Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/386

 705–15] strained interpretation, brought within the exemption, as followers of the "Book" of Zoroaster. But idolaters were to be pursued to the bitter end, and utterly rooted out. Such, the plain teaching of the Ḳorʾān, had been the habitual policy hitherto—the policy still, as we have seen, pursued in Central Asia. But in India a new leaf was turned. As Weil remarks—"It no longer was a holy war—with the view, that is to say, of the conversion of the heathen. That object was now dropped. Side by side with Allah, idols might be worshipped, if only tribute were duly paid." And thus, even under Moḥammadan rule, India remained largely a pagan land.

Throughout this reign Muslim armies, commanded generally by leaders of the royal blood, made yearly inroads into Armenia and Asia Minor, which the Greeks, from reverses nearer home, were little able to withstand. In the year 89 a campaign against the Turks on the Caspian was undertaken with notable success. But all other conquests of this reign fade before the conquest of Spain. That was a victory which, though demanding a separate chapter for itself, we must be here content to treat in briefest outline.

Mūsa ibn Noṣair, a Yemeni, was, in 89, appointed governor of the Mediterranean coast to the west of Egypt, by ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, uncle of the Caliph and ruler of Egypt, of which "Africa" was a dependency. His predecessor had already retrieved the disasters that successively befell the Muslim army at Ḳairawān: and Mūsa, having consolidated his power in the older districts, now, with the aid of his two sons, pushed the Muslim conquests to the Farthest West. In successive engagements at Sūs and Tlemsen, he completely overthrew the Berbers, took incredible multitudes prisoners, and at last brought the native population, even to the bounds