THE LAST OMAYYADS (717-750 A.D.)

T1he caliph appointed by Suleiman to be his successor was his cousin, Omar II, the son of Abdul-Aziz, a sovereign in whom according to some authors were united all the virtues of the great Omar without any of the latter’s severity against unbelievers, while others accuse him of levying intolerable imposts on the Christians. Yazid, Suleiman’s one time favourite, the governor of Khorasan, was thrown into prison for defalcation, and all other governors received strict orders not to resort to force and oppression in spreading the doctrines of Islamism, but to proceed with all mildness and humanity. Unfortunately for the realm the rule of the just and pious prince whose soul turned from earthly greatness and pride of conquest to the joys of paradise, was of but short duration. In the third year of his reign he succumbed to a painful malady which caused grave suspicions of poisoning to arise against certain of his ambitious kinsmen. Omar had not yet attained his fortieth year when, deeply mourned by all his people, he was laid in his grave at Deir Saman, in the neighbourhood of Hims (Emesa).

2The four years’ reign of Yazid II, who had beforehand been appointed Omar’s successor by his brother, Suleiman, ran its course in the midst of civil and foreign strife. Scarcely had Yazid, Muhallab’s son, learned of the death of the caliph when he escaped from prison and fleeing to Irak, where his brothers and other kindred possessed a large following, raised the standard of revolt. He was overcome, however, by the Syrian army under Maslama at Akr, on the left bank of the Euphrates, and sought and found death on the battle-field. His brothers were also overpowered by the hostile forces at Kerman, their wives and children were sold as slaves and the rebellious cities of Bassora and Wasit were heavily punished. At the same time wars, desertions, and conspiracies were rife in the remaining provinces, especially in northern Africa; while even in Spain and southern France the Moslem arms no longer met with their former success. Meanwhile the caliph in Damascus was giving himself up completely to the pleasures of love and song, and in the arms of a favourite slave was seeking restoration from the fatigues and hardships of a ruler’s life.

3[Sidenote: [724-744 A.D.]]

4Yazid’s brother and successor, Hisham, adopted an entirely different course. Simple in taste, just and pious like both the Omars, he banished from his court the luxury and extravagance in which most of his predecessors had freely indulged. But the house of Omayyad had too many enemies even among the believers themselves, and passions had been too deeply stirred by the recent civil war to make it possible that the twenty years’ reign of a prince who in spite of many praiseworthy qualities had by his avarice and suspicion incurred the enmity of all the city authorities, could run its course without suffering violence from storms and accidents.

5The abhorrence felt in Cufa toward the cruel and rapacious governor Khalid, had moreover revived in the minds of the mercurial inhabitants of Irak, all their former aversion to the Omayyads, and incited the Shiites to fresh revolt. Khalid was indeed deposed from office and forced by torture to disgorge his ill-got wealth, but the conspiracy was already too widespread to be completely uprooted. Zaid, a grandson of Husein, headed a revolt in the streets of Cufa, which resulted in a sharp struggle during which the leader and most of his followers lost their lives. Zaid’s body was mutilated and his head sent to the caliph at Damascus.

6But the new glory of martyrdom served only to enhance the importance and sanctity of the Alids, and to strengthen the hopes entertained by the Abbasids, their kinsmen, of entering the succession and getting the sovereignty away from the Koreishites to secure it to the house of Hisham to which alone, in the opinion of strict believers, it rightfully belonged. They had a large following in Khorasan and Transoxiana; and the Kharijites who, in consequence of the recent campaigns, had spread over the entire realm, served them in India and in Africa in the execution of their ambitious plans against the Omayyads.

7The insurrections, conspiracies, and civil wars which under Hisham broke out with ever increasing violence in the provinces, multiplying acts of rapacity and revenge, and dealing death-blows to the welfare of country, state, and people by the destruction of agriculture, industry, and trade, were so many indubitable signs that the unity of the kingdom was about to be dissolved, that the might of the Omayyad dynasty in Damascus was nearing its end.

8The subjugated populations were beginning to recover from their surprise and to bethink themselves of former times; and though the majority still remained faithful to the new religion, the consciousness of their national identity and remembrance of the past were not to be blotted from their minds, and the bold leader who could best evoke these secret feelings could count upon warm sympathy and a crowd of followers. The dissimilar elements that religious zeal had served to bind together in the first enthusiasm of the “Sacred War,” strove in the course of time, as other interests came uppermost and smothered passions again broke loose, to separate naturally and once more become distinct.

9These strivings on the part of the people towards independence were effectually aided by the divisions and hostilities that existed between the various commanders, by the machinations of the Abbasids, and their co-religionists and by the avarice of the caliph who, though observing the closest parsimony in his own mode of living, loved to feast his eyes on full state coffers.

