than fifteen hundred Christians were slain in the field of Tours. But this incredible tale is sufficiently disproved by the caution of the French general, who apprehended the snares and accidents of a pursuit, and dismissed his German allies to their native forests. The inactivity of a conqueror betrays the loss of strength and blood, and the most cruel execution is inflicted, not in the ranks of battle, but on the backs of a flying enemy. Yet the victory of the Franks was complete and final; Aquitain was recovered by the arms of Eudes; the Arabs never resumed the conquest of Gaul, and they were soon driven beyond the Pyrenees by Charles Martel and his valiant race.33 It might have been expected that the savior of Christendom would have been canonized, or at least applauded, by the gratitude of the clergy, who are indebted to his sword for their present existence. But in the public distress, the mayor of the palace had been compelled to apply the riches, or at least the revenues, of the bishops and abbots, to the relief of the state and the reward of the soldiers. His merits were forgotten, his sacrilege alone was remembered, and, in an epistle to a Carlovingian prince, a Gallic synod presumes to declare that his ancestor was damned; that on the opening of his tomb, the spectators were affrighted by a smell of fire and the aspect of a horrid dragon; and that a saint of the times was indulged with a pleasant vision of the soul and body of Charles Martel, burning, to all eternity, in the abys of hell.34

The loss of an army, or a province, in the Western world, was less painful to the court of Damascus, than the rise and progress of a domestic competitor. Except among the Syrians, the caliphs of the house of Ommiyah had never been the objects of the public favor. The life of Mahomet record

It should seem, that in his letters to the pope, Eudes usurped the honor of the victory, from which he is chastised by the French annalists, who, with equal falsehood, accuse him of inviting the Saracens.

33 Narbonne, and the rest of Septimania, was recovered by Pepin, the son of Charles Martel, A. D. 755, (Pagi, Critic, tom. iii. p. 300.) Thirty-seven years afterwards, it was pillaged by a sudden inroad of the Arabs, who employed the captives in the construction of the mosch of Cordova, (De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 354.)

34 This pastoral letter, addressed to Lewis the Germanic, the grandson of Charlemagne, and most probably composed by the pen of the artful Hincmar, is dated in the year 858, and signed by the bishops of the provinces of Rheims and Rouen, (Bar nius, Annal. Ecclés. A. D. 741. Fleury, Hist. Eccles. tom. x. p. 514—516.) Yet Baronius himself, and the French critics, reject with contempt this episcu Dal fiction.

ed their perseverance in idolatry and rebellion: their conver sion had been reluctant, their elevation irregular and factious and their throne was cemented with the most holy and noble blood of Arabia. The best of their race, the pious Omar was dissatisfied with his own title: their personal virtues were insufficient to justify a departure from the order of succes sion; and the eyes and wishes of the faithful were turned towards the line of Hashem and the kindred of the apostle of God. Of these the Fatimites were either rash or pusillanimous; but the descendants of Abbas cherished, with courage and discretion, the hopes of their rising fortunes. From an obscure residence in Syria, they secretly despatched their agents and missionaries, who preached in the Eastern provinces their hereditary indefeasible right; and Mohammed, the son of Ali, the son of Abdallah, the son of Abbas, the uncle of the prophet, gave audience to the deputies of Chorasan, and accepted their free gift of four hundred thousand pieces of gold. After the death of Mohammed, the oath of allegiance was administered in the name of his son Ibrahim to a numerous band of votaries, who expected only a signal and a leader; and the governor of Chorasan continued to deplore his fruitless admonitions and the deadly slumber of the caliphs of Damascus, till he himself, with all his adherents, was driven from the city and palace of Meru, by the rebellious arms of Abu Moslem.35 That maker of kings, the author, as he is named, of the call of the Abbassides, was at length rewarded for his presumption of merit with the usual gratitude of courts. A mean, perhaps foreign, extraction could not repress the aspiring energy of Abu Moslem. Jealous of his wives, liberal of his wealth, prodigal of his own blood and of that of others, he could boast with pleasure, and possibly with truth, that he had destroyed six hundred thousand of his enemies; and such was the intrepid gravity of his mind and countenance, that he was never seen to smile except on a day of battle. In the visible separation of parties, the green was consecrated to the Fatimites; the Ommiades were distinguished by the white; and the black, as the

