Page images
PDF
EPUB

manner adequate to my rank; but now my only wish is to have two sheepskins-one to serve me for a bed, and the other for a covering.' I gave her five hundred dirhems, and she nearly died from excess of joy. She afterwards continued to visit us till death placed a separation between us."

208

CHAPTER III.

THE CIVIL WAR.

A.D. 803-820.

WHEN the khalif Haroun al Rashid resolved upon the extirpation of the Barmekides, he foresaw a part, at least, of the consequences. Since the Abbasides had come to power, the old rivalry between the Arabs of Modhar and the Arabs of Yemen had been replaced— as I have tried to show in the preceding chapters-by that between Persian and Arab. The court of the khalif, the court of every provincial governor, were the theatres of this conflict. But, on the whole, the power of the Persians had waxed, and that of the Arabs waned. Under the protecting favour of the Barmekides and the vizier Yakoub, Persian practices and Persian habits of thought had obtained an undoubted ascendancy in Muhammadan Asia. The sweeping destruction that had fallen upon the Barmekides was, therefore, a triumph for the Arab and orthodox party, as great as it was unhoped for. The khalif, however, seems to have thought that the hatred engendered by the triumph of the one faction and the humiliation of the other would, unless foreseen and provided for, render his dominions the scene of bitter and intermin

able civil dissensions.

To avert this, he had recourse

to the desperate expedient of dividing his dominions between his two sons, leaving to Mamoun, the eastern provinces, where the Persian element predominated, and to Emin, Irak, Syria, Arabia, Egypt, and Northern Africa. It was further enacted that Emin should fix his capital at Baghdad, and Mamoun at Merou; and that on the demise of either brother, the whole empire should be united under the sceptre of the survivor. To make this arrangement as solemn and binding as possible, it was ratified in the Kaaba itself. When the khalif visited Mekka to inquire after the child of Abbassa, he took with him his two sons. In the house of God, the young men bound themselves by an oath never to engage in hostilities against each other; all the nobles and great men who were present affixed their signatures to the document, in which the conditions of the partition of power were laid down; and it was then affixed to the door of the holy place. But the document fell from the hand of the man whose duty it was to affix it; and the ready superstition of the time interpreted the incident as a sign that the document would be speedily trampled on by those who had sworn to observe its conditions.

But the fall of the Barmekides brought with it other consequences, which touched the khalif more nearly, and which he had not foreseen. It was in his power to destroy the ablest soldiers and statesmen he possessed, but it was out of his power to replace them. The khalif discovered what they had been to him, when he could no longer rely upon their ability. The busi

ness of the State fell into horrible confusion.

From

all parts of the kingdom came the intelligence of revolt and disorder. "Some people," the khalif was heard to say, "impelled us to punish our ablest and most faithful advisers, and then made us believe that they themselves were capable of replacing them; but when we did what they wanted, they were not of the least use to us." He then muttered this line to himself

"Infamous wretches! spare us your calumnies, or fill with ability the place which they filled so well."

In Khorasan, and the regions beyond the Oxus, the disorder was naturally greatest, and the insurrectionary movements most formidable. The population there instinctively perceived that the fall of the Barmekides foreboded the restoration of that Arab supremacy from which, under the conduct of Abou Moslem, they had emancipated themselves at the cost of so much blood. They had, too, a present proof of what that supremacy meant, in the character of the Arab governor who ruled Khorasan. This man was named Ali ibn Isa. He had established his residence at Balkh, and mercilessly pillaged the people in order to gratify his passion for building. The people of Khorasan had appealed to the khalif for protection against his extortions, and Haroun had summoned his governor to Rhe to give an account of his stewardship. But Ali knew the way to blind the eyes of his sovereign. He repaired to Rhe with such magnificent presents for the khalif and his Court, that he was sent back to Khorasan with honour, and permitted to go on plundering the

people without let or hindrance. The discontent thereby engendered needed but a spark to kindle it into flame, and this fell, immediately after the fall of the Barmekides.

In A.H. 190 (A.D. 806), there was resident at Samarkand a certain Rafi, the grandson of the ill-fated Nasr ibn Seyaur, who had perished in the revolt of Abou Moslem. Like his ancestor, this Rafi was a dashing and courageous soldier; and gifted with a handsome face and figure, and gay manners, he was as renowned for his gallantries in the field of love as for his exploits in the field of battle. There existed an attachment between this cavalier and a lady, the wife of a freedman of the khalif. Rafi persuaded the lady to feign apostasy from Islam, whereupon, in devout horror, her husband pronounced the irrevocable sentence of divorce.* Then the lady returned to the bosom of the true faith, and became the wife of Rafi. A fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind; and judging from certain antecedents of the khalif, he might have been expected to applaud this ignominious device of the gay Rafi. He was, however, exceedingly wrath, and sent orders that Rafi

* According to Muhammadan law, the formula of divorce repeated three times renders the reunion of the husband and wife impossible, unless the wife has first been married and then divorced by some other man. This provision, in some Muhammadan countries, especially in Egypt, has been the cause of an exceedingly revolting form of immorality. A husband, in a fit of rage, divorces his wife three times. He then desires to take her back; but the only manner in which he can do so is by obtaining some one to marry her for a single night, and divorcing her in the morning. There is, of course, a prophetic tradition which elevates this practice to the level of a divine decree. Its effects upon the purity and chastity of women are not difficult to divine.

« PreviousContinue »