In what precedes, we have examined the chief symbols of the prophetic vision; and seen their suitableness to figure the rise of Islam, and of the Moslem Arabs, in the seventh century. It remains that in the history of the Arab invasions of Christendom we trace the fulfillment of the other intimations given respecting them; intimations in which was foreshown what was most material in their subsequent progress and history.
1. There was indicated, as well by the hieroglyphic itself as by the words of explanation accompanying, that to the Arab cavalry hordes, thus gathered to the smoke of the hellish exhalation, there would be opened a fearful career of conquest over Roman Christendom: one in which they would fly, as it were, with locust-wings, destroy what opposed them with the strength of lions' teeth, and torment the subjugated Christian inhabitants' as with the poison of a scorpion sting. And was there then a correspondence with this in e facts of the subsequent Saracenic history. It was in the year 629 that the Saracens first issued from the desert into Syria, with proclamation of war against Christendom.
They appeared, and they retired: it was but the omen of what was to follow. But in 636 they returned to prosecute their mission in earnest; and behold, within less than three years Syria was subdued. When Damascus had fallen, and then Jerusalem, the unhappy Heraclius, with tears of anguish, bade farewell to the Syrian Province. He saw that it was lost to his crown irretrievably. The Patriarch of Jerusalem, yet more unhappy, had to attend the victor Caliph through it. He muttered desolation is in the as he passed on, "The abomination of desolation is in the Holy Place! "And soon, as if to remind the Christian remnant of the fact, there resounded that voice of the Muezzin, from a mosque erected on the site of Solomon's temple, 'which, except with brief intermission during the reign of the crusaders, has since then never ceased.1
The subjugation of Egypt followed quickly on that of Syria; then, some 20 or 40 years after, that of the African Province; then, at the beginning of the eighth century, that of Spain. All this, within the limits of Roman Christendom: and cotemporaneously, though without those limits, and consequently without the sphere of the Apocalyptic prefigurative vision, that of Persia in the second quarter of the seventh century, and that of North-west India and of Trans-Oxiana at the commencement of the eighth. Let us take, in exemplification of the rapidity an extent of their conquests and destructions, two historical statements.
The one, that in the ten years of Omar's Caliphate, from 634 to 644, the Saracens had reduced to his obedience 36,000 cities or castles, destroyed 4000 churches, and built 1400 mosques for the exercise of the religion of Muhammad. The other, that at the end of the first century of the Hegira, the Arabian empire had been extended to 200 days' journey from East to West, and reached from the confines of Tartary and India to the shores of the Atlantic. "Over all which ample space," says Gibbon, "the progress of the Islamic religion diffused a general resemblance of manners and of opinions:" over all which ample space, we may add, the venom of the scorpion sting of their conquerors was made to rankle in the breasts of the subject Christians.
For indeed the bitter contempt and hatred flowing out' from the Moslem faith towards them could not but be felt perpetually. It was marked in the very terms of appellation, Christian dogs and infidels. 2
The enactments of the capitulations granted them were their every day remembrance's of it. Deprived of the use of arms, like the Helot's of old, and with tribute enforced as their annual life redemption tax, with a different dress enjoined them from their masters, and a more humble mode of riding, an obligation to rise up deferentially in the presence of the meanest Moslem, and to receive, and gratuitously entertain for a certain time, whosoever of them when on a journey might require it, such were the marks of personal degradation ordained in the Capitulations.
And then, in token of the degradation of their religion, that to which, notwithstanding all their superstitions, they clung with fond attachment, there was the prohibition to build new churches, to chime the bells in those retained by them, or to refuse admission into them to the scoffing Moslem, though they regarded his presence as defilement. 3 Add to which, the inducements to apostasy, operating to an incalculable extent, on the young and thoughtless in families more especially, and then the penalty of death against their returning to the Christian faith, the insult moreover to Christian females, and thousand undefinable injuries of oppression; and how could it be but that the bitterness of their lot should be felt, and the poison rankle within them, even as in other days with the Jewish captives in Babylon, so as to make life itself almost a burden? 4
And now we shall be better prepared to consider,
Thirdly, What is said of the locusts having a king over them, "the angel of the bottomless pit; whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon." By Mede this angel is explained as meaning Muhammad. And Daubuz notices a curious fact, as corroborative of that interpretation: I mean that not only during his life-time did the myriads of the Arab Moslems acknowledge Muhammad "as both their prophet and their king, but that, even after his death, they who succeeded him in the headship of the Saracens and of Islam, the Commanders of the Faithful, considered and called themselves Muhammad's Caliphs or Vicars.
