held that they were being kept in concealment by God and would be brought back at the appointed time to rule over the world and bring in a kind of Muslim millennium. This is the oriental version of the story of Arthur in Avalon and of Frederick Barbarossa in Kyffhauser.

But that has led us far away and we must go back to the fall of the Umayyads and the again disappointed hopes of the Alids. By the time of the last Khalifa of the Umayyad house, Marwan II, A.H.127-132 (A.D. 744-750), the whole empire was more or less in rebellion, partly Shi'ite and partly Kharijite. The Shi'ites themselves had, as usual, no man strong enough to act as leader; that part was taken by as-Saffah, a descendant of al-Abbas, an uncle of Muhammad. The rebellion was ostensibly to bring again into power the family of the Prophet, but under that the Abbasids understood the family of Hashim, while the Alids took it in the more exact sense of themselves. They were made a cat's-paw, the Abbasid dynasty was founded, and they were thrown over. Thus, the Khalifate remained persistently in the hands of those who, up to the last, had been hostile to the Prophet. This al-Abbas had embraced the faith only when Mecca was taken by the Muslims. Later historians, jealous for the good name of the ancestor of the longest line of all the Successors, have labored to build up a legend that al-Abbas stayed in Mecca only because he could there be more useful in the cause of his nephew. This is one of the perversions of early history of which the Muslim chronicles are full.

But the story of the Umayyads is not yet out. From the ruin that overwhelmed them, one escaped and fled to North Africa. There, he vainly tried to draw together a power. At last, seeing in Spain some better prospect of success, he crossed thither, and by courage, statesmanship, and patience, carved out a new Umayyad empire that lasted for 300 years. One of his descendants in A.H. 317 (A.D. 929) took the title of Khalifa and claimed the homage due to the Commander of the Faithful. There is a story that al-Mansur, the second Abbasid, once asked his courtiers, "Who is the Falcon of Quraysh?" They named one after another of the great men of the tribe, beginning, naturally, with his majesty himself, but to no purpose. "No," he said, "the Falcon of Quraysh is Abd ar-Rahman, the Umayyad, who found his way over deserts and seas, flung himself alone into a strange country, and there, without any helper but himself, built up a realm. There has been none like him of the blood of Quraysh."