Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/176

 1 64 THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES prosperity, and the Christians were generally prevented from recovering much territory beyond the Ebro and the north- western region of Asturias. In these regions, however, was Decline of formed the nucleus of what subsequently became Saracen the great kingdoms of Leon, Castile, and Aragon. Power. j n the e i even th century the control of the kaliphs collapsed, and the Moorish dominion broke up into princi- palities, in the same sort of fashion as the Christian king- doms of Europe were broken up into dukedoms or counties. Spain ceased even nominally to acknowledge a single ruler. Cordova ceased to be the first city in Spain, while Seville and Granada were rivals for the pride of place. The Christians of the north grew stronger, and the time was at hand for a steady though gradual advance towards the recovery of the peninsula. The western kaliphate, of which the power was in fact limited to Spain, had broken away from the eastern kaliphate, The Eastern with the accession of the Abbasides. Of that Kaliphate. house the most splendid ruler was Harun al Raschid, the contemporary of Charlemagne, and like Charle- magne the centre of legend and romance. The Abbasides were kinsmen of the prophet; but though they had achieved power by the aid of the Shiites, or adherents of the house of Ali, as kaliphs they professed the orthodox creed of the Sunnites. The glory of Bagdad faded after the death of Harun; the magnificent luxury of the capital was of a kind which inevitably leads to demoralisation. Harun's sons struggled for supremacy among themselves j and though one of them, Mamun, succeeded Waning of m making himself a mighty monarch, he did so to the Kaliphate. a great extent by the incorporation of a great army of mercenary soldiers drawn mainly from the north- eastern regions of Turkestan. The kaliphs remained, but the real power passed from the Abbasides to great provincial rulers. Africa, with the exception of Egypt, at a very early stage ceased to give their authority anything more than a nominal recognition. In Egypt itself, a descendant of Ali made himself supreme, and established what was virtually a