Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.—Part VI (1)

I should deceive the expectation of the reader, if I passed in
silence the fate of the Alexandrian library, as it is described
by the learned Abulpharagius. The spirit of Amrou was more
curious and liberal than that of his brethren, and in his leisure
hours, the Arabian chief was pleased with the conversation of
John, the last disciple of Ammonius, and who derived the surname
of Philoponus from his laborious studies of grammar and
philosophy. 115 Emboldened by this familiar intercourse,
Philoponus presumed to solicit a gift, inestimable in his
opinion, contemptible in that of the Barbarians—the royal
library, which alone, among the spoils of Alexandria, had not
been appropriated by the visit and the seal of the conqueror.

Amrou was inclined to gratify the wish of the grammarian, but his
rigid integrity refused to alienate the minutest object without
the consent of the caliph; and the well-known answer of Omar was
inspired by the ignorance of a fanatic. “If these writings of the
Greeks agree with the book of God, they are useless, and need not
be preserved: if they disagree, they are pernicious, and ought to
be destroyed.” The sentence was executed with blind obedience:
the volumes of paper or parchment were distributed to the four
thousand baths of the city; and such was their incredible
multitude, that six months were barely sufficient for the
consumption of this precious fuel. Since the Dynasties of
Abulpharagius 116 have been given to the world in a Latin
version, the tale has been repeatedly transcribed; and every
scholar, with pious indignation, has deplored the irreparable
shipwreck of the learning, the arts, and the genius, of
antiquity. For my own part, I am strongly tempted to deny both
the fact and the consequences. 1161 The fact is indeed
marvellous. “Read and wonder!” says the historian himself: and
the solitary report of a stranger who wrote at the end of six
hundred years on the confines of Media, is overbalanced by the
silence of two annalist of a more early date, both Christians,
both natives of Egypt, and the most ancient of whom, the
patriarch Eutychius, has amply described the conquest of
Alexandria. 117 The rigid sentence of Omar is repugnant to the
sound and orthodox precept of the Mahometan casuists they
expressly declare, that the religious books of the Jews and
Christians, which are acquired by the right of war, should never
be committed to the flames; and that the works of profane
science, historians or poets, physicians or philosophers, may be
lawfully applied to the use of the faithful. 118 A more
destructive zeal may perhaps be attributed to the first
successors of Mahomet; yet in this instance, the conflagration
would have speedily expired in the deficiency of materials. I
should not recapitulate the disasters of the Alexandrian library,
the involuntary flame that was kindled by Caesar in his own
defence, 119 or the mischievous bigotry of the Christians, who
studied to destroy the monuments of idolatry. 120 But if we
gradually descend from the age of the Antonines to that of
Theodosius, we shall learn from a chain of contemporary
witnesses, that the royal palace and the temple of Serapis no
longer contained the four, or the seven, hundred thousand
volumes, which had been assembled by the curiosity and
magnificence of the Ptolemies. 121 Perhaps the church and seat of
the patriarchs might be enriched with a repository of books; but
if the ponderous mass of Arian and Monophysite controversy were
indeed consumed in the public baths, 122 a philosopher may allow,
with a smile, that it was ultimately devoted to the benefit of
mankind. I sincerely regret the more valuable libraries which
have been involved in the ruin of the Roman empire; but when I
seriously compute the lapse of ages, the waste of ignorance, and
the calamities of war, our treasures, rather than our losses, are
the objects of my surprise. Many curious and interesting facts
are buried in oblivion: the three great historians of Rome have
been transmitted to our hands in a mutilated state, and we are
deprived of many pleasing compositions of the lyric, iambic, and
dramatic poetry of the Greeks. Yet we should gratefully remember,
that the mischances of time and accident have spared the classic
works to which the suffrage of antiquity 123 had adjudged the
first place of genius and glory: the teachers of ancient
knowledge, who are still extant, had perused and compared the
writings of their predecessors; 124 nor can it fairly be presumed
that any important truth, any useful discovery in art or nature,
has been snatched away from the curiosity of modern ages.

115 (return) [ Many treatises of this lover of labor are still
extant, but for readers of the present age, the printed and
unpublished are nearly in the same predicament. Moses and
Aristotle are the chief objects of his verbose commentaries, one
of which is dated as early as May 10th, A.D. 617, (Fabric.
Bibliot. Graec. tom. ix. p. 458-468.) A modern, (John Le Clerc,)
who sometimes assumed the same name was equal to old Philoponus
in diligence, and far superior in good sense and real knowledge.]

116 (return) [ Abulpharag. Dynast. p. 114, vers. Pocock. Audi
quid factum sit et mirare. It would be endless to enumerate the
moderns who have wondered and believed, but I may distinguish
with honor the rational scepticism of Renaudot, (Hist. Alex.
Patriarch, p. 170: ) historia... habet aliquid ut Arabibus
familiare est.]

1161 (return) [ Since this period several new Mahometan
authorities have been adduced to support the authority of
Abulpharagius. That of, I. Abdollatiph by Professor White: II. Of
Makrizi; I have seen a Ms. extract from this writer: III. Of Ibn
Chaledun: and after them Hadschi Chalfa. See Von Hammer,
Geschichte der Assassinen, p. 17. Reinhard, in a German
Dissertation, printed at Gottingen, 1792, and St. Croix, (Magasin
Encyclop. tom. iv. p. 433,) have examined the question. Among
Oriental scholars, Professor White, M. St. Martin, Von Hammer.
and Silv. de Sacy, consider the fact of the burning the library,
by the command of Omar, beyond question. Compare St. Martin’s
note. vol. xi. p. 296. A Mahometan writer brings a similar charge
against the Crusaders. The library of Tripoli is said to have
contained the incredible number of three millions of volumes. On
the capture of the city, Count Bertram of St. Giles, entering the
first room, which contained nothing but the Koran, ordered the
whole to be burnt, as the works of the false prophet of Arabia.
See Wilken. Gesch der Kreux zuge, vol. ii. p. 211.—M.]

