$Unique_ID{how02060}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{History Of Europe During The Middle Ages
Part I}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Hallam, Henry}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{history
empire
mohammed
first
footnote
upon
constantinople
perhaps
saracens
bagdad}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       History Of Europe During The Middle Ages
Book:        Book VI: History Of The Greeks And Saracens
Author:      Hallam, Henry

Part I

     Rise Of Mohammedism - Causes Of Its Success - Progress Of Saracen Arms -
Greek Empire - Decline Of The Khalifs - The Greeks Recover Part Of Their
Losses - The Turks - The Crusades - Capture Of Constantinople By The Latins -
Its Recovery By The Greeks - The Moguls - The Ottomans - Danger At
Constantinople - Timur - Capture Of Constantinople By Mahomet II. - Alarm Of
Europe.

     The difficulty which occurs to us in endeavoring to fix a natural
commencement of modern history even in the western countries of Europe is much
enhanced when we direct our attention to the Eastern empire.  In tracing the
long series of the Byzantine annals we never lose sight of antiquity; the
Greek language, the Roman name, the titles, the laws, all the shadowy
circumstances of ancient greatness, attend us throughout the progress from the
first to the last of the Constantines; and it is only when we observe the
external condition and relations of their empire, that we perceive ourselves
to be embarked in a new sea, and are compelled to deduce, from points of
bearing to the history of other nations, a line of separation which the
domestic revolutions of Constantinople would not satisfactorily afford.  The
appearance of Mohammed, and the conquests of his disciples, present an epoch
in the history of Asia still more important and more definite than the
subversion of the Roman empire in Europe; and hence the boundary-line between
the ancient and modern divisions of Byzantine history will intersect the reign
of Heraclius. That prince may be said to have stood on the verge of both
hemispheres of time, whose youth was crowned with the last victories over the
successors of Artaxerxes, and whose age was clouded by the first calamities of
Mohammedan invasion.

     Of all the revolutions which have had a permanent influence upon the
civil history of mankind, none could so little be anticipated by human
prudence as that effected by the religion of Arabia.  As the seeds of
invisible disease grow up sometimes in silence to maturity, till they manifest
themselves hopeless and irresistible, the gradual propagation of a new faith
in a barbarous country beyond the limits of the empire was hardly known
perhaps, and certainly disregarded, in the court of Constantinople.  Arabia,
in the age of Mohammed, was divided into many small states, most of which,
however, seem to have looked up to Mecca as the capital of their nation and
the chief seat of their religious worship. The capture of that city
accordingly, and subjugation of its powerful and numerous aristocracy, readily
drew after it the submission of the minor tribes, who transferred to the
conqueror the reverence they were used to show to those he had subdued.  If we
consider Mohammed only as a military usurper, there is nothing more explicable
or more analogous, especially to the course of oriental history, than his
success.  But as the author of a religious imposture, upon which, though
avowedly unattested by miraculous powers, and though originally
discountenanced by the civil magistrate, he had the boldness to found a scheme
of universal dominion, which his followers were half enabled to realize, it is
a curious speculation by what means he could inspire so sincere, so ardent, so
energetic, and so permanent a belief.

