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.)]

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

Under the reign of Almamon at Bagdad, of Michael the Stammerer at

Constantinople, the islands of Crete 79 and Sicily were subdued

by the Arabs. The former of these conquests is disdained by their

own writers, who were ignorant of the fame of Jupiter and Minos,

but it has not been overlooked by the Byzantine historians, who

now begin to cast a clearer light on the affairs of their own

times. 80 A band of Andalusian volunteers, discontented with the

climate or government of Spain, explored the adventures of the

sea; but as they sailed in no more than ten or twenty galleys,

their warfare must be branded with the name of piracy. As the

subjects and sectaries of the white party, they might lawfully

invade the dominions of the black caliphs. A rebellious faction

introduced them into Alexandria; 81 they cut in pieces both

friends and foes, pillaged the churches and the moschs, sold

above six thousand Christian captives, and maintained their

station in the capital of Egypt, till they were oppressed by the

forces and the presence of Almamon himself. From the mouth of the

Nile to the Hellespont, the islands and sea-coasts both of the

Greeks and Moslems were exposed to their depredations; they saw,

they envied, they tasted the fertility of Crete, and soon

returned with forty galleys to a more serious attack. The

Andalusians wandered over the land fearless and unmolested; but

when they descended with their plunder to the sea-shore, their

vessels were in flames, and their chief, Abu Caab, confessed

himself the author of the mischief. Their clamors accused his

madness or treachery. “Of what do you complain?” replied the

crafty emir. “I have brought you to a land flowing with milk and

honey. Here is your true country; repose from your toils, and

forget the barren place of your nativity.” “And our wives and

children?” “Your beauteous captives will supply the place of your

wives, and in their embraces you will soon become the fathers of

a new progeny.” The first habitation was their camp, with a ditch

and rampart, in the Bay of Suda; but an apostate monk led them to

a more desirable position in the eastern parts; and the name of

Candax, their fortress and colony, has been extended to the whole

island, under the corrupt and modern appellation of Candia. The

hundred cities of the age of Minos were diminished to thirty; and

of these, only one, most probably Cydonia, had courage to retain

the substance of freedom and the profession of Christianity. The

Saracens of Crete soon repaired the loss of their navy; and the

timbers of Mount Ida were launched into the main. During a

hostile period of one hundred and thirty-eight years, the princes

of Constantinople attacked these licentious corsairs with

fruitless curses and ineffectual arms.

79 (return) [ The authors from whom I have learned the most of

the ancient and modern state of Crete, are Belon, (Observations,

&c., c. 3-20, Paris, 1555,) Tournefort, (Voyage du Levant, tom.

i. lettre ii. et iii.,) and Meursius, (Creta, in his works, tom.

iii. p. 343-544.) Although Crete is styled by Homer, by

Dionysius, I cannot conceive that mountainous island to surpass,

or even to equal, in fertility the greater part of Spain.]

80 (return) [ The most authentic and circumstantial intelligence

is obtained from the four books of the Continuation of

Theophanes, compiled by the pen or the command of Constantine

Porphyrogenitus, with the Life of his father Basil, the

Macedonian, (Scriptores post Theophanem, p. 1-162, a Francisc.

Combefis, Paris, 1685.) The loss of Crete and Sicily is related,

l. ii. p. 46-52. To these we may add the secondary evidence of

Joseph Genesius, (l. ii. p. 21, Venet. 1733,) George Cedrenus,

(Compend. p. 506-508,) and John Scylitzes Curopalata, (apud

Baron. Annal. Eccles. A.D. 827, No. 24, &c.) But the modern

Greeks are such notorious plagiaries, that I should only quote a

plurality of names.]

81 (return) [ Renaudot (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 251-256,

268-270) had described the ravages of the Andalusian Arabs in

Egypt, but has forgot to connect them with the conquest of

Crete.]

The loss of Sicily 82 was occasioned by an act of superstitious

rigor. An amorous youth, who had stolen a nun from her cloister,

was sentenced by the emperor to the amputation of his tongue.

Euphemius appealed to the reason and policy of the Saracens of

Africa; and soon returned with the Imperial purple, a fleet of

one hundred ships, and an army of seven hundred horse and ten

thousand foot. They landed at Mazara near the ruins of the

ancient Selinus; but after some partial victories, Syracuse 83

was delivered by the Greeks, the apostate was slain before her

walls, and his African friends were reduced to the necessity of

feeding on the flesh of their own horses. In their turn they were

relieved by a powerful reenforcement of their brethren of

Andalusia; the largest and western part of the island was

gradually reduced, and the commodious harbor of Palermo was

chosen for the seat of the naval and military power of the

Saracens. Syracuse preserved about fifty years the faith which

she had sworn to Christ and to Caesar. In the last and fatal

siege, her citizens displayed some remnant of the spirit which

had formerly resisted the powers of Athens and Carthage. They

stood above twenty days against the battering-rams and

catapultoe, the mines and tortoises of the besiegers; and the

place might have been relieved, if the mariners of the Imperial

fleet had not been detained at Constantinople in building a

church to the Virgin Mary. The deacon Theodosius, with the bishop

and clergy, was dragged in chains from the altar to Palermo, cast

into a subterraneous dungeon, and exposed to the hourly peril of

death or apostasy. His pathetic, and not inelegant, complaint may

be read as the epitaph of his country. 84 From the Roman conquest

to this final calamity, Syracuse, now dwindled to the primitive

Isle of Ortygea, had insensibly declined. Yet the relics were

still precious; the plate of the cathedral weighed five thousand

pounds of silver; the entire spoil was computed at one million of

pieces of gold, (about four hundred thousand pounds sterling,)

and the captives must outnumber the seventeen thousand

Christians, who were transported from the sack of Tauromenium

into African servitude. In Sicily, the religion and language of

the Greeks were eradicated; and such was the docility of the

rising generation, that fifteen thousand boys were circumcised

and clothed on the same day with the son of the Fatimite caliph.

The Arabian squadrons issued from the harbors of Palermo,

Biserta, and Tunis; a hundred and fifty towns of Calabria and

Campania were attacked and pillaged; nor could the suburbs of

Rome be defended by the name of the Caesars and apostles. Had the

Mahometans been united, Italy must have fallen an easy and

glorious accession to the empire of the prophet. But the caliphs

of Bagdad had lost their authority in the West; the Aglabites and

Fatimites usurped the provinces of Africa, their emirs of Sicily

aspired to independence; and the design of conquest and dominion

was degraded to a repetition of predatory inroads. 85

82 (return) [ Theophanes, l. ii. p. 51. This history of the loss

of Sicily is no longer extant. Muratori (Annali d’ Italia, tom.

vii. p. 719, 721, &c.) has added some circumstances from the

Italian chronicles.]

83 (return) [ The splendid and interesting tragedy of Tancrede

would adapt itself much better to this epoch, than to the date

(A.D. 1005) which Voltaire himself has chosen. But I must gently

reproach the poet for infusing into the Greek subjects the spirit

of modern knights and ancient republicans.]

84 (return) [ The narrative or lamentation of Theodosius is

transcribed and illustrated by Pagi, (Critica, tom. iii. p. 719,

&c.) Constantine Porphyrogenitus (in Vit. Basil, c. 69, 70, p.

190-192) mentions the loss of Syracuse and the triumph of the

demons.]

85 (return) [ The extracts from the Arabic histories of Sicily

are given in Abulfeda, (Annal’ Moslem. p. 271-273,) and in the

first volume of Muratori’s Scriptores Rerum Italicarum. M. de

Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 363, 364) has added some

important facts.]

In the sufferings of prostrate Italy, the name of Rome awakens a

solemn and mournful recollection. A fleet of Saracens from the

African coast presumed to enter the mouth of the Tyber, and to

approach a city which even yet, in her fallen state, was revered

as the metropolis of the Christian world. The gates and ramparts

were guarded by a trembling people; but the tombs and temples of

St. Peter and St. Paul were left exposed in the suburbs of the

Vatican and of the Ostian way. Their invisible sanctity had

protected them against the Goths, the Vandals, and the Lombards;

but the Arabs disdained both the gospel and the legend; and their

rapacious spirit was approved and animated by the precepts of the

Koran. The Christian idols were stripped of their costly

offerings; a silver altar was torn away from the shrine of St.

Peter; and if the bodies or the buildings were left entire, their

deliverance must be imputed to the haste, rather than the

scruples, of the Saracens. In their course along the Appian way,

they pillaged Fundi and besieged Gayeta; but they had turned

aside from the walls of Rome, and by their divisions, the Capitol

was saved from the yoke of the prophet of Mecca. The same danger

still impended on the heads of the Roman people; and their

domestic force was unequal to the assault of an African emir.