117 (return) [ This curious anecdote will be vainly sought in the
annals of Eutychius, and the Saracenic history of Elmacin. The
silence of Abulfeda, Murtadi, and a crowd of Moslems, is less
conclusive from their ignorance of Christian literature.]

118 (return) [ See Reland, de Jure Militari Mohammedanorum, in
his iiid volume of Dissertations, p. 37. The reason for not
burning the religious books of the Jews or Christians, is derived
from the respect that is due to the name of God.]

119 (return) [ Consult the collections of Frensheim (Supplement.
Livian, c. 12, 43) and Usher, (Anal. p. 469.) Livy himself had
styled the Alexandrian library, elegantiae regum curaeque
egregium opus; a liberal encomium, for which he is pertly
criticized by the narrow stoicism of Seneca, (De Tranquillitate
Animi, c. 9,) whose wisdom, on this occasion, deviates into
nonsense.]

120 (return) [ See this History, vol. iii. p. 146.]

121 (return) [ Aulus Gellius, (Noctes Atticae, vi. 17,) Ammianus
Marcellinua, (xxii. 16,) and Orosius, (l. vi. c. 15.) They all
speak in the past tense, and the words of Ammianus are remarkably
strong: fuerunt Bibliothecae innumerabiles; et loquitum
monumentorum veterum concinens fides, &c.]

122 (return) [ Renaudot answers for versions of the Bible,
Hexapla, Catenoe Patrum, Commentaries, &c., (p. 170.) Our
Alexandrian Ms., if it came from Egypt, and not from
Constantinople or Mount Athos, (Wetstein, Prolegom. ad N. T. p.
8, &c.,) might possibly be among them.]

123 (return) [ I have often perused with pleasure a chapter of
Quintilian, (Institut. Orator. x. i.,) in which that judicious
critic enumerates and appreciates the series of Greek and Latin
classics.]

124 (return) [ Such as Galen, Pliny, Aristotle, &c. On this
subject Wotton (Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning, p.
85-95) argues, with solid sense, against the lively exotic
fancies of Sir William Temple. The contempt of the Greeks for
Barbaric science would scarcely admit the Indian or Aethiopic
books into the library of Alexandria; nor is it proved that
philosophy has sustained any real loss from their exclusion.]

In the administration of Egypt, 125 Amrou balanced the demands of
justice and policy; the interest of the people of the law, who
were defended by God; and of the people of the alliance, who were
protected by man. In the recent tumult of conquest and
deliverance, the tongue of the Copts and the sword of the Arabs
were most adverse to the tranquillity of the province. To the
former, Amrou declared, that faction and falsehood would be
doubly chastised; by the punishment of the accusers, whom he
should detest as his personal enemies, and by the promotion of
their innocent brethren, whom their envy had labored to injure
and supplant. He excited the latter by the motives of religion
and honor to sustain the dignity of their character, to endear
themselves by a modest and temperate conduct to God and the
caliph, to spare and protect a people who had trusted to their
faith, and to content themselves with the legitimate and splendid
rewards of their victory. In the management of the revenue, he
disapproved the simple but oppressive mode of a capitation, and
preferred with reason a proportion of taxes deducted on every
branch from the clear profits of agriculture and commerce. A
third part of the tribute was appropriated to the annual repairs
of the dikes and canals, so essential to the public welfare.
Under his administration, the fertility of Egypt supplied the
dearth of Arabia; and a string of camels, laden with corn and
provisions, covered almost without an interval the long road from
Memphis to Medina. 126 But the genius of Amrou soon renewed the
maritime communication which had been attempted or achieved by
the Pharaohs the Ptolemies, or the Caesars; and a canal, at least
eighty miles in length, was opened from the Nile to the Red Sea.
1261 This inland navigation, which would have joined the
Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, was soon discontinued as
useless and dangerous: the throne was removed from Medina to
Damascus, and the Grecian fleets might have explored a passage to
the holy cities of Arabia. 127

125 (return) [ This curious and authentic intelligence of Murtadi
(p. 284-289) has not been discovered either by Mr. Ockley, or by
the self-sufficient compilers of the Modern Universal History.]

126 (return) [ Eutychius, Annal. tom. ii. p. 320. Elmacin, Hist.
Saracen. p. 35.]

1261 (return) [ Many learned men have doubted the existence of a
communication by water between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean
by the Nile. Yet the fact is positively asserted by the ancients.
Diodorus Siculus (l. i. p. 33) speaks of it in the most distinct
manner as existing in his time. So, also, Strabo, (l. xvii. p.
805.) Pliny (vol. vi. p. 29) says that the canal which united the
two seas was navigable, (alveus navigabilis.) The indications
furnished by Ptolemy and by the Arabic historian, Makrisi, show
that works were executed under the reign of Hadrian to repair the
canal and extend the navigation; it then received the name of the
River of Trajan Lucian, (in his Pseudomantis, p. 44,) says that
he went by water from Alexandria to Clysma, on the Red Sea.
Testimonies of the 6th and of the 8th century show that the
communication was not interrupted at that time. See the French
translation of Strabo, vol. v. p. 382. St. Martin vol. xi. p.
299.—M.]

127 (return) [ On these obscure canals, the reader may try to
satisfy himself from D’Anville, (Mem. sur l’Egypte, p. 108-110,
124, 132,) and a learned thesis, maintained and printed at
Strasburg in the year 1770, (Jungendorum marium fluviorumque
molimina, p. 39-47, 68-70.) Even the supine Turks have agitated
the old project of joining the two seas. (Memoires du Baron de
Tott, tom. iv.)]

