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Updated: June 11, 2025
The sultans of Constantinople govern, then, under this name, as much territory as the political vicissitudes allow them to govern i.e., the Turkish Empire; as khalifs, they are the spiritual heads of the whole of Sunnite Islam.
The dispute respecting the worship of images led to those great events. The acts of the Mohammedan khalifs and of the iconoclastic or image-breaking emperors occasioned that dispute. Nothing could be more deplorable than the condition of southern Europe when it first felt the intellectual influence of the Arabians.
Mahomet called himself Khalif, and ruled for ten years at Mecca, where he died and was buried. Mahometans go on pilgrimage to Mecca, and always turn their faces thither when they pray at sunrise or sunset, throwing water over themselves, or sand if they cannot get water. The Khalifs who came after Mahomet, went on conquering.
He had received embassies and presents from the sovereigns of the East, Christian and Mussulman, from the emperors at Constantinople and the khalifs at Bagdad. Everywhere, in Europe, in Africa, and in Asia, he was feared and respected by kings and people.
Within twenty-five years after the death of Mohammed, under Ali, the fourth khalif, the patronage of learning had become a settled principle of the Mohammedan system. Under the khalifs of Bagdad this principle was thoroughly carried out.
If it be true that the Arabs burned the library of Alexandria, there was at that time danger that their fanaticism would lend itself to the Byzantine system; but it was only for a moment that the khalifs fell into this evil policy. They very soon became distinguished patrons of learning.
However, there was doubtless as much policy as esteem in this, for the Asiatic khalifs perceived the advantage of a good understanding with the power that could control the emirs of Spain.
So the Chief of the Police took him and went down with him into the city, whilst the crier forewent them, proclaiming aloud and saying, 'This is the reward and the least of the reward of him who doth treason against the orthodox Khalifs! And the folk flocked to the gallows.
Many of the adventures of its heroes and heroines are suggested by the secret passages which the wall cupboards often hide, and may well have occurred in houses we may visit to-day in Cairo, for, more than any other, Cairo is the city of the "Arabian Nights," and in our walks one may at any moment meet the hunchback or the pastry-cook, or the one-eyed calender, whose adventures fills so many pages of that fascinating book; while the summary justice and drastic measures of the old khalifs are recalled by the many instruments of torture or of death which may still be seen hanging in the bazaars or from the city gates.
In this defence of images Gregory found an active coadjutor in a Syrian, John of Damascus, who had witnessed the rage of the khalifs against the images of his own country, and whose hand, having been cut off by those tyrants, had been miraculously rejoined to his body by an idol of the Virgin to which he prayed. But Gregory was not alone in his policy, nor John of Damascus in his controversies.
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