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Rh 909, had for years carried on secret correspondence with Alids and other sympathizers in Egypt. The opportunity was now obvious. In 969 the Fatimid army routed the Ikhshidid forces both in Egypt and at al-Ramlah; Egypt, Palestine and central Syria were incorporated in the emer- ging Fatimid empire.

The Ikhshidid dynasty (935-969), like its predecessor the Tulunid, had only an ephemeral existence. Both fol- lowed a pattern found in many other states which, in this period of disintegration, broke off from the imperial govern- ment. Both made lavish use of state moneys to curry favour with their subjects and thereby ruined the treasuries. Neither of them had any national basis in the land over which it tried to rule; neither could rely upon a strong coherent body of supporters of its own race among its subjects. Being intruders the rulers had to recruit their bodyguards, which were also their armies, from alien sources. Such a rule could be maintained only so long as the arm which wielded the sword remained strong.

Meanwhile Hasan al-Hamdani had consolidated his power in northern Syria and received the honorific Sayf- al-Dawlah (sword of state) from the Abbasid caliph, who sought thus to convey the impression that the recipient — in reality independent — was under his control. Sayf and his successors were tolerant Shiites and preserved the caliph's name in the Friday prayer. Sayf chose Aleppo for capital perhaps because of its ancient citadel and its proximity to the frontier fortresses which he intended to defend against the new wave of Byzantine inroads. For the first time since Amorite days, the northern metropolis became the seat of an important government. In it the new ruler erected a magnificent palace.

Sayf's domain covered northern Syria, a section of Cilicia and a large part of northern Mesopotamia. He even established a foothold in Armenia with the aid of Kurdish supporters; his mother was a Kurd. By marrying a Rh


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 of Covent Garden on a question of terms, Terry made his first appearance at Drury Lane, 16 Oct. 1822, speaking an occasional address by Colman and playing Sir Peter. He afterwards acted Crabtree, John Dory in ‘Wild Oats,’ Cassio, Belarius in ‘Cymbeline,’ Kent in ‘Lear,’ Dougal in ‘Rob Roy,’ Solomon in the ‘Stranger,’ and Grumio, and was, 4 Jan. 1823, the first Simpson in Poole's ‘Simpson & Co.’ At the Haymarket, 7 July, he was the first Admiral Franklin in Kenney's ‘Sweethearts and Wives,’ and on 27 Sept. the first Dr. Primrose in a new adaptation by T. Dibdin of the ‘Vicar of Wakefield.’ The season 1823–4 at Drury Lane saw him as Bartolo in ‘Fazio,’ Lord Sands, Menenius in ‘Coriolanus,’ and as the first Antony Foster in a version of ‘Kenilworth,’ 5 Jan. 1824, and the following season as Orozembo in ‘Pizarro,’ Justice Woodcock in ‘Love in a Village,’ Adam in ‘As you like it,’ Moustache in ‘Henri Quatre,’ Hubert in ‘King John,’ and Rochfort in an alteration of the ‘Fatal Dowry.’ Among his original rôles were Zamet in ‘Massaniello,’ 17 Feb. 1825, and Mephistopheles in ‘Faustus,’ 16 May, the last one of his best parts. In 1825, in association with his friend [q. v.], he became manager of the Adelphi, opening, 10 Oct., in a piece called ‘Killigrew.’ On the 31st was produced Fitzball's successful adaptation, ‘The Pilot,’ in which Terry was the Pilot. He also appeared in other parts.

Terry's financial affairs had meanwhile become so involved that he was obliged to retire from management. Under the strain of the collapse which followed, Terry's powers, mental and physical, gave way. After leaving the Adelphi he temporarily retired to the continent, and then re-engaged at Drury Lane and played Polonius and Simpson. Finding himself unable to act, and his memory quite gone, he threw up his engagement. On 12 June 1829 he was struck with paralysis, and died during the month. Having previously married in Liverpool, Terry espoused as his second wife Elizabeth Nasmyth, the daughter of [q. v.] the painter. Mrs. Terry—who, after Terry's death, married [q. v.] the lexicographer—had great taste in design, and seems to have taken some share in the decoration of Abbotsford. Terry left by her a son named after Scott (Walter), after whose fortunes Scott promised to look, and a daughter Jane.

Terry, who was almost as well known in Edinburgh as in London, was highly respected in both places. Sir Walter Scott, who extended to him a large amount of friendship, thought highly of his acting in tragedy, comedy, pantomime, and farce, and said that he could act everything except lovers, fine gentlemen, and operatic heroes. His merit in tragedy, Scott declared, was seen in those characters which exhibit the strong working of a powerful mind and the tortures of an agonised heart. While escaping from the charge of ranting, he was best in scenes of vehemence. Parts of tender emotion he was wise enough not to attempt. In comedy he excelled in old men, both those of real life and in ‘the tottering caricatures of Centlivre, Vanbrugh, and Cibber.’ In characters of amorous dotage, such as Sir Francis Gripe, Don Manuel, or Sir Adam Contest, he was excellent. His Falstaff was good. Terry's chief fault was want of ease. Disapproving of the starring system, he was conscientious enough not to pose as a ‘star.’

Terry's idolatry of Scott led him to imitate both his manner and his calligraphy. Scott, who appreciated Terry's knowledge of old dramatic literature and his delight in articles of vertu, who recognised him as a gentleman and corresponded freely with him on most subjects, declares that, were he called upon to swear to any document, the most he could do was to attest it was his own writing or Terry's. Terry had caught, says Lockhart, the very trick of Scott's meditative frown, and imitated his method of speech so as almost to pass for a Scotsman. Scott lent him money for his theatrical speculations, and gave him excellent advice. Being intimate with the Ballantynes, Terry had a financial stake in their business, and when the crash came Scott was saddled with his liability (1,750l.) Terry's architectural knowledge was of great use to Scott, who consulted him while building Abbotsford. Scott also consulted Terry upon many literary questions, especially as regards plays, and seems to have trusted him with the ‘Doom of Devorgoil,’ with a view to fitting it for the stage. On 8 Feb. 1818 Scott says concerning some play: ‘If any time should come when you might wish to disclose the secret, it will be in your power, and our correspondence will always serve to show that it was only at my earnest request, annexed as the condition of bringing the play forward, that you gave it your name, a circumstance which, with all the attending particulars, will prove plainly that there was no assumption on your part’ (, Memoir, iv. 125, ed. 1837). In the same letter he suggests that a beautiful drama might be made on the concealment of the Scottish regalia during the troubles. How many of the numerous adaptations of Scott that saw the light

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Rh daughter of al-Ikhshid he hoped to be left in peaceful pos- session of his territory ; his principality consumed much of its time and energy struggling with the Byzantines. Sayf was the first after a long interval to take up the cudgels seriously against the Christian enemies of Islam. This Hamdanid-Byzantine conflict may be considered a signifi- cant chapter in the prehistory of the Crusades. As a warrior the Hamdanid prince had a worthy peer in the Byzantine emperor Nicephorus, with whom the historians record about ten engagements. Success was not always on Sayf's side. In 962 he even temporarily lost his own capital after a brief siege in which his palace, symbol of his glory, was destroyed. His death in 967 terminated a reign more noteworthy for its cultural brilliance than for its mundane achievements.

Sayf surrounded himself in his gorgeous palace with a circle of literary and artistic talent that could hardly be matched except by that of the Baghdad caliphs in their heyday. It comprised the renowned philosopher and musician al-Farabi, the distinguished historian of Arabic literature al-Isbahani, the eloquent preacher ibn-Nubatah, the philologist ibn-Khalawayh, the grammarian ibn-Jinni, the warrior-poet abu-Firas and, above all, the illustrious bard al-Mutanabbi.

Al-Mutanabbi (915-965) received his surname (prophecy claimant) because in his youth he claimed the gift of prophecy, attempted an imitation of the Koran and was followed by a number of admirers. The Ikhshidid governor of Horns cast him into prison, where he remained for almost two years and from which he went out cured of his prophetic illusion but not of his vanity, self-assertiveness and self- admiration, which accompanied him throughout his life. Born in Kufah, he roamed about in quest of a patron and settled in Aleppo as the laureate of Sayf-al-Dawlah; the two names have ever since remained inseparably linked. Outstanding among his odes are those depicting the glories of Sayf's campaigns against the Byzantines. It is a question Rh


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Rh whether or not those panegyrics did not contribute more than the exploits themselves to making Sayf the myth he is in Arabic annals. In them the poet appears as the con- summate phrase-maker in the Arabic language. He later got into a dispute and deserted Aleppo for the court of Kafur, whom he first praised and later — disappointed in his hopes for high office — ridiculed in verses which almost every school child in the Arab world today commits to memory. In places the Mutanabbi style appears bombastic and ornate, the rhetoric florid and the metaphor overdone — but not to the Easterner. Such is the hold that this poet has had upon the imagination of generations of Arabic- speakers that he is still generally considered the greatest in Islam. In him and his two predecessors, abu-Tammam and al-Buhturi, Arabic poetry reached its full maturity. With few exceptions the decline after al-Mutanabbi was steady.

Of the rest of Sayf's circle two deserve special mention. Al-Isbahani (897-967) compiled the monumental Kitab al-Aghani, a twenty- volume treasury of Arab songs and anec- dotes. His senior al-Farabi (870-950) was one of the earliest Moslem thinkers to attempt a harmonization of Greek philosophy and Islam. His system was a syncretism of Aristotelianism, Platonism and Sufism. He became in effect the intellectual ancestor of all other subsequent Moslem philosophers. In addition he was the greatest of all Arabic musical theorists.

Sayf was succeeded by his son Sharif, called Sad-al- Dawlah (967-991), but his authority was disputed by his cousin, the poet abu-Firas, who claimed Horns until he was slain. Internal discord enabled Nicephorus to capture Aleppo, Antioch and Horns (968) and to impose an ephemeral Byzantine suzerainty over the Hamdanid realm. Aleppo was lost to the Hamdanids only until 975, but Antioch remained in Byzantine hands for over a century (968-1084). Nicephorus's successor, John Tzimisces, in 974 reduced not only the coastal towns from Latakia to Beirut but such Rh


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Rh festation being al-Hakim. Finding no response for this new creed among Egyptians, al-Darazi migrated to a district at the foot of Mount Hermon in Lebanon, where the hardy freedom-loving mountaineers, evidently already impregnated with ultra-Shiite ideas, were ready to give him a hearing. Here he fell in battle in 1019 and was succeeded by his rival Hamzah ibn-Ali, also a Persian.