Of his new conquest, the caliph Omar had an imperfect knowledge
from the voice of fame and the legends of the Koran. He requested
that his lieutenant would place before his eyes the realm of
Pharaoh and the Amalekites; and the answer of Amrou exhibits a
lively and not unfaithful picture of that singular country. 128
“O commander of the faithful, Egypt is a compound of black earth
and green plants, between a pulverized mountain and a red sand.
The distance from Syene to the sea is a month’s journey for a
horseman. Along the valley descends a river, on which the
blessing of the Most High reposes both in the evening and
morning, and which rises and falls with the revolutions of the
sun and moon. When the annual dispensation of Providence unlocks
the springs and fountains that nourish the earth, the Nile rolls
his swelling and sounding waters through the realm of Egypt: the
fields are overspread by the salutary flood; and the villages
communicate with each other in their painted barks. The retreat
of the inundation deposits a fertilizing mud for the reception of
the various seeds: the crowds of husbandmen who blacken the land
may be compared to a swarm of industrious ants; and their native
indolence is quickened by the lash of the task-master, and the
promise of the flowers and fruits of a plentiful increase. Their
hope is seldom deceived; but the riches which they extract from
the wheat, the barley, and the rice, the legumes, the
fruit-trees, and the cattle, are unequally shared between those
who labor and those who possess. According to the vicissitudes of
the seasons, the face of the country is adorned with a silver
wave, a verdant emerald, and the deep yellow of a golden
harvest.” 129 Yet this beneficial order is sometimes interrupted;
and the long delay and sudden swell of the river in the first
year of the conquest might afford some color to an edifying
fable. It is said, that the annual sacrifice of a virgin 130 had
been interdicted by the piety of Omar; and that the Nile lay
sullen and inactive in his shallow bed, till the mandate of the
caliph was cast into the obedient stream, which rose in a single
night to the height of sixteen cubits. The admiration of the
Arabs for their new conquest encouraged the license of their
romantic spirit. We may read, in the gravest authors, that Egypt
was crowded with twenty thousand cities or villages: 131 that,
exclusive of the Greeks and Arabs, the Copts alone were found, on
the assessment, six millions of tributary subjects, 132 or twenty
millions of either sex, and of every age: that three hundred
millions of gold or silver were annually paid to the treasury of
the caliphs. 133 Our reason must be startled by these extravagant
assertions; and they will become more palpable, if we assume the
compass and measure the extent of habitable ground: a valley from
the tropic to Memphis seldom broader than twelve miles, and the
triangle of the Delta, a flat surface of two thousand one hundred
square leagues, compose a twelfth part of the magnitude of
France. 134 A more accurate research will justify a more
reasonable estimate. The three hundred millions, created by the
error of a scribe, are reduced to the decent revenue of four
millions three hundred thousand pieces of gold, of which nine
hundred thousand were consumed by the pay of the soldiers. 135
Two authentic lists, of the present and of the twelfth century,
are circumscribed within the respectable number of two thousand
seven hundred villages and towns. 136 After a long residence at
Cairo, a French consul has ventured to assign about four millions
of Mahometans, Christians, and Jews, for the ample, though not
incredible, scope of the population of Egypt. 137

128 (return) [ A small volume, des Merveilles, &c., de l’Egypte,
composed in the xiiith century by Murtadi of Cairo, and
translated from an Arabic Ms. of Cardinal Mazarin, was published
by Pierre Vatier, Paris, 1666. The antiquities of Egypt are wild
and legendary; but the writer deserves credit and esteem for his
account of the conquest and geography of his native country, (see
the correspondence of Amrou and Omar, p. 279-289.)]

129 (return) [ In a twenty years’ residence at Cairo, the consul
Maillet had contemplated that varying scene, the Nile, (lettre
ii. particularly p. 70, 75;) the fertility of the land, (lettre
ix.) From a college at Cambridge, the poetic eye of Gray had seen
the same objects with a keener glance:—

What wonder in the sultry climes that spread,
Where Nile, redundant o’er his summer bed,
From his broad bosom life and verdure flings,
And broods o’er Egypt with his watery wings:
If with adventurous oar, and ready sail,
The dusky people drive before the gale:
Or on frail floats to neighboring cities ride.
That rise and glitter o’er the ambient tide.
(Mason’s Works and Memoirs of Gray, p. 199, 200.)]

130 (return) [ Murtadi, p. 164-167. The reader will not easily
credit a human sacrifice under the Christian emperors, or a
miracle of the successors of Mahomet.]

131 (return) [ Maillet, Description de l’Egypte, p. 22. He
mentions this number as the common opinion; and adds, that the
generality of these villages contain two or three thousand
persons, and that many of them are more populous than our large
cities.]

132 (return) [ Eutych. Annal. tom. ii. p. 308, 311. The twenty
millions are computed from the following data: one twelfth of
mankind above sixty, one third below sixteen, the proportion of
men to women as seventeen or sixteen, (Recherches sur la
Population de la France, p. 71, 72.) The president Goguet
(Origine des Arts, &c., tom. iii. p. 26, &c.) Bestows
twenty-seven millions on ancient Egypt, because the seventeen
hundred companions of Sesostris were born on the same day.]

133 (return) [ Elmacin, Hist. Saracen. p. 218; and this gross
lump is swallowed without scruple by D’Herbelot, (Bibliot.
Orient. p. 1031,) Ar. buthnot, (Tables of Ancient Coins, p. 262,)
and De Guignes, (Hist. des Huns, tom. iii. p. 135.) They might
allege the not less extravagant liberality of Appian in favor of
the Ptolemies (in praefat.) of seventy four myriads, 740,000
talents, an annual income of 185, or near 300 millions of pounds
sterling, according as we reckon by the Egyptian or the
Alexandrian talent, (Bernard, de Ponderibus Antiq. p. 186.)]

134 (return) [ See the measurement of D’Anville, (Mem. sur
l’Egypte, p. 23, &c.) After some peevish cavils, M. Pauw
(Recherches sur les Egyptiens, tom. i. p. 118-121) can only
enlarge his reckoning to 2250 square leagues.]

135 (return) [ Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alexand. p. 334, who
calls the common reading or version of Elmacin, error librarii.
His own emendation, of 4,300,000 pieces, in the ixth century,
maintains a probable medium between the 3,000,000 which the Arabs
acquired by the conquest of Egypt, (idem, p. 168.) and the
2,400,000 which the sultan of Constantinople levied in the last
century, (Pietro della Valle, tom. i. p. 352 Thevenot, part i. p.
824.) Pauw (Recherches, tom. ii. p. 365-373) gradually raises the
revenue of the Pharaohs, the Ptolemies, and the Caesars, from six
to fifteen millions of German crowns.]

