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Byzantium, to teach at the schools of
Baghdad. But this interest was superficial. Abbasid civilization was
fundamentally unaffected by Greek thought, but followed, rather, the traditions
handed down from the kingdoms of Mesopotamia and Iran. It was only in Spain, to
which the Ommayads had fled for refuge, that Hellenistic life lingered on in
the Moslem world.
     
    The Abbasid
Caliphate
    Nevertheless, the lot of the Christians under
the Abbasids was not unhappy. Moslem writers, such as al-Jahiz in the ninth
century, might make violent attacks on them; but that was because they were too
prosperous and were growing arrogant and heedless of the regulations made
against them. The Patriarch of Jerusalem, writing about the same time to his
colleague of Constantinople, says of the Moslem authorities that ‘they are just
and do us no wrong nor show us any violence’. Their justice and restraint were often
remarkable. When in the tenth century things were going badly for the Arabs in
their wars against Byzantium and Arab mobs attacked the Christians in anger at
their known sympathy with the enemy, the Caliph always made restitution for the
damage done. His motive may have been fear of the renascent power of the
Emperor, who by then had Moslems within his dominions whom he could persecute
in revenge. The Orthodox Churches, with foreign powers backing them, had always
maintained a favoured position. In the early tenth century the Nestorian
Catholicus, Abraham III, during a dispute with the Orthodox Patriarch of
Antioch, told the Grand Vizier that ‘we Nestorians are the friends of the Arabs
and pray for their victories’, adding: ‘Far be it from you to regard the
Nestorians, who have no other king but the Arabs’, in the same light as the
Greeks, whose kings never cease to make war against the Arabs’. But it was the
gift of two thousand golden coins rather than his argument that enabled him to
win his case. The only group of Christians against whom continual animosity was
shown were the Christians of pure Arab descent, such as the Banu Ghassan or the
Banu Tanukh. Such of these tribesmen as refused to be forcibly converted to
Islam were obliged to cross the frontier and seek refuge in Byzantium.
    The emigration of Christians into the Emperor’s
territory was continuous; nor did the Moslems take steps against it. There
seems never to have been a sustained attempt to prevent the Christians within
and without the Caliphate from keeping up close relations, even in times of
war. During the greater part of the Abbasid period the Byzantine Emperor was
not strong enough to do much for his co-religionists. The Arab failure before
Constantinople in 718 had guaranteed the continuance of the Empire; but two
centuries elapsed before Byzantium could seriously take the offensive against
the Arabs. In the meantime the Orthodox of the East had discovered a new
foreign friend. The growth of the Carolingian empire in the eighth century did
not pass unnoticed in the East. When at the close of the century Charles the
Great, soon to be crowned emperor at Rome, showed a particular interest in the
welfare of the holy places, his attentions were very welcome. The Caliph Harun
al-Rashid, glad to find an ally against Byzantium, gave him every encouragement
to make foundations at Jerusalem and to send alms to its church. For a while
Charles replaced the Byzantine Emperor as the monarch whose power was the
safeguard of the Orthodox in Palestine; and they repaid his charity by sending
him honorific marks of their esteem. But the collapse of his empire under his
descendants and the rebirth of Byzantium made this Frankish intervention short-lived
and soon barely remembered, except for the hostels that Charles had built and
the Latin services held in the Church of St Mary of the Latins, and the Latin
nuns serving in the Holy Sepulchre. But in the West the episode was never
forgotten. Legend and tradition exaggerated it. Charles was soon thought to