I should deceive the expectation of the reader, if I passed in silence the
fate of the Alexandrian library, as it is described by the learned
Abulpharagius. The spirit of Amrou was more curious and liberal than that
of his brethren, and in his leisure hours, the Arabian chief was pleased
with the conversation of John, the last disciple of Ammonius, and who
derived the surname of Philoponus from his laborious studies of grammar
and philosophy. 115 Emboldened by this familiar intercourse,
Philoponus presumed to solicit a gift, inestimable in his opinion,
contemptible in that of the Barbarians—the royal library, which
alone, among the spoils of Alexandria, had not been appropriated by the
visit and the seal of the conqueror.
Amrou was inclined to gratify the wish of the grammarian, but his rigid
integrity refused to alienate the minutest object without the consent of
the caliph; and the well-known answer of Omar was inspired by the
ignorance of a fanatic. “If these writings of the Greeks agree with the
book of God, they are useless, and need not be preserved: if they
disagree, they are pernicious, and ought to be destroyed.” The sentence
was executed with blind obedience: the volumes of paper or parchment were
distributed to the four thousand baths of the city; and such was their
incredible multitude, that six months were barely sufficient for the
consumption of this precious fuel. Since the Dynasties of Abulpharagius 116
have been given to the world in a Latin version, the tale has been
repeatedly transcribed; and every scholar, with pious indignation, has
deplored the irreparable shipwreck of the learning, the arts, and the
genius, of antiquity. For my own part, I am strongly tempted to deny both
the fact and the consequences. 1161 The fact is
indeed marvellous. “Read and wonder!” says the historian himself: and the
solitary report of a stranger who wrote at the end of six hundred years on
the confines of Media, is overbalanced by the silence of two annalist of a
more early date, both Christians, both natives of Egypt, and the most
ancient of whom, the patriarch Eutychius, has amply described the conquest
of Alexandria. 117 The rigid sentence of Omar is repugnant to
the sound and orthodox precept of the Mahometan casuists they expressly
declare, that the religious books of the Jews and Christians, which are
acquired by the right of war, should never be committed to the flames; and
that the works of profane science, historians or poets, physicians or
philosophers, may be lawfully applied to the use of the faithful. 118
A more destructive zeal may perhaps be attributed to the first successors
of Mahomet; yet in this instance, the conflagration would have speedily
expired in the deficiency of materials. I should not recapitulate the
disasters of the Alexandrian library, the involuntary flame that was
kindled by Caesar in his own defence, 119 or the mischievous
bigotry of the Christians, who studied to destroy the monuments of
idolatry. 120 But if we gradually descend from the age of
the Antonines to that of Theodosius, we shall learn from a chain of
contemporary witnesses, that the royal palace and the temple of Serapis no
longer contained the four, or the seven, hundred thousand volumes, which
had been assembled by the curiosity and magnificence of the Ptolemies. 121
Perhaps the church and seat of the patriarchs might be enriched with a
repository of books; but if the ponderous mass of Arian and Monophysite
controversy were indeed consumed in the public baths, 122
a philosopher may allow, with a smile, that it was ultimately devoted to
the benefit of mankind. I sincerely regret the more valuable libraries
which have been involved in the ruin of the Roman empire; but when I
seriously compute the lapse of ages, the waste of ignorance, and the
calamities of war, our treasures, rather than our losses, are the objects
of my surprise. Many curious and interesting facts are buried in oblivion:
the three great historians of Rome have been transmitted to our hands in a
mutilated state, and we are deprived of many pleasing compositions of the
lyric, iambic, and dramatic poetry of the Greeks. Yet we should gratefully
remember, that the mischances of time and accident have spared the classic
works to which the suffrage of antiquity 123 had adjudged the
first place of genius and glory: the teachers of ancient knowledge, who
are still extant, had perused and compared the writings of their
predecessors; 124 nor can it fairly be presumed that any
important truth, any useful discovery in art or nature, has been snatched
away from the curiosity of modern ages.
