The wars of the Moslems were sanctified by the prophet; but among

the various precepts and examples of his life, the caliphs

selected the lessons of toleration that might tend to disarm the

resistance of the unbelievers. Arabia was the temple and

patrimony of the God of Mahomet; but he beheld with less jealousy

and affection the nations of the earth. The polytheists and

idolaters, who were ignorant of his name, might be lawfully

extirpated by his votaries; 196 but a wise policy supplied the

obligation of justice; and after some acts of intolerant zeal,

the Mahometan conquerors of Hindostan have spared the pagodas of

that devout and populous country. The disciples of Abraham, of

Moses, and of Jesus, were solemnly invited to accept the more

perfect revelation of Mahomet; but if they preferred the payment

of a moderate tribute, they were entitled to the freedom of

conscience and religious worship. 197 In a field of battle the

forfeit lives of the prisoners were redeemed by the profession of

Islam; the females were bound to embrace the religion of their

masters, and a race of sincere proselytes was gradually

multiplied by the education of the infant captives. But the

millions of African and Asiatic converts, who swelled the native

band of the faithful Arabs, must have been allured, rather than

constrained, to declare their belief in one God and the apostle

of God. By the repetition of a sentence and the loss of a

foreskin, the subject or the slave, the captive or the criminal,

arose in a moment the free and equal companion of the victorious

Moslems. Every sin was expiated, every engagement was dissolved:

the vow of celibacy was superseded by the indulgence of nature;

the active spirits who slept in the cloister were awakened by the

trumpet of the Saracens; and in the convulsion of the world,

every member of a new society ascended to the natural level of

his capacity and courage. The minds of the multitude were tempted

by the invisible as well as temporal blessings of the Arabian

prophet; and charity will hope that many of his proselytes

entertained a serious conviction of the truth and sanctity of his

revelation. In the eyes of an inquisitive polytheist, it must

appear worthy of the human and the divine nature. More pure than

the system of Zoroaster, more liberal than the law of Moses, the

religion of Mahomet might seem less inconsistent with reason than

the creed of mystery and superstition, which, in the seventh

century, disgraced the simplicity of the gospel.

196 (return) [ The Harbii, as they are styled, qui tolerari

nequeunt, are, 1. Those who, besides God, worship the sun, moon,

or idols. 2. Atheists, Utrique, quamdiu princeps aliquis inter

Mohammedanos superest, oppugnari debent donec religionem

amplectantur, nec requies iis concedenda est, nec pretium

acceptandum pro obtinenda conscientiae libertate, (Reland,

Dissertat. x. de Jure Militari Mohammedan. tom. iii. p. 14;) a

rigid theory!]

197 (return) [ The distinction between a proscribed and a

tolerated sect, between the Harbii and the people of the Book,

the believers in some divine revelation, is correctly defined in

the conversation of the caliph Al Mamum with the idolaters or

Sabaeans of Charrae, (Hottinger, Hist. Orient. p. 107, 108.)]

In the extensive provinces of Persia and Africa, the national

religion has been eradicated by the Mahometan faith. The

ambiguous theology of the Magi stood alone among the sects of the

East; but the profane writings of Zoroaster 198 might, under the

reverend name of Abraham, be dexterously connected with the chain

of divine revelation. Their evil principle, the daemon Ahriman,

might be represented as the rival, or as the creature, of the God

of light. The temples of Persia were devoid of images; but the

worship of the sun and of fire might be stigmatized as a gross

and criminal idolatry. 199 The milder sentiment was consecrated

by the practice of Mahomet 200 and the prudence of the caliphs;

the Magians or Ghebers were ranked with the Jews and Christians

among the people of the written law; 201 and as late as the third

century of the Hegira, the city of Herat will afford a lively

contrast of private zeal and public toleration. 202 Under the

payment of an annual tribute, the Mahometan law secured to the

Ghebers of Herat their civil and religious liberties: but the

recent and humble mosch was overshadowed by the antique splendor

of the adjoining temple of fire. A fanatic Imam deplored, in his

sermons, the scandalous neighborhood, and accused the weakness or

indifference of the faithful. Excited by his voice, the people

assembled in tumult; the two houses of prayer were consumed by

the flames, but the vacant ground was immediately occupied by the

foundations of a new mosch. The injured Magi appealed to the

sovereign of Chorasan; he promised justice and relief; when,

behold! four thousand citizens of Herat, of a grave character and

mature age, unanimously swore that the idolatrous fane had never

existed; the inquisition was silenced and their conscience was

satisfied (says the historian Mirchond 203 with this holy and

meritorious perjury. 204 But the greatest part of the temples of

Persia were ruined by the insensible and general desertion of

their votaries.

It was insensible, since it is not accompanied with any memorial

of time or place, of persecution or resistance. It was general,

since the whole realm, from Shiraz to Samarcand, imbibed the

faith of the Koran; and the preservation of the native tongue

reveals the descent of the Mahometans of Persia. 205 In the

mountains and deserts, an obstinate race of unbelievers adhered

to the superstition of their fathers; and a faint tradition of

the Magian theology is kept alive in the province of Kirman,

along the banks of the Indus, among the exiles of Surat, and in

the colony which, in the last century, was planted by Shaw Abbas

at the gates of Ispahan. The chief pontiff has retired to Mount

Elbourz, eighteen leagues from the city of Yezd: the perpetual

fire (if it continues to burn) is inaccessible to the profane;

but his residence is the school, the oracle, and the pilgrimage

of the Ghebers, whose hard and uniform features attest the

unmingled purity of their blood. Under the jurisdiction of their

elders, eighty thousand families maintain an innocent and

industrious life: their subsistence is derived from some curious

manufactures and mechanic trades; and they cultivate the earth

with the fervor of a religious duty. Their ignorance withstood

the despotism of Shaw Abbas, who demanded with threats and

tortures the prophetic books of Zoroaster; and this obscure

remnant of the Magians is spared by the moderation or contempt of

their present sovereigns. 206

198 (return) [ The Zend or Pazend, the bible of the Ghebers, is

reckoned by themselves, or at least by the Mahometans, among the

ten books which Abraham received from heaven; and their religion

is honorably styled the religion of Abraham, (D’Herblot, Bibliot.

Orient. p. 701; Hyde, de Religione veterum Persarum, c, iii. p.

27, 28, &c.) I much fear that we do not possess any pure and free

description of the system of Zoroaster. 1981 Dr. Prideaux

(Connection, vol. i. p. 300, octavo) adopts the opinion, that he

had been the slave and scholar of some Jewish prophet in the

captivity of Babylon. Perhaps the Persians, who have been the

masters of the Jews, would assert the honor, a poor honor, of

being their masters.]

1981 (return) [ Whatever the real age of the Zendavesta,

published by Anquetil du Perron, whether of the time of Ardeschir

Babeghan, according to Mr. Erskine, or of much higher antiquity,

it may be considered, I conceive, both a “pure and a free,”

though imperfect, description of Zoroastrianism; particularly

with the illustrations of the original translator, and of the

German Kleuker—M.]

199 (return) [ The Arabian Nights, a faithful and amusing picture

of the Oriental world, represent in the most odious colors of the

Magians, or worshippers of fire, to whom they attribute the

annual sacrifice of a Mussulman. The religion of Zoroaster has

not the least affinity with that of the Hindoos, yet they are

often confounded by the Mahometans; and the sword of Timour was

sharpened by this mistake, (Hist. de Timour Bec, par Cherefeddin

Ali Yezdi, l. v.)]

200 (return) [ Vie de Mahomet, par Gagnier, (tom. iii. p. 114,

115.)]

201 (return) [ Hae tres sectae, Judaei, Christiani, et qui inter

Persas Magorum institutis addicti sunt, populi libri dicuntur,

(Reland, Dissertat. tom. iii. p. 15.) The caliph Al Mamun

confirms this honorable distinction in favor of the three sects,

with the vague and equivocal religion of the Sabaeans, under

which the ancient polytheists of Charrae were allowed to shelter

their idolatrous worship, (Hottinger, Hist. Orient p. 167, 168.)]

202 (return) [ This singular story is related by D’Herbelot,

(Bibliot. Orient. p 448, 449,) on the faith of Khondemir, and by

Mirchond himself, (Hist priorum Regum Persarum, &c., p. 9, 10,

not. p. 88, 89.)]

203 (return) [ Mirchond, (Mohammed Emir Khoondah Shah,) a native

of Herat, composed in the Persian language a general history of

the East, from the creation to the year of the Hegira 875, (A.D.

1471.) In the year 904 (A.D. 1498) the historian obtained the

command of a princely library, and his applauded work, in seven

or twelve parts, was abbreviated in three volumes by his son

Khondemir, A. H. 927, A.D. 1520. The two writers, most accurately

distinguished by Petit de la Croix, (Hist. de Genghizcan, p.537,

538, 544, 545,) are loosely confounded by D’Herbelot, (p. 358,

410, 994, 995: ) but his numerous extracts, under the improper

name of Khondemir, belong to the father rather than the son. The

historian of Genghizcan refers to a Ms. of Mirchond, which he

received from the hands of his friend D’Herbelot himself. A

curious fragment (the Taherian and Soffarian Dynasties) has been

lately published in Persic and Latin, (Viennae, 1782, in 4to.,

cum notis Bernard de Jenisch;) and the editor allows us to hope

for a continuation of Mirchond.]

204 (return) [ Quo testimonio boni se quidpiam praestitisse

opinabantur. Yet Mirchond must have condemned their zeal, since

he approved the legal toleration of the Magi, cui (the fire

temple) peracto singulis annis censu uti sacra Mohammedis lege

cautum, ab omnibus molestiis ac oneribus libero esse licuit.]

205 (return) [ The last Magian of name and power appears to be

Mardavige the Dilemite, who, in the beginning of the 10th

century, reigned in the northern provinces of Persia, near the

Caspian Sea, (D’Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 355.) But his

soldiers and successors, the Bowides either professed or embraced

the Mahometan faith; and under their dynasty (A.D. 933-1020) I

should say the fall of the religion of Zoroaster.]

206 (return) [ The present state of the Ghebers in Persia is

taken from Sir John Chardin, not indeed the most learned, but the

most judicious and inquisitive of our modern travellers, (Voyages

en Perse, tom. ii. p. 109, 179-187, in 4to.) His brethren, Pietro

della Valle, Olearius, Thevenot, Tavernier, &c., whom I have

fruitlessly searched, had neither eyes nor attention for this

interesting people.]

The Northern coast of Africa is the only land in which the light

of the gospel, after a long and perfect establishment, has been

totally extinguished. The arts, which had been taught by Carthage

and Rome, were involved in a cloud of ignorance; the doctrine of

Cyprian and Augustin was no longer studied. Five hundred

episcopal churches were overturned by the hostile fury of the

Donatists, the Vandals, and the Moors. The zeal and numbers of

the clergy declined; and the people, without discipline, or

knowledge, or hope, submissively sunk under the yoke of the

Arabian prophet. Within fifty years after the expulsion of the

Greeks, a lieutenant of Africa informed the caliph that the

tribute of the infidels was abolished by their conversion; 207

and, though he sought to disguise his fraud and rebellion, his

specious pretence was drawn from the rapid and extensive progress

of the Mahometan faith. In the next age, an extraordinary mission

of five bishops was detached from Alexandria to Cairoan. They

were ordained by the Jacobite patriarch to cherish and revive the

dying embers of Christianity: 208 but the interposition of a

foreign prelate, a stranger to the Latins, an enemy to the

Catholics, supposes the decay and dissolution of the African

hierarchy. It was no longer the time when the successor of St.

Cyprian, at the head of a numerous synod, could maintain an equal

contest with the ambition of the Roman pontiff. In the eleventh

century, the unfortunate priest who was seated on the ruins of

Carthage implored the arms and the protection of the Vatican; and

he bitterly complains that his naked body had been scourged by

the Saracens, and that his authority was disputed by the four

suffragans, the tottering pillars of his throne. Two epistles of

Gregory the Seventh 209 are destined to soothe the distress of

the Catholics and the pride of a Moorish prince. The pope assures

the sultan that they both worship the same God, and may hope to

meet in the bosom of Abraham; but the complaint that three

bishops could no longer be found to consecrate a brother,

announces the speedy and inevitable ruin of the episcopal order.

The Christians of Africa and Spain had long since submitted to

the practice of circumcision and the legal abstinence from wine

and pork; and the name of Mozarabes 210 (adoptive Arabs) was

applied to their civil or religious conformity. 211 About the

middle of the twelfth century, the worship of Christ and the

succession of pastors were abolished along the coast of Barbary,

and in the kingdoms of Cordova and Seville, of Valencia and

Grenada. 212 The throne of the Almohades, or Unitarians, was

founded on the blindest fanaticism, and their extraordinary rigor

might be provoked or justified by the recent victories and

intolerant zeal of the princes of Sicily and Castille, of Arragon

and Portugal. The faith of the Mozarabes was occasionally revived

by the papal missionaries; and, on the landing of Charles the

Fifth, some families of Latin Christians were encouraged to rear

their heads at Tunis and Algiers. But the seed of the gospel was

quickly eradicated, and the long province from Tripoli to the

Atlantic has lost all memory of the language and religion of

Rome. 213

207 (return) [ The letter of Abdoulrahman, governor or tyrant of

Africa, to the caliph Aboul Abbas, the first of the Abbassides,

is dated A. H. 132 Cardonne, (Hist. de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne,

tom. i. p. 168.)]

208 (return) [ Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 66. Renaudot, Hist.

Patriarch. Alex. p. 287, 288.]

209 (return) [ Among the Epistles of the Popes, see Leo IX.

epist. 3; Gregor. VII. l. i. epist. 22, 23, l. iii. epist. 19,

20, 21; and the criticisms of Pagi, (tom. iv. A.D. 1053, No. 14,

A.D. 1073, No. 13,) who investigates the name and family of the

Moorish prince, with whom the proudest of the Roman pontiffs so

politely corresponds.]

