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The Project Gutenberg Etext of History Of The Decline And Fall Of The
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#2 in our format series by Edward Gibbon, Esq. With notes by the Rev. H.
H. Milman


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History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire Volume 5


by Edward Gibbon, Esq. With notes by the Rev. H. H. Milman

April, 1997  [Etext # 894]


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This is volume five of the six volumes of Edward Gibbon's History Of The
Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire. If you find any errors please feel
free to notify me of them. I want to make this the best etext edition
possible for both scholars and the general public. [e-mail] and
[e-mail] are my email addresses for now. Please feel free to
send me your comments and I hope you enjoy this.

David Reed


History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire

Edward Gibbon, Esq.  With notes by the Rev. H. H. Milman  Vol. 5  1782
(Written), 1845 (Revised)

Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.

Part I.

Introduction, Worship, And Persecution Of Images. -- Revolt Of Italy And
Rome. -- Temporal Dominion Of The Popes. -- Conquest Of Italy By The
Franks. -- Establishment Of Images. -- Character And Coronation Of
Charlemagne. -- Restoration And Decay Of The Roman Empire In The West.
-- Independence Of Italy. -- Constitution Of The Germanic Body.

In the connection of the church and state, I have considered the former
as subservient only, and relative, to the latter; a salutary maxim, if
in fact, as well as in narrative, it had ever been held sacred. The
Oriental philosophy of the Gnostics, the dark abyss of predestination
and grace, and the strange transformation of the Eucharist from the sign
to the substance of Christ's body,  I have purposely abandoned to the
curiosity of speculative divines. But I have reviewed, with diligence
and pleasure, the objects of ecclesiastical history, by which the
decline and fall of the Roman empire were materially affected, the
propagation of Christianity, the constitution of the Catholic church,
the ruin of Paganism, and the sects that arose from the mysterious
controversies concerning the Trinity and incarnation. At the head of
this class, we may justly rank the worship of images, so fiercely
disputed in the eighth and ninth centuries; since a question of popular
superstition produced the revolt of Italy, the temporal power of the
popes, and the restoration of the Roman empire in the West.

The primitive Christians were possessed with an unconquerable repugnance
to the use and abuse of images; and this aversion may be ascribed to
their descent from the Jews, and their enmity to the Greeks. The Mosaic
law had severely proscribed all representations of the Deity; and that
precept was firmly established in the principles and practice of the
chosen people. The wit of the Christian apologists was pointed against
the foolish idolaters, who bowed before the workmanship of their own
hands; the images of brass and marble, which, had theybeen endowed with
sense and motion, should have started rather from the pedestal to adore
the creative powers of the artist.  Perhaps some recent and imperfect
converts of the Gnostic tribe might crown the statues of Christ and St.
Paul with the profane honors which they paid to those of Aristotle and
Pythagoras;  but the public religion of the Catholics was uniformly
simple and spiritual; and the first notice of the use of pictures is in
the censure of the council of Illiberis, three hundred years after the
Christian æra. Under the successors of Constantine, in the peace and
luxury of the triumphant church, the more prudent bishops condescended
to indulge a visible superstition, for the benefit of the multitude;
and, after the ruin of Paganism, they were no longer restrained by the
apprehension of an odious parallel. The first introduction of a symbolic
worship was in the veneration of the cross, and of relics. The saints
and martyrs, whose intercession was implored, were seated on the right
hand if God; but the gracious and often supernatural favors, which, in
the popular belief, were showered round their tomb, conveyed an
unquestionable sanction of the devout pilgrims, who visited, and
touched, and kissed these lifeless remains, the memorials of their
merits and sufferings.  But a memorial, more interesting than the skull
or the sandals of a departed worthy, is the faithful copy of his person
and features, delineated by the arts of painting or sculpture. In every
age, such copies, so congenial to human feelings, have been cherished by
the zeal of private friendship, or public esteem: the images of the
Roman emperors were adored with civil, and almost religious, honors; a
reverence less ostentatious, but more sincere, was applied to the
statues of sages and patriots; and these profane virtues, these splendid
sins, disappeared in the presence of the holy men, who had died for
their celestial and everlasting country. At first, the experiment was
made with caution and scruple; and the venerable pictures were
discreetly allowed to instruct the ignorant, to awaken the cold, and to
gratify the prejudices of the heathen proselytes. By a slow though
inevitable progression, the honors of the original were transferred to
the copy: the devout Christian prayed before the image of a saint; and
the Pagan rites of genuflection, luminaries, and incense, again stole
into the Catholic church. The scruples of reason, or piety, were
silenced by the strong evidence of visions and miracles; and the
pictures which speak, and move, and bleed, must be endowed with a divine
energy, and may be considered as the proper objects of religious
adoration. The most audacious pencil might tremble in the rash attempt
of defining, by forms and colors, the infinite Spirit, the eternal
Father, who pervades and sustains the universe.  But the superstitious
mind was more easily reconciled to paint and to worship the angels, and,
above all, the Son of God, under the human shape, which, on earth, they
have condescended to assume. The second person of the Trinity had been
clothed with a real and mortal body; but that body had ascended into
heaven: and, had not some similitude been presented to the eyes of his
disciples, the spiritual worship of Christ might have been obliterated
by the visible relics and representations of the saints. A similar
indulgence was requisite and propitious for the Virgin Mary: the place
of her burial was unknown; and the assumption of her soul and body into
heaven was adopted by the credulity of the Greeks and Latins. The use,
and even the worship, of images was firmly established before the end of
the sixth century: they were fondly cherished by the warm imagination of
the Greeks and Asiatics: the Pantheon and Vatican were adorned with the
emblems of a new superstition; but this semblance of idolatry was more
coldly entertained by the rude Barbarians and the Arian clergy of the
West. The bolder forms of sculpture, in brass or marble, which peopled
the temples of antiquity, were offensive to the fancy or conscience of
the Christian Greeks: and a smooth surface of colors has ever been
esteemed a more decent and harmless mode of imitation.

The merit and effect of a copy depends on its resemblance with the
original; but the primitive Christians were ignorant of the genuine
features of the Son of God, his mother, and his apostles: the statue of
Christ at Paneas in Palestine  was more probably that of some temporal
savior; the Gnostics and their profane monuments were reprobated; and
the fancy of the Christian artists could only be guided by the
clandestine imitation of some heathen model. In this distress, a bold
and dexterous invention assured at once the likeness of the image and
the innocence of the worship. A new super structure of fable was raised
on the popular basis of a Syrian legend, on the correspondence of Christ
and Abgarus, so famous in the days of Eusebius, so reluctantly deserted
by our modern advocates. The bishop of Cæsarea  records the epistle,
but he most strangely forgets the picture of Christ;  the perfect
impression of his face on a linen, with which he gratified the faith of
the royal stranger who had invoked his healing power, and offered the
strong city of Edessa to protect him against the malice of the Jews. The
ignorance of the primitive church is explained by the long imprisonment
of the image in a niche of the wall, from whence, after an oblivion of
five hundred years, it was released by some prudent bishop, and
seasonably presented to the devotion of the times. Its first and most
glorious exploit was the deliverance of the city from the arms of
Chosroes Nushirvan; and it was soon revered as a pledge of the divine
promise, that Edessa should never be taken by a foreign enemy. It is
true, indeed, that the text of Procopius ascribes the double deliverance
of Edessa to the wealth and valor of her citizens, who purchased the
absence and repelled the assaults of the Persian monarch. He was
ignorant, the profane historian, of the testimony which he is compelled
to deliver in the ecclesiastical page of Evagrius, that the Palladium
was exposed on the rampart, and that the water which had been sprinkled
on the holy face, instead of quenching, added new fuel to the flames of
the besieged. After this important service, the image of Edessa was
preserved with respect and gratitude; and if the Armenians rejected the
legend, the more credulous Greeks adored the similitude, which was not
the work of any mortal pencil, but the immediate creation of the divine
original. The style and sentiments of a Byzantine hymn will declare how
far their worship was removed from the grossest idolatry. "How can we
with mortal eyes contemplate this image, whose celestial splendor the
host of heaven presumes not to behold? He who dwells in heaven,
condescends this day to visit us by his venerable image; He who is
seated on the cherubim, visits us this day by a picture, which the
Father has delineated with his immaculate hand, which he has formed in
an ineffable manner, and which we sanctify by adoring it with fear and
love." Before the end of the sixth century, these images, made without
hands, (in Greek it is a single word, ) were propagated in the camps and
cities of the Eastern empire:  they were the objects of worship, and the
instruments of miracles; and in the hour of danger or tumult, their
venerable presence could revive the hope, rekindle the courage, or
repress the fury, of the Roman legions. Of these pictures, the far
greater part, the transcripts of a human pencil, could only pretend to a
secondary likeness and improper title: but there were some of higher
descent, who derived their resemblance from an immediate contact with
the original, endowed, for that purpose, with a miraculous and prolific
virtue. The most ambitious aspired from a filial to a fraternal relation
with the image of Edessa; and such is the veronicaof Rome, or Spain, or
Jerusalem, which Christ in his agony and bloody sweat applied to his
face, and delivered to a holy matron. The fruitful precedent was
speedily transferred to the Virgin Mary, and the saints and martyrs. In
the church of Diospolis, in Palestine, the features of the Mother of God
were deeply inscribed in a marble column; the East and West have been
decorated by the pencil of St. Luke; and the Evangelist, who was perhaps
a physician, has been forced to exercise the occupation of a painter, so
profane and odious in the eyes of the primitive Christians. The Olympian
Jove, created by the muse of Homer and the chisel of Phidias, might
inspire a philosophic mind with momentary devotion; but these Catholic
images were faintly and flatly delineated by monkish artists in the last
degeneracy of taste and genius.

The worship of images had stolen into the church by insensible degrees,
and each petty step was pleasing to the superstitious mind, as
productive of comfort, and innocent of sin. But in the beginning of the
eighth century, in the full magnitude of the abuse, the more timorous
Greeks were awakened by an apprehension, that under the mask of
Christianity, they had restored the religion of their fathers: they
heard, with grief and impatience, the name of idolaters; the incessant
charge of the Jews and Mahometans,  who derived from the Law and the
Koran an immortal hatred to graven images and all relative worship. The
servitude of the Jews might curb their zeal, and depreciate their
authority; but the triumphant Mussulmans, who reigned at Damascus, and
threatened Constantinople, cast into the scale of reproach the
accumulated weight of truth and victory. The cities of Syria, Palestine,
and Egypt had been fortified with the images of Christ, his mother, and
his saints; and each city presumed on the hope or promise of miraculous
defence. In a rapid conquest of ten years, the Arabs subdued those
cities and these images; and, in their opinion, the Lord of Hosts
pronounced a decisive judgment between the adoration and contempt of
these mute and inanimate idols. * For a while Edessa had braved the
Persian assaults; but the chosen city, the spouse of Christ, was
involved in the common ruin; and his divine resemblance became the slave
and trophy of the infidels. After a servitude of three hundred years,
the Palladium was yielded to the devotion of Constantinople, for a
ransom of twelve thousand pounds of silver, the redemption of two
hundred Mussulmans, and a perpetual truce for the territory of Edessa.
In this season of distress and dismay, the eloquence of the monks was
exercised in the defence of images; and they attempted to prove, that
the sin and schism of the greatest part of the Orientals had forfeited
the favor, and annihilated the virtue, of these precious symbols. But
they were now opposed by the murmurs of many simple or rational
Christians, who appealed to the evidence of texts, of facts, and of the
primitive times, and secretly desired the reformation of the church. As
the worship of images had never been established by any general or
positive law, its progress in the Eastern empire had been retarded, or
accelerated, by the differences of men and manners, the local degrees of
refinement, and the personal characters of the bishops. The splendid
devotion was fondly cherished by the levity of the capital, and the
inventive genius of the Byzantine clergy; while the rude and remote
districts of Asia were strangers to this innovation of sacred luxury.
Many large congregations of Gnostics and Arians maintained, after their
conversion, the simple worship which had preceded their separation; and
the Armenians, the most warlike subjects of Rome, were not reconciled,
in the twelfth century, to the sight of images.  These various
denominations of men afforded a fund of prejudice and aversion, of small
account in the villages of Anatolia or Thrace, but which, in the fortune
of a soldier, a prelate, or a eunuch, might be often connected with the
powers of the church and state.

