldom to be used.

"He said:-'I apply not my sword where my lash suffices nor my lash where my tongue is not enough. And even if there be one hair binding me to my fellow men, I do not let it break. When they pull I loosen, and if they loosen I pull.'

"His path to power was less incarnadined than most of those that have opened new dynasties.

"Like other usurpers, he felt the need to hedge his throne with splendor and ceremony. He took as his model the Byzantine emperors who had taken as their model the Persian King of Kings. The persistence of that monarchical pattern from Cyrus to our time suggests its serviceability in the government and exploitation of an unletterd population.

"Muawiya felt his methods justified by the prosperity that came under his rule, the quieting of tribal strife, and the consolidation of Arab power from the Oxus to the Nile.

"Twenty-five miles north of Kufa the caravan was intercepted by a force of Yezid's troops under Obeidallah. Husein offered to submit but his band chose to fight.

"Husein's nephew Qasim, ten years old, was struck by one of the first arrows and died in his uncle's arms. One by one Husein's brothers, sons, cousins, and nephews fell. Every man in the group was killed while the women and children looked on in horror and terror.

"When Husein's severed head was brought to Obeidallah, he carelessly turned it over with his staff. One of his officers protested:- 'Gently, he was the grandson of the Prophet. By Allah! I have seen those lips kissed by the blessed mouth of Mohammed' (680).

"Suddenly the siege was lifted. Yezid had died and the army was needed in Damascus.

"In two years of royal chaos three caliphs held the throne. Finally Abd-al-Malik, son of a cousin of Muawiya, ended the disorder with ruthless courage and then governed with relative mildness, wisdom, and justice. His general Hajjaj ibn Yusuf subdued the Kufans and renewed the siege of Mecca. Abdallah, now seventy-two, fought bravely, urged on by his centenarian mother. He was defeated and killed. His head ws sent as a certified check to Damascus. His body, after hanging for some time on a gibbet, was presented to his mother (692).

"During the ensuing peace Abd-al-Malik wrote poetry, patronized letters, attended to eight wives and reared fifteen sons, of whom four succeeded to his throne. His cognomen meant Father of Kings.

"His reign of twenty years paved the way for the accomplishments of his son, Walid I (705-15). The march of Arab conquest was now resumed. Balkh was taken in 705, Bokhara in 709, Spain in 711, Samarkand in 712.

"In the eastern provinces Hajjaj governed with a creative energy that equaled his barbaritics. Marshes were drained, arid tracts were irrigated and the canal system was restored and improved. Not content with which the general, once a school master, revolutionized Arabic orthography by introducing diacritical marks.

"Walid himself was a model king, far more interested in administration than in war. He encouraged industry and trade with new markets and better roads -- built schools and hospitals -- including the first lazar houses known -- and homes for the aged, the crippled, and the blind -- enlarged and beautified the mosques of Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem, and raised at Damascus a still greater one which still exists.

"Omar II (717-20) was resolved to atone in one reign for all the impiety and liberality of his Umayyad predecessors. The practice and propagation of the faith were the consuming interests of his life.

"He dressed so simply, wore so many patches, that no stranger took him for a king. He bade his wife surrender to the public treasury the costly jewels that her father had given her, and she obeyed. He informed his harem that the duties of government would absorb him to their neglect and gave them leave to depart. He ignored the poets, orators, and scholars who had depended on the court but drew to his counsel and companionship the most devout among the learned in his realm.

"He made peace with other countries, withdrew the army that had besieged Constantinople and called in the garrisons that had guarded Moslem cities hostile to Umayyad rule.

"Whereas his predecessors had discouraged conversions to Islam on the ground that less poll taxes would come to the state, Omar speeded the acceptance of Islam by Christians, Zoroastrians, and Jews. When his fiscal agents complained that his policy was ruining the treasury, he replied:-'Glad would I be, by Allah, to see everybody become Moslem, so that you and I would have to till the soil with our own hands to earn a living.'

"Clever councilors thought to stay the tide of conversions by requiring circumcision. Omar, another Paul, bade them dispense with it. Upon those who still refused conversion, he laid severe restrictions, excluded them from governmental employment, and forbade them to build new shrines.

"But the lottery of hereditary monarchy placed on the throne, in the eighth century, incompetents who exhausted the treasury, surrendered administration to eunuchs, and lost control over that Arab individualism which has nearly always prevented a united Moslem power.

"The old tribal enmities persisted as political factions. Hashimites and Umayyads hated one another as if they were more closely related than they really were. Arabia, Egypt, and Persia resented the authority of Damascus. The proud Persians, from contending that they were as good as the Arabs, passed to claiming superiority and could no longer brook Syrian rule.

"The descendants of Mohammed were scandalized to see at the head of Islam an Umayyad clan that had included the most unielding and last converted of the Prophet's enemies.

"They were shocked by the easy morals, perhaps by the religious tolerance, of the Umayyad caliphs. They prayed for the day when Allah would send some savior to redeem them from this humiliating rule.

"All that these hostile forces needed was some initiative personality to give them unity and voice.

"Abu al-Abbas, great-great-grandson of an uncle of Mohammed, provided the leadership from a hiding place in Palestine, organized the revolt in the provinces, and won the ardent support of the Shia Persian nationalists.

"In 749 he proclaimed himself caliph at Kufa. Merwan II met the rebel forces under Abu al-Abbas' uncle Abdallah on the river Zab. He was defeated. A year later Damascus yielded to seige.

"Merwan was caught and killed and his head was sent to Abu al-Abbas. The new Caliph was not satisfied. He said:- 'Had they quaffed my blood, it would not have quenched their thirst. Neither is my wrath slaked by this man's blood.'

"He named himself al-Saffah, the Bloodthirsty, and directed that all princes of the Umayyad line should be hunted out and slain to forestall any resurrection of the fallen dynasty.

"Abdallah, made governor of Syria, managed the matter with humor and dispatch. He announced an amnesty to the Umayyads and to confirm it he invited eighty of their leaders to dinner. While they ate, his hidden soldiers, at his signal, put them all to the sword. Carpets were spread over the fallen maen and the feast was resumed by the Abbasid diners over the bodies of their foes and to the music of dying groans.

"Moslem Spain, however, rejected his authority and in the twelfth year of his reign Sind threw off his rule.

"Hated in Damascus, uncomfortable in turbulent Kufa, al-Saffah made Anbar, north of Kufa, his capital. The men who had helped him to power, and now administered the state, were predominatnltly Persian in orgin or culture.

"After al-Saffah had drunk his fill of blood, a certain Iranian refinement and urbanity entered into the manners of the court. A succession of enlightened caliphs dignified the growth of wealth by promoting a brilliant flowering of art and literature, science and philosophy.

"Mansur's mother was a Berber slave. Of the thirty-seven Abbasid caliphs, slaves mothered all but three through the institution of concubinage and the legitimation of its progeny. In this way the Moslem aristocracy was perpetually recruited by the democracy of chance and the fortunes of love and war.

"The new Caliph was forty, tall, slender, bearded, dark, austere -- no slave to woman's beauty, no friend of wine or song, but a generous patron of letters, sciences, and arts. A man of great ability and little scruple, by his firm statesmanship, he established a dynasty that might else have died at al-Saffah's death.

"He gave himself sedulously to administration -- built a splended new capital at Baghdad -- reorganized the government and the army into their lasting form -- kept a keen eye on every department and almost every transaction -- periodically forced corrupt officials -- including his brother -- to disgorge their peculations into the treasury -- and dispensed the funds of the state with conscientious parsimony that won him no friends, but the title of 'Father of Farthings.'

"At the outset of his reign he established on a Persian model an institution -- the vizierate -- which was to play a major role in Abbasid history. As his first vizier, he appointed Khalid, son of Barmak. This family of Barmakids ws cast for a heavy part in the Abbasid drama.

"Byzantium having seized the opportunity of the Abbasid revolution to recover Arab conquered territory in Asia Minor, al-Mahdi sent an array under his son Harun to renew a theft long sanctified by time. Harun drove the Greeks back to Constantinople and so threatened that capital that the Empress Irene made peace on terms that pledged a yearly payment of 70,000 dinars ($332,500) to the caliphs (784).

"From that time onward al-Mahdi called the youth Harun al-Rashid -- Aaron the Upright. He had previously named another son heir apparent. Now, seeing the far superior capacity of Harun, he asked al-Hadi to waive his claim in favor of his younger brother.