They claimed the protection of their Latin sovereign; but the

Carlovingian standard was overthrown by a detachment of the

Barbarians: they meditated the restoration of the Greek emperors;

but the attempt was treasonable, and the succor remote and

precarious. 86 Their distress appeared to receive some

aggravation from the death of their spiritual and temporal chief;

but the pressing emergency superseded the forms and intrigues of

an election; and the unanimous choice of Pope Leo the Fourth 87

was the safety of the church and city. This pontiff was born a

Roman; the courage of the first ages of the republic glowed in

his breast; and, amidst the ruins of his country, he stood erect,

like one of the firm and lofty columns that rear their heads

above the fragments of the Roman forum. The first days of his

reign were consecrated to the purification and removal of relics,

to prayers and processions, and to all the solemn offices of

religion, which served at least to heal the imagination, and

restore the hopes, of the multitude. The public defence had been

long neglected, not from the presumption of peace, but from the

distress and poverty of the times. As far as the scantiness of

his means and the shortness of his leisure would allow, the

ancient walls were repaired by the command of Leo; fifteen

towers, in the most accessible stations, were built or renewed;

two of these commanded on either side of the Tyber; and an iron

chain was drawn across the stream to impede the ascent of a

hostile navy. The Romans were assured of a short respite by the

welcome news, that the siege of Gayeta had been raised, and that

a part of the enemy, with their sacrilegious plunder, had

perished in the waves.

86 (return) [ One of the most eminent Romans (Gratianus, magister

militum et Romani palatii superista) was accused of declaring,

Quia Franci nihil nobis boni faciunt, neque adjutorium praebent,

sed magis quae nostra sunt violenter tollunt. Quare non advocamus

Graecos, et cum eis foedus pacis componentes, Francorum regem et

gentem de nostro regno et dominatione expellimus? Anastasius in

Leone IV. p. 199.]

87 (return) [ Voltaire (Hist. Generale, tom. ii. c. 38, p. 124)

appears to be remarkably struck with the character of Pope Leo

IV. I have borrowed his general expression, but the sight of the

forum has furnished me with a more distinct and lively image.]

But the storm, which had been delayed, soon burst upon them with

redoubled violence. The Aglabite, 88 who reigned in Africa, had

inherited from his father a treasure and an army: a fleet of

Arabs and Moors, after a short refreshment in the harbors of

Sardinia, cast anchor before the mouth of the Tyber, sixteen

miles from the city: and their discipline and numbers appeared to

threaten, not a transient inroad, but a serious design of

conquest and dominion. But the vigilance of Leo had formed an

alliance with the vassals of the Greek empire, the free and

maritime states of Gayeta, Naples, and Amalfi; and in the hour of

danger, their galleys appeared in the port of Ostia under the

command of Caesarius, the son of the Neapolitan duke, a noble and

valiant youth, who had already vanquished the fleets of the

Saracens. With his principal companions, Caesarius was invited to

the Lateran palace, and the dexterous pontiff affected to inquire

their errand, and to accept with joy and surprise their

providential succor. The city bands, in arms, attended their

father to Ostia, where he reviewed and blessed his generous

deliverers. They kissed his feet, received the communion with

martial devotion, and listened to the prayer of Leo, that the

same God who had supported St. Peter and St. Paul on the waves of

the sea, would strengthen the hands of his champions against the

adversaries of his holy name. After a similar prayer, and with

equal resolution, the Moslems advanced to the attack of the

Christian galleys, which preserved their advantageous station

along the coast. The victory inclined to the side of the allies,

when it was less gloriously decided in their favor by a sudden

tempest, which confounded the skill and courage of the stoutest

mariners. The Christians were sheltered in a friendly harbor,

while the Africans were scattered and dashed in pieces among the

rocks and islands of a hostile shore. Those who escaped from

shipwreck and hunger neither found, nor deserved, mercy at the

hands of their implacable pursuers. The sword and the gibbet

reduced the dangerous multitude of captives; and the remainder

was more usefully employed, to restore the sacred edifices which

they had attempted to subvert. The pontiff, at the head of the

citizens and allies, paid his grateful devotion at the shrines of

the apostles; and, among the spoils of this naval victory,

thirteen Arabian bows of pure and massy silver were suspended

round the altar of the fishermen of Galilee. The reign of Leo the

Fourth was employed in the defence and ornament of the Roman

state. The churches were renewed and embellished: near four

thousand pounds of silver were consecrated to repair the losses

of St. Peter; and his sanctuary was decorated with a plate of

gold of the weight of two hundred and sixteen pounds, embossed

with the portraits of the pope and emperor, and encircled with a

string of pearls. Yet this vain magnificence reflects less glory

on the character of Leo than the paternal care with which he

rebuilt the walls of Horta and Ameria; and transported the

wandering inhabitants of Centumcellae to his new foundation of

Leopolis, twelve miles from the sea-shore. 89 By his liberality,

a colony of Corsicans, with their wives and children, was planted

in the station of Porto, at the mouth of the Tyber: the falling

city was restored for their use, the fields and vineyards were

divided among the new settlers: their first efforts were assisted

by a gift of horses and cattle; and the hardy exiles, who

breathed revenge against the Saracens, swore to live and die

under the standard of St. Peter. The nations of the West and

North who visited the threshold of the apostles had gradually

formed the large and populous suburb of the Vatican, and their

various habitations were distinguished, in the language of the

times, as the schools of the Greeks and Goths, of the Lombards

and Saxons. But this venerable spot was still open to

sacrilegious insult: the design of enclosing it with walls and

towers exhausted all that authority could command, or charity

would supply: and the pious labor of four years was animated in

every season, and at every hour, by the presence of the

indefatigable pontiff. The love of fame, a generous but worldly

passion, may be detected in the name of the Leonine city, which

he bestowed on the Vatican; yet the pride of the dedication was

tempered with Christian penance and humility. The boundary was

trod by the bishop and his clergy, barefoot, in sackcloth and

ashes; the songs of triumph were modulated to psalms and

litanies; the walls were besprinkled with holy water; and the

ceremony was concluded with a prayer, that, under the guardian

care of the apostles and the angelic host, both the old and the

new Rome might ever be preserved pure, prosperous, and

impregnable. 90

88 (return) [ De Guignes, Hist. Generale des Huns, tom. i. p.

363, 364. Cardonne, Hist. de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne, sous la

Domination des Arabs, tom. ii. p. 24, 25. I observe, and cannot

reconcile, the difference of these writers in the succession of

the Aglabites.]

89 (return) [ Beretti (Chorographia Italiae Medii Evi, p. 106,

108) has illustrated Centumcellae, Leopolis, Civitas Leonina, and

the other places of the Roman duchy.]

90 (return) [ The Arabs and the Greeks are alike silent

concerning the invasion of Rome by the Africans. The Latin

chronicles do not afford much instruction, (see the Annals of

Baronius and Pagi.) Our authentic and contemporary guide for the

popes of the ixth century is Anastasius, librarian of the Roman

church. His Life of Leo IV, contains twenty-four pages, (p.

175-199, edit. Paris;) and if a great part consist of

superstitious trifles, we must blame or command his hero, who was

much oftener in a church than in a camp.]

The emperor Theophilus, son of Michael the Stammerer, was one of

the most active and high-spirited princes who reigned at

Constantinople during the middle age. In offensive or defensive

war, he marched in person five times against the Saracens,

formidable in his attack, esteemed by the enemy in his losses and

defeats. In the last of these expeditions he penetrated into

Syria, and besieged the obscure town of Sozopetra; the casual

birthplace of the caliph Motassem, whose father Harun was

attended in peace or war by the most favored of his wives and

concubines. The revolt of a Persian impostor employed at that

moment the arms of the Saracen, and he could only intercede in

favor of a place for which he felt and acknowledged some degree

of filial affection. These solicitations determined the emperor

to wound his pride in so sensible a part. Sozopetra was levelled

with the ground, the Syrian prisoners were marked or mutilated

with ignominious cruelty, and a thousand female captives were

forced away from the adjacent territory. Among these a matron of

the house of Abbas invoked, in an agony of despair, the name of

Motassem; and the insults of the Greeks engaged the honor of her

kinsman to avenge his indignity, and to answer her appeal. Under

the reign of the two elder brothers, the inheritance of the

youngest had been confined to Anatolia, Armenia, Georgia, and

Circassia; this frontier station had exercised his military

talents; and among his accidental claims to the name of Octonary,

91 the most meritorious are the eight battles which he gained or

fought against the enemies of the Koran. In this personal

quarrel, the troops of Irak, Syria, and Egypt, were recruited

from the tribes of Arabia and the Turkish hordes; his cavalry

might be numerous, though we should deduct some myriads from the

hundred and thirty thousand horses of the royal stables; and the

expense of the armament was computed at four millions sterling,

or one hundred thousand pounds of gold. From Tarsus, the place of

assembly, the Saracens advanced in three divisions along the high

road of Constantinople: Motassem himself commanded the centre,

and the vanguard was given to his son Abbas, who, in the trial of

the first adventures, might succeed with the more glory, or fail

with the least reproach. In the revenge of his injury, the caliph

prepared to retaliate a similar affront. The father of Theophilus

was a native of Amorium 92 in Phrygia: the original seat of the

Imperial house had been adorned with privileges and monuments;