When al-Hakim was assassinated two years later, prob- ably as a result of a conspiracy by his own household, Hamzah denied his death and proclaimed that he had gone into a state of temporary occultation, whence his triumphal return should be expected. Al-Muqtana, Hamzah's right hand in the propagation of the new cult, at first addressed epistles to potential converts from Constantinople to India, with particular attention to Christians, but later enunciated a new policy, that during the 'absence' of al-Hakim no part of the religion should be divulged or promulgated — a policy doubtless dictated by the desire for safety on the part of a small heterodox minority struggling for existence. Since then 'the door has been closed'; no one could be allowed entrance or exit. The hidden imam idea had been elaborately worked out, prior to the rise of Druzism, by a number of ultra-Shiite groups.

Hamzah on behalf of al-Hakim absolved his followers of the cardinal obligations of Islam, including fasting and pilgrimage, and substituted precepts enjoining veracity of speech, mutual aid among the brethren in faith, renuncia- tion of all forms of false belief and absolute submission to the divine will. The last precept, involving the concept of predestination, has continued to be a potent factor in Druzism, as in orthodox Islam. Another feature of this cult is the belief in the transmigration of souls. The idea came originally to Islam from India and received an incre- ment of Platonic elements. The operation of the second precept, enjoining mutual aid, has made of the Druzes an unusually compact self-conscious community presenting Rh


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Rh more the aspects of a religious fraternal order than those of a sect, and that despite the fact that the community itself is divided into two distinctly marked classes: the initiate and the uninitiate. The sacred writings, all hand-written, are accessible to the initiated few only and the meeting-places are secluded rooms on hills outside the villages, where Thursday evening sessions are held.

As they tried to gain a permanent footing in southern Lebanon, the Druzes found themselves in conflict with an already established Islamic heterodoxy, the Nusayriyah, whose followers were subsequently driven into northern Syria, their present habitat. The Druzes later spread into other rural districts, but were unable to thrive in any city. Some of them, as a result of Qaysite- Yemenite blood feuds, migrated in the early eighteenth century into Hawran in Syria. The influx was augmented by malcontents from Lebanon in the nineteenth century. In Hawran they now number about ninety thousand as against eighty thousand in Lebanon. Throughout their entire history they have shown remarkable vigour and exercised in Lebanese and Syrian national affairs influence quite disproportionate to their number.

The Nusayriyah were an Ismailite sect founded in the late ninth century. Not much is known about this religion, which is secretive in character, hierarchical in organization and esoteric in doctrine. Its sacred writings have not been exposed to the same extent as those of the Druzes, many of which came to light as a result of communal wars in the nineteenth century. Finding itself a small heterodoxy amidst a hostile majority, the cult chose to go underground. Like other extreme Shiites, the Nusayris deify Ali and are there- fore sometimes referred to as Alawites, a name which became current after the French organized the mandated region centring on Latakia into a separate state under that name. The cult represents an imposition of extreme Shiite ideas on a pagan Syrian base. Its adepts must have passed directly Rh


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  the appearance of ‘Waverley’ and the death of the actor are by Terry cannot be said, many of these being anonymous and unprinted. In addition to these Terry is responsible for the ‘British Theatrical Gallery,’ a collection of whole-length portraits with biographical notes (London, 1825, fol.)

A portrait of Terry by Knight, and one by De Wilde as Barford in ‘Who wants a Guinea?’ are in the Mathews Collection at the Garrick Club. One, as Leon in ‘Rule a Wife and have a Wife,’ is in the ‘Theatrical Inquisitor’ (vol. i.).

 TERRY, EDWARD (1590–1660), writer of travels, was born in 1590 at Leigh, near Penshurst, Kent. Educated at the free school, Rochester, and at Christ Church, Oxford, he matriculated on 1 July 1608, graduated B.A. on 26 Nov. 1611, and M.A. on 6 July 1614. In February 1615–16 Terry went out to India as chaplain with a fleet sent by the London East India Company, sailing in the Charles with Benjamin Joseph, commander of the expedition. In his account of the voyage Terry describes a fight with a Portugal carrack, in which Joseph was killed, on 6 Aug. 1616. The Charles anchored in Swally Road on 25 Sept. following. On 20 Aug. Sir [q. v.], ambassador at the moghul's court, whose chaplain, the Rev. John Hall, died the day before, had written to the company's agent at Surat, saying that he could not ‘live the life of an atheist,’ and begging that another chaplain might be sent to him. Accordingly Terry, shortly after his arrival, was appointed to succeed Hall, and, travelling up country with four other Englishmen who were taking presents for the moghul, joined the ambassador, who was with the Emperor Jehanghir's camp at Mandoa, about the end of February 1617 (, Journal), or, according to Terry, towards the end of March. On the way they were detained by the moghul's son (afterwards the Emperor Shah Jehan), who wished to see the presents meant for his father. Terry stayed at Mandoa till September 1617, and thence travelled with the moghul's camp in the ambassador's suite to Ahmedabad, and in the neighbourhood he remained till September 1618. At Ahmedabad he and others of the ambassador's suite were attacked by the plague, the outbreak of which is recorded in the memoirs of Jehanghir (, Hist. of India, vol. vi.). Terry also notes (November 1618) the comet mentioned in the same memoirs (ib.) He returned with Roe to England in 1619, their ship reaching the Downs on 15 Sept. The court minutes of the East India Company record (22 Oct. 1619) that the freight on the goods of ‘Terry the preacher’ was remitted, he ‘being so much commended by Sir Thomas Roe for his sober, honest, and civil life.’ On his arrival in England he went back for a while to Christ Church, and in 1622 wrote, and presented in manuscript to Prince Charles, an account of his life in India. On 26 Aug. 1629 he was appointed rector of Great Greenford, Middlesex, where he lived till his death on 8 Oct. 1660. ‘He was an ingenious and polite man of a pious and exemplary conversation, a good preacher, and much respected by the neighbourhood’ (, Athenæ Oxon.) He was buried in the chancel of his church on 10 Oct. 1660.

On 22 Aug. 1661 his widow Elizabeth was buried at Greenford. A son James (d. 1680) matriculated from Pembroke College, Oxford, on 16 April 1641, took orders, and became rector of Mickelmarsh, Hampshire, being ejected from the living in 1662 for nonconformity.

Besides two sermons, printed in 1646 and 1649, Terry published:
 * 1) ‘A Voyage to East India,’ with portraits and a map, London, 1655; reprinted, London, 1777.
 * 2) ‘Character of King Charles II, with a Short Apology before it, and Introduction to it, and Conclusion after it,’ London, 1660, 4to.

A portrait of Terry, ætat. 64 (1655), engraved by R. Vaughan, is prefixed to his ‘Voyage.’ A summary of his narrative is given in Purchas's ‘Pilgrimes’ (ii. 1464 et seq.), and another epitomised version was published, with the English translation of P. della Valle's travels, in 1665.


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Rh from paganism to Ismailism with certain superficially Chris- tian features, such as observation of Christmas and Easter. They have a three-class hierarchy of initiates, while the rest of the community constitutes the uninitiated mass. Unlike the Druzes, they admit no women into the initiated group. Their meetings are held at night in secluded places, giving rise to the usual charges brought against groups who practise their religion in secret. Today some three hundred thousand Nusayris, mostly peasants, occupy the mountainous region of northern and central Syria and are scattered as far as Turkish Cilicia.

The successors of al-Hakim, more interested in luxurious living than in state administration, were unable to maintain order at home or sovereignty abroad. In 1023 the chief of the Kilab bedouins, Salih ibn-Mirdas, wrested Aleppo from Fatimid control. The Mirdasid line held Aleppo, with varying fortunes, until 1079. They allied themselves with other Arab tribes: the Tayyi, who set al-Ramlah on fire in 1024, an d tri e Kalb, who blockaded Damascus in 1025. Brigandage, highway robbery and lawlessness throve in the countryside, but Aleppo and other commercial cities pro- spered and their rulers grew fat on customs duties levied on merchandise.

The spirit of the age, with its political anarchy, social decay, intellectual pessimism and religious scepticism, was reflected in the poetry of al-Maarri (973-1057), of Maarrat al-Numan in northern Syria. Although blind he secured some education at Aleppo and twice visited Baghdad, where he probably came in contact with Hindus who converted him to vegetarianism. The remaining years of his life he lived as a bachelor in his native town, subsisting on the meagre proceeds earned by his lectures. Unlike the poets of his day al-Maarri did not devote his talent to eulogizing princes and potentates with a view to receiving remunera- tion; the ode he composed in his early career extolling Sayf-al-Dawlah was evidently never presented to the prince. Rh


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48 and being industrious both by nature and habit I produced a great number of those black-chalk sketches." This carried him on for some months, but the curse, or blessing, of the "wandering foot" was his, and as soon as money matters were a little ahead, off he went again to the forests. It was during these years, that is from 1811 to 1819, that many months were passed hunting with the Indians, the Osage tribe being the one whose language Audubon spoke. Late in life he wrote: "Of all the Indian tribes I know, the Osage are by far the superior." With them he delighted to track the birds and quadrupeds as only an Indian or one of like gifts, can; from them he learned much woodcraft; with them he strengthened his already iron constitution; and in fearlessness, endurance, patience, and marvellously keen vision, no Indian surpassed him. He had a wonderful gift of making and retaining friends, and even in these days of poverty and depression he never seemed too poor to help others; and certainly from others he received much kindness, which he never ceased to remember and acknowledge. Through one of these friends - I believe a member of the Tarascon family - he was offered a position in the Museum at Cincinnati. Without delay, or any written agreement, Audubon and his family were again (1818) in new surroundings, and the work being congenial, he entered heartily into it with Mr. Robert Best. The promised salary was large, but being never paid Audubon began drawing classes to support his modest household. In Cincinnati he first met Mr. Daniel Mallory (whose second daughter afterwards married Victor G. Audubon) and Captain Samuel Cummings. This latter gentleman had many tastes similar to Audubon's, and later went with him to New Orleans. The life at Cincinnati was one of strict economy. Mrs. Audubon was a woman of great ability and many

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Rh His later works embody his pessimistic, sceptical philosophy of life and his rational approach to its problems. In one epistle he peopled limbo with reputed heretics and free- thinkers enjoying themselves and discussing textual criticism. It was this treatise that had a stimulative effect on Dante's Divine Comedy. In another book he tried to imitate the Koran, a sacrilege in Moslem eyes. The philosophy ad- vocated in this work is basically Epicurean. Al-Maarri was one of the few Arabic poets who rose above limitations of time and place to the realm of universal humanity.

