Chapter II (2)

As soon as Musa had obtained Walid’s sanction to the contemplated enterprise, he sent off an expedition of only four vessels, with five hundred men on board, to explore the coast of the coveted land. TARIF ABU ZARA, the commander of this force, landed on the opposite side of the strait, and marched eighteen miles into the interior, to the castle and town of the traitor Count of Ceuta[63] (July 710). His glowing report of the wealth of the country, decided Musa to send over a more powerful expedition under the command of his freedman, TARIK BEN ZAYAD. The miserable Julian supplied the means of transport. Five thousand Arabs and seven thousand Moors landed at the European pillar of Hercules, Mount Calpe, which became, henceforth, the Mountain of Tarik--_Gebel al Tarik_, a name corrupted afterwards into the present appellation of Gibraltar (April, 711). Here Tarik formed a strongly entrenched camp, and gathered around him the friends of Julian, and also many Jews who were fired with the most deadly hatred against their Christian persecutors, that had, for more than a century, oppressed and hunted down this doomed people with a malignity such as religious fanaticism alone can excite and sustain. Counts EDECO and THEODEMIR, who had been commanded by the king to expel the intruders, were defeated with great slaughter; and a seasonable reinforcement from Africa swelled Tarik’s ranks to above 30,000 men. Roderic, conscious at last of the magnitude of the danger that threatened to overwhelm his throne and his people, gathered the flower of the Gothic nation around him, and marched at the head of 100,000 men to encounter the foreign invaders. In the neighbourhood of Cadiz, at Xeres de la Frontera, on the Guadelete, the hostile armies met. Three days were spent in desultory, though bloody fighting; on the fourth day, the actual battle commenced. When night spread her sable wings, and bade the slaughter cease for a while, more than half of the Saracen forces lay stretched dead on the ground they had come to conquer; and had not the vile defection of the most reverend father in God, the Archbishop of Toledo, and his two nephews, to whom Roderic’s generous or foolish (it may be read both ways) confidence had entrusted the most important post, broken the ranks of the Christians, the severed head of Musa’s freedman might have graced the battlements of Toledo. As it was, it took three days to scatter the remains of the Gothic army; and many a Saracen, and many a Christian traitor to his country, had to bite the dust before Tarik could pen his laconic “Praise be to Allah!--we have conquered.” (July 19-26, 711). The hapless king of the Goths was either slain in the fight or drowned in the waters of the Guadalquivir. The field of Xeres decided the fate of the Gothic monarchy; nearly the whole of Spain submitted to Tarik with such extraordinary rapidity, that the good old Musa, envious of his freedman’s success and fame, bade him arrest his victorious course, until he himself should arrive to gather the last and fairest fruits of the victory. Tarik, however, added Cordova and Toledo, the capital of the Gothic kingdom, to the list of his conquests, and advanced as far as the Bay of Biscay, where the failure of land at last compelled him to stop. Here he received an angry and imperious summons from his jealous chief; who had, meanwhile, himself crossed over from Africa, at the head of ten thousand Arabs and eight thousand Moors, and had taken Seville, and was besieging Merida. The latter city, though valiantly defended, was at last compelled to surrender. Midway between Merida and Toledo, Tarik met his chief, who received him with cold and stately formality, and demanded a strict account of the treasures of the conquered kingdom. The unfortunate lieutenant speedily found that Musa would not readily forgive his presumption of subduing Spain in the absence of his general: he saw himself ignominiously deprived of his command, and thrown into prison; and Musa carried his resentment so far, that he ordered the conqueror of Spain to be publicly scourged. Walid’s imperative commands compelled Musa to restore Tarik to his position; and the valiant man, who had been so ungenerously and unworthily treated by the jealous old chief, assisted him with his accustomed zeal, in achieving the conquest of the still unsubdued parts of the peninsula. At the end of 712, all resistance had ceased on the part of the Christians, with the exception of the valiant prince THEODEMIR, who defended himself several months longer in Orihuela, and obtained, at last, most favorable terms from Musa’s son, Abdelaziz, (5th April, 713); and the invincible PELAGIUS, or PELAYO, and PETRUS, who, in the Asturian, Gallician, and Biscayan vallies, laid the foundation of a new Christian empire in Spain; destined, after a time, to renew the struggle and ultimately to expel the foreign invaders.