The objection to this interpretation is, that in the Apocalypse, wherever angels are mentioned, they seem to have been the angelic spiritual agencies, good or bad by whose unseen instrumentality human affairs are affected. We may however, by a modification of the interpretation, reconcile it in a measure with the proper apocalyptic use of angel, and carry out its point and force much further: viz. by supposing' not Muhammad personally to be intended, but the Spirit of evil that, like the lying Spirit in the mouth of Ahab's prophets, 5 inspired him; and of whom Muhammad was but the mouth and instrument. And then, and as so interpreted, we see not merely a singular fact predicted, but one of important bearing on all the main points of the prophecy.
For the prediction was to this effect, that where so ever the Arab locusts might travel in their career of conquest, there they would carry the false religion of Muhammad with them; there, for however long, be ruled by its laws, and actuated by its spirit. Now this was not a result necessary, or to have been anticipated a' priori. By no means. The Gothic invaders that conquered and settled in the Roman empire, embraced, almost immediately after, the religion of the conquered, and so were rapidly amalgamated into one people with them. The same was the case with the Saxons afterwards, the Hungarians of the tenth century, and other invaders. But as the prediction (thus understood) noted the fact respecting the symbolic locusts, so in the case of the Saracens was it fulfilled.
Through all their conquests, in countries the most remote, the Koran, the book dictated by the Spirit of the abyss to Muhammad, was the code of religion and of law that governed them; and the Caliphs, invested with civil power, were invested simply in virtue of their religious character and office, as Caliph, or Vicars of the false Prophet. And hence, in fact, the perpetuation of their character through this period as destroyers to Christians. For the name of that Spirit of the abyss, their king, was Destroyer. Such it appeared in the doctrine of the Book; such on the field of battle. And when we consider not only the destruction of bodily life resulting, but also the destruction of soul from the poisonous doctrines of Islam, surely the suitableness will be allowed by all, of the name thus given him. Oh what a contrast, (it is one that even Gibbon cannot help alluding to,) what a contrast in character, doctrine, and results to mankind, between the spirit that animated MUHAMMAD and his Koran, and the Spirit of Him and his Gospel against whom Muhammad set himself, the Prince of Princes, the Lord Jesus: the one the Spirit of Peace and Salvation; the other the Abaddon, the Destroyer!
III. But there was a term and limit prescribed to these locusts; a Emit as to effect, a limit as to time. They were not to kill the men of Christendom, so as were the agents under the second woe; i. e. to annihilate them as a political Christian body; but only to torment them. And this was to be for the defined period of 150 days. These are the next points for investigation.
And first, as to the limit in effect. When the reader consults any carefully written history of the Saracens, he will be almost sure to find the notice of their successes followed by a notice of certain remarkable checks that they received after a while; the consequence of which was the preservation of Christendom, both in the east, and in the west. And he will find, intermingled with these statements, expressions of surprise and admiration, at checks such as these occurring, after so long and irresistible a progress of success. 6
1 - Thus, as regards the eastern empire. Twice did the Saracens, in the pride and plenitude of their power, attack the vital part of that division of Christendom, by besieging Constantinople;
1st, in the seven years' siege, which lasted from 668 to 675; 2ndly, in the years 716-718, when Leo the Isaurian was on the imperial throne. Alike on either occasion they were unsuccessful; and obliged to retire, defeated and disgraced, as they had never been before. Similarly, in the west, after that the Visigoth empire in Spain had been all but destroyed, A.D. 711, in the fatal battle of Xerxes, and when, its remnant and only germ of re-vivification being with Pelayo in the mountains of Asturias, the Moorish Saracens, flushed with victory, attacked, in order completely to destroy that remnant, their former success forsook them. They were twice repulsed with great loss, and gave up the enterprise.