'The steed and the saddle which had carried any of his wives were instantly killed or burnt, lest they should be afterwards mounted by a male. Twelve hundred mules or camels were required for his kitchen furniture; and the daily consumption amounted to three thousand cakes, a hundred sheep, besides oxen, poultry, &c., (Abulpharagius, Hist. Dynast. p. 140.)

most adverse, was naturally adopted by the Abbassides Their turbans and garments were stained with that gloomy color: two black standards, on pike staves nine cubits long were borne aloft in the van of Abu Moslem; and their allegorical names of the night and the shadow obscurely represented the indissoluble union and perpetual succession of the line of Hashem. From the Indus to the Euphrates, the East was co. vulsed by the quarrel of the white and the black factions the Abbassides were most frequently victorious; but their public success was clouded by the personal misfortune of their chief. The court of Damascus, awakening from a long slumber, resolved to prevent the pilgrimage of Mecca, which Ibrahim had undertaken with a splendid retinue, to recommend himself at once to the favor of the prophet and of the people. A detachment of cavalry intercepted his march and arrested his person; and the unhappy Ibrahim, snatched away from the promise of untasted royalty, expired in iron fetters in the dungeons of Haran. His two younger brothers, Saffah and Almansor, eluded the search of the tyrant, and lay concealed at Cufa, till the zeal of the people and the approach of his Eastern friends allowed them to expose their persons to the impatient public. On Friday, in the dress of a caliph, in the colors of the sect, Saffah proceeded with religious and military pomp to the mosch: ascending the pulpit, he prayed and preached as the lawful successor of Mahomet; and after his departure, his kinsmen bound a willing people by an oath of fidelity. But it was on the banks of the Zab, and not in the mosch of Cufa, that this important controversy was determined. Every advantage appeared to be on the side of the white faction: the authority of established government; an army of a hundred and twenty thousand soldiers, against a sixth part of that nuinber; and the presence and merit of the caliph Mervan, the fourteenth and last of the house of Ommiyah. Before his accession to the throne, he had deserved, by his Georgian warfare, the honorable epithet of the ass of Mesopotamia; 30

38 Al Hemar. He had Arabic proverb praises the never fly from an enemy.

been governor of Mesopotamia, and the courage of that warlike breed of asses who The surname of Mervan may justify the

He is called Abdullah or Abul Abbas in the Tarikh Tebry. Price, vol. i. p 600. Saffah or Saffauh (the Sanguinary) was a name which he acquired after his bloody reign, (vol. ii. p. Ï.) — M.

and he might have been ranked among the greatest princes had not, says Abulfeda, the eternal order decreed that mo ment for the ruin of his family; a decree against which al human prudence and fortitude must struggle in vain. The orders of Mervan were mistaken, or disobeyed: the return of his horse, from which he had dismounted on a necessary occasion, impressed the belief of his death; and the enthu siasm of the black squadrons was ably conduced by Ab dallah, the uncle of his competitor. After an i retrievable defeat, the caliph escaped to Mosul; but the colors of the Abbassides were displayed from the rampart; he suddenly repassed the Tigris, cast a melancholy look on his palace of Ilaran, crossed the Euphrates, abandoned the fortifications of Damascus, and, without halting in Palestine, pitched his last and fatal camp at Busir, on the banks of the Nile.37 His speed was urged by the incessant diligence of Abdallah, who in every step of the pursuit acquired strength and reputation the remains of the white faction were finally vanquished in Egypt; and the lance, which terminated the life and anxiety of Mervan, was not less welcome perhaps to the unfortunate than to the victorious chief. The merciless inquisition of the conqueror eradicated the most distant branches of the hostile race: their bones were scattered, their memory was accursed, and the martyrdom of Hossein was abun dantly revenged on the posterity of his tyrants. Fourscore of the Ommiades, who had yielded to the faith or clemency

comparison of Homer, (Iliad, 4. 557, &c.,) and both will silence the moderns, who consider the ass as a stupid and ignoble emblem, (D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 558.)