and, whatever might be the indifference of the people,

Constantinople itself was scarcely of more value in the eyes of

the sovereign and his court. The name of Amorium was inscribed on

the shields of the Saracens; and their three armies were again

united under the walls of the devoted city. It had been proposed

by the wisest counsellors, to evacuate Amorium, to remove the

inhabitants, and to abandon the empty structures to the vain

resentment of the Barbarians. The emperor embraced the more

generous resolution of defending, in a siege and battle, the

country of his ancestors. When the armies drew near, the front of

the Mahometan line appeared to a Roman eye more closely planted

with spears and javelins; but the event of the action was not

glorious on either side to the national troops. The Arabs were

broken, but it was by the swords of thirty thousand Persians, who

had obtained service and settlement in the Byzantine empire. The

Greeks were repulsed and vanquished, but it was by the arrows of

the Turkish cavalry; and had not their bowstrings been damped and

relaxed by the evening rain, very few of the Christians could

have escaped with the emperor from the field of battle. They

breathed at Dorylaeum, at the distance of three days; and

Theophilus, reviewing his trembling squadrons, forgave the common

flight both of the prince and people. After this discovery of his

weakness, he vainly hoped to deprecate the fate of Amorium: the

inexorable caliph rejected with contempt his prayers and

promises; and detained the Roman ambassadors to be the witnesses

of his great revenge. They had nearly been the witnesses of his

shame. The vigorous assaults of fifty-five days were encountered

by a faithful governor, a veteran garrison, and a desperate

people; and the Saracens must have raised the siege, if a

domestic traitor had not pointed to the weakest part of the wall,

a place which was decorated with the statues of a lion and a

bull. The vow of Motassem was accomplished with unrelenting

rigor: tired, rather than satiated, with destruction, he returned

to his new palace of Samara, in the neighborhood of Bagdad, while

the unfortunate 93 Theophilus implored the tardy and doubtful aid

of his Western rival the emperor of the Franks. Yet in the siege

of Amorium about seventy thousand Moslems had perished: their

loss had been revenged by the slaughter of thirty thousand

Christians, and the sufferings of an equal number of captives,

who were treated as the most atrocious criminals. Mutual

necessity could sometimes extort the exchange or ransom of

prisoners: 94 but in the national and religious conflict of the

two empires, peace was without confidence, and war without mercy.

Quarter was seldom given in the field; those who escaped the edge

of the sword were condemned to hopeless servitude, or exquisite

torture; and a Catholic emperor relates, with visible

satisfaction, the execution of the Saracens of Crete, who were

flayed alive, or plunged into caldrons of boiling oil. 95 To a

point of honor Motassem had sacrificed a flourishing city, two

hundred thousand lives, and the property of millions. The same

caliph descended from his horse, and dirtied his robe, to relieve

the distress of a decrepit old man, who, with his laden ass, had

tumbled into a ditch. On which of these actions did he reflect

with the most pleasure, when he was summoned by the angel of

death? 96

91 (return) [ The same number was applied to the following

circumstance in the life of Motassem: he was the eight of the

Abbassides; he reigned eight years, eight months, and eight days;

left eight sons, eight daughters, eight thousand slaves, eight

millions of gold.]

92 (return) [ Amorium is seldom mentioned by the old geographers,

and to tally forgotten in the Roman Itineraries. After the vith

century, it became an episcopal see, and at length the metropolis

of the new Galatia, (Carol. Scto. Paulo, Geograph. Sacra, p.

234.) The city rose again from its ruins, if we should read

Ammeria, not Anguria, in the text of the Nubian geographer. (p.

236.)]

93 (return) [ In the East he was styled, (Continuator Theophan.

l. iii. p. 84;) but such was the ignorance of the West, that his

ambassadors, in public discourse, might boldly narrate, de

victoriis, quas adversus exteras bellando gentes coelitus fuerat

assecutus, (Annalist. Bertinian. apud Pagi, tom. iii. p. 720.)]

94 (return) [ Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 167, 168) relates one of

these singular transactions on the bridge of the River Lamus in

Cilicia, the limit of the two empires, and one day’s journey

westward of Tarsus, (D’Anville, Geographie Ancienne, tom. ii. p.

91.) Four thousand four hundred and sixty Moslems, eight hundred

women and children, one hundred confederates, were exchanged for

an equal number of Greeks. They passed each other in the middle

of the bridge, and when they reached their respective friends,

they shouted Allah Acbar, and Kyrie Eleison. Many of the

prisoners of Amorium were probably among them, but in the same

year, (A. H. 231,) the most illustrious of them, the forty two

martyrs, were beheaded by the caliph’s order.]

95 (return) [ Constantin. Porphyrogenitus, in Vit. Basil. c. 61,

p. 186. These Saracens were indeed treated with peculiar severity

as pirates and renegadoes.]

96 (return) [ For Theophilus, Motassem, and the Amorian war, see

the Continuator of Theophanes, (l. iii. p. 77-84,) Genesius (l.

iii. p. 24-34.) Cedrenus, (p. 528-532,) Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen,

p. 180,) Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 165, 166,) Abulfeda, (Annal.

Moslem. p. 191,) D’Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orientale, p. 639, 640.)]

With Motassem, the eighth of the Abbassides, the glory of his

family and nation expired. When the Arabian conquerors had spread

themselves over the East, and were mingled with the servile

crowds of Persia, Syria, and Egypt, they insensibly lost the

freeborn and martial virtues of the desert. The courage of the

South is the artificial fruit of discipline and prejudice; the

active power of enthusiasm had decayed, and the mercenary forces

of the caliphs were recruited in those climates of the North, of

which valor is the hardy and spontaneous production. Of the Turks

97 who dwelt beyond the Oxus and Jaxartes, the robust youths,

either taken in war or purchased in trade, were educated in the

exercises of the field, and the profession of the Mahometan

faith. The Turkish guards stood in arms round the throne of their

benefactor, and their chiefs usurped the dominion of the palace

and the provinces. Motassem, the first author of this dangerous

example, introduced into the capital above fifty thousand Turks:

their licentious conduct provoked the public indignation, and the

quarrels of the soldiers and people induced the caliph to retire

from Bagdad, and establish his own residence and the camp of his

Barbarian favorites at Samara on the Tigris, about twelve leagues

above the city of Peace. 98 His son Motawakkel was a jealous and

cruel tyrant: odious to his subjects, he cast himself on the

fidelity of the strangers, and these strangers, ambitious and

apprehensive, were tempted by the rich promise of a revolution.

At the instigation, or at least in the cause of his son, they

burst into his apartment at the hour of supper, and the caliph

was cut into seven pieces by the same swords which he had

recently distributed among the guards of his life and throne. To

this throne, yet streaming with a father’s blood, Montasser was

triumphantly led; but in a reign of six months, he found only the

pangs of a guilty conscience. If he wept at the sight of an old

tapestry which represented the crime and punishment of the son of

Chosroes, if his days were abridged by grief and remorse, we may

allow some pity to a parricide, who exclaimed, in the bitterness

of death, that he had lost both this world and the world to come.

After this act of treason, the ensigns of royalty, the garment

and walking-staff of Mahomet, were given and torn away by the

foreign mercenaries, who in four years created, deposed, and

murdered, three commanders of the faithful. As often as the Turks

were inflamed by fear, or rage, or avarice, these caliphs were

dragged by the feet, exposed naked to the scorching sun, beaten

with iron clubs, and compelled to purchase, by the abdication of

their dignity, a short reprieve of inevitable fate. 99 At length,

however, the fury of the tempest was spent or diverted: the

Abbassides returned to the less turbulent residence of Bagdad;

the insolence of the Turks was curbed with a firmer and more

skilful hand, and their numbers were divided and destroyed in

foreign warfare. But the nations of the East had been taught to

trample on the successors of the prophet; and the blessings of

domestic peace were obtained by the relaxation of strength and

discipline. So uniform are the mischiefs of military despotism,

that I seem to repeat the story of the praetorians of Rome. 100

97 (return) [ M. de Guignes, who sometimes leaps, and sometimes

stumbles, in the gulf between Chinese and Mahometan story, thinks

he can see, that these Turks are the Hoei-ke, alias the Kao-tche,

or high-wagons; that they were divided into fifteen hordes, from

China and Siberia to the dominions of the caliphs and Samanides,

&c., (Hist. des Huns, tom. iii. p. 1-33, 124-131.)]

98 (return) [ He changed the old name of Sumera, or Samara, into

the fanciful title of Sermen-rai, that which gives pleasure at

first sight, (D’Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 808.

D’Anville, l’Euphrate et le Tigre p. 97, 98.)]

99 (return) [ Take a specimen, the death of the caliph Motaz:

Correptum pedibus pertrahunt, et sudibus probe permulcant, et

spoliatum laceris vestibus in sole collocant, prae cujus acerrimo

aestu pedes alternos attollebat et demittebat. Adstantium aliquis

misero colaphos continuo ingerebat, quos ille objectis manibus

avertere studebat..... Quo facto traditus tortori fuit, totoque

triduo cibo potuque prohibitus..... Suffocatus, &c. (Abulfeda, p.

206.) Of the caliph Mohtadi, he says, services ipsi perpetuis

ictibus contundebant, testiculosque pedibus conculcabant, (p.

208.)]

100 (return) [ See under the reigns of Motassem, Motawakkel,

Montasser, Mostain, Motaz, Mohtadi, and Motamed, in the

Bibliotheque of D’Herbelot, and the now familiar Annals of

Elmacin, Abulpharagius, and Abulfeda.]