Of such adventurers, the most fortunate was the emperor Leo the Third,
who, from the mountains of Isauria, ascended the throne of the East. He
was ignorant of sacred and profane letters; but his education, his
reason, perhaps his intercourse with the Jews and Arabs, had inspired
the martial peasant with a hatred of images; and it was held to be the
duty of a prince to impose on his subjects the dictates of his own
conscience. But in the outset of an unsettled reign, during ten years of
toil and danger, Leo submitted to the meanness of hypocrisy, bowed
before the idols which he despised, and satisfied the Roman pontiff with
the annual professions of his orthodoxy and zeal. In the reformation of
religion, his first steps were moderate and cautious: he assembled a
great council of senators and bishops, and enacted, with their consent,
that all the images should be removed from the sanctuary and altar to a
proper height in the churches where they might be visible to the eyes,
and inaccessible to the superstition, of the people. But it was
impossible on either side to check the rapid through adverse impulse of
veneration and abhorrence: in their lofty position, the sacred images
still edified their votaries, and reproached the tyrant. He was himself
provoked by resistance and invective; and his own party accused him of
an imperfect discharge of his duty, and urged for his imitation the
example of the Jewish king, who had broken without scruple the brazen
serpent of the temple. By a second edict, he proscribed the existence as
well as the use of religious pictures; the churches of Constantinople
and the provinces were cleansed from idolatry; the images of Christ, the
Virgin, and the saints, were demolished, or a smooth surface of plaster
was spread over the walls of the edifice. The sect of the Iconoclasts
was supported by the zeal and despotism of six emperors, and the East
and West were involved in a noisy conflict of one hundred and twenty
years. It was the design of Leo the Isaurian to pronounce the
condemnation of images as an article of faith, and by the authority of a
general council: but the convocation of such an assembly was reserved
for his son Constantine;  and though it is stigmatized by triumphant
bigotry as a meeting of fools and atheists, their own partial and
mutilated acts betray many symptoms of reason and piety. The debates and
decrees of many provincial synods introduced the summons of the general
council which met in the suburbs of Constantinople, and was composed of
the respectable number of three hundred and thirty-eight bishops of
Europe and Anatolia; for the patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria were
the slaves of the caliph, and the Roman pontiff had withdrawn the
churches of Italy and the West from the communion of the Greeks. This
Byzantine synod assumed the rank and powers of the seventh general
council; yet even this title was a recognition of the six preceding
assemblies, which had laboriously built the structure of the Catholic
faith. After a serious deliberation of six months, the three hundred and
thirty-eight bishops pronounced and subscribed a unanimous decree, that
all visible symbols of Christ, except in the Eucharist, were either
blasphemous or heretical; that image-worship was a corruption of
Christianity and a renewal of Paganism; that all such monuments of
idolatry should be broken or erased; and that those who should refuse to
deliver the objects of their private superstition, were guilty of
disobedience to the authority of the church and of the emperor. In their
loud and loyal acclamations, they celebrated the merits of their
temporal redeemer; and to his zeal and justice they intrusted the
execution of their spiritual censures. At Constantinople, as in the
former councils, the will of the prince was the rule of episcopal faith;
but on this occasion, I am inclined to suspect that a large majority of
the prelates sacrificed their secret conscience to the temptations of
hope and fear. In the long night of superstition, the Christians had
wandered far away from the simplicity of the gospel: nor was it easy for
them to discern the clew, and tread back the mazes, of the labyrinth.
The worship of images was inseparably blended, at least to a pious
fancy, with the Cross, the Virgin, the Saints and their relics; the holy
ground was involved in a cloud of miracles and visions; and the nerves
of the mind, curiosity and scepticism, were benumbed by the habits of
obedience and belief. Constantine himself is accused of indulging a
royal license to doubt, or deny, or deride the mysteries of the
Catholics,  but they were deeply inscribed in the public and private
creed of his bishops; and the boldest Iconoclast might assault with a
secret horror the monuments of popular devotion, which were consecrated
to the honor of his celestial patrons. In the reformation of the
sixteenth century, freedom and knowledge had expanded all the faculties
of man: the thirst of innovation superseded the reverence of antiquity;
and the vigor of Europe could disdain those phantoms which terrified the
sickly and servile weakness of the Greeks.

The scandal of an abstract heresy can be only proclaimed to the people
by the blast of the ecclesiastical trumpet; but the most ignorant can
perceive, the most torpid must feel, the profanation and downfall of
their visible deities. The first hostilities of Leo were directed
against a lofty Christ on the vestibule, and above the gate, of the
palace. A ladder had been planted for the assault, but it was furiously
shaken by a crowd of zealots and women: they beheld, with pious
transport, the ministers of sacrilege tumbling from on high and dashed
against the pavement: and the honors of the ancient martyrs were
prostituted to these criminals, who justly suffered for murder and
rebellion.  The execution of the Imperial edicts was resisted by
frequent tumults in Constantinople and the provinces: the person of Leo
was endangered, his officers were massacred, and the popular enthusiasm
was quelled by the strongest efforts of the civil and military power. Of
the Archipelago, or Holy Sea, the numerous islands were filled with
images and monks: their votaries abjured, without scruple, the enemy of
Christ, his mother, and the saints; they armed a fleet of boats and
galleys, displayed their consecrated banners, and boldly steered for the
harbor of Constantinople, to place on the throne a new favorite of God
and the people. They depended on the succor of a miracle: but their
miracles were inefficient against the Greek fire; and, after the defeat
and conflagration of the fleet, the naked islands were abandoned to the
clemency or justice of the conqueror. The son of Leo, in the first year
of his reign, had undertaken an expedition against the Saracens: during
his absence, the capital, the palace, and the purple, were occupied by
his kinsman Artavasdes, the ambitious champion of the orthodox faith.
The worship of images was triumphantly restored: the patriarch renounced
his dissimulation, or dissembled his sentiments and the righteous claims
of the usurper was acknowledged, both in the new, and in ancient, Rome.
Constantine flew for refuge to his paternal mountains; but he descended
at the head of the bold and affectionate Isaurians; and his final
victory confounded the arms and predictions of the fanatics. His long
reign was distracted with clamor, sedition, conspiracy, and mutual
hatred, and sanguinary revenge; the persecution of images was the motive
or pretence, of his adversaries; and, if they missed a temporal diadem,
they were rewarded by the Greeks with the crown of martyrdom. In every
act of open and clandestine treason, the emperor felt the unforgiving
enmity of the monks, the faithful slaves of the superstition to which
they owed their riches and influence. They prayed, they preached, they
absolved, they inflamed, they conspired; the solitude of Palestine
poured forth a torrent of invective; and the pen of St. John Damascenus,
the last of the Greek fathers, devoted the tyrant's head, both in this
world and the next.  * I am not at leisure to examine how far the monks
provoked, nor how much they have exaggerated, their real and pretended
sufferings, nor how many lost their lives or limbs, their eyes or their
beards, by the cruelty of the emperor.  From the chastisement of
individuals, he proceeded to the abolition of the order; and, as it was
wealthy and useless, his resentment might be stimulated by avarice, and
justified by patriotism. The formidable name and mission of the Dragon,
his visitor-general, excited the terror and abhorrence of the
blacknation: the religious communities were dissolved, the buildings
were converted into magazines, or bar racks; the lands, movables, and
cattle were confiscated; and our modern precedents will support the
charge, that much wanton or malicious havoc was exercised against the
relics, and even the books of the monasteries. With the habit and
profession of monks, the public and private worship of images was
rigorously proscribed; and it should seem, that a solemn abjuration of
idolatry was exacted from the subjects, or at least from the clergy, of
the Eastern empire.

The patient East abjured, with reluctance, her sacred images; they were
fondly cherished, and vigorously defended, by the independent zeal of
the Italians. In ecclesiastical rank and jurisdiction, the patriarch of
Constantinople and the pope of Rome were nearly equal. But the Greek
prelate was a domestic slave under the eye of his master, at whose nod
he alternately passed from the convent to the throne, and from the
throne to the convent. A distant and dangerous station, amidst the
Barbarians of the West, excited the spirit and freedom of the Latin
bishops. Their popular election endeared them to the Romans: the public
and private indigence was relieved by their ample revenue; and the
weakness or neglect of the emperors compelled them to consult, both in
peace and war, the temporal safety of the city. In the school of
adversity the priest insensibly imbibed the virtues and the ambition of
a prince; the same character was assumed, the same policy was adopted,
by the Italian, the Greek, or the Syrian, who ascended the chair of St.
Peter; and, after the loss of her legions and provinces, the genius and
fortune of the popes again restored the supremacy of Rome. It is agreed,
that in the eighth century, their dominion was founded on rebellion, and
that the rebellion was produced, and justified, by the heresy of the
Iconoclasts; but the conduct of the second and third Gregory, in this
memorable contest, is variously interpreted by the wishes of their
friends and enemies. The Byzantine writers unanimously declare, that,
after a fruitless admonition, they pronounced the separation of the East
and West, and deprived the sacrilegious tyrant of the revenue and
sovereignty of Italy. Their excommunication is still more clearly
expressed by the Greeks, who beheld the accomplishment of the papal
triumphs; and as they are more strongly attached to their religion than
to their country, they praise, instead of blaming, the zeal and
orthodoxy of these apostolical men.  The modern champions of Rome are
eager to accept the praise and the precedent: this great and glorious
example of the deposition of royal heretics is celebrated by the
cardinals Baronius and Bellarmine;  and if they are asked, why the same
thunders were not hurled against the Neros and Julians of antiquity,
they reply, that the weakness of the primitive church was the sole cause
of her patient loyalty.  On this occasion the effects of love and hatred
are the same; and the zealous Protestants, who seek to kindle the
indignation, and to alarm the fears, of princes and magistrates,
expatiate on the insolence and treason of the two Gregories against
their lawful sovereign.  They are defended only by the moderate
Catholics, for the most part, of the Gallican church,  who respect the
saint, without approving the sin. These common advocates of the crown
and the mitre circumscribe the truth of facts by the rule of equity,
Scripture, and tradition, and appeal to the evidence of the Latins,  and
the lives  and epistles of the popes themselves.

Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks. -- Part II.

