Chapter LII: More Conquests By The Arabs.—Part III

In a private condition, our desires are perpetually repressed by
poverty and subordination; but the lives and labors of millions
are devoted to the service of a despotic prince, whose laws are
blindly obeyed, and whose wishes are instantly gratified. Our
imagination is dazzled by the splendid picture; and whatever may
be the cool dictates of reason, there are few among us who would
obstinately refuse a trial of the comforts and the cares of
royalty. It may therefore be of some use to borrow the experience
of the same Abdalrahman, whose magnificence has perhaps excited
our admiration and envy, and to transcribe an authentic memorial
which was found in the closet of the deceased caliph. “I have now
reigned above fifty years in victory or peace; beloved by my
subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies.
Riches and honors, power and pleasure, have waited on my call,
nor does any earthly blessing appear to have been wanting to my
felicity. In this situation, I have diligently numbered the days
of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: they
amount to Fourteen:—O man! place not thy confidence in this
present world!” 50 The luxury of the caliphs, so useless to their
private happiness, relaxed the nerves, and terminated the
progress, of the Arabian empire. Temporal and spiritual conquest
had been the sole occupation of the first successors of Mahomet;
and after supplying themselves with the necessaries of life, the
whole revenue was scrupulously devoted to that salutary work. The
Abbassides were impoverished by the multitude of their wants, and
their contempt of oeconomy. Instead of pursuing the great object
of ambition, their leisure, their affections, the powers of their
mind, were diverted by pomp and pleasure: the rewards of valor
were embezzled by women and eunuchs, and the royal camp was
encumbered by the luxury of the palace. A similar temper was
diffused among the subjects of the caliph. Their stern enthusiasm
was softened by time and prosperity. they sought riches in the
occupations of industry, fame in the pursuits of literature, and
happiness in the tranquillity of domestic life. War was no longer
the passion of the Saracens; and the increase of pay, the
repetition of donatives, were insufficient to allure the
posterity of those voluntary champions who had crowded to the
standard of Abubeker and Omar for the hopes of spoil and of
paradise.

50 (return) [ Cardonne, tom. i. p. 329, 330. This confession, the
complaints of Solomon of the vanity of this world, (read Prior’s
verbose but eloquent poem,) and the happy ten days of the emperor
Seghed, (Rambler, No. 204, 205,) will be triumphantly quoted by
the detractors of human life. Their expectations are commonly
immoderate, their estimates are seldom impartial. If I may speak
of myself, (the only person of whom I can speak with certainty,)
my happy hours have far exceeded, and far exceed, the scanty
numbers of the caliph of Spain; and I shall not scruple to add,
that many of them are due to the pleasing labor of the present
composition.]