While the flame of enthusiasm was damped by the business, the

pleasure, and the knowledge, of the age, it burnt with

concentrated heat in the breasts of the chosen few, the congenial

spirits, who were ambitious of reigning either in this world or

in the next. How carefully soever the book of prophecy had been

sealed by the apostle of Mecca, the wishes, and (if we may

profane the word) even the reason, of fanaticism might believe

that, after the successive missions of Adam, Noah, Abraham,

Moses, Jesus, and Mahomet, the same God, in the fulness of time,

would reveal a still more perfect and permanent law. In the two

hundred and seventy-seventh year of the Hegira, and in the

neighborhood of Cufa, an Arabian preacher, of the name of

Carmath, assumed the lofty and incomprehensible style of the

Guide, the Director, the Demonstration, the Word, the Holy Ghost,

the Camel, the Herald of the Messiah, who had conversed with him

in a human shape, and the representative of Mohammed the son of

Ali, of St. John the Baptist, and of the angel Gabriel. In his

mystic volume, the precepts of the Koran were refined to a more

spiritual sense: he relaxed the duties of ablution, fasting, and

pilgrimage; allowed the indiscriminate use of wine and forbidden

food; and nourished the fervor of his disciples by the daily

repetition of fifty prayers. The idleness and ferment of the

rustic crowd awakened the attention of the magistrates of Cufa; a

timid persecution assisted the progress of the new sect; and the

name of the prophet became more revered after his person had been

withdrawn from the world. His twelve apostles dispersed

themselves among the Bedoweens, “a race of men,” says Abulfeda,

“equally devoid of reason and of religion;” and the success of

their preaching seemed to threaten Arabia with a new revolution.

The Carmathians were ripe for rebellion, since they disclaimed

the title of the house of Abbas, and abhorred the worldly pomp of

the caliphs of Bagdad. They were susceptible of discipline, since

they vowed a blind and absolute submission to their Imam, who was

called to the prophetic office by the voice of God and the

people. Instead of the legal tithes, he claimed the fifth of

their substance and spoil; the most flagitious sins were no more

than the type of disobedience; and the brethren were united and

concealed by an oath of secrecy. After a bloody conflict, they

prevailed in the province of Bahrein, along the Persian Gulf: far

and wide, the tribes of the desert were subject to the sceptre,

or rather to the sword of Abu Said and his son Abu Taher; and

these rebellious imams could muster in the field a hundred and

seven thousand fanatics. The mercenaries of the caliph were

dismayed at the approach of an enemy who neither asked nor

accepted quarter; and the difference between, them in fortitude

and patience, is expressive of the change which three centuries

of prosperity had effected in the character of the Arabians. Such

troops were discomfited in every action; the cities of Racca and

Baalbec, of Cufa and Bassora, were taken and pillaged; Bagdad was

filled with consternation; and the caliph trembled behind the

veils of his palace. In a daring inroad beyond the Tigris, Abu

Taher advanced to the gates of the capital with no more than five

hundred horse. By the special order of Moctader, the bridges had

been broken down, and the person or head of the rebel was

expected every hour by the commander of the faithful. His

lieutenant, from a motive of fear or pity, apprised Abu Taher of

his danger, and recommended a speedy escape. “Your master,” said

the intrepid Carmathian to the messenger, “is at the head of

thirty thousand soldiers: three such men as these are wanting in

his host:” at the same instant, turning to three of his

companions, he commanded the first to plunge a dagger into his

breast, the second to leap into the Tigris, and the third to cast

himself headlong down a precipice. They obeyed without a murmur.

“Relate,” continued the imam, “what you have seen: before the

evening your general shall be chained among my dogs.” Before the

evening, the camp was surprised, and the menace was executed. The

rapine of the Carmathians was sanctified by their aversion to the

worship of Mecca: they robbed a caravan of pilgrims, and twenty

thousand devout Moslems were abandoned on the burning sands to a

death of hunger and thirst. Another year they suffered the

pilgrims to proceed without interruption; but, in the festival of

devotion, Abu Taher stormed the holy city, and trampled on the

most venerable relics of the Mahometan faith. Thirty thousand

citizens and strangers were put to the sword; the sacred

precincts were polluted by the burial of three thousand dead

bodies; the well of Zemzem overflowed with blood; the golden

spout was forced from its place; the veil of the Caaba was

divided among these impious sectaries; and the black stone, the

first monument of the nation, was borne away in triumph to their

capital. After this deed of sacrilege and cruelty, they continued

to infest the confines of Irak, Syria, and Egypt: but the vital

principle of enthusiasm had withered at the root. Their scruples,

or their avarice, again opened the pilgrimage of Mecca, and

restored the black stone of the Caaba; and it is needless to

inquire into what factions they were broken, or by whose swords

they were finally extirpated. The sect of the Carmathians may be

considered as the second visible cause of the decline and fall of

the empire of the caliphs. 101

101 (return) [ For the sect of the Carmathians, consult Elmacin,

(Hist. Sara cen, p. 219, 224, 229, 231, 238, 241, 243,)

Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 179-182,) Abulfeda, (Annal. Moslem. p.

218, 219, &c., 245, 265, 274.) and D’Herbelot, (Bibliotheque

Orientale, p. 256-258, 635.) I find some inconsistencies of

theology and chronology, which it would not be easy nor of much

importance to reconcile. * Note: Compare Von Hammer, Geschichte

der Assassinen, p. 44, &c.—M.]

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

The third and most obvious cause was the weight and magnitude of

the empire itself. The caliph Almamon might proudly assert, that

it was easier for him to rule the East and the West, than to

manage a chess-board of two feet square: 102 yet I suspect that

in both those games he was guilty of many fatal mistakes; and I

perceive, that in the distant provinces the authority of the

first and most powerful of the Abbassides was already impaired.

The analogy of despotism invests the representative with the full

majesty of the prince; the division and balance of powers might

relax the habits of obedience, might encourage the passive

subject to inquire into the origin and administration of civil

government. He who is born in the purple is seldom worthy to

reign; but the elevation of a private man, of a peasant, perhaps,

or a slave, affords a strong presumption of his courage and

capacity. The viceroy of a remote kingdom aspires to secure the

property and inheritance of his precarious trust; the nations

must rejoice in the presence of their sovereign; and the command

of armies and treasures are at once the object and the instrument

of his ambition. A change was scarcely visible as long as the

lieutenants of the caliph were content with their vicarious

title; while they solicited for themselves or their sons a

renewal of the Imperial grant, and still maintained on the coin

and in the public prayers the name and prerogative of the

commander of the faithful. But in the long and hereditary

exercise of power, they assumed the pride and attributes of

royalty; the alternative of peace or war, of reward or

punishment, depended solely on their will; and the revenues of

their government were reserved for local services or private

magnificence. Instead of a regular supply of men and money, the

successors of the prophet were flattered with the ostentatious

gift of an elephant, or a cast of hawks, a suit of silk hangings,

or some pounds of musk and amber. 103

102 (return) [ Hyde, Syntagma Dissertat. tom. ii. p. 57, in Hist.

Shahiludii.]

103 (return) [ The dynasties of the Arabian empire may be studied

in the Annals of Elmacin, Abulpharagius, and Abulfeda, under the

proper years, in the dictionary of D’Herbelot, under the proper

names. The tables of M. de Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. i.)

exhibit a general chronology of the East, interspersed with some

historical anecdotes; but his attachment to national blood has

sometimes confounded the order of time and place.]

After the revolt of Spain from the temporal and spiritual

supremacy of the Abbassides, the first symptoms of disobedience

broke forth in the province of Africa. Ibrahim, the son of Aglab,

the lieutenant of the vigilant and rigid Harun, bequeathed to the

dynasty of the Aglabites the inheritance of his name and power.

The indolence or policy of the caliphs dissembled the injury and

loss, and pursued only with poison the founder of the Edrisites,

104 who erected the kingdom and city of Fez on the shores of the

Western ocean. 105 In the East, the first dynasty was that of the

Taherites; 106 the posterity of the valiant Taher, who, in the

civil wars of the sons of Harun, had served with too much zeal

and success the cause of Almamon, the younger brother. He was

sent into honorable exile, to command on the banks of the Oxus;

and the independence of his successors, who reigned in Chorasan

till the fourth generation, was palliated by their modest and

respectful demeanor, the happiness of their subjects and the

security of their frontier. They were supplanted by one of those

adventures so frequent in the annals of the East, who left his

trade of a brazier (from whence the name of Soffarides) for the

profession of a robber. In a nocturnal visit to the treasure of

the prince of Sistan, Jacob, the son of Leith, stumbled over a

lump of salt, which he unwarily tasted with his tongue. Salt,

among the Orientals, is the symbol of hospitality, and the pious

robber immediately retired without spoil or damage. The discovery

of this honorable behavior recommended Jacob to pardon and trust;

he led an army at first for his benefactor, at last for himself,

subdued Persia, and threatened the residence of the Abbassides.