     A full explanation of the causes which contributed to the progress of
Mohammedism is not perhaps, at present, attainable by those most conversant
with this department of literature. ^a But we may point out several of leading
importance: in the first place, those just and elevated notions of the divine
nature and of moral duties, the gold-ore that pervades the dross of the Koran,
which were calculated to strike a serious and reflecting people, already
perhaps disinclined, by intermixture with their Jewish and Christian
fellow-citizens, to the superstitions of their ancient idolatry; ^b next, the
artful incorporation of tenets, usages, and traditions from the various
religions that existed in Arabia; ^c and thirdly, the extensive application of
the precepts in the Koran, a book confessedly written with much elegance and
purity, to all legal transactions and all the business of life.  It may be
expected that I should add to these what is commonly considered as a
distinguishing mark of Mohammedism, its indulgence to voluptuousness.  But
this appears to be greatly exaggerated.  Although the character of its founder
may have been tainted by sensuality as well as ferociousness, I do not think
that he relied upon inducements of the former kind for the diffusion of his
system.  We are not to judge of this by rules of Christian purity, or of
European practice.  If polygamy was a prevailing usage in Arabia, as is not
questioned, its permission gave no additional license to the proselytes of
Mohammed, who will be found rather to have narrowed the unbounded liberty of
oriental manners in this respect; while his decided condemnation of adultery,
and of incestuous connections, so frequent among barbarous nations, does not
argue a very lax and accommodating morality. A devout Mussulman exhibits much
more of the Stoical than the Epicurean character.  Nor can any one read the
Koran without being sensible that it breathes an austere and scrupulous
spirit. And, in fact, the founder of a new religion or sect is little likely
to obtain permanent success by indulging the vices and luxuries of mankind.  I
should rather be disposed to reckon the severity of Mohammed's discipline
among the causes of its influence.  Precepts of ritual observance, being
always definite and unequivocal, are less likely to be neglected, after their
obligation has been acknowledged, than those of moral virtue.

[Footnote a: We are very destitute of satisfactory materials for the history
of Mohammed himself.  Abulfeda, the most judicious of his biographers, lived
in the fourteenth century, when it must have been morally impossible to
discriminate the truth amidst the torrent of fabulous tradition.  Al Jannabi,
whom Gagnier translated, is a mere legend writer; it would be as rational to
rely on the Acta Sanctorum as his romance.  It is therefore difficult to
ascertain the real character of the prophet, except as it is deducible from
the Koran.]

[Footnote b: The very curious romance of Antar, written, perhaps, before the
appearance of Mohammed, seems to render it probable that, however, idolatry,
as we are told by Sale, might prevail in some parts of Arabia, yet the genuine
religion of the descendants of Ishmael was a belief in the unity of God as
strict as is laid down in the Koran itself, and accompanied by the same
antipathy, partly religious, partly natural, towards the Fire-worshippers
which Mohammed inculcated.  This corroborates what I had said in the text
before the publication of that work.]

[Footnote c: I am very much disposed to believe, notwithstanding what seems to
be the general opinion, that Mohammed had never read any part of the New
Testament.  His knowledge of Christianity appears to be wholly derived from
the apocryphal gospels and similar works.  He admitted the miraculous
conception and prophetic character of Jesus, but not his divinity or
pre-existence.  Hence it is rather surprising to read, in a popular book of
sermons by a living prelate, that all the heresies of the Christian church (I
quote the substance from memory) are to be found in the Koran, but especially
that of Arianism.  No one who knows what Arianism is, and what Mohammedism is,
could possibly fall into so strange an error.  The misfortune has been, that
the learned writer, while accumulating a mass of reading upon this part of his
subject, neglected what should have been the nucleus of the whole, a perusal
of the single book which contains the doctrines of the Arabian impostor.  In
this strange chimera about the Arianism of Mohammed, he has been led away by a
misplaced trust in Whitaker; a writer almost invariably in the wrong, and
whose bad reasoning upon all the points of historical criticism which he
attempted to discuss is quite notorious.]

     Thus the long fasting, the pilgrimages, the regular prayers and
ablutions, the constant almsgiving, the abstinence from stimulating liquors,
enjoined by the Koran, created a visible standard of practice among its
followers, and preserved a continual recollection of their law.

