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Rh In this mood, the silence accompanied him, and the first visible rays of the morning sun in this same mood found him and saluted him. The excitement and the sleepless night just passed, and the strange narcotic of a quiet, steady anguish, and the sweet quiescence of the air, and the monotonous cradle-like motion of the coach over a road made firm and smooth by a refreshing shower over-night; these had wrought their wonted effect upon Isabel and Delly; with hidden faces they leaned fast asleep in Pierre's sight. Fast asleep—thus unconscious, oh sweet Isabel, oh forlorn Delly, your swift destinies I bear in my own!

Suddenly, as his sad eye fell lower and lower from scanning their magically quiescent persons, his glance lit upon his own clutched hand, which rested on his knee. Some paper protruded from that clutch. He knew not how it had got there, or whence it had come, though himself had closed his own grip upon it. He lifted his hand and slowly unfingered and unbolted the paper, and unrolled it, and carefully smoothed it, to see what it might be.

It was a thin, tattered, dried-fish-like thing; printed with blurred ink upon mean, sleazy paper. It seemed the opening pages of some ruinous old pamphlet—a pamphlet containing a chapter or so of some very voluminous disquisition. The conclusion was gone. It must have been accidentally left there by some previous traveller, who perhaps in drawing out his handkerchief, had ignorantly extracted his waste paper.

There is a singular infatuation in most men, which leads them in odd moments, intermitting between their regular occupations, and when they find themselves all alone in some quiet corner or nook, to fasten with unaccountable fondness upon the merest rag of old printed paper—some shred of a long-exploded advertisement

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Rh sky all round. Then he comes back and slowly delivers his judgment on the weather in bull-calf tones. He looks as if he has never been a mile from the village in his life. He sells "Coider" by the jugful.

The station master is a shy man with a fresh complexion and side whiskers.

The sergeant in charge of the police station is a good fellow, and, if you know him, you can go up to the station after closing time and have a nightcap with him.

The barber and tobacconist is a little Cockney, who attends on gentlemen and gentlemen's families at their own 'omes and sells tobacco by the hounce.

The village policeman is a heavy-footed countryman in uniform, who sees you home if you happen to have had a drop too much, and calls round next morning ostentatiously to ask "how the gentleman is?" but really to see if you have forgotten that you tipped him generously last night, and if so, to get another tip.

And that's about all at present, from yours truly.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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288 perhaps—and read it, and study it, and re-read it, and pore over it, and fairly agonise themselves over this miserable, sleazy paper-rag, which at any other time, or in any other place, they would hardly touch with St. Dunstan's long tongs. So now, in a degree, with Pierre. But notwithstanding that he, with most other human beings, shared in the strange hallucination above mentioned, yet the first glimpse of the title of the fried-fish-like, pamphlet-shaped rag, did almost tempt him to pitch it out of the window. For, be a man's mood what it may, what sensible and ordinary mortal could have patience for any considerable period, to knowingly hold in his conscious hand a printed document (and that too a very blurred one as to ink, and a very sleazy one as to paper), so metaphysically and insufferably entitled as this:—'Chronometricals and Horologicals?'

Doubtless, it was something vastly profound; but it is to be observed, that when a man is in a really profound mood, then all merely verbal or written profundities are unspeakably repulsive, and seem downright childish to him. Nevertheless, the silence still continued; the road ran through an almost unploughed and uninhabited region; the slumberers still slumbered before him; the evil mood was becoming well-nigh insupportable to him; so, more to force his mind away from the dark realities of things than from any other motive, Pierre finally tried his best to plunge himself into the pamphlet.

II

Sooner or later in this life, the earnest, or enthusiastic youth comes to know, and more or less appreciate this startling solecism:—That while, as the grand condition of acceptance to God, Christianity calls upon all men to renounce this world; yet by all odds the most Mammonish

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Rh part of this world—Europe and America—are owned by none but professed Christian nations, who glory in the owning, and seem to have some reason therefor.

This solecism once vividly and practically apparent; then comes the earnest reperusal of the Gospels: the intense self-absorption into that greatest real miracle of all religions, the Sermon on the Mount. From that divine mount, to all earnest loving youths, flows an inexhaustible soul-melting stream of tenderness and loving-kindness; and they leap exulting to their feet, to think that the founder of their holy religion gave utterance to sentences so infinitely sweet and soothing as these; sentences which embody all the love of the Past, and all the love which can be imagined in any conceivable Future. Such emotions as that sermon raises in the enthusiastic heart; such emotions all youthful hearts refuse to ascribe to humanity as their origin. This is of God! cries the heart, and in that cry ceases all inquisition. Now, with this fresh-read sermon in his soul, the youth again gazes abroad upon the world. Instantly, in aggravation of the former solecism, an overpowering sense of the world's downright positive falsity comes over him; the world seems to lie saturated and soaking with lies. The sense of this thing is so overpowering, that at first the youth is apt to refuse the evidence of his own senses; even as he does that same evidence in the matter of the movement of the visible sun in the heavens, which with his own eyes he plainly sees to go round the world, but nevertheless on the authority of other persons,—the Copernican astronomers, whom he never saw—he believes it not to go round the world, but the world round it. Just so, too, he hears good and wise people sincerely say: This world only seems to be saturated and soaking with lies; but in reality it does not so lie soaking and saturate; along with some lies, there is much truth in

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text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement/Chippendale, William Henry


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 For nearly a quarter of a century (1857–1881) Chitty acted as umpire at the inter-university boat race. He was a member, and for ten years (1867–77) major, of the Inns of Court volunteer corps. In later life he amused himself with carpentering and cabinet making. He was also a skilful executant on more than one musical instrument.

CHRISTIE, RICHARD COPLEY (1830–1901), scholar and bibliophile, born on 22 July 1830 at Lenton, Nottinghamshire, was the second son of Lorenzo Christie of Edale, Derbyshire, a mill-owner much respected in Manchester, and his wife Ann, a daughter of Isaac Bayley of Lenton Sands. In April 1849 he entered as an undergraduate at Lincoln College, Oxford, where [q. v.] was then establishing his ascendency. Towards him Christie was drawn by common literary interests and by a close agreement between their ideas as to the higher purposes of academical life; they became intimate friends in later years, and after the rector's death Christie contributed a biographical notice of him to this 'Dictionary.' His own Oxford days came to an end in 1853, when he graduated B. A ., taking a first class in law and history. Hallam, the historian, was one of his examiners. In 1855 he proceeded M.A. Having resolved upon a legal career, he was on 21 Nov. 1854 admitted a student of Lincoln's Inn (Lincoln's Inn Records, ii. 266); but almost immediately he was induced to settle at Manchester, and devote himself for a time to educational work. In this year the trustees of the newly founded Owens College had to select the first body of professors of that institution, which from small and tentative beginnings was gradually to grow into the largest of the university colleges of the Victorian type. As was inevitable in the case of a foundation intended to supply the instruction usually given in the English universities, Owens College opened with more chairs than teachers, and Christie, who had been appointed professor of ancient and modern history, was in the following year also chosen for the Faulkner professorship of political economy and commercial science [see ], To these, modestly remunerated, chairs was in 1855 added a third, that of jurisprudence and law; and, pluralist as he was, Christie found himself further called upon to bear an active share in the teaching of the evening classes of the college, for many years one of its most important departments, and even for a time to hold an additional class at the Working Men's College in the Mechanics' Institution. In the deliberations which aimed at increasing the public usefulness of the Owens College, and which in fact for many a year largely turned on the question of how to assure its existence, Christie from the first took a leading part, distinguishing himself by resourcefulness as well as judgment. One of the most satisfactory incidents in the earlier internal history of the college, the institution of the associateship, was due to his suggestion. As a teacher he was, according to general consent, successful; he can at no time have excelled in delivery, but he was invariably clear in statement and polished in expression, and he had at command that incisive kind of wit which as a tradition endears itself to students.

In June 1857 Christie had been called to the bar from Lincoln's Inn, and he at once commenced practice at Manchester as an equity draughtsman and conveyancer, and in the chancery court of the county palatine of Lancaster. His practice continuously grew, till at the time of his retirement in 1877 he was the leader of the Manchester equity bar. He was a good draughtsman and clear-headed lawyer, and professionally a model of honour and propriety. After the procedure had been altered he was less effective as an examiner of witnesses in court. Pupils found his chambers an admirable school of training. With his practice, which was of a high class, the importance of his personal position at Manchester steadily rose. In 1861 he married Mary Helen, daughter of Samuel Fletcher of Broomfield near Manchester, who from first to last closely 'associated herself with her husband's interests and beneficence. In their hospitable house on Cheetham Hill, and afterwards at Prestwich, bis library had already begun to be a source of pride and pleasure to him, and in his vacations he was quietly pursuing his literary and bibliographical researches in France and elsewhere. Gradually the pressure of his Owens College duties, as super-


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Balchen, John


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290 this world. But again he refers to his Bible, and there he reads most explicitly, that this world is unconditionally depraved and accursed; and that at all hazards men must come out of it. But why come out of it, if it be a True World and not a Lying World? Assuredly, then, this world is a lie.

Hereupon then in the soul of the enthusiast youth two armies come to the shock; and unless he prove recreant, or unless he prove gullible, or unless he can find the talismanic secret, to reconcile this world with his own soul, then there is no peace for him, no slightest truce for him in this life. Now without doubt this Talismanic Secret has never yet been found; and in the nature of human things it seems as though it never can be. Certain philosophers have time and again pretended to have found it; but if they do not in the end discover their own delusion, other people soon discover it for themselves, and so those philosophers and their vain philosophy are let glide away into practical oblivion. Plato, and Spinoza, and Goethe, and many more belong to this guild of self-impostors, with a preposterous rabble of Muggletonian Scots and Yankees, whose vile brogue still the more bestreaks the stripedness of their Greek or German Neoplatonical originals. That profound Silence, that only Voice of our God, which I before spoke of; from that divine thing without a name, those impostor philosophers pretend somehow to have got an answer; which is as absurd, as though they should say they had got water out of stone; for how can a man get a Voice out of Silence?