210 (return) [ Mozarabes, or Mostarabes, adscititii, as it is

interpreted in Latin, (Pocock, Specimen Hist. Arabum, p. 39, 40.

Bibliot. Arabico-Hispana, tom. ii. p. 18.) The Mozarabic liturgy,

the ancient ritual of the church of Toledo, has been attacked by

the popes, and exposed to the doubtful trials of the sword and of

fire, (Marian. Hist. Hispan. tom. i. l. ix. c. 18, p. 378.) It

was, or rather it is, in the Latin tongue; yet in the xith

century it was found necessary (A. Ae. C. 1687, A.D. 1039) to

transcribe an Arabic version of the canons of the councils of

Spain, (Bibliot. Arab. Hisp. tom. i. p. 547,) for the use of the

bishops and clergy in the Moorish kingdoms.]

211 (return) [ About the middle of the xth century, the clergy of

Cordova was reproached with this criminal compliance, by the

intrepid envoy of the Emperor Otho I., (Vit. Johan. Gorz, in

Secul. Benedict. V. No. 115, apud Fleury, Hist. Eccles. tom. xii.

p. 91.)]

212 (return) [ Pagi, Critica, tom. iv. A.D. 1149, No. 8, 9. He

justly observes, that when Seville, &c., were retaken by

Ferdinand of Castille, no Christians, except captives, were found

in the place; and that the Mozarabic churches of Africa and

Spain, described by James a Vitriaco, A.D. 1218, (Hist. Hierosol.

c. 80, p. 1095, in Gest. Dei per Francos,) are copied from some

older book. I shall add, that the date of the Hegira 677 (A.D.

1278) must apply to the copy, not the composition, of a treatise

of a jurisprudence, which states the civil rights of the

Christians of Cordova, (Bibliot. Arab. Hisp. tom. i. p. 471;) and

that the Jews were the only dissenters whom Abul Waled, king of

Grenada, (A.D. 1313,) could either discountenance or tolerate,

(tom. ii. p. 288.)]

213 (return) [ Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 288. Leo

Africanus would have flattered his Roman masters, could he have

discovered any latent relics of the Christianity of Africa.]

After the revolution of eleven centuries, the Jews and Christians

of the Turkish empire enjoy the liberty of conscience which was

granted by the Arabian caliphs. During the first age of the

conquest, they suspected the loyalty of the Catholics, whose name

of Melchites betrayed their secret attachment to the Greek

emperor, while the Nestorians and Jacobites, his inveterate

enemies, approved themselves the sincere and voluntary friends of

the Mahometan government. 214 Yet this partial jealousy was

healed by time and submission; the churches of Egypt were shared

with the Catholics; 215 and all the Oriental sects were included

in the common benefits of toleration. The rank, the immunities,

the domestic jurisdiction of the patriarchs, the bishops, and the

clergy, were protected by the civil magistrate: the learning of

individuals recommended them to the employments of secretaries

and physicians: they were enriched by the lucrative collection of

the revenue; and their merit was sometimes raised to the command

of cities and provinces. A caliph of the house of Abbas was heard

to declare that the Christians were most worthy of trust in the

administration of Persia. “The Moslems,” said he, “will abuse

their present fortune; the Magians regret their fallen greatness;

and the Jews are impatient for their approaching deliverance.”

216 But the slaves of despotism are exposed to the alternatives

of favor and disgrace. The captive churches of the East have been

afflicted in every age by the avarice or bigotry of their rulers;

and the ordinary and legal restraints must be offensive to the

pride, or the zeal, of the Christians. 217 About two hundred

years after Mahomet, they were separated from their

fellow-subjects by a turban or girdle of a less honorable color;

instead of horses or mules. they were condemned to ride on asses,

in the attitude of women. Their public and private building were

measured by a diminutive standard; in the streets or the baths it

is their duty to give way or bow down before the meanest of the

people; and their testimony is rejected, if it may tend to the

prejudice of a true believer. The pomp of processions, the sound

of bells or of psalmody, is interdicted in their worship; a

decent reverence for the national faith is imposed on their

sermons and conversations; and the sacrilegious attempt to enter

a mosch, or to seduce a Mussulman, will not be suffered to escape

with impunity. In a time, however, of tranquillity and justice,

the Christians have never been compelled to renounce the Gospel,

or to embrace the Koran; but the punishment of death is inflicted

upon the apostates who have professed and deserted the law of

Mahomet. The martyrs of Cordova provoked the sentence of the

cadhi, by the public confession of their inconstancy, or their

passionate invectives against the person and religion of the

prophet. 218

214 (return) [ Absit (said the Catholic to the vizier of Bagdad)

ut pari loco habeas Nestorianos, quorum praeter Arabas nullus

alius rex est, et Graecos quorum reges amovendo Arabibus bello

non desistunt, &c. See in the Collections of Assemannus (Bibliot.

Orient. tom. iv. p. 94-101) the state of the Nestorians under the

caliphs. That of the Jacobites is more concisely exposed in the

Preliminary Dissertation of the second volume of Assemannus.]

215 (return) [ Eutych. Annal. tom. ii. p. 384, 387, 388.

Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 205, 206, 257, 332. A taint

of the Monothelite heresy might render the first of these Greek

patriarchs less loyal to the emperors and less obnoxious to the

Arabs.]

216 (return) [ Motadhed, who reigned from A.D. 892 to 902. The

Magians still held their name and rank among the religions of the

empire, (Assemanni, Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. 97.)]

217 (return) [ Reland explains the general restraints of the

Mahometan policy and jurisprudence, (Dissertat. tom. iii. p.

16-20.) The oppressive edicts of the caliph Motawakkel, (A.D.

847-861,) which are still in force, are noticed by Eutychius,

(Annal. tom. ii. p. 448,) and D’Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orient. p.

640.) A persecution of the caliph Omar II. is related, and most

probably magnified, by the Greek Theophanes (Chron p. 334.)]

218 (return) [ The martyrs of Cordova (A.D. 850, &c.) are

commemorated and justified by St. Eulogius, who at length fell a

victim himself. A synod, convened by the caliph, ambiguously

censured their rashness. The moderate Fleury cannot reconcile

their conduct with the discipline of antiquity, toutefois

l’autorite de l’eglise, &c. (Fleury, Hist. Eccles. tom. x. p.

415-522, particularly p. 451, 508, 509.) Their authentic acts

throw a strong, though transient, light on the Spanish church in

the ixth century.]

At the end of the first century of the Hegira, the caliphs were

the most potent and absolute monarchs of the globe. Their

prerogative was not circumscribed, either in right or in fact, by

the power of the nobles, the freedom of the commons, the

privileges of the church, the votes of a senate, or the memory of

a free constitution. The authority of the companions of Mahomet

expired with their lives; and the chiefs or emirs of the Arabian

tribes left behind, in the desert, the spirit of equality and

independence. The regal and sacerdotal characters were united in

the successors of Mahomet; and if the Koran was the rule of their

actions, they were the supreme judges and interpreters of that

divine book. They reigned by the right of conquest over the

nations of the East, to whom the name of liberty was unknown, and

who were accustomed to applaud in their tyrants the acts of

violence and severity that were exercised at their own expense.

Under the last of the Ommiades, the Arabian empire extended two

hundred days’ journey from east to west, from the confines of

Tartary and India to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. And if we

retrench the sleeve of the robe, as it is styled by their

writers, the long and narrow province of Africa, the solid and

compact dominion from Fargana to Aden, from Tarsus to Surat, will

spread on every side to the measure of four or five months of the

march of a caravan. 219 We should vainly seek the indissoluble

union and easy obedience that pervaded the government of Augustus

and the Antonines; but the progress of the Mahometan religion

diffused over this ample space a general resemblance of manners

and opinions. The language and laws of the Koran were studied

with equal devotion at Samarcand and Seville: the Moor and the

Indian embraced as countrymen and brothers in the pilgrimage of

Mecca; and the Arabian language was adopted as the popular idiom

in all the provinces to the westward of the Tigris. 220

219 (return) [ See the article Eslamiah, (as we say Christendom,)

in the Bibliotheque Orientale, (p. 325.) This chart of the

Mahometan world is suited by the author, Ebn Alwardi, to the year

of the Hegira 385 (A.D. 995.) Since that time, the losses in

Spain have been overbalanced by the conquests in India, Tartary,

and the European Turkey.]

220 (return) [ The Arabic of the Koran is taught as a dead

language in the college of Mecca. By the Danish traveller, this

ancient idiom is compared to the Latin; the vulgar tongue of

Hejaz and Yemen to the Italian; and the Arabian dialects of

Syria, Egypt, Africa, &c., to the Provencal, Spanish, and

Portuguese, (Niebuhr, Description de l’Arabie, p. 74, &c.)]

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

The Two Sieges Of Constantinople By The Arabs.—Their Invasion Of

France, And Defeat By Charles Martel.—Civil War Of The Ommiades

And Abbassides.—Learning Of The Arabs.— Luxury Of The

Caliphs.—Naval Enterprises On Crete, Sicily, And Rome.—Decay And

Division Of The Empire Of The Caliphs. —Defeats And Victories Of

The Greek Emperors.

When the Arabs first issued from the desert, they must have been

surprised at the ease and rapidity of their own success. But when

they advanced in the career of victory to the banks of the Indus

and the summit of the Pyrenees; when they had repeatedly tried

the edge of their cimeters and the energy of their faith, they

might be equally astonished that any nation could resist their

invincible arms; that any boundary should confine the dominion of

the successor of the prophet. The confidence of soldiers and

fanatics may indeed be excused, since the calm historian of the

present hour, who strives to follow the rapid course of the

Saracens, must study to explain by what means the church and

state were saved from this impending, and, as it should seem,

from this inevitable, danger. The deserts of Scythia and Sarmatia

might be guarded by their extent, their climate, their poverty,

and the courage of the northern shepherds; China was remote and

inaccessible; but the greatest part of the temperate zone was

subject to the Mahometan conquerors, the Greeks were exhausted by

the calamities of war and the loss of their fairest provinces,

and the Barbarians of Europe might justly tremble at the

precipitate fall of the Gothic monarchy. In this inquiry I shall

unfold the events that rescued our ancestors of Britain, and our

neighbors of Gaul, from the civil and religious yoke of the

Koran; that protected the majesty of Rome, and delayed the

servitude of Constantinople; that invigorated the defence of the

Christians, and scattered among their enemies the seeds of

division and decay.

Forty-six years after the flight of Mahomet from Mecca, his

disciples appeared in arms under the walls of Constantinople. 1

They were animated by a genuine or fictitious saying of the

prophet, that, to the first army which besieged the city of the

Caesars, their sins were forgiven: the long series of Roman

triumphs would be meritoriously transferred to the conquerors of

New Rome; and the wealth of nations was deposited in this

well-chosen seat of royalty and commerce. No sooner had the

caliph Moawiyah suppressed his rivals and established his throne,

than he aspired to expiate the guilt of civil blood, by the

success and glory of this holy expedition; 2 his preparations by

sea and land were adequate to the importance of the object; his

standard was intrusted to Sophian, a veteran warrior, but the

troops were encouraged by the example and presence of Yezid, the

son and presumptive heir of the commander of the faithful. The

Greeks had little to hope, nor had their enemies any reason of

fear, from the courage and vigilance of the reigning emperor, who

disgraced the name of Constantine, and imitated only the

inglorious years of his grandfather Heraclius. Without delay or

opposition, the naval forces of the Saracens passed through the

unguarded channel of the Hellespont, which even now, under the

feeble and disorderly government of the Turks, is maintained as

the natural bulwark of the capital. 3 The Arabian fleet cast

anchor, and the troops were disembarked near the palace of

Hebdomon, seven miles from the city. During many days, from the

dawn of light to the evening, the line of assault was extended

from the golden gate to the eastern promontory and the foremost

warriors were impelled by the weight and effort of the succeeding

columns. But the besiegers had formed an insufficient estimate of

the strength and resources of Constantinople. The solid and lofty

walls were guarded by numbers and discipline: the spirit of the

Romans was rekindled by the last danger of their religion and

empire: the fugitives from the conquered provinces more

successfully renewed the defence of Damascus and Alexandria; and

the Saracens were dismayed by the strange and prodigious effects

of artificial fire. This firm and effectual resistance diverted

their arms to the more easy attempt of plundering the European

and Asiatic coasts of the Propontis; and, after keeping the sea

from the month of April to that of September, on the approach of

winter they retreated fourscore miles from the capital, to the

Isle of Cyzicus, in which they had established their magazine of

spoil and provisions. So patient was their perseverance, or so

languid were their operations, that they repeated in the six

following summers the same attack and retreat, with a gradual

abatement of hope and vigor, till the mischances of shipwreck and

disease, of the sword and of fire, compelled them to relinquish

the fruitless enterprise. They might bewail the loss, or

commemorate the martyrdom, of thirty thousand Moslems, who fell

in the siege of Constantinople; and the solemn funeral of Abu

Ayub, or Job, excited the curiosity of the Christians themselves.

That venerable Arab, one of the last of the companions of

Mahomet, was numbered among the ansars, or auxiliaries, of

Medina, who sheltered the head of the flying prophet. In his

youth he fought, at Beder and Ohud, under the holy standard: in

his mature age he was the friend and follower of Ali; and the

last remnant of his strength and life was consumed in a distant

and dangerous war against the enemies of the Koran. His memory

was revered; but the place of his burial was neglected and

unknown, during a period of seven hundred and eighty years, till

the conquest of Constantinople by Mahomet the Second. A

seasonable vision (for such are the manufacture of every

religion) revealed the holy spot at the foot of the walls and the

bottom of the harbor; and the mosch of Ayub has been deservedly

chosen for the simple and martial inauguration of the Turkish

sultans. 4

1 (return) [ Theophanes places the seven years of the siege of

Constantinople in the year of our Christian aera, 673 (of the

Alexandrian 665, Sept. 1,) and the peace of the Saracens, four

years afterwards; a glaring inconsistency! which Petavius, Goar,

and Pagi, (Critica, tom. iv. p. 63, 64,) have struggled to

remove. Of the Arabians, the Hegira 52 (A.D. 672, January 8) is

assigned by Elmacin, the year 48 (A.D. 688, Feb. 20) by Abulfeda,

whose testimony I esteem the most convenient and credible.]

