304 ON THE MIDDLE OH DARK AGES. 



ft was about the middle of the period we have thus far contemplated, in the 

 year of our Lord 568, that Mahomet was born in Arabia : and a period more 

 auspicious to his unrivalled craft and overtowering ambition could not possi- 

 bly have been produced by any concurrence of circumstances. The barba- 

 rians of the north had just completed their conquest over regular monarchy; 

 the western empire was tottering to its foundation, while the eastern was 

 shorn of its limits, and weakened by internal oppressions. Yet neither the 

 extent of the territories of the barbarian powers, nor their respective forms of 

 government, were definitely settled ; while, at the same time, the fury which 

 had accompanied their progress being exhausted, they had sunk into a state 

 of political lethargy, and no bond of union or co-operation existed between 

 them. Were we to search for that period of the Christian era in which there 

 was least of order, least of power, least of science, and least of intercourse 

 in Europe, we should be compelled to pitch upon the century which immedi- 

 ately preceded, and that which immediately followed, the commencement of 

 the Hegira. 



Mahomet flourished in the middle of this period. Deriving his immediate 

 descent from the patriarch Abraham, through the line of Ishmael, and, per- 

 haps, eldest son of eldest son, from the commencement of the chain, he was 

 a man of unbounded ambition, most enterprising courage, insinuating address, 

 and instructed in all the science of his day. He beheld his own country 

 without any fixed principles of religion, and ignorantly intermixing the rites 

 of Judaism with the doctrines of Christianity ; he beheld the professors of 

 the Christian church engaged in perpetual disputes upon inexplicable myste- 

 ries ; and excommunicating and massacreing each other, as they alternately 

 possessed the power, upon a mere difference of recondite or speculative 

 points, It was the precise moment for the invention of a new creed, .and he 

 invented one accordingly. With a mastery of craft that has never been 

 equalled, even in our own eventful age, he infused into the heterogeneous 

 mass a charm adapted to captivate every party and every passion ; and, to 

 destroy every doubt of success, he united the power of the sword to that of 

 the new faith, and threw open the gates of Paradise, and all the enjoyments 

 of the beatified, to every soldier who should fall under the banners of the 

 crescent. 



Such a religion, launched forth at such a period, and aided by such auxilia- 

 ries, it was impossible to oppose by human means. It ran like lightning over 

 the whole of Arabia, and equally subdued before* it political friends and poli- 

 tical foes. The states of Barbary were compelled to embrace it ; the leaders 

 of the Turks, the Mongul Tartars, and the Persians found it admirably 

 adapted to their purpose, and embraced it voluntarily ; all the Asiatic pro- 

 vinces of the eastern empire were overrun by the armies of the prophet him- 

 self, or his descendants, Abubeker and Omar : who, on succeeding to Mahomet, 

 assumed, from respect and in reference to him, the subordinate title of Caliph, 

 or Vicar. All Syria was invaded by the former for the express purpose, as 

 he openly asserted, " of taking it out of the hands of the infidels ;" and Jeru- 

 salem itself was captured by the latter, and rendered, shortly afterward, one 

 of the principal bulwarks of the Saracens, as they were soon denominated 

 among the Christian powers. 



The doctrine fundamentally inculcated by the Saracen chiefs was, that 

 "to fight for the faith is an act of obedience to God ;" and on this account 

 they characterized their ferocious and bloody ravages by the name of holy 

 wars. And having been the first to adopt this absurd and contradictory term, 

 they laid down a model, and offered at least an apology for the crusades. 

 And such was the success of their enterprise, that in less than a century from 

 the commencement of the Hegira, they spread the religion of Mahomet from 

 the Atlantic Ocean to India and Tartary, and obtained the whole, or the greater 

 part of the temporal, as well as the spiritual power in Syria, Persia, Egypt 

 Africa, and Spain. Spain, indeed, has since been rescued from their bondage ; 

 but the same general success continuing, the whole of the eastern empire was 

 overturned, and Constantinople itself taken possession of in 1453; while, in 



