e
more. Rival clans strove for the headship of Islam, and their quarrels
degenerated into bloody civil wars. In this fratricidal strife the
fervour of the first days cooled, and saintly men like Abu Bekr and
Omar, Islam's first standard-bearers, gave place to worldly minded
leaders who regarded their position of "Khalifa"[1] as a means to
despotic power and self-glorification. The seat of government was moved
to Damascus in Syria, and afterward to Bagdad in Mesopotamia. The reason
for this was obvious. In Mecca despotism was impossible. The fierce,
free-born Arabs of the desert would tolerate no master, and their innate
democracy had been sanctioned by the Prophet, who had explicitly
declared that all Believers were brothers. The Meccan caliphate was a
theocratic democracy. Abu Bekr and Omar were elected by the people, and
held themselves responsible to public opinion, subject to the divine law
as revealed by Mohammed in the Koran.

But in Damascus, and still more in Bagdad, things were different. There
the pure-blooded Arabs were only a handful among swarms of Syrian and
Persian converts and "Neo-Arab" mixed-bloods. These people were filled
with traditions of despotism and were quite ready to yield the caliphs
obsequious obedience. The caliphs, in their turn, leaned more and more
upon these complaisant subjects, drawing from their ranks courtiers,
officials, and ultimately soldiers. Shocked and angered, the proud Arabs
gradually returned to the desert, while the government fell into the
well-worn ruts of traditional Oriental despotism. When the caliphate was
moved to Bagdad after the founding of the Abbaside dynasty (A.D. 750),
Persian influence became preponderant. The famous Caliph
Haroun-al-Rashid, the hero of the _Arabian Nights_, was a typical
Persian monarch, a true successor of Xerxes and Chosroes, and as
different from Abu Bekr or Omar as it is possible to conceive. And, in
Bagdad, as elsewhere, despotic power was fatal to its possessors. Under
its blight the "successors" of Mohammed became capricious tyrants or
degenerate harem puppets, whose nerveless hands were wholly incapable of
guiding the great Moslem Empire.

The empire, in fact, gradually went to pieces. Shaken by the civil wars,
bereft of strong leaders, and deprived of the invigorating amalgam of
the unspoiled desert Arabs, political unity could not endure. Everywhere
there occurred revivals of suppressed racial or particularist
tendencies. The ver