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In the Omayyads the ancient aristocracy of Mecca came to the helm, and under them, the Mohammedan state was above all, as Wellhausen styled it, "the Arabian Empire." The best khalifs of this house had the political wisdom to give the governors of the provinces sufficient independence to prevent schism, and to secure to themselves the authority in important matters.
The Spanish khalifs had surrounded themselves with all the luxuries of Oriental life. They had magnificent palaces, enchanting gardens, seraglios filled with beautiful women. Europe at the present day does not offer more taste, more refinement, more elegance, than might have been seen, at the epoch of which we are speaking, in the capitals of the Spanish Arabs.
Wherefore I will give thee the like of what Abdallah gave thee. Then he ordered him money and horses and apparel, such as Abdallah had given him; and thus that man's fortune was restored to him by the munificence of these two generous men. It is said that there was none, among the Khalifs of the house of Abbas, more accomplished in all branches of knowledge than El Mamoun.
The canal of Rameses, which, in the course of so many centuries, has become filled up with sand, was thus cleaned out, as it was again in the reign of the Ptolemies, and again under the khalifs, and galleys passed from sea to sea.
Most Sunnites expect that at the end of the world there will come from the House of Mohammed a successor to him, guided by Allah, who will maintain the revealed law as faithfully as the first four khalifs did according to the idealized history, and who will succeed with God's help in making Islam victorious over the whole world.
Ibn-al-Arabi was governor of Saragossa, and one of the Spanish Arab chieftains in league against Abdel-Rhaman, the last offshoot of the Ommiad khalifs, who, with the assistance of the Berbers, had seized the government of Spain.
For at Mohammed's death the Medinese began fiercely contesting the claims of the Qoraishites; and during the reign of Ali, the fourth Khalif, the Kharijites rebelled, demanding, as democratic rigorists, the free election of khalifs without restriction to the tribe of Qoraish or to any other descent.
The Jewish people dropped its misanthropy and its leaning toward isolation. The Jews entered all sorts of careers: by the side of influential and cultivated statesmen, such as Chasdai ibn Shaprut and Samuel Hanagid, at the courts of the Khalifs, stood a brilliant group of grammarians, poets, and philosophers, like Jonah ibn Ganach, Solomon Gabirol, and Moses ibn Ezra.
Perhaps, long antecedent to the introduction of the faith of the khalifs among the eastern people, this word might have found its way and been naturalized in the islands; or perhaps its progress was in a contrary direction. It has likewise a connexion in sound with the names used to express a deity or some degree of superior being by many other people of this region of the earth.
After a brief success, the actual power of these khalifs was transferred to the hands, first, of the captains of their bodyguard, then of sultan-dynasties, whose forcibly acquired powers, were legalized by a formal investiture. In the same way the large provinces developed into independent kingdoms, whose rulers considered the nomination-diplomas from Bagdad in the light of mere ornaments.
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