2 (return) [ For this first siege of Constantinople, see

Nicephorus, (Breviar. p. 21, 22;) Theophanes, (Chronograph. p.

294;) Cedrenus, (Compend. p. 437;) Zonaras, (Hist. tom. ii. l.

xiv. p. 89;) Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p. 56, 57;) Abulfeda,

(Annal. Moslem. p. 107, 108, vers. Reiske;) D’Herbelot, (Bibliot.

Orient. Constantinah;) Ockley’s History of the Saracens, vol. ii.

p. 127, 128.]

3 (return) [ The state and defence of the Dardanelles is exposed

in the Memoirs of the Baron de Tott, (tom. iii. p. 39-97,) who

was sent to fortify them against the Russians. From a principal

actor, I should have expected more accurate details; but he seems

to write for the amusement, rather than the instruction, of his

reader. Perhaps, on the approach of the enemy, the minister of

Constantine was occupied, like that of Mustapha, in finding two

Canary birds who should sing precisely the same note.]

4 (return) [ Demetrius Cantemir’s Hist. of the Othman Empire, p.

105, 106. Rycaut’s State of the Ottoman Empire, p. 10, 11.

Voyages of Thevenot, part i. p. 189. The Christians, who suppose

that the martyr Abu Ayub is vulgarly confounded with the

patriarch Job, betray their own ignorance rather than that of the

Turks.]

The event of the siege revived, both in the East and West, the

reputation of the Roman arms, and cast a momentary shade over the

glories of the Saracens. The Greek ambassador was favorably

received at Damascus, a general council of the emirs or Koreish:

a peace, or truce, of thirty years was ratified between the two

empires; and the stipulation of an annual tribute, fifty horses

of a noble breed, fifty slaves, and three thousand pieces of

gold, degraded the majesty of the commander of the faithful. 5

The aged caliph was desirous of possessing his dominions, and

ending his days in tranquillity and repose: while the Moors and

Indians trembled at his name, his palace and city of Damascus was

insulted by the Mardaites, or Maronites, of Mount Libanus, the

firmest barrier of the empire, till they were disarmed and

transplanted by the suspicious policy of the Greeks. 6 After the

revolt of Arabia and Persia, the house of Ommiyah was reduced to

the kingdoms of Syria and Egypt: their distress and fear enforced

their compliance with the pressing demands of the Christians; and

the tribute was increased to a slave, a horse, and a thousand

pieces of gold, for each of the three hundred and sixty-five days

of the solar year. But as soon as the empire was again united by

the arms and policy of Abdalmalek, he disclaimed a badge of

servitude not less injurious to his conscience than to his pride;

he discontinued the payment of the tribute; and the resentment of

the Greeks was disabled from action by the mad tyranny of the

second Justinian, the just rebellion of his subjects, and the

frequent change of his antagonists and successors. 7 Till the

reign of Abdalmalek, the Saracens had been content with the free

possession of the Persian and Roman treasures, in the coins of

Chosroes and Caesar. By the command of that caliph, a national

mint was established, both for silver and gold, and the

inscription of the Dinar, though it might be censured by some

timorous casuists, proclaimed the unity of the God of Mahomet. 8

Under the reign of the caliph Walid, the Greek language and

characters were excluded from the accounts of the public revenue.

9 If this change was productive of the invention or familiar use

of our present numerals, the Arabic or Indian ciphers, as they

are commonly styled, a regulation of office has promoted the most

important discoveries of arithmetic, algebra, and the

mathematical sciences. 10

5 (return) [ Theophanes, though a Greek, deserves credit for

these tributes, (Chronograph. p. 295, 296, 300, 301,) which are

confirmed, with some variation, by the Arabic History of

Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 128, vers. Pocock.)]

6 (return) [ The censure of Theophanes is just and pointed,

(Chronograph. p. 302, 303.) The series of these events may be

traced in the Annals of Theophanes, and in the Abridgment of the

patriarch Nicephorus, p. 22, 24.]

7 (return) [ These domestic revolutions are related in a clear

and natural style, in the second volume of Ockley’s History of

the Saracens, p. 253-370. Besides our printed authors, he draws

his materials from the Arabic Mss. of Oxford, which he would have

more deeply searched had he been confined to the Bodleian library

instead of the city jail a fate how unworthy of the man and of

his country!]

8 (return) [ Elmacin, who dates the first coinage A. H. 76, A.D.

695, five or six years later than the Greek historians, has

compared the weight of the best or common gold dinar to the

drachm or dirhem of Egypt, (p. 77,) which may be equal to two

pennies (48 grains) of our Troy weight, (Hooper’s Inquiry into

Ancient Measures, p. 24-36,) and equivalent to eight shillings of

our sterling money. From the same Elmacin and the Arabian

physicians, some dinars as high as two dirhems, as low as half a

dirhem, may be deduced. The piece of silver was the dirhem, both

in value and weight; but an old, though fair coin, struck at

Waset, A. H. 88, and preserved in the Bodleian library, wants

four grains of the Cairo standard, (see the Modern Universal

History, tom. i. p. 548 of the French translation.) * Note: Up to

this time the Arabs had used the Roman or the Persian coins or

had minted others which resembled them. Nevertheless, it has been

admitted of late years, that the Arabians, before this epoch, had

caused coin to be minted, on which, preserving the Roman or the

Persian dies, they added Arabian names or inscriptions. Some of

these exist in different collections. We learn from Makrizi, an

Arabian author of great learning and judgment, that in the year

18 of the Hegira, under the caliphate of Omar, the Arabs had

coined money of this description. The same author informs us that

the caliph Abdalmalek caused coins to be struck representing

himself with a sword by his side. These types, so contrary to the

notions of the Arabs, were disapproved by the most influential

persons of the time, and the caliph substituted for them, after

the year 76 of the Hegira, the Mahometan coins with which we are

acquainted. Consult, on the question of Arabic numismatics, the

works of Adler, of Fraehn, of Castiglione, and of Marsden, who

have treated at length this interesting point of historic

antiquities. See, also, in the Journal Asiatique, tom. ii. p.

257, et seq., a paper of M. Silvestre de Sacy, entitled Des

Monnaies des Khalifes avant l’An 75 de l’Hegire. See, also the

translation of a German paper on the Arabic medals of the

Chosroes, by M. Fraehn. in the same Journal Asiatique tom. iv. p.

331-347. St. Martin, vol. xii. p. 19, —M.]

9 (return) [ Theophan. Chronograph. p. 314. This defect, if it

really existed, must have stimulated the ingenuity of the Arabs

to invent or borrow.]

10 (return) [ According to a new, though probable, notion,

maintained by M de Villoison, (Anecdota Graeca, tom. ii. p.

152-157,) our ciphers are not of Indian or Arabic invention. They

were used by the Greek and Latin arithmeticians long before the

age of Boethius. After the extinction of science in the West,

they were adopted by the Arabic versions from the original Mss.,

and restored to the Latins about the xith century. * Note:

Compare, on the Introduction of the Arabic numerals, Hallam’s

Introduction to the Literature of Europe, p. 150, note, and the

authors quoted therein.—M.]

Whilst the caliph Walid sat idle on the throne of Damascus,

whilst his lieutenants achieved the conquest of Transoxiana and

Spain, a third army of Saracens overspread the provinces of Asia

Minor, and approached the borders of the Byzantine capital. But

the attempt and disgrace of the second siege was reserved for his

brother Soliman, whose ambition appears to have been quickened by

a more active and martial spirit. In the revolutions of the Greek

empire, after the tyrant Justinian had been punished and avenged,

an humble secretary, Anastasius or Artemius, was promoted by

chance or merit to the vacant purple. He was alarmed by the sound

of war; and his ambassador returned from Damascus with the

tremendous news, that the Saracens were preparing an armament by

sea and land, such as would transcend the experience of the past,

or the belief of the present age. The precautions of Anastasius

were not unworthy of his station, or of the impending danger. He

issued a peremptory mandate, that all persons who were not

provided with the means of subsistence for a three years’ siege

should evacuate the city: the public granaries and arsenals were

abundantly replenished; the walls were restored and strengthened;

and the engines for casting stones, or darts, or fire, were

stationed along the ramparts, or in the brigantines of war, of

which an additional number was hastily constructed. To prevent is

safer, as well as more honorable, than to repel, an attack; and a

design was meditated, above the usual spirit of the Greeks, of

burning the naval stores of the enemy, the cypress timber that

had been hewn in Mount Libanus, and was piled along the sea-shore

of Phoenicia, for the service of the Egyptian fleet. This

generous enterprise was defeated by the cowardice or treachery of

the troops, who, in the new language of the empire, were styled

of the Obsequian Theme. 11 They murdered their chief, deserted

their standard in the Isle of Rhodes, dispersed themselves over

the adjacent continent, and deserved pardon or reward by

investing with the purple a simple officer of the revenue. The

name of Theodosius might recommend him to the senate and people;

but, after some months, he sunk into a cloister, and resigned, to

the firmer hand of Leo the Isaurian, the urgent defence of the

capital and empire. The most formidable of the Saracens,

Moslemah, the brother of the caliph, was advancing at the head of

one hundred and twenty thousand Arabs and Persians, the greater

part mounted on horses or camels; and the successful sieges of

Tyana, Amorium, and Pergamus, were of sufficient duration to

exercise their skill and to elevate their hopes. At the

well-known passage of Abydus, on the Hellespont, the Mahometan

arms were transported, for the first time, 1111 from Asia to

Europe. From thence, wheeling round the Thracian cities of the

Propontis, Moslemah invested Constantinople on the land side,

surrounded his camp with a ditch and rampart, prepared and

planted his engines of assault, and declared, by words and

actions, a patient resolution of expecting the return of

seed-time and harvest, should the obstinacy of the besieged prove

equal to his own. 1112 The Greeks would gladly have ransomed

their religion and empire, by a fine or assessment of a piece of

gold on the head of each inhabitant of the city; but the liberal

offer was rejected with disdain, and the presumption of Moslemah

was exalted by the speedy approach and invincible force of the

natives of Egypt and Syria. They are said to have amounted to

eighteen hundred ships: the number betrays their inconsiderable

size; and of the twenty stout and capacious vessels, whose

magnitude impeded their progress, each was manned with no more

than one hundred heavy-armed soldiers. This huge armada proceeded

on a smooth sea, and with a gentle gale, towards the mouth of the

Bosphorus; the surface of the strait was overshadowed, in the

language of the Greeks, with a moving forest, and the same fatal

night had been fixed by the Saracen chief for a general assault

by sea and land. To allure the confidence of the enemy, the

emperor had thrown aside the chain that usually guarded the

entrance of the harbor; but while they hesitated whether they

should seize the opportunity, or apprehend the snare, the

ministers of destruction were at hand. The fire-ships of the

Greeks were launched against them; the Arabs, their arms, and

vessels, were involved in the same flames; the disorderly

fugitives were dashed against each other or overwhelmed in the

waves; and I no longer find a vestige of the fleet, that had

threatened to extirpate the Roman name. A still more fatal and

irreparable loss was that of the caliph Soliman, who died of an

indigestion, 12 in his camp near Kinnisrin or Chalcis in Syria,

as he was preparing to lead against Constantinople the remaining

forces of the East. The brother of Moslemah was succeeded by a

kinsman and an enemy; and the throne of an active and able prince

was degraded by the useless and pernicious virtues of a bigot.

1211 While he started and satisfied the scruples of a blind

conscience, the siege was continued through the winter by the

neglect, rather than by the resolution of the caliph Omar. 13 The

winter proved uncommonly rigorous: above a hundred days the

ground was covered with deep snow, and the natives of the sultry

climes of Egypt and Arabia lay torpid and almost lifeless in

their frozen camp. They revived on the return of spring; a second

effort had been made in their favor; and their distress was

relieved by the arrival of two numerous fleets, laden with corn,

and arms, and soldiers; the first from Alexandria, of four

hundred transports and galleys; the second of three hundred and

sixty vessels from the ports of Africa. But the Greek fires were

again kindled; and if the destruction was less complete, it was

owing to the experience which had taught the Moslems to remain at

a safe distance, or to the perfidy of the Egyptian mariners, who

deserted with their ships to the emperor of the Christians. The

trade and navigation of the capital were restored; and the

produce of the fisheries supplied the wants, and even the luxury,

of the inhabitants. But the calamities of famine and disease were

soon felt by the troops of Moslemah, and as the former was

miserably assuaged, so the latter was dreadfully propagated, by

the pernicious nutriment which hunger compelled them to extract

from the most unclean or unnatural food. The spirit of conquest,

and even of enthusiasm, was extinct: the Saracens could no longer

struggle, beyond their lines, either single or in small parties,

without exposing themselves to the merciless retaliation of the

Thracian peasants.