Certainly, all must admit, that if for anyone this problem of the possible reconcilement of this world with our own souls possessed a peculiar and potential interest, that one was Pierre Glendinning at the period we now write of. For in obedience to the loftiest behest of

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Rh his soul, he had done certain vital acts, which had already lost him his worldly felicity, and which he felt must in the end indirectly work him some still additional and not-to-be-thought-of woe.

Soon then, as after his first distaste at the mystical title, and after his then reading on, merely to drown himself, Pierre at last began to obtain a glimmering into the profound intent of the writer of the sleazy rag pamphlet, he felt a great interest awakened in him. The more he read and re-read, the more this interest deepened, but still the more likewise did failure to comprehend the writer increase. He seemed somehow to derive some general vague inkling concerning it, but the central conceit refused to become clear to him. The reason whereof is not so easy to be laid down; seeing that the reason-originating heart and mind of man, these organic things themselves are not so easily to be expounded. Something, however, more or less to the point, may be adventured here.

If a man be in any vague latent doubt about the intrinsic correctness and excellence of his general life-theory and practical course of life; then, if that man chance to light on any other man, or any little treatise, or sermon, which unintendingly, as it were, yet very palpably illustrates to him the intrinsic incorrectness and non-excellence of both the theory and the practice of his life; then that man will—more or less unconsciously—try hard to hold himself back from the self-admitted comprehension of a matter which thus condemns him. For in this case, to comprehend, is himself to condemn himself, which is always highly inconvenient and uncomfortable to a man. Again. If a man be told a thing wholly new, then—during the time of its first announcement to him—it is entirely impossible for him to comprehend it. For—absurd as it may seem—men are only

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text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement/Chitty, Joseph William


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292 made to comprehend things which they comprehended before (though but in the embryo, as it were). Things new it is impossible to make them comprehend, by merely talking to them about it. True, sometimes they pretend to comprehend; in their own hearts they really believe they do comprehend; outwardly look as though they did comprehend; wag their bushy tails comprehendingly; but for all that, they do not comprehend. Possibly, they may afterward come, of themselves, to inhale this new idea from the circumambient air, and so come to comprehend it; but not otherwise at all. It will be observed, that neither points of the above speculations do we, in set terms, attribute to Pierre in connection with the rag pamphlet. Possibly both might be applicable; possibly neither. Certain it is, however, that at the time, in his own heart, he seemed to think that he did not fully comprehend the strange writer's conceit in all its bearings. Yet was this conceit apparently one of the plainest in the world; so natural, a child might almost have originated it. Nevertheless, again so profound, that scarce Juggularius himself could be the author; and still again so exceedingly trivial, that Juggularius' smallest child might well have been ashamed of it.

Seeing then that this curious paper rag so puzzled Pierre; foreseeing, too, that Pierre may not in the end be entirely uninfluenced in his conduct by the torn pamphlet, when afterward perhaps by other means he shall come to understand it; or, peradventure, come to know that he, in the first place, did—seeing too that the author thereof came to be made known to him by reputation, and though Pierre never spoke to him, yet exerted a surprising sorcery upon his spirit by the mere distant glimpse of his countenance;—all these reasons I account sufficient apology for inserting in the following chapters the initial part of what seems to me a very fanciful

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text:
Anthem for Doomed Youth

 * Anthem for Doomed Youth, the first published edition. It appeared in the 1920 Poems by Wilfred Owen, published by Siegfried Sassoon.
 * Anthem for Doomed Youth (Stallworthy edition), widely recognised as the authoritative version, based on the scholarship of Jon Stallworthy.

title: Anthem for Doomed Youth


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Rh


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Rh and mystical, rather than philosophical lecture, from which, I confess, that I myself can derive no conclusion which permanently satisfies those peculiar motions in my soul, to which that lecture seems more particularly addressed. For to me it seems more the excellently illustrated re-statement of a problem, than the solution of the problem itself. But as such mere illustrations are almost universally taken for solutions (and perhaps they are the only possible human solutions), therefore it may help to the temporary quiet of some inquiring mind; and so not be wholly without use. At the worst, each person can now skip, or read and rail for himself.

III

'EI'

PLOTINUS PLINLIMMON,

(In Three Hundred and Thirty-three Lectures).

—————

LECTURE FIRST.

CHRONOMETRICALS AND HOROLOGICALS,

(Being not so much the Portal, as part of the temporary Scaffold to the Portal of this New Philosophy).

'Few of us doubt, gentlemen, that human life on this earth is but a state of probation; which among other things implies, that here below, we mortals have only to do with things provisional. Accordingly, I hold that all our so-called wisdom is likewise but provisional.

'This preamble laid down, I begin.

'It seems to me, in my visions, that there is a certain most rare order of human souls, which if carefully carried in the body will almost always and everywhere give

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294 Heaven's own Truth, with some small grains of variance. For peculiarly coming from God, the sole source of that heavenly truth, and the great Greenwich hill and tower from which the universal meridians are far out into infinity reckoned; such souls seem as London sea-chronometers (Greek, time-namers) which as the London ship floats past Greenwich down the Thames, are accurately adjusted by Greenwich time, and if needfully kept, will still give that same time, even though carried to the Azores. True, in nearly all cases of long, remote voyages—to China, say—chronometers of the best make, and the most carefully treated, will gradually more or less vary from Greenwich time, without the possibility of the error being corrected by direct comparison with their great standard; but skilful and devout observations of the stars by the sextant will serve materially to lessen such errors. And besides, there is such a thing as rating a chronometer; that is, having ascertained its degree of organic inaccuracy, however small, then in all subsequent chronometrical calculations, that ascertained loss or gain be readily added or deducted, as the case may be. Then again, on these long voyages, the chronometer may be corrected by comparing it with the chronometer of some other ship at sea, more recently from home.

'Now in an artificial world like ours, the soul of man is further removed from its God and the Heavenly Truth, than the chronometer carried to China, is from Greenwich. And, as that chronometer, if at all accurate, will pronounce it to be 12 o'clock high-noon, when the China local watches say, perhaps, it is 12 o'clock midnight; so the chronometric soul if in this world true to its great Greenwich in the other, will always, in its so-called intuitions of right and wrong, be contradicting the mere local standards and watchmaker's brains of this earth.

'Bacon's brains were mere watchmaker's brains; but

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Police v. City of Newark

ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF NEW JERSEY. (D.C. Civil No. 97-02672). (District Judge: Honorable John W. Bissell).

Affirmed. MICHELLE HOLLAR-GREGORY, DARRYL M. SAUNDERS (Argued), City of Newark, Newark, NJ, Counsel for Appellants.

ROBERT R. CANNAN (Argued), MARIO E. DIRIENZO, Spevack & Cannan, Iselin, NJ, Counsel for Appellees.

KEVIN J. HASSON (Argued), ERIC W. TREENE, ROMAN STORZER, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, Washington, DC. RONALD K. CHEN, DAVID ROCAH, American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, Newark, NJ. STEVEN M. FREEMAN, DAVID ROSENBERG, ERICA M. BROIDO, LAUREN LEVIN, Anti-Defamation League, New York, NY, Counsel for Amici Curiae in Support of Appellees.

Before: GREENBERG, ALITO, and McKEE, Circuit Judges.

title: Police v. City of Newark


text:
Police v. City of Newark/Opinion of the Court

[p360] OPINION OF THE COURT

ALITO, Circuit Judge:

This appeal presents the question whether the policy of the Newark (N.J.) Police Department regarding the wearing of beards by officers violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. Under that policy, which the District Court held to be unconstitutional, exemptions are made for medical reasons (typically because of a skin condition called pseudo folliculitis barbae), but the Department refuses to make exemptions for officers whose religious beliefs prohibit them from shaving their beards. Because the Department makes exemptions from its policy for secular reasons and has not offered any substantial justification for refusing to provide similar treatment for officers who are required to wear beards for religious reasons, we conclude that the Department's policy violates the First Amendment. Accordingly, we affirm the District Court's order permanently enjoining the Department from disciplining two Islamic officers who have refused to shave their beards for religious reasons.

I
Since 1971, male officers in the Newark Police Department have been subject to an internal order that requires them to shave their beards. In relevant part, the order provides:

"Full beards, goatees or other growths of hair below the lower lip, on the chin, or lower jaw bone area are prohibited."

App. at 94 (Special Order from the Chief of Police No. 71-15, p.2 ("Order 71-15")). The order permits officers to wear mustaches and sideburns, id., and it allows exemptions from the "no-beard" rule for undercover officers whose "assignments or duties permit a departure from the requirements." Id. at 93. See Appellees' Br. at 14; Reply Br. at 9.

Officers Faruq Abdul-Aziz and Shakoor Mustafa are both devout Sunni Muslims who assert that they believe that they are under a religious obligation to grow their beards. See App. at 9-10; Supp. App. 3-4. According to the affidavit of an imam, "it is an obligation for men who can grow a beard, to do so" and not to shave. Supp. App. at 3. The affidavit continues:

. . . The Quran commands the wearing of a beard implicitly. The Sunnah is the detailed explanation of the general injunctions contained in the Quran. The Sunnah says in too many verses to recount [:]"Grow the beard, trim the mustache."

. . . I teach as the Prophet Mohammed taught that the Sunnah must be followed as well as the Quran. This in the unequivocal teaching for the past 1,418 years, by the one billion living Sunni Muslims world wide.

