pe dominates Asia, it is far
from certain that this condition will be permanent.

In spiritual matters Europe owes a balance of indebtedness to Asia, and
by far the greater part of it to the Semites. The Phoenician alphabet
and Arabian numerals are capital borrowed and yielding how enormous a
usufruct! Above all, Asiatic religions--albeit the greatest of them
was the child of Hellas as well as of Judaea--have conquered the whole
world save a few savage tribes. Ever since the cry of "There is no God
but Allah and Mahomet is his prophet" had aroused the Arabian nomads
from their age-long slumber, it was as a religious warfare that the
contest of the continents revealed itself. After the scimitar had
swept the Greek Empire out of Asia Minor and had cut Spain from
Christendom, the crusades and the rise of the Spanish kingdoms had
gradually beaten it back. But while the Saracen was being slowly but
surely driven from the western peninsula, the banner of the Crescent in
the east was seized by a race with a genius for war inversely
proportional to its other gifts. [Sidenote: The Turks] The Turks, who
have never added to the arts of peace anything more important than the
fabrication of luxurious carpets and the invention of a sensuous bath,
were able to found cannon and to drill battalions that drove the armies
of nobler races before them. From the sack of Constantinople in 1453
to the siege of Vienna in 1529 and even to some extent long after that,
the {449} majestic and terrible advance of the janizaries threatened
the whole fabric of Europe.

[Sidenote: Selim I, 1512-20]

Under Sultan Selim I the Turkish arms were turned to the east and
south. Persia, Kurdistan, Syria and Egypt were crushed, while the
title of Caliph, and with it the spiritual leadership of the Mahommetan
world, was wrested from the last of the Abassid dynasty. But it was
under his successor, Suleiman the Magnificent, [Sidenote: Suleiman
1520-6] that the banner of the prophet, "fanned by conquest's crimson
wing," was borne to the heart of Europe. Belgrade and Rhodes were
captured, Hungary completely overrun, and Vienna besieged. The naval
exploits of Khair-ed-din, called Barbarossa, carried the terror of the
Turkish arms into the whole Mediterranean, subdued Algiers and defeated
the Christian fleets under Andrew Doria.

On the death of Suleiman the Crescent Moon had attained the zenith of
its glory. The vast empire was not badly administered