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IN 711‚ when other Moslem forces were invading distant Spain, Arab soldiers fought their way to the mouth of the Indus River and captured the area called Sind. There they stopped. Nearly three centuries passed before Moslems again menaced India. In 998, a Turk named Mahmud, the amir of Ghazni in Afghanistan, burst through the Khyber Pass with an army of Turkish horsemen to sweep across the Punjab in the first of seventeen raids. Not even the savage, pagan Huns had been as bloodthirsty as these civilized sons of Islam. They hated the Hindus with a special hate. Believing in one God and in the equality of all men, they abominated the Indians for their countless gods and idols and their caste system. In a frenzy of righteousness they slew thousands upon thousands of Indians, smashing their temples and demolishing their cities. The Hindus fought back bravely, but their slow-footed elephants could not keep up with the Turks’ fast horses. They were hindered, too, by the custom which decreed that only members of the warrior caste could fight. Sometimes, when the Hindu defenders of a stronghold saw that the end was near, they carried out a dreadful rite called jauhur. They placed their wives and children on top of a huge pile of wood and set fire to it. Then, as their families were burned alive, they marched forth from the gates, carrying their swords, to meet certain death. The fearful raids of Mahmud “the imagebreaker” were followed by a large-scale Moslem invasion toward the end of the next century. In 1191, Mohammed Ghori, an Afghan not only raided India but occupied it. By destroying Buddhist universities and massacring their priests, he wiped out Buddhism in the land where it began. Soon he controlled most of the north. When a …

UNTIL 1947, when the Moslem state of Pakistan was carved out of its western and eastern corners, the entire triangle of land that points south from the Himalaya Mountains into the Indian Ocean was known as India. Geographers call this huge land mass a subcontinent, because it is almost completely cut off from the rest of the continent of Asia. The Himalayas on its northern frontier form a continuous barrier of rock, the highest in the world. “MOTHER GANGES” From the southern slopes of the Himalayas, two great rivers run down to the ocean. The valley of the Indus River, on the west, is mainly desert; overlooking it are the only breaks in the Himalayan wall, the Khyber Pass and the Bolan Pass. The valley of the Ganges River, on the east, is a broad, fertile plain. Indians consider this river holy and call it “Mother Ganges.” Together, the Indus and Ganges Valleys make up North India. South of the Ganges Plain rise the Vindhya Mountains. To the south stretches a very large region of hilly uplands, called the Deccan. At its western and eastern edges the Deccan drops suddenly to coastal plains, forming long mountain walls called Ghats. The Vindhyas, the Deccan, the Ghats and the strips of lowland along the coasts make up South India. INVADERS FROM THE NORTH Geography influences history. This is particularly true of India — so much so, in fact, that North and South India have really had two separate histories. From earliest times, the people in both parts of the country were mostly poor farmers, living in villages. They shared the beliefs of the Hindu religion. Hinduism taught them that life was only a dream, they paid little attention, north or south, to the events that took place in their lifetimes. Otherwise, however, …

IF Islam had never existed, the Christian countries of the world would probably be less advanced and certainly less varied, than they are. For it was Moslems who gave the West many of its basic skills and ideas. From the eighth to the thirteenth centuries, the Arabs and the other Islamic peoples were the main carriers of western civilization. While Europe was torn by almost constant fighting, Moslem scholars preserved the learning of the ancient world. Other Moslems added discoveries and original works of their own. In time, translators in the parts of Europe that were in closest contact with Islam passed this knowledge on to the Christian world. It helped produce a great intellectual and artistic awakening, the Renaissance, which ended the Middle Ages and ushered m modern times. So the West owes much to Islam. Its debt is specially great in philosophy and science. Many cultural treasures would have been lost forever if it had not been for Moslem scholarship. Among them are the works of three of the greatest thinkers of ancient Greece — the philosopher Aristotle, the physician Galen and the astronomer Ptolemy. These works are the foundations on which Renaissance thinkers built modern learning. In one branch of science, astronomy, the Arabs’ superiority is written across the very heavens‚ for most stars hear Arabic names to this day. Example the Acrab (from aqrab, a scorpion), Altair (from al-tair, the flyer) and Deneb (from dhanab, a tail). Allied to astronomy is mathematics. Taking their cue from work done in ancient India, Arab and Persian mathematicians developed algebra, geometry and trigonometry. They also taught Europeans to use the Arabic figures instead of the clumsy numerals based on the letters of the Roman alphabet. Unlike the ancient Greeks, who often came to conclusions by reasoning alone, the scientists …