. . . The refusal by a Sunni Muslim male who can grow a beard, to wear one is a major sin. I teach based upon the way I was taught and it is understood in my faith that the non-wearing of a beard by the male who can, for any reason is as [serious] a sin as eating pork.

. . . This is not a discretionary instruction; it is a commandment. A Sunni Muslim male will not be saved from this major sin because of an instruction of another, [p361]  even an employer to shave his beard and the penalties will be meted out by Allah.

Supp. App. at 4. The defendants have not disputed the sincerity of the plaintiffs' beliefs.

When Aziz and Mustafa were questioned about their non-compliance with Order 71-15, they informed Department officials that they were growing their beards for religious reasons. See Supp. App. at 1 & 5. This explanation was apparently deemed inadequate, and Mustafa received a Preliminary Notice of Disciplinary Action in July 1996 charging him with disobeying an oral command to comply with Order 71-15. App. at 96-97. Aziz received a similar notice in January 1997. Id. at 98-99. In both cases, the notices informed the officers that their actions might warrant "removal" from the Department. Id. at 96 & 98.

On January 24, 1997, Chief of Police Thomas C. O'Reilly announced a "Zero Tolerance" policy for officers who were not in compliance with Order 71-15 and had not received "medical clearance" to wear a beard. App. at 95 (Memorandum from the Chief of Police No. 97-30 ("Memo 97-30")). Consistent with this policy, the Department ordered Officers Aziz and Mustafa to appear for disciplinary hearing in May 1997.

Prior to the hearing, Mustafa and Aziz filed a complaint in the District Court requesting permanent injunctive relief on the ground that the Department's enforcement of Order 71-15 would violate their rights under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. After the defendants filed a motion to dismiss, and the plaintiffs filed a motion for summary judgment, the District Court held a hearing and concluded that the Department's application of Order 71-15 to Mustafa and Aziz would violate their free exercise rights. Accordingly, the District Court permanently enjoined the defendants "from disciplining or otherwise disadvantaging Plaintiffs Aziz and Mustafa for violating Order 71-15 or any other directive which would require them to shave or trim their beards in violation of their religious beliefs." App. at 23.

II
The Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, which has been made applicable to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment, see Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 303, 84 L. Ed. 1213, 60 S.C.t. 900 (1940), provides that "Congress shall make no law . . . prohibiting the free exercise" of religion. U.S.C.onst. amend. I. For many years, the Supreme Court appeared to interpret the free exercise clause as requiring the government to make religious exemptions from neutral, generally applicable laws that have the incidental effect of substantially burdening religious conduct. See Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205, 220, 32 L. Ed. 2d 15, 92 S.C.t. 1526 (1972) ("There are areas of conduct protected by the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and thus beyond the power of the State to control, even under regulations of general applicability."); see also Frazee v. Illinois Dep't of Employment Sec., 489 U.S. 829, 832-34, 109 S.C.t. 1514, 103 L. Ed. 2d 914 (1989); ''Thomas v. Review Bd. of Indiana Employment Div.'', 450 U.S. 707, 717, 67 L. Ed. 2d 624, 101 S.C.t. 1425 (1981); Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398, 403-404, 10 L. Ed. 2d 965, 83 S.C.t. 1790 (1963). In these cases, the Court required the government to meet "strict scrutiny" when application of a given law or regulation served to impose a substantial burden on religious activity. See Thomas, 450 U.S. at 718 ("The state may justify an inroad on religious liberty by showing that it is the least restrictive means of achieving some compelling state interest."); Yoder, 406 U.S. at 215 ("Only those interests of the highest order and those not otherwise served can overbalance legitimate claims to the free exercise of religion.").

In 1986, a plurality of the Court raised doubts about the breadth of the Court's "exemption" jurisprudence and proposed a new [p362]  approach. See Bowen v. Roy, 476 U.S. 693, 703-08, 90 L. Ed. 2d 735, 106 S.C.t. 2147 (1986) (Burger, C.J., joined by Rehnquist and Powell, J.J.). In Roy, a mother and father who wished to participate in the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program objected on religious grounds to the requirement that they furnish their daughter's Social Security number as a condition of receiving benefits. Id. at 695. Although the Court's precedent indicated that these circumstances were sufficient to trigger strict scrutiny because the government had "conditioned receipt of an important benefit upon conduct proscribed by a religious faith," Thomas, 450 U.S. at 717-718, the plurality opinion applied rational basis review. Roy, 476 U.S. at 707-08. The opinion explained:

"We conclude . . . that government regulation that indirectly and incidentally calls for a choice between securing a governmental benefit and adherence to religious beliefs is wholly different from governmental action or legislation that criminalizes religiously inspired activity or inescapably compels conduct that some find objectionable for religious reasons. Although the denial of government benefits over religious objection can raise serious Free Exercise problems, these two very different forms of government action are not governed by the same constitutional standard."

Id. at 706 (emphasis added). See also id. at 704.

In sum, the plurality proposed that the Court continue to apply heightened scrutiny to neutral, generally applicable laws that burden religious activity by affirmatively compelling or prohibiting conduct, but apply rational basis scrutiny to neutral, generally applicable rules governing benefits programs. However, rather than advocating the overruling of the Court's prior benefits-exemption cases, such as Sherbert and Thomas, the plurality distinguished those decisions on the ground that they concerned laws that already included "mechanisms for individualized exemptions." Roy, 476 U.S. at 708. The plurality explained that if "a state creates such a mechanism, its refusal to extend an exemption to an instance of religious hardship suggests a discriminatory intent," and it is "appropriate to require the State to demonstrate a compelling reason for denying the requested exemption." Id. Since the statutory framework at issue in Roy did not provide for individualized exemptions, the plurality did not believe that the Court's prior benefits decisions were controlling.

The Roy plurality's attempt to distinguish the Court's previous decisions and apply rational basis review failed to garner a majority of the Court. See id. at 715-16 (Blackmun, J., concurring in part); id. at 728-32 (O'Connor, J., joined by Brennan and Marshall, J.J., concurring in part and dissenting in part); id. at 733 (White, J., dissenting). In 1990, however, the legal landscape changed dramatically when the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Employment Div., Dep't of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872, 108 L. Ed. 2d 876, 110 S.C.t. 1595 (1990). Smith concerned two individuals who were denied state unemployment compensation benefits after being fired from their jobs for ingesting peyote, a controlled substance under Oregon law. Id. at 874. The individuals challenged the denial of benefits on the ground that they were entitled to religious exemptions since they had ingested peyote for sacramental purposes at a ceremony of the Native American Church. Declining to apply strict scrutiny, the Court concluded that "the right of free exercise does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a valid and neutral law of general applicability on the ground that the law proscribes (or prescribes) conduct that his religion prescribes (or proscribes)." Smith, 494 U.S. at 879 (quotations omitted). See also id. at 878 (explaining that "if prohibiting the exercise of religion" is "merely the incidental effect of a generally applicable and otherwise valid provision, the First Amendment has not been offended"). Accordingly, the Court held that Oregon could, consistent with the Free Exercise Clause, criminalize religious peyote use and deny unemployment compensation benefits to individuals whose job dismissals resulted [p363]  from such use. Id. at 890.

The Smith Court, however, did not overrule its prior free exercise decisions, but rather distinguished them. See Smith, 494 U.S. at 881-884. In this case, the plaintiffs contend that their Free Exercise claim is not governed by the generally applicable Smith rule but is instead governed by the Court's pre-Smith decisions. In this connection, the plaintiffs make three arguments. First, they contend that the Smith decision should be limited to cases involving criminal prohibitions. Second, they argue that the Smith analysis does not apply to government rules that, like the "no-beard" policy, already make secular exemptions for certain individuals. Finally, they maintain that the Smith rule does not bar their exemption claim because they are relying on both the Free Exercise Clause and the Free Speech Clause. The District Court accepted the plaintiffs' first argument, applied the Court's pre-Smith jurisprudence, and concluded that the Free Exercise Clause prohibits the Department from enforcing its "no-beard" policy against Aziz and Mustafa. While we disagree with the District Court's conclusion that Smith is limited to the criminal context, we believe that the plaintiffs are entitled to a religious exemption since the Department already makes secular exemptions. As a result, we need not reach the plaintiffs' "hybrid" free speech/free exercise argument. See generally Smith, 494 U.S. at 881-882 (distinguishing "hybrid" claims from free exercise claims).

A
Aziz and Mustafa first contend that the Smith rule applies only to cases involving criminal prohibitions. Since this case concerns a non-criminal prohibition, Aziz and Mustafa argue that the Court's pre-Smith decisions govern and heightened scrutiny applies. This position, however, has already been rejected by our court. See Salvation Army v. Department of Community Affairs of New Jersey, 919 F.2d 183, 194-96 (3d Cir. 1990). Salvation Army involved a claim by The Salvation Army ("TSA") that it was entitled to a religious exemption from the requirements of the New Jersey Rooming and Boarding House Act of 1979, N.J. Stat. Ann. § 55:13B-1 (West 1989), and the regulations promulgated thereunder. Salvation Army, 919 F.2d. at 185. Like Aziz and Mustafa, TSA argued that "the Court's holding in Smith was limited to free exercise challenges to neutral, generally applicable criminal statutes ." Id. at 194 (emphasis in original). Our response was unequivocal: "We cannot accept this interpretation of Smith." Id.

In addition to the analysis provided in Salvation Army, see 919 F.2d at 194-96, we believe there are two further reasons to conclude that Smith is not limited to cases involving criminal statutes. First, under a contrary reading of Smith, the Free Exercise Clause would not be implicated when the government prohibits religious conduct through generally applicable laws, Smith, 494 U.S. at 878-79, but would be implicated when the government imposes a lesser burden on religion through a generally applicable civil regulation. This counter-intuitive interpretation of the First Amendment is undermined by the very language of the Smith opinion:

"If a state has prohibited through its criminal laws certain kinds of religiously motivated conduct without violating the First Amendment, it certainly follows that it may impose the lesser burden of denying unemployment compensation benefits to persons who engage in that conduct."

