36 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
Prompted both by the ardour of spreading a new religion and also by the economic forces of the time, within forty-six years after Mahomet’s flight from Mecca, the new converts to Muhamedanism appeared in arms before the walls of Constantinople and beseiged it (in A. D. 668-675 ) . The seige lasted for 7 years without any decisive result, the beseigers made light of the strength and resources of Constantinople. The Romans rose equal to the danger of their religion and empire and met the onrushing Saracens with numbers and descipline with so much heroism that it revived their population in the East and the West and for a while, eclipsed the triumphs of the Saracens, who, had they succeeded in capturing Constantinople, would certainly have jeopardised the prospects of Christianity.
The Saracens invaded Constantinople a second time and beseiged it (A. D. 716-718) but with the same result.
Amidst all these triumphs, the Arabs were being gradually eclipsed by the Seljuks. At the time of their rise, the authority of Quaim, the Abbaside Caliph of Baghdad, was completely overshadowed, first by the Sheite dynasty of the Buyids, and afterwards by the more formidable Fatimite rivals. Placed in such circumstances, the Abbaside Caliph welcomed the rise of the Seljuk Turks, who being the upholders of orthodox Islam were sure to reinvest him all his former power and grandeur. “It is their merit from a Mhommedan point of view to have re-established the power of orthodox Islam and delivered the Moslem world from the subversive influence of the ultra-Sheite tenets, which constitued a serious danger to the duration of Islam itself. Neither had civilization anything to fear from them, since they represented a strong neutral power which made the intimate union of Persian and Arabian elements possible, almost at the expense of the national-Turkish-literary monuments in that language being during the whole period of the Seljuk rule exceedingly rare.” [1] The Seljuks comprised innumerable tribes or families, one of which was known as the Guzz. Among these constantly contending parties, the Guzz family, not in good graces of the rest, rose to power and became a menace to the neighbouring Mohomedan provinces.
1 Enc. Brit. 11th Ed. Art - “Seljuks”.