overrun and Damascus taken. Persia, which had contended for centuries on
equal terms with Rome, was overthrown in a single campaign. In 637
Jerusalem fell, and the sacred soil of Palestine passed under the yoke
of the Saracens. Within three years Alexandria and the rich valley of
the Nile were the prize of Amru and his army. The conquest of Egypt only
formed the stepping-stone to the reduction of Africa, and the victorious
Moslems did not pause in their career until they reached the Atlantic
Ocean, and Akbah,[3] riding his horse into the sea, sighed for more
worlds to conquer. We may be excused perhaps for thinking that it had
been well for the inhabitants of the New World, if Fortune had delivered
them into the hands of the generous Arabs rather than to the cruel
soldiery of Cortes and Pizarro.

[1] Al Makk., ii. 34. "What are thirty barbarians perched upon
a rock? They must inevitably die."

[2] Carlyle's "Hero Worship" ad finem.

[3] Cardonne, i. p. 37; Gibbon, vi. 348, note.

In 688, that is, in a little more than a generation from the death of
Mohammed, the Moslems undertook the siege of Constantinople. Fortunately
for the cause of civilisation and of Christendom, this long siege of
several years proved unsuccessful, as well as a second attack in 717.
But by the latter date the footing in Europe, which the valour of the
Byzantines denied them, had already been gained by the expedition into
Spain under Tarik in 711. The same year that witnessed the crossing of
the Straits of Gibraltar in the West saw also in the East the passage of
the Oxus by the eager warriors of Islam.