Under the reign of the Ommiades, the studies of the Moslems were
confined to the interpretation of the Koran, and the eloquence
and poetry of their native tongue. A people continually exposed
to the dangers of the field must esteem the healing powers of
medicine, or rather of surgery; but the starving physicians of
Arabia murmured a complaint that exercise and temperance deprived
them of the greatest part of their practice. 51 After their civil
and domestic wars, the subjects of the Abbassides, awakening from
this mental lethargy, found leisure and felt curiosity for the
acquisition of profane science. This spirit was first encouraged
by the caliph Almansor, who, besides his knowledge of the
Mahometan law, had applied himself with success to the study of
astronomy. But when the sceptre devolved to Almamon, the seventh
of the Abbassides, he completed the designs of his grandfather,
and invited the muses from their ancient seats. His ambassadors
at Constantinople, his agents in Armenia, Syria, and Egypt,
collected the volumes of Grecian science; at his command they
were translated by the most skilful interpreters into the Arabic
language: his subjects were exhorted assiduously to peruse these
instructive writings; and the successor of Mahomet assisted with
pleasure and modesty at the assemblies and disputations of the
learned. “He was not ignorant,” says Abulpharagius, “that they
are the elect of God, his best and most useful servants, whose
lives are devoted to the improvement of their rational faculties.
The mean ambition of the Chinese or the Turks may glory in the
industry of their hands or the indulgence of their brutal
appetites. Yet these dexterous artists must view, with hopeless
emulation, the hexagons and pyramids of the cells of a beehive:
52 these fortitudinous heroes are awed by the superior fierceness
of the lions and tigers; and in their amorous enjoyments they are
much inferior to the vigor of the grossest and most sordid
quadrupeds. The teachers of wisdom are the true luminaries and
legislators of a world, which, without their aid, would again
sink in ignorance and barbarism.” 53 The zeal and curiosity of
Almamon were imitated by succeeding princes of the line of Abbas:
their rivals, the Fatimites of Africa and the Ommiades of Spain,
were the patrons of the learned, as well as the commanders of the
faithful; the same royal prerogative was claimed by their
independent emirs of the provinces; and their emulation diffused
the taste and the rewards of science from Samarcand and Bochara
to Fez and Cordova. The vizier of a sultan consecrated a sum of
two hundred thousand pieces of gold to the foundation of a
college at Bagdad, which he endowed with an annual revenue of
fifteen thousand dinars. The fruits of instruction were
communicated, perhaps at different times, to six thousand
disciples of every degree, from the son of the noble to that of
the mechanic: a sufficient allowance was provided for the
indigent scholars; and the merit or industry of the professors
was repaid with adequate stipends. In every city the productions
of Arabic literature were copied and collected by the curiosity
of the studious and the vanity of the rich. A private doctor
refused the invitation of the sultan of Bochara, because the
carriage of his books would have required four hundred camels.
The royal library of the Fatimites consisted of one hundred
thousand manuscripts, elegantly transcribed and splendidly bound,
which were lent, without jealousy or avarice, to the students of
Cairo. Yet this collection must appear moderate, if we can
believe that the Ommiades of Spain had formed a library of six
hundred thousand volumes, forty-four of which were employed in
the mere catalogue. Their capital, Cordova, with the adjacent
towns of Malaga, Almeria, and Murcia, had given birth to more
than three hundred writers, and above seventy public libraries
were opened in the cities of the Andalusian kingdom. The age of
Arabian learning continued about five hundred years, till the
great eruption of the Moguls, and was coeval with the darkest and
most slothful period of European annals; but since the sun of
science has arisen in the West, it should seem that the Oriental
studies have languished and declined. 54

51 (return) [ The Guliston (p. 29) relates the conversation of
Mahomet and a physician, (Epistol. Renaudot. in Fabricius,
Bibliot. Graec. tom. i. p. 814.) The prophet himself was skilled
in the art of medicine; and Gagnier (Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii. p.
394-405) has given an extract of the aphorisms which are extant
under his name.]

52 (return) [ See their curious architecture in Reaumur (Hist.
des Insectes, tom. v. Memoire viii.) These hexagons are closed by
a pyramid; the angles of the three sides of a similar pyramid,
such as would accomplish the given end with the smallest quantity
possible of materials, were determined by a mathematician, at
109] degrees 26 minutes for the larger, 70 degrees 34 minutes for
the smaller. The actual measure is 109 degrees 28 minutes, 70
degrees 32 minutes. Yet this perfect harmony raises the work at
the expense of the artist he bees are not masters of transcendent
geometry.]

53 (return) [ Saed Ebn Ahmed, cadhi of Toledo, who died A. H.
462, A.D. 069, has furnished Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 160) with
this curious passage, as well as with the text of Pocock’s
Specimen Historiae Arabum. A number of literary anecdotes of
philosophers, physicians, &c., who have flourished under each
caliph, form the principal merit of the Dynasties of
Abulpharagius.]

54 (return) [ These literary anecdotes are borrowed from the
Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana, (tom. ii. p. 38, 71, 201, 202,) Leo
Africanus, (de Arab. Medicis et Philosophis, in Fabric. Bibliot.
Graec. tom. xiii. p. 259-293, particularly p. 274,) and Renaudot,
(Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 274, 275, 536, 537,) besides the
chronological remarks of Abulpharagius.]