On his march towards Bagdad, the conqueror was arrested by a

fever. He gave audience in bed to the ambassador of the caliph;

and beside him on a table were exposed a naked cimeter, a crust

of brown bread, and a bunch of onions. “If I die,” said he, “your

master is delivered from his fears. If I live, this must

determine between us. If I am vanquished, I can return without

reluctance to the homely fare of my youth.” From the height where

he stood, the descent would not have been so soft or harmless: a

timely death secured his own repose and that of the caliph, who

paid with the most lavish concessions the retreat of his brother

Amrou to the palaces of Shiraz and Ispahan. The Abbassides were

too feeble to contend, too proud to forgive: they invited the

powerful dynasty of the Samanides, who passed the Oxus with ten

thousand horse so poor, that their stirrups were of wood: so

brave, that they vanquished the Soffarian army, eight times more

numerous than their own. The captive Amrou was sent in chains, a

grateful offering to the court of Bagdad; and as the victor was

content with the inheritance of Transoxiana and Chorasan, the

realms of Persia returned for a while to the allegiance of the

caliphs. The provinces of Syria and Egypt were twice dismembered

by their Turkish slaves of the race of Toulon and Ilkshid. 107

These Barbarians, in religion and manners the countrymen of

Mahomet, emerged from the bloody factions of the palace to a

provincial command and an independent throne: their names became

famous and formidable in their time; but the founders of these

two potent dynasties confessed, either in words or actions, the

vanity of ambition. The first on his death-bed implored the mercy

of God to a sinner, ignorant of the limits of his own power: the

second, in the midst of four hundred thousand soldiers and eight

thousand slaves, concealed from every human eye the chamber where

he attempted to sleep. Their sons were educated in the vices of

kings; and both Egypt and Syria were recovered and possessed by

the Abbassides during an interval of thirty years. In the decline

of their empire, Mesopotamia, with the important cities of Mosul

and Aleppo, was occupied by the Arabian princes of the tribe of

Hamadan. The poets of their court could repeat without a blush,

that nature had formed their countenances for beauty, their

tongues for eloquence, and their hands for liberality and valor:

but the genuine tale of the elevation and reign of the

Hamadanites exhibits a scene of treachery, murder, and parricide.

At the same fatal period, the Persian kingdom was again usurped

by the dynasty of the Bowides, by the sword of three brothers,

who, under various names, were styled the support and columns of

the state, and who, from the Caspian Sea to the ocean, would

suffer no tyrants but themselves. Under their reign, the language

and genius of Persia revived, and the Arabs, three hundred and

four years after the death of Mahomet, were deprived of the

sceptre of the East.

104 (return) [ The Aglabites and Edrisites are the professed

subject of M. de Cardonne, (Hist. de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne

sous la Domination des Arabes, tom. ii. p. 1-63.)]

105 (return) [ To escape the reproach of error, I must criticize

the inaccuracies of M. de Guignes (tom. i. p. 359) concerning the

Edrisites. 1. The dynasty and city of Fez could not be founded in

the year of the Hegira 173, since the founder was a posthumous

child of a descendant of Ali, who fled from Mecca in the year

168. 2. This founder, Edris, the son of Edris, instead of living

to the improbable age of 120 years, A. H. 313, died A. H. 214, in

the prime of manhood. 3. The dynasty ended A. H. 307,

twenty-three years sooner than it is fixed by the historian of

the Huns. See the accurate Annals of Abulfeda p. 158, 159, 185,

238.]

106 (return) [ The dynasties of the Taherites and Soffarides,

with the rise of that of the Samanines, are described in the

original history and Latin version of Mirchond: yet the most

interesting facts had already been drained by the diligence of M.

D’Herbelot.]

107 (return) [ M. de Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. iii. p.

124-154) has exhausted the Toulunides and Ikshidites of Egypt,

and thrown some light on the Carmathians and Hamadanites.]

Rahadi, the twentieth of the Abbassides, and the thirty-ninth of

the successors of Mahomet, was the last who deserved the title of

commander of the faithful; 108 the last (says Abulfeda) who spoke

to the people, or conversed with the learned; the last who, in

the expense of his household, represented the wealth and

magnificence of the ancient caliphs. After him, the lords of the

Eastern world were reduced to the most abject misery, and exposed

to the blows and insults of a servile condition. The revolt of

the provinces circumscribed their dominions within the walls of

Bagdad: but that capital still contained an innumerable

multitude, vain of their past fortune, discontented with their

present state, and oppressed by the demands of a treasury which

had formerly been replenished by the spoil and tribute of

nations. Their idleness was exercised by faction and controversy.

Under the mask of piety, the rigid followers of Hanbal 109

invaded the pleasures of domestic life, burst into the houses of

plebeians and princes, the wine, broke the instruments, beat the

musicians, and dishonored, with infamous suspicions, the

associates of every handsome youth. In each profession, which

allowed room for two persons, the one was a votary, the other an

antagonist, of Ali; and the Abbassides were awakened by the

clamorous grief of the sectaries, who denied their title, and

cursed their progenitors. A turbulent people could only be

repressed by a military force; but who could satisfy the avarice

or assert the discipline of the mercenaries themselves? The

African and the Turkish guards drew their swords against each

other, and the chief commanders, the emirs al Omra, 110

imprisoned or deposed their sovereigns, and violated the

sanctuary of the mosch and harem. If the caliphs escaped to the

camp or court of any neighboring prince, their deliverance was a

change of servitude, till they were prompted by despair to invite

the Bowides, the sultans of Persia, who silenced the factions of

Bagdad by their irresistible arms. The civil and military powers

were assumed by Moezaldowlat, the second of the three brothers,

and a stipend of sixty thousand pounds sterling was assigned by

his generosity for the private expense of the commander of the

faithful. But on the fortieth day, at the audience of the

ambassadors of Chorasan, and in the presence of a trembling

multitude, the caliph was dragged from his throne to a dungeon,

by the command of the stranger, and the rude hands of his

Dilamites. His palace was pillaged, his eyes were put out, and

the mean ambition of the Abbassides aspired to the vacant station

of danger and disgrace. In the school of adversity, the luxurious

caliphs resumed the grave and abstemious virtues of the primitive

times. Despoiled of their armor and silken robes, they fasted,

they prayed, they studied the Koran and the tradition of the

Sonnites: they performed, with zeal and knowledge, the functions

of their ecclesiastical character. The respect of nations still

waited on the successors of the apostle, the oracles of the law

and conscience of the faithful; and the weakness or division of

their tyrants sometimes restored the Abbassides to the

sovereignty of Bagdad. But their misfortunes had been imbittered

by the triumph of the Fatimites, the real or spurious progeny of

Ali. Arising from the extremity of Africa, these successful

rivals extinguished, in Egypt and Syria, both the spiritual and

temporal authority of the Abbassides; and the monarch of the Nile

insulted the humble pontiff on the banks of the Tigris.

108 (return) [ Hic est ultimus chalifah qui multum atque saepius

pro concione peroraret.... Fuit etiam ultimus qui otium cum

eruditis et facetis hominibus fallere hilariterque agere soleret.

Ultimus tandem chalifarum cui sumtus, stipendia, reditus, et

thesauri, culinae, caeteraque omnis aulica pompa priorum

chalifarum ad instar comparata fuerint. Videbimus enim paullo

post quam indignis et servilibius ludibriis exagitati, quam ad

humilem fortunam altimumque contemptum abjecti fuerint hi quondam

potentissimi totius terrarum Orientalium orbis domini. Abulfed.

Annal. Moslem. p. 261. I have given this passage as the manner

and tone of Abulfeda, but the cast of Latin eloquence belongs

more properly to Reiske. The Arabian historian (p. 255, 257,

261-269, 283, &c.) has supplied me with the most interesting

facts of this paragraph.]

109 (return) [ Their master, on a similar occasion, showed

himself of a more indulgent and tolerating spirit. Ahmed Ebn

Hanbal, the head of one of the four orthodox sects, was born at

Bagdad A. H. 164, and died there A. H. 241. He fought and

suffered in the dispute concerning the creation of the Koran.]

110 (return) [ The office of vizier was superseded by the emir al

Omra, Imperator Imperatorum, a title first instituted by Radhi,

and which merged at length in the Bowides and Seljukides:

vectigalibus, et tributis, et curiis per omnes regiones

praefecit, jussitque in omnibus suggestis nominis ejus in

concionibus mentionem fieri, (Abulpharagius, Dynart. p 199.) It

is likewise mentioned by Elmacin, (p. 254, 255.)]

In the declining age of the caliphs, in the century which elapsed

after the war of Theophilus and Motassem, the hostile

transactions of the two nations were confined to some inroads by

sea and land, the fruits of their close vicinity and indelible

hatred. But when the Eastern world was convulsed and broken, the

Greeks were roused from their lethargy by the hopes of conquest

and revenge. The Byzantine empire, since the accession of the

Basilian race, had reposed in peace and dignity; and they might

encounter with their entire strength the front of some petty

emir, whose rear was assaulted and threatened by his national

foes of the Mahometan faith. The lofty titles of the morning

star, and the death of the Saracens, 111 were applied in the

public acclamations to Nicephorus Phocas, a prince as renowned in

the camp, as he was unpopular in the city. In the subordinate

station of great domestic, or general of the East, he reduced the

Island of Crete, and extirpated the nest of pirates who had so

long defied, with impunity, the majesty of the empire. 112 His

military genius was displayed in the conduct and success of the

enterprise, which had so often failed with loss and dishonor. The

Saracens were confounded by the landing of his troops on safe and

level bridges, which he cast from the vessels to the shore. Seven

months were consumed in the siege of Candia; the despair of the

native Cretans was stimulated by the frequent aid of their

brethren of Africa and Spain; and after the massy wall and double

ditch had been stormed by the Greeks a hopeless conflict was

still maintained in the streets and houses of the city. 1121 The

whole island was subdued in the capital, and a submissive people

accepted, without resistance, the baptism of the conqueror. 113

Constantinople applauded the long-forgotten pomp of a triumph;

but the Imperial diadem was the sole reward that could repay the

services, or satisfy the ambition, of Nicephorus.

111 (return) [ Liutprand, whose choleric temper was imbittered by

his uneasy situation, suggests the names of reproach and contempt

more applicable to Nicephorus than the vain titles of the Greeks,

Ecce venit stella matutina, surgit Eous, reverberat obtutu solis

radios, pallida Saracenorum mors, Nicephorus.]