In the administration of Egypt, 125 Amrou balanced the
demands of justice and policy; the interest of the people of the law, who
were defended by God; and of the people of the alliance, who were
protected by man. In the recent tumult of conquest and deliverance, the
tongue of the Copts and the sword of the Arabs were most adverse to the
tranquillity of the province. To the former, Amrou declared, that faction
and falsehood would be doubly chastised; by the punishment of the
accusers, whom he should detest as his personal enemies, and by the
promotion of their innocent brethren, whom their envy had labored to
injure and supplant. He excited the latter by the motives of religion and
honor to sustain the dignity of their character, to endear themselves by a
modest and temperate conduct to God and the caliph, to spare and protect a
people who had trusted to their faith, and to content themselves with the
legitimate and splendid rewards of their victory. In the management of the
revenue, he disapproved the simple but oppressive mode of a capitation,
and preferred with reason a proportion of taxes deducted on every branch
from the clear profits of agriculture and commerce. A third part of the
tribute was appropriated to the annual repairs of the dikes and canals, so
essential to the public welfare. Under his administration, the fertility
of Egypt supplied the dearth of Arabia; and a string of camels, laden with
corn and provisions, covered almost without an interval the long road from
Memphis to Medina. 126 But the genius of Amrou soon renewed the
maritime communication which had been attempted or achieved by the
Pharaohs the Ptolemies, or the Caesars; and a canal, at least eighty miles
in length, was opened from the Nile to the Red Sea. 1261
This inland navigation, which would have joined the Mediterranean and the
Indian Ocean, was soon discontinued as useless and dangerous: the throne
was removed from Medina to Damascus, and the Grecian fleets might have
explored a passage to the holy cities of Arabia. 127
Of his new conquest, the caliph Omar had an imperfect knowledge from the
voice of fame and the legends of the Koran. He requested that his
lieutenant would place before his eyes the realm of Pharaoh and the
Amalekites; and the answer of Amrou exhibits a lively and not unfaithful
picture of that singular country. 128 “O commander of
the faithful, Egypt is a compound of black earth and green plants, between
a pulverized mountain and a red sand. The distance from Syene to the sea
is a month’s journey for a horseman. Along the valley descends a river, on
which the blessing of the Most High reposes both in the evening and
morning, and which rises and falls with the revolutions of the sun and
moon. When the annual dispensation of Providence unlocks the springs and
fountains that nourish the earth, the Nile rolls his swelling and sounding
waters through the realm of Egypt: the fields are overspread by the
salutary flood; and the villages communicate with each other in their
painted barks. The retreat of the inundation deposits a fertilizing mud
for the reception of the various seeds: the crowds of husbandmen who
blacken the land may be compared to a swarm of industrious ants; and their
native indolence is quickened by the lash of the task-master, and the
promise of the flowers and fruits of a plentiful increase. Their hope is
seldom deceived; but the riches which they extract from the wheat, the
barley, and the rice, the legumes, the fruit-trees, and the cattle, are
unequally shared between those who labor and those who possess. According
to the vicissitudes of the seasons, the face of the country is adorned
with a silver wave, a verdant emerald, and the deep yellow of a golden
harvest.” 129 Yet this beneficial order is sometimes
interrupted; and the long delay and sudden swell of the river in the first
year of the conquest might afford some color to an edifying fable. It is
said, that the annual sacrifice of a virgin 130 had been
interdicted by the piety of Omar; and that the Nile lay sullen and
inactive in his shallow bed, till the mandate of the caliph was cast into
the obedient stream, which rose in a single night to the height of sixteen
cubits. The admiration of the Arabs for their new conquest encouraged the
license of their romantic spirit. We may read, in the gravest authors,
that Egypt was crowded with twenty thousand cities or villages: 131
that, exclusive of the Greeks and Arabs, the Copts alone were found, on
the assessment, six millions of tributary subjects, 132
or twenty millions of either sex, and of every age: that three hundred
millions of gold or silver were annually paid to the treasury of the
caliphs. 133 Our reason must be startled by these
extravagant assertions; and they will become more palpable, if we assume
the compass and measure the extent of habitable ground: a valley from the
tropic to Memphis seldom broader than twelve miles, and the triangle of
the Delta, a flat surface of two thousand one hundred square leagues,
compose a twelfth part of the magnitude of France. 134
A more accurate research will justify a more reasonable estimate. The
three hundred millions, created by the error of a scribe, are reduced to
the decent revenue of four millions three hundred thousand pieces of gold,
of which nine hundred thousand were consumed by the pay of the soldiers.
135
Two authentic lists, of the present and of the twelfth century, are
circumscribed within the respectable number of two thousand seven hundred
villages and towns. 136 After a long residence at Cairo, a French
consul has ventured to assign about four millions of Mahometans,
Christians, and Jews, for the ample, though not incredible, scope of the
population of Egypt. 137
What wonder in the sultry climes that spread,
Where Nile, redundant o’er his summer bed,
From his broad bosom life and verdure flings,
And broods o’er Egypt with his watery wings:
If with adventurous oar, and ready sail,
The dusky people drive before the gale:
Or on frail floats to neighboring cities ride.
That rise and glitter o’er the ambient tide.
(Mason’s Works and Memoirs of Gray, p. 199, 200.)]
IV. The conquest of Africa, from the Nile to the Atlantic Ocean, 138
was first attempted by the arms of the caliph Othman.
