The Expansion of Muslim Rule in Central…

Xuanzong, in 714, forbids all commercial vendors and shops in the Chinese capital city of Chang'an to copy and sell Buddhist sutras, so that the emperor can give the clergy of the Buddhist monasteries the sole right to distribute written sutras to the laity.

Qutayba renews his expeditions along the Jaxartes, probably with Shash as his base, in 714, but his campaign is cut short upon receiving the news of the death of al-Hajjaj.

Unsure of his position now that his patron is gone, he disbands the army and returns to Merv.

Anastasios reverses the ecclesiastical policies of Philippikos and tries to reform the army before he, too, is deposed.

Assuring Pope Constantine of his orthodoxy, Anastasios withdraws Philippikos' Monothelite decrees, which had imposed the heretical doctrine of a single will of Christ.

Militarily, he fortifies Constantinople, selects the island of Rhodes as an imperial naval base, and sends the Isaurian Leo to defend Syria against the Arabs.

Leo, called the Isaurian, born at Germanicia (Mar'ash) in northern Syria (modern Maras, Turkey), had been taken as a youth by his parents (who apparently were prosperous) to Mesembria, in Thrace.

Justinian II had appointed the young man to the prestigious rank of spatharius (attendant) as a reward for assisting him in the recovery of his throne in 705, but the Emperor had soon developed a distrust of him and had therefore sent him to perform a perilous mission among the Alani on the remote eastern frontier, anticipating that he would never return.

Despite the danger, Leo had accomplished his assignment, had managed to preserve his life, and ultimately, at the hands of the new emperor, Anastasios, receives appointment as commander of the Anatolikon (central Anatolia), the largest theme, or military-district army, in Asia Minor.

The classical style of Islamic music develops further under the Umayyad caliphate.

Male and female musicians, who form a class apart, throng the courts of the capital, Damascus.

Many prominent musicians are Arab by birth or acculturation, but the alien element continues to play a predominant role in Islamic music.

As foreign musical influence from the Muslim-held territories of Syria, Egypt, and Persia begins to influence Arabia, the tuning of the 'ud is altered to afford it the range of the Persian lute.

Works on musical theory, drawing upon Syrian and Persian practices, begin to appear.

In one such, written by Ibn Misjah, a musical theorist and a skilled singer and lute player, who dies around 715, the author describes eight melodic modes (“asabi”) and six rhythmic patterns (“iqaat”).

The first and the greatest musician of the Umayyad era, Ibn Misjah, is often honored as the father of Islamic music.

Born in Mecca of a Persian family, Ibn Misjah had traveled to Syria and Persia, learning the theory and practice of Byzantine and Persian music and incorporating much of his acquired knowledge into the Arabian art song.

Although he has adopted new elements such as foreign musical modes, he has rejected other musical traits as unsuitable to Arabian music.

The system of modal theory that he has devised will last throughout the golden age under the first Abbasid caliphs.

(Knowledge of his contributions is contained in the tenth-century Kitab al-Aghani, or “Book of Songs,” by Abu al-Faraj al-Isbahani, the most important source of information about music and musical life in the first three centuries of Islam.)

Abd al-Aziz takes Valencia in 714 and, breaking the terms of surrender, pillages the city; he turns the churches into mosques, leaving only one to the Christians.

The first Muslim campaigns in the lower Ebro valley and southwest part of the Iberian Peninsula commence in 714, when Abd al-Aziz takes the ancient Roman military settlement of Évora (renaming it Jabura).

In 714 also, the Moors capture Tarragona and …

…Saragossa (Zarogoza), making it the seat of an emirate, as Saraqustah.

The Ostrogothic kingdom of Italy had used so many Roman governmental institutions that it can most easily be analyzed as if it were part of the late Roman imperial system.

Lombard rule has marked much more of a break, without doubt.

But exactly how much the Lombard states owe to the Roman past and how much to Germanic traditions is still an ongoing debate.

The basic notion of the kingdom as a political system had been a Germanic concept in large part, for the legitimacy of the king rests on his direct relationship with the free Lombard people in arms—the exercitales, or arimanni, who form the basis of the Lombard army.

This concept leaves little room for Romans, who indeed largely disappear from the evidence, even when documents increase again in the eighth century; it is likely that any Romans who wished to remain politically important in the Lombard kingdom had to become “Lombardized.” It is even in dispute, for that matter, how many such Romans there were; Paul the Deacon, for instance, claimed that the Roman aristocracy were largely killed in the first generation of the Lombard invasion.

But this is certainly an exaggeration, because the Lombards have adopted too many customs from the Romans for the latter to have been reduced entirely to subjection.

Some Roman aristocratic families must have survived among the Lombards, as is suggested, for example, by the name of a royal protégé and founder of a monastery in Pavia in 714, Senator, son of Albinus.