direst insult, the greatest loss that could be inflicted upon it;
the venerable churches of Asia Minor had passed out of existence; no
Christian could set his foot in Jerusalem without permission; the Mosque
of Omar stood on the site of the Temple of Solomon. Among the ruins of
Alexandria the Mosque of Mercy marked the spot where a Saracen general,
satiated with massacre, had, in contemptuous compassion, spared the
fugitive relics of the enemies of Mohammed; nothing remained of Carthage
but her blackened ruins. The most powerful religious empire that the
world had ever seen had suddenly come into existence. It stretched from
the Atlantic Ocean to the Chinese Wall, from the shores of the Caspian
to those of the Indian Ocean, and yet, in one sense, it had not reached
its culmination. The day was to come when it was to expel the successors
of the Caesars from their capital, and hold the peninsula of Greece in
subjection, to dispute with Christianity the empire of Europe in the
very centre of that continent, and in Africa to extend its dogmas and
faith across burning deserts and through pestilential forests from the
Mediterranean to regions southward far beyond the equinoetial line.

DISSENSIONS OF THE ARABS. But, though Mohammedanism had not reached its
culmination, the dominion of the khalifs had. Not the sword of Charles
Martel, but the internal dissension of the vast Arabian Empire, was the
salvation of Europe. Though the Ommiade Khalifs were popular in Syria,
elsewhere they were looked upon as intruders or usurpers; the kindred
of the apostle was considered to be the rightful representative of his
faith. Three parties, distinguished by their colors, tore the khalifate
asunder with their disputes, and disgraced it by their atrocities. The
color of the Ommiades was white, that of the Fatimites green, that of
the Abassides black; the last represented the party of Abbas, the uncle
of Mohammed. The result of these discords was a tripartite division
of the Mohammedan Empire in the tenth century into the khalifates of
Bagdad, of Cairoan, and of Cordova. Unity in Mohammedan political action
was at an end, and Christendom found its safeguard, not in supernatural
help, but in the quarrels of the rival potentates. To internal
animosities foreign pressures were eventually added and Arabism, which
had done so much for the intellectual advancement of the world, came to
an end when the Turks and the Berbers attained to power.

The S