In the libraries of the Arabians, as in those of Europe, the far
greater part of the innumerable volumes were possessed only of
local value or imaginary merit. 55 The shelves were crowded with
orators and poets, whose style was adapted to the taste and
manners of their countrymen; with general and partial histories,
which each revolving generation supplied with a new harvest of
persons and events; with codes and commentaries of jurisprudence,
which derived their authority from the law of the prophet; with
the interpreters of the Koran, and orthodox tradition; and with
the whole theological tribe, polemics, mystics, scholastics, and
moralists, the first or the last of writers, according to the
different estimates of sceptics or believers. The works of
speculation or science may be reduced to the four classes of
philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and physic. The sages of
Greece were translated and illustrated in the Arabic language,
and some treatises, now lost in the original, have been recovered
in the versions of the East, 56 which possessed and studied the
writings of Aristotle and Plato, of Euclid and Apollonius, of
Ptolemy, Hippocrates, and Galen. 57 Among the ideal systems which
have varied with the fashion of the times, the Arabians adopted
the philosophy of the Stagirite, alike intelligible or alike
obscure for the readers of every age. Plato wrote for the
Athenians, and his allegorical genius is too closely blended with
the language and religion of Greece. After the fall of that
religion, the Peripatetics, emerging from their obscurity,
prevailed in the controversies of the Oriental sects, and their
founder was long afterwards restored by the Mahometans of Spain
to the Latin schools. 58 The physics, both of the Academy and the
Lycaeum, as they are built, not on observation, but on argument,
have retarded the progress of real knowledge. The metaphysics of
infinite, or finite, spirit, have too often been enlisted in the
service of superstition. But the human faculties are fortified by
the art and practice of dialectics; the ten predicaments of
Aristotle collect and methodize our ideas, 59 and his syllogism
is the keenest weapon of dispute. It was dexterously wielded in
the schools of the Saracens, but as it is more effectual for the
detection of error than for the investigation of truth, it is not
surprising that new generations of masters and disciples should
still revolve in the same circle of logical argument. The
mathematics are distinguished by a peculiar privilege, that, in
the course of ages, they may always advance, and can never
recede. But the ancient geometry, if I am not misinformed, was
resumed in the same state by the Italians of the fifteenth
century; and whatever may be the origin of the name, the science
of algebra is ascribed to the Grecian Diophantus by the modest
testimony of the Arabs themselves. 60 They cultivated with more
success the sublime science of astronomy, which elevates the mind
of man to disdain his diminutive planet and momentary existence.
The costly instruments of observation were supplied by the caliph
Almamon, and the land of the Chaldaeans still afforded the same
spacious level, the same unclouded horizon. In the plains of
Sinaar, and a second time in those of Cufa, his mathematicians
accurately measured a degree of the great circle of the earth,
and determined at twenty-four thousand miles the entire
circumference of our globe. 61 From the reign of the Abbassides
to that of the grandchildren of Tamerlane, the stars, without the
aid of glasses, were diligently observed; and the astronomical
tables of Bagdad, Spain, and Samarcand, 62 correct some minute
errors, without daring to renounce the hypothesis of Ptolemy,
without advancing a step towards the discovery of the solar
system. In the Eastern courts, the truths of science could be
recommended only by ignorance and folly, and the astronomer would
have been disregarded, had he not debased his wisdom or honesty
by the vain predictions of astrology. 63 But in the science of
medicine, the Arabians have been deservedly applauded. The names
of Mesua and Geber, of Razis and Avicenna, are ranked with the
Grecian masters; in the city of Bagdad, eight hundred and sixty
physicians were licensed to exercise their lucrative profession:
64 in Spain, the life of the Catholic princes was intrusted to
the skill of the Saracens, 65 and the school of Salerno, their
legitimate offspring, revived in Italy and Europe the precepts of
the healing art. 66 The success of each professor must have been
influenced by personal and accidental causes; but we may form a
less fanciful estimate of their general knowledge of anatomy, 67
botany, 68 and chemistry, 69 the threefold basis of their theory
and practice. A superstitious reverence for the dead confined
both the Greeks and the Arabians to the dissection of apes and
quadrupeds; the more solid and visible parts were known in the
time of Galen, and the finer scrutiny of the human frame was
reserved for the microscope and the injections of modern artists.
Botany is an active science, and the discoveries of the torrid
zone might enrich the herbal of Dioscorides with two thousand
plants. Some traditionary knowledge might be secreted in the
temples and monasteries of Egypt; much useful experience had been
acquired in the practice of arts and manufactures; but the
science of chemistry owes its origin and improvement to the
industry of the Saracens. They first invented and named the
alembic for the purposes of distillation, analyzed the substances
of the three kingdoms of nature, tried the distinction and
affinities of alcalis and acids, and converted the poisonous
minerals into soft and salutary medicines. But the most eager
search of Arabian chemistry was the transmutation of metals, and
the elixir of immortal health: the reason and the fortunes of
thousands were evaporated in the crucibles of alchemy, and the
consummation of the great work was promoted by the worthy aid of
mystery, fable, and superstition.