"Al-Hadi, commanding an army in the east, refused, and disobeyed a summons to Baghdad. Al-Mahdi and Harun set out to capture him but al-Mahdi, aged forty three, died on the way.

"Harun -- so counseled by the Barmakid Yahya, son of Khalad -- recognized Hadi as Caliph, and himself as heir appaent.

"As Sa'di was to say:-'Ten dervishes can sleep on one rug but two kings cannot be accommodated in an entire kingdom.'

"Al-Hadi soon set Harun aside, imprisond Yahya, and proclaimed his own son as successor. Shortly thereafter (786) al-Hadi died. Rumor said that hie own mother, favoring Harun, had had him smothered with pillows.

"All these qualities appear in history escept the gaiety, wich perhaps offended the historians. These depict him first of all as a pious and resolutely orthodox Moslem, who severely restricted the liberties of non-Moslems, made the pilgrimage to Mecca every second year, and performed a hundred prostrations with his daily prayers.

"He drank thirstily but mostly in the privacy of a few chosen friends. He had seven wives and several concubines, eleven sons and fourteen daughters, all by slave girls except al-Emin, his son by the Princess Zobeida.

"He was generous with all forms of his wealth. When his son al-Mamun fell in love with one of Harun's palace maids, the Caliph presented her to him, merely asking him in payment to compose some lines of poetry.

"He enjoyed poetry so intensely that on some occasions he would overwhelm a poet with extravagant gifts, as when he gave the poet Merwan, for one brief but laudatory ode, 5000 pieces of gold ($23,750), a robe of honor, ten Greek slave girls, and a favorite horse.

"His boon companion was the libertine poet Abu Nuwas. Repeatedly angered by the poet's insolence or open immorality, he was repeatedly mollified by exquisite verse.

"He gathered about him in Baghdad an unparalleled galaxy of poets, jurists, physicians, grammarians, rhetors, musicians, dancers, artists, and wits --judged their work with discriminating taste -- rewarded them abundantly -- and was repaid by a thousand metrical doxologies.

"He himself was a poet, a scholar, an impetuous and eloquent orator. No court in history had ever a more brilliant constellation of intellects.

"He led his armies personally in the field and maintained all frontiers intact. For the most part, however, he entrusted administration and policy to the wise Yahya.

"Soon after his accession he summoned Yahya and said:- 'I invest you with the rule over my subjects. Rule them as you please. Depose whom you will, appoint whom you will, conduct all affairs as you see fit' and in ratification of his wods he gave Yahya his ring.

"It was an act of extreme and imprudent confidence, but Harun, still a youth of twenty-two, judged himself unprepared to rule so wide a realm. It was almost an act of gratitude to one who had been his tutor, whom he had come to call father, and who had borne imprisonment for his sake.

"Yahya proved to be one of the ablest administrators in history. Affable, generous, judicious, tireless, he brought the government to its highest pitch of efficiency -- established order, security, and justice -- built roads, bridges, inns, canals, and kept all the provinces prosperous even while taxing them severely to fill his master's purse and his own. For he, too, like the Caliph, played patron to literature and art.

"His sons al-Fadl and Jafar received high office from him, acquitted themselves well, paid themselves better. They became millionaires, built palaces, kept their own herds of poets, jesters, and philosophers.

"Harun loved Jafar so well that gossip found scandal in their intimacy. The Caliph had a cloak made with two collars, so that he and Jafar might wear it at the same time, and be two heads with but a single breast.

"As the young ruler grew into middle age, and found no complete expression of his abilities in the pursuit of sensual pleasure and intellectual discourse, he may have regretted the omnipotence with which he dowered his vizier. When he ordered Jafar to have a rebel executed, Jafar connived at the man's escape. Harun never forgave this amiable negligence.

"A story worthy of the Thousand and One Nights tells how Abbasa, Harun's sister, tell in love with Jafar. Now Harun had vowed to keep the Hashimite blood of his sisters as pure as might be of any but high Arabian fluid, and Jafar was Persian. The Caliph permitted them to marry but on their promise never to meet except in his presence.

"The lovers soon broke this agreement. Abbasa secretly bore Jafar two sons, who were concealed and reared in Medina. Zobaida, Harun's wife, discovered the situation and revealed it to Harun.

"The Caliph sent for his chief executioner, Mesrur, bade him kill Abbasa and bury her in the palace, and supervised in person the performance of these commands.

"Then he ordered Mesrur to behead Jafar and bring him the severed head, which was duly done. Then he sent to Medina for the children, talked long with the handsome boys, admired them, and had them killed (803).

"Yahya and al-Fadl were imprisoned. They were allowed to keep their families and servants, but were never released. Yahya died two years after his son, al-Fadl five years after his brother.

"He took the field at once and from his new and strategic residence at Raqqa, on the northern frontier, he led into Asia Minor such impetuous expeditions that Necephorus soon agreed to resume the tribute (806).

"To Charlemagne -- a useful foil to Byzantium -- he sent an embassy bearing many presents, including a complicated water clock and an elephant.

"Though Harun was now only forty-two, his sons al-Emin and al-Mamun were already competing for the succession and looking forwad to his death. Hoping to mitigate their strife, Harun arranged that al-Mamun should inherit the provinces east of the Tigris, al-Emin the rest, and that on the death of either brother the survivor should rule the whole.

"The brothers signed this compact and swore to it before the Kaaba. In that same year 806 a serious rebellion broke out in Khurasan. Harun set out with al-Emin and al-Mamun to suppress it, although he was suffering from severe abdominal pains.

"At Tus in eastern Iran he could no longer stand. He was in his last agony when Bashin, a rebel leader, was brought before hm. Made almost insane by pain and grief, Harun upbraided the captive for causing him to undertake this fatal expedition, ordered Bashin to be cut to pieces limb by limb, and watched the execution of the sentence.

"Al-Mamun's general Tahir defeated the armies of al-Emin, besieged and almost destroyed Baghdad, and sent al-Emin's severed head to al-Mamun after a now inviolable custome. Al-Mamun, still remaining in Merv, had himself proclaimed Caliph (813).

"Syria and Arabia continued to resist him as the son of a Persian slave and it was not until 818 that he entered Baghdad as the acknowledged ruler of Islam.

"Abdallah al-Mamun ranks with al-Mansur and al-Rashid as one of the great caliphs of the Abbasid line. Though capable at times of the fury and cruelty that had disgraced Harun, he was usually a man of mild and lenient temper. In his state council he included representatives of all the major faiths in his realm -- Mohammedan, Christian, Jewish, Sabian, Zoroastrian -- and guaranteed, until his latest years, full freedom of worship and belief.

"For a time free thought was de rigueur at the Caliph's court. Masudi describes one of al-Mamun's intellectual afternoons:-

'Al-Mamun used to hold a salon every Tuesday for the discussion of questions in theology and law. The learned men of diverse sects were shown into a chamber spread with carpets. Tables were brought in laden with food and drink. When the repast was finished, servants fetched braziers of incense, and the guests perfumed themselves. Then they were admitted to the Caliph. He would debate with them in a manner as fair and impartial, and as unlike the haughtiness of a monarch, as can be imagined. At sunset a second meal was served and the guests departed to their homes.

"Under al-Mamun the royal support of arts, sciences, letters, and philosophy became more varied and discriminating than under Harun and left a far more significant result. He sent to Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and elsewhere for the writings of the Greek masters and paid a corps of translators to render the books into Arabic.

"He surrounded himself with a bodyguard of 4000 Turkish soldiers, as roman emperors had leaned on a Praetorian Guard. In Baghdad, as in Rome, the guard became in time and effect the king. The people of the capital complained that al-Mutassim's Turks rode recklessly through the streets and committed unpunished crimes.

"Fearing popular revolt,the Caliph left Baghdad and built himself a royal residence some thirty miles north at Samarra. From 836 to 892 eight caliphs made it their home and sepulcher. For twenty miles along the Tigris they reared great palaces and mosques and their officials built luxurious mansions with murals, fountains, gardens and bath.

"The Caliph al-Mutawakkil affirmed his piety by spending 700,000 dinars ($3,325,000) on a vast congregational mosque and only a trifle less on a new royal residence, the Jafariya, with a palace called the 'Pearl,' and a 'Hall of Delight,' all sourrounded with parks and streams.