Two original epistles, from Gregory the Second to the emperor Leo, are
still extant;  and if they cannot be praised as the most perfect models
of eloquence and logic, they exhibit the portrait, or at least the mask,
of the founder of the papal monarchy. "During ten pure and fortunate
years," says Gregory to the emperor, "we have tasted the annual comfort
of your royal letters, subscribed in purple ink, with your own hand, the
sacred pledges of your attachment to the orthodox creed of our fathers.
How deplorable is the change! how tremendous the scandal! You now accuse
the Catholics of idolatry; and, by the accusation, you betray your own
impiety and ignorance. To this ignorance we are compelled to adapt the
grossness of our style and arguments: the first elements of holy letters
are sufficient for your confusion; and were you to enter a
grammar-school, and avow yourself the enemy of our worship, the simple
and pious children would be provoked to cast their horn-books at your
head." After this decent salutation, the pope attempts the usual
distinction between the idols of antiquity and the Christian images. The
former were the fanciful representations of phantoms or dæmons, at a
time when the true God had not manifested his person in any visible
likeness. The latter are the genuine forms of Christ, his mother, and
his saints, who had approved, by a crowd of miracles, the innocence and
merit of this relative worship. He must indeed have trusted to the
ignorance of Leo, since he could assert the perpetual use of images,
from the apostolic age, and their venerable presence in the six synods
of the Catholic church. A more specious argument is drawn from present
possession and recent practice the harmony of the Christian world
supersedes the demand of a general council; and Gregory frankly
confesses, than such assemblies can only be useful under the reign of an
orthodox prince. To the impudent and inhuman Leo, more guilty than a
heretic, he recommends peace, silence, and implicit obedience to his
spiritual guides of Constantinople and Rome. The limits of civil and
ecclesiastical powers are defined by the pontiff. To the former he
appropriates the body; to the latter, the soul: the sword of justice is
in the hands of the magistrate: the more formidable weapon of
excommunication is intrusted to the clergy; and in the exercise of their
divine commission a zealous son will not spare his offending father: the
successor of St. Peter may lawfully chastise the kings of the earth.
"You assault us, O tyrant! with a carnal and military hand: unarmed and
naked we can only implore the Christ, the prince of the heavenly host,
that he will send unto you a devil, for the destruction of your body and
the salvation of your soul. You declare, with foolish arrogance, I will
despatch my orders to Rome: I will break in pieces the image of St.
Peter; and Gregory, like his predecessor Martin, shall be transported in
chains, and in exile, to the foot of the Imperial throne. Would to God
that I might be permitted to tread in the footsteps of the holy Martin!
but may the fate of Constans serve as a warning to the persecutors of
the church! After his just condemnation by the bishops of Sicily, the
tyrant was cut off, in the fullness of his sins, by a domestic servant:
the saint is still adored by the nations of Scythia, among whom he ended
his banishment and his life. But it is our duty to live for the
edification and support of the faithful people; nor are we reduced to
risk our safety on the event of a combat. Incapable as you are of
defending your Roman subjects, the maritime situation of the city may
perhaps expose it to your depredation but we can remove to the distance
of four-and-twenty stadia,  to the first fortress of the Lombards, and
then -- you may pursue the winds. Are you ignorant that the popes are
the bond of union, the mediators of peace, between the East and West?
The eyes of the nations are fixed on our humility; and they revere, as a
God upon earth, the apostle St. Peter, whose image you threaten to
destroy.  The remote and interior kingdoms of the West present their
homage to Christ and his vicegerent; and we now prepare to visit one of
their most powerful monarchs, who desires to receive from our hands the
sacrament of baptism.  The Barbarians have submitted to the yoke of the
gospel, while you alone are deaf to the voice of the shepherd. These
pious Barbarians are kindled into rage: they thirst to avenge the
persecution of the East. Abandon your rash and fatal enterprise;
reflect, tremble, and repent. If you persist, we are innocent of the
blood that will be spilt in the contest; may it fall on your own head!"

The first assault of Leo against the images of Constantinople had been
witnessed by a crowd of strangers from Italy and the West, who related
with grief and indignation the sacrilege of the emperor. But on the
reception of his proscriptive edict, they trembled for their domestic
deities: the images of Christ and the Virgin, of the angels, martyrs,
and saints, were abolished in all the churches of Italy; and a strong
alternative was proposed to the Roman pontiff, the royal favor as the
price of his compliance, degradation and exile as the penalty of his
disobedience. Neither zeal nor policy allowed him to hesitate; and the
haughty strain in which Gregory addressed the emperor displays his
confidence in the truth of his doctrine or the powers of resistance.
Without depending on prayers or miracles, he boldly armed against the
public enemy, and his pastoral letters admonished the Italians of their
danger and their duty.  At this signal, Ravenna, Venice, and the cities
of the Exarchate and Pentapolis, adhered to the cause of religion; their
military force by sea and land consisted, for the most part, of the
natives; and the spirit of patriotism and zeal was transfused into the
mercenary strangers. The Italians swore to live and die in the defence
of the pope and the holy images; the Roman people was devoted to their
father, and even the Lombards were ambitious to share the merit and
advantage of this holy war. The most treasonable act, but the most
obvious revenge, was the destruction of the statues of Leo himself: the
most effectual and pleasing measure of rebellion, was the withholding
the tribute of Italy, and depriving him of a power which he had recently
abused by the imposition of a new capitation.  A form of administration
was preserved by the election of magistrates and governors; and so high
was the public indignation, that the Italians were prepared to create an
orthodox emperor, and to conduct him with a fleet and army to the palace
of Constantinople. In that palace, the Roman bishops, the second and
third Gregory, were condemned as the authors of the revolt, and every
attempt was made, either by fraud or force, to seize their persons, and
to strike at their lives. The city was repeatedly visited or assaulted
by captains of the guards, and dukes and exarchs of high dignity or
secret trust; they landed with foreign troops, they obtained some
domestic aid, and the superstition of Naples may blush that her fathers
were attached to the cause of heresy. But these clandestine or open
attacks were repelled by the courage and vigilance of the Romans; the
Greeks were overthrown and massacred, their leaders suffered an
ignominious death, and the popes, however inclined to mercy, refused to
intercede for these guilty victims. At Ravenna,  the several quarters of
the city had long exercised a bloody and hereditary feud; in religious
controversy they found a new aliment of faction: but the votaries of
images were superior in numbers or spirit, and the exarch, who attempted
to stem the torrent, lost his life in a popular sedition. To punish this
flagitious deed, and restore his dominion in Italy, the emperor sent a
fleet and army into the Adriatic Gulf. After suffering from the winds
and waves much loss and delay, the Greeks made their descent in the
neighborhood of Ravenna: they threatened to depopulate the guilty
capital, and to imitate, perhaps to surpass, the example of Justinian
the Second, who had chastised a former rebellion by the choice and
execution of fifty of the principal inhabitants. The women and clergy,
in sackcloth and ashes, lay prostrate in prayer: the men were in arms
for the defence of their country; the common danger had united the
factions, and the event of a battle was preferred to the slow miseries
of a siege. In a hard-fought day, as the two armies alternately yielded
and advanced, a phantom was seen, a voice was heard, and Ravenna was
victorious by the assurance of victory. The strangers retreated to their
ships, but the populous sea-coast poured forth a multitude of boats; the
waters of the Po were so deeply infected with blood, that during six
years the public prejudice abstained from the fish of the river; and the
institution of an annual feast perpetuated the worship of images, and
the abhorrence of the Greek tyrant. Amidst the triumph of the Catholic
arms, the Roman pontiff convened a synod of ninety-three bishops against
the heresy of the Iconoclasts. With their consent, he pronounced a
general excommunication against all who by word or deed should attack
the tradition of the fathers and the images of the saints: in this
sentence the emperor was tacitly involved,  but the vote of a last and
hopeless remonstrance may seem to imply that the anathema was yet
suspended over his guilty head. No sooner had they confirmed their own
safety, the worship of images, and the freedom of Rome and Italy, than
the popes appear to have relaxed of their severity, and to have spared
the relics of the Byzantine dominion. Their moderate councils delayed
and prevented the election of a new emperor, and they exhorted the
Italians not to separate from the body of the Roman monarchy. The exarch
was permitted to reside within the walls of Ravenna, a captive rather
than a master; and till the Imperial coronation of Charlemagne, the
government of Rome and Italy was exercised in the name of the successors
of Constantine.

The liberty of Rome, which had been oppressed by the arms and arts of
Augustus, was rescued, after seven hundred and fifty years of servitude,
from the persecution of Leo the Isaurian. By the Cæsars, the triumphs of
the consuls had been annihilated: in the decline and fall of the empire,
the god Terminus, the sacred boundary, had insensibly receded from the
ocean, the Rhine, the Danube, and the Euphrates; and Rome was reduced to
her ancient territory from Viterbo to Terracina, and from Narni to the
mouth of the Tyber.  When the kings were banished, the republic reposed
on the firm basis which had been founded by their wisdom and virtue.
Their perpetual jurisdiction was divided between two annual magistrates:
the senate continued to exercise the powers of administration and
counsel; and the legislative authority was distributed in the assemblies
of the people, by a well-proportioned scale of property and service.
Ignorant of the arts of luxury, the primitive Romans had improved the
science of government and war: the will of the community was absolute:
the rights of individuals were sacred: one hundred and thirty thousand
citizens were armed for defence or conquest; and a band of robbers and
outlaws was moulded into a nation deserving of freedom and ambitious of
glory.  When the sovereignty of the Greek emperors was extinguished, the
ruins of Rome presented the sad image of depopulation and decay: her
slavery was a habit, her liberty an accident; the effect of
superstition, and the object of her own amazement and terror. The last
vestige of the substance, or even the forms, of the constitution, was
obliterated from the practice and memory of the Romans; and they were
devoid of knowledge, or virtue, again to build the fabric of a
commonwealth. Their scanty remnant, the offspring of slaves and
strangers, was despicable in the eyes of the victorious Barbarians. As
often as the Franks or Lombards expressed their most bitter contempt of
a foe, they called him a Roman; "and in this name," says the bishop
Liutprand, "we include whatever is base, whatever is cowardly, whatever
is perfidious, the extremes of avarice and luxury, and every vice that
can prostitute the dignity of human nature."  * By the necessity of
their situation, the inhabitants of Rome were cast into the rough model
of a republican government: they were compelled to elect some judges in
peace, and some leaders in war: the nobles assembled to deliberate, and
their resolves could not be executed without the union and consent of
the multitude. The style of the Roman senate and people was revived,
but the spirit was fled; and their new independence was disgraced by the
tumultuous conflict of licentiousness and oppression. The want of laws
could only be supplied by the influence of religion, and their foreign
and domestic counsels were moderated by the authority of the bishop. His
alms, his sermons, his correspondence with the kings and prelates of the
West, his recent services, their gratitude, and oath, accustomed the
Romans to consider him as the first magistrate or prince of the city.
The Christian humility of the popes was not offended by the name of
Dominus, or Lord; and their face and inscription are still apparent on
the most ancient coins.  Their temporal dominion is now confirmed by the
reverence of a thousand years; and their noblest title is the free
choice of a people, whom they had redeemed from slavery.

