THE RISE OF ISLAM 255

Koran, " and in what hath been sent down tc us and what
hath been sent down to Abraham and Ismael and Isaac and
Jacob and the tribes, and in what was given to Moses and
to Jesus and to the prophets from their Lord. We make no
•difference between them ; and to Him we are resigned ; and
-who so desireth any other religion than Islam, it shall by
no means be accepted from him, and in the next world he
-will be among the lost" (iii., 78-79).

The conquests of Islam were very rapid. They extended,
in about a century, over the whole of Arabia, Asia-Minor,
North Africa from Egypt to the Atlantic, the Iberian penin-
sula, Persia, Afghanistan, Turkestan, and Sind. This was
partly due to the innate driving force of the new faith, and
partly owing to the weakness of Europe and Persia. The
Eastern Roman Empire under Heraclius and Persia under
the Sassanian Khosroes II had exhausted each other by
•incessant war. They could offer no effective resistance against
the new force. In the West, however, the Islamic thrust
•across the Pyrenees into Gaul was checked by Charles Martel
at the battle of Tours in 732 A.D. In the East, already in
717 A.D. they had failed to carry Constantinople by storm,
"but in 737 at the battle of Kadessia Persia was subjugated.
"" At* the dose of the first century of the Hegira ", Gibbon
observes, "the caliphs were the most potent and absolute
monarchs of the globe." Though we may not enter into the
•chequered history of the Caliphate we must at least describe
here its glory under the most famous of the Caliphs, viz.
Haroun-al-Raschid of the Arabian Nights, who died in 809
.A.D. In this time, according to Sir Mark Sykes,

" The Imperial Court was polished, luxurious, and unlimitedly
wealthy; the capital, Bagdad, was a gigantic mercantile city
.surrounding a huge administrative fortress, wherein every depart-
jnent of state had a properly regulated and well-ordered public