Smith, 494 U.S. at 875 (quotation omitted) (emphasis added). See also id. at 898-99 (opinion of O'Connor, J., joined by Brennan, Marshall, and [p364]  Blackmun, J.J.) ("A neutral criminal law prohibiting conduct that a State may legitimately regulate is, if anything, more burdensome than a neutral civil statute placing legitimate conditions on the award of a state benefit.").

Second, the Supreme Court's most recent characterization of Smith supports our holding in Salvation Army that Smith is not limited to the criminal context. In City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507, 117 S.C.t. 2157, 138 L. Ed. 2d 624 (1997), the Supreme Court stated:

"Smith held that neutral, generally applicable laws may be applied to religious practices even when not supported by a compelling governmental interest."

Id. 117 S.C.t. at 2161. Nowhere in its discussion of Smith did the Flores Court indicate that the Smith decision only applied to generally applicable criminal laws. In fact, the law at issue in Flores was a non-criminal landmark ordinance. See Flores, 117 S.C.t. at 2160. If the plaintiffs are correct, and Smith does not apply to non-criminal provisions, there would have been no need for the Flores Court even to discuss Smith. However, the Flores Court did much more than to discuss Smith; it struck down the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, insofar as it applied to the states, for the very reason that it was inconsistent with Smith. See Flores, 117 S.C.t. at 2171-72. In light of Flores, it is difficult to say that Smith has no application to cases involving non-criminal statutes.

Because this court has already rejected the argument that Smith is limited to cases involving criminal statutes, and because that rejection is amply supported by both the Smith opinion itself and recent Supreme Court case law, we cannot agree with the plaintiffs and the District Court that Smith is distinguishable on the ground that it concerned a criminal statute.

B
Aziz and Mustafa's second argument is that the Department's refusal to make religious exemptions from its no-beard policy should be reviewed under strict scrutiny because the Department makes secular exemptions to its policy. This contention rests on the following passage from Smith in which the Court explained why some of its earlier religious exemption cases had applied strict scrutiny:

"The statutory conditions in Sherbert and Thomas provided that a person was not eligible for unemployment compensation benefits if, 'without good cause,' he had quit work or refused available work. The 'good cause' standard created a mechanism for individualized exemptions. As the plurality pointed out in Roy, our decisions in the unemployment cases stand for the proposition that where the State has in place a system of individual exemptions, it may not refuse to extend that system to cases of religious hardship without compelling reason."

Smith, 494 U.S. at 884 (quotations, citations, and alterations omitted).

The Court reiterated this understanding of its religious exemption jurisprudence, and applied it outside the unemployment compensation context, in Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520, 537-38, 124 L. Ed. 2d 472, 113 S.C.t. 2217 (1993). In Lukumi, the Court reviewed several municipal ordinances regulating the slaughter of animals, one of which prescribed punishments for "whoever . . . unnecessarily . . . kills any animal." Id. at 537. The Court explained that this ordinance could not be applied to punish the ritual slaughter of animals by members of the Santeria religion when the ordinance was not applied to secular killings:

"Because [the ordinance] requires an evaluation of the particular justification for the killing, this ordinance represents a system of individualized governmental assessment of the reasons for the relevant conduct. As we noted in Smith, in circumstances in which individualized exemptions from a general requirement are available, the government may not refuse to extend that system to cases of 'religious hardship' without compelling reason. Respondent's application of the test of necessity devalues religious reasons for killing by judging them to be of lesser import than nonreligious reasons. Thus religious practice is [p365] being singled out for discriminatory treatment."

Lukumi, 508 U.S. at 537-38 (emphasis added) (quotations and citations omitted).

Aziz and Mustafa contend that, since the Department provides medical -- but not religious -- exemptions from its "no-beard" policy, it has unconstitutionally devalued their religious reasons for wearing beards by judging them to be of lesser import than medical reasons. The Department, on the other hand, maintains that its distinction between medical exemptions and religious exemptions does not represent an impermissible value judgment because medical exemptions are made only so as to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA"), 42 U.S.C. § 12101 (1994). See Brief in Support of the Defendants' Motion to Dismiss at 11. While this argument initially appears persuasive, it ultimately cannot be sustained.

It is true that the ADA requires employers to make "reasonable accommodations" for individuals with disabilities. 42 U.S.C. § 12111(b)(5)(A) (1994). However, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 imposes an identical obligation on employers with respect to accommodating religion. 42 U.S.C. § 2000e(j) (1994). This parallel requirement undermines the Department's contention that it provides a medical exception, but not a religious exception, because it believes that "the law may require" a medical exception. Brief in Support of Defendants' Motion to Dismiss at 11. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that the Department has clearly been put on notice of Title VII's religious accommodation requirements. See EEOC Determination Letter, Charge No. 171970408 (attached to Plaintiffs' Letter Brief in Response to Defendants' Cross Motion for Summary Judgment); App. at 83 (Plaintiffs' Complaint) (citing Title VII). In light of these circumstances, we cannot accept the Department's position that its differential treatment of medical exemptions and religious exemptions is premised on a good-faith belief that the former may be required by law while the latter are not.

We also reject the argument that, because the medical exemption is not an "individualized exemption," the Smith/Lukumi rule does not apply. See App. at 19 (Dist. Ct. Op. at 12). While the Supreme Court did speak in terms of "individualized exemptions" in Smith and Lukumi, it is clear from those decisions that the Court's concern was the prospect of the government's deciding that secular motivations are more important than religious motivations. If anything, this concern is only further implicated when the government does not merely create a mechanism for individualized exemptions, but instead, actually creates a categorical exemption for individuals with a secular objection but not for individuals with a religious objection. See generally Lukumi, 508 U.S. at 542 (1992) ("All laws are selective to some extent, but categories of selection are of paramount concern when a law has the incidental effect of burdening religious practice.) (emphasis added). Therefore, we conclude that the Department's decision to provide medical exemptions while refusing religious exemptions is sufficiently suggestive of discriminatory intent so as to trigger heightened scrutiny under Smith and Lukumi.

Contrary to the Department's contention, our decision to apply heightened scrutiny is entirely consistent with the result in Smith. In Smith, the Court upheld an Oregon law [p366]  that prohibited the "knowing or intentional possession of a 'controlled substance' unless the substance has been prescribed by a medical practitioner." Smith, 494 U.S. at 874. The Department argues that, since the prescription exception did not prompt the Smith Court to apply heightened scrutiny to the Oregon law, we should not apply heightened scrutiny in the instant case based on the Department's allowance of medical exemptions. See Appellants' Br. at 8-9. This argument, however, overlooks a critical difference between the prescription exception in the Oregon law and the medical exemption in this case.

The Department's decision to allow officers to wear beards for medical reasons undoubtedly undermines the Department's interest in fostering a uniform appearance through its "no-beard" policy. By contrast, the prescription exception to Oregon's drug law does not necessarily undermine Oregon's interest in curbing the unregulated use of dangerous drugs. Rather, the prescription exception is more akin to the Department's undercover exception, which does not undermine the Department's interest in uniformity because undercover officers "obviously are not held out to the public as law enforcement personnel." Reply Br. at 9. The prescription exception and the undercover exception do not trigger heightened scrutiny because the Free Exercise Clause does not require the government to apply its laws to activities that it does not have an interest in preventing. However, the medical exemption raises concern because it indicates that the Department has made a value judgment that secular (i.e., medical) motivations for wearing a beard are important enough to overcome its general interest in uniformity but that religious motivations are not. As discussed above, when the government makes a value judgment in favor of secular motivations, but not religious motivations, the government's actions must survive heightened scrutiny.

C
The Department has not offered any interest in defense of its policy that is able to withstand any form of heightened scrutiny. The Department contends that it wants to convey the image of a " 'monolithic, highly disciplined force' " and that "uniformity [of appearance] not only benefits the men and women that risk their lives on a daily basis, but offers the public a sense of security in having readily identifiable and trusted public servants." Appellant's Brief at 14 (citation omitted). We will address separately all of the interests that we can discern in this passage.

The Department hints that other officers and citizens might have difficulty identifying a bearded officer as a genuine Newark police officer and that this might undermine safety. But while safety is undoubtedly an interest of the greatest importance, the Department's partial no-beard policy is not tailored to serve that interest. Uniformed officers, whether bearded or clean-shaven, should be readily identifiable. Officers who wear plain clothes are not supposed to stand out to the same degree as uniformed officers, and in any event the Department permits such officers to wear beards for medical reasons. The Department does not contend that these medical exemptions pose a serious threat to the safety of the members of the force or to the general public, and there is no apparent reason why permitting officers to wear beards for religious reasons should create any greater difficulties in this regard.

The Department also suggests that permitting officers to wear beards for religious reasons would undermine the force's morale and esprit de corps. However, the Department has provided no legitimate explanation as to why the presence of officers who wear beards for medical reasons does not have this effect but the presence of officers who wear beards for religious reasons would. And the same is true with respect to [p367]  the Department's suggestion that the presence of officers who wear beards for religious reasons would undermine public confidence in the force. We are at a loss to understand why religious exemptions threaten important city interests but medical exemptions do not. Conceivably, the Department may think that permitting officers to wear beards for religious reasons would present a greater threat to the sense of uniformity that it wishes to foster because the difference that this practice highlights -- namely, a difference in religious belief and practice -- is not superficial (like the presence of pseudo folliculitis barbae) and thus may cause divisions in the ranks and among the public. (There is no doubt that religious differences have been a cause of dissension throughout much of human history.) But if this is the Department's thinking -- and we emphasize that the Department has not spelled out this argument in so many words -- what it means is that Sunni Muslim officers who share the plaintiffs' religious beliefs are prohibited from wearing beards precisely for the purpose of obscuring the fact that they hold those beliefs and that they differ in this respect from most of the other members of the force. In other words, if this is the real reason for the distinction that is drawn between medical and religious exemptions, we have before us a policy the very purpose of which is to suppress manifestations of the religious diversity that the First Amendment safeguards. Before sanctioning such a policy, we would require a far more substantial showing than the Department has made in this case. We thus conclude that the Department's policy cannot survive any degree of heightened scrutiny and thus cannot be sustained.