136 (return) [ The list of Schultens (Index Geograph. ad calcem
Vit. Saladin. p. 5) contains 2396 places; that of D’Anville,
(Mem. sur l’Egypte, p. 29,) from the divan of Cairo, enumerates
2696.]

137 (return) [ See Maillet, (Description de l’Egypte, p. 28,) who
seems to argue with candor and judgment. I am much better
satisfied with the observations than with the reading of the
French consul. He was ignorant of Greek and Latin literature, and
his fancy is too much delighted with the fictions of the Arabs.
Their best knowledge is collected by Abulfeda, (Descript. Aegypt.
Arab. et Lat. a Joh. David Michaelis, Gottingae, in 4to., 1776;)
and in two recent voyages into Egypt, we are amused by Savary,
and instructed by Volney. I wish the latter could travel over the
globe.]

IV. The conquest of Africa, from the Nile to the Atlantic Ocean,
138 was first attempted by the arms of the caliph Othman.

The pious design was approved by the companions of Mahomet and
the chiefs of the tribes; and twenty thousand Arabs marched from
Medina, with the gifts and the blessing of the commander of the
faithful. They were joined in the camp of Memphis by twenty
thousand of their countrymen; and the conduct of the war was
intrusted to Abdallah, 139 the son of Said and the foster-brother
of the caliph, who had lately supplanted the conqueror and
lieutenant of Egypt. Yet the favor of the prince, and the merit
of his favorite, could not obliterate the guilt of his apostasy.
The early conversion of Abdallah, and his skilful pen, had
recommended him to the important office of transcribing the
sheets of the Koran: he betrayed his trust, corrupted the text,
derided the errors which he had made, and fled to Mecca to escape
the justice, and expose the ignorance, of the apostle. After the
conquest of Mecca, he fell prostrate at the feet of Mahomet; his
tears, and the entreaties of Othman, extorted a reluctant pardon;
but the prophet declared that he had so long hesitated, to allow
time for some zealous disciple to avenge his injury in the blood
of the apostate. With apparent fidelity and effective merit, he
served the religion which it was no longer his interest to
desert: his birth and talents gave him an honorable rank among
the Koreish; and, in a nation of cavalry, Abdallah was renowned
as the boldest and most dexterous horseman of Arabia. At the head
of forty thousand Moslems, he advanced from Egypt into the
unknown countries of the West. The sands of Barca might be
impervious to a Roman legion but the Arabs were attended by their
faithful camels; and the natives of the desert beheld without
terror the familiar aspect of the soil and climate. After a
painful march, they pitched their tents before the walls of
Tripoli, 140 a maritime city in which the name, the wealth, and
the inhabitants of the province had gradually centred, and which
now maintains the third rank among the states of Barbary. A
reenforcement of Greeks was surprised and cut in pieces on the
sea-shore; but the fortifications of Tripoli resisted the first
assaults; and the Saracens were tempted by the approach of the
praefect Gregory 141 to relinquish the labors of the siege for
the perils and the hopes of a decisive action. If his standard
was followed by one hundred and twenty thousand men, the regular
bands of the empire must have been lost in the naked and
disorderly crowd of Africans and Moors, who formed the strength,
or rather the numbers, of his host. He rejected with indignation
the option of the Koran or the tribute; and during several days
the two armies were fiercely engaged from the dawn of light to
the hour of noon, when their fatigue and the excessive heat
compelled them to seek shelter and refreshment in their
respective camps. The daughter of Gregory, a maid of incomparable
beauty and spirit, is said to have fought by his side: from her
earliest youth she was trained to mount on horseback, to draw the
bow, and to wield the cimeter; and the richness of her arms and
apparel were conspicuous in the foremost ranks of the battle. Her
hand, with a hundred thousand pieces of gold, was offered for the
head of the Arabian general, and the youths of Africa were
excited by the prospect of the glorious prize. At the pressing
solicitation of his brethren, Abdallah withdrew his person from
the field; but the Saracens were discouraged by the retreat of
their leader, and the repetition of these equal or unsuccessful
conflicts.

138 (return) [ My conquest of Africa is drawn from two French
interpreters of Arabic literature, Cardonne (Hist. de l’Afrique
et de l’Espagne sous la Domination des Arabes, tom. i. p. 8-55)
and Otter, (Hist. de l’Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xxi. p.
111-125, and 136.) They derive their principal information from
Novairi, who composed, A.D. 1331 an Encyclopaedia in more than
twenty volumes. The five general parts successively treat of, 1.
Physics; 2. Man; 3. Animals; 4. Plants; and, 5. History; and the
African affairs are discussed in the vith chapter of the vth
section of this last part, (Reiske, Prodidagmata ad Hagji
Chalifae Tabulas, p. 232-234.) Among the older historians who are
quoted by Navairi we may distinguish the original narrative of a
soldier who led the van of the Moslems.]

139 (return) [ See the history of Abdallah, in Abulfeda (Vit.
Mohammed. p. 108) and Gagnier, (Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii.
45-48.)]

140 (return) [ The province and city of Tripoli are described by
Leo Africanus (in Navigatione et Viaggi di Ramusio, tom. i.
Venetia, 1550, fol. 76, verso) and Marmol, (Description de
l’Afrique, tom. ii. p. 562.) The first of these writers was a
Moor, a scholar, and a traveller, who composed or translated his
African geography in a state of captivity at Rome, where he had
assumed the name and religion of Pope Leo X. In a similar
captivity among the Moors, the Spaniard Marmol, a soldier of
Charles V., compiled his Description of Africa, translated by
D’Ablancourt into French, (Paris, 1667, 3 vols. in 4to.) Marmol
had read and seen, but he is destitute of the curious and
extensive observation which abounds in the original work of Leo
the African.]

141 (return) [ Theophanes, who mentions the defeat, rather than
the death, of Gregory. He brands the praefect with the name: he
had probably assumed the purple, (Chronograph. p. 285.)]

