emperors into the capital of the Turks? Is a united Saracenic
empire better than a divided, wrangling Christian empire?

But I will not enter upon that discussion. I confine myself to
facts. It is certain that Mohammedanism, by means of the sword,
spread with marvellous and unprecedented rapidity. The successors
of the Prophet carried their conquests even to India. Neither the
Syrians nor the Egyptians could cope with men who felt that the
sacrifice of life in battle would secure an eternity of bliss. The
armies of the Greek emperor melted away before the generals of the
caliph. The Cross waned before the Crescent. The banners of the
Moslems floated over the proudest battlements of ancient Roman
grandeur.

In the fifth year of the caliph Omar, only seventeen years from the
Prophet's flight from Mecca, the conquest of Syria was completed.
The Christians were forbidden to build churches, or speak openly of
their religion, or sit in the presence of a Mohammedan, or to sell
wine, or bear arms, or use the saddle in riding, or have a domestic
who had been in the Mohammedan service. The utter prostration of
all civil and religious liberty took place in the old scenes of
Christian triumph. This was an instance in which persecution
proved successful; and because it was successful it is a proof, in
the eyes of Carlyle, that the persecuting religion was the better,
because it was outwardly the stronger.

The conquest of Egypt rapidly followed that of Syria; and with the
fall of Alexandria perished the largest library of the world, the
thesaurus of all the intellectual treasures of antiquity.