ACCORDING to their tradition, the Ottoman Turks once belonged to the same Central Asian tribe as the Seljuk Turks. Their ancestors came to Asia Minor with the Seljuks. In time, they began to challenge the authority of their fellow Turks. The Ottomans took their name from a chieftain called Othman, who in 1299 became the emir of Seljuk lands bordering on the Byzantine Empire. Othman declared holy war on his Christian neighbours. His son Orkhan captured the city of Brusa and in 1362 Orkhan’s son Murad took Adrianople, beyond the strait and sea that separated Asia Minor from Europe. Thereafter, Murad and his son Bayezid pressed forward on two fronts–against Serbs, Bulgars and other Balkan peoples in southeast Europe and against Byzantines and Seljuks in Asia Minor. By 1400, the Ottomans had conquered Macedonia and Bulgaria, pushed the Byzantines out of Asia Minor and swept the Seljuk emirs from their thrones. In that year, however, Timur attacked the eastern Bank of their kingdom. After devastating Syria, he came back and crushed the Ottoman army near Ankara, taking Sultan Bayezid captive. He restored the Seljuk emirs to their posts. When Bayezid died in 1405, his three sons immediately began to fight over their inheritance. Their struggle raged for ten years. At last Sultan Mohammed came out the winner, with both of his brothers dead. These civil wars, coming so soon after the Mongol invasion, left the land and the people exhausted. The Ottomans’ fighting spirit soon revived. Under Mohammed and his son Murad II, Turkish armies again advanced across southeast Europe. In 1443, a huge army made up of Rumanians, Hungarians, Poles, Germans and Frenchmen defeated them. Five years later, however, they beat back another massive Christian attack in Serbia. Murad’s son Mohammed II, became sultan in Adrianople in 1451. He …

LIKE THEIR relatives the Mongols, the Turks began as wandering herdsmen in Central Asia. Their first contact with Islam was as victims rather than victors. When Arab armies overran the southern part of their homeland in the eighth century, many Turks were captured and enslaved. Recognizing their talent for fighting, their new masters enrolled them in their armies. In time, many of them reached high positions in the lands of their adopted religion. About the middle of the tenth century, tribesmen from Turkistan, led by a chief named Seljuk, settled near the city of Bokhara. There they became converted to the Sunnite creed of Islam. From Bokhara, Seljuk set out on a career of conquest. His sons carried on, fighting their way slowly across Western Asia. At last, in 1055, Seljuk’s grandson Tughril took Baghdad. Tughril left the city in charge of his officers and went away. When he came back the next year, the Abbasid capital greeted him with elaborate ceremony. The caliph, wearing Mohammed’s own cloak and carrying his cane, named Tughril “King of the East and of the West.” Officially, Tughril became al-sultan, “he with authority.” From then on, Turkish sultans of the Seljuk family were to control the caliphate for a century and a half, using the Abbasid caliphs as pawns. THE SELJUK TURKS As Turkish tribesmen rushed to enlist in their armies, the Seljuks pushed their conquests outward in all directions. Soon western Asia was again united — as in the days of al-Mansur, Harun and al Mamun — in a mighty Moslem kingdom. Tughril’s successor, Alp Arslan, whose odd-sounding name meant “hero-lion” in Turkish, seized the capital of Christian Armenia. In 1071 he defeated the main army of the Byzantines, taking the emperor captive. Heading west, Seljuk soldiers penetrated the valleys of Asia Minor. …