A noble Arabian, who afterwards became the adversary of Ali, and
the father of a caliph, had signalized his valor in Egypt, and
Zobeir 142 was the first who planted the scaling-ladder against
the walls of Babylon. In the African war he was detached from the
standard of Abdallah. On the news of the battle, Zobeir, with
twelve companions, cut his way through the camp of the Greeks,
and pressed forwards, without tasting either food or repose, to
partake of the dangers of his brethren. He cast his eyes round
the field: “Where,” said he, “is our general?” “In his tent.” “Is
the tent a station for the general of the Moslems?” Abdallah
represented with a blush the importance of his own life, and the
temptation that was held forth by the Roman praefect. “Retort,”
said Zobeir, “on the infidels their ungenerous attempt. Proclaim
through the ranks that the head of Gregory shall be repaid with
his captive daughter, and the equal sum of one hundred thousand
pieces of gold.” To the courage and discretion of Zobeir the
lieutenant of the caliph intrusted the execution of his own
stratagem, which inclined the long-disputed balance in favor of
the Saracens. Supplying by activity and artifice the deficiency
of numbers, a part of their forces lay concealed in their tents,
while the remainder prolonged an irregular skirmish with the
enemy till the sun was high in the heavens. On both sides they
retired with fainting steps: their horses were unbridled, their
armor was laid aside, and the hostile nations prepared, or seemed
to prepare, for the refreshment of the evening, and the encounter
of the ensuing day. On a sudden the charge was sounded; the
Arabian camp poured forth a swarm of fresh and intrepid warriors;
and the long line of the Greeks and Africans was surprised,
assaulted, overturned, by new squadrons of the faithful, who, to
the eye of fanaticism, might appear as a band of angels
descending from the sky. The praefect himself was slain by the
hand of Zobeir: his daughter, who sought revenge and death, was
surrounded and made prisoner; and the fugitives involved in their
disaster the town of Sufetula, to which they escaped from the
sabres and lances of the Arabs. Sufetula was built one hundred
and fifty miles to the south of Carthage: a gentle declivity is
watered by a running stream, and shaded by a grove of
juniper-trees; and, in the ruins of a triumpha arch, a portico,
and three temples of the Corinthian order, curiosity may yet
admire the magnificence of the Romans. 143 After the fall of this
opulent city, the provincials and Barbarians implored on all
sides the mercy of the conqueror. His vanity or his zeal might be
flattered by offers of tribute or professions of faith: but his
losses, his fatigues, and the progress of an epidemical disease,
prevented a solid establishment; and the Saracens, after a
campaign of fifteen months, retreated to the confines of Egypt,
with the captives and the wealth of their African expedition. The
caliph’s fifth was granted to a favorite, on the nominal payment
of five hundred thousand pieces of gold; 144 but the state was
doubly injured by this fallacious transaction, if each
foot-soldier had shared one thousand, and each horseman three
thousand, pieces, in the real division of the plunder. The author
of the death of Gregory was expected to have claimed the most
precious reward of the victory: from his silence it might be
presumed that he had fallen in the battle, till the tears and
exclamations of the praefect’s daughter at the sight of Zobeir
revealed the valor and modesty of that gallant soldier. The
unfortunate virgin was offered, and almost rejected as a slave,
by her father’s murderer, who coolly declared that his sword was
consecrated to the service of religion; and that he labored for a
recompense far above the charms of mortal beauty, or the riches
of this transitory life. A reward congenial to his temper was the
honorable commission of announcing to the caliph Othman the
success of his arms. The companions the chiefs, and the people,
were assembled in the mosch of Medina, to hear the interesting
narrative of Zobeir; and as the orator forgot nothing except the
merit of his own counsels and actions, the name of Abdallah was
joined by the Arabians with the heroic names of Caled and Amrou.
145

142 (return) [ See in Ockley (Hist. of the Saracens, vol. ii. p.
45) the death of Zobeir, which was honored with the tears of Ali,
against whom he had rebelled. His valor at the siege of Babylon,
if indeed it be the same person, is mentioned by Eutychius,
(Annal. tom. ii. p. 308)]

143 (return) [ Shaw’s Travels, p. 118, 119.]

144 (return) [ Mimica emptio, says Abulfeda, erat haec, et mira
donatio; quandoquidem Othman, ejus nomine nummos ex aerario prius
ablatos aerario praestabat, (Annal. Moslem. p. 78.) Elmacin (in
his cloudy version, p. 39) seems to report the same job. When the
Arabs be sieged the palace of Othman, it stood high in their
catalogue of grievances.`]

145 (return) [ Theophan. Chronograph. p. 235 edit. Paris. His
chronology is loose and inaccurate.]

[A. D. 665-689.] The western conquests of the Saracens were
suspended near twenty years, till their dissensions were composed
by the establishment of the house of Ommiyah; and the caliph
Moawiyah was invited by the cries of the Africans themselves. The
successors of Heraclius had been informed of the tribute which
they had been compelled to stipulate with the Arabs; but instead
of being moved to pity and relieve their distress, they imposed,
as an equivalent or a fine, a second tribute of a similar amount.
The ears of the zantine ministers were shut against the
complaints of their poverty and ruin their despair was reduced to
prefer the dominion of a single master; and the extortions of the
patriarch of Carthage, who was invested with civil and military
power, provoked the sectaries, and even the Catholics, of the
Roman province to abjure the religion as well as the authority of
their tyrants. The first lieutenant of Moawiyah acquired a just
renown, subdued an important city, defeated an army of thirty
thousand Greeks, swept away fourscore thousand captives, and
enriched with their spoils the bold adventurers of Syria and
Egypt.146 But the title of conqueror of Africa is more justly due
to his successor Akbah. He marched from Damascus at the head of
ten thousand of the bravest Arabs; and the genuine force of the
Moslems was enlarged by the doubtful aid and conversion of many
thousand Barbarians. It would be difficult, nor is it necessary,
to trace the accurate line of the progress of Akbah. The interior
regions have been peopled by the Orientals with fictitious armies
and imaginary citadels. In the warlike province of Zab or
Numidia, fourscore thousand of the natives might assemble in
arms; but the number of three hundred and sixty towns is
incompatible with the ignorance or decay of husbandry;147 and a
circumference of three leagues will not be justified by the ruins
of Erbe or Lambesa, the ancient metropolis of that inland
country. As we approach the seacoast, the well-known titles of
Bugia,148 and Tangier149 define the more certain limits of the
Saracen victories. A remnant of trade still adheres to the
commodious harbour of Bugia, which, in a more prosperous age, is
said to have contained about twenty thousand houses; and the
plenty of iron which is dug from the adjacent mountains might
have supplied a braver people with the instruments of defence.
The remote position and venerable antiquity of Tingi, or Tangier,
have been decorated by the Greek and Arabian fables; but the
figurative expressions of the latter, that the walls were
constructed of brass, and that the roofs were covered with gold
and silver, may be interpreted as the emblems of strength and
opulence.

