ndered
savage persecutions and furious hates. Furthermore, both the Byzantine
and Persian Empires were harsh despotisms which crushed their subjects
to the dust and killed out all love of country or loyalty to the state.
Lastly, the two empires had just fought a terrible war from which they
had emerged mutually bled white and utterly exhausted.

Such was the world compelled to face the lava-flood of Islam. The result
was inevitable. Once the disciplined strength of the East Roman legions
and the Persian cuirassiers had broken before the fiery onslaught of the
fanatic sons of the desert, it was all over. There was no patriotic
resistance. The down-trodden populations passively accepted new masters,
while the numerous heretics actually welcomed the overthrow of
persecuting co-religionists whom they hated far worse than their alien
conquerors. In a short time most of the subject peoples accepted the new
faith, so refreshingly simple compared with their own degenerate cults.
The Arabs, in their turn, knew how to consolidate their rule. They were
no bloodthirsty savages, bent solely on loot and destruction. On the
contrary, they were an innately gifted race, eager to learn and
appreciative of the cultural gifts which older civilizations had to
bestow. Intermarrying freely and professing a common belief, conquerors
and conquered rapidly fused, and from this fusion arose a new
civilization--the Saracenic civilization, in which the ancient cultures
of Greece, Rome, and Persia were revitalized by Arab vigour and
synthesized by the Arab genius and the Islamic spirit. For the first
three centuries of its existence (circ. A.D. 650-1000) the realm of
Islam was the most civilized and progressive portion of the world.
Studded with splendid cities, gracious mosques, and quiet universities
where the wisdom of the ancient world was preserved and appreciated, the
Moslem East offered a striking contrast to the Christian West, then sunk
in the night of the Dark Ages.

However, by the tenth century the Saracenic civilization began to
display unmistakable symptoms of decline. This decline was at first
gradual. Down to the terrible disasters of the thirteenth century it
still displayed vigour and remained ahead of the Christian West. Still,
by the year A.D. 1000 its golden age was over. For this there were
several reasons. In the first place, that inveterate spirit of faction
which has always been the bane of the Arab race soon reappeared onc