     But the prevalence of Islam in the lifetime of its prophet, and during
the first ages of its existence, was chiefly owing to the spirit of martial
energy that he infused into it.  The religion of Mohammed is as essentially a
military system as the institution of chivalry in the west of Europe.  The
people of Arabia, a race of strong passions and sanguinary temper, inured to
habits of pillage and murder, found in the law of their native prophet, not a
license, but a command, to desolate the world, and the promise of all that
their glowing imaginations could anticipate of Paradise annexed to all in
which they most delighted upon earth.  It is difficult for us in the calmness
of our closets to conceive that feverish intensity of excitements to which man
may be wrought, when the animal and intellectual energies of his nature
converge to a point, and the buoyancy of strength and courage reciprocates the
influence of moral sentiment or religious hope.  The effect of this union I
have formerly remarked in the Crusades; a phenomenon perfectly analogous to
the early history of the Saracens.  In each, one hardly knows whether most to
admire the prodigious exertions of heroism, or to revolt from the ferocious
bigotry that attended them.  But the Crusades were a temporary effort, not
thoroughly congenial to the spirit of Christendom, which, even in the darkest
and most superstitious ages, was not susceptible of the solitary and
overruling fanaticism of the Moslem.  They needed no excitement from pontiffs
and preachers to achieve the work to which they were called; the precept was
in their law, the principle was in their hearts, the assurance of success was
in their swords.  "O prophet," exclaimed Ali, when Mohammed, in the first
years of his mission, sought among the scanty and hesitating assembly of his
friends a vizir and lieutenant in command, "I am the man; whoever rises
against thee, I will dash out his teeth, tear out his eyes, break his legs,
rip up his belly.  O prophet, I will be thy vizir over them." ^d These words
of Mohammed's early and illustrious disciple are, as it were, a text, upon
which the commentary expands into the whole Saracenic history.  They contain
the vital essence of his religion, implicit faith and ferocious energy. Death,
slavery, tribute to unbelievers, were the glad tidings of the Arabian prophet.
To the idolaters, indeed, or those who acknowledged no special revelation, one
alternative only was proposed, conversion or the sword.  The people of the
Book, as they are termed in the Koran, or four sects of Christians, Jews,
Magians, and Sabians, were permitted to redeem their adherence to their
ancient law by the payment of tribute, and other marks of humiliation and
servitude.  But the limits which Mohammedan intolerance had prescribed to
itself were seldom transgressed; the word pledged to unbelievers was seldom
forfeited; and with all their insolence and oppression, the Moslem conquerors
were mild and liberal in comparison with those who obeyed the pontiffs of Rome
or Constantinople.

[Footnote d: Gibbon, vol. ix. p. 284.]

     At the death of Mohammed in 632 his temporal and religious sovereignty
embraced, and was limited by, the Arabian peninsula.  The Roman and Persian
empires, engaged in tedious and indecisive hostility upon the rivers of
Mesopotamia and the Armenian mountains, were viewed by the ambitious fanatics
of his creed as their quarry.  In the very first year of Mohammed's immediate
successor, Abubeker, each of these mighty empires was invaded.  The latter
opposed but a short resistance.  The crumbling fabric of eastern despotism is
never secure against rapid and total subversion; a few victories, a few
sieges, carried the Arabian arms from the Tigris to the Oxus, and overthrew,
with the Sassanian dynasty, the ancient and famous religion they had
professed.  Seven years of active and unceasing warfare sufficed to subjugate
the rich province of Syria, though defended by numerous armies and fortified
cities [A. D. 632-639]; and the Khalif Omar had scarcely returned thanks for
the accomplishment of this conquest, when Amrou, his lieutenant, announced to
him the entire reduction of Egypt.  After some interval the Saracens won their
way along the coast of Africa as far as the Pillars of Hercules, and a third
province was irretrievably torn from the Greek empire.  [A. D. 647-698.] These
western conquests introduced them to fresh enemies, and ushered in more
splendid successes; encouraged by the disunion of the Visigoths, and perhaps
invited by treachery, Musa, the general of a master who sat beyond the
opposite extremity of the Mediterranean Sea, passed over into Spain, and
within about two years the name of Mohammed was invoked under the Pyrenees. ^e
[A. D. 710.]

