Philip K. Hitti

External and Internal Relations

Under the Mans and early Shihabs Lebanon’s foreign relations were mainly with France and Italy; they involved commercial and missionary activities.

Scientific and Literary Progress

The epoch of translation (ca. 750–850), discussed in a previous chapter (XXIV), was followed by one of creative activity; for the Arabs not only assimilated the ancient lore of Persia and the classical heritage of Greece but adapted both to their own peculiar needs and ways of thinking. In medicine and philosophy their independent work was less conspicuous than in alchemy, astronomy, mathematics and geography. In law, theology, philology and linguistics as Arabs and Moslems they carried on original thinking and research. Their translations, transmuted in no small degree by the Arab mind during the course of several centuries, were transmitted, together with many new contributions, to Europe through Syria, Spain and Sicily and laid the basis of that canon of knowledge which dominated medieval European thought. And transmission, from the standpoint of the history of culture, is no less essential than origination, for had the researches of Aristotle, Galen and Ptolemy been lost to posterity the world would have been as poor as if they had never been produced.

Alexander and his Successors

When in the spring of 334 B.C. a twenty-year-old Macedonian led an army of 35,000 across the Hellespont, in the opposite direction to Darius’ and Xerxes’ crossing, neither he nor anyone else could have foreseen that the map of the Near East was soon to be redrawn and the course of its history changed. The general’s name: Alexander the Great.

Sundry Dynasties in the East

While petty dynasties, mostly of Arab origin, were parcelling out the domains of the caliph in the west, the same process was being carried forward by others, chiefly Turkish or Persian, in the east.

The Umayyad Caliphate of Cordova

When ‘Abd-al-Raḥmān III succeeded his grandfather, ‘Abdullāh, in 912, he was barely twenty-three years of age. ‘Abdullāh had instigated one of his own sons to kill the other, ‘Abd-al-Raḥmān’s father, Muḥammad, on a mere suspicion of disloyalty.1 Later he connived at the murder of his other son, the fratricide, leaving himself childless. At the accession of ‘Abd-al-Raḥmān the vast Moslem state organized by his first namesake had shrunk to Cordova and its environs.

The Umayyad Amirate in Spain

When in 75o the ‘Abbāsids signalized their accession by a general massacre of the members of the house of Umayyah,1one of the very few who escaped was ‘Abd-al-Raḥmān ibn-Mu‘āwiyah,2 a grandson of Hishām, the tenth caliph of Damascus. The story of the narrow escape of this twenty-year-old youth and of his five years’ wandering in disguise through Palestine, Egypt and North Africa, where more than once he barely escaped the vigilant eyes of ‘Abbāsid spies, forms one of the most dramatic episodes in Arabic annals. The flight began from a Bedouin camp on the left bank of the Euphrates where ‘Abd-al-Raḥmān had sought refuge. One day the black standards of the ‘Abbāsids suddenly appeared close by the camp. With his thirteen-year-old brother, ‘Abd-al-Raḥmān dashed into the river. The younger, evidently a poor swimmer, believed the pursuers’ promise of amnesty and returned from midstream, only to be slain; the elder kept on and gained the opposite bank.3

Military Contacts Between East and West: The Crusades

When at the close of the eleventh century the motley hordes of Christendom made their way into Syria to wrest it from Moslem hands, the country presented the spectacle of division and impotence. It was split up among several local Arab chieftains, while in the north the Saljūq Turks were all-powerful and in the south the schismatic Fāṭimids of Egypt held sway. The population was far from being uniform in composition or even in language. The Druzes in southern Lebanon, the Nuṣayrīyah in their northern mountains and their neighbours the Ismā‘īlites, later Assassins, formed three schismatic communities distinct from orthodox Islam. Among the Christian bodies the Maronites of northern Lebanon, who still used Syriac to a considerable extent, constituted the largest minority.

Al-‘Irāq and Persia Conquered

When Khālid in 634 made his memorable dash westward from al-Ḥīrah he left the ‘Irāq front in the hands of his Bedouin ally al-Muthanna ibn-Ḥārithah, sheikh of the banu-Shaybān. In the meantime the Persians were preparing a counter-attack and succeeded in almost annihilating the Arabian bands at the Battle of the Bridge1 near al-Ḥīrah, November 26, 634. Undaunted, al-Muthanna undertook a new raid and in October or November of the following year scored over the Persian general Mihrān a victory at al-Buwayb on the Euphrates. But al-Muthanna was no more than a Bedouin chief, with no Madīnese or Makkan connections, and had not heard of or accepted Islam until after the death of the Prophet. The Caliph ‘Umar therefore chose Sa‘dibn-abi-Waqqāṣ, oneofthose Companions promised Paradise by Muhammad at the conclusion of the Battle of Badr, as commander in chief and sent him at the head of new reinforcements to al-‘Irāq. By that, time the victory of Yarmūk had been won and the fate of Syria sealed. Sa‘d with his 10,000 men measured his strength for the first time with the Persian Rustam, the administrator of the empire, at al-Qādisiyah, not far from al-Ḥīrah.

Early International Relations

We have thus far used the term Arabian for all the inhabitants of the peninsula without regard to geographical location. We must now differentiate between the South Arabians and the North Arabians, the latter including the Najdis of Central Arabia. The geographical division of the land by the trackless desert into northern and southern sections has its counterpart inthe peoples who inhabit it.

The End of Mamlūk Rule

Uhlike the Turkish Baḥris, the Burji Mamlūks were all Circassian with the exception of two: Khushqadam (1461–7) and Timurbugha (1467), who were Greek.1 The Burjis rejected even more emphatically than the Baḥris the principle of hereditary succession; the sultan was only primus inter pares with the real power in the hands of a military oligarchy. Of the twenty-three Burji sultans, whose reigns covered 134 years (1382–1517), nine ruled an aggregate of 124 years. These nine are Barqūq, Faraj, al-Mu’ayyad Shaykh, Barsbāy, Jaqmaq, Īnāl, Khushqadam, Qā’it-bāy and Qānṣawh al-Ghawri.2 The remaining fourteen were almost all of no consequence, and in one year, 1421, three different sultans were installed. Qā’it-bāy’s rule (1468–95) was not only the longest but in some respects the most important and successful.3