An army of Bulgarians was attracted from the Danube by the gifts

and promises of Leo; and these savage auxiliaries made some

atonement for the evils which they had inflicted on the empire,

by the defeat and slaughter of twenty-two thousand Asiatics. A

report was dexterously scattered, that the Franks, the unknown

nations of the Latin world, were arming by sea and land in the

defence of the Christian cause, and their formidable aid was

expected with far different sensations in the camp and city. At

length, after a siege of thirteen months, 14 the hopeless

Moslemah received from the caliph the welcome permission of

retreat. 1411 The march of the Arabian cavalry over the

Hellespont and through the provinces of Asia, was executed

without delay or molestation; but an army of their brethren had

been cut in pieces on the side of Bithynia, and the remains of

the fleet were so repeatedly damaged by tempest and fire, that

only five galleys entered the port of Alexandria to relate the

tale of their various and almost incredible disasters. 15

11 (return) [ In the division of the Themes, or provinces

described by Constantine Porphyrogenitus, (de Thematibus, l. i.

p. 9, 10,) the Obsequium, a Latin appellation of the army and

palace, was the fourth in the public order. Nice was the

metropolis, and its jurisdiction extended from the Hellespont

over the adjacent parts of Bithynia and Phrygia, (see the two

maps prefixed by Delisle to the Imperium Orientale of Banduri.)]

1111 (return) [ Compare page 274. It is singular that Gibbon

should thus contradict himself in a few pages. By his own account

this was the second time.—M.]

1112 (return) [ The account of this siege in the Tarikh Tebry is

a very unfavorable specimen of Asiatic history, full of absurd

fables, and written with total ignorance of the circumstances of

time and place. Price, vol. i. p. 498—M.]

12 (return) [ The caliph had emptied two baskets of eggs and of

figs, which he swallowed alternately, and the repast was

concluded with marrow and sugar. In one of his pilgrimages to

Mecca, Soliman ate, at a single meal, seventy pomegranates, a

kid, six fowls, and a huge quantity of the grapes of Tayef. If

the bill of fare be correct, we must admire the appetite, rather

than the luxury, of the sovereign of Asia, (Abulfeda, Annal.

Moslem. p. 126.) * Note: The Tarikh Tebry ascribes the death of

Soliman to a pleurisy. The same gross gluttony in which Soliman

indulged, though not fatal to the life, interfered with the

military duties, of his brother Moslemah. Price, vol. i. p.

511.—M.]

1211 (return) [ Major Price’s estimate of Omar’s character is

much more favorable. Among a race of sanguinary tyrants, Omar was

just and humane. His virtues as well as his bigotry were

active.—M.]

13 (return) [ See the article of Omar Ben Abdalaziz, in the

Bibliotheque Orientale, (p. 689, 690,) praeferens, says Elmacin,

(p. 91,) religionem suam rebus suis mundanis. He was so desirous

of being with God, that he would not have anointed his ear (his

own saying) to obtain a perfect cure of his last malady. The

caliph had only one shirt, and in an age of luxury, his annual

expense was no more than two drachms, (Abulpharagius, p. 131.)

Haud diu gavisus eo principe fuit urbis Muslemus, (Abulfeda, p.

127.)]

14 (return) [ Both Nicephorus and Theophanes agree that the siege

of Constantinople was raised the 15th of August, (A.D. 718;) but

as the former, our best witness, affirms that it continued

thirteen months, the latter must be mistaken in supposing that it

began on the same day of the preceding year. I do not find that

Pagi has remarked this inconsistency.]

1411 (return) [ The Tarikh Tebry embellishes the retreat of

Moslemah with some extraordinary and incredible circumstances.

Price, p. 514.—M.]

15 (return) [ In the second siege of Constantinople, I have

followed Nicephorus, (Brev. p. 33-36,) Theophanes, (Chronograph,

p. 324-334,) Cedrenus, (Compend. p. 449-452,) Zonaras, (tom. ii.

p. 98-102,) Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen, p. 88,) Abulfeda, (Annal.

Moslem. p. 126,) and Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 130,) the most

satisfactory of the Arabs.]

In the two sieges, the deliverance of Constantinople may be

chiefly ascribed to the novelty, the terrors, and the real

efficacy of the Greek fire. 16 The important secret of

compounding and directing this artificial flame was imparted by

Callinicus, a native of Heliopolis in Syria, who deserted from

the service of the caliph to that of the emperor. 17 The skill of

a chemist and engineer was equivalent to the succor of fleets and

armies; and this discovery or improvement of the military art was

fortunately reserved for the distressful period, when the

degenerate Romans of the East were incapable of contending with

the warlike enthusiasm and youthful vigor of the Saracens. The

historian who presumes to analyze this extraordinary composition

should suspect his own ignorance and that of his Byzantine

guides, so prone to the marvellous, so careless, and, in this

instance, so jealous of the truth. From their obscure, and

perhaps fallacious, hints it should seem that the principal

ingredient of the Greek fire was the naphtha, 18 or liquid

bitumen, a light, tenacious, and inflammable oil, 19 which

springs from the earth, and catches fire as soon as it comes in

contact with the air. The naphtha was mingled, I know not by what

methods or in what proportions, with sulphur and with the pitch

that is extracted from evergreen firs. 20 From this mixture,

which produced a thick smoke and a loud explosion, proceeded a

fierce and obstinate flame, which not only rose in perpendicular

ascent, but likewise burnt with equal vehemence in descent or

lateral progress; instead of being extinguished, it was nourished

and quickened by the element of water; and sand, urine, or

vinegar, were the only remedies that could damp the fury of this

powerful agent, which was justly denominated by the Greeks the

liquid, or the maritime, fire. For the annoyance of the enemy, it

was employed with equal effect, by sea and land, in battles or in

sieges. It was either poured from the rampart in large boilers,

or launched in red-hot balls of stone and iron, or darted in

arrows and javelins, twisted round with flax and tow, which had

deeply imbibed the inflammable oil; sometimes it was deposited in

fire-ships, the victims and instruments of a more ample revenge,

and was most commonly blown through long tubes of copper which

were planted on the prow of a galley, and fancifully shaped into

the mouths of savage monsters, that seemed to vomit a stream of

liquid and consuming fire. This important art was preserved at

Constantinople, as the palladium of the state: the galleys and

artillery might occasionally be lent to the allies of Rome; but

the composition of the Greek fire was concealed with the most

jealous scruple, and the terror of the enemies was increased and

prolonged by their ignorance and surprise. In the treaties of the

administration of the empire, the royal author 21 suggests the

answers and excuses that might best elude the indiscreet

curiosity and importunate demands of the Barbarians. They should

be told that the mystery of the Greek fire had been revealed by

an angel to the first and greatest of the Constantines, with a

sacred injunction, that this gift of Heaven, this peculiar

blessing of the Romans, should never be communicated to any

foreign nation; that the prince and the subject were alike bound

to religious silence under the temporal and spiritual penalties

of treason and sacrilege; and that the impious attempt would

provoke the sudden and supernatural vengeance of the God of the

Christians. By these precautions, the secret was confined, above

four hundred years, to the Romans of the East; and at the end of

the eleventh century, the Pisans, to whom every sea and every art

were familiar, suffered the effects, without understanding the

composition, of the Greek fire. It was at length either

discovered or stolen by the Mahometans; and, in the holy wars of

Syria and Egypt, they retorted an invention, contrived against

themselves, on the heads of the Christians. A knight, who

despised the swords and lances of the Saracens, relates, with

heartfelt sincerity, his own fears, and those of his companions,

at the sight and sound of the mischievous engine that discharged

a torrent of the Greek fire, the feu Gregeois, as it is styled by

the more early of the French writers. It came flying through the

air, says Joinville, 22 like a winged long-tailed dragon, about

the thickness of a hogshead, with the report of thunder and the

velocity of lightning; and the darkness of the night was

dispelled by this deadly illumination. The use of the Greek, or,

as it might now be called, of the Saracen fire, was continued to

the middle of the fourteenth century, 23 when the scientific or

casual compound of nitre, sulphur, and charcoal, effected a new

revolution in the art of war and the history of mankind. 24

16 (return) [ Our sure and indefatigable guide in the middle ages

and Byzantine history, Charles du Fresne du Cange, has treated in

several places of the Greek fire, and his collections leave few

gleanings behind. See particularly Glossar. Med. et Infim.

Graecitat. p. 1275, sub voce. Glossar. Med. et Infim. Latinitat.

Ignis Groecus. Observations sur Villehardouin, p. 305, 306.

Observations sur Joinville, p. 71, 72.]

17 (return) [ Theophanes styles him, (p. 295.) Cedrenus (p. 437)

brings this artist from (the ruins of) Heliopolis in Egypt; and

chemistry was indeed the peculiar science of the Egyptians.]

18 (return) [ The naphtha, the oleum incendiarium of the history

of Jerusalem, (Gest. Dei per Francos, p. 1167,) the Oriental

fountain of James de Vitry, (l. iii. c. 84,) is introduced on

slight evidence and strong probability. Cinanmus (l. vi. p. 165)

calls the Greek fire: and the naphtha is known to abound between

the Tigris and the Caspian Sea. According to Pliny, (Hist. Natur.

ii. 109,) it was subservient to the revenge of Medea, and in

either etymology, (Procop. de Bell. Gothic. l. iv. c. 11,) may

fairly signify this liquid bitumen. * Note: It is remarkable that

the Syrian historian Michel gives the name of naphtha to the

newly-invented Greek fire, which seems to indicate that this

substance formed the base of the destructive compound. St.

Martin, tom. xi. p. 420.—M.]

19 (return) [ On the different sorts of oils and bitumens, see

Dr. Watson’s (the present bishop of Llandaff’s) Chemical Essays,

vol. iii. essay i., a classic book, the best adapted to infuse

the taste and knowledge of chemistry. The less perfect ideas of

the ancients may be found in Strabo (Geograph. l. xvi. p. 1078)

and Pliny, (Hist. Natur. ii. 108, 109.) Huic (Naphthae) magna

cognatio est ignium, transiliuntque protinus in eam undecunque

visam. Of our travellers I am best pleased with Otter, (tom. i.

p. 153, 158.)]

20 (return) [ Anna Comnena has partly drawn aside the curtain.

(Alexiad. l. xiii. p. 383.) Elsewhere (l. xi. p. 336) she

mentions the property of burning. Leo, in the xixth chapter of

his Tactics, (Opera Meursii, tom. vi. p. 843, edit. Lami,

Florent. 1745,) speaks of the new invention. These are genuine

and Imperial testimonies.]

21 (return) [ Constantin. Porphyrogenit. de Administrat. Imperii,

c. xiii. p. 64, 65.]

22 (return) [ Histoire de St. Louis, p. 39. Paris, 1668, p. 44.

Paris, de l’Imprimerie Royale, 1761. The former of these editions

is precious for the observations of Ducange; the latter for the

pure and original text of Joinville. We must have recourse to

that text to discover, that the feu Gregeois was shot with a pile

or javelin, from an engine that acted like a sling.]

23 (return) [ The vanity, or envy, of shaking the established

property of Fame, has tempted some moderns to carry gunpowder

above the xivth, (see Sir William Temple, Dutens, &c.,) and the

Greek fire above the viith century, (see the Saluste du President

des Brosses, tom. ii. p. 381.) But their evidence, which precedes

the vulgar aera of the invention, is seldom clear or

satisfactory, and subsequent writers may be suspected of fraud or

credulity. In the earliest sieges, some combustibles of oil and

sulphur have been used, and the Greek fire has some affinities

with gunpowder both in its nature and effects: for the antiquity

of the first, a passage of Procopius, (de Bell. Goth. l. iv. c.

11,) for that of the second, some facts in the Arabic history of

Spain, (A.D. 1249, 1312, 1332. Bibliot. Arab. Hisp. tom. ii. p.

6, 7, 8,) are the most difficult to elude.]

24 (return) [ That extraordinary man, Friar Bacon, reveals two of

the ingredients, saltpetre and sulphur, and conceals the third in

a sentence of mysterious gibberish, as if he dreaded the

consequences of his own discovery, (Biog. Brit. vol. i. p. 430,

new edition.)]

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

Constantinople and the Greek fire might exclude the Arabs from

the eastern entrance of Europe; but in the West, on the side of

the Pyrenees, the provinces of Gaul were threatened and invaded

by the conquerors of Spain. 25 The decline of the French monarchy

invited the attack of these insatiate fanatics. The descendants

of Clovis had lost the inheritance of his martial and ferocious

spirit; and their misfortune or demerit has affixed the epithet

of lazy to the last kings of the Merovingian race. 26 They

ascended the throne without power, and sunk into the grave

without a name. A country palace, in the neighborhood of

Compiegne 27 was allotted for their residence or prison: but each

year, in the month of March or May, they were conducted in a

wagon drawn by oxen to the assembly of the Franks, to give

audience to foreign ambassadors, and to ratify the acts of the

mayor of the palace. That domestic officer was become the

minister of the nation and the master of the prince. A public

employment was converted into the patrimony of a private family:

the elder Pepin left a king of mature years under the

guardianship of his own widow and her child; and these feeble

regents were forcibly dispossessed by the most active of his

bastards. A government, half savage and half corrupt, was almost

dissolved; and the tributary dukes, and provincial counts, and

the territorial lords, were tempted to despise the weakness of

the monarch, and to imitate the ambition of the mayor. Among

these independent chiefs, one of the boldest and most successful

was Eudes, duke of Aquitain, who in the southern provinces of

Gaul usurped the authority, and even the title of king. The

Goths, the Gascons, and the Franks, assembled under the standard

of this Christian hero: he repelled the first invasion of the

Saracens; and Zama, lieutenant of the caliph, lost his army and

his life under the walls of Thoulouse. The ambition of his

successors was stimulated by revenge; they repassed the Pyrenees

with the means and the resolution of conquest. The advantageous

situation which had recommended Narbonne 28 as the first Roman

colony, was again chosen by the Moslems: they claimed the

province of Septimania or Languedoc as a just dependence of the

Spanish monarchy: the vineyards of Gascony and the city of

Bourdeaux were possessed by the sovereign of Damascus and

Samarcand; and the south of France, from the mouth of the Garonne

to that of the Rhone, assumed the manners and religion of Arabia.