In the quarrels of ancient Greece, the holy people of Elis enjoyed a
perpetual peace, under the protection of Jupiter, and in the exercise of
the Olympic games.  Happy would it have been for the Romans, if a
similar privilege had guarded the patrimony of St. Peter from the
calamities of war; if the Christians, who visited the holy threshold,
would have sheathed their swords in the presence of the apostle and his
successor. But this mystic circle could have been traced only by the
wand of a legislator and a sage: this pacific system was incompatible
with the zeal and ambition of the popes the Romans were not addicted,
like the inhabitants of Elis, to the innocent and placid labors of
agriculture; and the Barbarians of Italy, though softened by the
climate, were far below the Grecian states in the institutions of public
and private life. A memorable example of repentance and piety was
exhibited by Liutprand, king of the Lombards. In arms, at the gate of
the Vatican, the conqueror listened to the voice of Gregory the Second,
withdrew his troops, resigned his conquests, respectfully visited the
church of St. Peter, and after performing his devotions, offered his
sword and dagger, his cuirass and mantle, his silver cross, and his
crown of gold, on the tomb of the apostle. But this religious fervor was
the illusion, perhaps the artifice, of the moment; the sense of interest
is strong and lasting; the love of arms and rapine was congenial to the
Lombards; and both the prince and people were irresistibly tempted by
the disorders of Italy, the nakedness of Rome, and the unwarlike
profession of her new chief. On the first edicts of the emperor, they
declared themselves the champions of the holy images: Liutprand invaded
the province of Romagna, which had already assumed that distinctive
appellation; the Catholics of the Exarchate yielded without reluctance
to his civil and military power; and a foreign enemy was introduced for
the first time into the impregnable fortress of Ravenna. That city and
fortress were speedily recovered by the active diligence and maritime
forces of the Venetians; and those faithful subjects obeyed the
exhortation of Gregory himself, in separating the personal guilt of Leo
from the general cause of the Roman empire.  The Greeks were less
mindful of the service, than the Lombards of the injury: the two
nations, hostile in their faith, were reconciled in a dangerous and
unnatural alliance: the king and the exarch marched to the conquest of
Spoleto and Rome: the storm evaporated without effect, but the policy of
Liutprand alarmed Italy with a vexatious alternative of hostility and
truce. His successor Astolphus declared himself the equal enemy of the
emperor and the pope: Ravenna was subdued by force or treachery,  and
this final conquest extinguished the series of the exarchs, who had
reigned with a subordinate power since the time of Justinian and the
ruin of the Gothic kingdom. Rome was summoned to acknowledge the
victorious Lombard as her lawful sovereign; the annual tribute of a
piece of gold was fixed as the ransom of each citizen, and the sword of
destruction was unsheathed to exact the penalty of her disobedience. The
Romans hesitated; they entreated; they complained; and the threatening
Barbarians were checked by arms and negotiations, till the popes had
engaged the friendship of an ally and avenger beyond the Alps.

In his distress, the first * Gregory had implored the aid of the hero of
the age, of Charles Martel, who governed the French monarchy with the
humble title of mayor or duke; and who, by his signal victory over the
Saracens, had saved his country, and perhaps Europe, from the Mahometan
yoke. The ambassadors of the pope were received by Charles with decent
reverence; but the greatness of his occupations, and the shortness of
his life, prevented his interference in the affairs of Italy, except by
a friendly and ineffectual mediation. His son Pepin, the heir of his
power and virtues, assumed the office of champion of the Roman church;
and the zeal of the French prince appears to have been prompted by the
love of glory and religion. But the danger was on the banks of the
Tyber, the succor on those of the Seine, and our sympathy is cold to the
relation of distant misery. Amidst the tears of the city, Stephen the
Third embraced the generous resolution of visiting in person the courts
of Lombardy and France, to deprecate the injustice of his enemy, or to
excite the pity and indignation of his friend. After soothing the public
despair by litanies and orations, he undertook this laborious journey
with the ambassadors of the French monarch and the Greek emperor. The
king of the Lombards was inexorable; but his threats could not silence
the complaints, nor retard the speed of the Roman pontiff, who traversed
the Pennine Alps, reposed in the abbey of St. Maurice, and hastened to
grasp the right hand of his protector; a hand which was never lifted in
vain, either in war or friendship. Stephen was entertained as the
visible successor of the apostle; at the next assembly, the field of
March or of May, his injuries were exposed to a devout and warlike
nation, and he repassed the Alps, not as a suppliant, but as a
conqueror, at the head of a French army, which was led by the king in
person. The Lombards, after a weak resistance, obtained an ignominious
peace, and swore to restore the possessions, and to respect the
sanctity, of the Roman church. But no sooner was Astolphus delivered
from the presence of the French arms, than he forgot his promise and
resented his disgrace. Rome was again encompassed by his arms; and
Stephen, apprehensive of fatiguing the zeal of his Transalpine allies
enforced his complaint and request by an eloquent letter in the name and
person of St. Peter himself.  The apostle assures his adopted sons, the
king, the clergy, and the nobles of France, that, dead in the flesh, he
is still alive in the spirit; that they now hear, and must obey, the
voice of the founder and guardian of the Roman church; that the Virgin,
the angels, the saints, and the martyrs, and all the host of heaven,
unanimously urge the request, and will confess the obligation; that
riches, victory, and paradise, will crown their pious enterprise, and
that eternal damnation will be the penalty of their neglect, if they
suffer his tomb, his temple, and his people, to fall into the hands of
the perfidious Lombards. The second expedition of Pepin was not less
rapid and fortunate than the first: St. Peter was satisfied, Rome was
again saved, and Astolphus was taught the lessons of justice and
sincerity by the scourge of a foreign master. After this double
chastisement, the Lombards languished about twenty years in a state of
languor and decay. But their minds were not yet humbled to their
condition; and instead of affecting the pacific virtues of the feeble,
they peevishly harassed the Romans with a repetition of claims,
evasions, and inroads, which they undertook without reflection, and
terminated without glory. On either side, their expiring monarchy was
pressed by the zeal and prudence of Pope Adrian the First, the genius,
the fortune, and greatness of Charlemagne, the son of Pepin; these
heroes of the church and state were united in public and domestic
friendship, and while they trampled on the prostrate, they varnished
their proceedings with the fairest colors of equity and moderation.  The
passes of the Alps, and the walls of Pavia, were the only defence of the
Lombards; the former were surprised, the latter were invested, by the
son of Pepin; and after a blockade of two years, * Desiderius, the last
of their native princes, surrendered his sceptre and his capital. Under
the dominion of a foreign king, but in the possession of their national
laws, the Lombards became the brethren, rather than the subjects, of the
Franks; who derived their blood, and manners, and language, from the
same Germanic origin.

Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks. -- Part III.

The mutual obligations of the popes and the Carlovingian family form the
important link of ancient and modern, of civil and ecclesiastical,
history. In the conquest of Italy, the champions of the Roman church
obtained a favorable occasion, a specious title, the wishes of the
people, the prayers and intrigues of the clergy. But the most essential
gifts of the popes to the Carlovingian race were the dignities of king
of France,  and of patrician of Rome. I. Under the sacerdotal monarchy
of St. Peter, the nations began to resume the practice of seeking, on
the banks of the Tyber, their kings, their laws, and the oracles of
their fate. The Franks were perplexed between the name and substance of
their government. All the powers of royalty were exercised by Pepin,
mayor of the palace; and nothing, except the regal title, was wanting to
his ambition. His enemies were crushed by his valor; his friends were
multiplied by his liberality; his father had been the savior of
Christendom; and the claims of personal merit were repeated and ennobled
in a descent of four generations. The name and image of royalty was
still preserved in the last descendant of Clovis, the feeble Childeric;
but his obsolete right could only be used as an instrument of sedition:
the nation was desirous of restoring the simplicity of the constitution;
and Pepin, a subject and a prince, was ambitious to ascertain his own
rank and the fortune of his family. The mayor and the nobles were bound,
by an oath of fidelity, to the royal phantom: the blood of Clovis was
pure and sacred in their eyes; and their common ambassadors addressed
the Roman pontiff, to dispel their scruples, or to absolve their
promise. The interest of Pope Zachary, the successor of the two
Gregories, prompted him to decide, and to decide in their favor: he
pronounced that the nation might lawfully unite in the same person the
title and authority of king; and that the unfortunate Childeric, a
victim of the public safety, should be degraded, shaved, and confined in
a monastery for the remainder of his days. An answer so agreeable to
their wishes was accepted by the Franks as the opinion of a casuist, the
sentence of a judge, or the oracle of a prophet: the Merovingian race
disappeared from the earth; and Pepin was exalted on a buckler by the
suffrage of a free people, accustomed to obey his laws and to march
under his standard. His coronation was twice performed, with the
sanction of the popes, by their most faithful servant St. Boniface, the
apostle of Germany, and by the grateful hands of Stephen the Third, who,
in the monastery of St. Denys placed the diadem on the head of his
benefactor. The royal unction of the kings of Israel was dexterously
applied:  the successor of St. Peter assumed the character of a divine
ambassador: a German chieftain was transformed into the Lord's anointed;
and this Jewish rite has been diffused and maintained by the
superstition and vanity of modern Europe. The Franks were absolved from
their ancient oath; but a dire anathema was thundered against them and
their posterity, if they should dare to renew the same freedom of
choice, or to elect a king, except in the holy and meritorious race of
the Carlovingian princes. Without apprehending the future danger, these
princes gloried in their present security: the secretary of Charlemagne
affirms, that the French sceptre was transferred by the authority of the
popes;  and in their boldest enterprises, they insist, with confidence,
on this signal and successful act of temporal jurisdiction.

II. In the change of manners and language the patricians of Rome  were
far removed from the senate of Romulus, on the palace of Constantine,
from the free nobles of the republic, or the fictitious parents of the
emperor. After the recovery of Italy and Africa by the arms of
Justinian, the importance and danger of those remote provinces required
the presence of a supreme magistrate; he was indifferently styled the
exarch or the patrician; and these governors of Ravenna, who fill their
place in the chronology of princes, extended their jurisdiction over the
Roman city. Since the revolt of Italy and the loss of the Exarchate, the
distress of the Romans had exacted some sacrifice of their independence.
Yet, even in this act, they exercised the right of disposing of
themselves; and the decrees of the senate and people successively
invested Charles Martel and his posterity with the honors of patrician
of Rome. The leaders of a powerful nation would have disdained a servile
title and subordinate office; but the reign of the Greek emperors was
suspended; and, in the vacancy of the empire, they derived a more
glorious commission from the pope and the republic. The Roman
ambassadors presented these patricians with the keys of the shrine of
St. Peter, as a pledge and symbol of sovereignty; with a holy banner
which it was their right and duty to unfurl in the defence of the church
and city.  In the time of Charles Martel and of Pepin, the interposition
of the Lombard kingdom covered the freedom, while it threatened the
safety, of Rome; and the patriciaterepresented only the title, the
service, the alliance, of these distant protectors. The power and policy
of Charlemagne annihilated an enemy, and imposed a master. In his first
visit to the capital, he was received with all the honors which had
formerly been paid to the exarch, the representative of the emperor; and
these honors obtained some new decorations from the joy and gratitude of
Pope Adrian the First.  No sooner was he informed of the sudden approach
of the monarch, than he despatched the magistrates and nobles of Rome to
meet him, with the banner, about thirty miles from the city. At the
distance of one mile, the Flaminian way was lined with the schools, or
national communities, of Greeks, Lombards, Saxons, &c.: the Roman youth
were under arms; and the children of a more tender age, with palms and
olive branches in their hands, chanted the praises of their great
deliverer. At the aspect of the holy crosses, and ensigns of the saints,
he dismounted from his horse, led the procession of his nobles to the
Vatican, and, as he ascended the stairs, devoutly kissed each step of
the threshold of the apostles. In the portico, Adrian expected him at
the head of his clergy: they embraced, as friends and equals; but in
their march to the altar, the king or patrician assumed the right hand
of the pope. Nor was the Frank content with these vain and empty
demonstrations of respect. In the twenty-six years that elapsed between
the conquest of Lombardy and his Imperial coronation, Rome, which had
been delivered by the sword, was subject, as his own, to the sceptre of
Charlemagne. The people swore allegiance to his person and family: in
his name money was coined, and justice was administered; and the
election of the popes was examined and confirmed by his authority.
Except an original and self-inherent claim of sovereignty, there was not
any prerogative remaining, which the title of emperor could add to the
patrician of Rome.

