With the details of those old wars between Turks and Christians this book has no direct concern. The wars themselves should simply be noted as a chronic barrier between East and West. As for the Moslem East, with its declining Saracenic civilization bowed beneath the brutal Turkish yoke, it was presently exposed to even more terrible misfortunes. These misfortunes were also of Turanian origin. Toward the close of the twelfth century the eastern branches of the Turanian race were welded into a temporary unity by the genius of a mighty chieftain named Jenghiz Khan. Taking the sinister title of "The Inflexible Emperor," this arch-savage started out to loot the world. He first overran northern China, which he hideously ravaged, then turned his devastating course toward the west. Such was the rise of the terrible "Mongols," whose name still stinks in the nostrils of civilized mankind. Carrying with them skilled Chinese engineers using gunpowder for the reduction of fortified cities, Jenghiz Khan and his mounted hosts proved everywhere irresistible. The Mongols were the most appalling barbarians whom the world has ever seen. Their object was not conquest for settlement, not even loot, but in great part a sheer satanic lust for blood and destruction. They revelled in butchering whole populations, destroying cities, laying waste countrysides—and then passing on to fresh fields.
Jenghiz Khan died after a few years of his westward progress, but his successors continued his work with unabated zeal. Both Christendom and Islam were smitten by the Mongol scourge. All eastern Europe was ravaged and re-barbarized, the Russians showing ugly traces of the Mongol imprint to this day. But the woes of Christendom were as nothing to the woes of Islam. The Mongols never penetrated beyond Poland, and western Europe, the seat of Western civilization, was left unscathed. Not so Islam. Pouring down from the north-east, the Mongol hosts whirled like a cyclone over the Moslem world from India to Egypt, pillaging, murdering, and destroying. The nascent civilization of mediæval Persia, just struggling into the light beneath the incubus of Turkish harryings, was stamped flat under the Mongol hoofs, and the Mongols then proceeded to deal with the Moslem culture-centre—Bagdad. Bagdad had declined considerably from the gorgeous days of Haroun-al-Rashid, with its legendary million souls. However, it was still a great city, the seat of the caliphate and the unquestioned centre of Saracenic civilization. The Mongols stormed it (a.d. 1258), butchered its entire population, and literally wiped Bagdad off the face of the earth. And even this was not the worst. Bagdad was the capital of Mesopotamia. This "Land between the Rivers" had, in the very dawn of history, been reclaimed from swamp and desert by the patient labours of half-forgotten peoples who, with infinite toil, built up a marvellous system of irrigation that made Mesopotamia the perennial garden and granary of the world. Ages had passed and Mesopotamia had known many masters, but all these conquerors had respected, even cherished, the irrigation works which were the source of all prosperity. These works the Mongols wantonly, methodically destroyed. The oldest civilization in the world, the cradle of human culture, was hopelessly ruined; at least eight thousand years of continuous human effort went for naught, and Mesopotamia became the noisome land it still remains to-day, parched during the droughts of low water, soaked to fever-stricken marsh in the season of river-floods, tenanted only by a few mongrel fellahs inhabiting wretched mud villages, and cowed by nomad Bedouin browsing their flocks on the sites of ancient fields.
The destruction of Bagdad was a fatal blow to Saracenic civilization, especially in the East. And even before that dreadful disaster it had received a terrible blow in the West. Traversing North Africa in its early days, Islam had taken firm root in Spain, and had so flourished there that Spanish Moslem culture was fully abreast of that in the Moslem East. The capital of Spanish Islam was Cordova, the seat of the Western caliphate, a mighty city, perhaps more wonderful than Bagdad itself. For centuries Spanish Islam lived secure, confining the Christians to the mountainous regions of the north. As Saracen vigour declined, however, the Christians pressed the Moslems southward. In 1213 Spanish Islam was hopelessly broken at the tremendous battle of Las Navas de Tolosa. Thenceforth, for the victorious Christians it was a case of picking up the pieces. Cordova itself soon fell, and with it the glory of Spanish Islam, for the fanatical Christian Spaniards extirpated Saracenic civilization as effectually as the pagan Mongols were at that time doing. To be sure, a remnant of the Spanish Moslems held their ground at Granada, in the extreme south, until the year Columbus discovered America, but this was merely an episode. The Saracen civilization of the West was virtually destroyed.
