were balanced by the attempts of rival Caliphs to assert their own claims and those of the whole body of the faithful. But it was not till the expulsion of the Ommiads from Syria that any permanent separation took place; so that we may fairly call the period embraced in this Lecture that of the Undivided Caliphate.

The golden age of the Saracens was the twelve years, A.D. 632—644, comprised in the reigns of AbuBekr and Omar. This was a period of uninterrupted internal harmony and external conquest. The two fathers-in-law of the Prophet, for Omar held that place as well as Abu-Bekr, commanded an allegiance which never fell to the lot of his sons-in-law Othman and Ali. Ali clearly felt himself wronged by the three successive elections to his prejudice, but he did not allow his disappointment to hinder a true and dutiful allegiance to his successful rivals. Nor did any other sect or party disturb the perfect unity of the Faithful. The false prophets who arose in the last days of Mahomet fell "before the sword of the Lord and of Khaled," and Moseilama, who would have divided the world with Mahomet, received, like Harold Hardrada from his English namesake, only seven feet of ground for a grave. The proud realm of Persia sinks before the warriors of the desert, and the King of Kings is driven forth to wander as a homeless exile. Rome loses her oriental provinces ; Antioch, the birthplace of the Christian name; Jerusalem, the holy place alike of Jewish, Christian, and Moslem faith; Alexandria, the seat of the subtlest wisdom of heathen and of Christian, are all numbered among the subject cities of Islam. And, once grant1 Gibbon, cap. li. (ix. 353, ed. Milman).

CHARACTER OF THE EARLY CALIPHS.

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ing the principle of aggressive conquest, there is comparatively little to condemn in the conduct of the conquerors. The alternative, Koran, Tribute, or Sword, is always fairly offered to those attacked; and if Khaled is always found most inclined to the last of the three, Abu-Obeidah is always equally ready to commute vengeance for submission. We read of no

such massacres, above all of no such breaches of faith, as have commonly disgraced the triumphs of later Moslem victors. When Mahomet the Second conquered Euboea, the Venetian general Erizzo stipulated for the safety of his head. His head indeed was untouched, but his body was sawn asunder. A century later Sultan Selim conquers Cyprus, that its wines may the better enable him to violate the precepts of his own faith. The Venetian commander Bragadino capitulates on condition that he and his garrison are transported in safety to Crete. Ottoman good faith sells the garrison for slaves and flays alive their commander. Not such were the deeds of the first Caliphs. The cruel and treacherous Ottoman is indeed an unworthy representative of the noble Saracen whose creed and mission he dishonours. The conduct of Omar at the surrender of Jerusalem is perhaps the most signal instance of good faith that history records. He secures to the Christians the possession of their churches; he refuses to pray in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, lest his followers should afterwards make his example an excuse for converting it into a mosque. Succeeding Caliphs destroyed or desecrated this very temple and others secured by similar stipulations. Omar was an illiterate barbarian; he burnt the Alexandrian library; he went clad in a dirty sheepskin, and rode on a red

camel which carried the bag and the wooden platter which formed all his household wealth. Succeeding Caliphs surpassed the pomp of Chosroes and Cæsar; their courts were crowded with savans; their palaces were filled with their writings. But Omar was just and righteous and faithful to his word; his splendid successors sank into all the vulgar tyranny of the old-world despots of Babylon and Susa.

The fact was that the stern virtues of the first Saracens were the result of a religious enthusiasm too powerful to be lasting. When the Caliphate embraced half the civilized world, when it became the possession of unprincipled soldiers of fortune or of dissolute youths born in the purple, it was not in human nature that the Caliphs should continue to regard themselves as great public servants, mere trustees for the whole body of the Faithful. While the wealth of Persia and Syria was being poured at his feet, Abu-Bekr took for himself a daily salary of about three shillings, with maintenance for himself, one slave, and one camel. Omar divided his time between preaching to the people and administering justice among them. He made his meal of barley and water on the steps of the mosque, and invited every one who passed by to partake. Ali, when his brother asked him for a pension, recommended him rather to rob a rich neighbour; it were better for him to be accused by one man at the Day of Judgement than by the whole assembly of the Faithful. All this was natural in the companions of the Prophet; we admire it in them; we do not expect it to be continued in their successors. The early Caliphs at Medina were indeed wise and good men; their successors would have been more than men had they

CHARACTER OF THE EARLY CALIPHS. 69

lived in the same way at Damascus, Cordova, or Bagdad. Indeed such extreme simplicity, noble as it was, would have been out of place under their circumstances. The holy Imam might safely practise it in the sacred city, amidst the first fervour of devotion; the temporal Sovereign could hardly continue it'when love had begun to wax cold in a more artificial state of things. Still we might reasonably have expected that something of the old Moslem virtues would have continued. They revive indeed, to some extent, with every new race, with every fresh conquest; but we seldom indeed find them on the throne of the Commander of the Faithful. We do not expect Haroun-al-Rashid to have imitated Omar in his private life; we might have expected him to have imitated his justice and mercy, and not to have stained his hands with the blood of the Barmecides. In everything we see at once how great was the immediate reform effected by Mahomet in his own land, and how utterly inadequate his system was to effect a permanent reform in other lands. The master of such immediate scholars could not have been the "wicked impostor" depicted by Dean Prideaux; but the author of such ultimate results must surely have mistaken his calling when he announced himself as the Prophet of the whole world.

So early indeed as the reign of the third Caliph the scene begins to change. The golden age lasted no longer than Abu-Bekr and Omar; with Othman the fine gold has become dim. The personal virtues of Othman were indeed not inferior to those of his predecessors; his piety was equally exemplary; he had accompanied the Prophet in his first adversity,

and he died with his eyes fixed on the Koran; but perhaps he had never possessed the same capacity for government as his predecessors, or, if he had, he had lost it beneath the weight of seventy years. He did not affect the same simplicity of life as his predecessors; he began to assume something of the state of worldly royalty; he allowed himself to be swayed by unworthy favourites, and was culpably lavish to members of his own family. He met with his punishment in the earliest insurrection recorded in Mahometan history. Omar died by the hand of a Giaour, the victim of personal vengeance; Othman perished in a rebellion of the Faithful, stirred up by her who styled herself their Mother, headed by her brother, the son of the first Caliph, and by the old companions of the Prophet. The Commander of the Faithful slaughtered at Medina by the hands of Ansars1 and Mohajerins2 shows that, even before the close of its first generation, the glory of Islam had begun to fade away.

Upon the murder of Othman, Ali at last obtained the post of which he had been so often defrauded; and now begins the tragic tale of the wrongs and martyrdoms of the immediate family of the Prophet. The province of Syria was now ruled by the crafty Moawiyah, whose father was Abu-Sofian, so long the bitterest enemy of Mahomet, and at last a tardy and unwilling proselyte. His mother too was Henda, the female fury who made herself a name by devouring the heart of Mahomet's uncle Hamza after the battle of Ohud. Such was the parentage of the man who was to deprive the descendants of the Apostle of

2

Helpers

= those who received Mahomet at Medina. Fugitives = those who accompanied Mahomet from Mecca.