Tarik, whom he had unjustly disgraced and punished.
Being convicted of falsehood, on the production by Tarik of the
missing foot of the table of Solomon, the merit of finding which had
been claimed by Musa, he was tortured and deprived of his riches; and
the head of his gallant son Abdulaziz, whom he had left in command in
Spain, was shown to him in public by the Khalif Soliman, the successor
of Walid, with the cruel demand if he knew whose it was. "I do," was
the father's reply: "it is the head of one who fasted and prayed; may
the curse of Allah fall on it if he who slew him is a better man than
he!" But though Musa was thus arrested in the last stage of his
conquering career, so complete was the prostration of the Christians,
that the viceroys who succeeded Abdulaziz, overlooking or disregarding
this yet unsubdued corner of Spain, at once poured their forces across
the Pyrenees, seeking new fields of conquest and glory in the
countries of the Franks. But the antagonists whom they here
encountered, unlike the luxurious Goths of Spain, still preserved the
barbarian valour which they had brought from their German forests. And
As-Samh, (the Zama of the Christian writers,) the first Saracen
general who obtained a footing in France, "fell a martyr to the
faith," with nearly his whole army, in a battle with Eudo, Duke of
Aquitaine, before Toulouse, May 10, A.D. 721. But the fiery zeal of
the Moslems was only stimulated by this reverse. In the course of the
ten following years, their dominion was established as far as the
Rhone and Garonne; till, in 732, the torrent of invasion, headed by
the _Wali_ Abdurrahman, burst into the heart of the country; and the
battle, decisive of the destinies of France, and perhaps of Europe,
was fought between Tours and Poitiers, in October of that year,
(Ramadhan, A.H. 114.) Few details are given by the Arab writers of the
seven days' conflict, in which the ranks of the Moslems were shattered
by the iron arm of Charles Martel; "and the army of Abdurrahman was
cut to pieces at a spot called _Balatt-ush-Shohada_, (the Pavement of
the Martyrs,) he himself being in the number of the slain." Some
confusion here appears, as the same epithet had been applied to the
former battle near Toulouse; but this "disastrous day" of Tours
virtually extinguished the schemes of Arab conquest in France, though
it was not till many years later that they were completely dislodged
from Narbonne, and their other acqu