55 (return) [ The Arabic catalogue of the Escurial will give a
just idea of the proportion of the classes. In the library of
Cairo, the Mss of astronomy and medicine amounted to 6500, with
two fair globes, the one of brass, the other of silver, (Bibliot.
Arab. Hisp. tom. i. p. 417.)]

56 (return) [ As, for instance, the fifth, sixth, and seventh
books (the eighth is still wanting) of the Conic Sections of
Apollonius Pergaeus, which were printed from the Florence Ms.
1661, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. ii. p. 559.) Yet the fifth
book had been previously restored by the mathematical divination
of Viviani, (see his Eloge in Fontenelle, tom. v. p. 59, &c.)]

57 (return) [ The merit of these Arabic versions is freely
discussed by Renaudot, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. i. p.
812-816,) and piously defended by Casiri, (Bibliot. Arab.
Hispana, tom. i. p. 238-240.) Most of the versions of Plato,
Aristotle, Hippocrates, Galen, &c., are ascribed to Honain, a
physician of the Nestorian sect, who flourished at Bagdad in the
court of the caliphs, and died A.D. 876. He was at the head of a
school or manufacture of translations, and the works of his sons
and disciples were published under his name. See Abulpharagius,
(Dynast. p. 88, 115, 171-174, and apud Asseman. Bibliot. Orient.
tom. ii. p. 438,) D’Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orientale, p. 456,)
Asseman. (Bibliot. Orient. tom. iii. p. 164,) and Casiri,
(Bibliot. Arab. Hispana, tom. i. p. 238, &c. 251, 286-290, 302,
304, &c.)]

58 (return) [ See Mosheim, Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 181, 214,
236, 257, 315, 388, 396, 438, &c.]

59 (return) [ The most elegant commentary on the Categories or
Predicaments of Aristotle may be found in the Philosophical
Arrangements of Mr. James Harris, (London, 1775, in octavo,) who
labored to revive the studies of Grecian literature and
philosophy.]

60 (return) [ Abulpharagius, Dynast. p. 81, 222. Bibliot. Arab.
Hisp. tom. i. p. 370, 371. In quem (says the primate of the
Jacobites) si immiserit selector, oceanum hoc in genere
(algebrae) inveniet. The time of Diophantus of Alexandria is
unknown; but his six books are still extant, and have been
illustrated by the Greek Planudes and the Frenchman Meziriac,
(Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. iv. p. 12-15.)]

61 (return) [ Abulfeda (Annal. Moslem. p. 210, 211, vers. Reiske)
describes this operation according to Ibn Challecan, and the best
historians. This degree most accurately contains 200,000 royal or
Hashemite cubits which Arabia had derived from the sacred and
legal practice both of Palestine and Egypt. This ancient cubit is
repeated 400 times in each basis of the great pyramid, and seems
to indicate the primitive and universal measures of the East. See
the Metrologie of the laborions. M. Paucton, p. 101-195.]

62 (return) [ See the Astronomical Tables of Ulugh Begh, with the
preface of Dr. Hyde in the first volume of his Syntagma
Dissertationum, Oxon. 1767.]

63 (return) [ The truth of astrology was allowed by Albumazar,
and the best of the Arabian astronomers, who drew their most
certain predictions, not from Venus and Mercury, but from Jupiter
and the sun, (Abulpharag. Dynast. p. 161-163.) For the state and
science of the Persian astronomers, see Chardin, (Voyages en
Perse, tom. iii. p. 162-203.)]