"The growth of wealth and ease, of concubinage and pederasty, had like effects among the ruling class, and relaxed the martial qualities of the people. There could not come from such indiscipline the strong hand needed to hold together so scattered and divese a conglomeration of provinces and tribes.

"Racial and territorial antipathies festered into repeated revolt. Arabs, Persians, Syrians, Berbers, Christians, Jews, and Turks agreed only in depising one another. The faith that had once forged unity split into sects that expressed and intensified political or geographic divisions.

"The Near East lives or dies by irrigation. The canals that nourished the soil needed perpetual protection and care which no individual or family could provide. When governmental maintenance of the canal system became incompetent or negligent, the food supply lagged behind the birth rate and starvation had to restore the balance between these basic factors in history.

"But the impoverishment of the people by famine or epidemic seldom stayed the hand of the tax gatherer. Peasant, criftsman, and merchant saw their gains absorbed into the expenses and frills of government and lost the incentive to production, expansion, or enterprise.

"At last the economy could not support the government. Revenues fell, soldiers could not be adequately paid or controlled. Turks took the place of Arabs in the armed forces of the state as Germans had replaced Romans in the armies of Rome. From al-Muntasir onward it was Turkish captains that made and unmade, commanded and murdered, the caliphs.

"Spain had declared itself independent in 756, Morocco in 788, Tunis in 801, Egypt in 868. Nine years later the Egyptian emirs seized Syria and ruled most of it until 1076.

"Al-Mamun had rewarded his general Tahir by assigning to him and his descendants the governorship of Khurasan. This Tahirid dynasty (820-72) ruled most of Persia in semisovereignty until replaced by the Saffarids (872-903).

"In 929-44 a tribe of Shia Moslems, the Hamdanids, captured northern Mesopotamia and Syria, and dignified their power by making Mosul and Aleppo brilliant centers of cultural life. So Sayfu'l-Dawla (944-67), himself a poet, made places at his Aleppo court for the philosopher al-Farabi and the most popular of Arab poets, al-Mutanabbi.

"The Buwayhids, sons of the Caspian highland chiertain Buwayh, captuyred Isfahan and Shiraz, and finally Baghdad (945).

"For over a century they forced the caliphs to do their bidding. The Commander of the Faithful became little more than the head of orthodox Islam, while the Buwayhid emir, a Shi'ite, assumed direction of the diminishing state.

"Adud al-Dawla, the greatest of these Buwayhids (949-83), made his capital, Shiraz, one of the fairest cities of Islam, but spent generously also on the other cities of his realm.

"A Samanid court gave protection, and the use of a rich library, to Avicenna, the greatest of medieval philosophers. Al-Razi, greatest of medieval physicians, dedicated the al-Mansuri, his immense summary of medicine, to a Samanid prince.

"In 990 the Turks captured Bokhara and in 999 they put an end to the Samanid dynasty.

"As the Byzantines for three centuries had fought to contain the Arab expansion, so now the Moslems fought to check the westward movement of the Turks. So, later, the Turks would struggle to stay the Mongol flood.

"Periodically the pressure of a growing population upon the means of subsistence generates the mass migrations that overshadow the other events of history.

"In 962 a band of Turkish adventurers from Turkestan invaded Afghanistan under the lead of Alptigin, a former slave, captured Ghazni, and established there a Ghaznevid dynasty.

"Subukrigin (976-97), first slave, then son-in-law, then successor, of Alprigin, extended his rule over Peshawar and part of Khurasan. His son Mahmud (998-1030) took all Persia from the Gulf to the Oxus, and in seventeen ruthless campaigns added the Punjab to his empire, and much of India's wealth to his coffers. Surfeited with plunder, and fretting over the unemployment caused by demobilization, he spent part of his riches, and some of his men, in building the congregational mosque of Ghazni.

"Says a Moslem historian:-

"But seven years after his death his empire passed into the hands of the Seljuq Turks.

"It would be an error to picture the Turks as barbarians. As it was necessary to modify that term as applied to the German conquerors of Rome, so it must be said that the Turks were already passing out of barbarism when they overran Islam. Moving westward from Lake Baikal, the Turks of north central Asia organized themselves in the sixth century under a khan or chagan.

"Forging iron found in their mountains, they made weapons as hard as their code, which punished not only treason and murder, but adultery and cowardice, with death. The fertility of their women outran the mortality of their wars. By A.D. 1000 a branch of Turks known by the name of their Beg or leader Seljuq dominated Transoxiana as well as Turkestan.

"Mahmud of Ghazni, thinking to halt this rival Turkish power, seized a son of Seljuq, and imprisoned him in India (1029). Undaunted and enraged, the Seljuq Turks under the stern but masterful Tughril Beg took most of Persia, and paved their further advance by sending to the Caliph al-Qaim at Baghdad a deputation announcing their submission to him and Islam.

"The Caliph hoped that these fearless warriors might free him from his Buwayhid overlords. He invited Tughril Beg to come to his aid. Tughril came (1055) and the Buwayhids fled. Al-Qaim married Tughril's niece, and made him 'King of the East and the West' (1058).

"One by one the petty dynasties of Asiatic Islam crumbled before the Seljuqs, and acknowledged again the supremacy of Baghdad. The Seljuq rulers took the title of sultan -- master -- and reduced the caliphs to a merely religious role. But they brought to the government a new vigor and competence, and to Mohammedanism a new fervor of orthodox faith.

"That harassed country has felt the claws of rival imperialisms through many centuries because its mountains hindered its unity of defense while its valleys provided tempting roads between Mesopotamia and the Black Sea. Greece and Persia fought for those roads as highways of trade and war. Xenophon's Ten Thousand traversed them -- Rome and Persia fought for them -- Byzantium and Persia, Byzantium and Islam, Russia and Britain.

"Through all vicissitudes of external pressure or domination, Armenia maintained a practical independence, a vigorous commercial and agricultural economy, a cultural autonomy that produced its own creed, literature, and art.

"It was the first nation to adopt Christianity as its state religion (303). It took the Monophysite side in the debate about the natures of Christ, refusing to admit that He had shared the infirmities of human flesh.

"In 491 the Armenian bishops parted from Greek and Roman Christianity and formed an autonomous Armenian Church under its own Katholikos. Armenian literature used the Greek language until the early fifth century when Bishop Mesrob invented a national alphabet and translated the Bible into the Armenian tongue. Since that time Armenia has had an abundant literature, chiefly in religion and history.

"From 642 to 1046 the country was nominally subject to the caliphs but it remained virtually sovereign and zealously Christian.

"In the ninth century the Bagratuni family established a dynasty under the title of 'Prince of Princes,' built a capital at Ani, and gave the country several generations of progress and relative peace.

"Ashot III (952-77) was much loved by his people. He founded many churches, hospitals, convents, and almshouses, and (we are told) never sat down to meals without allowing poor men to join him.

"Under his son Gagik I (990-1020) -- how peculiar our names must seem to the Armenians! -- prosperity reached its height:- schools were numerous, towns were enriched by trade and adorned by art, and Kars rivaled Ani as a center of literature, theology, and philosophy.

"Ani had impressive palaces and a famous cathedral (c.980), subtly compounded of Persian and Byzantine styles. Here were piers and column clusters, pointed as well as round arches, and other features that later entered into Gothic art.

"Behind the facade, and under the burden, of courts and palaces, temples and schools, letters and luxuries and arts, stands the basic man -- the hunter bringing game from the woods -- the woodsman felling the forest -- the herdsman pasturing and breeding his flock -- the peasant clearing, plowing, sowing, cultivating, reaping, rending the orchard, the vine, the hive, and the brood -- the woman absorbed in the hundred crafts and cares of a functioning home -- the miner digging in the earth -- the builder shaping homes and vehicles and ships -- the artisan fashioning products and tools -- the pedlar, shopkeeper, and merchant uniting and dividing maker and user -- the investor fertilizing industry with his savings -- the executive harnessing muscle, materials, and minds for the creation of services and goods.

"Industry was in the handicraft stage, practiced in homes and artisans shops, and organized in guilds. We find few factories, and no clear advance in technology except the development of the windmill. Masudi, writing in the tenth century, speaks of seeing these in Persia and the Near East. There is no sign of them in Europe before the twelfth century. Possibly they were another gift of the Moslem East to its crusading foes.

"There was much mechanical ingenuity. The water clock sent by Harun al-Rashid to Charlemagne was made of leather and damascened brass. It told the time by metal cavaliers who at each hour opened the door, let fall the proper number of balls on a cymbal, and then, retiring, closed the door.