The pious design was approved by the companions of Mahomet and the chiefs
of the tribes; and twenty thousand Arabs marched from Medina, with the
gifts and the blessing of the commander of the faithful. They were joined
in the camp of Memphis by twenty thousand of their countrymen; and the
conduct of the war was intrusted to Abdallah, 139 the son of Said
and the foster-brother of the caliph, who had lately supplanted the
conqueror and lieutenant of Egypt. Yet the favor of the prince, and the
merit of his favorite, could not obliterate the guilt of his apostasy. The
early conversion of Abdallah, and his skilful pen, had recommended him to
the important office of transcribing the sheets of the Koran: he betrayed
his trust, corrupted the text, derided the errors which he had made, and
fled to Mecca to escape the justice, and expose the ignorance, of the
apostle. After the conquest of Mecca, he fell prostrate at the feet of
Mahomet; his tears, and the entreaties of Othman, extorted a reluctant
pardon; but the prophet declared that he had so long hesitated, to allow
time for some zealous disciple to avenge his injury in the blood of the
apostate. With apparent fidelity and effective merit, he served the
religion which it was no longer his interest to desert: his birth and
talents gave him an honorable rank among the Koreish; and, in a nation of
cavalry, Abdallah was renowned as the boldest and most dexterous horseman
of Arabia. At the head of forty thousand Moslems, he advanced from Egypt
into the unknown countries of the West. The sands of Barca might be
impervious to a Roman legion but the Arabs were attended by their faithful
camels; and the natives of the desert beheld without terror the familiar
aspect of the soil and climate. After a painful march, they pitched their
tents before the walls of Tripoli, 140 a maritime city in
which the name, the wealth, and the inhabitants of the province had
gradually centred, and which now maintains the third rank among the states
of Barbary. A reenforcement of Greeks was surprised and cut in pieces on
the sea-shore; but the fortifications of Tripoli resisted the first
assaults; and the Saracens were tempted by the approach of the praefect
Gregory 141 to relinquish the labors of the siege for
the perils and the hopes of a decisive action. If his standard was
followed by one hundred and twenty thousand men, the regular bands of the
empire must have been lost in the naked and disorderly crowd of Africans
and Moors, who formed the strength, or rather the numbers, of his host. He
rejected with indignation the option of the Koran or the tribute; and
during several days the two armies were fiercely engaged from the dawn of
light to the hour of noon, when their fatigue and the excessive heat
compelled them to seek shelter and refreshment in their respective camps.
The daughter of Gregory, a maid of incomparable beauty and spirit, is said
to have fought by his side: from her earliest youth she was trained to
mount on horseback, to draw the bow, and to wield the cimeter; and the
richness of her arms and apparel were conspicuous in the foremost ranks of
the battle. Her hand, with a hundred thousand pieces of gold, was offered
for the head of the Arabian general, and the youths of Africa were excited
by the prospect of the glorious prize. At the pressing solicitation of his
brethren, Abdallah withdrew his person from the field; but the Saracens
were discouraged by the retreat of their leader, and the repetition of
these equal or unsuccessful conflicts.
A noble Arabian, who afterwards became the adversary of Ali, and the
father of a caliph, had signalized his valor in Egypt, and Zobeir 142
was the first who planted the scaling-ladder against the walls of Babylon.
In the African war he was detached from the standard of Abdallah. On the
news of the battle, Zobeir, with twelve companions, cut his way through
the camp of the Greeks, and pressed forwards, without tasting either food
or repose, to partake of the dangers of his brethren. He cast his eyes
round the field: “Where,” said he, “is our general?” “In his tent.” “Is
the tent a station for the general of the Moslems?” Abdallah represented
with a blush the importance of his own life, and the temptation that was
held forth by the Roman praefect. “Retort,” said Zobeir, “on the infidels
their ungenerous attempt. Proclaim through the ranks that the head of
Gregory shall be repaid with his captive daughter, and the equal sum of
one hundred thousand pieces of gold.” To the courage and discretion of
Zobeir the lieutenant of the caliph intrusted the execution of his own
stratagem, which inclined the long-disputed balance in favor of the
Saracens. Supplying by activity and artifice the deficiency of numbers, a
part of their forces lay concealed in their tents, while the remainder
prolonged an irregular skirmish with the enemy till the sun was high in
the heavens. On both sides they retired with fainting steps: their horses
were unbridled, their armor was laid aside, and the hostile nations
prepared, or seemed to prepare, for the refreshment of the evening, and
the encounter of the ensuing day. On a sudden the charge was sounded; the
Arabian camp poured forth a swarm of fresh and intrepid warriors; and the
long line of the Greeks and Africans was surprised, assaulted, overturned,
by new squadrons of the faithful, who, to the eye of fanaticism, might
appear as a band of angels descending from the sky. The praefect himself
was slain by the hand of Zobeir: his daughter, who sought revenge and
death, was surrounded and made prisoner; and the fugitives involved in
their disaster the town of Sufetula, to which they escaped from the sabres
and lances of the Arabs. Sufetula was built one hundred and fifty miles to
the south of Carthage: a gentle declivity is watered by a running stream,
and shaded by a grove of juniper-trees; and, in the ruins of a triumpha
arch, a portico, and three temples of the Corinthian order, curiosity may
yet admire the magnificence of the Romans. 143 After the fall of
this opulent city, the provincials and Barbarians implored on all sides
the mercy of the conqueror. His vanity or his zeal might be flattered by
offers of tribute or professions of faith: but his losses, his fatigues,
and the progress of an epidemical disease, prevented a solid
establishment; and the Saracens, after a campaign of fifteen months,
retreated to the confines of Egypt, with the captives and the wealth of
their African expedition. The caliph’s fifth was granted to a favorite, on
the nominal payment of five hundred thousand pieces of gold; 144
but the state was doubly injured by this fallacious transaction, if each
foot-soldier had shared one thousand, and each horseman three thousand,
pieces, in the real division of the plunder. The author of the death of
Gregory was expected to have claimed the most precious reward of the
victory: from his silence it might be presumed that he had fallen in the
battle, till the tears and exclamations of the praefect’s daughter at the
sight of Zobeir revealed the valor and modesty of that gallant soldier.