Though the Fatimids had had difficulty in maintaining their precarious hold on Syria, first against Turks and Carmathians, then against Hamdanids and Byzantines, and later against Mirdasids and other bedouin assailants, their most formidable adversary did not appear on Syrian territory until 1070, by which time Fatimid rule had virtually col- lapsed because of rebellion in Egypt (1060). Sunnite Turkish Seljuks had pushed south from Turkestan to the region of Bukhara, embraced Islam there and continued their victorious drive until in 1055 their leader Tughril had forced the powerless Abbasid caliph to accept him as master instead of the Shiite Persian Buwayhids. Tughril assumed the title sultan, becoming the first Moslem ruler whose coins bear this title.

Under TughriPs nephew and successor Alp Arslan (1063- 1072), the Seljuk empire was extended westward into Syria and Asia Minor. In 1070 Alp advanced against the Mirdasids in northern Syria and occupied Aleppo, leaving the Mirdasid governor as his vassal. The Turkoman general Atsiz pushed into Palestine and captured al-Ramlah, Jerusalem and other towns as far south as Ascalon, whose Fatimid garrison held out. In the following year Alp won a decisive victory over the Byzantines at Manzikert, north of Lake Van, and took the emperor himself prisoner. All Asia Minor then lay open to the Turks. Hordes of them rushed into Anatolia and northern Syria. Turkish generals penetrated as far as Rh


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Rh literary purposes, in versions of the Bible.

Opposition to Christian thought as represented by Con- stantinople and Antioch resulted in schisms, 'heresies' from the orthodox viewpoint. As in the case of language these schisms were to a certain extent an expression of national awakening. After a submergence of centuries under a wave of Greek culture the Syrian spirit was at last asserting itself. The alienation of the people from their Byzantine rulers was due to ideological as well as to political and economic causes. The Byzantines were more autocratic in their rule than the Romans had been and more oppressive in their taxation. They disarmed the natives and had little regard for their feelings. Even in matters religious they displayed less tolerance than their pagan predecessors.

Theological controversy was the breath of life among the intelligentsia of the fourth and fifth centuries. It centred on the nature of Christ and kindred topics which no longer agitate Christian minds. The result was innumerable heresies and schools of thought, some of which reflect the exercise of Aristotelian logic and the application of Neo- Platonic principles. Meanwhile, cults akin to Zoroastrianism and to Buddhism were appearing amidst Christian com- munities. The patriarch John Chrysostom (d. 407) refers to a group in Antioch who believed in transmigration of souls and wore yellow robes. Most dangerous among the new religions spreading westward was Manichaeism, which combined Christian, Buddhist and Zoroastrian tenets in one syncretistic system. Its vigorous dualism and other 'errors' aroused the Syrian Fathers as no other 'errors' did.

Several protagonists of the so-called heresies were of Syrian nativity or education. The series began with the fourth-century Alius, whose system was condemned in the Council of Nicaea but retained great importance, both theological and political. As a reaction against Arianism, with its emphasis on the humanity of Christ and its implied denial of his divinity, Apollinaris of Latakia affirmed that Rh


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Rh while Christ had a true human body and soul, the Logos or Word occupied in him the place of the spirit, which is the highest part of man. Apollinarism links Arianism and Nestorianism by opposing the one and paving the way for the other.

Nestorius was born in eastern Cilicia and lived in a monastery near Antioch. In 428 he was elevated to the bishopric of Constantinople, but three years later his posi- tion was condemned by the Council of Ephesus. The objectionable view he held was that in Jesus a divine person (the Logos) and a human person were joined in perfect harmony of action but not in the unity of a single individual. Nestorius had many followers who constitute the real Nestorians. The so-called Nestorians of Persia, more properly the Church of the East, came later. Cut off from the Roman empire, its adherents evolved their local doctrines and ritual which still survive. Although some of its writers have used decidedly Nestorian language, the liturgical and synodical vocabulary of the church as a whole is remarkably free from it. This is the church which in later times had sufficient vitality to send missionaries as far as India and China.

Next to Nestorianism, Monophysitism was the greatest schism the oriental church suffered. Strictly the Mono- physites were those who did not accept the doctrine of the two natures (divine and human) in the one person of Jesus, formulated by the Council of Chalcedon (451). In the late fifth and early sixth centuries Monophysitism won to its doctrine the major part of northern Syria and fell heir to Apollinarism in the south. The Monophysite church in Syria was organized by Jacob Baradaeus, who was ordained bishop of Edessa about 543 and died in 578. In consequence the Syrian Monophysites came to be called Jacobites. The western part of the Syrian church thus became entirely separated from the eastern. From Syria the Monophysite doctrine spread into Armenia to the north and Egypt to Rh


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Rh the south. Armenians and Copts to this day adhere to the Monophysite theology. In Syria and Mesopotamia the number of its adherents has been on the decrease ever since Islam became the dominant power in those lands.

Another offshoot of the ancient Syrian church was the Maronite, named after its patron saint, an ascetic monk who lived east of Antioch, where he died in 410. Maron's disciples erected a monastery on the Orontes in his memory. In the early sixth century, after clashing with their Jacobite neighbours, they sought and found in northern Lebanon a safer refuge. Thence they spread to become the largest and most influential sect in Lebanon.

Even aside from the struggle against heresy and schism, confusion marked the intellectual life of Byzantine Syria in its early period. Polemics between Christian and non- Christian Greek and Latin writers were carried on for years after Constantine's profession of the Christian faith. Neo- Platonism was far from dead, though its great century had been the third. Church Fathers were inching their way to the front as leaders of thought. Sophists and rhetoricians were retreating though not quite disappearing.

The writings of a fourth-century Syrian rhetorician named Libanius, who was educated at Antioch and Athens and taught at Constantinople, give a vivid picture of the times and places in which he lived. They also open before us a small window through which we may gain a glimpse of the educational methods of the day. At Antioch courses extended over the winter and spring months; summer was taken up with festive activities. Classes began early and lasted till noon. Some students were as young as sixteen. Higher education was in the hands of rhetoricians, who were elected in the cities by the local senate, in the small towns by the communities at large. The rhetors taught, declaimed by way of example and were responsible for discipline. For their services they received pay from the cities and the students. Greek classics formed the core of the curriculum. Rh


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Rh Latin was patronized only by those intent upon a govern- ment career. Logic was emphasized. Aristotle enjoyed a renaissance consequent upon his rediscovery by Porphyry.

Due to the productive efforts of such pagan authors as Libanius, Antioch became the intellectual capital of northern Syria. Among the eminent Christians educated there was his pupil, the brilliant John Chrysostom, whose eloquent preaching was marked by a denunciation of laxity in morals and luxury in living. The rich were condemned for acquir- ing their riches by violence, deceit, monopoly and usury and for their attitude of indifference to the sufferings of the poor. His was a social message in an age of ecclesiasticism and theology. So celebrated did he become as a preacher that in 398 he was chosen patriarch of Constantinople, where he sold for the benefit of the needy the treasures collected by his predecessor and uncompromisingly insisted on moral and social reform. He was twice banished and died on his way to exile near the Caucasus. Altogether he was one of the most eloquent preachers and most remarkable teachers of Christian ethics that the church has ever pro- duced.

Two distinguished historians were born at Caesarea in Palestine, Eusebius and Procopius. Eusebius (264-about 349) became bishop of his native city and at the Council of Nicaea delivered an opening address condemning the heresiarch Arius, but his enduring reputation rests on his Ecclesiastical History, in which he narrates in detail the rise of Christianity and its relation to the empire. Procopius pro- vided a valuable contemporary account of the eventful reign of Justinian (527-565).

Several Christian notables not of Syrian nativity are associated with southern Syria. Outstanding among them was Jerome (345-420), whose ascetic temperament led him to a monastery in Bethlehem and thence to five years of solitary life among the hermits of the Syrian Desert. His translation of the Bible into Latin, called the Vulgate, has Rh


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Rh ever since been the standard version for services in the Roman Catholic church.

Early Christian art had been chiefly indebted to the mediocre Jewish art, just as the primitive churches had been merely elongated rooms modelled on Jewish synagogues. In freeing themselves from the limitations of this naive and rigidly restricted source. Christian artists in Syria and else- where drew increasingly upon pagan Hellenistic formulas. These were modified from time to time and place to place until in the fourth and fifth centuries there emerged a standardized Byzantine style, within which there was ample scope for individual talents to find expression. In archi- tecture, painting, sculpture and other fields of visual ex- pression, this new style aimed resolutely at realism, and this paved the way for Christian medieval art as well as for Moslem art.

It is probable that artistic craftsmen from Syria were summoned to embellish the new capital, Ravenna, to which Honorius (395-423) removed his court to escape the dangers of the Germanic invasions. They remained there to teach their craft to native artists, introducing mosaic techniques and Syrian decorative motifs. In the fifth century Ravenna became the artistic capital of northern Italy. Its school of art and architecture has been termed half-Syrian; the city itself could also be thus characterized. Venice, too, was an outpost of eastern culture on Italian soil.

