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They came, five thousand strong, at the invitation of Count Julian; and, far from meeting great resistance, they were welcomed by the numerous enemies of the Visigoths. This was the happy era of the Caliphs, and the Arabs might well pass for liberators in comparison with the tyrants of the North.
The city of Bussorah was for many years the capital of a kingdom tributary to the caliphs of Arabia. The king who governed it in the days of the caliph Haroon al Rusheed was named Zinebi, who not thinking it proper to commit the administration of his affairs to a single vizier, made choice of two, Khacan and Saouy.
An historian who balances the four caliphs with a hand unshaken by superstition, will calmly pronounce that their manners were alike pure and exemplary; that their zeal was fervent, and probably sincere; and that, in the midst of riches and power, their lives were devoted to the practice of moral and religious duties.
But the caliphs of Bagdad had lost their authority in the West; the Aglabites and Fatimites usurped the provinces of Africa, their emirs of Sicily aspired to independence; and the design of conquest and dominion was degraded to a repetition of predatory inroads. In the sufferings of prostrate Italy, the name of Rome awakens a solemn and mournful recollection.
In the exercise of their power, the caliphs were fettered neither by popular rights, the votes of a senate, nor constitutional laws: the Koran was, indeed, their professed rule of action; but, inasmuch as they alone were its interpreters, their will was in all cases law. The loss of Spain to the empire was more than made up by conquests in India, Tartary, and European Turkey.
At the beginning the caliphs had taken anxious precautions against the colonising of Egypt; they held it by an army, but they were insistent that the army should not take root, but be always free to join the caliph's standard. But it was inevitable that the Arabs should settle in so fertile and pleasant a land.
During these formidable wars the caliphs of Egypt sought assistance from those of Bagdad; and Noureddin, a prince of that empire, protected them against their Western assailants. The weakness of Egypt, however, came thus to be known to the crafty and powerful caliphs of Bagdad, and in a short time its Asiatic dominions were seized upon by Noureddin and Saladin.
One of the caliphs having been assassinated in a mosque, seems to have been the precedent for all the murders of the kind which have followed, and indelibly disgrace the Mussulman annals. These Hhaha and Shedma people are also borderers, and fight with the accustomed ferocity of border tribes.
The remainder of the province, Ramlah, Ptolemais or Acre, Sichem or Neapolis, Gaza, Ascalon, Berytus, Sidon, Gabala, Laodicea, Apamea, Hierapolis, no longer presumed to dispute the will of the conqueror; and Syria bowed under the sceptre of the caliphs seven hundred years after Pompey had despoiled the last of the Macedonian kings. Part VI.
It is difficult to ascertain the precise position of these titular Caliphs under the Mameluke monarchy in Egypt. That they were little known to the world in general is certain; and one is sometimes tempted to suspect the complete authenticity of the succession preserved through them.
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