The unfortunate virgin was offered, and almost rejected as a slave, by her
father’s murderer, who coolly declared that his sword was consecrated to
the service of religion; and that he labored for a recompense far above
the charms of mortal beauty, or the riches of this transitory life. A
reward congenial to his temper was the honorable commission of announcing
to the caliph Othman the success of his arms. The companions the chiefs,
and the people, were assembled in the mosch of Medina, to hear the
interesting narrative of Zobeir; and as the orator forgot nothing except
the merit of his own counsels and actions, the name of Abdallah was joined
by the Arabians with the heroic names of Caled and Amrou. 145
[A. D. 665-689.] The western conquests of the Saracens were suspended near
twenty years, till their dissensions were composed by the establishment of
the house of Ommiyah; and the caliph Moawiyah was invited by the cries of
the Africans themselves. The successors of Heraclius had been informed of
the tribute which they had been compelled to stipulate with the Arabs; but
instead of being moved to pity and relieve their distress, they imposed,
as an equivalent or a fine, a second tribute of a similar amount. The ears
of the zantine ministers were shut against the complaints of their poverty
and ruin their despair was reduced to prefer the dominion of a single
master; and the extortions of the patriarch of Carthage, who was invested
with civil and military power, provoked the sectaries, and even the
Catholics, of the Roman province to abjure the religion as well as the
authority of their tyrants. The first lieutenant of Moawiyah acquired a
just renown, subdued an important city, defeated an army of thirty
thousand Greeks, swept away fourscore thousand captives, and enriched with
their spoils the bold adventurers of Syria and Egypt.146
But the title of conqueror of Africa is more justly due to his successor
Akbah. He marched from Damascus at the head of ten thousand of the bravest
Arabs; and the genuine force of the Moslems was enlarged by the doubtful
aid and conversion of many thousand Barbarians. It would be difficult, nor
is it necessary, to trace the accurate line of the progress of Akbah. The
interior regions have been peopled by the Orientals with fictitious armies
and imaginary citadels. In the warlike province of Zab or Numidia,
fourscore thousand of the natives might assemble in arms; but the number
of three hundred and sixty towns is incompatible with the ignorance or
decay of husbandry;147 and a circumference of three leagues will
not be justified by the ruins of Erbe or Lambesa, the ancient metropolis
of that inland country. As we approach the seacoast, the well-known titles
of Bugia,148 and Tangier149 define the more
certain limits of the Saracen victories. A remnant of trade still adheres
to the commodious harbour of Bugia, which, in a more prosperous age, is
said to have contained about twenty thousand houses; and the plenty of
iron which is dug from the adjacent mountains might have supplied a braver
people with the instruments of defence. The remote position and venerable
antiquity of Tingi, or Tangier, have been decorated by the Greek and
Arabian fables; but the figurative expressions of the latter, that the
walls were constructed of brass, and that the roofs were covered with gold
and silver, may be interpreted as the emblems of strength and opulence.
The province of Mauritania Tingitana,150 which assumed the
name of the capital had been imperfectly discovered and settled by the
Romans; the five colonies were confined to a narrow pale, and the more
southern parts were seldom explored except by the agents of luxury, who
searched the forests for ivory and the citron wood,151
and the shores of the ocean for the purple shellfish. The fearless Akbah
plunged into the heart of the country, traversed the wilderness in which
his successors erected the splendid capitals of Fez and Morocco,152
and at length penetrated to the verge of the Atlantic and the great
desert. The river Suz descends from the western sides of mount Atlas,
fertilizes, like the Nile, the adjacent soil, and falls into the sea at a
moderate distance from the Canary, or adjacent islands. Its banks were
inhabited by the last of the Moors, a race of savages, without laws, or
discipline, or religion: they were astonished by the strange and
irresistible terrors of the Oriental arms; and as they possessed neither
gold nor silver, the richest spoil was the beauty of the female captives,
some of whom were afterward sold for a thousand pieces of gold. The
career, though not the zeal, of Akbah was checked by the prospect of a
boundless ocean. He spurred his horse into the waves, and raising his eyes
to heaven, exclaimed with the tone of a fanatic: “Great God! if my course
were not stopped by this sea, I would still go on, to the unknown kingdoms
of the West, preaching the unity of thy holy name, and putting to the
sword the rebellious nations who worship another gods than thee.” 153
Yet this Mahometan Alexander, who sighed for new worlds, was unable to
preserve his recent conquests. By the universal defection of the Greeks
and Africans he was recalled from the shores of the Atlantic, and the
surrounding multitudes left him only the resource of an honourable death.