64 (return) [ Bibliot. Arabico-Hispana, tom. i. p. 438. The
original relates a pleasant tale of an ignorant, but harmless,
practitioner.]

65 (return) [ In the year 956, Sancho the Fat, king of Leon, was
cured by the physicians of Cordova, (Mariana, l. viii. c. 7, tom.
i. p. 318.)]

66 (return) [ The school of Salerno, and the introduction of the
Arabian sciences into Italy, are discussed with learning and
judgment by Muratori (Antiquitat. Italiae Medii Aevi, tom. iii.
p. 932-940) and Giannone, (Istoria Civile di Napoli, tom. ii. p.
119-127.)]

67 (return) [ See a good view of the progress of anatomy in
Wotton, (Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning, p. 208-256.)
His reputation has been unworthily depreciated by the wits in the
controversy of Boyle and Bentley.]

68 (return) [ Bibliot. Arab. Hispana, tom. i. p. 275. Al Beithar,
of Malaga, their greatest botanist, had travelled into Africa,
Persia, and India.]

69 (return) [ Dr. Watson, (Elements of Chemistry, vol. i. p. 17,
&c.) allows the original merit of the Arabians. Yet he quotes the
modest confession of the famous Geber of the ixth century,
(D’Herbelot, p. 387,) that he had drawn most of his science,
perhaps the transmutation of metals, from the ancient sages.
Whatever might be the origin or extent of their knowledge, the
arts of chemistry and alchemy appear to have been known in Egypt
at least three hundred years before Mahomet, (Wotton’s
Reflections, p. 121-133. Pauw, Recherches sur les Egyptiens et
les Chinois, tom. i. p. 376-429.) * Note: Mr. Whewell (Hist. of
Inductive Sciences, vol. i. p. 336) rejects the claim of the
Arabians as inventors of the science of chemistry. “The formation
and realization of the notions of analysis and affinity were
important steps in chemical science; which, as I shall hereafter
endeavor to show it remained for the chemists of Europe to make
at a much later period.”—M.]

But the Moslems deprived themselves of the principal benefits of
a familiar intercourse with Greece and Rome, the knowledge of
antiquity, the purity of taste, and the freedom of thought.
Confident in the riches of their native tongue, the Arabians
disdained the study of any foreign idiom. The Greek interpreters
were chosen among their Christian subjects; they formed their
translations, sometimes on the original text, more frequently
perhaps on a Syriac version; and in the crowd of astronomers and
physicians, there is no example of a poet, an orator, or even an
historian, being taught to speak the language of the Saracens. 70
The mythology of Homer would have provoked the abhorrence of
those stern fanatics: they possessed in lazy ignorance the
colonies of the Macedonians, and the provinces of Carthage and
Rome: the heroes of Plutarch and Livy were buried in oblivion;
and the history of the world before Mahomet was reduced to a
short legend of the patriarchs, the prophets, and the Persian
kings. Our education in the Greek and Latin schools may have
fixed in our minds a standard of exclusive taste; and I am not
forward to condemn the literature and judgment of nations, of
whose language I am ignorant. Yet I know that the classics have
much to teach, and I believe that the Orientals have much to
learn; the temperate dignity of style, the graceful proportions
of art, the forms of visible and intellectual beauty, the just
delineation of character and passion, the rhetoric of narrative
and argument, the regular fabric of epic and dramatic poetry. 71
The influence of truth and reason is of a less ambiguous
complexion. The philosophers of Athens and Rome enjoyed the
blessings, and asserted the rights, of civil and religious
freedom. Their moral and political writings might have gradually
unlocked the fetters of Eastern despotism, diffused a liberal
spirit of inquiry and toleration, and encouraged the Arabian
sages to suspect that their caliph was a tyrant, and their
prophet an impostor. 72 The instinct of superstition was alarmed
by the introduction even of the abstract sciences; and the more
rigid doctors of the law condemned the rash and pernicious
curiosity of Almamon. 73 To the thirst of martyrdom, the vision
of paradise, and the belief of predestination, we must ascribe
the invincible enthusiasm of the prince and people. And the sword
of the Saracens became less formidable when their youth was drawn
away from the camp to the college, when the armies of the
faithful presumed to read and to reflect. Yet the foolish vanity
of the Greeks was jealous of their studies, and reluctantly
imparted the sacred fire to the Barbarians of the East. 74