In 264 B. C., the people of Rome met in a noisy session of their assembly. The question before them was: “Peace or War?” The Roman legions had proved their strength in winning all of Italy. Now the time had come to decide whether or not to risk the troops in wars away from the peninsula. Meeting with the assembly was a representative from Messana, an independent town on Sicily, just across the narrow channel from the tip of Italy. Troops from Carthage had attacked the town and captured it. Now Messana begged for help from Rome. The Senate, knowing well the power of Carthage, wanted to say no. In the assembly were many men who had fought in the legions, men who were proud and sure of their strength. When the agreements dragged on, they clamoured for a vote and the assembly voted for war. Dido’s curse – the burning hatred between her city of Carthage and Rome, the city of Aeneas – had come true at last. Even if the legend of Dido was only a story, the war itself was curse enough. From one Sicilian town it spread to half of the Mediterranean, a full-scale war between the greatest powers of the West. Once begun, it went on for 119 years and ended only when one of the two powers was utterly destroyed. Carthage was perhaps the richest city in the world, the international headquarters of merchant-princes who could afford to buy anything – luxuries, men, ships or cities. It was three times the size of Rome. It had rows of magnificent buildings and two fine harbours, one for merchant vessels and one for ships of war. The city was just as famous, however, for its dishonesty and cruelty. The god of Carthage was Baal, a greedy, …

THROUGHOUT THE eleventh century, the divided Arab Empire became weaker in all its parts. Meanwhile, the Christian lands to the north became stronger. Adventures from northern France snatched Sicily and Southern Italy from the Arabs. The pope called on the rulers of Europe for a united Christian attack on the Moslems. By the end of the century, European knights in chain-mail armour were streaming into Syria by land and sea, determined to recapture the holy places of their religion. This campaign was the first of many. The Crusades dragged on for two centuries, with long periods of peace coming between bouts of fighting. Christian kings and noblemen carved small states out of Moslem territory, only to lose them. In 1099, Frankish troops seized Jerusalem, the Christians’ holy city, and made it the capital of a kingdom. In 1187 Saladin reconquered the country for Islam. After the Moslems forced the last Crusaders to leave Syria in 1291, only the island of Cyprus remained under the Christian flag. So, in the end, although the Crusades did not change the balance of power between Christianity and Islam, they left behind bitter memories which were to poison Moslem-Christian relations for centuries. Not all of the results were bad, however. The Crusaders, who came to the Near East convinced of their own superiority, found that their despised enemies knew more than they did about a great many things. They took the knowledge they had gained home to Europe. The brave deeds of the warriors on both sides gave rise to thousands of poems, songs and tales which enriched the literatures of Europe and Islam. The Christian heroes included two kings — Richard the Lion Hearted of England and Louis IX of France, who was made a saint. Among the Moslem heroes, the most famous were …

IN 750, when the first Abbasid caliph ordered a wholesale massacre of the family that had ruled before him, hardly any of the Omayyads came out alive. One who did was a twenty-year-old youth named Abd-al-Rahman, a grandson of the tenth Omayyad caliph. Fleeing from a Bedouin camp on the Euphrates, he wandered in disguise through Palestine, Egypt and North Africa. Again and again he barely escaped being discovered and seized by Abbasid spies. His desperate flight lasted, altogether, five years. Finally he came to the town of Ceuta, on the northwest coast of Africa, where some Berber chieftains, who were uncles of his on his mother’s side, gave him shelter. The young man sent word across the Strait of Gibraltar to the chiefs of the Moslem divisions in southern Spain. Being Syrians, and therefore loyal to the Omayyads, the officers were overjoyed. They sent a ship to fetch him. Soon, he commanded a sizable army of Arabs and Berbers. When he led his soldiers through the countryside, the cities opened .their gates to him, one after another. The worried Abbasid governor tried to bribe him with rich presents‚ but he refused them. In May, 756, he captured the Spanish capital, Cordova. Within a few years be held all but the northern part of the Spanish peninsula. CONQUEST OF SPAIN Not long after this, the new Omayyad regime successfully defied the two most powerful rulers in the world. In 763, a governor of Spain appointed by al-Mansur was assassinated on Abd-al-Rahman’s orders. Abd-al-Rahman had the governor’s head sent to the caliph wrapped in a black Abbasid flag. Al-Mansur was beside himself with rage‚ but he was too busy fighting his enemies at home to answer the insult with force. In 778, Abd-al-Rahman and his Arab-Berber army defeated an army of …

