Ali to check the foreign career of his troops, in order to protect his power at home. He found an uncompromising enemy in Moavia, the general of Othman, who had a large force in the field, and who refused to recognize the validity of his election. Besides, Ayesha, the widow of the prophet, and daughter of the first khalif, was still living, and denied his claims. She even took the field against him.

Thus Ali, having vindicated his pretensions, and having tasted the sweets of authority for a very brief period, fell, like his two predecessors, under the knife of the assassin, sincerely mourned by his admiring adherents. To them it was not a mere choice, but a principle. They called and considered him Wasi, the executor of Mohammed; Mortada, beloved of God; Esed Allah Algalid, the victorious lion of God. Among the Persian converts he was known as Faid Alanwar, the distributor of lights and graces, and Shah Mordman, the king of men. I dwell upon

this character of Ali, because his claims were to operate long after his death in the deposition and dethronement of rival dynasties.

This Moavia, or more correctly Muawiyah Ibn Abi Sufyan, a near relative of the prophet, and of the house of Ummeyah, had declared himself khalif before the death of Ali, and now proceeded to make good his claims. With him was established the dynasty of the Ommyades, which was to play so distinguished a part in the future history.

And here we must pause for a moment, to note the important change in the seat of the khalifate from Medina to Damascus, which was to be the headquarters hereafter of the house of Ummeyah. It was a great step, prompted by a wise judgment. The city was beautiful for situation. Mohammed had called it an earthly paradise, and when he beheld it from a rocky eminence, refused to enter it, because, he said, only one paradise was allotted to man, and he preferred that which awaited him hereafter. It was more central than Mecca or Medina; it had a good Mediterranean port at Beirut, only fifty-eight miles distant; caravans converged to it with the trade of Bagdad, Mecca and Aleppo; and by Beirut and Acre it was in ready sea communication with the northern coast of Africa. It presented peculiar attractions to the inhabitants of the rocks and sands of Arabia; its minarets have

been compared to "a fleet sailing through a sea of verdure." Abana and Pharpar, the modern Barada and Phege, watered it in full flow. The enthusiastic description of Lamartine1 presents it to us as it appeared to the Arabian eye. They saw as he did, from a fissure in a rocky summit-" le plus magnifique et la plus etrange horizon qui est jamais etonne un regard d'homme." The eye falls at first upon a city surrounded by its walls of black and yellow marble, flanked from distance to distance by innumerable square towers, crowned with sculptured battlements, over which rise forests of minarets of every form; furrowed by the seven branches of its rivers, and its brooks without number. Thus the vision extends in a labyrinth of flower gardens, fruit trees and sycamores.

This change in the seat of government was made by Muawiyah in the year 673. From this point were directed the conquests of Islam in all directions until the overthrow of the Ommyades, and the accession of the house of Al Abas, known as the Abbassides, in 746.2

With this slight statement of the rise of the khalifate and the claims of the rival houses, we may leave the chronicle of the khalifs behind us. It is not germain to our present purpose to pursue their fortunes. As we proceed westward in northern Africa, with their victorious generals, their names and deeds grow dim, while those of their conquering Ameers absorb all our interest. These generals advanced step by step, fighting hard for what they earned, subduing, proselyting, founding cities, building mosques, establishing schools. Allah il Allah—God is God, found everywhere an answering echo, Allah achbar-God is victorious; until Ocba, strong in arms and in the faith, having founded or rebuilt the city of Kairwan, pushed forward to where the river Sus rolls its tribute into the Atlantic, and spurring his steed into the surf until the waves reached his saddle girths, cried out, "O Allah, if these deep waters did not restrain me, I would press still onward to carry further the knowledge of thy sacred name and holy law."

But the Berbers gathered in his rear, and caused him to halt and temporize. To subdue them, and to transform them from Voyage en Orient.

2So called from Al Abas, the uncle of Mohammed.

enemies into valiant soldiers of the faith, was the work of another commander, upon the consideration of whose labors and success

we now enter.

II.

PREPARATIONS FOR THE CONQUEST.

The victorious general whose proud fortune it was to carry the arms and faith of the prophet into Spain, was Musa, or Moses, the son of Nosseyr. His father Nosse yr was a manumitted slave of Abdu-l-'azis, the khalif's brother, and Musa, during his youth and before his appearance at the head of an army in Africa, had displayed the high qualities which caused his preferment to that important command. When, at an earlier period, the khalif, Abdu-l-malek had appointed his younger brother to the government of Basrah, Musa was considered so sagacious that he had been sent with him as wizir and counselor.1 And when Abdul-a-zis Ibn-Meruan was made governor of Egypt, he re-called Hassan, the general appointed by the khalif, and gave the command in Mauritania to Musa. The speedy arrival of Hassan with the news of successful battles against the Berbers, inflamed the Moslem curiosity and zeal, and so vindicated the generalship of Hassan, that an order of the khalif confirmed him in his possession, but Abdu-l-'azis, with a rare sagacity in reading character, and exercising a bold discretion, refused to obey the order, tore the diploma of Hassan in pieces, and wrote ardent letters to the khalif2 in defense of his action. The successor of Mohammed was angry, but the rapid advance and successive victories of Musa, and the brilliant tokens of conquest in the amount of booty, and the number of slaves which the khalif received, appeased his wrath and reconciled him to the change of commanders. From Abdu-l-'azis Musa received a general letter of conquest wherever in Northern Africa enemies of the faith could be found.3