"Production was slow, but the worker could express himself in integral work, and made almost every industry an art. Persian, Syrian, and Egyptian textiles were famous for the patient perfection of their technique:--Mosul for its connon muslin -- Damascus for its damask linen -- Aden for its wool. Damascus was noted also for its swords of highly tempered steel -- Sidon and Tyre for glass of unexcelled thinness and clarity -- Baghdad for its glass and pottery -- Rayy for pottery, needles, combs -- Raqqa for olive oil and soap -- Fars for perfume and rugs.

"So the camel, 'ship of the desert,' bore most of the freight of Arab trade. Caravans of 4700 camels swayed across the Moslem world.

"Great roads radiating from Baghdad led through Rayy, Nishapur, Merv, Bokhara, and Samarkand to Kashgar and the Chinese frontier -- through Mosul or Damascus to the Syrian coast. Caravanserais or inns, hospices and cisterns helped the traveler and his beasts. Much inland traffic was borne on rivers and canals. Harun al-Rashid planned a Suez canal, but Yahya, for unknown reasons, probably financial, discouraged the idea.

"The Tigris at Baghdad, 750 feet wide, was spanned by three bridges built upon boats.

"Over these arteries a busy commerce passed. It was an economic advantage to western Asia that one government united a region formerly divided among four states. Customs dues and other trade barriers were removed, and the flow of commodities was further eased by unity of language and faith.

"The Arabs did not share the European aristocrat's scorn of the merchant. Soon they joined Christians, Jews, and Persians in the business of getting goods from producer to consumer with the least possible profit to either.

"Cities and towns swelled and hummed with transport, barter, and sale. Pedlars cried their wares to latticed windows. Shops dangled their stock and resounded with haggling. Fairs, markets, and bazaars gathered merchandise, merchants, buyers, and poets. Caravans bound China and India to Persia, Syria, and Egypt. Ports like Baghdad, Basra, Aden, Cairo, and Alexandria sent Arab merchanmen out to sea.

"Moslem commerce dominated the Mediteranean until the Crusades, plying between Syria and Egypt at one end -- Tunis, Sicily, Morocco, and Spain at the other -- and touching Greece, Italy, and Gaul. It captured control of the Red Sea from Ethiopia. It reached over the Caspian into Mongolia, and up the Volga from Astrakhan to Novgorod, Finland, Scandinavia, and Germany, where it left thousands of Moslem coins.

"It answered the Chinese junks that visited Basra by sending Arab dhows out from the Persian Gulf to India and Ceylon, through the Straits and up the Chinese coast to Khanfu (Canton). A colony of Moslem and Jewish merchants was well established there in the tenth century, when western Europe was at nadir.

"Ibn Hawqal (c.975) describes a kind of promissory note for 42,000 dinars addressed to a merchant in Morocco. From the Arabic word sakk for this form of credit is derived our word check. Investors shared in financing commercial voyages or caravans. Though interest was forbidden, ways were found, as in Europe, of evading the prohibition and repaying caital for its use and risk.

"Monopolies were illegal but propspered. Within a century after Omar's death the Arab upper classes had amassed great wealth and lived on luxurious estates manned by hundreds of slaves. Yahya the Barmakid offered 7,000,000 dirhems ($560,000) for a pearl box made of precious stones and was refused. The Caliph Muqtafi, if we may believe Moslem figures, left at his death 20,000,000 dinars ($94,500,000) in jewelry and perfumes.

"When Harun al-Rashid married his son al-Mamun to Buran, her grandmother emptied a shower of pearls upon the groom. Her father scattered among the guests balls of musk, each of which contained a writ entitling the possessor to a slave, a horse, an estate, or some other gift. After Muqtadir confiscated 16,000,000 dinars of Ibn al-Jassas' furtune, that famous jeweler remained a wealthy man.

"The Caliph Muqtadir, we are told, had 11,000 eunuchs in the household. Musa took 300,000 captives in Africa, 30,000 'virgins' in Spain, and sold them into slavery. Qutayba capatured 100,000 in Sogdiana. The figures are Oriental and must be discounted.

"The Koran recognized the capture of non-Moslems in war and the birth of children to slave parents, as the sole legitimate sources of slavery. No Moslem (just as in Christendom no Christian) was to be enslaved. Nevertheless a brisk trade developed in slaves captured in raids -- negroes from East and Central Africa, Turks or Chinese from Turkestan, whites from Russia, Italy, and Spain.

"The Moslem had full rights of life and death over his slaves. Usually, however, he handled them with a genial humanity that made their lot no worse -- perhaps better, as more secure -- than that of a factory worker in nineteenth century Europe. Slaves did most of the menial work on the farms, most of the unskilled manual work in the towns. They acted as servants in the household and as concubines or eunuchs in the harem. Most dancers, singers, and actors were slaves.

"The offspring of a female slave by her master, or of a free woman by her slave, was free from birth. Slaves were allowed to marry. Their children, if talented, might receive an education.

"There was and is much begging in Islam and much imposture in begging. But the poor Asiatic had a protective skill in working slowly. Few men could rival him in manifold adaptation to idleness, alms were frequent, and at the worst a homeless man could sleep in the finest edifice in town -- the mosque.

"Even so, the eternal class war simmered sullenly through the years and broke out now and then (778, 796, 808, 838) in violent revolt. Usually, since state and church were one, rebellion took a religious garb. Some sects, like the Khurramiyya and the Muhayyida, adopted the communistic ideas of the Persian rebel Mazdak. One group called itself Surkh Alam -- the 'Red Flag.'

"About 772 Hashim al-Muqanna -- the 'Veiled Prophet' of Khurasan -- announced that he was God incarnate, and had come to restore the commnunism of Mazdak.

"He gathered various sects about him, defeated many armies, ruled northern Persia for fourteen years and was finally (786) captured and killed.

"In 838 Babik al-Khurranbi renewed the effort, gathered around him a band known as Muhammira -- i.e. 'Reds,' -- seized Azerbaijan, held it for twenty-two yers, defeated a succession of armies, and (Tabari would have us believe) killed 255,500 soldiers and captives before he was overcome.

"They agreed, seized food and supplies, defeated the troops sent against them, and built themselves independent villages with palaces for their leaders, prisons for their captives, and mosques for their prayers (869). The employers offered Ali five dinars ($23.75) per head if he would persuade the rebels to return to work. He refused.

"The surrounding country tried to starve them into submission. When their supplies ran out, they attacked the town of Obolla, freed and absorbed its slaves, sacked it, and put it to flames (870).

"Much encouraged, Ali led his men against other towns, took many of them, and captured control of southern Iran and Iraq to the gates of Baghdad. Commerce halted and the capital began to starve. In 871 the Negro general Mohallabi, with a large army of rebels, seized Basra. If we may credit the historians, 300,000 persons were massacred, and thousands of white women and children, including the Hashimite aristocracy, became the concubines or slaves of the Negro troos.

"For ten years the rebellion continued. Great armies were sent to suppress its amnesty and rewards were offered to deserters. Many of his men left Ali and joined the government's forces. The remnant was surrounded, besieged, and bombarded with molten lead and 'Greek fire' -- flaming torches of naphtha.

"Finally, a government army under the vizier Mowaffaq made its way into the rebel city, overcame resistance, killed Ali, and brought his hed to the victor. Mowaffaq and his officers knelt and thanked Allah for His mercies (883).

"Despite polygamy, the Moslem found considerable time for Allah and based his morals, his laws, and his government upon his religion.

"Theoretically the Moslem faith was the simplest of all creeds:-'There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is His Prophet.' (La ilaha il-Allah, Muhammad-un Rasulu-llah.)

"The simplicity of the formula is only apparent, for its second clause involves the acceptance of the Koran and all its teachings. Consequently the orthodox Muslem also believed in heaven and hell -- angels and demons -- the resurrection of body and soul -- the divine predestination of all events -- the Last Judgment -- the four duties of Moslem practice -- prayer, alms, fasting, and pilgrimage -- and the divine inspiration of various prophets who led up to Mohammed.

"Said the Koran:-'For every nation there is a messenger and prophet (x,48). Some Moslems reckon such messengers at 224,000. But apparently only Abraham, Moses, and Jesus were considered by Mohammed as having spoken the word of God.