37 Four several places, all in Egypt, bore the name of Busir, or Busiris, so famous in Greek fable. The first, where Mervan was slain was to the west of the Nile, in the province of Fium, or Arsinoe; the second in the Delta, in the Sebennytic nome; the third near the pyramids; the fourth, which was destroyed by Dioclesian, (see above, vol. ii. p. 130,) in the Thebais. I shall here transcribe a note of the learned and orthodox Michaelis: Videntur in pluribus Ægypti superioris urbibus Busiri Coptoque arma sumpsisse Christiani, libertatemque de religione sentiendi defendisse, sed succubuisse quo in bello Coptus et Busiris diruta, et circa Esnam magna strages edita. Bellum narrant sed causam belli ignorant scriptores Byzantini, alioqui Coptum et Busiri non rebellasse dicturi, sed causam Christianorum suscepturi, 'Not. 211, p. 100.) For the geography of the four Busirs, see Abulteda, (Descript. Ægypt. p. 9, vers. Michaelis, Gottinga, 1776, in 4to.,) Michaelis, (Not. 122-127, p. 58-63,) and D'Auville, Mémoire sur "Egypte, p. 85, 147, 205.)

of their foes, were invited to a banquet at Damascus. The laws of hospitality were violated by a promiscuous massacre: the board was spread over their fallen bodies; and the festivi. ty of the guests was enlivened by the music of their dying groans. By the event of the civil war, the dynasty of the Abbassides was firmly established; but the Christians only could triumph in the mutual hatred and common loss of the disciples of Mahomet.38

Yet the thousands who were swept away by the sword of war might have been speedily retrieved in the succeeding generation, if the consequences of the revolution had not tended to dissolve the power and unity of the empire of the Saracens. In the proscription of the Ommiades, a royal youth of the name of Abdalrahman alone escaped the rage of his enemies, who hunted the wandering exile from the banks of the Euphrates to the valleys of Mount Atlas. His presence in the neighborhood of Spain revived the zeal of the white faction. The name and cause of the Abbassides had been first vindicated by the Persians: the West had been pure from civil arms; and the servants of the abdicated family still held, by a precarious tenure, the inheritance of their lands and the offices of government. Strongly prompted by gratitude, indignation, and fear, they invited the grandson of the caliph Hashem to ascend the throne of his ancestors; and, in his desperate condition, the extremes of rashness and prudence were almost the same. The acclamations of the people saluted his landing on the coast of Andalusia: and, after a successful struggle, Abdalrahman established the throne of Cordova, and was the father of the Ommiades of Spain, who reigned above two hundred and fifty years from the Atlantic to the Pyrenees.39 He slew in battle a lieutenant of the Abbassides, who had invaded his dominions with a fleet and army: the head of Ala, in salt and camphire, was

38 See Abulfeda, (Annal. Moslem. p. 136–145,) Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 392, vers. Pocock,) Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p. 109—121,, Abulpharagius, (Hist. Dynast. p. 134-140,) Roderic of Toledo, (Hist. Arabum, c. xviii. p. 33,) Theophanes, (Chronograph. p. 356, 357, who speaks of the Abbassides under the names of Xwoaauritai and Mavoooooi,) and the Bibliothèque of D'Herbelot, in the articles Ommiades, Abbassides, Mærvan, Ibrahim, Saffah, Abou Moslem.

30 For the revolution of Spain, consult Roderic of Toledo, (c. xviii. p. 34, &c.,) the Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana, (tom. ii. p. 30, 198,) and Cardonne, (Hist. de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne, tom. i. p. 180– 197 205, 272, 323, &c.)