IV
For the reasons set out above, we affirm the decision of the District Court.


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Futility

 * A poem by Wilfred Owen: Futility
 * A poem by Walter de la Mare: Futility
 * A work by Morgan Robertson describing the sinking of oceanliner Titan
 * Futility (1898)
 * The Wreck of the Titan: Or, Futility (1912 re-issue related to the real Titanic)
 * Futility (1922), a novel by William Gerhardie

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 By Professor Hitti HISTORY OF THE ARABS

HISTORY OF SYRIA INCLUDING

LEBANON AND PALESTINE

LEBANON IN HISTORY

THE ARABS: A SHORT HISTORY


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 ROMANS AND SEMITES

geographical and traditional Syria was incorporated by Pompey in 64 B.C. into a single province, with Antioch as capital. Arab dynasts were allowed to remain, but their authority was restricted to their original domains and they paid annual tribute. The Nabataean king, however, kept Damascus for a lump sum of money. Judaea was left a subject state within the framework of the province of Syria, but the cities with a Greek constitution which the Jews had added to their domain were restored to their former status and granted internal freedom under provincial governors. Ten of these cities then formed a league known as Decapolis, of which all but Scythopolis lay east of the Jordan. Antioch, Gaza and other colony-cities were also given autonomy and placed under provincial governors.

The Syrian province was considered of such focal importance in the Asiatic possessions as to be put under the direct rule of a Roman proconsul with power to levy troops and engage in war. The first proconsul, Aulus Gabinius, further reduced the power of the Jewish monarchy by depriving the high priest of his royal rank, subjecting the people to heavy taxation and dividing the state into five small cantons, each under a council or Sanhedrin. He also rebuilt a number of Greco-Syrian cities which had been destroyed by the Maccabees, including Samaria, Scythopolis and Gaza. He was succeeded by the avaricious Crassus, who immediately upon his arrival in 54 B.C. made Syria a base of military operations against Parthia, whose wealth was considered inexhaustible. With the successive elimination of Pontus and Armenia and the acquisition of Syria, Rome had come into direct contact with Parthia. In his second campaign in Rh


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Rh the spring of 53 Crassus was betrayed by his Arab ally and was slain in battle in the Syrian Desert south of Harran ; his army was cut to pieces.

Crassus' able treasurer and successor, Cassius, realized that this crushing defeat put all Syria in jeopardy and hastened to prepare for the coming invasion, which did not materialize until the year 51. At the head of two legions the proconsul took his stand in Antioch ready to offer determined resistance. Sensing a lengthy siege, the Parthians retired along the Orontes and ultimately withdrew from all Syria. The incursion, however, left its effect in the resur- gence of several local dynasts, many of whom favoured the Parthians.

With civil war raging in Rome and the whole realm in a condition of unrest and instability, Syria rapidly reverted to the confused anarchy in which Pompey had found it as a result of the ineffectiveness of the later Seleucids. Arab chiefs in the north and east, Nabataeans and Jews in the south, robbers in Lebanon and Cilicia and pirates along the Phoenician coast disdained the power of distant Rome. Trade, already disrupted by the successive Armenian and Parthian invasions, came to a virtual standstill. A brief visit by Julius Caesar in 47 B.C. and four years under the irresponsible Mark Antony (40-36) brought no improve- ment. A major Parthian incursion dislodged the Romans from the entire province with the exception of Tyre ; they regained control only slowly and with difficulty.

During Mark Antony's tenure the Maccabean family was replaced by that of Herod, a nominal Jew of Idumaean origin who established himself as king at Jerusalem in 37 B.C. and maintained power until his death thirty-three years later. Herod promoted Roman as against national interests and succeeded, where the Seleucids had failed, in forcibly making of Judaea a passable imitation of a Hel- lenistic realm. He mercilessly crushed all opposition to his despotic rule and left a pacified kingdom to his sons, but Rh


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Rh in a.d. 6 it was restored to the direct rule of Roman governors.

Meanwhile a rising Roman general, Octavian, had van- quished Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the naval battle of Actium (31 B.C.), had passed through Syria and been welcomed by provincials desperately longing for a stable government and had received from the Roman senate the rank of emperor and the title Augustus Caesar. During Augustus's imperial rule Syria was fully incorporated into the Roman provincial system, under which native com- munities suffered but little restriction in the exercise of their autonomy. They retained their own religion, language and customs. The Romans took upon themselves the responsi- bility for their protection, afforded by garrison legions of Italian troops. In lieu of military service tribute was exacted from the native population. The Roman governors, who exercised general supervision over provincial affairs, were normally appointed for short periods and received no pay, but made themselves wealthy by farming out taxes and other oppressive methods.

By the time Augustus became emperor, the Romans and their subject peoples had virtually harmonized the Greek and Latin civilizations. Greek remained the cultural language of the eastern provinces and Aramaean the ver- nacular, but Latin became the official language of adminis- tration. The Greeks were weak on the political and organizational side, which was exactly where the Romans were strong. The Romans were rather poor in the artistic and philosophic field, where the Greeks were rich. Thus did Hellenism, strengthened and enriched under the Roman aegis, continue its sway over Syria. Under Roman protec- tion the land remained secure from c barbarian' peril ; Syrian Greek city life, with its characteristic political forms, round of festivities, amusements and intellectual exercise, moved on as before. Such local dynasties as were suffered by the mighty Romans to persist — in Judaea, Petra, Palmyra and Rh


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Rh elsewhere — had by this time all acquired a strong Hel- lenistic tinge.

As a frontier province bordering on Parthia, the only serious rival and formidable foe of Rome, Syria was con- stituted an imperial province of which the emperor himself was the titular proconsul. As such it was placed under a legate, always of consular rank, whose term of office lasted from three to five years. Its governorship, with that of Gaul, was the most honourable and highly prized that the empire could confer. Syria in the east, like Gaul in the west, was a central seat of military control. The governor was assisted by an adequate staff among whom the pro- curators stood high as collectors of state revenue. The col- lection was made either directly or through tax farming. Under the legate's control was a strong military force of four legions, consisting in the early empire almost entirely of Italian troops. The legate of Syria was responsible for the security of Roman possessions throughout south-western Asia.

The local communities lived under a variety of govern- ments. The Greco-Macedonian colonies kept their own magistrates under whom were a senate and a popular assembly. The Phoenician city-states likewise retained their traditional oligarchical systems, and the Aramaean com- munities of the interior continued in control of their internal affairs as before. The Arabs of Horns and the Biqa were ruled by their own princes, while on the desert frontier, where the nomadic or semi-nomadic way of life was still the rule, the tribe was the social unit and the patriarchal form of administration was maintained. In Judaea the high priest, no longer a king, acted as head of the community and was nominated by the Jewish aristocracy. Throughout Rome displayed a remarkable flexibility in its dealings with these diverse communities and their leaders.

Behind this diversity of organization and control was a measure of ethnic and cultural similarity far beyond any- thing that had prevailed before. All Syrians were by this Rh


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Rh time fully Semitized and were mingling and hence becoming more and more homogeneous. Phoenicians and Aramaeans, Arabs and Jews, Macedonians and Greeks — all could be found in any city of Syria, where ancient antagonisms con- sequently faded away. From this mingling the Romans kept somewhat aloof, unmindful of the culture of the provincials whom they ruled. They planted few colonies, of which the most important were a settlement of veterans at Beirut and another at Baalbek, both destined to become vital centres of Roman culture. But inevitably the chief Roman interest in Syria was to use it as a base against Parthia and to exploit its resources. The Syrians manifested but little interest in the Roman military campaigns except when their own safety was threatened.

The performance of Roman administration in such a province as Syria, which had a civilization as high as the Roman though differing in character, was not as successful or brilliant as in such half-civilized provinces as Spain or Gaul. In Syria the Greek settlements, Phoenician cities and Judaean towns, with their developed social, intellectual and economic life and their schools of art, philosophy and literature, found but little to borrow from Rome. To them Latin literature remained of no interest. But the Arabs, whether speaking Arabic or — like the Ituraeans, Idu- maeans and Nabataeans — Aramaic, responded differently. Among them, east of Anti-Lebanon and of settled Trans- jordan, Roman colonies were set up, each starting with a nucleus of Italian settlers around which others were grouped, and developing into special communities.

After reducing insurgent Petra in a.d. 105 Trajan annexed the regions east and south of the Dead Sea and incorporated them into the empire as the province of Arabia. With Syria as the focus of Roman power in the Near East, Roman administration established a chain of posts along the fringe of the desert to protect the more settled and civilized areas. The forts were often garrisoned with Rh


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Rh auxiliaries recruited from friendly tribes. The transversal road from east to west, connecting the cities of the Tigris and Euphrates with those of the Mediterranean and passing through Palmyra, cut across this territory, bisecting the caravan route from Arabia to Damascus. Political security and the improvement in communications promoted a tend- ency towards settled life on the part of nomadic or semi- nomadic communities. Urbanization was a cardinal point in Roman policy.