Again, and yet more remarkably, in the year 732 when Abdrahman and his Moorish Saracens had prolonged a victorious line of march above 1000 miles, from Gibraltar to the Loire, " adjudging to the obedience of the Prophet whatever yet remained of France or Europe . . and in the full confidence of surmounting all opposition either of nature or of man," 7 at that crisis, when, as Gibbon declares, "it appeared impossible for France to avoid subjugation," in the which case all Europe would probably have fallen, and as regards our own island," the interpretation of the Koran be now taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits demonstrate to a circumcised people the truth and sanctity of the revelation of Muhammad," at that crisis a bulwark was raised up most unexpectedly by the Franks under Charles Martel. The Saracens recoiled broken and discomfited from the blows of him that was called the hammer of Western Christendom; and " Europe owes its existence, its religion, and its liberty, to his victory."
Historians, I repeat, agree in speaking of these deliverances of Christendom as events of which, at the time, there could have been no reasonable anticipation. But to the student of the Apocalypse, who has thus far followed and agreed with me, it will appear all accounted for. It was said to the Saracen locusts, "that they should not kill," not politically annihilate the united church and state of Christendom either in the east, or in any one of the kingdoms of the west; however scorpion-like they might mutilate the political body, and torment the men, its constituents. In attempting to annihilate them, they exceeded their com- mission, and were repulsed.
Again there was a restriction as to time. It was to a period of five months, or 150 days, 8that their commission was confined, to injure the inhabitants of Roman Christendom. In order to the understanding of which restrictive clause, (a clause that will necessarily detain us some length of time,) it is important, indeed essential, that the reader should bear in mind two things: 1st, that the period noted is not that of the duration of the symbolic locusts, but of their aggressively striking, injuring, and tormenting the men of Roman Christendom, with their lion-like teeth and scorpion-stings: 9 2ndly, that the period intended by the 150 days is, if I am right, 150 years. For I adhere to the principle of expounding a day as significant of a year, in the chronological periods of symbolic prophecy:-a principle early suggested, as I have already intimated and partially applied, by certain old prophetic expositors of eminence; and subsequently, and in more modern times, adopted and fully carried out by Mede, and most other English Protestant interpreters after him. An examination of the objections lately urged against it, by Mr. Maitland and others, will of course be necessary. This I reserve for my comment on Rev. 13, as the most fitting occasion. For the present I will only repeat my deliberate conviction of the truth of the principle; and beg attention to the remark that, in its application both here and elsewhere, it will be my care to allow myself no more license or latitude than such as we find distinct precedent and authority for in other scripture chronological prophecies; prophecies allowed on all hands to have received their fulfillment.
This premised, we turn to the history of the Saracenic warfare against Roman Christendom, to see whether there be discernible in it any well-marked period of five symbolic months, or 150 years, defining what we may call the intensity of the woe: in other words that of the irresistible aggressive movement of the symbolic locusts; (irresistible, except with the reserve implied in the restriction as to effect already noted;) and that of the full out flowing of the venom of their scorpion-stings, to wound and to torment.
In the carrying out of which inquiry, the first question of course must be, from what act or event, as an epoch, to date the commencement of the period. And here, just as in regard of those two famous ancient prophecies, the one Jeremiah's, respecting the seventy years of the Babylonian captivity, the other Daniel's, respecting the seventy weeks to the Messiah,' it is not one epoch only that suggests itself, as that from which we might reasonably date the commencement of the period we speak of, but two or three. Thus did we know when first the idea established itself in Muhammad's mind of preaching his new and false religion, that perhaps might be considered a fit epoch of commencement; as being the time when the key of the abyss was given him.10 Next there was that of the year A.D. 609, when Muhammad began privately to preach his divine mission, and so, in the eyes of his family, to open the pit of the abyss; and, yet again, that of 612, when he first publicly announced his prophetic mission,11 and so publicly caused the smoke of the pit of darkness to rise up before the eyes of men.