70 (return) [ Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 26, 148) mentions a
Syriac version of Homer’s two poems, by Theophilus, a Christian
Maronite of Mount Libanus, who professed astronomy at Roha or
Edessa towards the end of the viiith century. His work would be a
literary curiosity. I have read somewhere, but I do not believe,
that Plutarch’s Lives were translated into Turkish for the use of
Mahomet the Second.]

71 (return) [ I have perused, with much pleasure, Sir William
Jones’s Latin Commentary on Asiatic Poetry, (London, 1774, in
octavo,) which was composed in the youth of that wonderful
linguist. At present, in the maturity of his taste and judgment,
he would perhaps abate of the fervent, and even partial, praise
which he has bestowed on the Orientals.]

72 (return) [ Among the Arabian philosophers, Averroes has been
accused of despising the religions of the Jews, the Christians,
and the Mahometans, (see his article in Bayle’s Dictionary.) Each
of these sects would agree, that in two instances out of three,
his contempt was reasonable.]

73 (return) [ D’Herbelot, Bibliotheque, Orientale, p. 546.]

74 (return) [ Cedrenus, p. 548, who relates how manfully the
emperor refused a mathematician to the instances and offers of
the caliph Almamon. This absurd scruple is expressed almost in
the same words by the continuator of Theophanes, (Scriptores post
Theophanem, p. 118.)]

In the bloody conflict of the Ommiades and Abbassides, the Greeks
had stolen the opportunity of avenging their wrongs and enlarging
their limits. But a severe retribution was exacted by Mohadi, the
third caliph of the new dynasty, who seized, in his turn, the
favorable opportunity, while a woman and a child, Irene and
Constantine, were seated on the Byzantine throne. An army of
ninety-five thousand Persians and Arabs was sent from the Tigris
to the Thracian Bosphorus, under the command of Harun, 75 or
Aaron, the second son of the commander of the faithful. His
encampment on the opposite heights of Chrysopolis, or Scutari,
informed Irene, in her palace of Constantinople, of the loss of
her troops and provinces. With the consent or connivance of their
sovereign, her ministers subscribed an ignominious peace; and the
exchange of some royal gifts could not disguise the annual
tribute of seventy thousand dinars of gold, which was imposed on
the Roman empire. The Saracens had too rashly advanced into the
midst of a distant and hostile land: their retreat was solicited
by the promise of faithful guides and plentiful markets; and not
a Greek had courage to whisper, that their weary forces might be
surrounded and destroyed in their necessary passage between a
slippery mountain and the River Sangarius. Five years after this
expedition, Harun ascended the throne of his father and his elder
brother; the most powerful and vigorous monarch of his race,
illustrious in the West, as the ally of Charlemagne, and familiar
to the most childish readers, as the perpetual hero of the
Arabian tales. His title to the name of Al Rashid (the Just) is
sullied by the extirpation of the generous, perhaps the innocent,
Barmecides; yet he could listen to the complaint of a poor widow
who had been pillaged by his troops, and who dared, in a passage
of the Koran, to threaten the inattentive despot with the
judgment of God and posterity. His court was adorned with luxury
and science; but, in a reign of three-and-twenty years, Harun
repeatedly visited his provinces from Chorasan to Egypt; nine
times he performed the pilgrimage of Mecca; eight times he
invaded the territories of the Romans; and as often as they
declined the payment of the tribute, they were taught to feel
that a month of depredation was more costly than a year of
submission. But when the unnatural mother of Constantine was
deposed and banished, her successor, Nicephorus, resolved to
obliterate this badge of servitude and disgrace. The epistle of
the emperor to the caliph was pointed with an allusion to the
game of chess, which had already spread from Persia to Greece.
“The queen (he spoke of Irene) considered you as a rook, and
herself as a pawn. That pusillanimous female submitted to pay a
tribute, the double of which she ought to have exacted from the
Barbarians. Restore therefore the fruits of your injustice, or
abide the determination of the sword.” At these words the
ambassadors cast a bundle of swords before the foot of the
throne. The caliph smiled at the menace, and drawing his cimeter,
samsamah, a weapon of historic or fabulous renown, he cut asunder
the feeble arms of the Greeks, without turning the edge, or
endangering the temper, of his blade. He then dictated an epistle
of tremendous brevity: “In the name of the most merciful God,
Harun al Rashid, commander of the faithful, to Nicephorus, the
Roman dog. I have read thy letter, O thou son of an unbelieving
mother. Thou shalt not hear, thou shalt behold, my reply.” It was
written in characters of blood and fire on the plains of Phrygia;
and the warlike celerity of the Arabs could only be checked by
the arts of deceit and the show of repentance.