In brief, it may be claimed that the chief service which Roman administration rendered the Syrian province was immunity from civil disturbances and protection against external enemies. Incidentally it opened up a wider market, a world market before it. In the first century of imperial rule Syrian recovery from the depression into which it had sunk as a result of foreign and civil wars was rapid. The province found itself an integral part of an empire that stretched from the Atlantic and the North Sea to the Euphrates and from the Rhine and the Danube to the Sahara. Under the shelter of imperial arms order and peace prevailed ; security from brigandage and piracy was established. Parthian and Arabian incursions were checked. Strategic passes, like the Cilician, were well guarded. A network of well-drained roads, an outstanding achievement of administrative and engineering skill, knit all parts of the empire into a relatively compact unit. Augustus instituted a postal service which brought the central government into closer contact with its provincial agents. Trade was stimu- lated. The curve of prosperity tended upward again. After a.d. 70 the entire Roman state enjoyed a long period of immunity from serious civil disturbances. From a.d. 96 to 180 it was fortunate in having an unbroken succession of worthy emperors beginning with Nerva and ending with Marcus Aurelius. Under them Roman Syria attained its widest extent and greatest prosperity. The sense of security, the extension of the road system Rh


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Rh and the creation of a new world trade stimulated economic production beyond anything hitherto known. Prosperity was reflected in a higher standard of living and the appear- ance of new towns. The increased population of greater Syria must in the second century have reached the all-time high of 7,000,000. The whole Orontes valley, today partly desert, must have been intensely cultivated, as Roman en- gineering skill lifted the river water and distributed it to the fields, where improved ploughs helped produce better crops. Even Transjordan, now mostly desert, abounded in grain and grapes, as well as date palms and olive trees. The fertility of the Hawran plateau became proverbial. From a country of shepherds it was transformed into one of cities and villages. The entire region was dependent on the use of reservoirs in which the irregular but sometimes heavy rainfall was collected. The degree of prosperity attained by this region under the Romans was never again approached even under the Umayyad caliphs.

Syrian gardening was a pleasant feature of ancient Roman civilization. It goes back to early Semitic beginnings which grew out of the widespread fruit, flower and herb cultivation dependent solely upon summer irrigation. Given an impetus under Persian rule, Semitic gardening technique was perfected under the Romans. It was applied not only on a private but also on a public scale, as exemplified in the sacred grove of Daphne. The flowery retreats which attended the Mediterranean civilization and were repre- sented in Antioch, Damascus and Jerusalem became a proto- type of the pleasure gardens that spread as far as Moorish Granada. Even today water is still handled as an artistic motif in the flowing jets emitting a veil-like spray in the courtyards of Damascus.

All aspects of Syrian agriculture and all districts pro- spered. Grain constituted the principal nourishment. In addition to the staple cereals rice, which requires artificial irrigation, was cultivated spasmodically along the coast. Rh


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 BYZANTINES AND ARABS

May 11, 330, the emperor Constantine dedicated as the new capital of the Roman empire the city of Constantinople, located on the site of ancient Byzantium on the European side of the Bosporus. Its strategic position, relatively secure against the barbarian bands which had made Rome untenable, gave the city economic and military advantages that made it a natural centre about which the eastern provinces could readily cluster. The shift itself indicates a recognition of the preponderance those provinces possessed in wealth and natural resources. The major civilized antagonist of the empire, Persia, lay to the east. The centre of gravity in world affairs was returning eastward after four centuries' sojourn in Italy.

Prior to his foundation of a new capital for the state Constantine gave recognition to a new official religion. Whether his own conversion to Christianity about 312 was one of convenience or of conviction is of no historical consequence. The fact remains that at his command this once persecuted and obscure cult now became the official religion of the empire. As Greece had conquered the minds of the Romans, Syria now conquered their souls. By this time the most influential men in the empire had become followers of Christ, though the majority of the population, including Constantine's foes, were still pagan. Discipline, organization, wealth and enthusiasm were on the side of the minority, to which the emperor now added the power of the state. In 325 he convened an ecumenical council of all the bishops of the empire at Nicaea, the first congress of its kind. In it Arianism was condemned and the Christian faith was definitely codified in what became the Nicene Creed. All Rh


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Rh but one of the successors of Constantine professed the Christian faith.

These two events in the reign of Constantine — the transference of the capital from Rome to Constantinople and the official recognition of Christianity — mark out that reign as one of the most significant in the long history of the Roman state. Christian in doctrine, Greek in language, eclectic in culture, the new empire inaugurated by Con- stantine was to endure, with many vicissitudes, for about eleven centuries and a quarter. From the seventh century on it served as a bulwark against Islam. Finally, in 1453, it succumbed under the onrush of the new champions of that religion, the Ottoman Turks.

For a few years after the establishment of Constantinople the external and theoretical unity of the empire was main- tained. In practice, however, the two halves of the empire were frequently separated and ruled by different emperors. The final division came in 395 when Theodosius died and his sons Honorius and Arcadius succeeded, the former ruling over the western portion and the latter over the eastern. At last, in 476, Rome fell to Germanic invaders.

Byzantine Syria presents a different picture from Roman Syria. It was, on the whole, a Christian land. In fact this is the only period in which Syria has been a fully Christian country. Sandwiched in between the pagan Roman and the Arab Moslem, the Byzantine period was therefore unique in Syrian annals. At the end of the fourth century the province was divided into seven districts, with their capitals at Antioch, Apamea, Tyre, Horns, Caesarea, Scythopolis and Petra. The first two were still called Syria, the next two Phoenicia (though including inland cities which had never belonged to either Phoenicia or Lebanon) and the last three Palaestina, including the former province of Arabia.

Not only was the country Christian but the age was an ecclesiastical age. The church was its greatest institution; Rh


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Rh saints were its most revered heroes. From the fourth to the sixth centuries monks, nuns, anchorites, priests and bishops flourished as never before or since. Churches, chapels, basilicas and monasteries — all with a new style of archi- tecture featuring domes, bell towers and prominent cruci- fixes — dotted the land. Hermit caves were excavated or enlarged. Pillars were erected on which curious ascetics called Stylites lived and died. Pilgrimage boomed. Vows and prayers at tombs of saints became standard remedies for ill health and misfortune. Monasticism was a favoured way of life. Its ideals of celibacy, poverty and obedience held wide appeal. The decline of population, the waning of prosperity and the civil disturbances that marked the late Roman and early Byzantine decades, had led to a widespread loss of confidence in secular institutions. Christianity pre- sented something supernatural and ultramundane, including a belief in spiritual values worth renouncing this world for and dying for.

Linguistically the church in Syria had developed along two lines : Greek on the coast and in the Hellenized cities, Syriac in the interior. The Syriac-using church had had its start as early as the second century. With the spread of Christianity in the third century Syriac had asserted itself against Greek. In the Byzantine period revulsion from Greek and reversion to Aramaic signalized the new awaken- ing among Syrians. The revived interest in the ancient Semitic tongue was an index of a revival of national con- sciousness as well as a reaction against paganism. Always polyglots, Syrians interested in the bar studied Latin; those addicted to philosophy took up Greek; but the rest, especially those outside of cosmopolitan centres, stuck to the native tongue. The Syriac literature extant is almost entirely Christian, but comprises also handbooks of science and philosophy translated from Greek. Its first great centre, away from the Greek-speaking cities, was Edessa, the Athens of the Aramaic world, where Syriac had first been used for Rh


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 MOSLEM CONQUEST

episodes of late classical times surpass all others in significance: the migration of the Teutonic tribes which resulted in the destruction of the western part of the Roman empire and the eruption of the Moslem Arabian tribes which annihilated the empire of the Persians and stripped the Byzantine of its fairest provinces. Of the two the Arabian episode was the more phenomenal. At the time of its occurrence Persia and Byzantium were the only world powers; the Arabians were known merely as a hopelessly fragmented desert people whose only importance outside their own uninviting peninsula was as unreliable allies of the two great antagonists and as middlemen in the spice and incense trade.

Their unification, the indispensable prelude to their triumphal emergence, was accomplished in the brief span of ten years (622-632) by the Meccan prophet Muhammad, founder of the Islamic faith and father of the Arabian nation. During Muhammad's lifetime little was heard of him in Syria, despite a few attacks on border towns south and east of the Dead Sea. The first of these, in 629, seemed to the natives to be merely another of the frequent bedouin raids to which they were all too accustomed. In perspective, however, it was the opening skirmish in a struggle that was not to cease until Byzantium itself had surrendered and the name of Muhammad had replaced that of Christ on its cathedrals.

In the following year a few of these border settlements submitted to the Moslem columns. Their people were granted security and the right to retain their property and profess their religion on condition that they paid an annual Rh


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Rh tribute. These terms, formulated by Muhammad himself, set the pattern followed by his successors in treating with conquered populations. The prevailing notion that Moslems offered Christians only a choice between conversion to Islam and death by the sword has no basis in fact ; they much pre- ferred to hold such peoples under their rule and collect tribute, which normally ceased once the conquered accepted Islam.

By 633, the year after Muhammad's death, the dissident Arabian tribes had been subdued and the whole peninsula north of the Empty Quarter had been consolidated and unified under the leadership of one man, the first caliph abu-Bakr (632-634). The momentum acquired in these internal wars had to seek new outlets, especially since the new religion had supposedly converted its adherents into one brotherhood. The martial spirit of the tribes, to whom raids had been a sort of national sport from time im- memorial, was not weakened by Islam; on the contrary it was redirected and intensified.

Viewed in its proper perspective, the Islamic expansion was the last in the long series of migrations which took the surplus Semitic population from the barren peninsula to the bordering fertile regions and the more abundant life they offered. The Islamic movement, however, did possess one distinctive feature — religious impulse. Combined with the economic, this made the movement irresistible and carried it far beyond the confines of any preceding one. Islam provided a battle-cry, serving as a cohesive agency cement- ing tribes never united before. But while the desire to spread the new faith or to attain paradise may have moti- vated some of the bedouin warriors, the desire for the comforts and luxuries of settled life in the Fertile Crescent was the driving force in the case of many more of them.