10[Sidenote: [744-750 A.D.]]

11Walid II, Hisham’s successor, scattered the hoarded treasures of his predecessor, and delighted flatterers, courtiers, generals, and troops by his boundless liberality. He disgraced himself, on the other hand, by his licentiousness and excesses, and gave offence by running counter to all the accepted Mohammedan customs and religious laws. However loudly smooth-tongued poets, in whose company he squandered the wealth that was his by oppression as well as by inheritance, might sing his praises, the people were wroth with the unworthy ruler who spent his time in hunting and debauchery, found all his pleasure in wine, song, and dance, indulged in unnatural vices and flouted public decency by carrying with him dogs and wine on a pilgrimage to Mecca.

12When, therefore, this godless caliph sent to the governors a circular letter filled with pious maxims of the strictest orthodoxy, calling upon all the people to acknowledge and swear allegiance to his two minor sons, Hakam and Othman, as their future rulers, the unheard-of innovation excited the liveliest dissatisfaction. Especially loud in their complaints were the sovereign’s own kinsmen, who had each in secret cherished the hope of succession; so that now another and more threatening danger was added to those by which the royal house was already beset; disunion within itself.

13The sons of Hisham and Walid I allied themselves with the enemies of the Omayyads, and accused the caliph, whom they had also personally affronted, of “unbelief, free-thought, and incest.” Even Khalid, hitherto steadily devoted to the House of Omayyah, hesitated at swearing allegiance to two children who “did not yet know how to pray, and could not be accepted as lawful witnesses.” The caliph thereupon gave him into the hands of his mortal enemy Yusuf, governor of Cufa, who caused his members to be broken one after another until he died under the torture. By this act Walid increased the number of his enemies.

14A widespread conspiracy was formed in Damascus and its vicinity, under the leadership of Yazid, son of the former caliph Walid I, as a result of which the commander of the faithful was attacked by a troop of insurgents in his castle of Nadira, and after a brave resistance was overpowered and killed. The following day his head was carried on the end of a lance about the streets of Damascus, and his own brother Suleiman refused to his remains the honour of burial. The reign of Yazid III lasted but half a year.

15As a former rebel against the rightful sovereign, as an adherent of the doctrines of free-will, and as a parsimonious leader who curtailed the pay of his troops, he had made many enemies; and would certainly have succumbed to the arms of mighty Merwan, the Omayyad governor of Armenia and Aderbaijan, who advanced upon him with a large army, had he not died just previous to the encounter.

16Merwan now entered Syria with his seasoned, experienced troops, captured Himso, and in a desperate engagement that took place in a narrow valley near Ain Diar defeated the Yemenite army that Hisham’s son, Suleiman, had led into the field against him. In this battle Suleiman left seventeen thousand men on the field of battle, and as many more fell into the hands of Merwan, while the rest of his army scattered in disorder. When the news of this battle reached Damascus, Ibrahim, whom Yazid III had designated as his successor, fled with Suleiman from the capital, after having put to death Walid’s sons and Yusuf, the earlier governor of Irak, who were in prison, and seized the state treasures.

17Merwan, who had hitherto acted only as Walid’s avenger and the protector of his sons, now found himself in a position where he could stretch out his hand towards the crown of caliph, and cause the oath of allegiance to be taken to himself. In order to give his pretensions the appearance of legitimacy he made known the statement of a fellow-prisoner of the murdered princes, who asserted that at his death the eldest of them had made over his right of succession to the throne to him, Merwan. In spite of this sanction, whether true or false, and in spite of the reconciliation which took place later with Ibrahim and Suleiman, Merwan’s rule never met with full recognition.

18The battle of Ain Diar had inflicted wounds too deep, had brought uppermost in too many minds the sacred duty of revenge, to allow Merwan, the usurper, to ever come to peaceful enjoyment of his power. The years of his reign were marked by uninterrupted struggles with hostile factions, who had again united and all over the realm were stirring up the people to revolt. Even the Syrians, who had hitherto been the Omayyad’s strongest prop, went over in part to the enemy, and Merwan, with all his military talent and the tireless activity that had won for him the rather doubtful title of Himar (Donkey), could not in the long run withstand such determined opposition.

19With insurrection, tribal feuds, and civil strife in every province the whole realm was in a condition of anarchy and lawlessness that destroyed all private peace, and awoke in every breast an intense desire for a firm hand at the helm of state that should guide it into less troubled waters. That such a ruler was no longer to be looked for among the members of the house of Omayyah, divided as it was, and having foot on no solid, religious ground, had lately become the settled conviction in the minds of all.