112 (return) [ Notwithstanding the insinuation of Zonaras, &c.,

(tom. ii. l. xvi. p. 197,) it is an undoubted fact, that Crete

was completely and finally subdued by Nicephorus Phocas, (Pagi,

Critica, tom. iii. p. 873-875. Meursius, Creta, l. iii. c. 7,

tom. iii. p. 464, 465.)]

1121 (return) [ The Acroases of Theodorus, de expugnatione

Cretae, miserable iambics, relate the whole campaign. Whoever

would fairly estimate the merit of the poetic deacon, may read

the description of the slinging a jackass into the famishing

city. The poet is in a transport at the wit of the general, and

revels in the luxury of antithesis. Theodori Acroases, lib. iii.

172, in Niebuhr’s Byzant. Hist.—M.]

113 (return) [ A Greek Life of St. Nicon the Armenian was found

in the Sforza library, and translated into Latin by the Jesuit

Sirmond, for the use of Cardinal Baronius. This contemporary

legend casts a ray of light on Crete and Peloponnesus in the 10th

century. He found the newly-recovered island, foedis detestandae

Agarenorum superstitionis vestigiis adhuc plenam ac refertam....

but the victorious missionary, perhaps with some carnal aid, ad

baptismum omnes veraeque fidei disciplinam pepulit. Ecclesiis per

totam insulam aedificatis, &c., (Annal. Eccles. A.D. 961.)]

After the death of the younger Romanus, the fourth in lineal

descent of the Basilian race, his widow Theophania successively

married Nicephorus Phocas and his assassin John Zimisces, the two

heroes of the age. They reigned as the guardians and colleagues

of her infant sons; and the twelve years of their military

command form the most splendid period of the Byzantine annals.

The subjects and confederates, whom they led to war, appeared, at

least in the eyes of an enemy, two hundred thousand strong; and

of these about thirty thousand were armed with cuirasses: 114 a

train of four thousand mules attended their march; and their

evening camp was regularly fortified with an enclosure of iron

spikes. A series of bloody and undecisive combats is nothing more

than an anticipation of what would have been effected in a few

years by the course of nature; but I shall briefly prosecute the

conquests of the two emperors from the hills of Cappadocia to the

desert of Bagdad. The sieges of Mopsuestia and Tarsus, in

Cilicia, first exercised the skill and perseverance of their

troops, on whom, at this moment, I shall not hesitate to bestow

the name of Romans. In the double city of Mopsuestia, which is

divided by the River Sarus, two hundred thousand Moslems were

predestined to death or slavery, 115 a surprising degree of

population, which must at least include the inhabitants of the

dependent districts. They were surrounded and taken by assault;

but Tarsus was reduced by the slow progress of famine; and no

sooner had the Saracens yielded on honorable terms than they were

mortified by the distant and unprofitable view of the naval

succors of Egypt. They were dismissed with a safe-conduct to the

confines of Syria: a part of the old Christians had quietly lived

under their dominion; and the vacant habitations were replenished

by a new colony. But the mosch was converted into a stable; the

pulpit was delivered to the flames; many rich crosses of gold and

gems, the spoils of Asiatic churches, were made a grateful

offering to the piety or avarice of the emperor; and he

transported the gates of Mopsuestia and Tarsus, which were fixed

in the walls of Constantinople, an eternal monument of his

victory. After they had forced and secured the narrow passes of

Mount Amanus, the two Roman princes repeatedly carried their arms

into the heart of Syria. Yet, instead of assaulting the walls of

Antioch, the humanity or superstition of Nicephorus appeared to

respect the ancient metropolis of the East: he contented himself

with drawing round the city a line of circumvallation; left a

stationary army; and instructed his lieutenant to expect, without

impatience, the return of spring. But in the depth of winter, in

a dark and rainy night, an adventurous subaltern, with three

hundred soldiers, approached the rampart, applied his

scaling-ladders, occupied two adjacent towers, stood firm against

the pressure of multitudes, and bravely maintained his post till

he was relieved by the tardy, though effectual, support of his

reluctant chief. The first tumult of slaughter and rapine

subsided; the reign of Caesar and of Christ was restored; and the

efforts of a hundred thousand Saracens, of the armies of Syria

and the fleets of Africa, were consumed without effect before the

walls of Antioch. The royal city of Aleppo was subject to

Seifeddowlat, of the dynasty of Hamadan, who clouded his past

glory by the precipitate retreat which abandoned his kingdom and

capital to the Roman invaders. In his stately palace, that stood

without the walls of Aleppo, they joyfully seized a

well-furnished magazine of arms, a stable of fourteen hundred

mules, and three hundred bags of silver and gold. But the walls

of the city withstood the strokes of their battering-rams: and

the besiegers pitched their tents on the neighboring mountain of

Jaushan. Their retreat exasperated the quarrel of the townsmen

and mercenaries; the guard of the gates and ramparts was

deserted; and while they furiously charged each other in the

market-place, they were surprised and destroyed by the sword of a

common enemy. The male sex was exterminated by the sword; ten

thousand youths were led into captivity; the weight of the

precious spoil exceeded the strength and number of the beasts of

burden; the superfluous remainder was burnt; and, after a

licentious possession of ten days, the Romans marched away from

the naked and bleeding city. In their Syrian inroads they

commanded the husbandmen to cultivate their lands, that they

themselves, in the ensuing season, might reap the benefit; more

than a hundred cities were reduced to obedience; and eighteen

pulpits of the principal moschs were committed to the flames to

expiate the sacrilege of the disciples of Mahomet. The classic

names of Hierapolis, Apamea, and Emesa, revive for a moment in

the list of conquest: the emperor Zimisces encamped in the

paradise of Damascus, and accepted the ransom of a submissive

people; and the torrent was only stopped by the impregnable

fortress of Tripoli, on the sea-coast of Phoenicia. Since the

days of Heraclius, the Euphrates, below the passage of Mount

Taurus, had been impervious, and almost invisible, to the Greeks.

The river yielded a free passage to the victorious Zimisces; and

the historian may imitate the speed with which he overran the

once famous cities of Samosata, Edessa, Martyropolis, Amida, 116

and Nisibis, the ancient limit of the empire in the neighborhood

of the Tigris. His ardor was quickened by the desire of grasping

the virgin treasures of Ecbatana, 117 a well-known name, under

which the Byzantine writer has concealed the capital of the

Abbassides. The consternation of the fugitives had already

diffused the terror of his name; but the fancied riches of Bagdad

had already been dissipated by the avarice and prodigality of

domestic tyrants. The prayers of the people, and the stern

demands of the lieutenant of the Bowides, required the caliph to

provide for the defence of the city. The helpless Mothi replied,

that his arms, his revenues, and his provinces, had been torn

from his hands, and that he was ready to abdicate a dignity which

he was unable to support. The emir was inexorable; the furniture

of the palace was sold; and the paltry price of forty thousand

pieces of gold was instantly consumed in private luxury. But the

apprehensions of Bagdad were relieved by the retreat of the

Greeks: thirst and hunger guarded the desert of Mesopotamia; and

the emperor, satiated with glory, and laden with Oriental spoils,

returned to Constantinople, and displayed, in his triumph, the

silk, the aromatics, and three hundred myriads of gold and

silver. Yet the powers of the East had been bent, not broken, by

this transient hurricane. After the departure of the Greeks, the

fugitive princes returned to their capitals; the subjects

disclaimed their involuntary oaths of allegiance; the Moslems

again purified their temples, and overturned the idols of the

saints and martyrs; the Nestorians and Jacobites preferred a

Saracen to an orthodox master; and the numbers and spirit of the

Melchites were inadequate to the support of the church and state.

Of these extensive conquests, Antioch, with the cities of Cilicia

and the Isle of Cyprus, was alone restored, a permanent and

useful accession to the Roman empire. 118

114 (return) [ Elmacin, Hist. Saracen. p. 278, 279. Liutprand was

disposed to depreciate the Greek power, yet he owns that

Nicephorus led against Assyria an army of eighty thousand men.]

115 (return) [ Ducenta fere millia hominum numerabat urbs

(Abulfeda, Annal. Moslem. p. 231) of Mopsuestia, or Masifa,

Mampsysta, Mansista, Mamista, as it is corruptly, or perhaps more

correctly, styled in the middle ages, (Wesseling, Itinerar. p.

580.) Yet I cannot credit this extreme populousness a few years

after the testimony of the emperor Leo, (Tactica, c. xviii. in

Meursii Oper. tom. vi. p. 817.)]

116 (return) [ The text of Leo the deacon, in the corrupt names

of Emeta and Myctarsim, reveals the cities of Amida and

Martyropolis, (Mia farekin. See Abulfeda, Geograph. p. 245, vers.

Reiske.) Of the former, Leo observes, urbus munita et illustris;

of the latter, clara atque conspicua opibusque et pecore,

reliquis ejus provinciis urbibus atque oppidis longe praestans.]