MUSA was a very old man--but though the coloring of his beard, and other little expedients of art, might fail to obliterate the physical ravages wrought by eighty-eight years of life, and by the fatigues and privations of fifty campaigns[64]--yet the vigor of his mind, and the youthful ardor that fired his breast, remained unimpaired: and, like that marvellous old man of a later period, great DANDOLO, the approach of ninety found him revolving enterprises of stupendous magnitude; aye, no less than the conquest of Gaul, Italy, Germany, and the Greek empire. He was preparing to pass the Pyrenees,[65] and bid the kingdom of the Franks cease to exist, when an imperious command from Damascus, called both him and Tarik thither, to render an account of their proceedings to the commander of the faithful. Tarik obeyed; Musa delayed complying with the Khalif’s summons, until a second and still more peremptory message left the old chief no other alternative but obedience or open rebellion: and, as his own loyalty, or that of his troops, put the latter out of question, he set at once diligently about preparing for his return to Damascus. He confided the government of Spain to his son, ABDELAZIZ; that of Africa, to his son, ABDALLAH. Taking with him immense treasures in gold and silver, and, among others, the famous emerald table of Solomon, encircled with pearls and gems--a spoil of the Romans from the east, and which, it would appear, had fallen into the hands of Alaric, in the sack of Rome[66] (410, A.D.); and attended by thirty Gothic princes, 400 nobles, and 18,000 male and female captives of humbler degree, he set out from Ceuta on his way to Damascus. At Tiberias, in Palestine, he received a private message from SULEIMAN, or SOLIMAN, the brother and presumptive heir of Walid, informing him that the Khalif was dying, and commanding him, as he valued Soliman’s friendship, to reserve his triumphal entry into Damascus for the inauguration of the new reign.

Musa, who might deem Soliman’s anger less dangerous than the resentment of the Khalif should he recover, disregarded the injunction, and pursued his march to Damascus, where he arrived just in time to afford the dying Walid the gratification of beholding the spoils of Africa and of Spain,[67] soon after which, the most powerful of the Khalifs bowed his head to the stroke of the mighty master of kings and emperors (October, 714). His successor, SOLIMAN, was an able and energetic prince, but of a despotic and ruthless disposition. Musa was arraigned at the judgment seat of the new Khalif, for abuse of power and disobedience to orders. The unworthy treatment which the victor of Xeres had suffered at the hands of his jealous chief, was avenged by a similar indignity inflicted upon the latter: the veteran commander was publicly scourged, and then kept waiting a whole day before the palace gate, till the “_mercy_” of Soliman accorded him a sentence of exile to Mecca. He was, moreover, adjudged to pay to the public treasury, a fine of 200,000 pieces of gold. Afraid lest the sons of the despoiled and insulted old man, should attempt to avenge the injuries of their father, the worthy son of Abd-el-Malek secretly dispatched to Africa and Spain, decrees commanding the extermination of Musa’s family; and, by a refinement of cruelty worthy of a Caligula, Caracalla, or Justinian II., he had the head of Abdelaziz presented to the bereaved father, with an insulting question, whether he knew the features of the rebel? “I know his features,” exclaimed the hapless old man, in a paroxysm of grief and indignation; “he was loyal and true. May the same fate overtake the base authors of his death!” -- -- -- Musa’s death, a few weeks after, of the anguish of a broken heart, spared Soliman an additional crime. The victor of Xeres fared but little better than his ancient commander; though, indeed, he was not made to expiate by death, imprisonment, or exile, the great services which he had rendered his country. CATIBAH, who had every reason to dread a similar fate as Musa’s and Tarik’s, rose in arms against the jealous tyrant of Damascus, and had the good fortune to meet with a glorious death on the battle field.

