Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/98

 632–4] also in equipment, the Byzantine must vastly have surpassed the Arab force. But the Bedawi horse excelled in celerity and dash. Their charge, if light, was galling, and so rapidly delivered that ere the surprise was over, the troop itself might be out of sight. The Byzantine army, it is true, had Bedawi auxiliaries as numerous, perhaps, as the whole Muslim army. But their spirit widely differed. The fealty of the Syrian Arab was lax and loose. Christian in name, the yoke of his faith sat lightly on him. Indeed, throughout the empire, Christianity was eaten up of strife and rancour. With reinforcements came a troop of Monks and Bishops, who, bearing banners, waving gold crosses, and shouting that the faith was in jeopardy, sought thus to rouse the passion of the army. The passion roused was often but the scowl of hatred. Bitter schisms then rent the Church, and the cry of the Orthodox for help would strike a far different chord than that of patriotism in the Eutychian and Nestorian breast. Lastly, the social and ancestral associations of the Syrian Bedawi, alien from his Byzantine masters, were in full accord with his brethren from Arabia; and of such instinctive feeling, the invaders knew well to take advantage. With this lukewarm and disunited host, compare the Muslim in its virgin vigour, bound together as one man, and fired with a wild and fanatic fervour to "fight in the way of the Lord," winning thus at one and the same time heavenly favour and worldly fortune. For the survivors there were endless spoil, captive maidens, fertile vales, houses which they builded not, and wells which they had not digged. Should they fall by the sword, there were the Martyr’s prize of paradise, and black-eyed "Houries" waiting impatiently for the happy hour. The soldiers' imagination was inflamed by tales of heaven opened on the very battlefield, and the expiring warrior tended by two virgins wiping away the sweat and dust from off his face, and with the wanton graces of paradise drawing him upwards in their fond embrace. Of an army, nerved by this strange combination of incentives, divine and human,—of the flesh and of the spirit, faith and rapine, heavenly devotion and passion for the sex even in the throes of death,—ten might chase a hundred of the half-hearted Greeks. The 40,000 Muslims were stronger far than the 240,000 of the enemy.