On the whole, of course, the sixth, seventh, and even the eighth
centuries form a period of strife. The Teutons had spent too many ages
warring against one another in petty strife to abandon the pleasure in a
single generation. Men fought because they liked fighting, much as they
play football to-day. Then, too, there came another great outburst of
Semite religious enthusiasm. Mahomet[9] started the Arabs on their
remarkable career of conquest.
THE MAHOMETAN OUTBURST
Mahomet himself died (632) before he had fully established his influence
even over Arabia: his successors had practically to reconquer it. Yet
within five years of his death the Arabs had mastered Syria.[10] They
spread like some sudden, unexpected, immeasurable whirlwind. Ancient
Persia went down before them. By 640 they had trampled Egypt under foot,
and destroyed the celebrated Alexandrian library.[11] They swept over
all Africa, completely obliterating every trace of Vandal or of Roman.
Their dominion reached farther east than that of Alexander. They wrested
most of its Asiatic possessions from the pretentious Empire at
Constantinople, and reduced that exhausted State to a condition of
weakness from which it never arose.
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