Rivers" had, in the very dawn of history, been reclaimed from swamp and
desert by the patient labours of half-forgotten peoples who, with
infinite toil, built up a marvellous system of irrigation that made
Mesopotamia the perennial garden and granary of the world. Ages had
passed and Mesopotamia had known many masters, but all these conquerors
had respected, even cherished, the irrigation works which were the
source of all prosperity. These works the Mongols wantonly, methodically
destroyed. The oldest civilization in the world, the cradle of human
culture, was hopelessly ruined; at least eight thousand years of
continuous human effort went for naught, and Mesopotamia became the
noisome land it still remains to-day, parched during the droughts of low
water, soaked to fever-stricken marsh in the season of river-floods,
tenanted only by a few mongrel fellahs inhabiting wretched mud villages,
and cowed by nomad Bedouin browsing their flocks on the sites of ancient
fields.

The destruction of Bagdad was a fatal blow to Saracenic civilization,
especially in the East. And even before that dreadful disaster it had
received a terrible blow in the West. Traversing North Africa in its
early days, Islam had taken firm root in Spain, and had so flourished
there that Spanish Moslem culture was fully abreast of that in the
Moslem East. The capital of Spanish Islam was Cordova, the seat of the
Western caliphate, a mighty city, perhaps more wonderful than Bagdad
itself. For centuries Spanish Islam lived secure, confining the
Christians to the mountainous regions of the north. As Saracen vigour
declined, however, the Christians pressed the Moslems southward. In 1213
Spanish Islam was hopelessly broken at the tremendous battle of Las
Navas de Tolosa. Thenceforth, for the victorious Christians it was a
case of picking up the pieces. Cordova itself soon fell, and with it the
glory of Spanish Islam, for the fanatical Christian Spaniards extirpated
Saracenic civilization as effectually as the pagan Mongols were at that
time doing. To be sure, a remnant of the Spanish Moslems held their
ground at Granada, in the extreme south, until the year Columbus
discovered America, but this was merely an episode. The Saracen
civilization of the West was virtually destroyed.

Meanwhile the Moslem East continued to bleed under the Mongol scourge.
Wave after wave of Mongol raiders passed over the land, the last notable
invasion being that headed by the fa