The last scene was dignified by an example of national virtue. An
ambitious chief, who had disputed the command and failed in the attempt,
was led about as a prisoner in the camp of the Arabian general. The
insurgents had trusted to his discontent and revenge; he disdained their
offers and revealed their designs. In the hour of danger, the grateful
Akbah unlocked his fetters, and advised him to retire; he chose to die
under the banner of his rival. Embracing as friends and martyrs, they
unsheathed their scimeters, broke their scabbards, and maintained an
obstinate combat, till they fell by each other’s side on the last of their
slaughtered countrymen. The third general or governor of Africa, Zuheir,
avenged and encountered the fate of his predecessor. He vanquished the
natives in many battles; he was overthrown by a powerful army, which
Constantinople had sent to the relief of Carthage.
[A. D. 670-675.] It had been the frequent practice of the Moorish tribes
to join the invaders, to share the plunder, to profess the faith, and to
revolt in their savage state of independence and idolatry, on the first
retreat or misfortune of the Moslems. The prudence of Akbah had proposed
to found an Arabian colony in the heart of Africa; a citadel that might
curb the levity of the Barbarians, a place of refuge to secure, against
the accidents of war, the wealth and the families of the Saracens. With
this view, and under the modest title of the station of a caravan, he
planted this colony in the fiftieth year of the Hegira. In its present
decay, Cairoan154 still holds the second rank in the kingdom
of Tunis, from which it is distant about fifty miles to the south;155
its inland situation, twelve miles westward of the sea, has protected the
city from the Greek and Sicilian fleets. When the wild beasts and serpents
were extirpated, when the forest, or rather wilderness, was cleared, the
vestiges of a Roman town were discovered in a sandy plain: the vegetable
food of Cairoan is brought from afar; and the scarcity of springs
constrains the inhabitants to collect in cisterns and reservoirs a
precarious supply of rain water. These obstacles were subdued by the
industry of Akbah; he traced a circumference of three thousand and six
hundred paces, which he encompassed with a brick wall; in the space of
five years, the governor’s palace was surrounded with a sufficient number
of private habitations; a spacious mosque was supported by five hundred
columns of granite, porphyry, and Numidian marble; and Cairoan became the
seat of learning as well as of empire. But these were the glories of a
later age; the new colony was shaken by the successive defeats of Akbah
and Zuheir, and the western expeditions were again interrupted by the
civil discord of the Arabian monarchy. The son of the valiant Zobeir
maintained a war of twelve years, a siege of seven months against the
house of Ommiyah. Abdallah was said to unite the fierceness of the lion
with the subtlety of the fox; but if he inherited the courage, he was
devoid of the generosity, of his father.156
[A. D. 692-698.] The return of domestic peace allowed the caliph
Abdalmalek to resume the conquest of Africa; the standard was delivered to
Hassan governor of Egypt, and the revenue of that kingdom, with an army of
forty thousand men, was consecrated to the important service. In the
vicissitudes of war, the interior provinces had been alternately won and
lost by the Saracens. But the seacoast still remained in the hands of the
Greeks; the predecessors of Hassan had respected the name and
fortifications of Carthage; and the number of its defenders was recruited
by the fugitives of Cabes and Tripoli. The arms of Hassan were bolder and
more fortunate: he reduced and pillaged the metropolis of Africa; and the
mention of scaling-ladders may justify the suspicion, that he anticipated,
by a sudden assault, the more tedious operations of a regular siege. But
the joy of the conquerors was soon disturbed by the appearance of the
Christian succours. The praefect and patrician John, a general of
experience and renown, embarked at Constantinople the forces of the
Eastern empire;157 they were joined by the ships and soldiers
of Sicily, and a powerful reinforcement of Goths158 was obtained from
the fears and religion of the Spanish monarch.