Although some Syriac-speaking emigrants were artists and many were soldiers, monks or slaves, the majority were merchants and other men of affairs. The division of the empire and the fragmentation of its Syrian province do not seem to have affected the domestic and foreign trade rela- tions of Syria adversely. In the Byzantine period as in the earlier one Mediterranean trade was almost entirely in Syrian and Greek hands. Syriac-speaking merchants con- tinued traversing the entire Roman world in the fourth century, prompted by their love of lucrative trade and Rh


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Rh defying all dangers. They had flourishing settlements at Rome, Naples and Venice in Italy, Marseilles, Bordeaux and Paris in France, Carthage and the Spanish and Sicilian ports. They imported wines from Ascalon and Gaza, purple from Caesarea, woven fabrics from Tyre and Beirut, pistachio nuts and sword blades from Damascus and embroidered stuffs from several towns. Embroidery was especially in demand for ecclesiastical use. An old commodity which now assumed new importance was silk, the entire trade being in Syrian hands. Imported from China through Arabia, the silk was dyed and rewoven in Phoenicia. Both dyeing and silk-trading soon became monopolies of the Byzantine state. From Arabia and India, Syria continued to import spices and other tropical products. In exchange Syria exported to these lands — as well as to China — glass, enamels and fine textiles.

As it was in the Roman period, Beirut remained the only city of the Phoenician coast famous for intellectual rather than commercial and industrial activity. It still housed the academy of law, a science more assiduously cultivated than any other in the Byzantine era. This institution reached its greatest development in the fifth century, when it attracted some of the finest young minds in the Byzantine empire. The curriculum included science, geometry, rhetoric, Greek and Latin. It covered four years, but Justinian added a fifth year. Some students diverted themselves at horse races and theatres or by drinking and gambling, while others were passionately addicted to theological disputation, asceticism and occultism. Earthquakes between 551 and 555 and a disastrous fire in 560 brought the university to a tragic end.

Throughout the Byzantine period, the aggressive Sasanid dynasty of Persia posed a constant threat to the Syrian pro- vince. One incursion between 527 and 532 was checked by Justinian's able general Belisarius. Procopius of Caesarea, the historian of this war, accompanied Belisarius as an adviser. In 540 the Persians appeared again under Chosroes I. At Rh


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Rh , and with one less gifted her unpractical husband would have fared far worse than he did. To quote again: "Our living here [Cincinnati] is extremely moderate; the markets are well supplied and cheap, beef only two and a half cents a pound, and I am able to provide a good deal myself; Partridges are frequently in the streets, and I can shoot Wild Turkeys within a mile or so; Squirrels and Woodcock are very abundant in the season, and fish always easily caught." Even with these advantages, Audubon, receiving no money from Dr. Drake, president of the Museum, decided on going to New Orleans. He had now a great number of drawings and the idea of publishing these had suggested itself both to him and his wife. To perfect his collection he planned going through many of the Southern States, then pushing farther west, and thence returning to Cincinnati. On Oct. 12, 1820, he left Cincinnati with Captain Samuel Cummings for New Orleans, but with a long pause at Natchez, did not reach that city before mid-winter, where he remained with varying success until the summer of 1821, when he took a position as tutor in the family of Mrs. Charles Percy of Bayou Sara. Here, in the beloved Louisiana whose praises he never wearied of singing, whose magnolia woods were more to him than palaces, whose swamps were storehouses of treasures, he stayed till autumn, when, all fear of yellow fever being over, he sent for his wife and sons. Many new drawings had been made in this year of separation from them, and these were by far the greater part of the furniture in the little house in Dauphine St., to which he took his family on their arrival in December, 1821. The former life of drawing portraits, giving lessons, painting birds, and wandering through the country, began again, though there was less of this last, Audubon realizing

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Rh the head of 30,000 men this energetic monarch descended on Syria, exacting 2000 pounds of silver from Hierapolis as the price of immunity. He demanded double this sum from Aleppo, and set fire to the city when it failed to raise the amount specified.

From Aleppo Chosroes proceeded to Antioch, which was weakly garrisoned, as most of Justinian's army was in Europe attempting to reassemble the ancient Roman empire. A last-minute reinforcement of 6000 soldiers from the district of Horns proved no match for the Persian invader. The city was sacked. Its cathedral was stripped of its gold and silver treasures and of its splendid marbles. The whole town was completely destroyed. Its inhabitants were carried away as captives. The career of the city as an intellectual centre thus after eight centuries came to an end. In its last days Antioch was a prominent Christian city, ranking with Con- stantinople and Alexandria as a patriarchal see. The economic and human consequences of the Persian sack, following catastrophic earthquakes in 526 and 528, were permanently disastrous.

From Antioch Chosroes moved on to Apamea, another flourishing Christian centre. Its church claimed the pos- session of a piece of the true cross, which was reverently preserved in a jewelled casket and displayed annually as the whole population worshipped. This casket, together with all the gold and silver in the town, was taken by the invader, but the relic itself was spared, being devoid of value to him. The natives ascribed the deliverance of their city from destruction to the efficacy of the holy relic.

In 542 a truce was concluded and thereafter renewed several times until 562, when a fifty-year treaty was signed binding Justinian to pay tribute to the c great king' and to refrain from any religious propaganda in Persian territory. In the early seventh century hostilities were renewed by Chosroes II, who swept over Syria from 611 to 614, carrying plunder and destruction wherever he passed. He pillaged Rh


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Rh held out in expectation of aid from Heraclius.

Heraclius did not intend to disappoint them. He mustered from the vicinity of Antioch and Aleppo an army of some fifty thousand, mostly Armenian and Arab mer- cenaries, and again put it under the command of his brother Theodoras. Realizing the numerical superiority of this army, the Arabian generals immediately abandoned Horns, Damascus and other cities to concentrate about 2500 men on the Yarmuk river east of Lake Tiberias. After a period of skirmishing, the desert tribesmen on August 20, 636, forced a showdown during a dust storm which gave them a decisive advantage. Before the Moslem onslaught the Armenian and Syro-Arab mercenaries could not hold their own. Some were slaughtered then and there; others were driven relentlessly into the river; still others deserted and were caught and annihilated on the other side. Theodorus was one of the victims. The fate of Syria was sealed, as even Heraclius reluctantly admitted.

Damascus and the other cities previously occupied now received the conqueror with open arms. 'We like your rule and justice', declared the natives of Horns, 'far better than the state of tyranny and oppression under which we have been living.' Farther north Aleppo and Antioch were soon reduced. Only the Taurus mountains, natural boundary of Syria, finally halted the uninterrupted advance of Arabian arms. Along the coast Acre, Tyre, Sidon, Beirut, Byblus and Tripoli were taken. Jerusalem held out until 638 and Caesarea, reinforced and supplied by sea, until 640. In seven years (633-640) the entire country was subdued.

This easy conquest of a strategic province of the Byzantine empire is not difficult to explain. The military structure of that empire had been as effectively undermined by the Persian incursions of the early seventh century as the spiritual unity of its society had been disrupted by the Monophysite schism of the middle fifth. Last-minute efforts to effect a Rh


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Rh religious compromise only made matters worse. The bulk of the Syrians held on to their church. To them it was more than a religious institution ; it was an expression of a sub- merged, semi-articulate feeling of nationality.

At no time after Alexander's conquest did the people of Syria, as a people, lose their national character, their native tongue or their Semitic religion and identify themselves wholeheartedly with the Greco-Roman way of life. At its thickest Hellenistic culture was only skin-deep, affecting a crust of intelligentsia in urban settlements. The bulk of the population must throughout that millennium have con- sidered their rulers aliens. The alienation between rulers and ruled was no doubt aggravated by misrule and high taxation. To the masses of seventh-century Syria the Moslem Arabians must have appeared closer ethnically, linguistically and perhaps religiously than the hated Byzan- tine masters.

Once conquered, Syria became the base for Arab armies fanning out in every direction. Between 639 and 646 Mesopotamia was subjugated, and Persia lay open to attack. Between 640 and 646 Egypt was subdued and the way cleared to North Africa and Spain. From northern Syria, Anatolia was vulnerable to devastating incursions which were mounted intermittently for almost a century. All these conquests, however, belong to the category of systematic campaigning rather than the casual raiding to which the seizure of Syria belonged. But it was this first victory which gave the nascent power of Islam prestige before the world and confidence in itself.

In historical significance the Moslem conquests of the seventh century rank with those of Alexander as the principal landmarks in the political and cultural history of the Near East. For a thousand years after Alexander's conquest the civilized life of Syria and its neighbouring lands was oriented westward, across the sea; now the orientation turned east- ward, across the desert. Links with Rome and Byzantium Rh


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Rh were severed; new ones with Mecca and Medina were forged. Strictly the latest orientation was a reversion to an old type, for the Arab Moslem civilization did not introduce many original elements. It was rather a revivification of the ancient Semitic culture. Thus viewed, Hellenism becomes an intrusive phenomenon between two cognate layers.

In about a decade the Moslem conquests changed the face of the Near East; in about a century they changed the face of the civilized world. Far from being peripheral or ephemeral, they proved to be a decisive factor in the evolu- tion of medieval society. The Mediterranean became a Moslem lake, and sea trade routes were severed. This, coupled with the Arab occupation of the eastern, western and southern shores, replaced the late classical world with a new world, that of the Middle Ages.

Meanwhile in Syria the Arabians had awakened after the intoxication of the great victory to find themselves con- fronted with a new and colossal problem for which they were ill prepared, the administration of their new domain. In their past experience there was nothing on which they could draw. Clearly the laws of their primitive Medinese society were not adequate and those of their new Islamic society were not applicable, as the conquered people were not yet Moslems.

Umar, who had succeeded abu-Bakr as caliph in 634, was the first to address himself to this task. Details of his enactments are obscured by later interpolations, but certain principles are clear. First among these was the policy re- quiring that Arabian Moslems in conquered lands should constitute a sort of religio-military aristocracy, keeping their blood pure and unmixed, living aloof and abstaining from holding or cultivating any landed property. The con- quered peoples were given a new status, that of second-class citizens under a covenanted obligation to pay a tribute which comprised both land tax and poll tax, but they were entitled to protection and were exempt from military duty. Rh


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Rh Only a Moslem could draw his sword in defence of the land of Islam. Thus the principle of inequality between victor and vanquished was established as a permanent basis of policy.