25 (return) [ For the invasion of France and the defeat of the

Arabs by Charles Martel, see the Historia Arabum (c. 11, 12, 13,

14) of Roderic Ximenes, archbishop of Toledo, who had before him

the Christian chronicle of Isidore Pacensis, and the Mahometan

history of Novairi. The Moslems are silent or concise in the

account of their losses; but M Cardonne (tom. i. p. 129, 130,

131) has given a pure and simple account of all that he could

collect from Ibn Halikan, Hidjazi, and an anonymous writer. The

texts of the chronicles of France, and lives of saints, are

inserted in the Collection of Bouquet, (tom. iii.,) and the

Annals of Pagi, who (tom. iii. under the proper years) has

restored the chronology, which is anticipated six years in the

Annals of Baronius. The Dictionary of Bayle (Abderame and Munuza)

has more merit for lively reflection than original research.]

26 (return) [ Eginhart, de Vita Caroli Magni, c. ii. p. 13-78,

edit. Schmink, Utrecht, 1711. Some modern critics accuse the

minister of Charlemagne of exaggerating the weakness of the

Merovingians; but the general outline is just, and the French

reader will forever repeat the beautiful lines of Boileau’s

Lutrin.]

27 (return) [ Mamaccae, on the Oyse, between Compiegne and Noyon,

which Eginhart calls perparvi reditus villam, (see the notes, and

the map of ancient France for Dom. Bouquet’s Collection.)

Compendium, or Compiegne, was a palace of more dignity, (Hadrian.

Valesii Notitia Galliarum, p. 152,) and that laughing

philosopher, the Abbe Galliani, (Dialogues sur le Commerce des

Bleds,) may truly affirm, that it was the residence of the rois

tres Chretiens en tres chevelus.]

28 (return) [ Even before that colony, A. U. C. 630, (Velleius

Patercul. i. 15,) In the time of Polybius, (Hist. l. iii. p. 265,

edit. Gronov.) Narbonne was a Celtic town of the first eminence,

and one of the most northern places of the known world,

(D’Anville, Notice de l’Ancienne Gaule, p. 473.)]

But these narrow limits were scorned by the spirit of Abdalraman,

or Abderame, who had been restored by the caliph Hashem to the

wishes of the soldiers and people of Spain. That veteran and

daring commander adjudged to the obedience of the prophet

whatever yet remained of France or of Europe; and prepared to

execute the sentence, at the head of a formidable host, in the

full confidence of surmounting all opposition either of nature or

of man. His first care was to suppress a domestic rebel, who

commanded the most important passes of the Pyrenees: Manuza, a

Moorish chief, had accepted the alliance of the duke of Aquitain;

and Eudes, from a motive of private or public interest, devoted

his beauteous daughter to the embraces of the African

misbeliever. But the strongest fortresses of Cerdagne were

invested by a superior force; the rebel was overtaken and slain

in the mountains; and his widow was sent a captive to Damascus,

to gratify the desires, or more probably the vanity, of the

commander of the faithful. From the Pyrenees, Abderame proceeded

without delay to the passage of the Rhone and the siege of Arles.

An army of Christians attempted the relief of the city: the tombs

of their leaders were yet visible in the thirteenth century; and

many thousands of their dead bodies were carried down the rapid

stream into the Mediterranean Sea. The arms of Abderame were not

less successful on the side of the ocean. He passed without

opposition the Garonne and Dordogne, which unite their waters in

the Gulf of Bourdeaux; but he found, beyond those rivers, the

camp of the intrepid Eudes, who had formed a second army and

sustained a second defeat, so fatal to the Christians, that,

according to their sad confession, God alone could reckon the

number of the slain. The victorious Saracen overran the provinces

of Aquitain, whose Gallic names are disguised, rather than lost,

in the modern appellations of Perigord, Saintonge, and Poitou:

his standards were planted on the walls, or at least before the

gates, of Tours and of Sens; and his detachments overspread the

kingdom of Burgundy as far as the well-known cities of Lyons and

Besançon. The memory of these devastations (for Abderame did not

spare the country or the people) was long preserved by tradition;

and the invasion of France by the Moors or Mahometans affords the

groundwork of those fables, which have been so wildly disfigured

in the romances of chivalry, and so elegantly adorned by the

Italian muse. In the decline of society and art, the deserted

cities could supply a slender booty to the Saracens; their

richest spoil was found in the churches and monasteries, which

they stripped of their ornaments and delivered to the flames: and

the tutelar saints, both Hilary of Poitiers and Martin of Tours,

forgot their miraculous powers in the defence of their own

sepulchres. 29 A victorious line of march had been prolonged

above a thousand miles from the rock of Gibraltar to the banks of

the Loire; the repetition of an equal space would have carried

the Saracens to the confines of Poland and the Highlands of

Scotland; the Rhine is not more impassable than the Nile or

Euphrates, and the Arabian fleet might have sailed without a

naval combat into the mouth of the Thames. Perhaps the

interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of

Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people

the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet. 30

29 (return) [ With regard to the sanctuary of St. Martin of

Tours, Roderic Ximenes accuses the Saracens of the deed. Turonis

civitatem, ecclesiam et palatia vastatione et incendio simili

diruit et consumpsit. The continuator of Fredegarius imputes to

them no more than the intention. Ad domum beatissimi Martini

evertendam destinant. At Carolus, &c. The French annalist was

more jealous of the honor of the saint.]

30 (return) [ Yet I sincerely doubt whether the Oxford mosch

would have produced a volume of controversy so elegant and

ingenious as the sermons lately preached by Mr. White, the Arabic

professor, at Mr. Bampton’s lecture. His observations on the

character and religion of Mahomet are always adapted to his

argument, and generally founded in truth and reason. He sustains

the part of a lively and eloquent advocate; and sometimes rises

to the merit of an historian and philosopher.]

From such calamities was Christendom delivered by the genius and

fortune of one man. Charles, the illegitimate son of the elder

Pepin, was content with the titles of mayor or duke of the

Franks; but he deserved to become the father of a line of kings.

In a laborious administration of twenty-four years, he restored

and supported the dignity of the throne, and the rebels of

Germany and Gaul were successively crushed by the activity of a

warrior, who, in the same campaign, could display his banner on

the Elbe, the Rhone, and the shores of the ocean. In the public

danger he was summoned by the voice of his country; and his

rival, the duke of Aquitain, was reduced to appear among the

fugitives and suppliants. “Alas!” exclaimed the Franks, “what a

misfortune! what an indignity! We have long heard of the name and

conquests of the Arabs: we were apprehensive of their attack from

the East; they have now conquered Spain, and invade our country

on the side of the West. Yet their numbers, and (since they have

no buckler) their arms, are inferior to our own.” “If you follow

my advice,” replied the prudent mayor of the palace, “you will

not interrupt their march, nor precipitate your attack. They are

like a torrent, which it is dangerous to stem in its career. The

thirst of riches, and the consciousness of success, redouble

their valor, and valor is of more avail than arms or numbers. Be

patient till they have loaded themselves with the encumbrance of

wealth. The possession of wealth will divide their councils and

assure your victory.” This subtile policy is perhaps a refinement

of the Arabian writers; and the situation of Charles will suggest

a more narrow and selfish motive of procrastination—the secret

desire of humbling the pride and wasting the provinces of the

rebel duke of Aquitain. It is yet more probable, that the delays

of Charles were inevitable and reluctant. A standing army was

unknown under the first and second race; more than half the

kingdom was now in the hands of the Saracens: according to their

respective situation, the Franks of Neustria and Austrasia were

to conscious or too careless of the impending danger; and the

voluntary aids of the Gepidae and Germans were separated by a

long interval from the standard of the Christian general. No

sooner had he collected his forces, than he sought and found the

enemy in the centre of France, between Tours and Poitiers. His

well-conducted march was covered with a range of hills, and

Abderame appears to have been surprised by his unexpected

presence. The nations of Asia, Africa, and Europe, advanced with

equal ardor to an encounter which would change the history of the

world. In the six first days of desultory combat, the horsemen

and archers of the East maintained their advantage: but in the

closer onset of the seventh day, the Orientals were oppressed by

the strength and stature of the Germans, who, with stout hearts

and iron hands, 31 asserted the civil and religious freedom of

their posterity. The epithet of Martel, the Hammer, which has

been added to the name of Charles, is expressive of his weighty

and irresistible strokes: the valor of Eudes was excited by

resentment and emulation; and their companions, in the eye of

history, are the true Peers and Paladins of French chivalry.

After a bloody field, in which Abderame was slain, the Saracens,

in the close of the evening, retired to their camp. In the

disorder and despair of the night, the various tribes of Yemen

and Damascus, of Africa and Spain, were provoked to turn their

arms against each other: the remains of their host were suddenly

dissolved, and each emir consulted his safety by a hasty and

separate retreat. At the dawn of the day, the stillness of a

hostile camp was suspected by the victorious Christians: on the

report of their spies, they ventured to explore the riches of the

vacant tents; but if we except some celebrated relics, a small

portion of the spoil was restored to the innocent and lawful

owners. The joyful tidings were soon diffused over the Catholic

world, and the monks of Italy could affirm and believe that three

hundred and fifty, or three hundred and seventy-five, thousand of

the Mahometans had been crushed by the hammer of Charles, 32

while no more than fifteen hundred Christians were slain in the

field of Tours. But this incredible tale is sufficiently

disproved by the caution of the French general, who apprehended

the snares and accidents of a pursuit, and dismissed his German

allies to their native forests.

The inactivity of a conqueror betrays the loss of strength and

blood, and the most cruel execution is inflicted, not in the

ranks of battle, but on the backs of a flying enemy. Yet the

victory of the Franks was complete and final; Aquitain was

recovered by the arms of Eudes; the Arabs never resumed the

conquest of Gaul, and they were soon driven beyond the Pyrenees

by Charles Martel and his valiant race. 33 It might have been

expected that the savior of Christendom would have been

canonized, or at least applauded, by the gratitude of the clergy,

who are indebted to his sword for their present existence. But in

the public distress, the mayor of the palace had been compelled

to apply the riches, or at least the revenues, of the bishops and

abbots, to the relief of the state and the reward of the

soldiers. His merits were forgotten, his sacrilege alone was

remembered, and, in an epistle to a Carlovingian prince, a Gallic

synod presumes to declare that his ancestor was damned; that on

the opening of his tomb, the spectators were affrighted by a

smell of fire and the aspect of a horrid dragon; and that a saint

of the times was indulged with a pleasant vision of the soul and

body of Charles Martel, burning, to all eternity, in the abyss of

hell. 34

31 (return) [ Gens Austriae membrorum pre-eminentia valida, et

gens Germana corde et corpore praestantissima, quasi in ictu

oculi, manu ferrea, et pectore arduo, Arabes extinxerunt,

(Roderic. Toletan. c. xiv.)]

32 (return) [ These numbers are stated by Paul Warnefrid, the

deacon of Aquileia, (de Gestis Langobard. l. vi. p. 921, edit.

Grot.,) and Anastasius, the librarian of the Roman church, (in

Vit. Gregorii II.,) who tells a miraculous story of three

consecrated sponges, which rendered invulnerable the French

soldiers, among whom they had been shared It should seem, that in

his letters to the pope, Eudes usurped the honor of the victory,

from which he is chastised by the French annalists, who, with

equal falsehood, accuse him of inviting the Saracens.]

33 (return) [ Narbonne, and the rest of Septimania, was recovered

by Pepin the son of Charles Martel, A.D. 755, (Pagi, Critica,

tom. iii. p. 300.) Thirty-seven years afterwards, it was pillaged

by a sudden inroad of the Arabs, who employed the captives in the

construction of the mosch of Cordova, (De Guignes, Hist. des

Huns, tom. i. p. 354.)]

34 (return) [ This pastoral letter, addressed to Lewis the

Germanic, the grandson of Charlemagne, and most probably composed

by the pen of the artful Hincmar, is dated in the year 858, and

signed by the bishops of the provinces of Rheims and Rouen,

(Baronius, Annal. Eccles. A.D. 741. Fleury, Hist. Eccles. tom. x.

p. 514-516.) Yet Baronius himself, and the French critics, reject

with contempt this episcopal fiction.]

The loss of an army, or a province, in the Western world, was

less painful to the court of Damascus, than the rise and progress

of a domestic competitor. Except among the Syrians, the caliphs

of the house of Ommiyah had never been the objects of the public

favor. The life of Mahomet recorded their perseverance in

idolatry and rebellion: their conversion had been reluctant,

their elevation irregular and factious, and their throne was

cemented with the most holy and noble blood of Arabia. The best

of their race, the pious Omar, was dissatisfied with his own

title: their personal virtues were insufficient to justify a

departure from the order of succession; and the eyes and wishes

of the faithful were turned towards the line of Hashem, and the

kindred of the apostle of God. Of these the Fatimites were either

rash or pusillanimous; but the descendants of Abbas cherished,

with courage and discretion, the hopes of their rising fortunes.

From an obscure residence in Syria, they secretly despatched

their agents and missionaries, who preached in the Eastern

provinces their hereditary indefeasible right; and Mohammed, the

son of Ali, the son of Abdallah, the son of Abbas, the uncle of

the prophet, gave audience to the deputies of Chorasan, and

accepted their free gift of four hundred thousand pieces of gold.

After the death of Mohammed, the oath of allegiance was

administered in the name of his son Ibrahim to a numerous band of

votaries, who expected only a signal and a leader; and the

governor of Chorasan continued to deplore his fruitless

admonitions and the deadly slumber of the caliphs of Damascus,

till he himself, with all his adherents, was driven from the city

and palace of Meru, by the rebellious arms of Abu Moslem. 35 That

maker of kings, the author, as he is named, of the call of the

Abbassides, was at length rewarded for his presumption of merit

with the usual gratitude of courts. A mean, perhaps a foreign,

extraction could not repress the aspiring energy of Abu Moslem.