The weight of the confederate navy broke the chain that guarded the
entrance of the harbour; the Arabs retired to Cairoan, or Tripoli; the
Christians landed; the citizens hailed the ensign of the cross, and the
winter was idly wasted in the dream of victory or deliverance. But Africa
was irrecoverably lost: the zeal and resentment of the commander of the
faithful159 prepared in the ensuing spring a more
numerous armament by sea and land; and the patrician in his turn was
compelled to evacuate the post and fortifications of Carthage. A second
battle was fought in the neighbourhood of Utica; and the Greeks and Goths
were again defeated; and their timely embarkation saved them from the
sword of Hassan, who had invested the slight and insufficient rampart of
their camp. Whatever yet remained of Carthage was delivered to the flames,
and the colony of Dido160 and Cesar lay desolate above two hundred
years, till a part, perhaps a twentieth, of the old circumference was
repeopled by the first of the Fatimite caliphs. In the beginning of the
sixteenth century, the second capital of the West was represented by a
mosque, a college without students, twenty-five or thirty shops, and the
huts of five hundred peasants, who, in their abject poverty, displayed the
arrogance of the Punic senators. Even that paltry village was swept away
by the Spaniards whom Charles the Fifth had stationed in the fortress of
the Goletta. The ruins of Carthage have perished; and the place might be
unknown if some broken arches of an aqueduct did not guide the footsteps
of the inquisitive traveller.161
[A. D. 698-709.] The Greeks were expelled, but the Arabians were not yet
masters of the country. In the interior provinces the Moors or Berbers,162
so feeble under the first Cesars, so formidable to the Byzantine princes,
maintained a disorderly resistance to the religion and power of the
successors of Mahomet. Under the standard of their queen Cahina, the
independent tribes acquired some degree of union and discipline; and as
the Moors respected in their females the character of a prophetess, they
attacked the invaders with an enthusiasm similar to their own. The veteran
bands of Hassan were inadequate to the defence of Africa: the conquests of
an age were lost in a single day; and the Arabian chief, overwhelmed by
the torrent, retired to the confines of Egypt, and expected, five years,
the promised succours of the caliph. After the retreat of the Saracens,
the victorious prophetess assembled the Moorish chiefs, and recommended a
measure of strange and savage policy. “Our cities,” said she, “and the
gold and silver which they contain, perpetually attract the arms of the
Arabs. These vile metals are not the objects of OUR ambition; we content
ourselves with the simple productions of the earth. Let us destroy these
cities; let us bury in their ruins those pernicious treasures; and when
the avarice of our foes shall be destitute of temptation, perhaps they
will cease to disturb the tranquillity of a warlike people.” The proposal
was accepted with unanimous applause. From Tangier to Tripoli the
buildings, or at least the fortifications, were demolished, the
fruit-trees were cut down, the means of subsistence were extirpated, a
fertile and populous garden was changed into a desert, and the historians
of a more recent period could discern the frequent traces of the
prosperity and devastation of their ancestors.
Such is the tale of the modern Arabians. Yet I strongly suspect that their
ignorance of antiquity, the love of the marvellous, and the fashion of
extolling the philosophy of Barbarians, has induced them to describe, as
one voluntary act, the calamities of three hundred years since the first
fury of the Donatists and Vandals. In the progress of the revolt, Cahina
had most probably contributed her share of destruction; and the alarm of
universal ruin might terrify and alienate the cities that had reluctantly
yielded to her unworthy yoke. They no longer hoped, perhaps they no longer
wished, the return of their Byzantine sovereigns: their present servitude
was not alleviated by the benefits of order and justice; and the most
zealous Catholic must prefer the imperfect truths of the Koran to the
blind and rude idolatry of the Moors. The general of the Saracens was
again received as the saviour of the province; the friends of civil
society conspired against the savages of the land; and the royal
prophetess was slain in the first battle which overturned the baseless
fabric of her superstition and empire. The same spirit revived under the
successor of Hassan; it was finally quelled by the activity of Musa and
his two sons; but the number of the rebels may be presumed from that of
three hundred thousand captives; sixty thousand of whom, the caliph’s
fifth, were sold for the profit of thee public treasury. Thirty thousand
of the Barbarian youth were enlisted in the troops; and the pious labours
of Musa to inculcate the knowledge and practice of the Koran, accustomed
the Africans to obey the apostle of God and the commander of the faithful.
In their climate and government, their diet and habitation, the wandering
Moors resembled the Bedoweens of the desert. With the religion, they were
proud to adopt the language, name, and origin of Arabs: the blood of the
strangers and natives was insensibly mingled; and from the Euphrates to
the Atlantic the same nation might seem to be diffused over the sandy
plains of Asia and Africa. Yet I will not deny that fifty thousand tents
of pure Arabians might be transported over the Nile, and scattered through
the Lybian desert: and I am not ignorant that five of the Moorish tribes
still retain their barbarous idiom, with the appellation and character of
white Africans.163
[A. D. 709.] V. In the progress of conquest from the north and south, the
Goths and the Saracens encountered each other on the confines of Europe
and Africa. In the opinion of the latter, the difference of religion is a
reasonable ground of enmity and warfare.164 As early as the
time of Othman165 their piratical squadrons had ravaged the
coast of Andalusia;166 nor had they forgotten the relief of
Carthage by the Gothic succours. In that age, as well as in the present,
the kings of Spain were possessed of the fortress of Ceuta; one of the
columns of Hercules, which is divided by a narrow strait from the opposite
pillar or point of Europe. A small portion of Mauritania was still wanting
to the African conquest; but Musa, in the pride of victory, was repulsed