In a few words we may trace the lineaments of this distinguished

1 Al-makkari. i. App. lii.

2 Al-makkari. i. App. liv.

3 His appointment was not, however, ratified by the khalif until ten years later, A. H. 88. Mahom. Dyn. i, 510.

chieftain. His portrait has been drawn by friendly and hostile hand. Eliminating all prejudice, he was a remarkable man, an accomplished general, a valiant soldier, an enthusiast in religion, instant in prayer, an eloquent preacher, and if he was to the Spanish historian a ferocious man, he is also allowed to have been prudent in his counsels and ready in execution.1

Once in a season of great drought, he prayed fervently for rain, and refreshing torrents had followed in answer to his petition. The very words of that prayer were constantly repeated, and were even used nine centuries after by the Moriscoes in southern Spain.2

Nor were supernatural auguries of his success wanting to his credulous troops. On his arrival to take command, while reviewing the first division of his army, a sparrow flew down and lighted upon the folds of his robe upon his breast. Catching the bird, he cut its throat, smeared his garments with its blood, and plucking its feathers scattered them in the air, crying out: "By the Master of the Ka'bah! victory is ours, if such be the will of the Almighty."3 The Arab historians report at length his sermons and harangues to the soldiers; and although we may doubt their authenticity, they are valuable as traditions of the power of his eloquence.

Such was the man to whom was reserved the conquest of Spain. He remodeled his army; paid the troops three times their arrears of pay, and told them to imitate him in his well-doing, and reprove him when they found him in error. It is not to our purpose to describe in detail his conquests in Africa.

The regions watered by the Sus, as it flows through western Africa, are called by the Arabs Sus-el-Adani, or that nearest to eastern Africa, and Sus-el-Aksa, or the farthest. To this Atlantic limit Musa led his armies with constant movement-first invading the frontiers of el Adani, and soon making his power felt throughout the whole land. His diplomacy was equal to his soldiership. To appease the khalif, and to retain the favor of the governor of Egypt, he sent vast booty and many slaves, and thus bought the sanction of his mercenary superiors.

1Hombre feroz, en sus consejos prudente, y en la execution pronto. Mariana ii. 283.

2 Mahom. Dyn, i, 801.

3 lb. i. App. iv.

On the other hand, turning to his enemies, who, having felt the power of his arm, were ready to treat with him, he taxed his eloquence to make them believe that they were engaged in an unnatural strife, because they were Aulad-Arabi, the sons of the Arabs, of the same race, and destined to share in the same victorious fortunes as himself and his Eastern troops.

This was a master stroke of policy. There were, in reality, too many points of congeniality between the invaders and the invaded for even the most ignorant and unreflecting to doubt the advantage of their union. They were similar in their nomadic or semi-nomadic habits; among them were traditions of identity of origin. Some of them were nominal Christians in belief, made so by the power of the lower empire; among them were many Jews, who were the easy allies of the Moslems, who did less indignity to the prophet, in that they rejected the Nazarene, and who honored him for his adoption of their theogonal and historical books; who, in a word, found a common origin in the loins of Abraham and the semi-brotherhood of Isaac and Ishmael. The most ignorant of the Berbers were idolators, but many of them had been already moslemized by contact with the earlier invaders.

The results of this policy were immediate and cheering. Southward, from Kairwan, the people of Gadames and along the upper line of the great desert joined his standard to the number of twelve thousand picked men. The war in Africa was at an end; a powerful auxiliary instrument was placed in Musa's hands, while in Egypt and Damascus the encomiums were loud of a commander who could convert a realm to the Faith without the shedding of blood.

It was now the year 88 of the hejira (A. D. 706). In view of these great successes, the khalif confirmed and enlarged the appointment which Musa had received from Abdu-l-Azir in the year 791, nearly ten years before. He was now to be supreme commander, subject only to the khalif, with the title of Ameer of Africa. Large reinforcements were sent him from Egypt, who should strengthen the faith and cement the bonds of the converted nations; and thus, without the knowledge of the khalif, with Africa and Mauritania nominally moslemized, he was making ready for the greatest exploit yet proposed to the Arabian arms,