the fate of the Alexandrian library, as it is described by the learned
Abulpharagius. The spirit of Amrou was more curious and liberal than
that of his brethren, and in his leisure hours, the Arabian chief was
pleased with the conversation of John, the last disciple of Ammonius,
and who derived the surname of _Philoponus_ from his laborious studies
of grammar and philosophy. Emboldened by this familiar intercourse,
Philoponus presumed to solicit a gift, inestimable in _his_ opinion,
contemptible in that of the Barbarians--the royal library, which alone,
among the spoils of Alexandria, had not been appropriated by the visit
and the seal of the conqueror. Amrou was inclined to gratify the wish of
the grammarian, but his rigid integrity refused to alienate the minutest
object without the consent of the caliph; and the well-known answer of
Omar was inspired by the ignorance of a fanatic. "If these writings of
the Greeks agree with the book of God, they are useless, and need not
be preserved: if they disagree, they are pernicious, and ought to be
destroyed." The sentence was executed with blind obedience: the volumes
of paper or parchment were distributed to the four thousand baths of
the city; and such was their incredible multitude, that six months were
barely sufficient for the consumption of this precious fuel. Since
the Dynasties of Abulpharagius have been given to the world in a Latin
version, the tale has been repeatedly transcribed; and every scholar,
with pious indignation, has deplored the irreparable shipwreck of the
learning, the arts, and the genius, of antiquity. For my own part, I am
strongly tempted to deny both the fact and the consequences. The fact
is indeed marvellous. "Read and wonder!" says the historian himself: and
the solitary report of a stranger who wrote at the end of six hundred
years on the confines of Media, is overbalanced by the silence of two
annalist of a more early date, both Christians, both natives of Egypt,
and the most ancient of whom, the patriarch Eutychius, has amply
described the conquest of Alexandria. The rigid sentence of Omar is
repugnant to the sound and orthodox precept of the Mahometan casuists
they expressly declare, that the religious books of the Jews and
Christians, which are acquired by the right of war, should never
be committed to the flames; and that the works of profane science,
historians or poets, physicians or philosophers, may be lawfully applied
to the use of the faithful. A more destructive zeal may perhaps be
attributed to the first successors of Mahomet; yet in this instance,
the conflagration would have speedily expired in the deficiency of
materials. I should not recapitulate the disasters of the Alexandrian
library, the involuntary flame that was kindled by CÊsar in his own
defence, or the mischievous bigotry of the Christians, who studied to
destroy the monuments of idolatry. But if we gradually descend from the
age of the Antonines to that of Theodosius, we shall learn from a chain
of contemporary witnesses, that the royal palace and the temple of
Serapis no longer contained the four, or the seven, hundred thousand
volumes, which had been assembled by the curiosity and magnificence of
the Ptolemies. Perhaps the church and seat of the patriarchs might be
enriched with a repository of books; but if the ponderous mass of Arian
and Monophysite controversy were indeed consumed in the public baths, a
philosopher may allow, with a smile, that it was ultimately devoted to
the benefit of mankind. I sincerely regret the more valuable libraries
which have been involved in the ruin of the Roman empire; but when I
seriously compute the lapse of ages, the waste of ignorance, and the
calamities of war, our treasures, rather than our losses, are the
objects of my surprise. Many curious and interesting facts are buried
in oblivion: the three great historians of Rome have been transmitted
to our hands in a mutilated state, and we are deprived of many pleasing
compositions of the lyric, iambic, and dramatic poetry of the Greeks.
Yet we should gratefully remember, that the mischances of time and
accident have spared the classic works to which the suffrage of
antiquity had adjudged the first place of genius and glory: the teachers
of ancient knowledge, who are still extant, had perused and compared the
writings of their predecessors; nor can it fairly be presumed that
any important truth, any useful discovery in art or nature, has been
snatched away from the curiosity of modern ages.
In the administration of Egypt, Amrou balanced the demands of justice
and policy; the interest of the people of the law, who were defended by
God; and of the people of the alliance, who were protected by man. In
the recent tumult of conquest and deliverance, the tongue of the Copts
and the sword of the Arabs were most adverse to the tranquillity of
the province. To the former, Amrou declared, that faction and falsehood
would be doubly chastised; by the punishment of the accusers, whom he
should detest as his personal enemies, and by the promotion of their
innocent brethren, whom their envy had labored to injure and supplant.