146 (return) [ Theophanes (in Chronograph. p. 293.) inserts the
vague rumours that might reach Constantinople, of the western
conquests of the Arabs; and I learn from Paul Warnefrid, deacon
of Aquileia (de Gestis Langobard. 1. v. c. 13), that at this time
they sent a fleet from Alexandria into the Sicilian and African
seas.]

147 (return) [ See Novairi (apud Otter, p. 118), Leo Africanus
(fol. 81, verso), who reckoned only cinque citta e infinite
casal, Marmol (Description de l’Afrique, tom. iii. p. 33,) and
Shaw (Travels, p. 57, 65-68)]

148 (return) [ Leo African. fol. 58, verso, 59, recto. Marmol,
tom. ii. p. 415. Shaw, p. 43]

149 (return) [ Leo African. fol. 52. Marmol, tom. ii. p. 228.]

The province of Mauritania Tingitana,150 which assumed the name
of the capital had been imperfectly discovered and settled by the
Romans; the five colonies were confined to a narrow pale, and the
more southern parts were seldom explored except by the agents of
luxury, who searched the forests for ivory and the citron
wood,151 and the shores of the ocean for the purple shellfish.
The fearless Akbah plunged into the heart of the country,
traversed the wilderness in which his successors erected the
splendid capitals of Fez and Morocco,152 and at length penetrated
to the verge of the Atlantic and the great desert. The river Suz
descends from the western sides of mount Atlas, fertilizes, like
the Nile, the adjacent soil, and falls into the sea at a moderate
distance from the Canary, or adjacent islands. Its banks were
inhabited by the last of the Moors, a race of savages, without
laws, or discipline, or religion: they were astonished by the
strange and irresistible terrors of the Oriental arms; and as
they possessed neither gold nor silver, the richest spoil was the
beauty of the female captives, some of whom were afterward sold
for a thousand pieces of gold. The career, though not the zeal,
of Akbah was checked by the prospect of a boundless ocean. He
spurred his horse into the waves, and raising his eyes to heaven,
exclaimed with the tone of a fanatic: “Great God! if my course
were not stopped by this sea, I would still go on, to the unknown
kingdoms of the West, preaching the unity of thy holy name, and
putting to the sword the rebellious nations who worship another
gods than thee.” 153 Yet this Mahometan Alexander, who sighed for
new worlds, was unable to preserve his recent conquests. By the
universal defection of the Greeks and Africans he was recalled
from the shores of the Atlantic, and the surrounding multitudes
left him only the resource of an honourable death. The last scene
was dignified by an example of national virtue. An ambitious
chief, who had disputed the command and failed in the attempt,
was led about as a prisoner in the camp of the Arabian general.
The insurgents had trusted to his discontent and revenge; he
disdained their offers and revealed their designs. In the hour of
danger, the grateful Akbah unlocked his fetters, and advised him
to retire; he chose to die under the banner of his rival.
Embracing as friends and martyrs, they unsheathed their
scimeters, broke their scabbards, and maintained an obstinate
combat, till they fell by each other’s side on the last of their
slaughtered countrymen. The third general or governor of Africa,
Zuheir, avenged and encountered the fate of his predecessor. He
vanquished the natives in many battles; he was overthrown by a
powerful army, which Constantinople had sent to the relief of
Carthage.

150 (return) [ Regio ignobilis, et vix quicquam illustre sortita,
parvis oppidis habitatur, parva flumina emittit, solo quam viris
meleor et segnitie gentis obscura. Pomponius Mela, i. 5, iii. 10.
Mela deserves the more credit, since his own Phoenician ancestors
had migrated from Tingitana to Spain (see, in ii. 6, a passage of
that geographer so cruelly tortured by Salmasius, Isaac Vossius,
and the most virulent of critics, James Gronovius). He lived at
the time of the final reduction of that country by the emperor
Claudius: yet almost thirty years afterward, Pliny (Hist. Nat. v.
i.) complains of his authors, to lazy to inquire, too proud to
confess their ignorance of that wild and remote province.]

151 (return) [ The foolish fashion of this citron wood prevailed
at Rome among the men, as much as the taste for pearls among the
women. A round board or table, four or five feet in diameter,
sold for the price of an estate (latefundii taxatione), eight,
ten, or twelve thousand pounds sterling (Plin. Hist. Natur. xiii.
29). I conceive that I must not confound the tree citrus, with
that of the fruit citrum. But I am not botanist enough to define
the former (it is like the wild cypress) by the vulgar or
Linnaean name; nor will I decide whether the citrum be the orange
or the lemon. Salmasius appears to exhaust the subject, but he
too often involves himself in the web of his disorderly
erudition. (Flinian. Exercitat. tom. ii. p 666, &c.)]

152 (return) [ Leo African. fol. 16, verso. Marmol, tom. ii. p.
28. This province, the first scene of the exploits and greatness
of the cherifs is often mentioned in the curious history of that
dynasty at the end of the third volume of Marmol, Description de
l’Afrique. The third vol. of The Recherches Historiques sur les
Maures (lately published at Paris) illustrates the history and
geography of the kingdoms of Fez and Morocco.]