Jealous of his wives, liberal of his wealth, prodigal of his own

blood and of that of others, he could boast with pleasure, and

possibly with truth, that he had destroyed six hundred thousand

of his enemies; and such was the intrepid gravity of his mind and

countenance, that he was never seen to smile except on a day of

battle. In the visible separation of parties, the green was

consecrated to the Fatimites; the Ommiades were distinguished by

the white; and the black, as the most adverse, was naturally

adopted by the Abbassides. Their turbans and garments were

stained with that gloomy color: two black standards, on pike

staves nine cubits long, were borne aloft in the van of Abu

Moslem; and their allegorical names of the night and the shadow

obscurely represented the indissoluble union and perpetual

succession of the line of Hashem. From the Indus to the

Euphrates, the East was convulsed by the quarrel of the white and

the black factions: the Abbassides were most frequently

victorious; but their public success was clouded by the personal

misfortune of their chief. The court of Damascus, awakening from

a long slumber, resolved to prevent the pilgrimage of Mecca,

which Ibrahim had undertaken with a splendid retinue, to

recommend himself at once to the favor of the prophet and of the

people. A detachment of cavalry intercepted his march and

arrested his person; and the unhappy Ibrahim, snatched away from

the promise of untasted royalty, expired in iron fetters in the

dungeons of Haran. His two younger brothers, Saffah 3511 and

Almansor, eluded the search of the tyrant, and lay concealed at

Cufa, till the zeal of the people and the approach of his Eastern

friends allowed them to expose their persons to the impatient

public. On Friday, in the dress of a caliph, in the colors of the

sect, Saffah proceeded with religious and military pomp to the

mosch: ascending the pulpit, he prayed and preached as the lawful

successor of Mahomet; and after his departure, his kinsmen bound

a willing people by an oath of fidelity. But it was on the banks

of the Zab, and not in the mosch of Cufa, that this important

controversy was determined. Every advantage appeared to be on the

side of the white faction: the authority of established

government; an army of a hundred and twenty thousand soldiers,

against a sixth part of that number; and the presence and merit

of the caliph Mervan, the fourteenth and last of the house of

Ommiyah. Before his accession to the throne, he had deserved, by

his Georgian warfare, the honorable epithet of the ass of

Mesopotamia; 36 and he might have been ranked amongst the

greatest princes, had not, says Abulfeda, the eternal order

decreed that moment for the ruin of his family; a decree against

which all human fortitude and prudence must struggle in vain. The

orders of Mervan were mistaken, or disobeyed: the return of his

horse, from which he had dismounted on a necessary occasion,

impressed the belief of his death; and the enthusiasm of the

black squadrons was ably conducted by Abdallah, the uncle of his

competitor. After an irretrievab defeat, the caliph escaped to

Mosul; but the colors of the Abbassides were displayed from the

rampart; he suddenly repassed the Tigris, cast a melancholy look

on his palace of Haran, crossed the Euphrates, abandoned the

fortifications of Damascus, and, without halting in Palestine,

pitched his last and fatal camp at Busir, on the banks of the

Nile. 37 His speed was urged by the incessant diligence of

Abdallah, who in every step of the pursuit acquired strength and

reputation: the remains of the white faction were finally

vanquished in Egypt; and the lance, which terminated the life and

anxiety of Mervan, was not less welcome perhaps to the

unfortunate than to the victorious chief. The merciless

inquisition of the conqueror eradicated the most distant branches

of the hostile race: their bones were scattered, their memory was

accursed, and the martyrdom of Hossein was abundantly revenged on

the posterity of his tyrants. Fourscore of the Ommiades, who had

yielded to the faith or clemency of their foes, were invited to a

banquet at Damascus. The laws of hospitality were violated by a

promiscuous massacre: the board was spread over their fallen

bodies; and the festivity of the guests was enlivened by the

music of their dying groans. By the event of the civil war, the

dynasty of the Abbassides was firmly established; but the

Christians only could triumph in the mutual hatred and common

loss of the disciples of Mahomet. 38

35 (return) [ The steed and the saddle which had carried any of

his wives were instantly killed or burnt, lest they should

afterwards be mounted by a male. Twelve hundred mules or camels

were required for his kitchen furniture; and the daily

consumption amounted to three thousand cakes, a hundred sheep,

besides oxen, poultry, &c., (Abul pharagius, Hist. Dynast. p.

140.)]

3511 (return) [ He is called Abdullah or Abul Abbas in the Tarikh

Tebry. Price vol. i. p. 600. Saffah or Saffauh (the Sanguinary)

was a name which be required after his bloody reign, (vol. ii. p.

1.)—M.]

36 (return) [ Al Hemar. He had been governor of Mesopotamia, and

the Arabic proverb praises the courage of that warlike breed of

asses who never fly from an enemy. The surname of Mervan may

justify the comparison of Homer, (Iliad, A. 557, &c.,) and both

will silence the moderns, who consider the ass as a stupid and

ignoble emblem, (D’Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 558.)]

37 (return) [ Four several places, all in Egypt, bore the name of

Busir, or Busiris, so famous in Greek fable. The first, where

Mervan was slain was to the west of the Nile, in the province of

Fium, or Arsinoe; the second in the Delta, in the Sebennytic

nome; the third near the pyramids; the fourth, which was

destroyed by Dioclesian, (see above, vol. ii. p. 130,) in the

Thebais. I shall here transcribe a note of the learned and

orthodox Michaelis: Videntur in pluribus Aegypti superioris

urbibus Busiri Coptoque arma sumpsisse Christiani, libertatemque

de religione sentiendi defendisse, sed succubuisse quo in bello

Coptus et Busiris diruta, et circa Esnam magna strages edita.

Bellum narrant sed causam belli ignorant scriptores Byzantini,

alioqui Coptum et Busirim non rebellasse dicturi, sed causam

Christianorum suscepturi, (Not. 211, p. 100.) For the geography

of the four Busirs, see Abulfeda, (Descript. Aegypt. p. 9, vers.

Michaelis, Gottingae, 1776, in 4to.,) Michaelis, (Not. 122-127,

p. 58-63,) and D’Anville, (Memoire sua l’Egypte, p. 85, 147,

205.)]

38 (return) [ See Abulfeda, (Annal. Moslem. p. 136-145,)

Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 392, vers. Pocock,) Elmacin,

(Hist. Saracen. p. 109-121,) Abulpharagius, (Hist. Dynast. p.

134-140,) Roderic of Toledo, (Hist. Arabum, c. xviii. p. 33,)

Theophanes, (Chronograph. p. 356, 357, who speaks of the

Abbassides) and the Bibliotheque of D’Herbelot, in the articles

Ommiades, Abbassides, Moervan, Ibrahim, Saffah, Abou Moslem.]

Yet the thousands who were swept away by the sword of war might

have been speedily retrieved in the succeeding generation, if the

consequences of the revolution had not tended to dissolve the

power and unity of the empire of the Saracens. In the

proscription of the Ommiades, a royal youth of the name of

Abdalrahman alone escaped the rage of his enemies, who hunted the

wandering exile from the banks of the Euphrates to the valleys of

Mount Atlas. His presence in the neighborhood of Spain revived

the zeal of the white faction. The name and cause of the

Abbassides had been first vindicated by the Persians: the West

had been pure from civil arms; and the servants of the abdicated

family still held, by a precarious tenure, the inheritance of

their lands and the offices of government. Strongly prompted by

gratitude, indignation, and fear, they invited the grandson of

the caliph Hashem to ascend the throne of his ancestors; and, in

his desperate condition, the extremes of rashness and prudence

were almost the same. The acclamations of the people saluted his

landing on the coast of Andalusia: and, after a successful

struggle, Abdalrahman established the throne of Cordova, and was

the father of the Ommiades of Spain, who reigned above two

hundred and fifty years from the Atlantic to the Pyrenees. 39 He

slew in battle a lieutenant of the Abbassides, who had invaded

his dominions with a fleet and army: the head of Ala, in salt and

camphire, was suspended by a daring messenger before the palace

of Mecca; and the caliph Almansor rejoiced in his safety, that he

was removed by seas and lands from such a formidable adversary.

Their mutual designs or declarations of offensive war evaporated

without effect; but instead of opening a door to the conquest of

Europe, Spain was dissevered from the trunk of the monarchy,

engaged in perpetual hostility with the East, and inclined to

peace and friendship with the Christian sovereigns of

Constantinople and France. The example of the Ommiades was

imitated by the real or fictitious progeny of Ali, the Edrissites

of Mauritania, and the more powerful fatimites of Africa and

Egypt. In the tenth century, the chair of Mahomet was disputed by

three caliphs or commanders of the faithful, who reigned at

Bagdad, Cairoan, and Cordova, excommunicating each other, and

agreed only in a principle of discord, that a sectary is more

odious and criminal than an unbeliever. 40

39 (return) [ For the revolution of Spain, consult Roderic of

Toledo, (c. xviii. p. 34, &c.,) the Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana,

(tom. ii. p. 30, 198,) and Cardonne, (Hist. de l’Afrique et de

l’Espagne, tom. i. p. 180-197, 205, 272, 323, &c.)]

40 (return) [ I shall not stop to refute the strange errors and

fancies of Sir William Temple (his Works, vol. iii. p. 371-374,

octavo edition) and Voltaire (Histoire Generale, c. xxviii. tom.

ii. p. 124, 125, edition de Lausanne) concerning the division of

the Saracen empire. The mistakes of Voltaire proceeded from the

want of knowledge or reflection; but Sir William was deceived by

a Spanish impostor, who has framed an apocryphal history of the

conquest of Spain by the Arabs.]

Mecca was the patrimony of the line of Hashem, yet the Abbassides

were never tempted to reside either in the birthplace or the city

of the prophet. Damascus was disgraced by the choice, and

polluted with the blood, of the Ommiades; and, after some

hesitation, Almansor, the brother and successor of Saffah, laid

the foundations of Bagdad, 41 the Imperial seat of his posterity

during a reign of five hundred years. 42 The chosen spot is on

the eastern bank of the Tigris, about fifteen miles above the

ruins of Modain: the double wall was of a circular form; and such

was the rapid increase of a capital, now dwindled to a provincial

town, that the funeral of a popular saint might be attended by

eight hundred thousand men and sixty thousand women of Bagdad and

the adjacent villages. In this city of peace, 43 amidst the

riches of the East, the Abbassides soon disdained the abstinence

and frugality of the first caliphs, and aspired to emulate the

magnificence of the Persian kings. After his wars and buildings,

Almansor left behind him in gold and silver about thirty millions

sterling: 44 and this treasure was exhausted in a few years by

the vices or virtues of his children. His son Mahadi, in a single

pilgrimage to Mecca, expended six millions of dinars of gold. A

pious and charitable motive may sanctify the foundation of

cisterns and caravanseras, which he distributed along a measured

road of seven hundred miles; but his train of camels, laden with

snow, could serve only to astonish the natives of Arabia, and to

refresh the fruits and liquors of the royal banquet. 45 The

courtiers would surely praise the liberality of his grandson

Almamon, who gave away four fifths of the income of a province, a

sum of two millions four hundred thousand gold dinars, before he

drew his foot from the stirrup. At the nuptials of the same

prince, a thousand pearls of the largest size were showered on

the head of the bride, 46 and a lottery of lands and houses

displayed the capricious bounty of fortune. The glories of the

court were brightened, rather than impaired, in the decline of

the empire, and a Greek ambassador might admire, or pity, the

magnificence of the feeble Moctader. “The caliph’s whole army,”

says the historian Abulfeda, “both horse and foot, was under

arms, which together made a body of one hundred and sixty

thousand men. His state officers, the favorite slaves, stood near

him in splendid apparel, their belts glittering with gold and

gems. Near them were seven thousand eunuchs, four thousand of

them white, the remainder black. The porters or door-keepers were

in number seven hundred. Barges and boats, with the most superb

decorations, were seen swimming upon the Tigris. Nor was the

palace itself less splendid, in which were hung up thirty-eight

thousand pieces of tapestry, twelve thousand five hundred of

which were of silk embroidered with gold. The carpets on the

floor were twenty-two thousand. A hundred lions were brought out,

with a keeper to each lion. 47 Among the other spectacles of rare

and stupendous luxury was a tree of gold and silver spreading

into eighteen large branches, on which, and on the lesser boughs,

sat a variety of birds made of the same precious metals, as well

as the leaves of the tree. While the machinery affected

spontaneous motions, the several birds warbled their natural

harmony. Through this scene of magnificence, the Greek ambassador

was led by the vizier to the foot of the caliph’s throne.” 48 In

the West, the Ommiades of Spain supported, with equal pomp, the

title of commander of the faithful. Three miles from Cordova, in

honor of his favorite sultana, the third and greatest of the

Abdalrahmans constructed the city, palace, and gardens of Zehra.

Twenty-five years, and above three millions sterling, were

employed by the founder: his liberal taste invited the artists of

Constantinople, the most skilful sculptors and architects of the

age; and the buildings were sustained or adorned by twelve

hundred columns of Spanish and African, of Greek and Italian

marble. The hall of audience was incrusted with gold and pearls,

and a great basin in the centre was surrounded with the curious

and costly figures of birds and quadrupeds. In a lofty pavilion

of the gardens, one of these basins and fountains, so delightful

in a sultry climate, was replenished not with water, but with the

purest quicksilver. The seraglio of Abdalrahman, his wives,

concubines, and black eunuchs, amounted to six thousand three

hundred persons: and he was attended to the field by a guard of

twelve thousand horse, whose belts and cimeters were studded with

gold. 49

41 (return) [ The geographer D’Anville, (l’Euphrate et le Tigre,

p. 121-123,) and the Orientalist D’Herbelot, (Bibliotheque, p.

