the
East (a tradition largely induced by racial and climatic factors[3]) was
toward absolutism. This tradition had been interrupted by the inrush of
the wild libertarianism of the desert. But the older tendency presently
reasserted itself, stimulated as it was by the political transformation
of the caliphate from theocratic, democracy to despotism.

This triumph of absolutism in the field of government in fact assured
its eventual triumph in all other fields as well. For, in the long run,
despotism can no more tolerate liberty of thought than it can liberty of
action. Some of the Damascus caliphs, to be sure, toyed with Motazelism,
the Ommeyyads being mainly secular-minded men to whom freethinking was
intellectually attractive. But presently the caliphs became aware of
liberalism's political implications. The Motazelites did not confine
themselves to the realm of pure philosophic speculation. They also
trespassed on more dangerous ground. Motazelite voices were heard
recalling the democratic days of the Meccan caliphate, when the
Commander of the Faithful, instead of being an hereditary monarch, was
elected by the people and responsible to public opinion. Some bold
spirits even entered into relations with the fierce fanatic sects of
inner Arabia, like the Kharijites, who, upholding the old desert
freedom, refused to recognize the caliphate and proclaimed theories of
advanced republicanism.

The upshot was that the caliphs turned more and more toward the
conservative theologians as against the liberals, just as they favoured
the monarchist Neo-Arabs in preference to the intractable pure-blooded
Arabs of the desert. Under the Abbasides the government came out frankly
for religious absolutism. Standards of dogmatic orthodoxy were
established, Motazelites were persecuted and put to death, and by the
twelfth century A.D. the last vestiges of Saracenic liberalism were
extirpated. The canons of Moslem thought were fixed. All creative
activity ceased. The very memory of the great Motazelite doctors faded
away. The Moslem mind was closed, not to be re-opened until our own day.

By the beginning of the eleventh century the decline of Saracenic
civilization had become so pronounced that change was clearly in the
air. Having lost their early vigour, the Neo-Arabs were to see their
political power pass into other hands. These political heirs of the
Neo-Arabs were the Turks. The Turks were a western branch of that
congeries of nom