"Hence the Moslem was required to accept the Old Testament and the Gospels as inspired scriptures. Where these contradicted the Koran it was because their divine text had been willfully or unwittingly corrupted by men. In any case the Koran superseded all previous revelations, and Mohammed excelled all their other messengers of God.

"Christian influences seem to have molded many of the traditions. Love toward one's enemies was inculcated, although Mohammed had sterner views. The Lord's Prayer was adopted from the Gospels. The parables of the sower, the wedding guests, and the laborers in the vineyard were put into Mohammed's mouth.

"All in all, he was transformed into an excellent Christian, despite his nine wives. Moslem critics complained that much of the Hadith had been concocted as Umayyad, Abbasid, or other propaganda.

"Ibn Abi al-Awja, executed at Kufa in 772, confessed to having fabricated 4000 traditions. A few skeptics laughed at the Hadith collections and composed indecent stories in solemn Hadith form.

"Nevertheless, the acceptance of the Hadith, in one or the other of the approved collections, as binding in faith and morals, became a distinguishing mark of orthodox Moslems, who therefore received the name of Sunni, or traditionalists.

"One tradition represented the angel Gabriel as asking Mohammed:-'What is Islam' -- and made Mohammed reply:-'Islam is to believe in Allah and His Prophet, to recite the prescribed prayers, to give alms, to observe the fast of Ramadan, and to make the pilgrimage to Mecca.'

"As prayer was required of the Moslem five times a day, cleanliness came literally next to godliness. Mohammed, like Moses, used religion as a means to hygiene as well as to morality, on the general principle that the rational can secure popular acceptance only in the form of the mystical.

"He warned that the prayer of an unclean person would not be heard by God. He even thought of making the brushing of the teeth a prerequisite to prayer but finally he compromised on the washing of the face, the hands, and the feet (v.6)

"A man who had had sexual relations, a woman who had menstruated, or given birth, since the last purification, must bathe before prayer. At dawn, shortly after midday, in late afternoon, at sunset, and at bedtime the muezzin mounted a minaret to sound the adhan, or call to prayer:-

'Allahu Akbar (God is most great)! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! I bear witness that there is no God but Allah. I bear witness that there is no God but Allah. I bear witness that there is no God but Allah. I bear witness that Mohamnmed is the Apostle of Allah. I bear witness that Mohammed is the Apostle of Allah. I bear witness that Mohammed is the Apostle of Allah. Come to prayer! Come to prayer! Come to prayer! Come to success! Come to success! Come to success! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! There is no God but Allah!'

"The mosque, like the synagogue and the church, was the center of daily life -- the home and hearth of the community. Half an hour before Friday noon the muezzin chanted from the minarets the salutation or salaam -- a blessing on Allah, Mohammed, his family, and the great Companions, and called the congregation to the mosque.

"The worshipers were expected to have bathed and put on clean clothes, and to have perfumed themselves. They might perform minor ablutions in the tank or fountain that stood in the courtyard of the mosque. The women usually stayed at home when the men went to the mosque and vice versa. It was feared that the presence of women, even veiled, would distract the excitable male.

"The worshipers removed their shoes at the door of the mosque proper and entered in slippers or stocking feet. There or in the court (if they were numerous) they stood shoulder to shoulder in one or more rows, facing the mihrab or prayer niche in the wall which indicated the qibla or direction of Mecca.

"An imam or prayer leader read a passage from the Koran and preached a short sermon. Each worshiper recited several prayers and in the prescribed postures of bowing, kneeling, and prostration. Mosque meant a place of prostration in prayer.

"Then the imam recited a complex series of salutations, benedictions, and orisons, in which the congregation silently joined. There were no hymns, processions, or sacraments, no collections of pew rents. Religion, being one with the state, was financed from public funds.

"The imam was not a priest but a layman, who continued to earn his living by a secular occupation and was appointed by the mosque warden for a specified period and a small salary to lead the congregation in prayer. There was no priesthood in Islam.

<"Apparently his early followers were mostly of humble orgin. One of his first activities in Medina was to establish an annual tax of two and a half per cent on the movable wealth of all citizens for the relief of the poor. Regular officials collected and distributed this revenue. Part of the proceeds was used to build mosques and defray the expenses of government and war. But war in return brought booty that swelled the gifts to the poor.

"Said Omar II:-'Prayer carries us halfway to God, fasting brings us to the door of His palace, almsgiving lets us in.'

"In general the Moslem was commanded to avoid wine, carrion, blood, and the flesh of swine or dogs. But Mohammed was more lenient than Moses. Forbidden foods might be eaten in cases of necessity. Of a tasty cheese containing some prohibited meat, he only asked with his sly humor:-'Mention the name of Allah over it.'

"He frowned on asceticism and condemned monasticism (vii, 27). Mohammedans were to enjoy the pleasurs of life with a good conscience but in moderation. Nevertheless, Islam, like most religions, required certain fasts, partly as a discipline of the will, partly, we may presume, as hygiene.

"A few months after settling in Medina he saw the Jews keeping their annual fast of Yom Kippur. He adopted it for his followers, hoping to win the Jews to Islam. When this hope faded he transferred the fast to the month of Ramadan.

"For twenty-nine days the Moslem was to abstain, during the daylight hours, from eating, drinking, smoking, or contact with the other sex. Exceptions were made for the sick, the weary traveler, the very young or old, and women with child or giving suck.

"When first decreed, the month of fasting fell in winter, when daylight came late and ended soon. But as the lunar calendar of the Moslems made the year shorter than the four seasons, Ramadan, every thirty-three years, fell in midsummer, when the days are long and the Eastern heat makes thirst a torture. Yet the good Moslem bore the fast.

"Each night, however, the feast was broken, and the Moslem might eat, drink, smoke, and make love until the dawn. Stores and shops remained open all those nights, inviting the populace to feasting and merriment.

"The poor worked as usual during the month of fast. The well-to-do could ease their way through it by sleeping during the day. Very pious persons spent the last ten nights of Ramadan in the mosque. On one of those nights, it was believed, Allah began to reveal the Koran to Mohammed. That night was accounted 'better than a thousand months' and simple devotees, uncertain which of the ten was the 'Night of the Divine Decree' kept all ten with dire solemnity.

"Pilgrimage to holy places was traditional in the East. The Jew lived in hopes of one day seeing Zion. Pious pagan Arabs, long before Mohammed, had trekked to the Kaaba. Mohammed accepted the old custom because he knew that ritual is less easily changed than belief -- perhaps because he himself hankered after the Black Stone. By yielding to the old rite he opened a wide door to the acceptance of Islam by all Arabia.

"The Kaaba, purified of its idols, became for all Moslems the house of God. Upon every Mohammedan the obligation was laid (with considerate exceptions for the ailing and the poor) to make the Mecca pilgrimage 'as often as he can' -- which was soon interpreted as meaning once in a lifetime.

"On the seventh day those who wished to make the 'major pilgrimage' streamed out to Mt. Arafat -- six hours' journey distant -- and heard a three-hour sermon. Returning halfway, they spent a might in prayer at the oratory of Muzdalifa.

"On the eighth day they rushed to the valley of Mina and threw seven stones at three marks or pillars, for so, they believed, Abraham had cast stones at Satan when the Devil interrupted his preparations for slaying his son.

On the tenth day they sacrificed a sheep, a camel, and some other horned animal, ate the meat and distributed alms. This ceremony, commemorating similar sacrifices by Mohammed, was the central rite of the pilgrimage. This 'Festival of Sacrifice' was celebrated with like offerings to Allah, by Moslems all over the world on the tenth day of the pilgrimage period.

"The pilgrims now shaved their heads, paired their nails, and buried the cuttings. This completed the Major Pilgrimage.

"There were the martial, puritanic, democratic Kharijites -- Murji'ites who held that no Moslem would be everlastingly damned -- Jabrites who denied free will and upheld absolute predestination -- Qadarites who defended the freedom of the will, and many others. We pay our respects to their sincerity and omniscience, and pass on.

"But the Shi'ites belong inescapably to history. They overthrew the Umayyads, captured Persian, Egyptian, and Indian Islam, and deeply affected literature and philosophy. The Shia (i.e. group,sect) had its origin in two murders -- the assassination of Ali, and the slaughter of Husein and his family.

"A large minority of Moslems argued that since Mohammed was the chosen Apostle of Allah, it must have been Allah's intent that the Prophet's descendants, inheriting some measure of his divine spirit and purpose, should inherit his leadership in Islam.

