ask whether the time had not arrived for throwing off the mask. The governor of Korassan wrote to Merwan: "I see some sparks scintillating under the ashes, and from them a great fire may be kindled ; let us hasten to extinguish these sparks, if we wish to avoid the conflagration: why must I ask if the children of Omia are awake, or if a leaden sleep shuts their eyes?" Merwan sent orders for rigorous treatment of all persons guilty of sedition; but it was too late.

The conspirators now publicly announced at Merv the beginning of a new dynasty, and no prayers, promises, or reasonings were sufficient to to cause them to retrace their steps. The kalif trembled when he heard this news from a province upon which he had so greatly depended; whose brave and strong inhabitants had furnished his armies their most indomitable soldiers; and when he reflected that the battle-cry of this revolt was "the Family of the Prophet!" he awakened himself a second time. Ibrahim, the leader of the movement, was captured and imprisoned at Harran; but his lieutenant, Abu Muslim, the real heart and soul of the insurrection, pressed on successfully; captured Merv, and called to his banner all who were willing to unite in a strong blow at the kalif in the centre of his power. Merwan made his captive suffer for his lieutenant's success, and put him to death, but Ibrahim bequeathed his vengeance to his brother, Abu Abbas, called el Saffah, the Bloody. In the autumn of 749, Abbas appeared in the capital of Korassan, and was an nounced as the successor of the prophet; he then

THE DECISIVE BATTLE OF THE ZAB.

351

took possession of the palace, unrolled the black flag of his family, and called upon all the faithful to join in reconquering the heritage of Mohammed.

Merwan, with his usual agility, was on the march for Korassan with an army, at the first news of the revolt; the two claimants for the supreme power over a region extending from the Indus to the Atlantic, found themselves face to face on the banks of the river Zab (in January, 750), some thirty miles southeast of Nineveh and Mosul, not far from Arbela, celebrated as the scene of the last great battle between Darius the Mede and Alexander the Great, B.C. 331.* Battle was joined at mid-day, and continued until the hour of prayer in the afternoon. The enthusiasm of the Saracens seemed to have deserted the Omiades, and though Merwan performed deeds of great valor, his men were simply an inert mass; they carried out the orders badly, and the enemy profited by each evidence of indecision. The fight was renewed the next day; but at last the troops of the Abbassides gained the advantage, and the soldiers of the kalif sought to recross the river, flying in disorder. Many were cut down by the enemy, large numbers were drowned in the Zab, and the cause of the Omiades was forever lost. Merwan himself took to flight. At Harran he found his wives and children, and with them went to Kinnesrin, but he did not stop there. He was robbed of portions of his goods on the way towards Emesa, from which place he hastened to Damascus; but the gates of the capital of his dynasty were closed *See "The Story of Alexander's Empire," chapter iii.

against him, and he continued on to the southward, not stopping until he had reached the delta of the Nile, where he was overtaken and decapitated by soldiers of Abul Abbas.

The assassination of Merwan was the beginning of a butchery by Abbas which gave good ground for his name el Saffah. He had overthrown the family of the Omiades, and now he determined to cut it out root and branch. To this end, he ordered the entire connection executed, in a general proscription—sons, grandsons, friends, were ordered to indiscriminate butchery, of which the details are too heart-sickening for description. Vengeance did not stop with the living; the funereal marbles that stood over the remains of the dead were broken down, ashes and bones were torn from their resting-places and scattered. This done, Abbas felt secure of his throne.

In spite of these desperate efforts on the part of the new kalif to root out of the world every relict of the former dynasty, there remained one at least, Abd er Rahman, son of Moawia, who managed to escape to Egypt. There, avoiding inhabited regions, he trusted himself to the mercies of the wandering. Berbers of the desert, and gained their respect by his noble origin, but especially by his princely appearance and accomplishments, his courage and manly virtues. Information regarding him reached Spain, then rent by discord, and, after several years of vicissitude, Abd er Rahman was called to become kalif at Cordova. Thus Abul Abbas failed to gain control of the entire dominion that the Omiades had ruled, and a representative of his mortal enemies gov

AFTER THE VICTORY.

353

erned a large portion of the now permanently divided kalifate. His reign of thirty-two years was a constant series of struggles, from all of which he came forth victorious, forcing even his enemies to admire his success. It was during the period covered by this long reign that the defeat of Charlemagne occurred at Roncesveaux (A.D. 778), upon which balladists have built the romantic tales of Roland and his sword Durando, of Ganelon and his despicable treason.

The first solicitude of Abbas after he had obliterated the family of his opponents was to secure the kalifate to his own tribe in succession, and in his efforts to accomplish this he showed considerable misdirected sagacity. He determined to make the interest of the family of Abbas one, and to this end divided the realm into several parts, giving each one to a different member of the family. Thus to Mansur, his brother, destined to be his successor, he confided the government of Irak or Mesopotamia; to an uncle he gave Yemen ; to another (Abdalla ben Ali, ben Abdalla, ben Abbas), Syria; to another, Bassora; to another, Egypt; and to Abu Muslim, to whom he owed his authority, he assigned Korassan. A nephew was stationed at Kufa, and another relative at Mosul. Africa and Spain gave him no trouble, for they had been taken from him. Having made these arrangements for the permanence of his dynasty, Abul Abbas died at Anbar, on the Euphrates, in the year 754, at the early age of thirty-three.

THE dynasty that Abul Abbas had now founded was destined to continue for five hundred years, and in glory and riches to surpass by far any thing that the Omiades had dreamed of. Mansur ("the Victorious"), brother of Abbas, who was designated by him. as his successor, had been governor of Irak, but at the moment of the kalif's death he was engaged in the performance of the pilgrimage to Mecca in company with that founder of the dynasty, Muslim, who wished to return thanks to Allah for his goodness in giving him success. It was his fortune to be the first to salute Mansur as kalif, and his powerful example was immediately followed by those pilgrims who surrounded him.

At the head of the religious troops Mansur then took up the journey towards Irak, but hardly had he come to the borders of his own territory when he was informed that the means which Abbas had taken to strengthen the family feeling and make the dynasty stable had resulted in giving him a formidable rival. His uncle, Abdalla, who had been the first to adopt the black colors which became those of the dynasty, and who had been rewarded for his services