Soliman resolved to render his reign famous by the overthrow of the Greek empire, and the conquest of Constantinople. His preparations, both by land and sea, were made on a gigantic scale. His brother, the redoubtable MOSLEMAH, invaded Asia Minor at the head of 70,000 foot and 50,000 horse, with an immense train of camels, (716). The city of Tyana fell into the hands of the Moslems, and Amorium was closely besieged by them. The troops in Amorium were commanded at the time by General LEO, a native of Isauria. The original name of this remarkable man, was KONON; his father had come over from Asia Minor to Thrace, and had settled as a grazier there. He must have acquired considerable wealth in that lucrative business, since he could afford a gift of 500 sheep to the Imperial camp, to procure for his son admission into the guards of Justinian. The personal strength of the young soldier, and his dexterity in all martial exercises attracted the notice of the emperor, who speedily advanced him to the higher grades of military rank. Anastasius II. confided to him the command of the Anatolian legions, and it was in this capacity that he defended Amorium against the Saracens. One of those sudden revolutions so frequent in the Byzantine court, compelled Anastasius to hand over the sceptre to an obscure officer of the revenue, who assumed the name of Theodosius III. General Leo refused to acknowledge the new emperor, and managed so skilfully, that not only did the troops under his command invest _him_ with the imperial purple, but the Arabs, it would appear, accorded him and his army free and undisturbed departure from Amorium. He marched upon Constantinople, and Theodosius seeing himself in danger of being abandoned by the very troops who had so recently exalted him, willingly resigned to the hands of the general and emperor of the Oriental troops, the sceptre which, moreover, he had accepted with extreme reluctance only. He was permitted to retire with his son to the shelter of a monastery, where he had ample time to paint golden letters, an occupation which marvellously suited the natural indolence of his disposition.

LEO, third of the name, who figures in history usually as the _Isaurian_, or the _Iconoclast_, was fully aware of the intention of the Arabs to attempt the reduction of Constantinople; he, therefore, made every preparation which military experience could suggest, or engineering skill devise, to give them a fitting reception. In July, 717, after the reduction of Pergamus, Moslemah transported his army from Asia to Europe, across the Hellespont or Dardanelles, at the most narrow part of the passage (from Abydos to Sestos); and thence, wheeling his troops round Gallipoli, Heraclea, and the other Thracian cities of the Propontis, or Sea of Marmara, he invested Constantinople on the land side. An offer made by the Greeks, to purchase the withdrawal of the besieging forces by the payment of a piece of gold for each inhabitant of the city, was contemptuously rejected; and Moslemah pushed on the operations of the siege with the greatest vigor, but without any corresponding success, the Isaurian repelling every attack with a bravery and determination, such as the Saracens had but little expected to see displayed by the apparently effete Greeks. Moslemah’s hopes were swelled high, however, by the arrival of the navies of Syria and Egypt, to the number of 1800 vessels,[68] with 50,000 men on board. The Saracen commander fixed a night for a general assault by land and sea, and proudly boasted that by the morning the city should be his. When that morning came, the Greek fire had done its work; and scarce a vestige remained of the proud fleet, or of those who had manned it; and ten thousand Arabs and Persians slain, bore witness how fiercely Moslemah had assaulted the defences of Byzantium, and how bravely and vigorously the Isaurian and his gallant troops had repulsed the hostile multitudes. From this check, Moslemah essayed in vain to recover: he became soon painfully conscious that the conviction of invincibility, which had hitherto so materially contributed to the great successes of the Saracen arms, was, if not altogether destroyed, at least considerably shaken. His assaults were now repulsed with apparent ease almost, and all his attempts at surprises were defeated by the ever watchful Isaurian. One hope still remained to restore the ancient supremacy of the Moslem arms: Khalif Soliman had gathered a formidable host of Arabians, Persians, and Turks, and was preparing to lead them to his brother’s assistance. The eyes of both the besiegers and the besieged were anxiously turned towards the Khalif’s camp near Chalcis (or Kinnisrin) in Syria; and Leo was endeavoring, by gifts and promises, to attract an army of Bulgarians from the Danube to pit them against the Saracens; and thus, perchance, to free the Byzantine empire from all danger, by the mutual destruction of its Barbarian foes. But it so happened that the Commander of the Faithful could not command his appetite; a meal of two scores or so of eggs, and a matter of six or seven pounds of figs, followed up by a dessert of marrow and sugar, proved too much for even his well-seasoned stomach; he paid with his life the penalty of his gluttony (717). He had appointed his cousin, OMAR BEN ABDELAZIZ, to succeed him in the khalifate. Omar, second of the name, was a most estimable man, but a very indifferent prince; much fitter, indeed, to be the head of a monastery of ascetics, than of a powerful empire. The first act of his reign was to order the cessation of the Syrian armaments, which might have been a wise measure, had it been accompanied by the recall of Moslemah and his forces from the siege of Constantinople. His neglect of the latter measure entailed upon the unfortunate natives of the sultry climes of Egypt and Arabia, the unspeakable hardships of a most severe winter, passed in a frozen camp. In spring (718), he made an effort to relieve their wants, and to fill up the gaps which cold, famine, and disease had made in the ranks of the besieging army. Two numerous fleets were sent on this errand, one from Alexandria, the other from the ports of Africa. They succeeded, indeed, in landing the stores and reinforcements, but they found it as vain to contend against the Greek fire, as the armada which, the year before, had so proudly threatened to erase the Roman name from among the nations. Meanwhile, the Bulgarians had been bribed into an alliance with the Greek emperor, and these savage auxiliaries proved formidable antagonists to the exhausted and half-starved Asiatics. Still the intrepid Moslemah was not dismayed, and although he was compelled to relinquish all further attempts upon the defences of the city, he defeated, on his part, all attacks made on his camp: until, at length, Khalif Omar sent him the welcome order to raise the siege, (August, 718). The retreat of the Arabian forces was effected without delay or molestation; but of the fleet, tempests destroyed what the fire of Callinicus had spared, and of 700 vessels that had proudly sailed forth, five only returned to the port of Alexandria, to tell the sad tale of the disastrous loss of their companions. Byzantium was saved, and the victorious Isaurian found himself at liberty to prepare for his meditated warfare against canvas, wood, brass, and marble.