The gratitude of the Carlovingians was adequate to these obligations,
and their names are consecrated, as the saviors and benefactors of the
Roman church. Her ancient patrimony of farms and houses was transformed
by their bounty into the temporal dominion of cities and provinces; and
the donation of the Exarchate was the first-fruits of the conquests of
Pepin.  Astolphus with a sigh relinquished his prey; the keys and the
hostages of the principal cities were delivered to the French
ambassador; and, in his master's name, he presented them before the tomb
of St. Peter. The ample measure of the Exarchate  might comprise all the
provinces of Italy which had obeyed the emperor and his vicegerent; but
its strict and proper limits were included in the territories of
Ravenna, Bologna, and Ferrara: its inseparable dependency was the
Pentapolis, which stretched along the Adriatic from Rimini to Ancona,
and advanced into the midland-country as far as the ridges of the
Apennine. In this transaction, the ambition and avarice of the popes
have been severely condemned. Perhaps the humility of a Christian priest
should have rejected an earthly kingdom, which it was not easy for him
to govern without renouncing the virtues of his profession. Perhaps a
faithful subject, or even a generous enemy, would have been less
impatient to divide the spoils of the Barbarian; and if the emperor had
intrusted Stephen to solicit in his name the restitution of the
Exarchate, I will not absolve the pope from the reproach of treachery
and falsehood. But in the rigid interpretation of the laws, every one
may accept, without injury, whatever his benefactor can bestow without
injustice. The Greek emperor had abdicated, or forfeited, his right to
the Exarchate; and the sword of Astolphus was broken by the stronger
sword of the Carlovingian. It was not in the cause of the Iconoclast
that Pepin has exposed his person and army in a double expedition beyond
the Alps: he possessed, and might lawfully alienate, his conquests: and
to the importunities of the Greeks he piously replied that no human
consideration should tempt him to resume the gift which he had conferred
on the Roman Pontiff for the remission of his sins, and the salvation of
his soul. The splendid donation was granted in supreme and absolute
dominion, and the world beheld for the first time a Christian bishop
invested with the prerogatives of a temporal prince; the choice of
magistrates, the exercise of justice, the imposition of taxes, and the
wealth of the palace of Ravenna. In the dissolution of the Lombard
kingdom, the inhabitants of the duchy of Spoleto  sought a refuge from
the storm, shaved their heads after the Roman fashion, declared
themselves the servants and subjects of St. Peter, and completed, by
this voluntary surrender, the present circle of the ecclesiastical
state. That mysterious circle was enlarged to an indefinite extent, by
the verbal or written donation of Charlemagne,  who, in the first
transports of his victory, despoiled himself and the Greek emperor of
the cities and islands which had formerly been annexed to the Exarchate.
But, in the cooler moments of absence and reflection, he viewed, with an
eye of jealousy and envy, the recent greatness of his ecclesiastical
ally. The execution of his own and his father's promises was
respectfully eluded: the king of the Franks and Lombards asserted the
inalienable rights of the empire; and, in his life and death, Ravenna,
as well as Rome, was numbered in the list of his metropolitan cities.
The sovereignty of the Exarchate melted away in the hands of the popes;
they found in the archbishops of Ravenna a dangerous and domestic rival:
the nobles and people disdained the yoke of a priest; and in the
disorders of the times, they could only retain the memory of an ancient
claim, which, in a more prosperous age, they have revived and realized.

Fraud is the resource of weakness and cunning; and the strong, though
ignorant, Barbarian was often entangled in the net of sacerdotal policy.
The Vatican and Lateran were an arsenal and manufacture, which,
according to the occasion, have produced or concealed a various
collection of false or genuine, of corrupt or suspicious, acts, as they
tended to promote the interest of the Roman church. Before the end of
the eighth century, some apostolic scribe, perhaps the notorious
Isidore, composed the decretals, and the donation of Constantine, the
two magic pillars of the spiritual and temporal monarchy of the popes.
This memorable donation was introduced to the world by an epistle of
Adrian the First, who exhorts Charlemagne to imitate the liberality, and
revive the name, of the great Constantine.  According to the legend, the
first of the Christian emperors was healed of the leprosy, and purified
in the waters of baptism, by St. Silvester, the Roman bishop; and never
was physician more gloriously recompensed. His royal proselyte withdrew
from the seat and patrimony of St. Peter; declared his resolution of
founding a new capital in the East; and resigned to the popes the free
and perpetual sovereignty of Rome, Italy, and the provinces of the West.
This fiction was productive of the most beneficial effects. The Greek
princes were convicted of the guilt of usurpation; and the revolt of
Gregory was the claim of his lawful inheritance. The popes were
delivered from their debt of gratitude; and the nominal gifts of the
Carlovingians were no more than the just and irrevocable restitution of
a scanty portion of the ecclesiastical state. The sovereignty of Rome no
longer depended on the choice of a fickle people; and the successors of
St. Peter and Constantine were invested with the purple and prerogatives
of the Cæsars. So deep was the ignorance and credulity of the times,
that the most absurd of fables was received, with equal reverence, in
Greece and in France, and is still enrolled among the decrees of the
canon law.  The emperors, and the Romans, were incapable of discerning a
forgery, that subverted their rights and freedom; and the only
opposition proceeded from a Sabine monastery, which, in the beginning of
the twelfth century, disputed the truth and validity of the donation of
Constantine.  In the revival of letters and liberty, this fictitious
deed was transpierced by the pen of Laurentius Valla, the pen of an
eloquent critic and a Roman patriot.  His contemporaries of the
fifteenth century were astonished at his sacrilegious boldness; yet such
is the silent and irresistible progress of reason, that, before the end
of the next age, the fable was rejected by the contempt of historians
and poets,  and the tacit or modest censure of the advocates of the
Roman church.  The popes themselves have indulged a smile at the
credulity of the vulgar;  but a false and obsolete title still
sanctifies their reign; and, by the same fortune which has attended the
decretals and the Sibylline oracles, the edifice has subsisted after the
foundations have been undermined.

While the popes established in Italy their freedom and dominion, the
images, the first cause of their revolt, were restored in the Eastern
empire.  Under the reign of Constantine the Fifth, the union of civil
and ecclesiastical power had overthrown the tree, without extirpating
the root, of superstition. The idols (for such they were now held) were
secretly cherished by the order and the sex most prone to devotion; and
the fond alliance of the monks and females obtained a final victory over
the reason and authority of man. Leo the Fourth maintained with less
rigor the religion of his father and grandfather; but his wife, the fair
and ambitious Irene, had imbibed the zeal of the Athenians, the heirs of
the Idolatry, rather than the philosophy, of their ancestors. During the
life of her husband, these sentiments were inflamed by danger and
dissimulation, and she could only labor to protect and promote some
favorite monks whom she drew from their caverns, and seated on the
metropolitan thrones of the East. But as soon as she reigned in her own
name and that of her son, Irene more seriously undertook the ruin of the
Iconoclasts; and the first step of her future persecution was a general
edict for liberty of conscience. In the restoration of the monks, a
thousand images were exposed to the public veneration; a thousand
legends were inverted of their sufferings and miracles. By the
opportunities of death or removal, the episcopal seats were judiciously
filled the most eager competitors for earthly or celestial favor
anticipated and flattered the judgment of their sovereign; and the
promotion of her secretary Tarasius gave Irene the patriarch of
Constantinople, and the command of the Oriental church. But the decrees
of a general council could only be repealed by a similar assembly:  the
Iconoclasts whom she convened were bold in possession, and averse to
debate; and the feeble voice of the bishops was reechoed by the more
formidable clamor of the soldiers and people of Constantinople. The
delay and intrigues of a year, the separation of the disaffected troops,
and the choice of Nice for a second orthodox synod, removed these
obstacles; and the episcopal conscience was again, after the Greek
fashion, in the hands of the prince. No more than eighteen days were
allowed for the consummation of this important work: the Iconoclasts
appeared, not as judges, but as criminals or penitents: the scene was
decorated by the legates of Pope Adrian and the Eastern patriarchs,  the
decrees were framed by the president Taracius, and ratified by the
acclamations and subscriptions of three hundred and fifty bishops. They
unanimously pronounced, that the worship of images is agreeable to
Scripture and reason, to the fathers and councils of the church: but
they hesitate whether that worship be relative or direct; whether the
Godhead, and the figure of Christ, be entitled to the same mode of
adoration. Of this second Nicene council the acts are still extant; a
curious monument of superstition and ignorance, of falsehood and folly.
I shall only notice the judgment of the bishops on the comparative merit
of image-worship and morality. A monk had concluded a truce with the
dæmon of fornication, on condition of interrupting his daily prayers to
a picture that hung in his cell. His scruples prompted him to consult
the abbot. "Rather than abstain from adoring Christ and his Mother in
their holy images, it would be better for you," replied the casuist, "to
enter every brothel, and visit every prostitute, in the city."  For the
honor of orthodoxy, at least the orthodoxy of the Roman church, it is
somewhat unfortunate, that the two princes who convened the two councils
of Nice are both stained with the blood of their sons. The second of
these assemblies was approved and rigorously executed by the despotism
of Irene, and she refused her adversaries the toleration which at first
she had granted to her friends. During the five succeeding reigns, a
period of thirty-eight years, the contest was maintained, with unabated
rage and various success, between the worshippers and the breakers of
the images; but I am not inclined to pursue with minute diligence the
repetition of the same events. Nicephorus allowed a general liberty of
speech and practice; and the only virtue of his reign is accused by the
monks as the cause of his temporal and eternal perdition. Superstition
and weakness formed the character of Michael the First, but the saints
and images were incapable of supporting their votary on the throne. In
the purple, Leo the Fifth asserted the name and religion of an Armenian;
and the idols, with their seditious adherents, were condemned to a
second exile. Their applause would have sanctified the murder of an
impious tyrant, but his assassin and successor, the second Michael, was
tainted from his birth with the Phrygian heresies: he attempted to
mediate between the contending parties; and the intractable spirit of
the Catholics insensibly cast him into the opposite scale. His
moderation was guarded by timidity; but his son Theophilus, alike
ignorant of fear and pity, was the last and most cruel of the
Iconoclasts. The enthusiasm of the times ran strongly against them; and
the emperors who stemmed the torrent were exasperated and punished by
the public hatred. After the death of Theophilus, the final victory of
the images was achieved by a second female, his widow Theodora, whom he
left the guardian of the empire. Her measures were bold and decisive.
The fiction of a tardy repentance absolved the fame and the soul of her
deceased husband; the sentence of the Iconoclast patriarch was commuted
from the loss of his eyes to a whipping of two hundred lashes: the
bishops trembled, the monks shouted, and the festival of orthodoxy
preserves the annual memory of the triumph of the images. A single
question yet remained, whether they are endowed with any proper and
inherent sanctity; it was agitated by the Greeks of the eleventh
century;  and as this opinion has the strongest recommendation of
absurdity, I am surprised that it was not more explicitly decided in the
affirmative. In the West, Pope Adrian the First accepted and announced
the decrees of the Nicene assembly, which is now revered by the
Catholics as the seventh in rank of the general councils. Rome and Italy
were docile to the voice of their father; but the greatest part of the
Latin Christians were far behind in the race of superstition. The
churches of France, Germany, England, and Spain, steered a middle course
between the adoration and the destruction of images, which they admitted
into their temples, not as objects of worship, but as lively and useful
memorials of faith and history. An angry book of controversy was
composed and published in the name of Charlemagne:  under his authority
a synod of three hundred bishops was assembled at Frankfort:  they
blamed the fury of the Iconoclasts, but they pronounced a more severe
censure against the superstition of the Greeks, and the decrees of their
pretended council, which was long despised by the Barbarians of the
West.  Among them the worship of images advanced with a silent and
insensible progress; but a large atonement is made for their hesitation
and delay, by the gross idolatry of the ages which precede the
reformation, and of the countries, both in Europe and America, which are
still immersed in the gloom of superstition.

Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks. -- Part IV.

It was after the Nicene synod, and under the reign of the pious Irene,
that the popes consummated the separation of Rome and Italy, by the
translation of the empire to the less orthodox Charlemagne. They were
compelled to choose between the rival nations: religion was not the sole
motive of their choice; and while they dissembled the failings of their
friends, they beheld, with reluctance and suspicion, the Catholic
virtues of their foes. The difference of language and manners had
perpetuated the enmity of the two capitals; and they were alienated from
each other by the hostile opposition of seventy years. In that schism
the Romans had tasted of freedom, and the popes of sovereignty: their
submission would have exposed them to the revenge of a jealous tyrant;
and the revolution of Italy had betrayed the impotence, as well as the
tyranny, of the Byzantine court. The Greek emperors had restored the
images, but they had not restored the Calabrian estates  and the
Illyrian diocese,  which the Iconoclasts had torn away from the
successors of St. Peter; and Pope Adrian threatens them with a sentence
of excommunication unless they speedily abjure this practical heresy.
The Greeks were now orthodox; but their religion might be tainted by the
breath of the reigning monarch: the Franks were now contumacious; but a
discerning eye might discern their approaching conversion, from the use,
to the adoration, of images. The name of Charlemagne was stained by the
polemic acrimony of his scribes; but the conqueror himself conformed,
with the temper of a statesman, to the various practice of France and
Italy. In his four pilgrimages or visits to the Vatican, he embraced the
popes in the communion of friendship and piety; knelt before the tomb,
and consequently before the image, of the apostle; and joined, without
scruple, in all the prayers and processions of the Roman liturgy. Would
prudence or gratitude allow the pontiffs to renounce their benefactor?
Had they a right to alienate his gift of the Exarchate? Had they power
to abolish his government of Rome? The title of patrician was below the
merit and greatness of Charlemagne; and it was only by reviving the
Western empire that they could pay their obligations or secure their
establishment. By this decisive measure they would finally eradicate the
claims of the Greeks; from the debasement of a provincial town, the
majesty of Rome would be restored: the Latin Christians would be united,
under a supreme head, in their ancient metropolis; and the conquerors of
the West would receive their crown from the successors of St. Peter. The
Roman church would acquire a zealous and respectable advocate; and,
under the shadow of the Carlovingian power, the bishop might exercise,
with honor and safety, the government of the city.

Before the ruin of Paganism in Rome, the competition for a wealthy
bishopric had often been productive of tumult and bloodshed. The people
was less numerous, but the times were more savage, the prize more
important, and the chair of St. Peter was fiercely disputed by the
leading ecclesiastics who aspired to the rank of sovereign. The reign of
Adrian the First  surpasses the measure of past or succeeding ages;  the
walls of Rome, the sacred patrimony, the ruin of the Lombards, and the
friendship of Charlemagne, were the trophies of his fame: he secretly
edified the throne of his successors, and displayed in a narrow space
the virtues of a great prince. His memory was revered; but in the next
election, a priest of the Lateran, Leo the Third, was preferred to the
nephew and the favorite of Adrian, whom he had promoted to the first
dignities of the church. Their acquiescence or repentance disguised,
above four years, the blackest intention of revenge, till the day of a
procession, when a furious band of conspirators dispersed the unarmed
multitude, and assaulted with blows and wounds the sacred person of the
pope. But their enterprise on his life or liberty was disappointed,
perhaps by their own confusion and remorse. Leo was left for dead on the
ground: on his revival from the swoon, the effect of his loss of blood,
he recovered his speech and sight; and this natural event was improved
to the miraculous restoration of his eyes and tongue, of which he had
been deprived, twice deprived, by the knife of the assassins.  From his
prison he escaped to the Vatican: the duke of Spoleto hastened to his
rescue, Charlemagne sympathized in his injury, and in his camp of
Paderborn in Westphalia accepted, or solicited, a visit from the Roman
pontiff. Leo repassed the Alps with a commission of counts and bishops,
the guards of his safety and the judges of his innocence; and it was not
without reluctance, that the conqueror of the Saxons delayed till the
ensuing year the personal discharge of this pious office. In his fourth
and last pilgrimage, he was received at Rome with the due honors of king
and patrician: Leo was permitted to purge himself by oath of the crimes
imputed to his charge: his enemies were silenced, and the sacrilegious
attempt against his life was punished by the mild and insufficient
penalty of exile. On the festival of Christmas, the last year of the
eighth century, Charlemagne appeared in the church of St. Peter; and, to
gratify the vanity of Rome, he had exchanged the simple dress of his
country for the habit of a patrician.  After the celebration of the holy
mysteries, Leo suddenly placed a precious crown on his head,  and the
dome resounded with the acclamations of the people, "Long life and
victory to Charles, the most pious Augustus, crowned by God the great
and pacific emperor of the Romans!" The head and body of Charlemagne
were consecrated by the royal unction: after the example of the Cæsars,
he was saluted or adored by the pontiff: his coronation oath represents
a promise to maintain the faith and privileges of the church; and the
first-fruits were paid in his rich offerings to the shrine of his
apostle. In his familiar conversation, the emperor protested the
ignorance of the intentions of Leo, which he would have disappointed by
his absence on that memorable day. But the preparations of the ceremony
must have disclosed the secret; and the journey of Charlemagne reveals
his knowledge and expectation: he had acknowledged that the Imperial
title was the object of his ambition, and a Roman synod had pronounced,
that it was the only adequate reward of his merit and services.

The appellation of greathas been often bestowed, and sometimes deserved;
but Charlemagne is the only prince in whose favor the title has been
indissolubly blended with the name. That name, with the addition of
saint, is inserted in the Roman calendar; and the saint, by a rare
felicity, is crowned with the praises of the historians and philosophers
of an enlightened age.  His realmerit is doubtless enhanced by the
barbarism of the nation and the times from which he emerged: but the
apparentmagnitude of an object is likewise enlarged by an unequal
comparison; and the ruins of Palmyra derive a casual splendor from the
nakedness of the surrounding desert. Without injustice to his fame, I
may discern some blemishes in the sanctity and greatness of the restorer
of the Western empire. Of his moral virtues, chastity is not the most
conspicuous:  but the public happiness could not be materially injured
by his nine wives or concubines, the various indulgence of meaner or
more transient amours, the multitude of his bastards whom he bestowed on
the church, and the long celibacy and licentious manners of his
daughters,  whom the father was suspected of loving with too fond a
passion. * I shall be scarcely permitted to accuse the ambition of a
conqueror; but in a day of equal retribution, the sons of his brother
Carloman, the Merovingian princes of Aquitain, and the four thousand
five hundred Saxons who were beheaded on the same spot, would have
something to allege against the justice and humanity of Charlemagne. His
treatment of the vanquished Saxons  was an abuse of the right of
conquest; his laws were not less sanguinary than his arms, and in the
discussion of his motives, whatever is subtracted from bigotry must be
imputed to temper. The sedentary reader is amazed by his incessant
activity of mind and body; and his subjects and enemies were not less
astonished at his sudden presence, at the moment when they believed him
at the most distant extremity of the empire; neither peace nor war, nor
summer nor winter, were a season of repose; and our fancy cannot easily
reconcile the annals of his reign with the geography of his expeditions.
But this activity was a national, rather than a personal, virtue; the
vagrant life of a Frank was spent in the chase, in pilgrimage, in
military adventures; and the journeys of Charlemagne were distinguished
only by a more numerous train and a more important purpose. His military
renown must be tried by the scrutiny of his troops, his enemies, and his
actions. Alexander conquered with the arms of Philip, but the twoheroes
who preceded Charlemagne bequeathed him their name, their examples, and
the companions of their victories. At the head of his veteran and
superior armies, he oppressed the savage or degenerate nations, who were
incapable of confederating for their common safety: nor did he ever
encounter an equal antagonist in numbers, in discipline, or in arms The
science of war has been lost and revived with the arts of peace; but his
campaigns are not illustrated by any siege or battle of singular
difficulty and success; and he might behold, with envy, the Saracen
trophies of his grandfather. After the Spanish expedition, his
rear-guard was defeated in the Pyrenæan mountains; and the soldiers,
whose situation was irretrievable, and whose valor was useless, might
accuse, with their last breath, the want of skill or caution of their
general.  I touch with reverence the laws of Charlemagne, so highly
applauded by a respectable judge. They compose not a system, but a
series, of occasional and minute edicts, for the correction of abuses,
the reformation of manners, the economy of his farms, the care of his
poultry, and even the sale of his eggs. He wished to improve the laws
and the character of the Franks; and his attempts, however feeble and
imperfect, are deserving of praise: the inveterate evils of the times
were suspended or mollified by his government;  but in his institutions
I can seldom discover the general views and the immortal spirit of a
legislator, who survives himself for the benefit of posterity. The union
and stability of his empire depended on the life of a single man: he
imitated the dangerous practice of dividing his kingdoms among his sons;
and after his numerous diets, the whole constitution was left to
fluctuate between the disorders of anarchy and despotism. His esteem for
the piety and knowledge of the clergy tempted him to intrust that
aspiring order with temporal dominion and civil jurisdiction; and his
son Lewis, when he was stripped and degraded by the bishops, might
accuse, in some measure, the imprudence of his father. His laws enforced
the imposition of tithes, because the dæmons had proclaimed in the air
that the default of payment had been the cause of the last scarcity.
The literary merits of Charlemagne are attested by the foundation of
schools, the introduction of arts, the works which were published in his
name, and his familiar connection with the subjects and strangers whom
he invited to his court to educate both the prince and people. His own
studies were tardy, laborious, and imperfect; if he spoke Latin, and
understood Greek, he derived the rudiments of knowledge from
conversation, rather than from books; and, in his mature age, the
emperor strove to acquire the practice of writing, which every peasant
now learns in his infancy.  The grammar and logic, the music and
astronomy, of the times, were only cultivated as the handmaids of
superstition; but the curiosity of the human mind must ultimately tend
to its improvement, and the encouragement of learning reflects the
purest and most pleasing lustre on the character of Charlemagne.  The
dignity of his person,  the length of his reign, the prosperity of his
arms, the vigor of his government, and the reverence of distant nations,
distinguish him from the royal crowd; and Europe dates a new æra from
his restoration of the Western empire.

