243. THE CONQUESTS OF ISLAM. 171
tioii of her innocence. After his death she was the most sacred person among the Moslems and the highest authority on religious and legal questions. She survived her husband forty-seven years and died at Medina, July 13, 678, aged sixty-seven years.1
In his ambition for a hereditary dynasty, Mohammed was sadly disappointed: he lost his two sous by Chadijah, and a third one by Mary the Egyptian, his favorite concubine.
To compare such a man with Jesus, is preposterous and even blasphemous. Jesus was the sinless Saviour of sinners ; Moham med was a sinner, and he knew and confessed it. He falls far below Moses, or Elijah, or any of the prophets and apostles in moral purity. But outside of the sphere of revelation, he ranks with Confucius, and Cakya Muni the Buddha, among the greatest founders of religious and lawgivers of nations.
§ 43. The Conquests of Islam.
" The sword," says Mohammed, " is the key of heaven and hell ; a drop of blood shed in the cause of Allah, a night spent in arms, is of more avail than two months of fasting or prayer : whosoever falls in battle, his sins are forgiven, and at the day of judgment his limbs shall be supplied by the wings of angels and cherubim." This is the secret of his success. Idolaters had to choose between Islam, slavery, and death; Jews and Christians were allowed to purchase a limited toleration by the payment of tribute, but were otherwise kept in degrading bondage. History
1 Sprenger, III. 61-87, gives a full account of fourteen wives of Mohammed, and especially of Ayesha, according to the list of Zohry and Ibn Saad. Sprenger says, p. 37: " Der Prophet hatte keine Wohnungfiir sich selbst. Sein Hauptquarticr war in der Hiltte der Ayischa und die d/entlichcn Oeschafte verrichtete cr in der Moschee, aber er brachte jede Nacht bei einer seiner Frauen zn und, war, u-ie es scheint, auch ihr Oast bcim Essen. Er givg aber taglich, wenn erbei guter Laune war, bei alien seinen Frauen umher, gab jeder einen Kuss, s-prach einige Worte vnd spieltc mil ihr. Wir habcn geschen, doss seine Familie neun Hiltten bemss ; dies war auch die Anzahl der Frauen, welche er bei seinem Tode hintcrliess. Doch gab es Zcitcn, zu denen sein Harem starker war. Er brachte dann einige seiner Schoncn in den Hdusern von Nachbarn untcr. Es kam auch vor, dass zwcl Frauen eine Hiitte bewohnten. Slie/kindcr wohnten, so lange siejung waren, bei ihren Miittern"
172 FOUKTH PEKIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
records no soldiers of greater bravery inspired by religion than the Moslem conquerors, except Cromwell's Ironsides, and the Scotch Covenanters, who fought with purer motives for a nobler cause.
The Califs, Mohammed's successors, who like him united the priestly and kingly dignity, carried on his conquests with the battle-cry : " Before you is paradise, behind you are death and hell." Inspired by an intense fanaticism, and aided by the weak ness of the Byzantine empire and the internal distractions of the Greek Church, the wild sons of the desert, who were content with the plainest food, and disciplined in the school of war, hardship and recklessness of life, subdued Palestine, Syria, and Egypt, embracing the classical soil of primitive Christianity. Thousands of Christian churches in the patriarchal dioceses of Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria, were ruthlessly destroyed, or converted into mosques. Twenty-one years after the death of Mohammed the Crescent ruled over a realm as large as the Roman Empire. Even Constantinople was besieged twice (668 and 717), although in vain. The terrible efficacy of the newly invented " Greek fire," and the unusual severity of a long winter defeated the enemy, and saved Eastern and Northern Europe from the blight of the Koran. A large number of nominal Christians who had so fiercely quarreled with each other about unfruitful subtleties of their creeds, surrendered their faith to the conqueror. In 707 the North African provinces, where once St. Augustin had directed the attention of the church to the highest problems of theology and religion, fell into the hands of the Arabs.
In 711 they crossed from Africa to Spain and established an independent Call fate at Cordova. The moral degeneracy and dissensions of the Western Goths facilitated their subjugation. Encouraged by such success, the Arabs crossed the Pyrenees and boasted that they would soon stable their horses in St. Peter's cathedral in Rome, but the defeat of Abd-er Rahman by Charles Martel between Poitiers and Tours in 732 — one hundred and ten years after the Hegira — checked their progress in the West, and