20In the East the active partisan, Abu Muslim, had raised the black flag of the Abbasids and had appeared clad in black in company with his followers at the most splendid feasts. “Under the embers,” said Nasr, governor of Khorasan, to the caliph when he begged help against the house of Abbas and its champion, Abu Muslim, “I see red coals that will soon burst into flame and suffocate or consume the wisest, body and trunk. As wood nurses fire to flame, so incendiary speeches precipitate war, and in astonishment I ask, is the family of Omayyah awake or asleep?”

21After Nasr had suffered numerous attacks from Abu Muslim he received from the caliph reinforcements under the general Nabata. But when the latter with ten thousand Syrians was defeated by Abu Muslim’s forces, under Kahtaba Nasr fled with the rest of his troops to Hamadan. He did not live to reach the ancient city, and his successor to the governorship surrendered to Kahtaba who was just returning from a second victory near Ispahan, on condition that himself and his Syrian followers should receive full pardon. The black flag of Abbasids now waved in all the lands east of the Tigris, and for the family of Omayyah the decisive hour had arrived. Kahtaba perished on the blood-soaked battle-field of Kerbela; but his son Hasan, who succeeded his father to the command, completely defeated the Syrian army, which was led by the brave governor Hobaira. It was now the turn of Cufa to display the black banner and in that city Abul-Abbas, the head of the Abbasids, was proclaimed caliph.

22When the news of these events reached the warlike Merwan, he gathered together his entire military force and after causing Ibrahim, the eldest of the Abbasid brothers, to be put to death in his prison at Haram, advanced to meet the enemy. On the river Zab, not far from the ruins of Nineveh, where once in the neighbourhood of Arbela and Gaugamela the fate of the Persian kingdom and its reigning house had been decided, took place the great battle which wrested from the Omayyads the sceptre of supremacy in the East, and gave the first impulse toward the dissolution of the entire kingdom (January 25th, 750).

23Fortune which had so long been favourable to Merwan now deserted him; beset by treachery and ill-chance, he fled from the battle-field to Hims and Damascus, whither but few of the soldiers that made up his mighty forces could follow him, those who escaped the sword of the enemy finding death in the waters of the stream. Abdallah then began a triumphal march through all the towns and countries that lay between Mosul and Syria. Merwan, after having appointed his son-in-law Walid governor, fled at his approach to Palestine. Here he learned that the black flag was also flying in Damascus, where the terrible Abdallah, nicknamed “As-Saffan, the Shedder of Blood,” had celebrated his entrance by putting to death the newly appointed governor Walid, and he again sought flight--into Egypt this time.

24But insurrection had reached even the peaceful Nile valley, and in an unsuccessful engagement with the opposing factionists Merwan II came to a violent end while seeking refuge in a church at Busir, in Upper Egypt.

25[Sidenote: [661-750 A.D.]]

26With Merwan’s death the last support to the unity of the kingdom was removed. Weak and unpopular as were many of the rulers of the Omayyad dynasty, their sway nevertheless extended from the Indus and the Iaxartes to the western coast of the Pyrenean peninsula, and from the Caucasus to the Bay of Aden. Sole founders and perpetuators of the Islamite kingdom in the three divisions of the ancient world, the early fame of the Omayyads served to gloss over many a fault in their later representatives, lending a lustre to their names which according to their contemporaries did not rightfully belong to them.

27Now that Abul-Abbas had become established in Damascus, the central point round which the whole political life of the Moslems had revolved was lost; and Islamism was henceforth to break up into ever widening smaller circles in which each unit was free to develop individually, until the Mohammedan world should be again reduced to that condition of dismemberment which had at first prevailed among the tribes of the Arabian peninsula. There were indeed among the caliphs of Damascus some to whom virtues and the ability to rule were not denied by later writers. Omar II’s piety and love of justice, and the court life of Yazid II, bright with all the lustre that benevolence, poetry, and brilliant feasts could shed upon it, received full meed of praise from poets and true believers.

28By borrowing from the Byzantines their methods of administration and their Greek-Roman culture, by attracting to their court physicians, architects, and mathematicians, and enriching the simple life of the inhabitants of the desert with the arts and conveniences of civilisation, they showed future rulers how to weld together native and foreign constituents so that great results might be obtained, to unite many and diverse elements into one specific whole. But a stain rested upon the name of the Omayyads that, in the opinion of true believers, could never be wiped away. The blood of Ali and his family still dyed their hands, they had driven the sacred line of Mohammed from the seat of honour, and they had covered the head of Hosein with ridicule and contempt.

29These sins could not be expiated by any single act; they constituted a perpetual curse that must descend from one generation to another of the race, dividing families by dissensions and internal feuds until the whole dynasty should finally be overthrown.[d]

30[Illustration]