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church of St. Martin. But, before they reached it, they were met by Charles to whom Eudo, despite
his previous hostility, had fled for assistance after his defeat. Notes the Encyclopedia Britannica:

Charles, at the head of a large army, engaged with the enemy south of Tours, perhaps at
the little town of Cenon, near the junction of the Clain and the Vienne, and not far north
of Old Poitiers. For seven days the two armies stood facing each other. Then on a Satur-
day in October the serious fighting began. Charles had taken up a defensive position in
close formation. It was the moral and physical superiority of the Teutonic race over the
Muslims that won the day. The light Arab cavalry broke before the "immovable wall" of
Frankish soldiers who stood, we are told, firm "as a rock of ice" (Isidorus Pacensis). They
were hurled back with heavy loss; 'Abd-ar-Rahman himself was killed on the field. Fight-
ing continued till nightfall; and when, on the next morning, the Franks prepared to re-
sume the battle, they found the Arab tents deserted. The Arab losses were very severe
(1943, Vol. 22, p. 329).

The battle of Tours is commonly regarded as one of the decisive battles of the world's his-
tory. It dealt a decisive check to the advance of the Arabs into Gaul. It removed an imminent peril,
a constant menace -- and threw the advance of Islam into a centuries-long recession that continued
until the sixth angel "release(d) the four angels that are bound at the great river Euphrates."

Islam had a remarkable recrudescence under the ferocious Seljuk Turks. The tribe of the
Seljuk Turks was founded by the warrior Seljuk, whose one son and three nephews founded the
Great Seljuk Empire, stretching through Persia and Mesopotamia. Settled in Transoxiana, north of
the present-day Amu-Dar'ya River in Uzbek in the former Soviet Union, they became converted to
Islam after a conquering career against the Muhammadans. In the late 1050s, the Caliph of Bagh-
dad came under Seljuk "protection." In the year 1063, the Turkish Sultan Toghrul-Begh, Seljuk's
nephew, died and was succeeded by his own nephew, Alp-Arslan. By 1064 Alp-Arslan had
CROSSED THE EUPHRATES into the Empire. In 1067 he took the great city of Caesarea; in
1068 he took Iconium and, in 1071, he won a decisive victory at Mantzikert. He captured Jerusa-
lem in 1076, ushering in an era of cruel oppression "which filled all Christendom with sorrow and
indignation" (Green's Church History). This eventually led to the Crusades.

The Seljuk Turks then invaded western Asia and founded a dynastic empire. During the
reign of Malik Shah (r. 1072-92), his grand vizier, Nizam-al-Mulk (1018-92), founded a university
at Baghdad and, with Omar Khayyam, revised the astronomical tables and introduced a new era,
the Jelalian. After the death of Malik the empire began to break up into smaller kingdoms -- and
came to an end in 1157 after attacks by the shah of Khorezm. The Turkish Empire, founded by the
Seljuks, was continued by the Ottoman Turks.

In the first half of the 13th century, a small body of Muslim Turks, driven before the con-
quering Mongol hordes under Genghis Khan, moved westward from their home in Iran and made
their way ACROSS THE EUPHRATES RIVER into Asia Minor. Under the leadership of their
chieftain, Ertogrul, they entered the service of Ala-ad-Din, Sultan of Iconium (Konia), the last rem-
nant of the great empire established by the Seljuk Turks in western Asia. Ala-ad-Din granted Er-
togrul and his Turkish followers some land in Phrygia, where OSMAN, the son of Ertogrul,
extended the power of his tribe by numerous conquests in Asia Minor.

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