Fourthly, there was the epoch of the year 629, when the locust armies first issued out of the smoke, to make their attack on Syrian Christendom.12 Now out of these four epochs I agree with Daubuz in selecting the third. I prefer it to the two first, because in of the term of duration of any public woe, we ought, I think, to have some noted public act, and not any thing merely private, to mark both its commencement and its end. And I am led to it, in preference to the la8t, because the commencing epoch of 612 has, as we shall see, a suitable epoch of termination corresponding with it, whereas that of 629 has none. 13
It is to be observed, that in the circumstances of this public opening of his mission, A. D. 612, there was then for the first time expressed that principle of propagating his false religion by violence and with the sword, which made his followers a woe to all the countries near them, and was specially a declaration of war on Christendom. Nay, more: the organization might then be said to have begun, the destroying commission to have been given, and in the person of Ali, whom Muhammad named the Lion of God, the locust-form, with its lion-teeth and scorpion-sting, to have been discernible in the smoke from the just opened pit. For what passed on that occasion?
"Who," said Muhammad, after announcing his mission, will be my Vizier and Lieutenant? "O Prophet, replied Ali, "I am the man. Whoever rises against thee, will dash out his teeth, tear out his eyes, break his legs, rip up his belly. O Prophet, I will be thy Vizier." On which I find Mr. Hallam thus observing: "These words of Muhammad's early and illustrious disciple are, as it were, a text upon which the commentary expands into the whole Saracen history." And, just as in the case of the 400 years of affliction and servitude, predicted as to befall Abraham's seed, the epoch of Isaac's mocking by Ishmael has by some been fixed on as that of the commencement of the period, because that in that mocking laugh there was manifested the spirit and the germ of what was more fully developed afterwards, So, in the case before us, the epoch of the announcement and first manifestation of the bitter, fanatic, persecuting spirit of Islam against all opposers, or even dissentients, may as justly be fixed on as that of the commencement of the 150 years of the chief virulence of the Saracen woe. "After the year 612," says the Modern Universal History, "Muhammad sought to propagate his religion with all his might."14
But supposing the epoch of the commencement of the woe thus fixed, when may we consider that its five months period of intensity ended ? Not evidently during the progress of the aggressive religious wars and victories of the Saracen Moslems. Not, that is to say, during the first prophetic month (or thirty years) from this commencing epoch of 612, in the course of which Syria and Egypt fell before them: not during the second month, in which month Cilicia was reduced to obedience, their inroads advanced to near Constantinople, and the African province invaded: not during the third month, that in which the subjugation of Africa was all but completed; or the fourth, in which Spain was subdued, and the south and centre of France almost to the Loire. 15 The earliest date for the end of the chief intensity of the Saracen woe, that can for a moment be thought probable, is that of the battle of Poitiers, already spoken of, in which Charles Martel defeated them, and which occurred in October 732, the beginning of the fifth prophetic month. But though defeated, or at least repulsed, on that memorable occasion, 16 their power and spirit to aggress and to torment, with all the bitterness of fanaticism, was not terminated. " The vanquished spoilers," says Mosheim, "soon recovered their strength and ferocity ; and returned with new violence to their devastations." In France the strength and power of the Saracens was so far from being crushed, that we find its Southern districts continued in subjection to them till the middle of this century.
Charles Martel besieged Narbonne, the chief town of the Saracens, in vain after the battle. In 739 be had to invoke aid from Luitprand, King of the Lombards against the Saracens, who had taken a the chief cities in Province, and extended their ravages as high as Vienne, near Lyons. 17 Nor were they finally driven out till some 15 or 20 years afterwards. 18 In Spain the tide of' their success and supremacy, notwithstanding the ill success of their efforts at total extinguishing Pelayo and the Gothic remnant, had not yet begun to ebb.19 In Africa, some twenty years after the battle of Poitiers, the torment of the scorpion-sting so operated, as to induce nearly the whole Christian population of the province to apostatize, and become Mussulman. 20 From east to west, throughout the vast Islamic world, one Caliph still governed the locust hordes in the name of the Prophet. Their power remained unbroken.
But just about the middle of the eighth century a change occurred, marked by two events of such a nature, and such importance, as to be regarded by historians, both the one and the other, as constituting epochs most memorable in the Saracen history. The change was this. The Abbassides, descendants of a different family of the early followers of Muhammad, in the year 750 supplanted the Ommiades in the Caliphate. And then what followed?