The good and pious Omar distinguished his reign chiefly by the abolition or “repeal” of the curse against Ali and his adherents which had for nearly sixty years been daily pronounced from the pulpits (719). By this act of simple justice, and by his somewhat hasty and incautious attempts to reform the fearful abuses which had crept into the administration of the empire under his predecessors, he excited the determined hostility of his own family, and of the Vizirs and high officers of state. A dose of poison removed him (720). His successor, YEZID II., had none of his virtues, but most of the vices of his other predecessors of the line of Ommiyah. It was in the reign of this prince, and in that of his successor, that the family Hashem, in two of its branches, viz. the ALIDES, or FATIMITES, i.e. the descendants of Ali and Fatima, and the ABASSIDES, that is the descendants of Abbas, the uncle of the prophet, began to urge their claims to the throne of the Khalifa. Indeed, Mohammed, the great grandson of Abbas, was secretly acknowledged as the true commander of the Faithful, by a considerable body of the inhabitants of Chorasan, and his son IBRAHIM was even enabled to hoist the black flag of the Abassides[69] in that province; the gloomy banner was triumphantly borne onward by ABU MOSLEM, the intrepid and invincible champion of the Abassides, the _King-maker_ of the East, but, who was fated at last, like the English King-maker, to experience the usual gratitude of princes. From the Indus to the Euphrates, the East was convulsed by the fearful struggle between the white and the black factions, and the fairest provinces of Asia were deluged with blood to void the ancient quarrel between Ommiyah and Hashem, and to decide which of two equally vile races of despots had the _better right_ to trample on God’s fair creation. The struggle terminated for a time in 750, with the overthrow and almost total extirpation of the Ommiades--but of this hereafter.

YEZID died in 722 or 723, of grief for the death of a favorite concubine. He was succeeded by his brother HESHAM, a prince not altogether destitute of good qualities. Hesham had to contend against the Fatimite ZEID, the grandson of Hassan, who was, however, speedily overcome, and had to pay with his life the penalty of his ambition. The struggle against the more successful Abassides has been mentioned in the preceding paragraph.

After Musa’s departure from Spain, and the murder of his son Abdelaziz, AJUB was proclaimed by the Arabian and Moorish troops, governor of the Spanish peninsula; he fixed his residence at Cordova. Under him and his more immediate successors numerous colonies came over to Spain from various parts of the Saracen dominions in Asia and Africa; of these the royal legion of Damascus was planted at Cordova; that of Emesa at Seville; that of Chalcis at Jaen; that of Palestine at Algezire and Medina Sidonia. The Egyptian bands were permitted to share with the original conquerors their establishments of Murcia and Lisbon. The immigrants from Yemen and Persia were located round Toledo, and in the inland country; and ten thousand horsemen of Syria and Irak, the children of the purest and most noble Arabian tribes, settled in the fertile seats of Grenada.[70]