[Footnote e: Ockley's History of the Saracens; Cardonne, Revolutions de
l'Afrique et de l'Espagne.  The former of these works is well known and justly
admired for its simplicity and picturesque details.  Scarcely any narrative
has ever excelled in beauty that of the death of Hossein.  But these do not
tend to render it more deserving of confidence.  On the contrary, it may be
laid down as a pretty general rule, that circumstantiality, which enhances the
credibility of a witness, diminishes that of an historian remote in time or
situation.  And I observe that Reiske, in his preface to Abulfeda, speaks of
Wakidi, from whom Ockley's book is but a translation, as a mere fabulist.]

     These conquests, which astonish the careless and superficial, are less
perplexing to a calm inquirer than their cessation; the loss of half the Roman
empire, than the preservation of the rest.  A glance from Medina to
Constantinople in the middle of the seventh century would probably have
induced an indifferent spectator, if such a being may be imagined, to
anticipate by eight hundred years the establishment of a Mohammedan dominion
upon the shores of the Hellespont.  The fame of Heraclius had withered in the
Syrian war; and his successors appeared as incapable to resist, as they were
unworthy to govern.  Their despotism, unchecked by law, was often punished by
successful rebellion; but not a whisper of civil liberty was ever heard, and
the vicissitudes of servitude and anarchy consummated the moral degeneracy of
the nation.  Less ignorant than the western barbarians, the Greeks abused
their ingenuity in theological controversies, those especially which related
to the nature and incarnation of our Saviour; wherein the disputants, as is
usual, became more positive and rancorous as their creed receded from the
possibility of human apprehension.  Nor were these confined to the clergy, who
had not, in the East, obtained the prerogative of guiding the national faith;
the sovereigns sided alternately with opposing factions; Heraclius was not too
brave, nor Theodora too infamous, for discussions of theology; and the
dissenters from an imperial decision were involved in the double proscription
of treason and heresy.  But the persecutors of their opponents at home
pretended to cowardly scrupulousness in the field; nor was the Greek church
ashamed to require the lustration of a canonical penance from the soldier who
shed the blood of his enemies in a national war.

     But this depraved people were preserved from destruction by the vices of
their enemies, still more than by some intrinsic resources which they yet
possessed.  A rapid degeneracy enfeebled the victorious Moslems in their
career.  That irresistible enthusiasm, that earnest and disinterested zeal of
the companions of Mohammed, was in a great measure lost, even before the first
generation had passed away.  In the fruitful valleys of Damascus and Bassora
the Arabs of the desert forgot their abstemious habits.  Rich from the
tributes of an enslaved people, the Mohammedan sovereigns knew no employment
of riches but in sensual luxury, and paid the price of voluptuous indulgence
in the relaxation of their strength and energy.  Under the reign of Moawiah,
the fifth khalif, an hereditary succession was substituted for the free choice
of the faithful, by which the first representatives of the prophet had been
elevated to power; and this regulation, necessary as it plainly was to avert
in some degree the dangers of schism and civil war, exposed the kingdom to the
certainty of being often governed by feeble tyrants.  But no regulation could
be more than a temporary preservative against civil war.  The dissensions
which still separate and render hostile the followers of Mohammed may be
traced to the first events that ensued upon his death, to the rejection of his
son-in-law Ali by the electors of Medina.  Two reigns, those of Abubeker and
Omar, passed in external glory and domestic reverence; but the old age of
Othman was weak and imprudent, and the conspirators against him established
the first among a hundred precedents of rebellion and regicide.  Ali was now
chosen, but a strong faction disputed his right; and the Saracen empire was,
for many years, distracted with civil war, among competitors who appealed, in
reality, to no other decision than that of the sword.  The family of Ommiyah
succeeded at last in establishing an unresisted, if not an undoubted, title.
But rebellions were perpetually afterwards breaking out in that vast extent of
dominion, till one of these revolters acquired by success a better name than
rebel, and founded the dynasty of the Abbassides.  [A. D. 750.]