"All caliphs except Ali seemed to them usurpers. They rejoiced when Ali became caliph, mourned when he was murderd, and were profoundly shocked by Husein's death. Ali and Husein became saints in Shia worship. Their shrines were held second in holiness only to the Kaaba and the Prophet's tomb.

"Perhaps influenced by Persian, Jewish, and Christian ideas of a Messiah, and the Buddhist conception of Bodhisattvas -- repeatedly incarnated saints -- the Shi'ites considered the descendants of Ali to be Imams ('exemplars'), i.e. infalliable incarnations of divine wisdom.

"The eighth Imam was Riza, whose tomb at Mashhad, in northeastern Persia, is accounted the 'Glory of the Shia World.'

"It was a fiscal advantage to share the faith of the ruling race. Captives in war could escape slavery by accepting Allah, Mohammed, and circumcision. Gradually the non-Moslem populations adopted the Arabic languge and dress, the laws and faith of the Koran.

"Where Hellenism, after a thousand years of mastery, had failed to take root, and Roman arms had left the native gods unconquered, and Byzantine orthodoxy had raised rebellious heresies, Mohammedanism had secured, almost with proselytism, not only belef and worship, but a tenacious fidelity tht quite forgot the superseded gods.

"As conquerors they were proud of their supposedly unmixed blood and pure speech. With keen genealogical consciousness the Arab added his father's name to his own, as in Abdallah ibn (son of) Zobeir. Sometimes he added his tribe and place of origin, and made a biography of a name, as in Abu Bekr Ahmad ibn Jarir al-Azdi.

"Purity of blood became a myth as the conquerors took conquered women as concubines, and reckoned their offspring as Arabs. But pride of blood and rank remained.

"The higher class of Arabs moved about on horseback, clothed in white silk and a sword. The commoner walked in baggy trousers, convoluted turban, and pointed shoes. The Bedouin kept his flowing gown, head shawl, and band. Long drawers were prohibited by the Prophet, but some Arabs ventured into them.

"All classes affected jewelry. Women stimulated the male fancy with tight bodices, bright girdles, loose and colorful skirts. They wore their hair in bangs at the front, curls at the side, braids at the back. Sometimes they filled it out with black silk threads. Often they adorned it with gems or flowers.

"Increasingly after the year 715, when out of doors, they veiled the face below the eyes. In this way every woman could be romantic, for at any age the eyes of Arab women are perilously beautiful.

"Perhaps Islam erred in the oppposite direction and carried marriage to an extreme. It gave the sexual appetite so many outlets within the law that prostitution diminished for a time under Mohammed and the Successors.

"Exhaustion requires stimulation and dancing girls soon played a prominent role in the life of even the most married Moslem male. Moslem literature, being intended only for male eyes and ears, was sometimes as loose as male conversation in a Christian land. It contained a superabundance of deliberately erotic books. Moslem medical works gave much attention to aphrodisiacs.

"In strict Mohammedan law fornication and pederasty were to be punished with death. The growth of wealth brought an easier ethic, punished fornication with thirty strokes, and winked at the spread of homosexual love. A class of professional homosexuals (mukhannath) arose who imitated the costume and conduct of women, plaited their hair, dyed their nails with henna, and performed obscene dances.

"The Caliph Suleiman ordered the mukhannath of Mecca castrated. The Caliph al-Hadi, coming upon two women attendants in Lesbian relations, beheaded them on the spot.

"Despite such discouragement homosexualism made rapid progress. A few years after al-Hadi it was prevalent at Harun's court and in the songs of his favorite poet Abu Nuwas.

"The Moslem male, separated from women before marrige by purdah, and surfeited with them after marriage by the harem, fell into irregular relations.

"But the Moslems of Mohammed's century had not secluded their women. The two sexes exchanged visits, moved indiscriminately through the streets, and prayed together in the mosque. When Musab ibn al-Zobeir asked his wife Aisha why she never veiled her face, she answered 'Since Allah, may He remain blessed and exalted, hath put upon me the stamp of beauty, it is my wish that the public should view that beauty, and thereby recognize His grace unto them.'

"Under Walid II (743-4), however, the harem-and-eunuch system took form, and purdah developed with it. Harim, like haram, meant forbidden, sacred. The seclusion of women was originally due to their being tabu because of menstruation or childbirth. The harem was a sanctuary.

"The Moslem husband knew the passionate temper of the Oriental, felt a need to protect his women, and saw no escape from their adultery except through their incarceration. It became reprehensible for women to walk in the streets except for short distances and veiled. They could visit one another, but usually they traveled in curtained litters. They were never to be seen abroad at night.

"They were separated from the men in the mosque by a screen or railing or gallery. Finally they wre excluded altogether. Religion, which in Latin Christendom has been described as a secondary sexual characteristic of the female, became in Islam, as public worship, a prereogative of the male.

"Even more cruelly, women were forbidden the pleasure of shopping. They sent out for what they needed. Pedlars, usually women, came to spread their wares on the harem floor. Rarely, except in the lower classes, did the women sit at table with their husbands.

"It was unlawful for a Moslem to see the face of any woman except his wives, slaves, and near relatives. A physican was allowed to see only the afflicted part of a woman patient. The man found the system very convenient. It gave him at home a maximum of opportunity, adnd outside the home full freedom from surveillance or surprise.

"As for the women themselves, until the nineteenth century, there is no evidence that they objected to purdah or the veil. They enjoyed the privacy, security, and comforts of the zenana, or women's quarters. They resented as an insult any negligence of the husband in maintaining their seclusion, and from their apparent prison the legal wives still played a lively part in history.

"Polygamy in Islam was more often successive than simultaneous. Only the rich could afford plural wives. Facility of divorce made it possible for a Moslem to have almost any number of successive mates.

"Ali had 200. Ibn al-Teiyib, a dyer of Baghdad who lived to be eighty-five, is reported to have married 900 wives.

"In addition to wives, a Moslem might have any number of concubines. Harun contented himself with 200, but al-Mutawakkil, we are told, had 4000, each of whom shared his bed for a night. Some slave merchants trained female slaves in music, song, and sexual seduction and then sold them as concubines for as much as 100,000 dirhems ($80,000).

"But we must not think of the usual harem as a private brothel. In most cases the concubines became mothers, and prided themslves on the number and gender of their children. There were many instances of tender affection between master and concubine. Legal wives accepted concubinage as a matter of course. Zobaida, wife of Harun, presented him with ten concubines. In this way a man's household might contain as many children as an American suburb. A son of Walid I had sixty sons and an unrecorded number of daughters.

"Eunuchs, forbidden by the Koran, became a necessary appendage to the harem. Christians and Jews participated in importing or manufacturing them. Caliphs, viziers, and magnates paid high prices for them. Soon these cunning castrati subjected many phases of Moslem government to their narrow competence.

"In the early centuries after the conquest, this harem system prevented the Arabs from being ethnically absorbed by the conquered population, and multiplied them to a number needed to rule their spreading realm.

"It is remarkable how many adulteries she managed to commit despite her handicaps. She was reviled and revered -- belittled and suppressed -- and in most cases was loved with passion and tenderness.

"Said Abu'l Atiyya:-'For my wife I will gladly renounce all the prizes of life and all the wealth of the world.' Such professions were frequent and sometimes sincere.

"In one matter the Moslem wife was favored as compared with some European women. Whatever property she received was wholly at her disposal, not subject to any claims of her husband or his creditors. Within the security of the Zenana she spun, wove, sewed, managed the household and the children, played games, ate sweets, gossiped and intrigued.

"She was expected to bear many children, as economic assets in an agricultural and patriarchal society. The estimation in which she was held depended chiefly upon her fertility. Said Mohammed:-'A piece of old matting lying in a corner is better than a barren wife.'

"Nevertheless abortion and contraception were widely practiced in the harem. Midwives transmitted ancient techniques, and physicians offered new ones.

"The Koran more definitely denounced gambling and intoxication (v.90). But some gambling and much drinking continued in both civilizations. Corruption in government and judiciary flourished in Islam as in Christendom.

"In general the Moslem seems to hve excelled the Christian in commercial morality, fidelity to his word, and loyalty to treaties signed. Saladin was by common consent the best gentleman of the Crusades. The Moslems were honest about lying. They allowed a lie to save a life, to patch up a quarrel, to please a wife, to deceive in war the enemies of the faith.