He excited the latter by the motives of religion and honor to sustain
the dignity of their character, to endear themselves by a modest and
temperate conduct to God and the caliph, to spare and protect a people
who had trusted to their faith, and to content themselves with the
legitimate and splendid rewards of their victory. In the management
of the revenue, he disapproved the simple but oppressive mode of a
capitation, and preferred with reason a proportion of taxes deducted on
every branch from the clear profits of agriculture and commerce. A third
part of the tribute was appropriated to the annual repairs of the
dikes and canals, so essential to the public welfare. Under his
administration, the fertility of Egypt supplied the dearth of Arabia;
and a string of camels, laden with corn and provisions, covered almost
without an interval the long road from Memphis to Medina. But the
genius of Amrou soon renewed the maritime communication which had been
attempted or achieved by the Pharaohs the Ptolemies, or the CÊsars; and
a canal, at least eighty miles in length, was opened from the Nile
to the Red Sea. This inland navigation, which would have joined the
Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, was soon discontinued as useless
and dangerous: the throne was removed from Medina to Damascus, and
the Grecian fleets might have explored a passage to the holy cities of
Arabia.
Of his new conquest, the caliph Omar had an imperfect knowledge from
the voice of fame and the legends of the Koran. He requested that his
lieutenant would place before his eyes the realm of Pharaoh and the
Amalekites; and the answer of Amrou exhibits a lively and not unfaithful
picture of that singular country. "O commander of the faithful, Egypt
is a compound of black earth and green plants, between a pulverized
mountain and a red sand. The distance from Syene to the sea is a month's
journey for a horseman. Along the valley descends a river, on which the
blessing of the Most High reposes both in the evening and morning, and
which rises and falls with the revolutions of the sun and moon. When the
annual dispensation of Providence unlocks the springs and fountains
that nourish the earth, the Nile rolls his swelling and sounding waters
through the realm of Egypt: the fields are overspread by the salutary
flood; and the villages communicate with each other in their painted
barks. The retreat of the inundation deposits a fertilizing mud for the
reception of the various seeds: the crowds of husbandmen who blacken the
land may be compared to a swarm of industrious ants; and their native
indolence is quickened by the lash of the task-master, and the promise
of the flowers and fruits of a plentiful increase. Their hope is seldom
deceived; but the riches which they extract from the wheat, the
barley, and the rice, the legumes, the fruit-trees, and the cattle,
are unequally shared between those who labor and those who possess.
According to the vicissitudes of the seasons, the face of the country is
adorned with a _silver_ wave, a verdant _emerald_, and the deep
yellow of a _golden_ harvest." Yet this beneficial order is sometimes
interrupted; and the long delay and sudden swell of the river in the
first year of the conquest might afford some color to an edifying fable.
It is said, that the annual sacrifice of a virgin had been interdicted
by the piety of Omar; and that the Nile lay sullen and inactive in his
shallow bed, till the mandate of the caliph was cast into the obedient
stream, which rose in a single night to the height of sixteen cubits.
The admiration of the Arabs for their new conquest encouraged the
license of their romantic spirit. We may read, in the gravest authors,
that Egypt was crowded with twenty thousand cities or villages: _that_,
exclusive of the Greeks and Arabs, the Copts alone were found, on the
assessment, six millions of tributary subjects, or twenty millions of
either sex, and of every age: _that_ three hundred millions of gold or
silver were annually paid to the treasury of the caliphs. Our reason
must be startled by these extravagant assertions; and they will become
more palpable, if we assume the compass and measure the extent of
habitable ground: a valley from the tropic to Memphis seldom broader
than twelve miles, and the triangle of the Delta, a flat surface of
two thousand one hundred square leagues, compose a twelfth part of
the magnitude of France. A more accurate research will justify a more
reasonable estimate. The three hundred millions, created by the error
of a scribe, are reduced to the decent revenue of four millions three
hundred thousand pieces of gold, of which nine hundred thousand were
consumed by the pay of the soldiers. Two authentic lists, of the present
and of the twelfth century, are circumscribed within the respectable
number of two thousand seven hundred villages and towns. After a long
residence at Cairo, a French consul has ventured to assign about four
millions of Mahometans, Christians, and Jews, for the ample, though not
incredible, scope of the population of Egypt.
