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 180 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE operating from the east and south, had met with the same failure. Mohammed had died without naming a successor, and, after the reigns of his father-in-law, Abu-Bekr, and of Mohamme- O mar > the aD l est of his early converts, civil wars dan occurred over the succession. In 66 1, a member ynasties ^ ^ Ommiad (or Umayyad) family, which rep- resented the Meccan aristocracy and the interests of Syria, became caliph, a title meaning the representative or suc- cessor of Mohammed and so both the religious and political head of the Moslem world. He transferred the capital from Medina to Damascus. Under the Caliph Walid (705-715), the Ommiad dynasty reached the height of its prosperity, maintaining a court of brilliant culture, with poets and scholars, and erecting imposing mosques at Damascus and Jerusalem. During his reign the Arabs not only conquered Spain in the West, but ranged as far east as the borders of India and China. In 750, the Ommiads, to whom there had always been much opposition in the East, and who were now weakened by feuds among themselves, gave way to the Abbassids (750-1258), a Persian dynasty claiming descent from Mohammed's uncle, Abbas. They moved the capital farther east to Bagdad. But the western part of the Moslem world broke away from their rule. The Ommiad Abd-er- Rahman, after five years of wandering, escaped to Spain and was recognized as emir at Cordova. It was not, however, until 929 that Abd-er-Rahman III assumed the title of caliph, and that it is strictly correct to speak of the Caliph- ate of Cordova. Several independent Moslem states also arose in North Africa, where the Berbers always inclined to establish governments of their own; these were the germs of the modern Tunis, Algeria, and Morocco. Of their con- quests in Sicily and Italy in the ninth and tenth centuries we shall have occasion to speak elsewhere. In 909, the Fat- imites, so-called from Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed, came into power in North Africa. In 969, they conquered Egypt from the Abbassids, founded the city of Cairo, and henceforth made Egypt the center of their activities, losing