In the West, however, a stout resistance was encountered. The Saracens
besieged Constantinople, against which they carried on a siege of eight
years (A.D. 668-675); but every assault was repelled by torrents of
terrible Greek fire. A second siege, forty years afterward, met a like
result. In North Africa, too, they encountered long and obstinate
resistance; but finally the whole northern coast--Cyrene, Tripoli,
Carthage--was subdued; and in A. D. 710 a host of turbaned Arabs, with
unsheathed scimitars, under Tarik-ben-Zaid, crossed the narrow strait
into Spain and landed on the rock which commemorates the name of their
leader (“Gibraltar,” i. e., _Jebel Tarik_, the Mountain of Tarik).