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Re: Sinclair Dates



17 October 732

In light of the recent events we should remember today. From 711A.D. Muslim
forces crossed the Straits of Gibraltar, conquered the Visigothic Kingdom.
Spain lay under Arab control.   In less than ten years the Arabs  crossed
the Pyrenees.  In 732, under the command of Abd-er- rahman, they were
decisively defeated by Charles Martel,  and the Franks at the Battle of
Poitiers  also known as the battle of Tours. This battle  looms  large in
our Western history. There is a famous passage of purple prose by Edward
Gibbon in his Decline  and Fall of the Roman Empire about minarets rather
than spires in Oxford if the Arabs  had won.

Edward Creasy in Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World Everyman's Library ,
New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc. Quoted from an unidentified Arab

"The Moslems smote their enemies, and passed the river Garonne, and laid
waste the country, and took captives without number. And that army went
through all places like a desolating storm. Prosperity made those warriors
insatiable. At the passage of the river, Abderrahman overthrew the count,
and the count retired into his stronghold, but the Moslems fought against
it, and entered it by force, and slew the count; for everything gave way to
their scimitars, which were the robbers of lives. All the nations of the
Franks trembled at that terrible army, and they betook them to their king
Caldus [Charles Martel], and told him of the havoc made by the Moslem
horsemen, and bow they rode at their will through all the land of Narbonne,
Toulouse, and Bordeaux, and they told the king of the death of their count.
Then the king bade them be of good cheer, and offered to aid them. . . . He
mounted his horse, and he took with him a host that could not be numbered,
and went against the Moslems. And he came upon them at the great city of
Tours. And Abderrahman and other prudent cavaliers saw the disorder of the
Moslem troops, who were loaded with spoil; but they did not venture to
displease the soldiers by ordering them to abandon everything except their
arms and war-horses. And Abderrahman trusted in the valour of his soldiers,
and in the good fortune which had ever attended him. But such defect of
discipline always is fatal to armies. So Abderrabman and his host attacked
Tours to gain still more spoil, and they fought against it so fiercely that
they stormed the city almost before the eyes of the army that came to save
it; and the fury and the cruelty of the Moslems towards the inhabitants of
the city were like the fury and cruelty of raging tigers. It was manifest
that God's chastisement was sure to follow such excesses; and fortune
thereupon turned her back upon the Moslems.
Near the river Owar [Loire], the two great hosts of the two languages and
the two creeds were set in array against each other. The hearts of
Abderrahman, his captains and his men were filled with wrath and pride, and
they were the first to begin to fight. The Moslem horsemen dashed fierce and
frequent forward against the battalions of the Franks, who resisted
manfully, and many fell dead on either side, until the going down of the
sun. Night parted the two armies: but in the grey of the morning the Moslems
returned to the battle. Their cavaliers had soon hewn their way into the
center of the Christian host. But many of the Moslems were fearful for the
safety of the spoil which they had stored in their tents, and a false cry
arose in their ranks that some of the enemy were plundering the camp;
whereupon several squadrons of the Moslem horsemen rode off to protect their
tents. But it seemed as if they fled; and all the host was troubled. And
while Abderrahman strove to check their tumult, and to lead them back to
battle, the warriors of the Franks came around him, and he was pierced
through with many spears, so that he died. Then all the host fled before the
enemy, and many died in the flight. . . .



Sinclair

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