"Moslem manners were both formal and genial, and Moslem speech was heavy with compliments and polite hyperbole. Like the Jews, the Moslems greeted one another with a solemn bow and salutation:-'Peace (salaam) be with you' and the proper reply of every Moslem was:-'On you be peace, and the mercy and blessings of God.'

"Hospitality was universal and generous. Cleanliness was a function of income. The poor were neglected and encrusted, the well-to-do wee scrubbed, manicured, and perfumed. Circumcision, though not mentioned in the Koran, was taken for granted as a precaution of hygiene. Boys underwent the operation at five or six.

"Private baths were a luxury of the rich but public bathhouses were numerous. Baghdad in the tenth century. we are told, had 27,000.

"Perfumes and incense were popular with men as well as with women. Arabia was famous of old for its frankincense and myrrh. Persia for its oil of roses, or violets or jasmine.

"We find from Avicenna's Qanun that the Moslems of the tenth century had nearly all the sports and physical foibles of our time -- boxing, wrestling, running, archery, throwing the javelin, gymnastics, fencing, riding, polo, croquet, weight lifting and ball playing with mallet, hockey stick, or bat.

"Games of chance being forbidden, cards and dice were not much used. Backgammon was popular. Chess was allowed, though Mohammed had denounced the carving of the pieces in the likeness of men.

"Horse racing was popular, and was patronized by the caliphs. In one program, we are informed, 4000 horses took part. Hunting remained the most aristocratic of sports, less violent than in Sasanian times, and often subsiding into falconry.

"Probably the cruelties recorded of the caliphs were no worse in total than those of contemporary Christian kings, Byzantine, Merovingian, or Norse. But they were a disgrace to any civilization.

"In 717 Suleiman, on pilgrimage to Mecca, invited his courtiers to try their swords on 400 Greeks recently captured in war. The invitation was accepted and the 400 men were beheaded in merry sport as the Caliph looked on.

"Al-Mutawakkil, enthroned, cast into prison a vizier who had, some years before, treated him with indignity. For weeks the prisoner was kept awake to the point of insanity. Then he was allowed to sleep for twenty-four hours. So strengthened, he was placed between boards lined with spikes, which prevented his moving without self-laceration. So he lay in agony for days until he died.

"Such savagery, of course, was exceptional. Normally the Moslem was the soul of courtesy, humanity, and tolerance. He was, if we may describe the mythical average, quick of apprehension and wit, excitable and lazy, easily amused and readily cheerful -- finding content in simplicity, bearing misfortune calmly, accepting all events with patience, dignity, and pride.

"Actually the Commander of the Faithful was chosen, and policy was decided, by a small group of notables in Medina. This was to be expected. Men being by nature unequal in intelligence and scruple, democracy must at best be relative. In communities with poor communication and limited schooling some form of oligarcy is inevitable.

"Since war and democracy are enemies, the expansion of Islam promoted one-man rule. Unity of command and quickness of decision were required by a martial and imperialist policy.

"Under the Umayyads the government became frankly monarchical, and the caliphate was transmitted by succession or trial of arms.

"Again theoretically, the caliphate was a religious rather than a political office. The caliph was first of all the head of a religious group, Islam. His primary duty was to defend the faith. In theory, the caliphate was a theocracy, a government by God through religion.

"The caliph, however, was not a pope or a priest, not could he issue new decrees of the faith. In practice he enjoyed nearly absolute power, limited by no parliament, no hereditary aristocracy, no priesthood, but only by the Koran -- which his paid pundits could interpret at his will.

"As conquest extended the reach and responsibilities of Mohammed's impromptu legislation, and puzzled it with cases unforseen in the Koran, the Moslem jurists invented traditions that implicitly or explicitly met their need, hence the Hadith became a second source of Mohammedan law. By strange but repeated coincidence these useful traditions echoed the principles and judgments of Roman and Byzantine law, and still more of the Mishna or Gemara of the Jews.

"The growing mass and complexity of legal traditions gave sustenance and high status to the legal profession in Islam. The jurists (faqihs) who expounded or applied the law acquired by the tenth century almost the power and sanctity of a priestly class.

"They might have devastated or confiscated everything like the Mongols or the Magyars or the raiding Norse. Instead they merely taxed.

"When Omar conquered Egypt he rejected the advice of Zobeir to divide the land among his followers and the Caliph confirmed his judgment. Said Omar:-'Leave it in the people's hands to nurse and fructify.'

"Under the caliphal government lands were measured, records were systematically kept, roads and canals were multiplied or maintained, rivers were banked to prevent floods. Iraq, now half desert, was again a garden of Eden. Palestine, recently so rich in sand and stories, was fertile, wealthy, and populous.

"Civilization is rural in base but urban in form. Man must gather in cities to provie for one another audiences and stimuli.

"Moslem towns were nearly all of modest size, with 10,000 souls or less, cramped into a small and usually walled area for protection against raid or siege, with unlit streets of dust or mud, and little stucco houses hugging their privacy behind a forbvidding continuum of external wall. All the glory of the town was concentrated in the mosque.

"But here and there rose the cities in which Moslem civilization touched its sumiits of beauty, learning, and happiness.

"In Moslem sentiment both Mecca and Medina were holy cities, one as the seat of the ancient Arab shrine and the birthplace of the Prophet, the other as his refuge and home.

"Walid II rebuilt in splendor the modest mosque at Medina. At Walid's urging, and for 80,000 dinars, the Byzantine emperor sent forty loads of mosaic stones, and eighty craftsmen from Egypt and Greece. The Moslems complained tht their Prophet's mosque was being built by Christian infidels.

"Despite the Kaaba and this mosque, the two cities took on under the Umayyads an aspect of worldly pleasure and luxury that would have shocked the earlier caliphs, and must have gladdened the triumphant Quraish.

"The spoils of conquest had flowed into Medina, and had been distributed chiefly to its citizens. Pilgrims were coming to Mecca in greater number and with richer offerings than ever before, enormously stimulating trade. The holy cities became centers of wealth, leisure, gaiety, and song. Palaces and suburban villas housed an aristocracy surfeited with servants and slaves. Concubines accumulated, forbidden wine flowed, singers, strummed pleasantly sad melodies, and poets multiplied rhymes of war and love.

"At Medina the beautiful Suqainah, daughter of the martyred Husein, presided over a salon of poets, jurists, and statesmen. Her wit, charm, and good taste set a standard for all Islam. She could not count her successive husbands on her jeweled fingers. In some instances she made it a condition of marrige that she should retain full freedom of action.

"The Caliph Abd-al-Malik, envying the splendor with which the Church of the Holy Sepulcher had been restored after its destruction by Khosru Parvez, lavished the revenues of Egypt to surpass that shrine with a group of structures known to the Moslem world as Al-Haram al-Sharif (the venerble sanctuary). At the south end was built (691-4) Al-Masjid al-Agsa -- 'The Farther Mosque' -- so named after a passage in the Koran (xvii,1).

"It was ruined by earthquake in 746, restored in 785, and often modified. But the nave goes back to Abd-al-Malik, and most of the columns to Justinian's basilica in Jerusalem. Muqaddad considered it more beautiful than the Great Mosque at Damascus.

"Somewhere in the sacred enclosure, it was said, Mohammed had met Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, and had prayed with them. Nearby he had seen the rock (reckoned by Israel to be the center of the world) where Abraham had thought to sacrifice Isaac, and Moses had received the Ark of the Covenant, and Solomon and Herod had built their temples. From that rock Mohammed had ascended into heaven. If one but had faith he could see in the rock the footprints of the Prophet.

"In 684, when the rebel Abdallah ibn Zobeir held Mecca and received the revenues of its pilgrims, Abd-al-Malik, anxious to attract some of this sacred revenue, decreed that thereafter this rock should replace the Kaaba as the object of pious pilgrimage.

"Over that historic stone his artisans (691) raised in Syrian-Byzantine style the famous 'Dome of the Rock' which soon ranked as the third of the 'four wonders of the Moslem world' (the others were the mosques of Mecca, Medina, and Damascus).

"It was not a mosque, but a shrine to house the rock. The Crusaders erred twice in calling it the 'Mosque of Omar.' Upon an octagonal building of squared stones, 528 feet in circuit, rises a dome, 112 feet high, mae of wood externally covered with gilded brass. Four elegant portals -- their lintels faced by splended repousse bronze plates -- lead into an interior divided into diminishing octagons by concentric colonnades of polished marbles.

