Though, however, we may have cause to regret the meagreness and doubtful
character of these narratives, we have the great advantage of being able
to compare the accounts given of Abderrahman's expedition by the
national writers of each side. This is a benefit which the inquirer into
antiquity so seldom can obtain that the fact of possessing it, in the
case of the battle of Tours, makes us think the historical testimony
respecting that great event more certain and satisfactory than is the
case in many other instances, where we possess abundant details
respecting military exploits, but where those details come to us from
the annalist of one nation only, and where we have, consequently, no
safeguard against the exaggerations, the distortions, and the fictions
which national vanity has so often put forth in the garb and under the
title of history. The Arabian writers who recorded the conquests and
wars of their countrymen in Spain have narrated also the expedition into
Gaul of their great Emir, and his defeat and death near Tours, in battle
with the host of the Franks under "King Caldus," the name into which
they metamorphose Charles Martel.
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