First the one and only survivor of the deposed and proscribed family escaped to Spain: and behold be was there received, acknowledged, and established as the lawful Caliph. This was in the year A.D. 755. So at length was the Caliphate divided. There was thenceforth a Caliph in the west, in opposition to the Caliph in the east. "The Colossus," says Sismondi, "that had bestridden the whole south was broken." And he adds, "This revolution did more for the deliverance of Europe from the Mussulman arms than even the battle of Poitiers." 21 Such was the first notable result.
Further, out of this change of dynasty, a second most important consequence followed in the east. The new Abbassidean Caliph, dissatisfied with the Syrian capital, where his rivals and enemies, the Ommiades, had so long lived and reigned, determined on building another on the western bank of the Tigris 22 just a few miles beyond the old Roman Euphratean frontier. It was in the year 762 that Almanzor there laid its foundations; and thither the government and head of the locusts then took its flight, far eastward, away from Christendom. This was the era, as Daubuz well calls it, of the settlement of the locusts. They no more roved, he says, in a body as before, in quest of new conquests. And so Dean Waddington; "The [Arab] conquerors now settled tranquilly in the countries they had subdued." In fact the ancient warlike spirit, at least in this eastern division, 'had ceased to animate them as of old. " War, says Gibbon, "was no longer the passion of the Saracens." The very name that the Caliph gave to the new capital, was but an indication of the comparatively peaceable character that was thenceforth to attach to the Saracens.
It was named Medinat al Salem, the City of Peace. The era is further noted by historians as that of the decline of the Saracen power. So Gibbon observes; "In this City of Peace, amidst the riches of the East, the Abbassides ... aspired to emulate the magnificence of the Persian Kinas." "The luxury of the Caliphs (i. e. of the Abbassides,) relaxed the nerves and terminated the progress of the Arabian empire." So Mills, in his History of Mahommedism. "The period preceding was, that of. . . the rise of the Saracen power; that which succeeds of …its decline and fall:" and Hallam: "The Abbassides ... never attained the real strength of their predecessors." Nor must I omit to observe on the manner in which the very geographical position of the new capital contributed to the relaxation of the woe. For not merely with reference to maritime enterprises against it, as Mr. Hallam suggests, but with reference to military also, the distance of the new seat of government added to the difficulty, and diminished the temptation. The locusts were no more in such immediate contact, as before, with Eastern Christendom.
And now, behold, instead of aggressive war on the part of the Saracens, aggression has begun against them, and victoriously too, on the part of the Christians.
In the west, under the son of Charles Martel, Narbonne and Septimania were in the year 759 recovered, and the Saracens driven beyond the Pyrenees. Again in 761, as Baronius marks the date, the Christian remnant in the mountains of Spain, under the first Alphonzo, began to roll back the tide of war on their Saracen oppressors. It was the same in the east. There Constantine Copronymus, the then reigning emperor, seized the opportunity for avenging the wrongs, and enlarging the limits, of the Greek empire. So that the septenary of years begun A.D. 755, and ending 762, is obviously every way remarkable, as the period of the deliverance of Christendom from the chief terror and persecution of the Saracens. And either its year of commencement, 755, or that of its termination, 762, is just the fittest epoch, so far as I see, the one or the other, at which to consider the intensity of the Saracen woe as terminated.
And what then the length of the period of intensity and aggression, thus defined? It is possible that the exact time when the idea was first formed by Muhammad of acting the part of false prophet, and when thus the key was presented to him where wit to open the pit of the abyss, may have been about the year 605, four years before his private preaching; and so have furnished a date of inceptive commencement, corresponding the year 755, as that of the inceptive termination. But the epoch of decided commencement may rather be fixed, as we have said, at Muhammad's public opening of his mission, A.D. 612; and the epoch of full termination, as regarded the Greek empire at least, to which in this and the next Trumpet there seems all through a special reference, at the removal of the Caliphate to Baghdad, A.D. 762. Indeed there is in the next vision, as it seems to me, a direct allusion to this removal, as constituting an epoch recognized and marked out for notice in the Apocalyptic prophecy. And the interval between these dates of commencement and termination is, as the reader sees, precisely that laid down in the prophecy; viz. five prophetic months, or 150 years.