Several considerations directed this martial energy Syria- ward. The Arabian tribes domiciled there were expected to collaborate with their invading kinsmen, as the annual Rh


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Rh subsidies which for years they had been receiving from Heraclius for guarding the frontiers had recently been sus- pended as an economy measure. The forts along that southern border had also been neglected and stripped of their garrisons to enable concentration in the north in face of the Persian danger. This does not mean, however, that this invasion or the simultaneous attack on Mesopotamia were the result of purposeful planning. They were surely designed as casual raids for booty, with no thought of permanent conquest, though this was the outcome to which the logic of events inexorably led.

In 633 one column invaded Syria by the coastal route, two followed the inland caravan route north, and one under Khalid ibn-al-Walid penetrated Mesopotamia. Each de- tachment was approximately 3000 strong at first, but rein- forcements more than doubled this strength as they moved north. Two engagements sufficed to clear southern Palestine of Byzantine troops, and fruitful raiding followed. The emperor Heraclius organized a fresh army at Horns and dispatched it under his brother Theodorus, while abu-Bakr ordered Khalid and his column to join their co-religionists in Syria. This Khalid did by an epic eighteen-day march across the desert, appearing with dramatic suddenness directly in the rear of the improvised Byzantine army. He defeated the Christian Ghassanid forces and pressed through Transjordan to Palestine, where the four reunited detach- ments won a major victory in July 634.

All Palestine now lay open before the invader. For six months random raids were launched in all directions. Another Byzantine army was routed and sought refuge behind the walls of Damascus. Khalid pursued it, isolated the city for six months and in September 635 gained pos- session of it through treachery. With the fall of the metro- polis, total victory was assured. Baalbek and Horns were occupied in 635, and Aleppo, Antioch, Hamah and others early in 636. Only Jerusalem, Caesarea and a few ports Rh


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 THE GLORY THAT WAS DAMASCUS

in 661 Muawiyah was proclaimed caliph at Jeru- salem, but it was Damascus that he chose as his capital, thus inaugurating its most glorious epoch. His first problem was to pacify the empire and consolidate his control over rebellious provinces. Hejaz was naturally lukewarm in its loyalty to Muawiyah, as the Moslems of Mecca and Medina never forgot that the Umayyads were late believers and that their belief was one of convenience rather than con- viction. But for the time being the cradle of Islam gave no serious trouble. Syria was loyal to its former governor and Egypt was firmly held.

Iraq, however, immediately and openly declared for al-Hasan, elder son of Ali and Fatimah. To its people he was the only legitimate successor of his assassinated father. In the course of a swift campaign Muawiyah secured from al-Hasan a definite renunciation of all claims, in return for a generous subsidy to be paid him for fife. He retired to an existence of ease and luxury in Medina and died eight years later after having married and divorced at least a hundred wives. His death may have been caused by tuberculosis or by poisoning connected with some harem intrigue, but his followers blamed it on the caliph and con- sidered al-Hasan 'lord of all the martyrs'. At his death, his claims passed to his brother al-Husayn, who did not dare assert them during the lifetime of Muawiyah.

After disposing of the Alid threat, Muawiyah brought Iraq to heel by naming a series of capable and heavy-handed governors who transplanted 50,000 troublesome Arabians and bedouins to eastern Persia and took other drastic measures to subject the turbulent province. With the Rh


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Rh territory of Islam temporarily pacified, Muawiyah's extra- ordinary energies sought new outlets in military campaigns by land and sea, thus resuming the course of Moslem expansion which had been interrupted by the two civil wars.

Eastward these campaigns resulted in completing the subjugation of Khurasan (663-671), crossing the Oxus and raiding Bukhara in Turkestan (674). Merv, Balkh, Herat and other cities which were to develop into brilliant centres of Islamic culture were captured. The army returned to Iraq laden with booty from the Turkish tribes of Trans- oxiana. They thus established the first contact between Arabs and Turks, destined to play a major role in later Islamic affairs.

To the west the city of Kairawan was established in Tunisia as a base for military operations against the Berbers. It was built partly with material taken from the ruins of Carthage. As the Berbers were Islamized, they were pressed into the Arab army and utilized in chasing the Byzantines out of Algeria. Brilliant as it was, this campaign, like that in Central Asia, was of no lasting significance, because it was not followed up by occupation. Here, as in Transoxiana, the work had to be done over again.

During the Umayyad period, as in the early Abbasid, the frontier between Arab and Byzantine lands was formed by the great ranges of the Taurus and Anti-Taurus. As the two hostile states stood face to face across this line, they first sought to keep each other off by turning the intervening stretch of land into a desolate terrain. Muawiyah con- tributed to the creation of this unclaimed waste zone. Later Umayyads pursued a different policy, aiming at establishing a footing there by rebuilding as fortresses abandoned or destroyed towns and building new ones. Thus grew a cordon of Moslem fortifications stretching from Tarsus in Cilicia to Malatya on the upper Euphrates. These fortresses were strategically situated at the inter- sections of military roads or the entrances of narrow passes. Rh


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 LIFE UNDER THE UMAYYADS

population of the Umayyad empire was divided into four social classes. At the top stood the ruling Moslems, headed by the caliphal family and the aristocracy of Arabian conquerors. Few Arabians were interested in agriculture, so the newcomers mostly congregated in cities. Lebanon was naturally avoided. The mountain does not seem to have received an influx of Arabians till the ninth and succeeding centuries. In other places with fertile soil and spring water, however, some doubtless did establish agricultural villages on easily defended sites. In Syria, as elsewhere, they remained a small minority; but Arabian tribal traits such as family solidarity, exaltation of individual prowess, hospitality and emphasis on the personal touch in all human relations spread to other peoples and are still manifest and highly prized throughout Syria.

The Arab concentration in cities was so marked that Arabic by Hisham's time had become the urban language. As the country folk came to these cities to sell their products or practise their crafts, they acquired the new tongue without necessarily forsaking the old one. The indigenous intellectuals also found it convenient to acquire Arabic in order to qualify for government posts.

Next below the Arabian Moslems stood the Neo-Moslems. These were native Syrians who, from conviction or calculation, had professed Islam and were thereby in theory, though not in practice, admitted to the full rights of Islamic citizenship. Such converts usually attached themselves as clients to some Arabian tribe and became members thereof. These neophytes formed a lower stratum of Moslem society, a status which they bitterly resented. Some of them expressed Rh


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Rh their dissatisfaction by espousing the dissident Shiite or the Kharijite cause, while others became fanatical exponents of militant orthodox Islam. Other converts were naturally the first members of the Moslem society to devote themselves to learned studies and the fine arts. They mediated their old traditions and culture to their new co-religionists. As they demonstrated their superiority in the intellectual field, they began to contest with them political leadership. And as they intermarried with them they diluted the Arabian stock and ultimately made the term Arab applicable to all Arabic-speaking Moslems regardless of ethnic origin.

Damascus and other cities may by the late Umayyad era have presented the aspect of Moslem towns, but the other places, more particularly the mountain regions, preserved their native features and ancient culture pattern. The number of country people who readily accepted the new faith must have been fewer than those who accepted the new language, mainly because the Umayyad caliphs, with the exception of the pious Umar II, did not favour conversion, especially from among owners of arable land. The total number of Moslems in Syria about 732 could not have exceeded 200,000 out of an estimated population of 3,500,000.

The third class consisted of members of tolerated sects which professed revealed religions—Christians, Jews and Sabians—with whom the Moslems had entered into a covenant relationship. The tolerated status was granted to Christians and Jews by Muhammad himself and was accorded to the Sabians (and the pseudo-Sabians of Harran) on the assumption that they were monotheists. It was later extended to the fire-worshipping Zoroastrians, the heathen Berbers and others. In Arabia proper, however, because of a statement ascribed to Muhammad, no non-Moslems were tolerated except the small Jewish community in Yemen. This recognition of tolerated sects was predicated on disarming their devotees and exacting tribute from them in return for Moslem protection. Not being members of the Rh


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Rh dominant religious community they held an inferior position socially and politically. In matters of civil and criminal judicial procedure they were left under their own spiritual heads unless a Moslem was involved. Moslem law was considered too sacred to be applicable to non-Moslems.

In Syria Christians and Jews were generally well treated until the reign of Umar II, the first caliph to impose humiliating restrictions on them. He issued regulations excluding Christians from public offices, forbidding their wearing turbans and requiring them to cut their forelocks, don distinctive clothes with girdles of leather, ride without saddles, erect no places of worship and pray in subdued voices. The penalty for a Moslem's killing of a Christian, he further decreed, was only a fine, and a Christian's testi- mony against a Moslem was not acceptable in court. It may be assumed that such legislation was enacted in response to popular demand. In administration, business and industry the Arabian Moslems, still predominantly illiterate, could offer no competition to the indigenous Christians. The Jews, who were fewer than Christians and often held meaner jobs, were evidently included under some of these restrictions and excluded from government posts.