That empire was not unworthy of its title;  and some of the fairest
kingdoms of Europe were the patrimony or conquest of a prince, who
reigned at the same time in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Hungary.
I. The Roman province of Gaul had been transformed into the name and
monarchy of France; but, in the decay of the Merovingian line, its
limits were contracted by the independence of the Britonsand the revolt
of Aquitain. Charlemagne pursued, and confined, the Britons on the
shores of the ocean; and that ferocious tribe, whose origin and language
are so different from the French, was chastised by the imposition of
tribute, hostages, and peace. After a long and evasive contest, the
rebellion of the dukes of Aquitain was punished by the forfeiture of
their province, their liberty, and their lives. Harsh and rigorous would
have been such treatment of ambitious governors, who had too faithfully
copied the mayors of the palace. But a recent discovery  has proved that
these unhappy princes were the last and lawful heirs of the blood and
sceptre of Clovis, and younger branch, from the brother of Dagobert, of
the Merovingian house. Their ancient kingdom was reduced to the duchy of
Gascogne, to the counties of Fesenzac and Armagnac, at the foot of the
Pyrenees: their race was propagated till the beginning of the sixteenth
century; and after surviving their Carlovingian tyrants, they were
reserved to feel the injustice, or the favors, of a third dynasty. By
the reunion of Aquitain, France was enlarged to its present boundaries,
with the additions of the Netherlands and Spain, as far as the Rhine.
II. The Saracens had been expelled from France by the grandfather and
father of Charlemagne; but they still possessed the greatest part of
Spain, from the rock of Gibraltar to the Pyrenees. Amidst their civil
divisions, an Arabian emir of Saragossa implored his protection in the
diet of Paderborn. Charlemagne undertook the expedition, restored the
emir, and, without distinction of faith, impartially crushed the
resistance of the Christians, and rewarded the obedience and services of
the Mahometans. In his absence he instituted the Spanish march,  which
extended from the Pyrenees to the River Ebro: Barcelona was the
residence of the French governor: he possessed the counties of
Rousillonand Catalonia; and the infant kingdoms of Navarreand
Arragonwere subject to his jurisdiction. III. As king of the Lombards,
and patrician of Rome, he reigned over the greatest part of Italy,  a
tract of a thousand miles from the Alps to the borders of Calabria. The
duchy of Beneventum, a Lombard fief, had spread, at the expense of the
Greeks, over the modern kingdom of Naples. But Arrechis, the reigning
duke, refused to be included in the slavery of his country; assumed the
independent title of prince; and opposed his sword to the Carlovingian
monarchy. His defence was firm, his submission was not inglorious, and
the emperor was content with an easy tribute, the demolition of his
fortresses, and the acknowledgment, on his coins, of a supreme lord. The
artful flattery of his son Grimoald added the appellation of father, but
he asserted his dignity with prudence, and Benventum insensibly escaped
from the French yoke.  IV. Charlemagne was the first who united Germany
under the same sceptre. The name of Oriental Franceis preserved in the
circle of Franconia; and the people of Hesseand Thuringiawere recently
incorporated with the victors, by the conformity of religion and
government. The Alemanni, so formidable to the Romans, were the faithful
vassals and confederates of the Franks; and their country was inscribed
within the modern limits of Alsace, Swabia, and Switzerland. The
Bavarians, with a similar indulgence of their laws and manners, were
less patient of a master: the repeated treasons of Tasillo justified the
abolition of their hereditary dukes; and their power was shared among
the counts, who judged and guarded that important frontier. But the
north of Germany, from the Rhine and beyond the Elbe, was still hostile
and Pagan; nor was it till after a war of thirty-three years that the
Saxons bowed under the yoke of Christ and of Charlemagne. The idols and
their votaries were extirpated: the foundation of eight bishoprics, of
Munster, Osnaburgh, Paderborn, and Minden, of Bremen, Verden,
Hildesheim, and Halberstadt, define, on either side of the Weser, the
bounds of ancient Saxony these episcopal seats were the first schools
and cities of that savage land; and the religion and humanity of the
children atoned, in some degree, for the massacre of the parents. Beyond
the Elbe, the Slavi, or Sclavonians, of similar manners and various
denominations, overspread the modern dominions of Prussia, Poland, and
Bohemia, and some transient marks of obedience have tempted the French
historian to extend the empire to the Baltic and the Vistula. The
conquest or conversion of those countries is of a more recent age; but
the first union of Bohemiawith the Germanic body may be justly ascribed
to the arms of Charlemagne. V. He retaliated on the Avars, or Huns of
Pannonia, the same calamities which they had inflicted on the nations.
Their rings, the wooden fortifications which encircled their districts
and villages, were broken down by the triple effort of a French army,
that was poured into their country by land and water, through the
Carpathian mountains and along the plain of the Danube. After a bloody
conflict of eight years, the loss of some French generals was avenged by
the slaughter of the most noble Huns: the relics of the nation submitted
the royal residence of the chagan was left desolate and unknown; and the
treasures, the rapine of two hundred and fifty years, enriched the
victorious troops, or decorated the churches of Italy and Gaul.  After
the reduction of Pannonia, the empire of Charlemagne was bounded only by
the conflux of the Danube with the Teyss and the Save: the provinces of
Istria, Liburnia, and Dalmatia, were an easy, though unprofitable,
accession; and it was an effect of his moderation, that he left the
maritime cities under the real or nominal sovereignty of the Greeks. But
these distant possessions added more to the reputation than to the power
of the Latin emperor; nor did he risk any ecclesiastical foundations to
reclaim the Barbarians from their vagrant life and idolatrous worship.
Some canals of communication between the rivers, the Saone and the
Meuse, the Rhine and the Danube, were faintly attempted.  Their
execution would have vivified the empire; and more cost and labor were
often wasted in the structure of a cathedral. *

Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks. -- Part V.

If we retrace the outlines of this geographical picture, it will be seen
that the empire of the Franks extended, between east and west, from the
Ebro to the Elbe or Vistula; between the north and south, from the duchy
of Beneventum to the River Eyder, the perpetual boundary of Germany and
Denmark. The personal and political importance of Charlemagne was
magnified by the distress and division of the rest of Europe. The
islands of Great Britain and Ireland were disputed by a crowd of princes
of Saxon or Scottish origin: and, after the loss of Spain, the Christian
and Gothic kingdom of Alphonso the Chaste was confined to the narrow
range of the Asturian mountains. These petty sovereigns revered the
power or virtue of the Carlovingian monarch, implored the honor and
support of his alliance, and styled him their common parent, the sole
and supreme emperor of the West.  He maintained a more equal intercourse
with the caliph Harun al Rashid,  whose dominion stretched from Africa
to India, and accepted from his ambassadors a tent, a water-clock, an
elephant, and the keys of the Holy Sepulchre. It is not easy to conceive
the private friendship of a Frank and an Arab, who were strangers to
each other's person, and language, and religion: but their public
correspondence was founded on vanity, and their remote situation left no
room for a competition of interest. Two thirds of the Western empire of
Rome were subject to Charlemagne, and the deficiency was amply supplied
by his command of the inaccessible or invincible nations of Germany. But
in the choice of his enemies, * we may be reasonably surprised that he
so often preferred the poverty of the north to the riches of the south.
The three-and-thirty campaigns laboriously consumed in the woods and
morasses of Germany would have sufficed to assert the amplitude of his
title by the expulsion of the Greeks from Italy and the Saracens from
Spain. The weakness of the Greeks would have insured an easy victory;
and the holy crusade against the Saracens would have been prompted by
glory and revenge, and loudly justified by religion and policy. Perhaps,
in his expeditions beyond the Rhine and the Elbe, he aspired to save his
monarchy from the fate of the Roman empire, to disarm the enemies of
civilized society, and to eradicate the seed of future emigrations. But
it has been wisely observed, that, in a light of precaution, all
conquest must be ineffectual, unless it could be universal, since the
increasing circle must be involved in a larger sphere of hostility.  The
subjugation of Germany withdrew the veil which had so long concealed the
continent or islands of Scandinavia from the knowledge of Europe, and
awakened the torpid courage of their barbarous natives. The fiercest of
the Saxon idolaters escaped from the Christian tyrant to their brethren
of the North; the Ocean and Mediterranean were covered with their
piratical fleets; and Charlemagne beheld with a sigh the destructive
progress of the Normans, who, in less than seventy years, precipitated
the fall of his race and monarchy.

Had the pope and the Romans revived the primitive constitution, the
titles of emperor and Augustus were conferred on Charlemagne for the
term of his life; and his successors, on each vacancy, must have
ascended the throne by a formal or tacit election. But the association
of his son Lewis the Pious asserts the independent right of monarchy and
conquest, and the emperor seems on this occasion to have foreseen and
prevented the latent claims of the clergy. The royal youth was commanded
to take the crown from the altar, and with his own hands to place it on
his head, as a gift which he held from God, his father, and the nation.
The same ceremony was repeated, though with less energy, in the
subsequent associations of Lothaire and Lewis the Second: the
Carlovingian sceptre was transmitted from father to son in a lineal
descent of four generations; and the ambition of the popes was reduced
to the empty honor of crowning and anointing these hereditary princes,
who were already invested with their power and dominions. The pious
Lewis survived his brothers, and embraced the whole empire of
Charlemagne; but the nations and the nobles, his bishops and his
children, quickly discerned that this mighty mass was no longer inspired
by the same soul; and the foundations were undermined to the centre,
while the external surface was yet fair and entire. After a war, or
battle, which consumed one hundred thousand Franks, the empire was
divided by treaty between his three sons, who had violated every filial
and fraternal duty. The kingdoms of Germany and France were forever
separated; the provinces of Gaul, between the Rhone and the Alps, the
Meuse and the Rhine, were assigned, with Italy, to the Imperial dignity
of Lothaire. In the partition of his share, Lorraine and Arles, two
recent and transitory kingdoms, were bestowed on the younger children;
and Lewis the Second, his eldest son, was content with the realm of
Italy, the proper and sufficient patrimony of a Roman emperor. On his
death without any male issue, the vacant throne was disputed by his
uncles and cousins, and the popes most dexterously seized the occasion
of judging the claims and merits of the candidates, and of bestowing on
the most obsequious, or most liberal, the Imperial office of advocate of
the Roman church. The dregs of the Carlovingian race no longer exhibited
any symptoms of virtue or power, and the ridiculous epithets of the
bard, the stammerer, the fat, and the simple, distinguished the tame and
uniform features of a crowd of kings alike deserving of oblivion. By the
failure of the collateral branches, the whole inheritance devolved to
Charles the Fat, the last emperor of his family: his insanity authorized
the desertion of Germany, Italy, and France: he was deposed in a diet,
and solicited his daily bread from the rebels by whose contempt his life
and liberty had been spared. According to the measure of their force,
the governors, the bishops, and the lords, usurped the fragments of the
falling empire; and some preference was shown to the female or
illegitimate blood of Charlemagne. Of the greater part, the title and
possession were alike doubtful, and the merit was adequate to the
contracted scale of their dominions. Those who could appear with an army
at the gates of Rome were crowned emperors in the Vatican; but their
modesty was more frequently satisfied with the appellation of kings of
Italy: and the whole term of seventy-four years may be deemed a vacancy,
from the abdication of Charles the Fat to the establishment of Otho the
First.

Otho  was of the noble race of the dukes of Saxony; and if he truly
descended from Witikind, the adversary and proselyte of Charlemagne, the
posterity of a vanquished people was exalted to reign over their
conquerors. His father, Henry the Fowler, was elected, by the suffrage
of the nation, to save and institute the kingdom of Germany. Its limits
were enlarged on every side by his son, the first and greatest of the
Othos. A portion of Gaul, to the west of the Rhine, along the banks of
the Meuse and the Moselle, was assigned to the Germans, by whose blood
and language it has been tinged since the time of Cæsar and Tacitus.
Between the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Alps, the successors of Otho
acquired a vain supremacy over the broken kingdoms of Burgundy and
Arles. In the North, Christianity was propagated by the sword of Otho,
the conqueror and apostle of the Slavic nations of the Elbe and Oder:
the marches of Brandenburgh and Sleswick were fortified with German
colonies; and the king of Denmark, the dukes of Poland and Bohemia,
confessed themselves his tributary vassals. At the head of a victorious
army, he passed the Alps, subdued the kingdom of Italy, delivered the
pope, and forever fixed the Imperial crown in the name and nation of
Germany. From that memorable æra, two maxims of public jurisprudence
were introduced by force and ratified by time. I. Thatthe prince, who
was elected in the German diet, acquired, from that instant, the subject
kingdoms of Italy and Rome. II. But that he might not legally assume the
titles of emperor and Augustus, till he had received the crown from the
hands of the Roman pontiff.