The triumphant caliph retired, after the fatigues of the
campaign, to his favorite palace of Racca on the Euphrates: 76
but the distance of five hundred miles, and the inclemency of the
season, encouraged his adversary to violate the peace. Nicephorus
was astonished by the bold and rapid march of the commander of
the faithful, who repassed, in the depth of winter, the snows of
Mount Taurus: his stratagems of policy and war were exhausted;
and the perfidious Greek escaped with three wounds from a field
of battle overspread with forty thousand of his subjects. Yet the
emperor was ashamed of submission, and the caliph was resolved on
victory. One hundred and thirty-five thousand regular soldiers
received pay, and were inscribed in the military roll; and above
three hundred thousand persons of every denomination marched
under the black standard of the Abbassides. They swept the
surface of Asia Minor far beyond Tyana and Ancyra, and invested
the Pontic Heraclea, 77 once a flourishing state, now a paltry
town; at that time capable of sustaining, in her antique walls, a
month’s siege against the forces of the East. The ruin was
complete, the spoil was ample; but if Harun had been conversant
with Grecian story, he would have regretted the statue of
Hercules, whose attributes, the club, the bow, the quiver, and
the lion’s hide, were sculptured in massy gold. The progress of
desolation by sea and land, from the Euxine to the Isle of
Cyprus, compelled the emperor Nicephorus to retract his haughty
defiance. In the new treaty, the ruins of Heraclea were left
forever as a lesson and a trophy; and the coin of the tribute was
marked with the image and superscription of Harun and his three
sons. 78 Yet this plurality of lords might contribute to remove
the dishonor of the Roman name. After the death of their father,
the heirs of the caliph were involved in civil discord, and the
conqueror, the liberal Almamon, was sufficiently engaged in the
restoration of domestic peace and the introduction of foreign
science.

75 (return) [ See the reign and character of Harun Al Rashid, in
the Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 431-433, under his proper title;
and in the relative articles to which M. D’Herbelot refers. That
learned collector has shown much taste in stripping the Oriental
chronicles of their instructive and amusing anecdotes.]

76 (return) [ For the situation of Racca, the old Nicephorium,
consult D’Anville, (l’Euphrate et le Tigre, p. 24-27.) The
Arabian Nights represent Harun al Rashid as almost stationary in
Bagdad. He respected the royal seat of the Abbassides: but the
vices of the inhabitants had driven him from the city, (Abulfed.
Annal. p. 167.)]

77 (return) [ M. de Tournefort, in his coasting voyage from
Constantinople to Trebizond, passed a night at Heraclea or
Eregri. His eye surveyed the present state, his reading collected
the antiquities, of the city (Voyage du Levant, tom. iii. lettre
xvi. p. 23-35.) We have a separate history of Heraclea in the
fragments of Memnon, which are preserved by Photius.]

78 (return) [ The wars of Harun al Rashid against the Roman
empire are related by Theophanes, (p. 384, 385, 391, 396, 407,
408.) Zonaras, (tom. iii. l. xv. p. 115, 124,) Cedrenus, (p. 477,
478,) Eutycaius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 407,) Elmacin, (Hist.
Saracen. p. 136, 151, 152,) Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 147, 151,)
and Abulfeda, (p. 156, 166-168.)]