IV. The conquest of Africa, from the Nile to the Atlantic Ocean, was
first attempted by the arms of the caliph Othman. The pious design was
approved by the companions of Mahomet and the chiefs of the tribes;
and twenty thousand Arabs marched from Medina, with the gifts and the
blessing of the commander of the faithful. They were joined in the camp
of Memphis by twenty thousand of their countrymen; and the conduct
of the war was intrusted to Abdallah, the son of Said and the
foster-brother of the caliph, who had lately supplanted the conqueror
and lieutenant of Egypt. Yet the favor of the prince, and the merit of
his favorite, could not obliterate the guilt of his apostasy. The early
conversion of Abdallah, and his skilful pen, had recommended him to the
important office of transcribing the sheets of the Koran: he betrayed
his trust, corrupted the text, derided the errors which he had made, and
fled to Mecca to escape the justice, and expose the ignorance, of the
apostle. After the conquest of Mecca, he fell prostrate at the feet of
Mahomet; his tears, and the entreaties of Othman, extorted a reluctant
pardon; out the prophet declared that he had so long hesitated, to allow
time for some zealous disciple to avenge his injury in the blood of
the apostate. With apparent fidelity and effective merit, he served the
religion which it was no longer his interest to desert: his birth and
talents gave him an honorable rank among the Koreish; and, in a nation
of cavalry, Abdallah was renowned as the boldest and most dexterous
horseman of Arabia. At the head of forty thousand Moslems, he advanced
from Egypt into the unknown countries of the West. The sands of Barca
might be impervious to a Roman legion but the Arabs were attended by
their faithful camels; and the natives of the desert beheld without
terror the familiar aspect of the soil and climate. After a painful
march, they pitched their tents before the walls of Tripoli, a maritime
city in which the name, the wealth, and the inhabitants of the province
had gradually centred, and which now maintains the third rank among the
states of Barbary. A reÎnforcement of Greeks was surprised and cut in
pieces on the sea-shore; but the fortifications of Tripoli resisted the
first assaults; and the Saracens were tempted by the approach of the
prÊfect Gregory to relinquish the labors of the siege for the perils
and the hopes of a decisive action. If his standard was followed by one
hundred and twenty thousand men, the regular bands of the empire must
have been lost in the naked and disorderly crowd of Africans and Moors,
who formed the strength, or rather the numbers, of his host. He rejected
with indignation the option of the Koran or the tribute; and during
several days the two armies were fiercely engaged from the dawn of light
to the hour of noon, when their fatigue and the excessive heat compelled
them to seek shelter and refreshment in their respective camps. The
daughter of Gregory, a maid of incomparable beauty and spirit, is said
to have fought by his side: from her earliest youth she was trained to
mount on horseback, to draw the bow, and to wield the cimeter; and the
richness of her arms and apparel were conspicuous in the foremost ranks
of the battle. Her hand, with a hundred thousand pieces of gold, was
offered for the head of the Arabian general, and the youths of Africa
were excited by the prospect of the glorious prize. At the pressing
solicitation of his brethren, Abdallah withdrew his person from the
field; but the Saracens were discouraged by the retreat of their leader,
and the repetition of these equal or unsuccessful conflicts.
A noble Arabian, who afterwards became the adversary of Ali, and the
father of a caliph, had signalized his valor in Egypt, and Zobeir was
the first who planted the scaling-ladder against the walls of Babylon.
In the African war he was detached from the standard of Abdallah. On the
news of the battle, Zobeir, with twelve companions, cut his way through
the camp of the Greeks, and pressed forwards, without tasting either
food or repose, to partake of the dangers of his brethren. He cast his
eyes round the field: "Where," said he, "is our general?" "In his
tent." "Is the tent a station for the general of the Moslems?" Abdallah
represented with a blush the importance of his own life, and the
temptation that was held forth by the Roman prÊfect. "Retort," said
Zobeir, "on the infidels their ungenerous attempt. Proclaim through
the ranks that the head of Gregory shall be repaid with his captive
daughter, and the equal sum of one hundred thousand pieces of gold."