"The magnificent columns were taken from Roman ruins, the capitals were Byzantine. The spandrels of the arches are distinguished by mosaics depicting trees with all the delicacy of a Courber.

"Even finer are the mosaics of the drum below the dome. Running around the cornice of the outer colonnade, in yellow letters on blue tiles, is an inscription in Kufic -- the angular characters favored in Jufa. Saladin had it set up in 1187. It is a lovely example of this unique form of architectural decoration. Within the colonnade is the massive shapeless rock, 200 feet around.

"Five converging streams made its hinterland the 'Garden of the Earth,' fed a hundred public fountains, a hundred public baths, and 120,000 gardens, and flowed out westward into a 'Valley of Violets' twelve miles long and three miles wide.

"Said Idrisi:- 'Damascus is the most delightful of all God's cities.'

"In the heart of the town, amid a population of some 140,000 souls, rose the palace of the caliphs, built by Muawiya I, gaudy with gold and marble, brilliant with mosaics in floors and walls, cool with ever-flowing fountains and cascades. On the north side stood the Great Mosque, one of 572 mosques in the city, and the sole surviving relic of Umayyad Damascus. In Roman days a temple of Jupiter had adorned the site. On its ruins Theodosius I had built (379) the cathedral of St. John the Baptist.

"Walid I, about 705, proposed to the Christians that the cathedral should be remodeled and form part of a new mosque, and promised to give them ground and materials for another cathedral anywhere else in the city. They protested, and warned him that 'it is written in our books that he who destroys this church will choke to death.' But Walid began the destruction with his own hands.

"The whole land tax of the empire, we are told, was devoted for seven years to the construction of the mosque. In addition a large sum was given to the Christians to finance a new cathedral. Artists and artisans were brought in from India, Persia, Constantinople, Egypt, Libya, Tunis, and Alberia. All together 12,000 workmen were employed and the task was completd in eight years.

"Moslem travelers unanimously describe it as the most magnificent structure in Islam. The Abbasid caliphs al-Mahdi and al-Mamun -- no lovers of the Umayyads or Damascus -- ranked it above all other buildings on the earth.

"A great battle-mented wall, with interior colonnades, enclosed a spacious marble-paved court. On the south side of this enclosure rose the mosque, built of squared stones and guarded by three minarets -- one of which is the oldest in Islam. Ground plan and decoration were Byzantine, and were doubtless influenced by St. Sophia.

"The roof and dome -- fifty feet in diameter -- were covered with plates of lead. The interior 429 feet long, was divided into nave and aisles by two tiers of white marble columns, from whose gold-plated Corinthian capitals sprang round on horseshoe arches, the first Moslem examples of this latter form.

"The mosaic floor was covered with carpets. The walls were faced with colored marble mosaics and enameled tiles. Six beautiful grilles of marble divided the interior. In one wall, facing Mecca, was a mihrab lined with gold, silver, and previous stones. Lighting was effected through seventy-four windows of colored glass, and 12,000 lamps.

"Said a traveler:- 'If a man were to sojourn here a hundred years, and pondered each day on what he saw, he would see something new every day.'

"Farther northeast lay Tabriz, whose finest age was still to come. Then, to the east, Tehran (as yet a minor town), Darnghan, and -- east of the Caspian -- Gurgan.

"In the tenth century this was a provincial capital noted for its cultured princes. The greatest of them, Shams al-Maali Qabus, was a poet and scholar who sheltered Avicenna at his court, and left behind him, as his tomb, a gigantic tower 167 feet high, the Gunbad-i-Qabus, the only structure standing of a once populous and prosperous city.

"Along the northern route to the east lay Nishapur, still melodious in Omar Khayyamn's verse. Mashhad, the Mecca of Shia Moslems. Merv, a capital of a once mighty province. And -- usually beyond the reach of the caliph's taxgatherers -- Bokhara and Samarkand.

"Over the mountain ranges to the south lay Ghazni. Poets tell of Mahmud's great palaces there, and of 'tall towers that amazed the moon.' Still stand the 'Triumphal Tower' of Mahmud, and the more ornate tower of Masud II.

"After the Moslem conquest it became the seat of several Christian monasteries, mostly Nestorian. From these monks, we are told, the Caliph al-Mansur learned that the site was cool in summer and free from the mosquitoes that harassed Kufa and Basra. Perhaps the Caliph thought it advisable to put some distance between himself and those unruly cities, already swelling with a revolutionary proletariat.

"Doubtless he saw strategic advantage in a site safely inland, yet in touch by water, through the Tigris and the major canals, with all the cities on the two rivers, and then through the gulf with all the ports of the world.

"So in 762 he transferred his residence from Hashimiya, and the governmental offices from Kufa, to Baghdad, surrounded the site with a threefold circular wall and a moat, changed its official name from Baghdad ('Gift of God') to Medinat-al-Salam ('City of Peace'), and employed 100,000 workmen to build in four years great brick palaces for himself, his relatives, and the bureaus of the government.

"At the center of this 'Round City of al-Mansur' rose the caliphal palace, called the 'Golden Gate' from its gilded entrance, or the 'Green Dome' from its gleaming cupola. Outside the walls, and directly on the west bank of the Tigris, al-Mansur built a summer residence, the 'Palace of Eternity.' Here, for most of his years, Harun al-Rashid made his home.

"We may imagine this domestic splendor from an incredible passage in Abulfeda, which assures us that the royal palace at Baghdad had on its floors 22,000 carpets, and on its walls 38,000 tapestries, 12,500 of silk.

"The residences of the caliph and his family, the vizier, and the governmental heads occupied a square mile of the eastern city. Jafar the Barmakid inqugurated an aristocratic migration by building in southeastern Baghdad a mansion whose splendor contributed to his death.

"He tried to evade Harun's jealousy by presenting the palace to Mamun. Harun accepted it for his son, but Jafar cntinued to live and frolic in the 'Qasr Jafari' untl his fall.

"When the palaces of al-Mansur and Harun began to crumble, new palaces replaced them. Al-Mutadid spent 400,000 dinars ($1,900,000) on his 'Palace of the Pleiades' (892). We may judge its extent from the 9000 horses, camels, and mules that were housed in its stables.

"Al-Muqtafi built next to this his 'Palace of the Crown' (902), which, with its gardens, covered nine square miles. Al-Muqtadir raised in his turn the 'Hall of the Tree,' so named becaue in its garden pond stood a tree of silver and gold. On the silver leaves and twigs perched silver birds, whose beaks piped mechanical lays. The Buwayhid sultans outspent them all by lavishing 13,000,000 dirhems upon the Muizziyah Palace.

"They went to the Maydan or plaza to watch horse races or polo games, drank precious forbidden wine, and ate foods brought from the greatest possible distances at the greatest possible price -- robed themselves and their ladies in gorgeous and colorful raiment of silk and gold brocade -- perfumed their clothing, hair, and beards -- breathed the aroma of burning ambergris or frankincense -- and wore jewelry on their heads, ears, necks, wrists, and feminine ankles.

"Sang a poet to a lass:- 'The clinking of thine anklets has berefit me of reason.' Usually women were excluded from the social gatherings of the men. Poets, musicians, and wits took their place, and doubtless sang or spoke of love. Willowy slave girls danced until the men were their slaves.

"Politer groups listened to poetic readings, or recitations of the Koran. Some formed philosophical clubs like the Brethren of Purity. About 790 we hear of a club of ten membes -- an orthodox Sunni, a Shi'ite, a Kharijite, a Manichean, an erotic poet, a materialist, a Christian, a Jew, a Sabaean, and a Zoroastrian. Their meetings, we are told, were marked by mutual tolerance, good humor, and courteous argument.

"In general Moslem society was one of excellent manners. From Cyrus to Li Hung Chang the East has surpassed the West in courtesy. It was an ennobling aspect of this Baghdad life that all the permitted arts and sciences found there a discriminating patronage, that schools and colleges were numerous, and the air resounded with poetry.

"Of the life of the common people we are told little. We may only assume that they helped to uphold this edifice of grandeur with their services and their toil. While the rich played with literature and art, science and philosophy, the simpler folk lisened to street singers, or strummed their own lutes and sang their own songs.

"Now and then a wedding procession redeemed the din and odor of the streets. On festive holydays people visited one another, exchanged presents with careful calculation, and ate with keener relish than those who feasted from plates of gold.