Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/147

 THE EASTERN EMPIRE 135 Othman was killed by the adherents of Ali, the prophet's son-in-law, who was proclaimed kaliph. His title was im- mediately disputed, and he himself was overthrown. The There was a struggle for some years between Ommayads. Husain, the son of Ali, and the Ommayad family for the kaliphate, which ended in the victory of the Ommayads. The threatened disruption, however, was by no means at an end. The struggle over the succession did not prevent the Saracens from carrying their arms still further to the east, and westward, along the African coast, till they penetrated into Spain on one side and India on the other, although the time had not yet come for the establishment of Islam in these regions. In the direction of Eastern Europe, however, their conquering career met with a tremendous check in the year 718. About the middle of the eighth century the rule of the Ommayads in Asia was challenged by a new family, the Abbasides, who were completely victorious and The established the brief magnificence of the new Abbasides. capital of the kaliphate at Bagdad on the Tigris. In 786 a.d. began the reign of that famous monarch Harun-al-Raschid. Nevertheless, the victory of the Abbasides in the east was promptly followed by the establishment of an opposition kaliphate in the far west by a member of the Ommayad family, Abdur Rahman. The successors of the Emperor Heraclius, who died in 641 a.d., the year after the conquest of Egypt by the Saracens, present no great names. They saw the Saracens win Africa from their nominal sway, attack Sicily, which was still regarded as part of their dominion, and even assail Constantinople. But that feeble family became extinct ; and in the g The year 717 the great Emperor Leo in., called the isaurian Isaurian by reason of his race, and the Iconoclast Em P erors - because of his religious policy, succeeded to the Byzantine throne. It was at this moment that the Ommayads were putting forth their greatest effort against the Islam repu ised empire. They had overrun Asia Minor, and now by Leo the they laid siege to Constantinople. A very few Isaurian ' 717 - years before they had burst into Spain, of which they were