To the courage and discretion of Zobeir the lieutenant of the caliph
intrusted the execution of his own stratagem, which inclined the
long-disputed balance in favor of the Saracens. Supplying by activity
and artifice the deficiency of numbers, a part of their forces lay
concealed in their tents, while the remainder prolonged an irregular
skirmish with the enemy till the sun was high in the heavens. On both
sides they retired with fainting steps: their horses were unbridled,
their armor was laid aside, and the hostile nations prepared, or seemed
to prepare, for the refreshment of the evening, and the encounter of the
ensuing day. On a sudden the charge was sounded; the Arabian camp poured
forth a swarm of fresh and intrepid warriors; and the long line of
the Greeks and Africans was surprised, assaulted, overturned, by new
squadrons of the faithful, who, to the eye of fanaticism, might appear
as a band of angels descending from the sky. The prÊfect himself was
slain by the hand of Zobeir: his daughter, who sought revenge and death,
was surrounded and made prisoner; and the fugitives involved in their
disaster the town of Sufetula, to which they escaped from the sabres and
lances of the Arabs. Sufetula was built one hundred and fifty miles
to the south of Carthage: a gentle declivity is watered by a running
stream, and shaded by a grove of juniper-trees; and, in the ruins of a
triumphal arch, a portico, and three temples of the Corinthian order,
curiosity may yet admire the magnificence of the Romans. After the fall
of this opulent city, the provincials and Barbarians implored on all
sides the mercy of the conqueror. His vanity or his zeal might be
flattered by offers of tribute or professions of faith: but his losses,
his fatigues, and the progress of an epidemical disease, prevented
a solid establishment; and the Saracens, after a campaign of fifteen
months, retreated to the confines of Egypt, with the captives and the
wealth of their African expedition. The caliph's fifth was granted to
a favorite, on the nominal payment of five hundred thousand pieces of
gold; but the state was doubly injured by this fallacious transaction,
if each foot-soldier had shared one thousand, and each horseman three
thousand, pieces, in the real division of the plunder. The author of the
death of Gregory was expected to have claimed the most precious reward
of the victory: from his silence it might be presumed that he had fallen
in the battle, till the tears and exclamations of the prÊfect's daughter
at the sight of Zobeir revealed the valor and modesty of that gallant
soldier. The unfortunate virgin was offered, and almost rejected as a
slave, by her father's murderer, who coolly declared that his sword
was consecrated to the service of religion; and that he labored for a
recompense far above the charms of mortal beauty, or the riches of this
transitory life. A reward congenial to his temper was the honorable
commission of announcing to the caliph Othman the success of his arms.
The companions the chiefs, and the people, were assembled in the mosch
of Medina, to hear the interesting narrative of Zobeir; and as the
orator forgot nothing except the merit of his own counsels and actions,
the name of Abdallah was joined by the Arabians with the heroic names of
Caled and Amrou.
Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.--Part VIII.
The Western conquests of the Saracens were suspended near twenty years,
till their dissensions were composed by the establishment of the house
of Ommiyah; and the caliph Moawiyah was invited by the cries of the
Africans themselves. The successors of Heraclius had been informed of
the tribute which they had been compelled to stipulate with the Arabs,
but instead of being moved to pity and relieve their distress, they
imposed, as an equivalent or a fine, a second tribute of a similar
amount. The ears of the Byzantine ministers were shut against the
complaints of their poverty and ruin: their despair was reduced to
prefer the dominion of a single master; and the extortions of the
patriarch of Carthage, who was invested with civil and military power,
provoked the sectaries, and even the Catholics of the Roman province, to
abjure the religion as well as the authority of their tyrants. The first
lieutenant of Moawiyah acquired a just renown, subdued an important
city, defeated an army of thirty thousand Greeks, swept away fourscore
thousand captives, and enriched with their spoils the bold adventures of
Syria and Egypt. But the title of conqueror of Africa is more justly
due to his successor Akbah. He marched from Damascus at the head of ten
thousand of the bravest Arabs; and the genuine force of the Moslems was
enlarged by the doubtful aid and conversion of many thousand Barbarians.
It would be difficult, nor is it necessary, to trace the accurate line
of the progress of Akbah. The interior regions have been peopled by the
Orientals with fictitious armies and imaginary citadels. In the warlike
province of Zab, or Numidia, fourscore thousand of the natives might
assemble in arms; but the number of three hundred and sixty towns
is incompatible with the ignorance or decay of husbandry; and a
circumference of three leagues will not be justified by the ruins of
Erbe or Lambesa, the ancient metropolis of that inland country. As we
approach the seacoast, the well-known cities of Bugia and Tangier define
the more certain limits of the Saracen victories. A remnant of trade
still adheres to the commodious harbor of Bugia which, in a more
prosperous age, is said to have contained about twenty thousand houses;
and the plenty of iron which is dug from the adjacent mountains might
have supplied a braver people with the instruments of defence. The
remote position and venerable antiquity of Tingi, or Tangier, have
been decorated by the Greek and Arabian fables; but the figurative
expressions of the latter, that the walls were constructed of brass, and
that the roofs were covered with gold and silver, may be interpreted
as the emblems of strength and opulence. The provinces of Mauritania
Tingitana, which assumed the name of the capital, had been imperfectly
discovered and settled by the Romans; the five colonies were confined to
a narrow pale, and the more southern parts were seldom explored except
by the agents of luxury, who searched the forests for ivory and the
citron-wood, and the shores of the ocean for the purple shell-fish.