from the walls of Ceuta, by the vigilance and courage of count Julian, the
general of the Goths. From his disappointment and perplexity, Musa was
relieved by an unexpected message of the Christian chief, who offered his
place, his person, and his sword, to the successors of Mahomet, and
solicited the disgraceful honour of introducing their arms into the heart
of Spain.167
If we inquire into the cause of this treachery, the Spaniards will repeat
the popular story of his daughter Cava;168 of a virgin who
was seduced, or ravished, by her sovereign; of a father who sacrificed his
religion and country to the thirst of revenge. The passions of princes
have often been licentious and destructive; but this well-known tale,
romantic in itself, is indifferently supported by external evidence; and
the history of Spain will suggest some motives of interest and policy more
congenial to the breast of a veteran statesman.169 After the decease
or deposition of Witiza, his two sons were supplanted by the ambition of
Roderic, a noble Goth, whose father, the duke or governor of a province,
had fallen a victim to the preceding tyranny. The monarchy was still
elective; but the sons of Witiza, educated on the steps of the throne,
were impatient of a private station. Their resentment was the more
dangerous, as it was varnished with the dissimulation of courts: their
followers were excited by the remembrance of favours and the promise of a
revolution: and their uncle Oppas, archbishop of Toledo and Seville, was
the first person in the church, and the second in the state. It is
probable that Julian was involved in the disgrace of the unsuccessful
faction, that he had little to hope and much to fear from the new reign;
and that the imprudent king could not forget or forgive the injuries which
Roderic and his family had sustained. The merit and influence of the count
rendered him a useful or formidable subject: his estates were ample, his
followers bold and numerous, and it was too fatally shown that, by his
Andalusian and Mauritanian commands, he held in his hands the keys of the
Spanish monarchy. Too feeble, however, to meet his sovereign in arms, he
sought the aid of a foreign power; and his rash invitation of the Moors
and Arabs produced the calamities of eight hundred years. In his epistles,
or in a personal interview, he revealed the wealth and nakedness of his
country; the weakness of an unpopular prince; the degeneracy of an
effeminate people. The Goths were no longer the victorious Barbarians, who
had humbled the pride of Rome, despoiled the queen of nations, and
penetrated from the Danube to the Atlantic ocean. Secluded from the world
by the Pyrenean mountains, the successors of Alaric had slumbered in a
long peace: the walls of the city were mouldered into dust: the youth had
abandoned the exercise of arms; and the presumption of their ancient
renown would expose them in a field of battle to the first assault of the
invaders. The ambitious Saracen was fired by the ease and importance of
the attempt; but the execution was delayed till he had consulted the
commander of the faithful; and his messenger returned with the permission
of Walid to annex the unknown kingdoms of the West to the religion and
throne of the caliphs. In his residence of Tangier, Musa, with secrecy and
caution, continued his correspondence and hastened his preparations. But
the remorse of the conspirators was soothed by the fallacious assurance
that he should content himself with the glory and spoil, without aspiring
to establish the Moslems beyond the sea that separates Africa from Europe.170
[A. D. 710.] Before Musa would trust an army of the faithful to the
traitors and infidels of a foreign land, he made a less dangerous trial of
their strength and veracity. One hundred Arabs and four hundred Africans,
passed over, in four vessels, from Tangier or Ceuta; the place of their
descent on the opposite shore of the strait, is marked by the name of
Tarif their chief; and the date of this memorable event171
is fixed to the month of Ramandan, of the ninety-first year of the Hegira,
to the month of July, seven hundred and forty-eight years from the Spanish
era of Cesar,172 seven hundred and ten after the birth of
Christ. From their first station, they marched eighteen miles through a
hilly country to the castle and town of Julian;173 on which (it is
still called Algezire) they bestowed the name of the Green Island, from a
verdant cape that advances into the sea. Their hospitable entertainment,
the Christians who joined their standard, their inroad into a fertile and
unguarded province, the richness of their spoil and the safety of their
return, announced to their brethren the most favourable omens of victory.
In the ensuing spring, five thousand veterans and volunteers were embarked
under the command of Tarik, a dauntless and skilful soldier, who surpassed
the expectation of his chief; and the necessary transports were provided
by the industry of their too faithful ally. The Saracens landed174
at the pillar or point of Europe; the corrupt and familiar appellation of
Gibraltar (Gebel el Tarik) describes the mountain of Tarik; and the
intrenchments of his camp were the first outline of those fortifications,
which, in the hands of our countrymen, have resisted the art and power of
the house of Bourbon. The adjacent governors informed the court of Toledo
of the descent and progress of the Arabs; and the defeat of his lieutenant
Edeco, who had been commanded to seize and bind the presumptuous
strangers, admonished Roderic of the magnitude of the danger. At the royal
summons, the dukes and counts, the bishops and nobles of the Gothic
monarchy assembled at the head of their followers; and the title of king
of the Romans, which is employed by an Arabic historian, may be excused by
the close affinity of language, religion, and manners, between the nations
of Spain. His army consisted of ninety or a hundred thousand men: a
formidable power, if their fidelity and discipline had been adequate to
their numbers. The troops of Tarik had been augmented to twelve thousand
Saracens; but the Christian malcontents were attracted by the influence
of Julian, and a crowd of Africans most greedily tasted the temporal
blessings of the Koran. In the neighbourhood of Cadiz, the town of Xeres175
has been illustrated by the encounter which determined the fate of the
kingdom; the stream of the Guadalete, which falls into the bay, divided
the two camps, and marked the advancing and retreating skirmishes of three
successive and bloody days.