Another principle said to have been enunciated by Umar was that movable property and prisoners won as booty belonged to the warriors as before, but that the land belonged to the Moslem community. Those who cultivated it had to continue paying land tax even after adopting Islam. This and other tax legislation traditionally ascribed to the initiative of Umar clearly resulted from years of experience. The first caliphs and provincial governors coufd not have devised and imposed a system of taxation and of finance administration; it was easier for them to continue with minor modifications the system of Byzantine provincial government already established in Syria. In the Moslem empire tribute varied from place to place according to the nature of the soil and the previously prevailing system. Poll tax was an index of lower status and was exacted in a lump sum. It was generally four dinars for the well-to-do, two for the middle class and one for the poor. Women, children, beggars, the aged and the diseased were exempt except when they had independent income.

Umar in 639 divided Syria for administrative purposes into four military districts — Damascus, Horns, Jordan (in- cluding Galilee) and Palestine — corresponding to the Byzantine provinces at the time of the conquest. A military camp south of Damascus served as the temporary capital; other military camps were set up in each district. To these camps Arabian soldiers, soon to become the new citizenry of the conquered province, brought their families; many of their wives or concubines were no doubt captured native women. As warriors and defenders they enjoyed rights and privileges which later immigrants from Arabia could not enjoy. At their head stood the commander-in-chief and governor-general, who combined in his person all the Rh


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Rh executive, judiciary and military functions. The govern- mental framework of the Byzantine system was preserved ; even the local officials who did not withdraw from the country at the time of conquest were left in their positions. Obviously the Arabians had no trained personnel to replace such officials. Besides, their paramount interests were to keep the captured province under control and to collect the taxes due from its people. In its primitive phases Arabian provincial government was military in form, financial in aim and flexible in method.

In 639 a terrible plague spread havoc among the troops. Some 20,000 of them are said to have perished, including the governor-general and his successor Yazid. Umar there- upon (640) appointed Yazid's brother Muawiyah governor. For twenty years Muawiyah was to dominate Syria ; for twenty more he would dominate the world of Islam as the first of the Umayyad family of caliphs. The policies he initiated as governor and pursued as caliph earned for him a permanent and prominent niche in the Arab hall of fame. He made the starting-point of his policy the cultiva- tion of his new Syrian subjects, who were still Christians, as well as the Arab tribes, such as the Ghassanids, who had been domiciled in the country since pre-Islamic days and were Christianized. Many of these tribes were of South Arabian origin as opposed to the new emigrants, who were North Arabians. For wife Muawiyah chose a Jacobite Christian girl of the Kalb, a South Arabian tribe. His personal physician, his court poet and his financial controller were likewise Christians. Arab chronicles stress the sense of loyalty which the Syrians cherished toward their new chief consequent upon his enlightened and tolerant policy.

Muawiyah proceeded to organize the province on a stable basis. The raw material which constituted the Arab army he now whipped into the first ordered, disciplined military force in Islam. Its archaic tribal organization, a relic of patriarchal days, was abolished. There was no Rh


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Rh interference from Medina, especially since the new caliph Uthman, who succeeded Umar in 644, was a relative of Muawiyah, both being members of the aristocratic Umayyad branch of the Quraysh. Muhammad belonged to another clan of the same tribe. The army was kept in fit condition by semi-annual raids into the 'land of the Romans 5 — Asia Minor.

For the defence of a province bordering on the sea, Muawiyah realized that a body of disciplined, loyal troops did not suffice. In Acre he found fully equipped Byzantine shipyards which he developed into an arsenal second only to that of Alexandria. The new Moslem fleet, doubtless manned by Greco-Syrians with a long seafaring tradition, took Cyprus in 649 despite the reluctance of desert-reared caliphs to approve of expeditions across the alien sea. Rhodes was pillaged in 654 and in the following year the long-supreme Byzantine navy was virtually annihilated by the simple expedient of tying each Arab ship to an enemy vessel and converting the engagement into a hand-to-hand conflict.

Muawiyah, however, could not take full advantage of these exploits by his admirals and generals. Domestic dis- turbances leading to civil war were convulsing the Moslem world. In 656 Uthman was murdered by rebellious partisans of Ali, first cousin of Muhammad and husband of his only surviving daughter Fatimah. These partisans (Shiah) in- sisted that Ali was the divinely designated and therefore the only legitimate successor, and that his descendants were entitled to the caliphate by hereditary right. After some deliberation he was proclaimed caliph.

The caliphate of Ali was beset with trouble from begin- ning to end. The first problem was how to dispose of two rival claimants, Talhah and al-Zubayr, who with their fol- lowers in Hejaz and Iraq refused to recognize his succession. Both men were defeated and killed in a battle near Basra in December 656. Ali established himself in his new capital Rh


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50 that he must make money. He had had to use strong persuasions to induce Mrs. Audubon to join him in New Orleans. She had relatives in Cincinnati, as well as many friends, and several pupils brought her a small income. Who, recalling her early married life, can wonder that she hesitated before leaving this home for the vicissitudes of an unknown city? She and her husband were devotedly attached to each other, but she thought more of the uncertainty for her sons than for herself. They were now boys of twelve and nine years old, and their mother, whose own education was far beyond the average, realized how unwise a thing for them the constant change was. Audubon was most anxious also that his "Kentucky lads," as he often called them, should be given every advantage, but he had the rare quality of being able to work equally well in any surroundings, in doors or out, and he failed to understand why others could not, just as he failed to see why his wife should ever doubt the desirability of going anywhere, at any time, under any conditions. He thus writes to her in a letter, dated New Orleans, May 3, 1821: "Thou art not, it seems, as daring as I am about leaving one place to go to another, without the means. I am sorry for that. I never will fear want as long as I am well; and if God will grant me health with the little talents I have received from Nature, I would dare go to England or anywhere, without one cent, one single letter of introduction to any one."

This, as we know, was no empty boast, but the principle on which Audubon proceeded numberless times in his life. His own courage, or persuasions, brought his wife, as has been said, to join him in the Crescent City, and here as elsewhere that noble woman proved her courage and endurance fully equal to his, although perhaps in another line. Under the date of January 1, 1822, Audubon writes: "Two months and five days have elapsed before I could

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Rh al-Kufah as the seemingly undisputed caliph. A second civil war, however, was not far off.

The usual oath of fealty was accorded the new caliph by every provincial governor except Muawiyah. The well- entrenched governor of Syria and kinsman of Uthman now came out as the avenger of the martyred caliph. Dramatically Muawiyah exhibited in the Damascus mosque the blood-stained shirt of Uthman and the fingers chopped from the hands of his wife as she tried to defend him. Care- fully keeping his own interests under cover, Muawiyah publicly confronted Ali with this dilemma: punish the assassins or accept the position of an accomplice. Punishing the culprits was something Ali neither would nor could do. But the basic conflict transcended personalities. The funda- mental question at issue was whether Iraq or Syria, Kufah or Damascus, should head the Islamic world. Medina clearly was out of the race. The far-flung conquests had shifted the centre of gravity to the north and relegated the former capital to a marginal position.

The army of Iraq led by Ali and that of Syria under Muawiyah met south of the Euphrates in July 657 for what should have been the decisive battle. Ali's forces were on the point of achieving complete victory after three days of bloody fighting when suddenly their foes lifted lances to which were fastened manuscripts of the Koran. This gesture was interpreted as meaning an appeal from the decision of arms to the decision of the Koran — whatever that might mean. Hostilities ceased. Ali, pious and simple-hearted, accepted Muawiyah's proposal to arbitrate and thus spare Moslem blood. The arbitration which ensued in January 659 has been embellished by legend, but apparently both principals were deposed, depriving Ali of a real office and Muawiyah only of a tenuous claim which he had not yet even dared publicly assert.

Two years later Ali was assassinated by a personal enemy and hastily interred outside Kufah at Najaf, where his Rh


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Rh including his harem, al-Husayn, who had hitherto resisted the solicitations of his Iraqi partisans and lived in retirement in Medina, set out from Mecca for Kufah. The governor, forewarned, posted patrols one of which, 4000 strong, inter- cepted al-Husayn at Kerbela and demanded his surrender. He refused and was killed, as were his band of 200. The day of his death (Muharram 10) has become a day of mourning in Shiah Islam. An annual passion play portrays his 'heroic 5 resistance and tragic martyrdom. His tomb in Kerbela is considered by Shiites the holiest place in the world, a pilgrimage to which is more meritorious than one to Mecca.

The elimination of al-Husayn did not end the struggle for the caliphate. Abdullah ibn-al-Zubayr, a son of the man who had fruitlessly disputed the title with Ali, was now proclaimed caliph in Hejaz. Quick to act, Yazid dis- patched against the Medinese dissidents a disciplinary force in which many Christian Syrians served. This force defeated ibn-al-Zubayr, who took refuge in Mecca. The Syrians attacked its traditionally inviolable soil, burning the Kabah and splitting into three pieces the Black Stone, a pre-Islamic fetish considered the holiest relic of Islam. Yazid's death late in 683 led to the suspension of operations.

Yazid was followed by his son Muawiyah II, a weak and sickly youth whose reign lasted only three months. His successor was an elderly cousin, Marwan I, whose South Arabian troops in 684 inflicted a crushing defeat on the North Arabian supporters of ibn-al-Zubayr. This claimant had now been proclaimed caliph not only in his home Hejaz but in Iraq, South Arabia and even parts of Syria. This victory ended the third civil war in Islam, but the anti- caliphate of ibn-al-Zubayr continued until Marwan's son and successor Abd-al-Malik sent against it his iron-handed general al-Hajjaj with 20,000 men. For six and a half months in 692 he besieged Mecca, finally killing ibn-al- Zubayr and sending his head to Damascus. With his death the last champion of primitive Islam passed away. Uthman Rh


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Rh was avenged. The new Syrian, secular, political orientation was secure. Mecca and Medina took back seats, and the his- tory of Arabia came to deal more with the effect of the outer world on the peninsula and less with the effect of the peninsula on the outer world. The mother 'island' had spent itself.