153 (return) [ Otter (p. 119,) has given the strong tone of
fanaticism to this exclamation, which Cardonne (p. 37,) has
softened to a pious wish of preaching the Koran. Yet they had
both the same text of Novairi before their eyes.]

[A. D. 670-675.] It had been the frequent practice of the Moorish
tribes to join the invaders, to share the plunder, to profess the
faith, and to revolt in their savage state of independence and
idolatry, on the first retreat or misfortune of the Moslems. The
prudence of Akbah had proposed to found an Arabian colony in the
heart of Africa; a citadel that might curb the levity of the
Barbarians, a place of refuge to secure, against the accidents of
war, the wealth and the families of the Saracens. With this view,
and under the modest title of the station of a caravan, he
planted this colony in the fiftieth year of the Hegira. In its
present decay, Cairoan154 still holds the second rank in the
kingdom of Tunis, from which it is distant about fifty miles to
the south;155 its inland situation, twelve miles westward of the
sea, has protected the city from the Greek and Sicilian fleets.
When the wild beasts and serpents were extirpated, when the
forest, or rather wilderness, was cleared, the vestiges of a
Roman town were discovered in a sandy plain: the vegetable food
of Cairoan is brought from afar; and the scarcity of springs
constrains the inhabitants to collect in cisterns and reservoirs
a precarious supply of rain water. These obstacles were subdued
by the industry of Akbah; he traced a circumference of three
thousand and six hundred paces, which he encompassed with a brick
wall; in the space of five years, the governor’s palace was
surrounded with a sufficient number of private habitations; a
spacious mosque was supported by five hundred columns of granite,
porphyry, and Numidian marble; and Cairoan became the seat of
learning as well as of empire. But these were the glories of a
later age; the new colony was shaken by the successive defeats of
Akbah and Zuheir, and the western expeditions were again
interrupted by the civil discord of the Arabian monarchy. The son
of the valiant Zobeir maintained a war of twelve years, a siege
of seven months against the house of Ommiyah. Abdallah was said
to unite the fierceness of the lion with the subtlety of the fox;
but if he inherited the courage, he was devoid of the generosity,
of his father.156

[A. D. 692-698.] The return of domestic peace allowed the caliph
Abdalmalek to resume the conquest of Africa; the standard was
delivered to Hassan governor of Egypt, and the revenue of that
kingdom, with an army of forty thousand men, was consecrated to
the important service. In the vicissitudes of war, the interior
provinces had been alternately won and lost by the Saracens. But
the seacoast still remained in the hands of the Greeks; the
predecessors of Hassan had respected the name and fortifications
of Carthage; and the number of its defenders was recruited by the
fugitives of Cabes and Tripoli. The arms of Hassan were bolder
and more fortunate: he reduced and pillaged the metropolis of
Africa; and the mention of scaling-ladders may justify the
suspicion, that he anticipated, by a sudden assault, the more
tedious operations of a regular siege. But the joy of the
conquerors was soon disturbed by the appearance of the Christian
succours. The praefect and patrician John, a general of
experience and renown, embarked at Constantinople the forces of
the Eastern empire;157 they were joined by the ships and soldiers
of Sicily, and a powerful reinforcement of Goths158 was obtained
from the fears and religion of the Spanish monarch.

154 (return) [ The foundation of Cairoan is mentioned by Ockley
(Hist. of the Saracens, vol. ii. p. 129, 130); and the situation,
mosque, &c. of the city are described by Leo Africanus (fol. 75),
Marmol (tom. ii. p. 532), and Shaw (p. 115).]

155 (return) [ A portentous, though frequent mistake, has been
the confounding, from a slight similitude of name, the Cyrene of
the Greeks, and the Cairoan of the Arabs, two cities which are
separated by an interval of a thousand miles along the seacoast.
The great Thuanus has not escaped this fault, the less excusable
as it is connected with a formal and elaborate description of
Africa (Historiar. l. vii. c. 2, in tom. i. p. 240, edit.
Buckley).]

156 (return) [ Besides the Arabic Chronicles of Abulfeda,
Elmacin, and Abulpharagius, under the lxxiiid year of the Hegira,
we may consult nd’Herbelot (Bibliot. Orient. p. 7,) and Ockley
(Hist. of the Saracens, vol. ii. p. 339-349). The latter has
given the last and pathetic dialogue between Abdallah and his
mother; but he has forgot a physical effect of her grief for his
death, the return, at the age of ninety, and fatal consequences
of her menses.]

157 (return) [ The patriarch of Constantinople, with Theophanes
(Chronograph. p. 309,) have slightly mentioned this last attempt
for the relief or Africa. Pagi (Critica, tom. iii. p. 129. 141,)
has nicely ascertained the chronology by a strict comparison of
the Arabic and Byzantine historians, who often disagree both in
time and fact. See likewise a note of Otter (p. 121).]

158 (return) [ Dove s’erano ridotti i nobili Romani e i Gotti;
and afterward, i Romani suggirono e i Gotti lasciarono
Carthagine. (Leo African. for. 72, recto) I know not from what
Arabic writer the African derived his Goths; but the fact, though
new, is so interesting and so probable, that I will accept it on
the slightest authority.]

