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Tarik, whom he had unjustly disgraced and punished. Being convicted of falsehood, on the production by Tarik of the missing foot of the table of Solomon, the merit of finding which had been claimed by Musa, he was tortured and deprived of his riches; and the head of his gallant son Abdulaziz, whom he had left in command in Spain, was shown to him in public by the Khalif Soliman, the successor of Walid, with the cruel demand if he knew whose it was. "I do," was the father's reply: "it is the head of one who fasted and prayed; may the curse of Allah fall on it if he who slew him is a better man than he!" But though Musa was thus arrested in the last stage of his conquering career, so complete was the prostration of the Christians, that the viceroys who succeeded Abdulaziz, overlooking or disregarding this yet unsubdued corner of Spain, at once poured their forces across the Pyrenees, seeking new fields of conquest and glory in the countries of the Franks. But the antagonists whom they here encountered, unlike the luxurious Goths of Spain, still preserved the barbarian valour which they had brought from their German forests. And As-Samh, (the Zama of the Christian writers,) the first Saracen general who obtained a footing in France, "fell a martyr to the faith," with nearly his whole army, in a battle with Eudo, Duke of Aquitaine, before Toulouse, May 10, A.D. 721. But the fiery zeal of the Moslems was only stimulated by this reverse. In the course of the ten following years, their dominion was established as far as the Rhone and Garonne; till, in 732, the torrent of invasion, headed by the _Wali_ Abdurrahman, burst into the heart of the country; and the battle, decisive of the destinies of France, and perhaps of Europe, was fought between Tours and Poitiers, in October of that year, (Ramadhan, A.H. 114.) Few details are given by the Arab writers of the seven days' conflict, in which the ranks of the Moslems were shattered by the iron arm of Charles Martel; "and the army of Abdurrahman was cut to pieces at a spot called _Balatt-ush-Shohada_, (the Pavement of the Martyrs,) he himself being in the number of the slain." Some confusion here appears, as the same epithet had been applied to the former battle near Toulouse; but this "disastrous day" of Tours virtually extinguished the schemes of Arab conquest in France, though it was not till many years later that they were completely dislodged from Narbonne, and their other acqu
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