Abd-al-Malik committed to al-Hajjaj the government of Hejaz. This he held for a couple of years in the course of which he pacified not only that region but Yemen and other parts of Arabia. In 694 he was called to an even more difficult task, that of subduing Iraq, a seething cauldron of discontent. Zubayrites and Kharijites, as well as Shiites and other Alids, kept it in turmoil.

No sooner had al-Hajjaj received his appointment than he set out from Medina with a small mounted escort, crossed the desert by forced marches and arrived at Kufah dis- guised and unannounced. It was early dawn, time of prayer. Accompanied by only twelve cameleers and with his bow on his shoulder and sword at his side, he entered the mosque, removed the heavy turban which veiled his stern features and delivered a fiery oration which began, ' O people of Kufah. Certain am I that I see heads ripe for cutting, and verily I am the man to do it.' This former teacher who had taken up the warrior's sword was as good as his word. No neck proved too high for him to reach, no head too strong to crush. His task was to establish the ascendancy of the state over all elements within its frame- work — cost what it may. This he did. Human lives to the number of 120,000 are said to have been sacrificed by him ; 50,000 men and 30,000 women were found held in prison at his death. These undoubtedly exaggerated figures with the equally exaggerated reports about his tyranny, bloodthirstiness, gluttony and impiety indicate that what the historians — mostly Shiites or Sunnites of the Abbasid regime — have left us is a caricature rather than a portrayal of the man.

Al-Hajjaj had to his credit several constructive achieve- Rh


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Rh merits. He had old canals dug and new ones opened. He built a new capital — Wasit — midway between Kufah and Basrah. He introduced regulations to reform currency, taxes and measures. He is credited, perhaps wrongly, with introducing orthographical signs into the Koran to indicate vowel sounds and to distinguish between similar-appearing consonants in order to prevent incorrect reading of the sacred text. Justifiable or not, the repressive measures he took restored order in Kufah and Basrah, hotbeds of dis- content and opposition. The state authority was likewise firmly established along the eastern coast of Arabia, including hitherto independent Oman. His viceroyalty also embraced Persia, where his forces practically eliminated the most dangerous Kharijite sect and even penetrated into India. His success depended upon the faithful support of his Syrian troops, in whom his confidence — like his loyalty to the Umayyad house — knew no bounds.

During the reigns of Abd-al-Malik (685-705) and his four sons the Umayyad dynasty in Damascus reached the meridian of its power and glory. The Islamic empire attained its greatest expansion, from the shores of the Atlantic and the Pyrenees to the Indus and the confines of China — an extent greater than that of the Roman empire at its height. At no time before or after did the Arabs control so large a territory. It was during this period that the definitive subjugation of Transoxiana, the reconquest and pacification of North Africa and the acquisition of the Iberian peninsula were accomplished. To this era also belong the Arabicization of the state administration, the introduction of the first purely Arab coinage, the develop- ment of a system of postal service and the erection of such architectural monuments as the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, the holiest sanctuary in Islam after those of Mecca and Medina.

Syria's severance from the Byzantine empire considerably reduced its maritime trade, but that was somewhat Rh


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Rh compensated for by new markets opened by the acquisition of Persia and Central Asia. Commercial vessels plied the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean as far as Ceylon, as well as the Mediterranean. Abd-al-Malik founded a shipyard at Tunis, while his son Hisham transferred the main naval yard from Acre to Tyre. Commerce, especially by land, flourished, as did Syrian agriculture, despite the greed of the exchequer. Prosperity spread.

It was under Abd-al-Malik that hostilities with the Byzantines were renewed. While ibn-al-Zubayr was con- testing the caliphate, Abd-al-Malik paid tribute to the 'tyrant of the Romans' and to his Christian allies the Mardaites, an obscure highland people who had spread from the Taurus and Amanus ranges into the fastnesses of Lebanon and occupied its chief strategic points as far as Palestine. Mount Lebanon then must have been very sparsely populated and thickly wooded; only the part bordering on the maritime plain was fairly settled. Around these Mardaites as nucleus, fugitives and malcontents gathered. In northern Lebanon they were fused with the Maronites. They furnished scouts and irregular troops to the Byzantines and constituted a thorn in the side of the Arabs, to whom mountain warfare was never palatable. Like his predecessor Muawiyah I, Abd-al-Malik found it expedient to buy them off rather than suffer their marauds or divert his military strength from conquest abroad to policing Syria. With his internal foes thus bribed to remain quiet, he was able to resume periodic attacks on the Greeks of Asia Minor and defeat them in battle. The Maronites themselves in 694 routed a Byzantine army which attempted to end their autonomy. Armenia, which had been overrun while Muawiyah was governor of Syria but had taken advantage of ibn-al-Zubayr's debacle to revolt, was again reduced under Abd-al-Malik.

North Africa too had to be reconquered at this time. Both Berber resistance and Byzantine authority were ended Rh


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Rh in a series of land campaigns with naval support. Under Musa ibn-Nusayr, son of a Syrian Christian captured by Khalid ibn-al-Walid, it was divorced from Egypt and made a separate province held directly under the caliph at Damas- cus. Musa extended its boundaries westward as far as Tangier and brought the Berbers permanently into the fold of Islam and into the advancing Moslem armies. The sub- jugation of North Africa as far as the Atlantic opened the way for the conquest of Spain in subsequent reigns.

Under Abd-al-Malik the administration of the expanding empire was strengthened. Arabic began to replace Greek and Persian as the official language of the government bureaus. Thus in the couse of a millennium three written languages succeeded each other in Syria : Aramaic, Greek and Arabic. With the change of language went a change in coinage. At first the Byzantine coinage found current in Syria at the time of conquest was left undisturbed. Next occasional koranic superscriptions were stamped on the coins. A number of gold and silver pieces were struck in imitation of Byzantine and Persian types, and some copper pieces were issued on which the portrait of the king holding a cross was replaced by that of the caliph brandishing a sword. But it was not until 695, under Abd-al-Malik, that the first purely Arabic dinars and dirhems were struck.

It was this caliph, moreover, who developed a regular postal service designed primarily to meet the needs of government officials and their correspondence. In this he built on the foundation laid by his great predecessor Muawiyah I. Abd-al-Malik promoted the service through a well-organized system knitting together the various parts of his far-flung empire. To this end relays of horses were used between Damascus and the provincial capitals. Post- masters were installed, charged among other duties with the task of keeping the caliph posted on all important happenings in their respective territories.

Other changes in this period involved taxes and fiscal Rh


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Rh matters. In theory the only tax incumbent on a Moslem, no matter what his nationality might be, was the alms tax, but in practice only the Moslem of Arabian origin usually enjoyed this privilege. Taking advantage of the theory, new converts to Islam, particularly from Iraq, began under the Umayyads to desert their farms and villages and head for the cities with the hope of enlisting in the Arab army. From the standpoint of the treasury the movement con- stituted a double loss, for at conversion the taxes were sup- posedly reduced and upon joining the army a special subsidy was due. As a measure of remedy al-Hajjaj ordered such men restored to their farms and reimposed the high tribute originally paid, the equivalent of the land tax and poll tax. This policy restored the revenues but caused widespread resentment among converts.

Abd-al-Malik was succeeded by his son al-Walid I (705- 715). The new caliph resolved to put an end to the effrontery of the Mardaites, and put his brother Maslamah in charge of a punitive operation. Maslamah attacked the trouble- some people in their own headquarters and demolished their capital. Some perished, others migrated to Anatolia, and of those who remained some joined the Syrian army and fought under the banner of Islam.

It was the generals of al-Hajjaj who brought about the final reduction of the regions now called Turkestan, Afghani- stan, Baluchistan and the Punjab. Qutaybah ibn-Muslim, governor of Khurasan under the viceroy, within a decade after his appointment in 704 reduced Balkh, Bukhara and Samarkand and extended nominal Moslem rule as far as the Jaxartes. Meanwhile, a column of 6000 Syrian troops reduced Sind (the lower valley and delta of the Indus) and in 713 took Multan in the southern Punjab and reached the foot of the Himalaya range. Multan was the seat of a great Buddhist shrine from which enormous plunder was secured. It became the capital of Arab India and the out- post of Islam there. Rh


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Rh At the opposite extreme of the empire, an Arab-Berber army crossed the Strait of Gibraltar in 710 in a raid for plunder. Encouraged by its success and by dynastic trouble in the Visigothic kingdom of Spain, Musa ibn-Nusayr in 711 dispatched his freedman Tariq with 7000 men, most of whom were, like him, Berbers. They met 25,000 Visigoths and — aided by treachery of disgruntled nobles — routed them. This turned out to be a decisive victory. The march of Moslem arms throughout the peninsula went on un- checked. Tariq with the bulk of the army headed toward the capital Toledo. On his way he sent detachments against neighbouring towns. Seville, a strongly fortified city, was by-passed. Cordova, future resplendent capital of Moslem Spain, fell through treachery. Malaga offered no resistance. Toledo was betrayed by Jewish residents. In less than six months the Berber raider found himself master of half of Spain.

Musa did not relish the idea of having all the honour and booty go to his lieutenant. He arrived in Spain in 712 with an army of 10,000 Arabians and Syrians, attacking the towns avoided by Tariq. Near Toledo he caught up with his former slave, whom he whipped and chained for refusing to obey a halt order early in the campaign. The triumphal march was then resumed. Soon Saragossa in the north was reached and occupied. The highlands of Aragon, Leon and Galicia would have come next but for an order from, al- Walid in distant Damascus. The caliph charged his viceroy with the same offence for which the viceroy had disciplined his subordinate — acting independently of his superior.

