Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 2.djvu/228

 (i86) BOOK VII. INDIAN SARACENIC ARCHITECTURE. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. FROM a very early period in the world's history a great group of civilised nations existed in Western Asia between the Mediterranean and the Indus. They lived apart, having few relations with their neighbours, except of war and hatred, and served rather to separate than to bring together the Indian and European communities which flourished beyond them on either hand. Alexander's great raid was the first attempt to break through this barrier, and to join the East and West by commercial or social interchanges. The steady organisation of the Roman empire succeeded in consolidating what that brilliant conqueror had sketched out. During the permanence of her supremacy the space intervening between India and Europe was bridged over by the order she maintained among the various communities established in Western Asia, and there seemed no reason why the intercourse so established should be interrupted. Unsuspected, however, by the Roman world, two nomad nations, uninfluenced by its civilisation, hung on either flank of this great line of communication, ready to avail themselves of any moment of weakness that might occur. The Arabs, as the most impetuous, and nearest the centre, were the first to break their bounds ; and in the course of the 7th century Syria, Persia, Egypt, and the north of Africa became theirs. Spain was conquered, and India nearly shared the same fate. Under Mu'awiah, the first Khalifah of the Umayyades, attempts were made to cross the Indus by the southern route that which the Skythians had successfully followed a short time before. Both these attempts failed, but under Walid, Muhammad ibn Qasim, A.H. 93 (A.D. 712), they did