117 (return) [ Ut et Ecbatana pergeret Agarenorumque regiam

everteret.... aiunt enim urbium quae usquam sunt ac toto orbe

existunt felicissimam esse auroque ditissimam, (Leo Diacon. apud

Pagium, tom. iv. p. 34.) This splendid description suits only

with Bagdad, and cannot possibly apply either to Hamadan, the

true Ecbatana, (D’Anville, Geog. Ancienne, tom. ii. p. 237,) or

Tauris, which has been commonly mistaken for that city. The name

of Ecbatana, in the same indefinite sense, is transferred by a

more classic authority (Cicero pro Lego Manilia, c. 4) to the

royal seat of Mithridates, king of Pontus.]

118 (return) [ See the Annals of Elmacin, Abulpharagius, and

Abulfeda, from A. H. 351 to A. H. 361; and the reigns of

Nicephorus Phocas and John Zimisces, in the Chronicles of Zonaras

(tom. ii. l. xvi. p. 199—l. xvii. 215) and Cedrenus, (Compend. p.

649-684.) Their manifold defects are partly supplied by the Ms.

history of Leo the deacon, which Pagi obtained from the

Benedictines, and has inserted almost entire, in a Latin version,

(Critica, tom. iii. p. 873, tom. iv. 37.) * Note: The whole

original work of Leo the Deacon has been published by Hase, and

is inserted in the new edition of the Byzantine historians. M

Lassen has added to the Arabian authorities of this period some

extracts from Kemaleddin’s account of the treaty for the

surrender of Aleppo.—M.]

Chapter LIII: Fate Of The Eastern Empire.—Part I.

Fate Of The Eastern Empire In The Tenth Century.—Extent And

Division.—Wealth And Revenue.—Palace Of Constantinople.— Titles

And Offices.—Pride And Power Of The Emperors.— Tactics Of The

Greeks, Arabs, And Franks.—Loss Of The Latin Tongue.—Studies And

Solitude Of The Greeks.

A ray of historic light seems to beam from the darkness of the

tenth century. We open with curiosity and respect the royal

volumes of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, 1 which he composed at a

mature age for the instruction of his son, and which promise to

unfold the state of the eastern empire, both in peace and war,

both at home and abroad. In the first of these works he minutely

describes the pompous ceremonies of the church and palace of

Constantinople, according to his own practice, and that of his

predecessors. 2 In the second, he attempts an accurate survey of

the provinces, the themes, as they were then denominated, both of

Europe and Asia. 3 The system of Roman tactics, the discipline

and order of the troops, and the military operations by land and

sea, are explained in the third of these didactic collections,

which may be ascribed to Constantine or his father Leo. 4 In the

fourth, of the administration of the empire, he reveals the

secrets of the Byzantine policy, in friendly or hostile

intercourse with the nations of the earth. The literary labors of

the age, the practical systems of law, agriculture, and history,

might redound to the benefit of the subject and the honor of the

Macedonian princes. The sixty books of the Basilics, 5 the code

and pandects of civil jurisprudence, were gradually framed in the

three first reigns of that prosperous dynasty. The art of

agriculture had amused the leisure, and exercised the pens, of

the best and wisest of the ancients; and their chosen precepts

are comprised in the twenty books of the Geoponics 6 of

Constantine. At his command, the historical examples of vice and

virtue were methodized in fifty-three books, 7 and every citizen

might apply, to his contemporaries or himself, the lesson or the

warning of past times. From the august character of a legislator,

the sovereign of the East descends to the more humble office of a

teacher and a scribe; and if his successors and subjects were

regardless of his paternal cares, we may inherit and enjoy the

everlasting legacy.

1 (return) [ The epithet of Porphyrogenitus, born in the purple,

is elegantly defined by Claudian:— Ardua privatos nescit fortuna

Penates; Et regnum cum luce dedit. Cognata potestas Excepit Tyrio

venerabile pignus in ostro.

And Ducange, in his Greek and Latin Glossaries, produces many

passages expressive of the same idea.]

2 (return) [ A splendid Ms. of Constantine, de Caeremoniis Aulae

et Ecclesiae Byzantinae, wandered from Constantinople to Buda,

Frankfort, and Leipsic, where it was published in a splendid

edition by Leich and Reiske, (A.D. 1751, in folio,) with such

lavish praise as editors never fail to bestow on the worthy or

worthless object of their toil.]

3 (return) [ See, in the first volume of Banduri’s Imperium

Orientale, Constantinus de Thematibus, p. 1-24, de Administrando

Imperio, p. 45-127, edit. Venet. The text of the old edition of

Meursius is corrected from a Ms. of the royal library of Paris,

which Isaac Casaubon had formerly seen, (Epist. ad Polybium, p.

10,) and the sense is illustrated by two maps of William

Deslisle, the prince of geographers till the appearance of the

greater D’Anville.]

4 (return) [ The Tactics of Leo and Constantine are published

with the aid of some new Mss. in the great edition of the works

of Meursius, by the learned John Lami, (tom. vi. p. 531-920,

1211-1417, Florent. 1745,) yet the text is still corrupt and

mutilated, the version is still obscure and faulty. The Imperial

library of Vienna would afford some valuable materials to a new

editor, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. vi. p. 369, 370.)]

5 (return) [ On the subject of the Basilics, Fabricius, (Bibliot.

Graec. tom. xii. p. 425-514,) and Heineccius, (Hist. Juris

Romani, p. 396-399,) and Giannone, (Istoria Civile di Napoli,

tom. i. p. 450-458,) as historical civilians, may be usefully

consulted: xli. books of this Greek code have been published,

with a Latin version, by Charles Annibal Frabrottus, (Paris,

1647,) in seven tomes in folio; iv. other books have been since

discovered, and are inserted in Gerard Meerman’s Novus Thesaurus

Juris Civ. et Canon. tom. v. Of the whole work, the sixty books,

John Leunclavius has printed, (Basil, 1575,) an eclogue or

synopsis. The cxiii. novels, or new laws, of Leo, may be found in

the Corpus Juris Civilis.]

6 (return) [ I have used the last and best edition of the

Geoponics, (by Nicolas Niclas, Leipsic, 1781, 2 vols. in octavo.)

I read in the preface, that the same emperor restored the

long-forgotten systems of rhetoric and philosophy; and his two

books of Hippiatrica, or Horse-physic, were published at Paris,

1530, in folio, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. vi. p. 493-500.)]

7 (return) [ Of these LIII. books, or titles, only two have been

preserved and printed, de Legationibus (by Fulvius Ursinus,

Antwerp, 1582, and Daniel Hoeschelius, August. Vindel. 1603) and

de Virtutibus et Vitiis, (by Henry Valesius, or de Valois, Paris,

1634.)]

A closer survey will indeed reduce the value of the gift, and the

gratitude of posterity: in the possession of these Imperial

treasures we may still deplore our poverty and ignorance; and the

fading glories of their authors will be obliterated by

indifference or contempt. The Basilics will sink to a broken

copy, a partial and mutilated version, in the Greek language, of

the laws of Justinian; but the sense of the old civilians is

often superseded by the influence of bigotry: and the absolute

prohibition of divorce, concubinage, and interest for money,

enslaves the freedom of trade and the happiness of private life.

In the historical book, a subject of Constantine might admire the

inimitable virtues of Greece and Rome: he might learn to what a

pitch of energy and elevation the human character had formerly

aspired. But a contrary effect must have been produced by a new

edition of the lives of the saints, which the great logothete, or

chancellor of the empire, was directed to prepare; and the dark

fund of superstition was enriched by the fabulous and florid

legends of Simon the Metaphrast. 8 The merits and miracles of the

whole calendar are of less account in the eyes of a sage, than

the toil of a single husbandman, who multiplies the gifts of the

Creator, and supplies the food of his brethren. Yet the royal

authors of the Geoponics were more seriously employed in

expounding the precepts of the destroying art, which had been

taught since the days of Xenophon, 9 as the art of heroes and

kings. But the Tactics of Leo and Constantine are mingled with

the baser alloy of the age in which they lived. It was destitute

of original genius; they implicitly transcribe the rules and

maxims which had been confirmed by victories. It was unskilled in

the propriety of style and method; they blindly confound the most

distant and discordant institutions, the phalanx of Sparta and

that of Macedon, the legions of Cato and Trajan, of Augustus and

Theodosius. Even the use, or at least the importance, of these

military rudiments may be fairly questioned: their general theory

is dictated by reason; but the merit, as well as difficulty,

consists in the application. The discipline of a soldier is

formed by exercise rather than by study: the talents of a

commander are appropriated to those calm, though rapid, minds,

which nature produces to decide the fate of armies and nations:

the former is the habit of a life, the latter the glance of a

moment; and the battles won by lessons of tactics may be numbered

with the epic poems created from the rules of criticism. The book

of ceremonies is a recital, tedious yet imperfect, of the

despicable pageantry which had infected the church and state

since the gradual decay of the purity of the one and the power of

the other. A review of the themes or provinces might promise such

authentic and useful information, as the curiosity of government

only can obtain, instead of traditionary fables on the origin of

the cities, and malicious epigrams on the vices of their

inhabitants. 10 Such information the historian would have been

pleased to record; nor should his silence be condemned if the

most interesting objects, the population of the capital and

provinces, the amount of the taxes and revenues, the numbers of

subjects and strangers who served under the Imperial standard,

have been unnoticed by Leo the philosopher, and his son

Constantine. His treatise of the public administration is stained

with the same blemishes; yet it is discriminated by peculiar

merit; the antiquities of the nations may be doubtful or

fabulous; but the geography and manners of the Barbaric world are

delineated with curious accuracy. Of these nations, the Franks

alone were qualified to observe in their turn, and to describe,

the metropolis of the East. The ambassador of the great Otho, a

bishop of Cremona, has painted the state of Constantinople about

the middle of the tenth century: his style is glowing, his

narrative lively, his observation keen; and even the prejudices

and passions of Liutprand are stamped with an original character

of freedom and genius. 11 From this scanty fund of foreign and

domestic materials, I shall investigate the form and substance of

the Byzantine empire; the provinces and wealth, the civil

government and military force, the character and literature, of

the Greeks in a period of six hundred years, from the reign of

Heraclius to his successful invasion of the Franks or Latins.