At the bottom of the social ladder stood the slaves. Slavery, an ancient Semitic institution, was accepted by Islam but modified by legislation to ameliorate the condition of the slave. Canon law forbade a Moslem to enslave a co- religionist, but did not guarantee liberty to an alien slave on adopting Islam. In early Islam, slaves were recruited by purchase, kidnapping, raiding and from unransomed prisoners of war, including women and children. Soon the slave trade became brisk and lucrative in all Moslem lands. East and Central Africa supplied black slaves, Turkestan yellow ones, the Near East and south-eastern Europe white ones. The institution was self-perpetuating, as most children of slave mothers were also slaves. Only the children borne to her master by a slave concubine were considered free by Rh


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 ABBASID PROVINCE

the Umayyad fall the hegemony of Syria in the world of Islam ended and the glory of the country passed away. The Abbasids made Iraq their headquarters and Kufah their first capital. The Syrians awoke to the humiliating and infuriating realization that the Islamic centre of gravity had left their land and shifted eastward. As a last resort they set their hopes on an expected descendant of Muawiyah I to appear like a Messiah and deliver them from their victorious Iraqi rivals. A surviving Umayyad named Ziyad did assemble 40,000 men from Horns and Palmyra, but this revolt, like those of Marwan's ex-generals in Qinnasrin and Hawran, accomplished nothing.

Meanwhile abu-al-Abbas was busy consolidating his newly acquired domain. In the inaugural address delivered at Kufah he had assumed the appellation al-Saffah (blood-shedder), which proved to be no idle boast. The incoming dynasty chose to depend more than the outgoing on the use of force in the execution of its plans. For the first time the leathern bag ready to receive the head of the executioner's victim found a place near the imperial throne. The new caliph surrounded himself with theologians and legists, giving the infant state an atmosphere of theocracy as opposed to the secular character of its predecessor. On ceremonial occasions he hastened to don the mantle of his distant cousin, Muhammad. The well-geared propaganda machine which had worked to undermine public confidence in the old regime was now busy entrenching the usurpers in public esteem. They proclaimed that if the Abbasid caliphate were ever destroyed, the entire universe would be disorganized. Anti-Umayyad, pro-Abbasid hadiths were Rh


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Rh fabricated wholesale. Even Umayyad names were effaced from inscriptions on buildings, and the tombs of every Umayyad caliph except Muawiyah I and Umar II were violated and their corpses desecrated.

The most significant difference between this and the preceding caliphate, however, lay in the fact that the Abbasid was oriented Persia-ward. Persian protocol pervaded the court, Persian ideas dominated the political scene and Persian women prevailed in the royal harem. It was an empire of Neo-Moslems in which the Arabs formed but one of the component parts. The Iraqis felt relieved from Syrian tutelage. The Shiites felt avenged. Persians found high posts in the government open to them; they introduced and occupied a new office, the vizirate, highest after the caliphate. Khurasanians flocked to man the caliphal bodyguard. The Arabian aristocracy was eclipsed.

The first governor of Abbasid Syria was the caliph's uncle Abdullah, who had won the decisive battle over Marwan II. When al-Saffah died in 754, Abdullah disputed the caliphate with al-Mansur, brother of the deceased caliph. His claim rested on the huge disciplined army which he had assembled presumably for use against the Byzantines. He did not trust the Khurasanian troops, so had 17,000 of them butchered before moving eastward with the rest of his men, mostly Syrians. He was met and defeated by abu-Muslim, the virtually independent governor of Khurasan and idol of his people. So successful was he in suppressing all personal and official enemies that al-Mansur's suspicions were aroused, and he had the general to whom he owed so much treacherously put to death.

The caliphate founded by al-Saffah and al-Mansur was the longest-lived and the most celebrated of caliphates. All the thirty-five caliphs who succeeded al-Mansur (754-775) were his lineal descendants. As a site for his capital al-Mansur chose a Christian village on the west bank of the Tigris, Baghdad. The city was built in 762 and officially Rh


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Rh named Dar al-Salam (abode of peace). It soon fell heir to the power and prestige of its predecessors in the area — Babylon and Ctesiphon — and has lived in legend and in history as the peerless symbol of the glory of Abbasid Islam and the scene of The Thousand and One Nights.

With the removal of the capital to distant Baghdad the hereditary Byzantine enemy ceased to be of major concern. Nevertheless, al-Mansur and his successors strengthened the border fortresses of Syria and fortified the seaports of Lebanon. In 759 a band of Christians in Lebanon, resentful of harsh conditions and intolerable exactions and en- couraged by the presence of a Byzantine fleet in the waters of Tripoli, burst forth from their mountain stronghold al- Munaytirah and plundered several villages in the Biqa. They were ambushed by Abbasid cavalry and cut down. In retaliation the governor uprooted the mountain villagers, many of whom had taken no part in the revolt, and had them dispersed all over Syria. This was the first of many such desperate uprisings, all repressed with similar ruth- lessness.

Next on al-Mansur's list of victims were the Alids, who had helped overthrow the Umayyads on the naive assump- tion that the Abbasids were fighting their battles but were now disillusioned. The Alids persisted in claiming for their imams the sole right to preside over the destinies of Islam, thus reducing the caliphs to the position of usurpers. Their movement again went underground but never missed an opportunity to rise in open revolt. A rebellion in 762 headed by two great-grandsons of al-Hasan was ruthlessly crushed and the brothers were promptly executed.

Despite these set-backs the Syrians continued to express their opposition by word and deed. A rejoinder by one of them to al-Mansur's remark that the people were lucky to escape the plague in his days typifies the then prevailing sentiment : c God is too good to subject us to pestilence and your rule at the same time. 5 They never did wholly re- Rh


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 PETTY DYNASTIES

first sign of internal decay in the Abbasid regime was the rise of the Turkish bodyguard after the death of al- Mamun in 833. Like the Janissaries in Ottoman history, this corps became too powerful for the caliph and at times held him in abject submission to its will. Except for short intervals thereafter Abbasid power declined steadily. As it disintegrated, petty dynasties, mostly of Arabian origin, were parcelling out its domains in the west, while others, mostly Turkish and Persian, were performing the same operation in the east.

First among these to affect Syria was the short-lived Tulunid dynasty (868-905). It was founded by a deputy governor of Egypt, Ahmad ibn-Tulun, whose father was a Turk sent from Bukhara as a present to al-Mamun. No sooner had the ambitious young man arrived at his post than he planned to take advantage of the distance that separated him from the central government and practise independence. On authorization from the caliph he increased his troops, reportedly to a hundred thousand, and marched against a rebel in Syria — the land of rebels against Abbasid rule. At the death of its governor in 877 he deemed the time ripe for full occupation. The Egyptian army marched through al-Ramlah in the south to Damascus, Horns, Hamah and Aleppo in the north without opposition. Only Antioch closed its gates and was reduced after a short siege. In 879/880 Ahmad proclaimed himself ruler of both lands.

This was a turning-point in the history of Egypt. It then and there embarked upon its career as an independent state, a position which it maintained with one important Rh


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Rh interruption for centuries to come. Syria throughout this long period went with Egypt, as it did in Pharaonic days. The old connection, severed about a thousand years before, was thus re-established. The land of the Nile profited by the change, at least to the extent of having its entire revenue spent within its territory, but the position of its Syrian adjunct was not improved.

A typical military dictator, Ahmad ruled with an iron hand. He built a powerful military machine on which he depended for the maintenance of his throne. Its core was a bodyguard of 24,000 Turkish and 40,000 Negro slaves from each one of whom he exacted an oath of allegiance. As if to justify his usurpation of power in the eyes of his subjects, he launched a programme of public works that had no parallel since Pharaonic days. He adorned his capital al- Fustat (Old Cairo) with magnificent buildings, including a hospital and a mosque which still bears his name. In Syria he fortified Acre and established a naval base there. So strong was the tower that topped its double wall that three centuries later it thwarted for almost two years the com- bined efforts of two Crusading monarchs and in 1799 it proved impregnable against the assaults of Napoleon's field artillery.

Ahmad was succeeded in 884 by his extravagant and dissolute twenty-year-old son Khumarawayh, who erected a splendid palace with a garden rich in exotic tr£es, an aviary and a zoological enclosure. Under him the Tulunid domain extended from Cyrenaica to the Tigris. The caliph al-Mutadid in 892 confirmed Khumarawayh and his heirs in the possession of this vast territory for thirty years in return for an annual tribute of 300,000 dinars. Khumara- wayh' s extravagance, including a fabulous dowry for a daughter who married al-Mutadid, left the treasury empty. He was murdered by his own slaves (895) and was succeeded by two sons in turn.

Their turbulent reigns were rendered more turbulent by Rh


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Rh the advent of a militant extreme Shiite sect, the Carmathians. It was organized as a secret, communistic society, with initiation as a requisite for admission. Starting near Kufah about 890, the Carmathians became masters of an in- dependent state on the western coast of the Persian Gulf. From these two centres they spread devastation in all direc- tions. Throughout the Umayyad period Moslem Syria had followed the orthodox Sunnite line ; but the imposition of the hated Abbasid regime had opened the way for the introduction of Alid doctrines which now prepared the people for Carmathian views. Just as in Byzantine Syria the people endeavoured to assert their nationality by espousing Christian doctrines considered heretical by Byzantium, so were they now ready to adopt ultra-Shiite, anti-Abbasid beliefs. The Carmathians defeated the Tulunid garrison and laid siege to Damascus in 901, reduced Horns, decimated Hamah and almost annihilated the population of Baalbek.

In 902 the caliph sent against the Carmathians an able general who, after defeating them and securing the allegi- ance of the Syrian vassals, set out for the conquest of Egypt. In 904 Khumarawayh's second son was assassinated and succeeded by an uncle, but the Abbasid general reached the Tulunid capital outside al-Fustat, razed it to the ground, cut off twenty Tulunid heads and carried the remaining male members of this house in chains to the imperial capital. In the following year the last Umayyad pretender on record unfurled the white flag in Syria and he too was captured and sent to Baghdad. The people who had once been described as acknowledging no other authority than that of the Umayyads had evidently at long last become demoralized and reconciled to alien rule.

The general who in the name of the Tulunids had defended Damascus against the Carmathians was a Turk named Tughj, whose son Muhammad managed to inherit the Tulunid legacy. After a brief interval of precarious Rh