Musa left his son in command and slowly made his way overland toward Syria. His princely train comprised, besides his staff, 400 of the Visigothic royalty and aristocracy, wearing their crowns and girdled with gold belts, followed by a long retinue of slaves and captives loaded with treasures of booty. The triumphal passage through North Africa and southern Syria was extolled by Arab chroniclers. At Tiberias Rh


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Rh venture to dispose of one hundred and twenty-five cents to pay for this book, that probably, like all other things in the world, is ashamed to find me so poor." On March 5th of the same year: "During January my time was principally spent in giving lessons in painting and drawing, to supply my family and pay for the schooling of Victor and Johnny at a Mr. Branards', where they received notions of geography, arithmetic, grammar, and writing, for six dollars per month each. Every moment I had to spare I drew birds for my ornithology, in which my Lucy and myself alone have faith. February was spent in drawing birds strenuously, and I thought I had improved much by applying coats of water-color under the pastels, thereby preventing the appearance of the paper, that in some instances marred my best productions. I discovered also many imperfections in my earlier drawings, and formed the resolution to redraw the whole of them; consequently I hired two French hunters, who swept off every dollar that I could raise for specimens. I have few acquaintances; my wife and sons are more congenial to me than all others in the world, and we have no desire to force ourselves into a society where every day I receive fewer bows." This winter (1821-1822) in New Orleans, proved to Audubon that his wife's judgment was correct; it was not the place for them to make either a permanent income or home. True, they had been able to live with extreme simplicity, and to send the boys to school; they had had their own pleasures, as the worn, brown volume, the journal of 1822-24, with its faded entries, bears witness. There are accounts of walks and of musical evenings when they were joined by one or two friends of like tastes and talents. Both played well, she on the piano, and he on a variety of instruments, principally the violin, flute, and flageolet. For over two months a fifth inmate was added to the home circle in Mr. Matabon, a former friend, whom Audubon found one morning in the market, in a state of great

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Rh Musa received orders from Sulayman, brother and heir of the sick caliph, to delay his arrival at the capital so that it might synchronize with his accession to the caliphal throne. Evidently Musa ignored the orders. In February 715 he made his impressive entry into Damascus and was received by the caliph with great dignity and pomp in the courtyard of the newly and magnificently built Umayyad Mosque, adjoining the caliphal palace. If any single episode can exemplify the zenith of Umayyad glory, it is this memorable day on which such booty was displayed and such numbers of Western princes and fair-haired European captives were seen offering homage to the commander of the believers. Nevertheless Sulayman disciplined Musa and humiliated him. After making him stand until exhausted in the sun, he dismissed him from office and confiscated his property. Musa met the same fate that many a successful general and administrator in Islam met. The conqueror of Africa and Spain was last heard of begging for sustenance in a remote village of Hejaz.

Spain was now incorporated in the Syrian empire. Musa's successors carried on the work of rounding out the conquered territory in the east and north. Half a dozen years after the landing of the first Arab troops on Spanish soil, their successors stood facing the towering and mighty Pyrenees. Such seemingly unprecedented conquest would not have been possible but for internal weakness and dis- sension. The population of the country was Spanish- Roman ; the rulers were Teutonic Visigoths (West Goths) who had occupied the land in the early fifth century. They ruled as absolute, often despotic, monarchs. For years they professed Arian Christianity and did not adopt Catholicism, the denomination of their subjects, until the latter part of the following century. The lowest stratum of the society was held in serfdom and slavery and, with the persecuted Jews, contributed to the facility with which the conquest was achieved. Rh


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Rh Al-Walid had pressed the offensive against Byzantium, taking Tyana, the strongest fortress in Cappadocia, and preparing a great expedition against Constantinople itself. No sooner had Sulayman (715-717) succeeded his brother than he undertook to expedite the departure of this expedi- tion under Maslamah, supported by a fleet. Constantinople was blockaded by land and sea in the late summer of 716. Of all the Arab attacks on the capital this was unquestionably the most threatening and the best recorded. The besiegers used naphtha and siege artillery. But the defending emperor, Leo the Isaurian, was a capable and vigorous soldier of humble Syrian origin from Marash. He was probably born a subject of the caliph and knew Arabic as perfectly as Greek. While the besieged were hard pressed, the besiegers were equally harassed. Pestilence, Greek fire, scarcity of provisions and attacks from Bulgars wrought havoc among them. The rigours of an unusually severe winter added their share. Yet Maslamah stubbornly persisted. Neither such hardships nor the death of the caliph seemed to deter him. But the order of the new caliph, Umar ibn-Abd-al- Aziz (717-720), he had to heed. The army withdrew in a pitiful state. The fleet, or what was left of it, was wrecked by a tempest on its way back. The Syrian-born emperor was hailed as the saviour of Christian Europe from Moslem Arabs.

The new caliph, Umar II, was in several respects unique among the Umayyads. His piety, frugality and simplicity contrasted sharply with the luxurious worldliness of his cousins. His ideal was to follow in the footsteps of his maternal grandfather, the second orthodox caliph, whose namesake he was. During his brief reign the theologians had their day. Hence the saintly reputation he acquired in Moslem history. Umar abolished the practice introduced by Muawiyah of cursing Ali from the pulpit at the Friday prayers. He introduced fiscal reforms which failed of survival because they lowered the revenue collected from Rh


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Rh converts, as Berbers, Persians and others flocked to Islam for the pecuniary privileges that accrued. His unworldly but well-intentioned enactment nevertheless substantially contributed toward the treatment as equals of Arab and non-Arab Moslems and the ultimate fusion of the sons of conquerors and conquered.

Yazid II (720-724), a son of Abd-al-Malik, was a frivolous misfit who spent most of his time with his two favourite singing girls. When one of them choked on a grape which he had playfully tossed into her mouth, the passionate young caliph fretted himself to death. He was succeeded by still another brother, Hisham (724-743), rightly considered by Arab historians the last statesman of the house of Umayyah. Hisham's governors had to re-conquer the territory in Central Asia overrun by Qutaybah, extending his sway as far as Kashgar. This city constituted the limit of Arab expansion eastward. The Umayyad army was modelled on the Byzantine, and in outfit and armour the Arab warrior was hard to distinguish from his Greek counterpart. The cavalry used plain, rounded saddles like the ones still in fashion in the Near East. The heavy artillery comprised ballista, mangonel and battering-ram. Such heavy engines, together with the baggage, were transported on camels behind the army.

The Arabs and Berbers in Spain had started crossing the Pyrenees to raid the convents and churches of France, with varying success. Narbonne had been captured in 720 and was later converted into a huge citadel with an arsenal, but an assault on Toulouse in 721 failed. In 732 a full-scale invasion commenced with a victory over the duke of Aquitaine and the storming of Bordeaux. Between Tours and Poitiers the French under Charles Martel turned back the invaders at what proved to be the high-water mark of Moslem conquest in western Europe. Despite this setback, Arab raids in other directions continued. In 734 Avignon was captured; nine years later Lyons was pillaged. Rh


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Rh These were the last accessions made under the Umayyad caliphs.

In 732, when Arab expansion was checked at the Loire just a century after the death of Muhammad, the Umayyad caliphs ruled an empire extending from the Bay of Biscay to the Indus and the confines of China and from the Aral Sea to the cataracts of the Nile. The capital of this huge domain was Damascus, the oldest living city, set like a pearl in an emerald girdle of gardens watered by snow-fed brooks. The city overlooked a plain stretching south-westward to that venerable patriarch of Lebanon crests, Mount Hermon, called by the Arabs al-Jabal al-Shaykh (the grey-haired peak), because of its turban of perpetual snow. In the centre of the city stood the Umayyad Mosque, a gem of architecture that still attracts lovers of beauty. Near by lay the green-domed palace where the caliph held his formal audiences, flanked by his relatives, with courtiers, poets and petitioners ranged behind.

Caliphal life in Damascus was fully regal in contrast with that of Medina, which had been on the whole simple and patriarchal. Relations with the Umayyad caliphs began to be regulated by protocol. Ceremonial clothes with the name of the caliph and religious sentences embroidered on their borders came into use. The evenings of the caliph were set apart for entertainment and social intercourse. Muawiyah I enjoyed listening to tales and drinking rose sherbet, but his successors preferred stronger beverages and livelier amusements. Yazid I and Hisham's successor al- Walid II were confirmed drunkards, and the frivolous diversions of Yazid II have already been noted. Debauched parties were held in the desert palaces, far from censorious eyes. Several caliphs and courtiers engaged in more innocent pastimes such as hunting, dicing and horse-racing. Polo was introduced from Persia probably toward the end of the Umayyad period. Cock-fights were not infrequent. The chase was always popular, at first with saluki dogs, later Rh


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Rh with cheetahs. Al-Walid I was one of the first caliphs to institute and patronize public horse-races.

The harem of the caliphal household apparently enjoyed a relatively large measure of freedom. They undoubtedly appeared veiled in public, veiling being an ancient Semitic custom sanctioned by the Koran. The harem system, with its concomitant auxiliary of eunuchs, was not fully instituted until after the death of Hisham.

The city of Damascus cannot have changed much in character and tone of life since its Umayyad days. Then, as now, in its narrow covered streets the Damascene with his baggy trousers, heavy turban and red pointed shoes rubbed shoulders with the sun-tanned bedouin in his flowing gown surmounted by a head shawl encircled by a band. A few women, all veiled, crossed the streets ; others stole glimpses through the latticed windows of their homes overlooking the bazaars and public squares. There was no right or left rule of way, no part of the passage reserved for riders or pedestrians. Amidst the confused crowd an aristocrat might be seen on horseback cloaked in a silk robe and armed with a sword. The screaming voices of sherbet sellers and sweet- meat vendors competed with the incessant tramp of passers- by and of donkeys and camels laden with the varied products of the desert and the town. The entire city atmosphere was charged with all kinds of smell. The demand on eye, ear and nose must have been overwhelming.

As in Horns, Aleppo and other towns the Arabians lived in separate quarters of their own according to their tribal affiliations. The door of the house usually opened from the street into a courtyard in which an orange or citron tree flourished beside a large basin with a flowing jet emitting intermittently a veil-like spray. It was the Umayyads who, to their eternal glory, supplied Damascus with a water system unexcelled in its day and still functioning. The luxurious gardens outside of Damascus, al-Ghutah, owe their very existence to the Barada river, which rushes from the north Rh


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Rh right, but the liberation of a slave has always been looked upon as praiseworthy.

