he battle of Muta. Though
on that occasion they were successful, the most sanguine could not have
ventured to predict that, before the close of a century, their empire
would become more extensive than any that had ever before existed. Yet
such was the fact. It overthrew the power of the Romans, and rendered
the successors of the Prophet the mightiest and most absolute
sovereigns on earth.

Under the last monarch of the Ommiade race, {230} the Arabian empire,
excepting only an obscure part of Africa, of little account, embraced a
compact territory equal to six months' march of a caravan in length and
four in breadth, with innumerable tributary and dependant states. In
the exercise of their power, the caliphs were fettered neither by
popular rights, the votes of a senate, nor constitutional laws: the
Koran was, indeed, their professed rule of action; but, inasmuch as
they alone were its interpreters, their will was in all cases law. The
loss of Spain to the empire was more than made up by conquests in
India, Tartary, and European Turkey. Samarcand and Timbuctoo studied
with equal devotion the language and religion of the Koran, and at the
temple of Mecca the Moor and the Indian met as brother pilgrims.
Throughout the countries west of the Tigris, the language of Arabia
became the vehicle of popular intercourse; and, although in Persia,
Tartary, and Hindostan the native dialects continued in common use, the
Arabic was also there the sacred tongue.

We will advert to some of the causes which led to this astonishing
success. The leading article of the Mohammedan faith, the unity of
God, harmonized with what Jews and Christians universally believed.
Mohammed propounded this doctrine, by excluding the Deity of Jesus
Christ, so as {231} to fall in with the views of the greater number of
the Christian sectaries. He moreover enjoined practices which, in the
then corrupt state of religion, were beginning widely to prevail. To
the untutored mind of the desert wanderer, his doctrine would thus
possess all the attractiveness he might have heard ascribed to
Christianity, while his being of the same country would secure for him
the greater attention. Systems in which truth and error have been
combined are by no means unwillingly received, especially by those who
are already superstitious and fanatical, and such was pre-eminently the
character of the Arabians. Mohammed's religious, moral, and juridical
system was in general