     Damascus had been the seat of empire under the Ommiades; it was removed
by the succeeding family to their new city of Bagdad.  There are not any names
in the long line of khalifs, after the companions of Mohammed, more renowned
in history than some of the earlier sovereigns who reigned in this capital -
Almansor, Haroun Alraschid, and Almamun.  Their splendid palaces, their
numerous guards, their treasures of gold and silver, the populousness and
wealth of their cities, formed a striking contrast to the rudeness and poverty
of the western nations in the same age.  In their court learning, which the
first Moslems had despised as unwarlike or rejected as profane, was held in
honor. ^f The Khalif Almamun especially was distinguished for his patronage of
letters; the philosophical writings of Greece were eagerly sought and
translated; the stars were numbered, the course of the planets was measured.
The Arabians improved upon the science they borrowed, and returned it with
abundant interest to Europe in the communication of numeral figures and the
intellectual language of algebra. ^g Yet the merit of the Abbassides has been
exaggerated by adulation or gratitude.  After all the vague praises of
hireling poets, which have sometimes been repeated in Europe, it is very rare
to read the history of an eastern sovereign unstained by atrocious crimes.  No
Christian government, except perhaps that of Constantinople, exhibits such a
series of tyrants as the khalifs of Bagdad; if deeds of blood, wrought through
unbridled passion or jealous policy, may challenge the name of tyranny.  These
are ill redeemed by ceremonious devotion and acts of trifling, perhaps
ostentatious, humility, or even by the best attribute of Mohammedan princes -
a rigorous justice in chastising the offences of others.  Anecdotes of this
description give as imperfect a sketch of an oriental sovereign as monkish
chroniclers sometimes draw of one in Europe who founded monasteries and obeyed
the clergy; though it must be owned that the former are in much better taste.

[Footnote f: The Arabian writers date the origin of their literature (except
those works of fiction which had always been popular) from the reign of
Almansor, A.D. 758.  Abulpharagius, p. 160; Gibbon, c. 52.]

[Footnote g: Several very recent publications contain interesting details on
Saracen literature; Berington's Literary History of the Middle Ages, Mill's
History of Mohammedanism, chap. vi., Turner's History of England, vol. i.
Harris' Philological Arrangement is perhaps a book better known; and, though
it has since been much excelled, was one of the first contributions in our own
language to this department, in which a great deal yet remains for the
oriential scholars of Europe.  Casiri's admirable catalogue of Arabic MSS. in
the Escurial ought before this to have been followed up by a more accurate
examination of their contents than it was possible for him to give.]

     Though the Abbassides have acquired more celebrity, they never attained
the real strength of their predecessors.  Under the last of the house of
Ommiyah, one command was obeyed almost along the whole diameter of the known
world, from the banks of the Sihon to the utmost promontory of Portugal.  But
the revolution which changed the succession of khalifs produced another not
less important.  A fugitive of the vanquished family, by name Abdalrahman,
arrived in Spain, and the Moslems of that country, not sharing in the
prejudices which had stirred up the Persians in favor of the line of Abbas,
and conscious that their remote situation entitled them to independence,
proclaimed him Khalif of Cordova.  There could be little hope of reducing so
distant a dependency; and the example was not unlikely to be imitated.  In the
reign of Haroun Alraschid two principalities were formed in Africa - of the
Aglabites, who reigned over Tunis and Tripoli; and of the Edrisites in the
western parts of Barbary. These yielded in about a century to the Fatimites, a
more powerful dynasty, who afterwards established an empire in Egypt. ^h

[Footnote h: For these revolutions, which it is not very easy to fix in the
memory, consult Cardonne, who has made as much of them as the subject would
bear.]