167, 168,) may suffice for the knowledge of Bagdad. Our

travellers, Pietro della Valle, (tom. i. p. 688-698,) Tavernier,

(tom. i. p. 230-238,) Thevenot, (part ii. p. 209-212,) Otter,

(tom. i. p. 162-168,) and Niebuhr, (Voyage en Arabie, tom. ii. p.

239-271,) have seen only its decay; and the Nubian geographer,

(p. 204,) and the travelling Jew, Benjamin of Tuleda

(Itinerarium, p. 112-123, a Const. l’Empereur, apud Elzevir,

1633,) are the only writers of my acquaintance, who have known

Bagdad under the reign of the Abbassides.]

42 (return) [ The foundations of Bagdad were laid A. H. 145, A.D.

762. Mostasem, the last of the Abbassides, was taken and put to

death by the Tartars, A. H. 656, A.D. 1258, the 20th of

February.]

43 (return) [ Medinat al Salem, Dar al Salem. Urbs pacis, or, as

it is more neatly compounded by the Byzantine writers,

(Irenopolis.) There is some dispute concerning the etymology of

Bagdad, but the first syllable is allowed to signify a garden in

the Persian tongue; the garden of Dad, a Christian hermit, whose

cell had been the only habitation on the spot.]

44 (return) [ Reliquit in aerario sexcenties millies mille

stateres. et quater et vicies millies mille aureos aureos.

Elmacin, Hist. Saracen. p. 126. I have reckoned the gold pieces

at eight shillings, and the proportion to the silver as twelve to

one. But I will never answer for the numbers of Erpenius; and the

Latins are scarcely above the savages in the language of

arithmetic.]

45 (return) [ D’Herbelot, p. 530. Abulfeda, p. 154. Nivem Meccam

apportavit, rem ibi aut nunquam aut rarissime visam.]

46 (return) [ Abulfeda (p. 184, 189) describes the splendor and

liberality of Almamon. Milton has alluded to this Oriental

custom:—

Or where the gorgeous East, with richest hand,

Showers on her kings Barbaric pearls and gold.

I have used the modern word lottery to express the word of the

Roman emperors, which entitled to some prize the person who

caught them, as they were thrown among the crowd.]

47 (return) [ When Bell of Antermony (Travels, vol. i. p. 99)

accompanied the Russian ambassador to the audience of the

unfortunate Shah Hussein of Persia, two lions were introduced, to

denote the power of the king over the fiercest animals.]

48 (return) [ Abulfeda, p. 237. D’Herbelot, p. 590. This embassy

was received at Bagdad, A. H. 305, A.D. 917. In the passage of

Abulfeda, I have used, with some variations, the English

translation of the learned and amiable Mr. Harris of Salisbury,

(Philological Enquiries p. 363, 364.)]

49 (return) [ Cardonne, Histoire de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne,

tom. i. p. 330-336. A just idea of the taste and architecture of

the Arabians of Spain may be conceived from the description and

plates of the Alhambra of Grenada, (Swinburne’s Travels, p.

171-188.)]

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

In a private condition, our desires are perpetually repressed by

poverty and subordination; but the lives and labors of millions

are devoted to the service of a despotic prince, whose laws are

blindly obeyed, and whose wishes are instantly gratified. Our

imagination is dazzled by the splendid picture; and whatever may

be the cool dictates of reason, there are few among us who would

obstinately refuse a trial of the comforts and the cares of

royalty. It may therefore be of some use to borrow the experience

of the same Abdalrahman, whose magnificence has perhaps excited

our admiration and envy, and to transcribe an authentic memorial

which was found in the closet of the deceased caliph. “I have now

reigned above fifty years in victory or peace; beloved by my

subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies.

Riches and honors, power and pleasure, have waited on my call,

nor does any earthly blessing appear to have been wanting to my

felicity. In this situation, I have diligently numbered the days

of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: they

amount to Fourteen:—O man! place not thy confidence in this

present world!” 50 The luxury of the caliphs, so useless to their

private happiness, relaxed the nerves, and terminated the

progress, of the Arabian empire. Temporal and spiritual conquest

had been the sole occupation of the first successors of Mahomet;

and after supplying themselves with the necessaries of life, the

whole revenue was scrupulously devoted to that salutary work. The

Abbassides were impoverished by the multitude of their wants, and

their contempt of oeconomy. Instead of pursuing the great object

of ambition, their leisure, their affections, the powers of their

mind, were diverted by pomp and pleasure: the rewards of valor

were embezzled by women and eunuchs, and the royal camp was

encumbered by the luxury of the palace. A similar temper was

diffused among the subjects of the caliph. Their stern enthusiasm

was softened by time and prosperity. they sought riches in the

occupations of industry, fame in the pursuits of literature, and

happiness in the tranquillity of domestic life. War was no longer

the passion of the Saracens; and the increase of pay, the

repetition of donatives, were insufficient to allure the

posterity of those voluntary champions who had crowded to the

standard of Abubeker and Omar for the hopes of spoil and of

paradise.

50 (return) [ Cardonne, tom. i. p. 329, 330. This confession, the

complaints of Solomon of the vanity of this world, (read Prior’s

verbose but eloquent poem,) and the happy ten days of the emperor

Seghed, (Rambler, No. 204, 205,) will be triumphantly quoted by

the detractors of human life. Their expectations are commonly

immoderate, their estimates are seldom impartial. If I may speak

of myself, (the only person of whom I can speak with certainty,)

my happy hours have far exceeded, and far exceed, the scanty

numbers of the caliph of Spain; and I shall not scruple to add,

that many of them are due to the pleasing labor of the present

composition.]

Under the reign of the Ommiades, the studies of the Moslems were

confined to the interpretation of the Koran, and the eloquence

and poetry of their native tongue. A people continually exposed

to the dangers of the field must esteem the healing powers of

medicine, or rather of surgery; but the starving physicians of

Arabia murmured a complaint that exercise and temperance deprived

them of the greatest part of their practice. 51 After their civil

and domestic wars, the subjects of the Abbassides, awakening from

this mental lethargy, found leisure and felt curiosity for the

acquisition of profane science. This spirit was first encouraged

by the caliph Almansor, who, besides his knowledge of the

Mahometan law, had applied himself with success to the study of

astronomy. But when the sceptre devolved to Almamon, the seventh

of the Abbassides, he completed the designs of his grandfather,

and invited the muses from their ancient seats. His ambassadors

at Constantinople, his agents in Armenia, Syria, and Egypt,

collected the volumes of Grecian science; at his command they

were translated by the most skilful interpreters into the Arabic

language: his subjects were exhorted assiduously to peruse these

instructive writings; and the successor of Mahomet assisted with

pleasure and modesty at the assemblies and disputations of the

learned. “He was not ignorant,” says Abulpharagius, “that they

are the elect of God, his best and most useful servants, whose

lives are devoted to the improvement of their rational faculties.

The mean ambition of the Chinese or the Turks may glory in the

industry of their hands or the indulgence of their brutal

appetites. Yet these dexterous artists must view, with hopeless

emulation, the hexagons and pyramids of the cells of a beehive:

52 these fortitudinous heroes are awed by the superior fierceness

of the lions and tigers; and in their amorous enjoyments they are

much inferior to the vigor of the grossest and most sordid

quadrupeds. The teachers of wisdom are the true luminaries and

legislators of a world, which, without their aid, would again

sink in ignorance and barbarism.” 53 The zeal and curiosity of

Almamon were imitated by succeeding princes of the line of Abbas:

their rivals, the Fatimites of Africa and the Ommiades of Spain,

were the patrons of the learned, as well as the commanders of the

faithful; the same royal prerogative was claimed by their

independent emirs of the provinces; and their emulation diffused

the taste and the rewards of science from Samarcand and Bochara

to Fez and Cordova. The vizier of a sultan consecrated a sum of

two hundred thousand pieces of gold to the foundation of a

college at Bagdad, which he endowed with an annual revenue of

fifteen thousand dinars. The fruits of instruction were

communicated, perhaps at different times, to six thousand

disciples of every degree, from the son of the noble to that of

the mechanic: a sufficient allowance was provided for the

indigent scholars; and the merit or industry of the professors

was repaid with adequate stipends. In every city the productions

of Arabic literature were copied and collected by the curiosity

of the studious and the vanity of the rich. A private doctor

refused the invitation of the sultan of Bochara, because the

carriage of his books would have required four hundred camels.

The royal library of the Fatimites consisted of one hundred

thousand manuscripts, elegantly transcribed and splendidly bound,

which were lent, without jealousy or avarice, to the students of

Cairo. Yet this collection must appear moderate, if we can

believe that the Ommiades of Spain had formed a library of six

hundred thousand volumes, forty-four of which were employed in

the mere catalogue. Their capital, Cordova, with the adjacent

towns of Malaga, Almeria, and Murcia, had given birth to more

than three hundred writers, and above seventy public libraries

were opened in the cities of the Andalusian kingdom. The age of

Arabian learning continued about five hundred years, till the

great eruption of the Moguls, and was coeval with the darkest and

most slothful period of European annals; but since the sun of

science has arisen in the West, it should seem that the Oriental

studies have languished and declined. 54

51 (return) [ The Guliston (p. 29) relates the conversation of

Mahomet and a physician, (Epistol. Renaudot. in Fabricius,

Bibliot. Graec. tom. i. p. 814.) The prophet himself was skilled

in the art of medicine; and Gagnier (Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii. p.

394-405) has given an extract of the aphorisms which are extant

under his name.]

52 (return) [ See their curious architecture in Reaumur (Hist.

des Insectes, tom. v. Memoire viii.) These hexagons are closed by

a pyramid; the angles of the three sides of a similar pyramid,

such as would accomplish the given end with the smallest quantity

possible of materials, were determined by a mathematician, at

109] degrees 26 minutes for the larger, 70 degrees 34 minutes for

the smaller. The actual measure is 109 degrees 28 minutes, 70

degrees 32 minutes. Yet this perfect harmony raises the work at

the expense of the artist he bees are not masters of transcendent

geometry.]

53 (return) [ Saed Ebn Ahmed, cadhi of Toledo, who died A. H.

462, A.D. 069, has furnished Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 160) with

this curious passage, as well as with the text of Pocock’s

Specimen Historiae Arabum. A number of literary anecdotes of

philosophers, physicians, &c., who have flourished under each

caliph, form the principal merit of the Dynasties of

Abulpharagius.]

54 (return) [ These literary anecdotes are borrowed from the

Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana, (tom. ii. p. 38, 71, 201, 202,) Leo

Africanus, (de Arab. Medicis et Philosophis, in Fabric. Bibliot.

Graec. tom. xiii. p. 259-293, particularly p. 274,) and Renaudot,

(Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 274, 275, 536, 537,) besides the

chronological remarks of Abulpharagius.]

In the libraries of the Arabians, as in those of Europe, the far

greater part of the innumerable volumes were possessed only of

local value or imaginary merit. 55 The shelves were crowded with

orators and poets, whose style was adapted to the taste and

manners of their countrymen; with general and partial histories,

which each revolving generation supplied with a new harvest of

persons and events; with codes and commentaries of jurisprudence,

which derived their authority from the law of the prophet; with

the interpreters of the Koran, and orthodox tradition; and with

the whole theological tribe, polemics, mystics, scholastics, and

moralists, the first or the last of writers, according to the

different estimates of sceptics or believers. The works of

speculation or science may be reduced to the four classes of

philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and physic. The sages of

Greece were translated and illustrated in the Arabic language,

and some treatises, now lost in the original, have been recovered

in the versions of the East, 56 which possessed and studied the

writings of Aristotle and Plato, of Euclid and Apollonius, of

Ptolemy, Hippocrates, and Galen. 57 Among the ideal systems which

have varied with the fashion of the times, the Arabians adopted

the philosophy of the Stagirite, alike intelligible or alike

obscure for the readers of every age. Plato wrote for the

Athenians, and his allegorical genius is too closely blended with

the language and religion of Greece. After the fall of that

religion, the Peripatetics, emerging from their obscurity,

prevailed in the controversies of the Oriental sects, and their

founder was long afterwards restored by the Mahometans of Spain

to the Latin schools. 58 The physics, both of the Academy and the

Lycaeum, as they are built, not on observation, but on argument,

have retarded the progress of real knowledge. The metaphysics of

infinite, or finite, spirit, have too often been enlisted in the

service of superstition. But the human faculties are fortified by

the art and practice of dialectics; the ten predicaments of

Aristotle collect and methodize our ideas, 59 and his syllogism

is the keenest weapon of dispute. It was dexterously wielded in

the schools of the Saracens, but as it is more effectual for the

detection of error than for the investigation of truth, it is not

surprising that new generations of masters and disciples should

still revolve in the same circle of logical argument. The

mathematics are distinguished by a peculiar privilege, that, in

the course of ages, they may always advance, and can never

recede. But the ancient geometry, if I am not misinformed, was

resumed in the same state by the Italians of the fifteenth

century; and whatever may be the origin of the name, the science

of algebra is ascribed to the Grecian Diophantus by the modest

testimony of the Arabs themselves. 60 They cultivated with more

success the sublime science of astronomy, which elevates the mind

of man to disdain his diminutive planet and momentary existence.