AJUB’S successor in the government of Spain, EL HORR BEN ABDERRAHMAN resolved to annex to the dominions under his sway the Gallic province of Septimania or Languedoc, of which the eastern part, with Narbonne and Carcassone, was still remaining in the hands of the Visigoths; the western part, Aquitaine and Thoulouse having been severed from the Gothic kingdom in 508, by Clovis. But he was defeated and driven back by the Christians; in consequence of the ill-success of his operations, the Khalif removed him from the command, and named EL ZAMA governor in his stead. That bold and skilful general speedily succeeded in reducing the whole of the Narbonnese province (720); whence he marched into Aquitaine, and laid siege to Thoulouse. Here he found a more formidable foe to encounter--the FRANKS, who were ultimately to check the further advance of Islam and its followers into the fairest provinces of Europe. The history of that nation, and of its successful leader against the Saracen invaders, forms the subject of the second part of this volume.

FOOTNOTES:

[43] _Khalifet Resul Allah_, i.e. lieutenant, or representative of the prophet of God.

[44] Omar was the first to assume the additional title of _Emir al Mumenin_, i.e. prince, or commander, of the faithful.

[45] Jabalah had embraced the religion of Islam. On the occasion of the pilgrimage to Mecca, the irascible prince had dealt an Arabian, who had accidentally trod on the skirt of his long robe, a severe blow with his fist, which broke the bridge of the nose of the assaulted man. The Khalif Omar having demanded satisfaction for the aggrieved Moslem, and threatened the proud Gassanide chief with the application of the lex talionis, Jabalah, feeling highly indignant at the notion, fled, and returned to the profession of the Christian faith.

[46] Yezdegerd fled finally to the territory of Tergana, on the Jaxartes. In an attempt which he made in 651, to invade his lost empire at the head of some Turkish tribes, he met his death, it would appear, at the hands of his barbarian allies. One of the daughters of Yezdegerd married Hassan, the son of Ali, and the other, Mohammed, the son of Abu Bekr.

[47] The Nestorians and Jacobites bestowed on the self-styled Catholics of the Greek and Roman church, the name of _Melchites_, or _Royalists_, to mark that their faith, instead of resting on the basis of Scripture, reason, or tradition, had been established solely by the power of a temporal monarch.

[48] “Six months,” the Worthy Jacobite says, “the 4000 baths of the city were heated with the volumes of paper and parchment.” These volumes must have been bulky indeed, and must have contained a surprising amount of latent heat, considering that, even admitting the library to have existed at the time, and conceding to it the largest number of volumes claimed by the most extravagant writers, viz., 720,000, one single volume per day must have sufficed to heat a public bath! Verily, verily, history is made the most inexact of all sciences. The flames which Cæsar was compelled to kindle in his defence, in the Bruchion (the Belgravia or Tyburnia of the city of Alexander); the havoc and depredation committed by the Alexandrian mob during the troubles of the _shoes_ (so called from the circumstance that these terrible troubles, which are said to have lasted above twelve years [from 261 to 273 A.D.], were first occasioned by a dispute between a soldier and a townsman about a pair of shoes); and the destruction inflicted on the Bruchion by Aurelian, in 273, cannot have left much behind of that portion of the splendid library of the Ptolemies which was kept in the museum. And the other portion of it, which was kept in the Temple of Serapis, to which latter place it is most probable the celebrated Pergamese library, presented by Marcus Antonius to Cleopatra, had also been sent, was totally destroyed in 389, in the reign of Theodosius I., by a bigoted Christian mob, under the leadership of the Archbishop Theophilus, a much more ignorant and brutal zealot than either Omar or Amru.

[49] Othman’s foster-brother, the same whom Mohammed had so reluctantly pardoned after the taking of Mecca. He was renowned as the boldest and most dexterous horseman of Arabia.

[50] Callinicus was either a native of Heliopolis, in Syria, or of Egypt. This clever chemist had been for a while in the service of the Khalif; but, offended at the slight estimation in which his science was held by the ignorant sons of the desert, he went over to the emperor, and placed in the hands of the Christians that marvellous and mysterious agent, the _Greek fire_, which afterwards repeatedly saved Constantinople from falling into the hands of its barbarian besiegers. It is certainly a curious coincidence, that, at a later period of history, Sultan Mohammed II. was most materially assisted in the reduction of the city of the Cæsars, by another man of science, the Hungarian URBAN, who, having been almost starved in the Greek service, had deserted to the Moslems, for whom he cast cannons of enormous size and weight of metal.