     The loss, however, of Spain and Africa was the inevitable effect of that
immensely extended dominion, which their separation alone would not have
enfeebled.  But other revolutions awaited it at home.  In the history of the
Abassides of Bagdad we read over again the decline of European monarchies,
through their various symptoms of ruin; and find successive analogies to the
insults of the barbarians towards imperial Rome in the fifth century, to the
personal insignificance of the Merovingian kings, and to the feudal
usurpations that dismembered the inheritance of Charlemagne.  I.  Beyond the
northeastern frontier of the Saracen empire dwelt a warlike and powerful
nation of the Tartar family, who defended the independence of Turkestan from
the sea of Aral to the great central chain of mountains.  In the wars which
the khalifs or their lieutenants waged against them many of these Turks were
led into captivity, and dispersed over the empire.  Their strength and courage
distinguished them among a people grown effeminate by luxury; and that
jealousy of disaffection among his subjects so natural to an eastern monarch
might be an additional motive with the Khalif Motassem to form bodies of
guards out of these prisoners.  But his policy was fatally erroneous.  More
rude and even more ferocious than the Arabs, they contemned the feebleness of
the khalifate, while they grasped at its riches.  The son of Motassem,
Motawakkel, was murdered in his palace by the barbarians of the north; and his
fate revealed the secret of the empire, that the choice of its sovereign had
passed to their slaves.  Degradation and death were frequently the lot of
succeeding khalifs; but in the East the son leaps boldly on the throne which
the blood of his father has stained, and the praetorian guards of Bagdad
rarely failed to render a fallacious obedience to the nearest heir of the
house of Abbas.  2.  In about one hundred years after the introduction of the
Turkish soldiers the sovereigns of Bagdad sank almost into oblivion.  Al Radi,
who died in 940, was the last of these that officiated in the mosque, that
commanded the forces in person, that addressed the people from the pulpit,
that enjoyed the pomp and splendor of royalty. ^i But he was the first who
appointed, instead of a vizir, a new officer - a mayor, as it were, of the
palace - with the title of Emir al Omra, commander of commanders, to whom he
delegated by compulsion the functions of his office.  This title was usually
seized by active and martial spirits; it was sometimes hereditary, and in
effect irrevocable by the khalifs, whose names hardly appear after this time
in Oriental annals. 3.  During these revolutions of the palace every province
successively shook off its allegiance; new principalities were formed in Syria
and Mesopotamia, as well as in Khorasan and Persia, till the dominion of the
Commander of the Faithful was literally confined to the city of Bagdad and its
adjacent territory.  For a time some of these princes, who had been appointed
as governors by the khalifs, professed to respect his supremacy by naming him
in the public prayers and upon the coin; but these tokens of dependence were
gradually obliterated. ^j

[Footnote i: Abulfeda, p. 261; Gibbon, c. 52; Modern Univ. Hist. vol. ii. Al
Radi's command of the army is only mentioned by the last.]

[Footnote j: The decline of the Saracens is fully discussed in the 52nd
chapter of Gibbon, which is, in itself, a complete philosophical dissertation
upon this part of history.]