The costly instruments of observation were supplied by the caliph

Almamon, and the land of the Chaldaeans still afforded the same

spacious level, the same unclouded horizon. In the plains of

Sinaar, and a second time in those of Cufa, his mathematicians

accurately measured a degree of the great circle of the earth,

and determined at twenty-four thousand miles the entire

circumference of our globe. 61 From the reign of the Abbassides

to that of the grandchildren of Tamerlane, the stars, without the

aid of glasses, were diligently observed; and the astronomical

tables of Bagdad, Spain, and Samarcand, 62 correct some minute

errors, without daring to renounce the hypothesis of Ptolemy,

without advancing a step towards the discovery of the solar

system. In the Eastern courts, the truths of science could be

recommended only by ignorance and folly, and the astronomer would

have been disregarded, had he not debased his wisdom or honesty

by the vain predictions of astrology. 63 But in the science of

medicine, the Arabians have been deservedly applauded. The names

of Mesua and Geber, of Razis and Avicenna, are ranked with the

Grecian masters; in the city of Bagdad, eight hundred and sixty

physicians were licensed to exercise their lucrative profession:

64 in Spain, the life of the Catholic princes was intrusted to

the skill of the Saracens, 65 and the school of Salerno, their

legitimate offspring, revived in Italy and Europe the precepts of

the healing art. 66 The success of each professor must have been

influenced by personal and accidental causes; but we may form a

less fanciful estimate of their general knowledge of anatomy, 67

botany, 68 and chemistry, 69 the threefold basis of their theory

and practice. A superstitious reverence for the dead confined

both the Greeks and the Arabians to the dissection of apes and

quadrupeds; the more solid and visible parts were known in the

time of Galen, and the finer scrutiny of the human frame was

reserved for the microscope and the injections of modern artists.

Botany is an active science, and the discoveries of the torrid

zone might enrich the herbal of Dioscorides with two thousand

plants. Some traditionary knowledge might be secreted in the

temples and monasteries of Egypt; much useful experience had been

acquired in the practice of arts and manufactures; but the

science of chemistry owes its origin and improvement to the

industry of the Saracens. They first invented and named the

alembic for the purposes of distillation, analyzed the substances

of the three kingdoms of nature, tried the distinction and

affinities of alcalis and acids, and converted the poisonous

minerals into soft and salutary medicines. But the most eager

search of Arabian chemistry was the transmutation of metals, and

the elixir of immortal health: the reason and the fortunes of

thousands were evaporated in the crucibles of alchemy, and the

consummation of the great work was promoted by the worthy aid of

mystery, fable, and superstition.

55 (return) [ The Arabic catalogue of the Escurial will give a

just idea of the proportion of the classes. In the library of

Cairo, the Mss of astronomy and medicine amounted to 6500, with

two fair globes, the one of brass, the other of silver, (Bibliot.

Arab. Hisp. tom. i. p. 417.)]

56 (return) [ As, for instance, the fifth, sixth, and seventh

books (the eighth is still wanting) of the Conic Sections of

Apollonius Pergaeus, which were printed from the Florence Ms.

1661, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. ii. p. 559.) Yet the fifth

book had been previously restored by the mathematical divination

of Viviani, (see his Eloge in Fontenelle, tom. v. p. 59, &c.)]

57 (return) [ The merit of these Arabic versions is freely

discussed by Renaudot, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. i. p.

812-816,) and piously defended by Casiri, (Bibliot. Arab.

Hispana, tom. i. p. 238-240.) Most of the versions of Plato,

Aristotle, Hippocrates, Galen, &c., are ascribed to Honain, a

physician of the Nestorian sect, who flourished at Bagdad in the

court of the caliphs, and died A.D. 876. He was at the head of a

school or manufacture of translations, and the works of his sons

and disciples were published under his name. See Abulpharagius,

(Dynast. p. 88, 115, 171-174, and apud Asseman. Bibliot. Orient.

tom. ii. p. 438,) D’Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orientale, p. 456,)

Asseman. (Bibliot. Orient. tom. iii. p. 164,) and Casiri,

(Bibliot. Arab. Hispana, tom. i. p. 238, &c. 251, 286-290, 302,

304, &c.)]

58 (return) [ See Mosheim, Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 181, 214,

236, 257, 315, 388, 396, 438, &c.]

59 (return) [ The most elegant commentary on the Categories or

Predicaments of Aristotle may be found in the Philosophical

Arrangements of Mr. James Harris, (London, 1775, in octavo,) who

labored to revive the studies of Grecian literature and

philosophy.]

60 (return) [ Abulpharagius, Dynast. p. 81, 222. Bibliot. Arab.

Hisp. tom. i. p. 370, 371. In quem (says the primate of the

Jacobites) si immiserit selector, oceanum hoc in genere

(algebrae) inveniet. The time of Diophantus of Alexandria is

unknown; but his six books are still extant, and have been

illustrated by the Greek Planudes and the Frenchman Meziriac,

(Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. iv. p. 12-15.)]

61 (return) [ Abulfeda (Annal. Moslem. p. 210, 211, vers. Reiske)

describes this operation according to Ibn Challecan, and the best

historians. This degree most accurately contains 200,000 royal or

Hashemite cubits which Arabia had derived from the sacred and

legal practice both of Palestine and Egypt. This ancient cubit is

repeated 400 times in each basis of the great pyramid, and seems

to indicate the primitive and universal measures of the East. See

the Metrologie of the laborions. M. Paucton, p. 101-195.]

62 (return) [ See the Astronomical Tables of Ulugh Begh, with the

preface of Dr. Hyde in the first volume of his Syntagma

Dissertationum, Oxon. 1767.]

63 (return) [ The truth of astrology was allowed by Albumazar,

and the best of the Arabian astronomers, who drew their most

certain predictions, not from Venus and Mercury, but from Jupiter

and the sun, (Abulpharag. Dynast. p. 161-163.) For the state and

science of the Persian astronomers, see Chardin, (Voyages en

Perse, tom. iii. p. 162-203.)]

64 (return) [ Bibliot. Arabico-Hispana, tom. i. p. 438. The

original relates a pleasant tale of an ignorant, but harmless,

practitioner.]

65 (return) [ In the year 956, Sancho the Fat, king of Leon, was

cured by the physicians of Cordova, (Mariana, l. viii. c. 7, tom.

i. p. 318.)]

66 (return) [ The school of Salerno, and the introduction of the

Arabian sciences into Italy, are discussed with learning and

judgment by Muratori (Antiquitat. Italiae Medii Aevi, tom. iii.

p. 932-940) and Giannone, (Istoria Civile di Napoli, tom. ii. p.

119-127.)]

67 (return) [ See a good view of the progress of anatomy in

Wotton, (Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning, p. 208-256.)

His reputation has been unworthily depreciated by the wits in the

controversy of Boyle and Bentley.]

68 (return) [ Bibliot. Arab. Hispana, tom. i. p. 275. Al Beithar,

of Malaga, their greatest botanist, had travelled into Africa,

Persia, and India.]

69 (return) [ Dr. Watson, (Elements of Chemistry, vol. i. p. 17,

&c.) allows the original merit of the Arabians. Yet he quotes the

modest confession of the famous Geber of the ixth century,

(D’Herbelot, p. 387,) that he had drawn most of his science,

perhaps the transmutation of metals, from the ancient sages.

Whatever might be the origin or extent of their knowledge, the

arts of chemistry and alchemy appear to have been known in Egypt

at least three hundred years before Mahomet, (Wotton’s

Reflections, p. 121-133. Pauw, Recherches sur les Egyptiens et

les Chinois, tom. i. p. 376-429.) * Note: Mr. Whewell (Hist. of

Inductive Sciences, vol. i. p. 336) rejects the claim of the

Arabians as inventors of the science of chemistry. “The formation

and realization of the notions of analysis and affinity were

important steps in chemical science; which, as I shall hereafter

endeavor to show it remained for the chemists of Europe to make

at a much later period.”—M.]

But the Moslems deprived themselves of the principal benefits of

a familiar intercourse with Greece and Rome, the knowledge of

antiquity, the purity of taste, and the freedom of thought.

Confident in the riches of their native tongue, the Arabians

disdained the study of any foreign idiom. The Greek interpreters

were chosen among their Christian subjects; they formed their

translations, sometimes on the original text, more frequently

perhaps on a Syriac version; and in the crowd of astronomers and

physicians, there is no example of a poet, an orator, or even an

historian, being taught to speak the language of the Saracens. 70

The mythology of Homer would have provoked the abhorrence of

those stern fanatics: they possessed in lazy ignorance the

colonies of the Macedonians, and the provinces of Carthage and

Rome: the heroes of Plutarch and Livy were buried in oblivion;

and the history of the world before Mahomet was reduced to a

short legend of the patriarchs, the prophets, and the Persian

kings. Our education in the Greek and Latin schools may have

fixed in our minds a standard of exclusive taste; and I am not

forward to condemn the literature and judgment of nations, of

whose language I am ignorant. Yet I know that the classics have

much to teach, and I believe that the Orientals have much to

learn; the temperate dignity of style, the graceful proportions

of art, the forms of visible and intellectual beauty, the just

delineation of character and passion, the rhetoric of narrative

and argument, the regular fabric of epic and dramatic poetry. 71

The influence of truth and reason is of a less ambiguous

complexion. The philosophers of Athens and Rome enjoyed the

blessings, and asserted the rights, of civil and religious

freedom. Their moral and political writings might have gradually

unlocked the fetters of Eastern despotism, diffused a liberal

spirit of inquiry and toleration, and encouraged the Arabian

sages to suspect that their caliph was a tyrant, and their

prophet an impostor. 72 The instinct of superstition was alarmed

by the introduction even of the abstract sciences; and the more

rigid doctors of the law condemned the rash and pernicious

curiosity of Almamon. 73 To the thirst of martyrdom, the vision

of paradise, and the belief of predestination, we must ascribe

the invincible enthusiasm of the prince and people. And the sword

of the Saracens became less formidable when their youth was drawn

away from the camp to the college, when the armies of the

faithful presumed to read and to reflect. Yet the foolish vanity

of the Greeks was jealous of their studies, and reluctantly

imparted the sacred fire to the Barbarians of the East. 74

70 (return) [ Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 26, 148) mentions a

Syriac version of Homer’s two poems, by Theophilus, a Christian

Maronite of Mount Libanus, who professed astronomy at Roha or

Edessa towards the end of the viiith century. His work would be a

literary curiosity. I have read somewhere, but I do not believe,

that Plutarch’s Lives were translated into Turkish for the use of

Mahomet the Second.]

71 (return) [ I have perused, with much pleasure, Sir William

Jones’s Latin Commentary on Asiatic Poetry, (London, 1774, in

octavo,) which was composed in the youth of that wonderful

linguist. At present, in the maturity of his taste and judgment,

he would perhaps abate of the fervent, and even partial, praise

which he has bestowed on the Orientals.]

72 (return) [ Among the Arabian philosophers, Averroes has been

accused of despising the religions of the Jews, the Christians,

and the Mahometans, (see his article in Bayle’s Dictionary.) Each

of these sects would agree, that in two instances out of three,

his contempt was reasonable.]

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

74 (return) [ Cedrenus, p. 548, who relates how manfully the

emperor refused a mathematician to the instances and offers of

the caliph Almamon. This absurd scruple is expressed almost in

the same words by the continuator of Theophanes, (Scriptores post

Theophanem, p. 118.)]

In the bloody conflict of the Ommiades and Abbassides, the Greeks

had stolen the opportunity of avenging their wrongs and enlarging

their limits. But a severe retribution was exacted by Mohadi, the

third caliph of the new dynasty, who seized, in his turn, the

favorable opportunity, while a woman and a child, Irene and

Constantine, were seated on the Byzantine throne. An army of

ninety-five thousand Persians and Arabs was sent from the Tigris

to the Thracian Bosphorus, under the command of Harun, 75 or

Aaron, the second son of the commander of the faithful. His

encampment on the opposite heights of Chrysopolis, or Scutari,

informed Irene, in her palace of Constantinople, of the loss of

her troops and provinces. With the consent or connivance of their

sovereign, her ministers subscribed an ignominious peace; and the

exchange of some royal gifts could not disguise the annual

tribute of seventy thousand dinars of gold, which was imposed on

the Roman empire. The Saracens had too rashly advanced into the

midst of a distant and hostile land: their retreat was solicited

by the promise of faithful guides and plentiful markets; and not

a Greek had courage to whisper, that their weary forces might be

surrounded and destroyed in their necessary passage between a

slippery mountain and the River Sangarius. Five years after this

expedition, Harun ascended the throne of his father and his elder

brother; the most powerful and vigorous monarch of his race,

illustrious in the West, as the ally of Charlemagne, and familiar

to the most childish readers, as the perpetual hero of the

Arabian tales. His title to the name of Al Rashid (the Just) is

sullied by the extirpation of the generous, perhaps the innocent,

Barmecides; yet he could listen to the complaint of a poor widow

who had been pillaged by his troops, and who dared, in a passage

of the Koran, to threaten the inattentive despot with the

judgment of God and posterity. His court was adorned with luxury

and science; but, in a reign of three-and-twenty years, Harun

repeatedly visited his provinces from Chorasan to Egypt; nine

times he performed the pilgrimage of Mecca; eight times he

invaded the territories of the Romans; and as often as they

declined the payment of the tribute, they were taught to feel

that a month of depredation was more costly than a year of

submission. But when the unnatural mother of Constantine was

deposed and banished, her successor, Nicephorus, resolved to

obliterate this badge of servitude and disgrace. The epistle of

the emperor to the caliph was pointed with an allusion to the

game of chess, which had already spread from Persia to Greece.

“The queen (he spoke of Irene) considered you as a rook, and

herself as a pawn. That pusillanimous female submitted to pay a

tribute, the double of which she ought to have exacted from the

Barbarians. Restore therefore the fruits of your injustice, or

abide the determination of the sword.” At these words the

ambassadors cast a bundle of swords before the foot of the

throne. The caliph smiled at the menace, and drawing his cimeter,

samsamah, a weapon of historic or fabulous renown, he cut asunder

the feeble arms of the Greeks, without turning the edge, or

endangering the temper, of his blade. He then dictated an epistle

of tremendous brevity: “In the name of the most merciful God,

Harun al Rashid, commander of the faithful, to Nicephorus, the

Roman dog. I have read thy letter, O thou son of an unbelieving

mother. Thou shalt not hear, thou shalt behold, my reply.” It was

written in characters of blood and fire on the plains of Phrygia;

and the warlike celerity of the Arabs could only be checked by

the arts of deceit and the show of repentance.