In the melting-pot process which resulted in the amal- gamation of Arabians and non-Arabians, slaves, no doubt, played a significant role. This was true of the royalty as well as the commonalty, for the mothers of the last three Umayyad caliphs were slaves. Yazid III was the son of al-Walid I and a captured Persian princess, but his brother Ibrahim was the son of an obscure concubine, perhaps a Greek. The mother of Ibrahim's successor, Marwan II, was a Kurdish slave. According to one report she was already pregnant with Marwan when his father acquired her, which would make the last Umayyad not an Umayyad at all.

As Syrians, Iraqis, Persians, Copts and Berbers joined the band-wagon of Islam and intermarried with Arabians, the gap between Arabians and non-Arabians was bridged. The follower of Muhammad, no matter what his original nationality might have been, would now adopt the Arabic tongue and pass for an Arab. The Arabians themselves brought no science, no art, no tradition of learning, no heritage of culture from the desert. The religious and linguistic elements were the only two novel cultural elements they introduced. In everything else they found themselves dependent upon their subjects > In Syria and the other con- quered lands they sat as pupils at the feet of the conquered. What Greece was to the Romans Syria was to the Arabians. When, therefore, we speak of Arab medicine or philosophy or mathematics, what we mean is the learning that was en- shrined in Arabic books written by men who were them- selves Syrians, Persians, Iraqis, Egyptians or Arabians — Christians, Jews or Moslems — and who drew their material from Greek, Aramaic, Persian and other sources.

Intellectual life in the Umayyad period was not on a high level. In fact the whole period was one of incubation. The frequency of its civil and foreign wars and the in- stability of its economic and social conditions militated Rh


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Rh against the possibility of high intellectual attainment. But in it the seeds were sown to come into full bloom in the Abbasid caliphate. The study of Arabic grammar was one of the first disciplines cultivated in this period. It was neces- sitated by the linguistic needs of Neo-Moslems eager to learn the Koran, hold government positions and push ahead with the conquering class. Arabic grammar went through a pro- cess of slow, long development and bears striking marks of the influence of Greek logic and Sanskrit linguistics.

The twin sciences of lexicography and philology arose as a result of the study of the Koran and the necessity of expounding it. The same is true of the most characteristically Moslem literary activity, the science of tradition (hadith). The Koran and tradition lay at the foundation of theology and jurisprudence, both based on Islamic law. Roman law too was adapted and applied to contractual transactions and state monopolies such as coinage, official seals and papyrus for documents. The Arabs followed the Byzantine precedent in considering it the state duty to protect its citizens against forgery, counterfeit, contraband and other abuses connected with these commodities, and in administering heavy punish- ments. But we know of no book on Roman law translated into Arabic.

The judges of the Umayyad period were usually ap- pointed by provincial governors from among scholars learned in the Koran and Islamic tradition. Their jurisdiction was limited to Moslem citizens ; non- Moslems were allowed auto- nomy under their own religious heads, especially in personal matters relating to marriage, divorce and inheritance. Be- sides judging cases these officials administered pious foun- dations (waqfs) and the property of imbeciles and orphans. History-writing developed from interest in Islamic tradi- tion, and hence was one of the earliest disciplines cultivated by Arab Moslems. The stimuli for historical research were provided by the interest of the believers in collecting old stories about Muhammad and his companions, the necessity Rh


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Rh of ascertaining the genealogical relationship of each Moslem Arab in order to determine the amount of state stipend to be received and the desire of the early caliphs to scan the proceedings of kings and rulers before them.

Public speaking in its varied forms attained in the Umayyad epoch heights unsurpassed in later times. It was employed for sermons, for military exhortations and for patriotic addresses. The fiery orations of al-Hajjaj are among the chief literary treasures of the period. Early official correspondence must have been brief, concise and to the point. It was not till the days of the last Umayyads that the flowery style was introduced. Its ornate, excessively polite phraseology betrays Persian patterns. Persian literary influence may also be detected in the many early wise sayings and proverbs.

The strenuous period of conquest and expansion had produced no poet in a nation that had a long tradition of poetry. But with the accession of the worldly Umayyads, poets throve. Satirical verse, love lyrics, odes in praise of wine, fulsome panegyrics, political rhymes, anthologies of pre-Islamic poetry and other productions were turned out in great quantities, but quality remained high. The close- ness of Umayyad poetry to Islam and to pre-Islamic poetry endowed it with purity of style, strength of expression and natural dignity that raised it to the position of a model for generations to come. Its techniques and motifs set the pattern and provided the mould into which the Arabic poet's individual feeling and composition has since been cast. His inability since then to dissociate himself from his literary heritage and create original masterpieces has been evident.

Arab science was based on the Greek and had its start with medicine. Moslem regard for medical science is echoed in a tradition ascribed to Muhammad: 'Science is twofold: that which relates to religion and that which relates to the body'. Medical treatises and other works were translated from Greek, Syriac and Coptic into Arabic, and segregation Rh


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Rh of persons afflicted with leprosy, blindness and other chronic diseases was instituted and special treatment provided. Umar II is said to have transferred the schools of medicine from Alexandria, where the Greek tradition flourished, to Antioch and Harran.

The Umayyad period also saw the beginnings of several movements of a religious and philosophical nature. Theo- logical speculation provoked by contacts with Christianity led to the rationalist Mutazilite school, while reaction against the harsh predestination of Islam motivated the Qadarite doctrine of free will. Muawiyah II and Yazid III subscribed to the Qadarite doctrine. Chief among the Christian pro- tagonists who induced these speculations was St. John of Damascus (675-about 749), a Syrian who wrote in Greek but no doubt spoke Aramaic at home and also knew Arabic. He was a boon companion of the court and a government councillor before retiring to a life of asceticism and devotion. Besides debating theology with Moslems, he wrote dialogues which emphasize the divinity of Christ and the freedom of human will. He defended the use of images and ritual and composed many hymns. As theologian, orator, apologist, polemicist and father of Byzantine art and music, St. John stands out as an ornament of the church under the caliphate.

Other movements which weakened the universal Moslem orthodoxy included the tolerant Murjiites, who suspended judgment of sinners and tended to justify the secularism of the Umayyad caliphs, and the intolerant Kharijites, who aimed at maintaining the primitive democratic principles of puritanical Islam. In pursuit of their aim the Kharijites caused rivers of blood to flow in the first three centuries of Islam. They opposed the prerogative conferred on the Quraysh that the caliph should be one of their number, forbade the cult of saints with its attendant local pilgrimages and prohibited Sufi fraternities.

More important than all these were the Shiites, partisans of Ali and his descendants. The orthodox Sunnite view Rh


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52 poverty. He at once took him to his house and kept him as a guest, till, like Micawber, "something turned up " for him to do. When this gentleman left, this entry is made: "Mr. Matabon's departure is regretted by us all, and we shall sorely miss his beautiful music on the flute." Summer approaching, when those who purchased pictures and took drawing-lessons were about to leave the city, Audubon accepted a position as tutor in the household of a Mr. Quaglas near Natchez. Mrs. Audubon, who had for some time been teaching in the family of Mr. Brand, removed to that gentleman's house with her sons; they, however, were almost immediately sent to school at Washington, nine miles from Natchez, Audubon's salary enabling him to do this, and in September he was joined by his wife. While at Natchez, the long summer days permitted the drawing of birds as well as the teaching, which was conscientiously performed, and the hope of eventually publishing grew stronger. In the autumn of this year (1822), Audubon met a portrait painter named John Steen or Stein, from Washington, Pa., and thus writes, December, 1822: "He gave me the first lesson in painting in oils I ever took in my life; it was a copy of an Otter from one of my water-colors. Together we painted a full length portrait of Père Antonio, which was sent to Havana."

January, 1823, brought fresh changes. Mrs. Audubon, with her son John, went to Mrs. Percy's plantation, Beechwoods, to teach not only Marguerite Percy, but also the daughters of the owners of the neighboring plantations, and Audubon, with Victor and Mr. Steen, started on a tour of the Southern States in a dearborn, intending to paint for their support. The journal says, March, 1823; "I regretted deeply leaving my Natchez friends, especially Charles Carré and Dr. Provan. The many birds I had collected to take to France I made free; some of the doves had become so fond of me that I was obliged to

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Rh considers the caliph the secular head of the Moslem com- munity, the leader of the believers and the protector of the faith, but bestows no spiritual authority on him. In opposi- tion to that the Shiite view confines the imamate to the family of Ah and makes the imam not only the sole legitimate head of the Moslem society but also the spiritual and religious leader whose authority is derived from a divine ordinance. Extremist Shiites went so far as to consider the imam the incarnation of the deity. Shiism germinated most success- fully in Iraq, but Syria and Lebanon still contain nearly a quarter million, fragmented into several minor sects and heterodoxies. Like a magnet Shiism attracted to itself all sorts of nonconformists and malcontents — economic, social, political and religious.

No sooner had the awe inspired by Islam worn off than male and female professional singers and musicians began to make their appearance. In the Umayyad era Mecca and, more particularly, Medina became a nursery of song and a conservatory of music. They attracted gifted artists from outside and supplied the Damascus court with an ever- increasing stream of talent. The second Umayyad caliph, Yazid I, himself a composer, introduced singing and musical instruments into the court. Other Umayyads — except the austere and puritanical Umar II — followed suit. So wide- spread was the cultivation of musical art under the Umayyads that it provided their rivals, the Abbasid party, with an effective argument in their propaganda aimed at under- mining the house of the 'ungodly usurpers'.

Moslem hostility towards representational art does not manifest itself in Umayyad times. The caliphs had Christian painters decorate their palaces with mural frescoes and mosaics which combine Nabataean, Syrian, Byzantine and Sasanid motifs. They depict royal enemies of the Arabs, hunting scenes, nude dancers, musicians and merrymakers. The fringes of the Syrian Desert, especially in its southern part, are strewn with remains of palaces and hunting lodges Rh


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