     Such is the outline of Saracenic history for three centuries after
Mohammed: one age of glorious conquest; a second of stationary but rather
precarious greatness; a third of rapid decline.  The Greek empire meanwhile
survived, and almost recovered from the shock it had sustained. Besides the
decline of its enemies, several circumstances may be enumerated tending to its
preservation.  The maritime province of Cilicia had been overrun by the
Mohammedans; but between this and the Lesser Asia Mount Taurus raises its
massy buckler, spreading as a natural bulwark from the sea-coast of the
ancient Pamphylia to the hilly district of Isauria, whence it extends in an
easterly direction, separating the Cappadocian and Cilician plains, and, after
throwing off considerable ridges to the north and south, connects itself with
other chains of mountains that penetrate far into the Asiatic continent.
Beyond this barrier the Saracens formed no durable settlement, though the
armies of Alraschid wasted the country as far as the Hellespont, and the city
of Amorium, in Phrygia, was razed to the ground by Al Motassem.  The position
of Constantinople, chosen with a sagacity to which the course of events almost
gave the appearance of prescience, secured her from any immediate danger on
the side of Asia, and rendered her as little accessible to an enemy as any
city which valor and patriotism did not protect.  Yet in the days of Arabian
energy she was twice attacked by great naval armaments.  [A.D. 668 and 716.]
The fist siege, or rather blockade, continued for seven years; the second,
though shorter, was more terrible, and her walls, as well as her port, were
actually invested by the combined forces of the Khalif Waled, under his
brother Moslema. ^k The final discomfiture of these assailants showed the
resisting force of the empire, or rather of its capital; but perhaps the
abandonment of such maritime enterprises by the Saracens may be in some
measure ascribed to the removal of their metropolis from Damascus to Bagdad.
But the Greeks in their turn determined to dispute the command of the sea.  By
possessing the secret of an inextinguishable fire, they fought on superior
terms; their wealth, perhaps their skill, enabled them to employ larger and
better appointed vessels; and they ultimately expelled their enemies from the
islands of Crete and Cyprus.  By land they were less desirous of encountering
the Moslem.  The science of tactics is studied by the pusillanimous, like that
of medicine by the sick; and the Byzantine emperors, Leo and Constantine, have
left written treatises on the art of avoiding defeat, of protracting contest,
of resisting attack. ^l But this timid policy, and even the purchase of
armistices from the Saracens, were not ill calculated for the state of both
nations.  While Constantinople temporized, Bagdad shook to her foundations;
and the heirs of the Roman name might boast the immortality of their own
empire when they contemplated the dissolution of that which had so rapidly
sprung up and perished.  Amidst all the crimes and revolutions of the
Byzantine government - and its history is but a series of crimes and
revolutions - it was never dismembered by intestine war.  A sedition in the
army, a tumult in the theatre, a conspiracy in the palace, precipitated a
monarch from the throne; but the allegiance of Constantinople was instantly
transferred to his successor, and the provinces implicitly obeyed the voice of
the capital.  The custom too of partition, so baneful to the Latin kingdoms,
and which was not altogether unknown to the Saracens, never prevailed in the
Greek empire.  It stood in the middle of the tenth century, as vicious indeed
and cowardly, but more wealthy, more enlightened, and far more secure from its
enemies than under the first successors of Heraclius.  For about one hundred
years preceding there had been only partial wars with the Mohammedan
potentates; and in these the emperors seem gradually to have gained the
advantage, and to have become more frequently the aggressors.  But the
increasing distractions of the East encouraged two brave usurpers, Nicephorus
Phocas and John Zimisces, to attempt the actual recovery of the lost
provinces.  [A.D. 963-975.] They carried the Roman arms (one may use the term
with less reluctance than usual) over Syria; Antioch and Aleppo were taken by
storm; Damascus submitted; even the cities of Mesopotamia, beyond the ancient
boundary of the Euphrates, were added to the trophies of Zimisces, who
unwillingly spared the capital of the khalifate.  From such distant conquests
it was expedient, and indeed necessary, to withdraw; but Cilicia and Antioch
were permanently restored to the empire.  At the close of the tenth century
the emperors of Constantinople possessed the best and greatest portion of the
modern kingdom of Naples, a part of Sicily, the whole European dominions of
the Ottomans, the province of Anatolia or Asia Minor, with some part of Syria
and Armenia. ^m

[Footnote k: Gibbon, c. 52.]

[Footnote l: Ibid., c. 53.  Constantine Porphyrogenitus, in his advice to his
son as to the administration of the empire, betrays a mind not ashamed to
confess weakness and cowardice, and pleasing itself in petty arts to elude the
rapacity or divide the power of its enemies.]

[Footnote m: Gibbon, c. 52 and 53.  The latter of these chapters contains as
luminous a sketch of the condition of Greece as the former does of Saracenic
history.  In each, the facts are not grouped historically, according to the
order of time, but philosophically, according to their relations.]