The fearless Akbah plunged into the heart of the country, traversed the
wilderness in which his successors erected the splendid capitals of Fez
and Morocco, and at length penetrated to the verge of the Atlantic and
the great desert. The river Sus descends from the western sides of Mount
Atlas, fertilizes, like the Nile, the adjacent soil, and falls into the
sea at a moderate distance from the Canary, or Fortunate Islands.
Its banks were inhabited by the last of the Moors, a race of savages,
without laws, or discipline, or religion; they were astonished by the
strange and irresistible terrors of the Oriental arms; and as they
possessed neither gold nor silver, the riches spoil was the beauty of
the female captives, some of whom were afterwards sold for a thousand
pieces of gold. The career, though not the zeal, of Akbah was checked by
the prospect of a boundless ocean. He spurred his horse into the waves,
and raising his eyes to heaven, exclaimed with a tone of a fanatic,
"Great God! if my course were not stopped by this sea, I would still go
on, to the unknown kingdoms of the West, preaching the unity of thy holy
name, and putting to the sword the rebellious nations who worship any
other Gods than thee." Yet this Mahometan Alexander, who sighed for new
worlds, was unable to preserve his recent conquests. By the universal
defection of the Greeks and Africans, he was recalled from the shores of
the Atlantic, and the surrounding multitudes left him only the resource
of an honorable death. The last scene was dignified by an example of
national virtue. An ambitious chief, who had disputed the command and
failed in the attempt, was led about as a prisoner in the camp of
the Arabian general. The insurgents had trusted to his discontent and
revenge; he disdained their offers, and revealed their designs. In the
hour of danger, the grateful Akbah unlocked his fetters, and advised him
to retire; he chose to die under the banner of his rival. Embracing
as friends and martyrs, they unsheathed their cimeters, broke their
scabbards, and maintained an obstinate combat, till they fell by each
other's side on the last of their slaughtered countrymen. The third
general or governor of Africa, Zuheir, avenged and encountered the fate
of his predecessor. He vanquished the natives in many battles; he was
overthrown by a powerful army, which Constantinople had sent to the
relief of Carthage.
It had been the frequent practice of the Moorish tribes to join the
invaders, to share the plunder, to profess the faith, and to revolt to
their savage state of independence and idolatry, on the first retreat or
misfortune of the Moslems. The prudence of Akbah had proposed to found
an Arabian colony in the heart of Africa; a citadel that might curb
the levity of the Barbarians, a place of refuge to secure, against the
accidents of war, the wealth and the families of the Saracens. With this
view, and under the modest title of the station of a caravan, he planted
this colony in the fiftieth year of the Hegira. In the present decay,
Cairoan still holds the second rank in the kingdom of Tunis, from which
it is distant about fifty miles to the south: its inland situation,
twelve miles westward of the sea, has protected the city from the Greek
and Sicilian fleets. When the wild beasts and serpents were extirpated,
when the forest, or rather wilderness, was cleared, the vestiges of
a Roman town were discovered in a sandy plain: the vegetable food of
Cairoan is brought from afar; and the scarcity of springs constrains the
inhabitants to collect in cisterns and reservoirs a precarious supply
of rain-water. These obstacles were subdued by the industry of Akbah; he
traced a circumference of three thousand and six hundred paces, which
he encompassed with a brick wall; in the space of five years, the
governor's palace was surrounded with a sufficient number of private
habitations; a spacious mosch was supported by five hundred columns of
granite, porphyry, and Numidian marble; and Cairoan became the seat of
learning as well as of empire. But these were the glories of a later
age; the new colony was shaken by the successive defeats of Akbah and
Zuheir, and the western expeditions were again interrupted by the
civil discord of the Arabian monarchy. The son of the valiant Zobeir
maintained a war of twelve years, a siege of seven months against the
house of Ommiyah. Abdallah was said to unite the fierceness of the lion
with the subtlety of the fox; but if he inherited the courage, he was
devoid of the generosity, of his father.