8 (return) [ The life and writings of Simon Metaphrastes are

described by Hankius, (de Scriptoribus Byzant. p. 418-460.) This

biographer of the saints indulged himself in a loose paraphrase

of the sense or nonsense of more ancient acts. His Greek rhetoric

is again paraphrased in the Latin version of Surius, and scarcely

a thread can be now visible of the original texture.]

9 (return) [ According to the first book of the Cyropaedia,

professors of tactics, a small part of the science of war, were

already instituted in Persia, by which Greece must be understood.

A good edition of all the Scriptores Tactici would be a task not

unworthy of a scholar. His industry might discover some new Mss.,

and his learning might illustrate the military history of the

ancients. But this scholar should be likewise a soldier; and

alas! Quintus Icilius is no more. * Note: M. Guichardt, author of

Memoires Militaires sur les Grecs et sur les Romains. See

Gibbon’s Extraits Raisonnees de mes Lectures, Misc. Works vol. v.

p. 219.—M]

10 (return) [ After observing that the demerit of the

Cappadocians rose in proportion to their rank and riches, he

inserts a more pointed epigram, which is ascribed to Demodocus.

The sting is precisely the same with the French epigram against

Freron: Un serpent mordit Jean Freron—Eh bien? Le serpent en

mourut. But as the Paris wits are seldom read in the Anthology, I

should be curious to learn, through what channel it was conveyed

for their imitation, (Constantin. Porphyrogen. de Themat. c. ii.

Brunck Analect. Graec. tom. ii. p. 56. Brodaei Anthologia, l. ii.

p. 244.)]

11 (return) [ The Legatio Liutprandi Episcopi Cremonensis ad

Nicephorum Phocam is inserted in Muratori, Scriptores Rerum

Italicarum, tom. ii. pars i.]

After the final division between the sons of Theodosius, the

swarms of Barbarians from Scythia and Germany over-spread the

provinces and extinguished the empire of ancient Rome. The

weakness of Constantinople was concealed by extent of dominion:

her limits were inviolate, or at least entire; and the kingdom of

Justinian was enlarged by the splendid acquisition of Africa and

Italy. But the possession of these new conquests was transient

and precarious; and almost a moiety of the Eastern empire was

torn away by the arms of the Saracens. Syria and Egypt were

oppressed by the Arabian caliphs; and, after the reduction of

Africa, their lieutenants invaded and subdued the Roman province

which had been changed into the Gothic monarchy of Spain. The

islands of the Mediterranean were not inaccessible to their naval

powers; and it was from their extreme stations, the harbors of

Crete and the fortresses of Cilicia, that the faithful or rebel

emirs insulted the majesty of the throne and capital. The

remaining provinces, under the obedience of the emperors, were

cast into a new mould; and the jurisdiction of the presidents,

the consulars, and the counts were superseded by the institution

of the themes, 12 or military governments, which prevailed under

the successors of Heraclius, and are described by the pen of the

royal author. Of the twenty-nine themes, twelve in Europe and

seventeen in Asia, the origin is obscure, the etymology doubtful

or capricious: the limits were arbitrary and fluctuating; but

some particular names, that sound the most strangely to our ear,

were derived from the character and attributes of the troops that

were maintained at the expense, and for the guard, of the

respective divisions. The vanity of the Greek princes most

eagerly grasped the shadow of conquest and the memory of lost

dominion. A new Mesopotamia was created on the western side of

the Euphrates: the appellation and praetor of Sicily were

transferred to a narrow slip of Calabria; and a fragment of the

duchy of Beneventum was promoted to the style and title of the

theme of Lombardy. In the decline of the Arabian empire, the

successors of Constantine might indulge their pride in more solid

advantages. The victories of Nicephorus, John Zimisces, and Basil

the Second, revived the fame, and enlarged the boundaries, of the

Roman name: the province of Cilicia, the metropolis of Antioch,

the islands of Crete and Cyprus, were restored to the allegiance

of Christ and Caesar: one third of Italy was annexed to the

throne of Constantinople: the kingdom of Bulgaria was destroyed;

and the last sovereigns of the Macedonian dynasty extended their

sway from the sources of the Tigris to the neighborhood of Rome.

In the eleventh century, the prospect was again clouded by new

enemies and new misfortunes: the relics of Italy were swept away

by the Norman adventures; and almost all the Asiatic branches

were dissevered from the Roman trunk by the Turkish conquerors.

After these losses, the emperors of the Comnenian family

continued to reign from the Danube to Peloponnesus, and from

Belgrade to Nice, Trebizond, and the winding stream of the

Meander. The spacious provinces of Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece,

were obedient to their sceptre; the possession of Cyprus, Rhodes,

and Crete, was accompanied by the fifty islands of the Aegean or

Holy Sea; 13 and the remnant of their empire transcends the

measure of the largest of the European kingdoms.

12 (return) [ See Constantine de Thematibus, in Banduri, tom. i.

p. 1-30. It is used by Maurice (Strata gem. l. ii. c. 2) for a

legion, from whence the name was easily transferred to its post

or province, (Ducange, Gloss. Graec. tom. i. p. 487-488.) Some

etymologies are attempted for the Opiscian, Optimatian,

Thracesian, themes.]

13 (return) [ It is styled by the modern Greeks, from which the

corrupt names of Archipelago, l’Archipel, and the Arches, have

been transformed by geographers and seamen, (D’Anville,

Geographie Ancienne, tom. i. p. 281. Analyse de la Carte de la

Greece, p. 60.) The numbers of monks or caloyers in all the

islands and the adjacent mountain of Athos, (Observations de

Belon, fol. 32, verso,) monte santo, might justify the epithet of

holy, a slight alteration from the original, imposed by the

Dorians, who, in their dialect, gave the figurative name of

goats, to the bounding waves, (Vossius, apud Cellarium, Geograph.

Antiq. tom. i. p. 829.)]

The same princes might assert, with dignity and truth, that of

all the monarchs of Christendom they possessed the greatest city,

14 the most ample revenue, the most flourishing and populous

state. With the decline and fall of the empire, the cities of the

West had decayed and fallen; nor could the ruins of Rome, or the

mud walls, wooden hovels, and narrow precincts of Paris and

London, prepare the Latin stranger to contemplate the situation

and extent of Constantinople, her stately palaces and churches,

and the arts and luxury of an innumerable people. Her treasures

might attract, but her virgin strength had repelled, and still

promised to repel, the audacious invasion of the Persian and

Bulgarian, the Arab and the Russian. The provinces were less

fortunate and impregnable; and few districts, few cities, could

be discovered which had not been violated by some fierce

Barbarian, impatient to despoil, because he was hopeless to

possess. From the age of Justinian the Eastern empire was sinking

below its former level; the powers of destruction were more

active than those of improvement; and the calamities of war were

imbittered by the more permanent evils of civil and

ecclesiastical tyranny. The captive who had escaped from the

Barbarians was often stripped and imprisoned by the ministers of

his sovereign: the Greek superstition relaxed the mind by prayer,

and emaciated the body by fasting; and the multitude of convents

and festivals diverted many hands and many days from the temporal

service of mankind. Yet the subjects of the Byzantine empire were

still the most dexterous and diligent of nations; their country

was blessed by nature with every advantage of soil, climate, and

situation; and, in the support and restoration of the arts, their

patient and peaceful temper was more useful than the warlike

spirit and feudal anarchy of Europe. The provinces that still

adhered to the empire were repeopled and enriched by the

misfortunes of those which were irrecoverably lost. From the yoke

of the caliphs, the Catholics of Syria, Egypt, and Africa retired

to the allegiance of their prince, to the society of their

brethren: the movable wealth, which eludes the search of

oppression, accompanied and alleviated their exile, and

Constantinople received into her bosom the fugitive trade of

Alexandria and Tyre. The chiefs of Armenia and Scythia, who fled

from hostile or religious persecution, were hospitably

entertained: their followers were encouraged to build new cities

and to cultivate waste lands; and many spots, both in Europe and

Asia, preserved the name, the manners, or at least the memory, of

these national colonies. Even the tribes of Barbarians, who had

seated themselves in arms on the territory of the empire, were

gradually reclaimed to the laws of the church and state; and as

long as they were separated from the Greeks, their posterity

supplied a race of faithful and obedient soldiers. Did we possess

sufficient materials to survey the twenty-nine themes of the

Byzantine monarchy, our curiosity might be satisfied with a

chosen example: it is fortunate enough that the clearest light

should be thrown on the most interesting province, and the name

of Peloponnesus will awaken the attention of the classic reader.

14 (return) [ According to the Jewish traveller who had visited

Europe and Asia, Constantinople was equalled only by Bagdad, the

great city of the Ismaelites, (Voyage de Benjamin de Tudele, par

Baratier, tom. l. c. v. p. 46.)]