Meanwhile the Moslem East continued to bleed under the Mongol scourge. Wave after wave of Mongol raiders passed over the land, the last notable invasion being that headed by the famous (or rather infamous) Tamerlane, early in the fifteenth century. By this time the western Mongols had accepted Islam, but that made little difference in their conduct. To show that Tamerlane was a true scion of his ancestor Jenghiz Khan, it may be remarked that his foible was pyramids of human skulls, his prize effort being one of 70,000 erected after the storming of the Persian city of Ispahan. After the cessation of the Mongol incursions, the ravaged and depopulated Moslem East fell under the sway of the Ottoman Turks.
The Ottoman Turks, or "Osmanli," were originally merely one of the many Turkish hordes which entered Asia Minor after the downfall of Byzantine rule. They owed their greatness mainly to a long line of able sultans, who gradually absorbed the neighbouring Turkish tribes and used this consolidated strength for ambitious conquests both to east and west. In 1453 the Osmanli extinguished the old Byzantine Empire by taking Constantinople, and within a century thereafter they had conquered the Moslem East from Persia to Morocco, had subjugated the whole Balkan Peninsula, and had advanced through Hungary to the walls of Vienna. Unlike their Mongol cousins, the Ottoman Turks built up a durable empire. It was a barbarous sort of empire, for the Turks understood very little about culture. The only things they could appreciate were military improvements. These, however, they thoroughly appreciated and kept fully abreast of the times. In their palmy days the Turks had the best artillery and the steadiest infantry in the world, and were the terror of Europe.
Meantime Europe was awakening to true progress and higher civilization. While the Moslem East was sinking under Mongol harryings and Turkish militarism, the Christian West was thrilling to the Renaissance and the discoveries of America and the water route to India. The effect of these discoveries simply cannot be over-estimated. When Columbus and Vasco da Gama made their memorable voyages at the end of the fifteenth century, Western civilization was pent up closely within the restricted bounds of west-central Europe, and was waging a defensive and none-too-hopeful struggle with the forces of Turanian barbarism. Russia lay under the heel of the Mongol Tartars, while the Turks, then in the full flush of their martial vigour, were marching triumphantly up from the south-east and threatening Europe's very heart. So strong were these Turanian barbarians, with Asia, North Africa, and eastern Europe in their grasp, that Western civilization was hard put to it to hold its own. Western civilization was, in fact, fighting with its back to the wall—the wall of a boundless ocean. We can hardly conceive how our mediæval forefathers viewed the ocean. To them it was a numbing, constricting presence; the abode of darkness and horror. No wonder mediæval Europe was static, since it faced on ruthless, aggressive Asia, and backed on nowhere. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, the sea-wall became a highway, and dead-end Europe became mistress of the ocean—and thereby mistress of the world.
The greatest strategic shift of fortune in all human history had taken place. Instead of fronting hopelessly on the fiercest of Asiatics, against whom victory by direct attack seemed impossible, the Europeans could now flank them at will. Furthermore, the balance of resources shifted in Europe's favour. Whole new worlds were unmasked whence Europe could draw limitless wealth to quicken its home life and initiate a progress that would soon place it immeasurably above its once-dreaded Asiatic assailants. What were the resources of the stagnant Moslem East compared with those of the Americas and the Indies? So Western civilization, quickened, energized, progressed with giant strides, shook off its mediæval fetters, grasped the talisman of science, and strode into the light of modern times.
Yet all this left Islam unmoved. Wrapping itself in the tatters of Saracenic civilization, the Moslem East continued to fall behind. Even its military power presently vanished, for the Turk sank into lethargy and ceased to cultivate the art of war. For a time the West, busied with internal conflicts, hesitated to attack the East, so great was the prestige of the Ottoman name. But the crushing defeat of the Turks