The weight of the confederate navy broke the chain that guarded
the entrance of the harbour; the Arabs retired to Cairoan, or
Tripoli; the Christians landed; the citizens hailed the ensign of
the cross, and the winter was idly wasted in the dream of victory
or deliverance. But Africa was irrecoverably lost: the zeal and
resentment of the commander of the faithful159 prepared in the
ensuing spring a more numerous armament by sea and land; and the
patrician in his turn was compelled to evacuate the post and
fortifications of Carthage. A second battle was fought in the
neighbourhood of Utica; and the Greeks and Goths were again
defeated; and their timely embarkation saved them from the sword
of Hassan, who had invested the slight and insufficient rampart
of their camp. Whatever yet remained of Carthage was delivered to
the flames, and the colony of Dido160 and Cesar lay desolate
above two hundred years, till a part, perhaps a twentieth, of the
old circumference was repeopled by the first of the Fatimite
caliphs. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, the second
capital of the West was represented by a mosque, a college
without students, twenty-five or thirty shops, and the huts of
five hundred peasants, who, in their abject poverty, displayed
the arrogance of the Punic senators. Even that paltry village was
swept away by the Spaniards whom Charles the Fifth had stationed
in the fortress of the Goletta. The ruins of Carthage have
perished; and the place might be unknown if some broken arches of
an aqueduct did not guide the footsteps of the inquisitive
traveller.161

[A. D. 698-709.] The Greeks were expelled, but the Arabians were
not yet masters of the country. In the interior provinces the
Moors or Berbers,162 so feeble under the first Cesars, so
formidable to the Byzantine princes, maintained a disorderly
resistance to the religion and power of the successors of
Mahomet. Under the standard of their queen Cahina, the
independent tribes acquired some degree of union and discipline;
and as the Moors respected in their females the character of a
prophetess, they attacked the invaders with an enthusiasm similar
to their own. The veteran bands of Hassan were inadequate to the
defence of Africa: the conquests of an age were lost in a single
day; and the Arabian chief, overwhelmed by the torrent, retired
to the confines of Egypt, and expected, five years, the promised
succours of the caliph. After the retreat of the Saracens, the
victorious prophetess assembled the Moorish chiefs, and
recommended a measure of strange and savage policy. “Our cities,”
said she, “and the gold and silver which they contain,
perpetually attract the arms of the Arabs. These vile metals are
not the objects of OUR ambition; we content ourselves with the
simple productions of the earth. Let us destroy these cities; let
us bury in their ruins those pernicious treasures; and when the
avarice of our foes shall be destitute of temptation, perhaps
they will cease to disturb the tranquillity of a warlike people.”
The proposal was accepted with unanimous applause. From Tangier
to Tripoli the buildings, or at least the fortifications, were
demolished, the fruit-trees were cut down, the means of
subsistence were extirpated, a fertile and populous garden was
changed into a desert, and the historians of a more recent period
could discern the frequent traces of the prosperity and
devastation of their ancestors.

159 (return) [ This commander is styled by Nicephorus, ———— a
vague though not improper definition of the caliph. Theophanes
introduces the strange appellation of —————, which his
interpreter Goar explains by Vizir Azem. They may approach the
truth, in assigning the active part to the minister, rather than
the prince; but they forget that the Ommiades had only a kaleb,
or secretary, and that the office of Vizir was not revived or
instituted till the 132d year of the Hegira (d’Herbelot, 912).]

160 (return) [ According to Solinus (1.27, p. 36, edit. Salmas),
the Carthage of Dido stood either 677 or 737 years; a various
reading, which proceeds from the difference of MSS. or editions
(Salmas, Plinian. Exercit tom i. p. 228) The former of these
accounts, which gives 823 years before Christ, is more consistent
with the well-weighed testimony of Velleius Paterculus: but the
latter is preferred by our chronologists (Marsham, Canon. Chron.
p. 398,) as more agreeable to the Hebrew and Syrian annals.]

161 (return) [ Leo African. fo1. 71, verso; 72, recto. Marmol,
tom. ii. p.445-447. Shaw, p.80.]

162 (return) [ The history of the word Barbar may be classed
under four periods, 1. In the time of Homer, when the Greeks and
Asiatics might probably use a common idiom, the imitative sound
of Barbar was applied to the ruder tribes, whose pronunciation
was most harsh, whose grammar was most defective. 2. From the
time, at least, of Herodotus, it was extended to all the nations
who were strangers to the language and manners of the Greeks. 3.
In the age, of Plautus, the Romans submitted to the insult
(Pompeius Festus, l. ii. p. 48, edit. Dacier), and freely gave
themselves the name of Barbarians. They insensibly claimed an
exemption for Italy, and her subject provinces; and at length
removed the disgraceful appellation to the savage or hostile
nations beyond the pale of the empire. 4. In every sense, it was
due to the Moors; the familiar word was borrowed from the Latin
Provincials by the Arabian conquerors, and has justly settled as
a local denomination (Barbary) along the northern coast of
Africa.]

Such is the tale of the modern Arabians. Yet I strongly suspect
that their ignorance of antiquity, the love of the marvellous,
and the fashion of extolling the philosophy of Barbarians, has
induced them to describe, as one voluntary act, the calamities of
three hundred years since the first fury of the Donatists and
Vandals. In the progress of the revolt, Cahina had most probably
contributed her share of destruction; and the alarm of universal
ruin might terrify and alienate the cities that had reluctantly
yielded to her unworthy yoke. They no longer hoped, perhaps they
no longer wished, the return of their Byzantine sovereigns: their
present servitude was not alleviated by the benefits of order and
justice; and the most zealous Catholic must prefer the imperfect
truths of the Koran to the blind and rude idolatry of the Moors.
The general of the Saracens was again received as the saviour of
the province; the friends of civil society conspired against the
savages of the land; and the royal prophetess was slain in the
first battle which overturned the baseless fabric of her
superstition and empire. The same spirit revived under the
successor of Hassan; it was finally quelled by the activity of
Musa and his two sons; but the number of the rebels may be
presumed from that of three hundred thousand captives; sixty
thousand of whom, the caliph’s fifth, were sold for the profit of
thee public treasury. Thirty thousand of the Barbarian youth were
enlisted in the troops; and the pious labours of Musa to
inculcate the knowledge and practice of the Koran, accustomed the
Africans to obey the apostle of God and the commander of the
faithful. In their climate and government, their diet and
habitation, the wandering Moors resembled the Bedoweens of the
desert. With the religion, they were proud to adopt the language,
name, and origin of Arabs: the blood of the strangers and natives
was insensibly mingled; and from the Euphrates to the Atlantic
the same nation might seem to be diffused over the sandy plains
of Asia and Africa. Yet I will not deny that fifty thousand tents
of pure Arabians might be transported over the Nile, and
scattered through the Lybian desert: and I am not ignorant that
five of the Moorish tribes still retain their barbarous idiom,
with the appellation and character of white Africans.163