UNDER THE Omayyads, who ruled from 661 to 750, Islam had grown into a mighty empire. Arabic had become its language, while the Arabs, in turn, had picked up useful skills from the peoples they had conquered. The state had grown rich from the tribute paid by non-Moslems and the land tax paid by landowners. Though the caliphs were mainly concerned with pleasure and power, they had not neglected religion completely. They had built the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and the Omayyad Mosque in Damascus — two magnificent sanctuaries which were the holiest places in Islam after the Kaaba and the Medina mosque. The believers had become divided, as they would remain divided, into Sunnites and Shiites. Now it was the turn of the Abbasids, who were to rule over the eastern part of the Arab Empire from 750 to 1258. Their first century of power was the Golden Age of Islam. Of all thirty-seven Abbassid caliphs, three stand out above the rest: al-Mansur, Harun al-Raschid and al-Mamun. Although he reigned after his brother the Bloodshedder, al-Mansur (754-775) was the real founder of the dynasty. It was he who firmly established it in power. He crushed a rebellion of Shiites. He raided the border strongholds of the Byzantines. He appointed the first vizier, or chief advisor. This practice, copied from the courts of the Persian emperors, was carried on by all the caliphs who came after him. BAGHDAD AND ITS RULERS Al-Mansur’s greatest achievement was building Baghdad, the fabled city of The Arabian Nights. He himself chose the site on the banks of the Tigris. Constructed in four years by a hundred thousand architects and workmen, Baghdad became the imperial capital of the Abbasids. It also became one of the greatest centres of trade in the world. To …

THE FIRST three caliphs — Abu Bakr, Omar and Othman — had all known — Mohammed well. In 656, Othman, an old man in his eighties, was stabbed to death by a band of rebels. They believed that the right to be caliph belonged to Mohammed’s son-in-law, Ali. Sometime later, Ali defeated his rivals for power in battle and proclaimed himself caliph. Instead of Medina, he chose as his capital the new Arab city of al-Kufah, in Iraq. All but one of the leaders of Islam swore loyalty to Ali. The exception was Muawiyah, the governor of Syria, who set out to avenge Othman. Holding the dead caliph’s blood-stained shirt above his head in the mosque of Damascus, he accused Ali of Othman‘s murder. He challenged Ali to produce the actual murderers or resign. ALI AND THE OMAYYADS Muawiyah was certainly ambitious‚ but his real quarrel with Ali was political, not personal. The question was whether al-Kufah or Damascus, Iraq or Syria, was to be the center of the Arab world. Soon the quarrel became a war, and two great armies stood face to face on the banks of the Euphrates. Instead of clashing, however, the Iraqi and Syrian soldiers merely raided each other’s camps, for neither side was eager to spill Moslem blood. Nevertheless, after a few weeks it began to look as if Ali’s forces would win. Then Muawiyah’s general Amr, the conqueror of Egypt, had a clever idea. He ordered his men to tie copies of the Koran to their lances and hoist them aloft. Fighting stopped immediately. The signal meant that the two sides should settle their differences by peaceful discussion, letting the holy word of Allah be their guide. To spare Moslem lives, Ali agreed. His decision had serious results. By accepting Amr’s suggestion, the …