In Spain, during this period, all seems to have gone prosperously with the Jews, except that an impostor named Serenus, who professed, as so many before and after his time have done, to be the Messiah, taking advantage of the unsettled state of things between France and Spain, persuaded large numbers of his countrymen to follow him into Palestine, where he proposed to set up his kingdom. He does not seem to have reached the Holy Land, and the greater part of his followers perished in the attempt. Those who survived returned to their homes, but only to find that their possessions had been confiscated to the State. In the year 750 a revolution took place at Damascus, during which nearly the whole of the Ommiad dynasty (as the descendants of Caliph Omar were called) was cut off, and Abul Abbas succeeded to the Caliphate. Yusef, the Mussulman Emir in Spain, sided with the usurping family; but the Moorish chiefs generally were desirous of establishing their own independence, and finding in Abderachman ben Moasiah a still surviving representative of the Ommiad family, placed him on the throne, under the title of the Caliph of Cordova. His government was wise and powerful, and under him the Jews attained the zenith of their prosperity. We are now about to transfer our attention to the countries of Western Europe, where occurred almost every event of importance in which the Jews are concerned for several ensuing centuries. But before doing so, it will be proper to record what is known of the Hebrew communities who dwelt in those countries of the distant East which acknowledged neither the sceptre of Rome nor of Persia. The records of these are very scanty, and rest upon very doubtful authority, but that affords no sufficient reason for not preserving all that can be gleaned from various sources respecting them. FOOTNOTES: [84] Similarly, and for the like reason, Constantine Copronymus was nicknamed ‘the Jew.’ [85] The Caliph Almamon, a great patron of learning, caused many of the Rabbinical books to be translated into Arabic, and placed in the Royal Library at Bagdad. [86] After the capture of Rhodes, a Jew belonging to Edessa purchased the remains of the celebrated Colossus, which had been lying on the ground since its overthrow by an earthquake. It had been seventy cubits high, and was constructed of brass. The fragments are said to have loaded nine hundred camels. Probably the purchase money was a sum ridiculously small, the profit enormous. [87] Textualists, that is. It was attached to them in the first instance as a term of reproach. [88] The tenets of the Karaites are said to have been: 1. The Creation of the world, as opposed to its eternal existence. 2. That God had no beginning, has no form, and that His unity is absolute. 3. That He sent Moses, and delivered to him the Law. 4. That every believer must derive his belief from the simple interpretation of Holy Scripture, without regard to tradition.