On the fourth day, the two armies joined a more serious and decisive
issue; but Alaric would have blushed at the sight of his unworthy
successor, sustaining on his head a diadem of pearls, encumbered with a
flowing robe of gold and silken embroidery, and reclining on a litter, or
car of ivory, drawn by two white mules. Notwithstanding the valour of the
Saracens, they fainted under the weight of multitudes, and the plain of
Xeres was overspread with sixteen thousand of their dead bodies. “My
brethren,” said Tarik to his surviving companions, “the enemy is before
you, the sea is behind; whither would ye fly? Follow your general I am
resolved either to lose my life, or to trample on the prostrate king of
the Romans.” Besides the resource of despair, he confided in the secret
correspondence and nocturnal interviews of count Julian, with the sons and
the brother of Witiza. The two princes and the archbishop of Toledo
occupied the most important post; their well-timed defection broke the
ranks of the Christians; each warrior was prompted by fear or suspicion to
consult his personal safety; and the remains of the Gothic army were
scattered or destroyed to the flight and pursuit of the three following
days. Amidst the general disorder, Roderic started from his car, and
mounted Orelia, the fleetest of his Horses; but he escaped from a
soldier’s death to perish more ignobly in the waters of the Boetis or
Guadalquiver. His diadem, his robes, and his courser, were found on the
bank; but as the body of the Gothic prince was lost in the waves, the
pride and ignorance of the caliph must have been gratified with some
meaner head, which was exposed in triumph before the palace of Damascus.
“And such,” continues a valiant historian of the Arabs, “is the fate of
those kings who withdraw themselves from a field of battle.” 176
[A. D. 711.] Count Julian had plunged so deep into guilt and infamy, that
his only hope was in the ruin of his country. After the battle of Xeres he
recommended the most effectual measures to the victorious Saracens. “The
king of the Goths is slain; their princes are fled before you, the army is
routed, the nation is astonished. Secure with sufficient detachments the
cities of Boetica; but in person and without delay, march to the royal
city of Toledo, and allow not the distracted Christians either time or
tranquillity for the election of a new monarch.” Tarik listened to his
advice. A Roman captive and proselyte, who had been enfranchised by the
caliph himself, assaulted Cordova with seven hundred horse: he swam the
river, surprised the town, and drove the Christians into the great church,
where they defended themselves above three months. Another detachment
reduced the seacoast of Boetica, which in the last period of the Moorish
power has comprised in a narrow space the populous kingdom of Grenada. The
march of Tarik from the Boetis to the Tagus,177 was directed
through the Sierra Morena, that separates Andalusia and Castille, till he
appeared in arms under the walls of Toledo.178 The most zealous
of the Catholics had escaped with the relics of their saints; and if the
gates were shut, it was only till the victor had subscribed a fair and
reasonable capitulation. The voluntary exiles were allowed to depart with
their effects; seven churches were appropriated to the Christian worship;
the archbishop and his clergy were at liberty to exercise their functions,
the monks to practise or neglect their penance; and the Goths and Romans
were left in all civil or criminal cases to the subordinate jurisdiction
of their own laws and magistrates. But if the justice of Tarik protected
the Christians, his gratitude and policy rewarded the Jews, to whose
secret or open aid he was indebted for his most important acquisitions.
Persecuted by the kings and synods of Spain, who had often pressed the
alternative of banishment or baptism, that outcast nation embraced the
moment of revenge: the comparison of their past and present state was the
pledge of their fidelity; and the alliance between the disciples of Moses
and those of Mahomet, was maintained till the final era of their common
expulsion.
From the royal seat of Toledo, the Arabian leader spread his conquests to
the north, over the modern realms of Castille and Leon; but it is heedless
to enumerate the cities that yielded on his approach, or again to describe
the table of emerald,179 transported from the East by the Romans,
acquired by the Goths among the spoils of Rome, and presented by the Arabs
to the throne of Damascus. Beyond the Asturian mountains, the maritime
town of Gijon was the term180 of the lieutenant
of Musa, who had performed with the speed of a traveller, his victorious
march of seven hundred miles, from the rock of Gibraltar to the bay of
Biscay. The failure of land compelled him to retreat: and he was recalled
to Toledo, to excuse his presumption of subduing a kingdom in the absence
of his general. Spain, which in a more savage and disorderly state, had
resisted, two hundred years, the arms of the Romans, was overrun in a few
months by those of the Saracens; and such was the eagerness of submission
and treaty, that the governor of Cordova is recorded as the only chief who
fell, without conditions, a prisoner into their hands. The cause of the
Goths had been irrevocably judged in the field of Xeres; and in the
national dismay, each part of the monarchy declined a contest with the
antagonist who had vanquished the united strength of the whole.181
That strength had been wasted by two successive seasons of famine and
pestilence; and the governors, who were impatient to surrender, might
exaggerate the difficulty of collecting the provisions of a siege. To
disarm the Christians, superstition likewise contributed her terrors: and
the subtle Arab encouraged the report of dreams, omens, and prophecies,
and of the portraits of the destined conquerors of Spain, that were
discovered on the breaking open an apartment of the royal palace. Yet a
spark of the vital flame was still alive; some invincible fugitives
preferred a life of poverty and freedom in the Asturian valleys; the hardy
mountaineers repulsed the slaves of the caliph; and the sword of Pelagius
has been transformed into the sceptre of the Catholic kings.182