[51] The victory of Bassora is therefore usually called the Day of the Camel; seventy men who successively held the bridle of the camel which carried Ayesha’s litter, were all either killed or more or less severely wounded.

[52] That is, “God is great,” or “God is victorious.”

[53] Abder-Rahman.

[54] January; according to some historians, Midsummer, 660; others place the event in August, 661.

[55] But many of the tribes revered the name and memory of Ali. His refusal to be bound by the tradition, or Sonna, became a kind of religious creed, and a wide and deep gulf was opened between two rival sects, the _Sonnites_, or believers in the tradition, and the _Schiites_, or sectaries, who reject the tradition, regard Ali as the _Vicar of God_, and his three predecessors as execrable usurpers. The religious discord of the friends and enemies of Ali may be said to be actually maintained still to the present day in the immortal hatred of the Schiite Persians, and the Sonnite Turks. The twelve Imams, or pontiffs, of the Persian church are Ali, Hassan, Hosein, and the lineal descendants of Hosein to the ninth generation. The curse against Ali and his adherents was abolished by Omar II., in 719.

[56] The ruins of the ancient city of Carthage are about ten miles east of Tunis.

[57] At least in Syria and Irak.

[58] One of the most remarkable men of the period; he was said to unite the fierceness of the lion with the subtlety of the fox; his eventful life would furnish ample material for ten historic romances.

[59] It would appear, from Leo Africanus, that a considerable body of Goths formed part of the army of relief.

[60] Handalusia signifies, in Arabic, the country of the West; and the Arabs applied the name not only to the modern province of Andalusia, but to the whole peninsula of Spain. The attempted derivation of the name of Andalusia from the Vandals (Vandalusia) is most improbable. LEMBKE travels still farther out of the way of all rational probability, by assigning the etymological paternity of the name to _Andalos_, whom the Arabians number among Noah’s grandchildren.

[61] 649-672.

[62] This would certainly seem to have been the true cause of Julian’s defection; the story of the seduction or violation of his daughter Florinda (surnamed _la Cava_, i.e., the wicked), lacks all true historic foundation. _Mariana_, the Jesuit historian, to whom we are chiefly indebted for this pretty tale, was too apt to draw on his lively imagination, where historical evidence failed him.

[63] The place on which the Arabs landed is marked to the present day by the name of their chief Tarif (Tarifa); on the coast they bestowed the name of the Green Island (_Algesiras_ or _Algezire_).

[64] Musa had fought in Syria; he had assisted Moawiyah in the reduction of Cyprus (648), and had held the government of that island; he had subsequently been governor of Irak, and after this, governor of Egypt; Sardinia, Majorca, and Minorca, also had felt his presence.

[65] Though some historians lead Musa (in 712) into the Narbonnese Gaul, there are strong reasons to reject this as an erroneous supposition; it is more than doubtful whether the old chief ever passed the Pyrenees.

[66] The statement made by some historians, that _Ætius_ presented this table as a gift to _Torismund_, after the victory of Chalons (451), seems to rest on a very slender foundation; and so, I am inclined to think, do the 365 feet of gems and massive gold so liberally bestowed upon the table by Oriental writers. Another tradition substitutes, as the gift of the Roman patrician, the famous Missorium, or great golden dish for the service of the communion table, which is stated to have weighed 500 pounds, and to have been adorned with a profusion of gems.

[67] Some historians make Musa arrive _after_ the death of Walid; and some place the latter event a year later (715). The records of the period of the early Khalifs are so confused and contradictory that it is by no means easy always to ascertain the correct date of an event; the difficulty is considerably increased by the error into which some historians have fallen, of confounding the lunar year of the Mohammedans with the solar year of the Julian era. The common lunar year of the Hegira has 354 days; but the Mohammedans count, in a cyclus of 30 years, 11 leap years of 355 days (the 2nd, 5th, 7th, 10th, 13th, 16th, 18th, 21st, 24th, 25th and 29th years of the cyclus).

[68] Of small size, of course.

[69] In the separation of parties, the _green_ color was adopted by the Alides, or Fatimites, the _black_ color by the Abassides, and the _white_ color by the Ommiades; these colors were displayed respectively by the several parties, not only in their standards but also in their garments and turbans.

[70] Gibbon.