The Imperial dignity of Charlemagne was announced to the East by the
alteration of his style; and instead of saluting his fathers, the Greek
emperors, he presumed to adopt the more equal and familiar appellation
of brother.  Perhaps in his connection with Irene he aspired to the name
of husband: his embassy to Constantinople spoke the language of peace
and friendship, and might conceal a treaty of marriage with that
ambitious princess, who had renounced the most sacred duties of a
mother. The nature, the duration, the probable consequences of such a
union between two distant and dissonant empires, it is impossible to
conjecture; but the unanimous silence of the Latins may teach us to
suspect, that the report was invented by the enemies of Irene, to charge
her with the guilt of betraying the church and state to the strangers of
the West.  The French ambassadors were the spectators, and had nearly
been the victims, of the conspiracy of Nicephorus, and the national
hatred. Constantinople was exasperated by the treason and sacrilege of
ancient Rome: a proverb, "That the Franks were good friends and bad
neighbors," was in every one's mouth; but it was dangerous to provoke a
neighbor who might be tempted to reiterate, in the church of St. Sophia,
the ceremony of his Imperial coronation. After a tedious journey of
circuit and delay, the ambassadors of Nicephorus found him in his camp,
on the banks of the River Sala; and Charlemagne affected to confound
their vanity by displaying, in a Franconian village, the pomp, or at
least the pride, of the Byzantine palace.  The Greeks were successively
led through four halls of audience: in the first they were ready to fall
prostrate before a splendid personage in a chair of state, till he
informed them that he was only a servant, the constable, or master of
the horse, of the emperor. The same mistake, and the same answer, were
repeated in the apartments of the count palatine, the steward, and the
chamberlain; and their impatience was gradually heightened, till the
doors of the presence-chamber were thrown open, and they beheld the
genuine monarch, on his throne, enriched with the foreign luxury which
he despised, and encircled with the love and reverence of his victorious
chiefs. A treaty of peace and alliance was concluded between the two
empires, and the limits of the East and West were defined by the right
of present possession. But the Greeks  soon forgot this humiliating
equality, or remembered it only to hate the Barbarians by whom it was
extorted. During the short union of virtue and power, they respectfully
saluted the augustCharlemagne, with the acclamations of basileus, and
emperor of the Romans. As soon as these qualities were separated in the
person of his pious son, the Byzantine letters were inscribed, "To the
king, or, as he styles himself, the emperor of the Franks and Lombards."
When both power and virtue were extinct, they despoiled Lewis the Second
of his hereditary title, and with the barbarous appellation of rex or
rega, degraded him among the crowd of Latin princes. His reply  is
expressive of his weakness: he proves, with some learning, that, both in
sacred and profane history, the name of king is synonymous with the
Greek word basileus: if, at Constantinople, it were assumed in a more
exclusive and imperial sense, he claims from his ancestors, and from the
popes, a just participation of the honors of the Roman purple. The same
controversy was revived in the reign of the Othos; and their ambassador
describes, in lively colors, the insolence of the Byzantine court.  The
Greeks affected to despise the poverty and ignorance of the Franks and
Saxons; and in their last decline refused to prostitute to the kings of
Germany the title of Roman emperors.

These emperors, in the election of the popes, continued to exercise the
powers which had been assumed by the Gothic and Grecian princes; and the
importance of this prerogative increased with the temporal estate and
spiritual jurisdiction of the Roman church. In the Christian
aristocracy, the principal members of the clergy still formed a senate
to assist the administration, and to supply the vacancy, of the bishop.
Rome was divided into twenty-eight parishes, and each parish was
governed by a cardinal priest, or presbyter, a title which, however
common or modest in its origin, has aspired to emulate the purple of
kings. Their number was enlarged by the association of the seven deacons
of the most considerable hospitals, the seven palatine judges of the
Lateran, and some dignitaries of the church. This ecclesiastical senate
was directed by the seven cardinal-bishops of the Roman province, who
were less occupied in the suburb dioceses of Ostia, Porto, Velitræ,
Tusculum, Præneste, Tibur, and the Sabines, than by their weekly service
in the Lateran, and their superior share in the honors and authority of
the apostolic see. On the death of the pope, these bishops recommended a
successor to the suffrage of the college of cardinals,  and their choice
was ratified or rejected by the applause or clamor of the Roman people.
But the election was imperfect; nor could the pontiff be legally
consecrated till the emperor, the advocate of the church, had graciously
signified his approbation and consent. The royal commissioner examined,
on the spot, the form and freedom of the proceedings; nor was it till
after a previous scrutiny into the qualifications of the candidates,
that he accepted an oath of fidelity, and confirmed the donations which
had successively enriched the patrimony of St. Peter. In the frequent
schisms, the rival claims were submitted to the sentence of the emperor;
and in a synod of bishops he presumed to judge, to condemn, and to
punish, the crimes of a guilty pontiff. Otho the First imposed a treaty
on the senate and people, who engaged to prefer the candidate most
acceptable to his majesty:  his successors anticipated or prevented
their choice: they bestowed the Roman benefice, like the bishoprics of
Cologne or Bamberg, on their chancellors or preceptors; and whatever
might be the merit of a Frank or Saxon, his name sufficiently attests
the interposition of foreign power. These acts of prerogative were most
speciously excused by the vices of a popular election. The competitor
who had been excluded by the cardinals appealed to the passions or
avarice of the multitude; the Vatican and the Lateran were stained with
blood; and the most powerful senators, the marquises of Tuscany and the
counts of Tusculum, held the apostolic see in a long and disgraceful
servitude. The Roman pontiffs, of the ninth and tenth centuries, were
insulted, imprisoned, and murdered, by their tyrants; and such was their
indigence, after the loss and usurpation of the ecclesiastical
patrimonies, that they could neither support the state of a prince, nor
exercise the charity of a priest.  The influence of two sister
prostitutes, Marozia and Theodora, was founded on their wealth and
beauty, their political and amorous intrigues: the most strenuous of
their lovers were rewarded with the Roman mitre, and their reign  may
have suggested to the darker ages  the fable  of a female pope.  The
bastard son, the grandson, and the great-grandson of Marozia, a rare
genealogy, were seated in the chair of St. Peter, and it was at the age
of nineteen years that the second of these became the head of the Latin
church. * His youth and manhood were of a suitable complexion; and the
nations of pilgrims could bear testimony to the charges that were urged
against him in a Roman synod, and in the presence of Otho the Great. As
John XII. had renounced the dress and decencies of his profession, the
soldiermay not perhaps be dishonored by the wine which he drank, the
blood that he spilt, the flames that he kindled, or the licentious
pursuits of gaming and hunting. His open simony might be the consequence
of distress; and his blasphemous invocation of Jupiter and Venus, if it
be true, could not possibly be serious. But we read, with some surprise,
that the worthy grandson of Marozia lived in public adultery with the
matrons of Rome; that the Lateran palace was turned into a school for
prostitution, and that his rapes of virgins and widows had deterred the
female pilgrims from visiting the tomb of St. Peter, lest, in the devout
act, they should be violated by his successor.  The Protestants have
dwelt with malicious pleasure on these characters of Antichrist; but to
a philosophic eye, the vices of the clergy are far less dangerous than
their virtues. After a long series of scandal, the apostolic see was
reformed and exalted by the austerity and zeal of Gregory VII. That
ambitious monk devoted his life to the execution of two projects. I. To
fix in the college of cardinals the freedom and independence of
election, and forever to abolish the right or usurpation of the emperors
and the Roman people. II. To bestow and resume the Western empire as a
fief or benefice  of the church, and to extend his temporal dominion
over the kings and kingdoms of the earth. After a contest of fifty
years, the first of these designs was accomplished by the firm support
of the ecclesiastical order, whose liberty was connected with that of
their chief. But the second attempt, though it was crowned with some
partial and apparent success, has been vigorously resisted by the
secular power, and finally extinguished by the improvement of human
reason.

In the revival of the empire of empire of Rome, neither the bishop nor
the people could bestow on Charlemagne or Otho the provinces which were
lost, as they had been won, by the chance of arms. But the Romans were
free to choose a master for themselves; and the powers which had been
delegated to the patrician, were irrevocably granted to the French and
Saxon emperors of the West. The broken records of the times  preserve
some remembrance of their palace, their mint, their tribunal, their
edicts, and the sword of justice, which, as late as the thirteenth
century, was derived from Cæsar to the præfect of the city.  Between the
arts of the popes and the violence of the people, this supremacy was
crushed and annihilated. Content with the titles of emperor and
Augustus, the successors of Charlemagne neglected to assert this local
jurisdiction. In the hour of prosperity, their ambition was diverted by
more alluring objects; and in the decay and division of the empire, they
were oppressed by the defence of their hereditary provinces. Amidst the
ruins of Italy, the famous Marozia invited one of the usurpers to assume
the character of her third husband; and Hugh, king of Burgundy was
introduced by her faction into the mole of Hadrian or Castle of St.
Angelo, which commands the principal bridge and entrance of Rome. Her
son by the first marriage, Alberic, was compelled to attend at the
nuptial banquet; but his reluctant and ungraceful service was chastised
with a blow by his new father. The blow was productive of a revolution.
"Romans," exclaimed the youth, "once you were the masters of the world,
and these Burgundians the most abject of your slaves. They now reign,
these voracious and brutal savages, and my injury is the commencement of
your servitude."  The alarum bell rang to arms in every quarter of the
city: the Burgundians retreated with haste and shame; Marozia was
imprisoned by her victorious son, and his brother, Pope John XI., was
reduced to the exercise of his spiritual functions. With the title of
prince, Alberic possessed above twenty years the government of Rome; and
he is said to have gratified the popular prejudice, by restoring the
office, or at least the title, of consuls and tribunes. His son and heir
Octavian assumed, with the pontificate, the name of John XII.: like his
predecessor, he was provoked by the Lombard princes to seek a deliverer
for the church and republic; and the services of Otho were rewarded with
the Imperial dignity. But the Saxon was imperious, the Romans were
impatient, the festival of the coronation was disturbed by the secret
conflict of prerogative and freedom, and Otho commanded his sword-bearer
not to stir from his person, lest he should be assaulted and murdered at
the foot of the altar.  Before he repassed the Alps, the emperor
chastised the revolt of the people and the ingratitude of John XII. The
pope was degraded in a synod; the præfect was mounted on an ass, whipped
through the city, and cast into a dungeon; thirteen of the most guilty
were hanged, others were mutilated or banished; and this severe process
was justified by the ancient laws of Theodosius and Justinian. The voice
of fame has accused the second Otho of a perfidious and bloody act, the
massacre of the senators, whom he had invited to his table under the
fair semblance of hospitality and friendship.  In the minority of his
son Otho the Third, Rome made a bold attempt to shake off the Saxon
yoke, and the consul Crescentius was the Brutus of the republic. From
the condition of a subject and an exile, he twice rose to the command of
the city, oppressed, expelled, and created the popes, and formed a
conspiracy for restoring the authority of the Greek emperors. * In the
fortress of St. Angelo, he maintained an obstinate siege, till the
unfortunate consul was betrayed by a promise of safety: his body was
suspended on a gibbet, and his head was exposed on the battlements of
the castle. By a reverse of fortune, Otho, after separating his troops,
was besieged three days, without food, in his palace; and a disgraceful
escape saved him from the justice or fury of the Romans. The senator
Ptolemy was the leader of the people, and the widow of Crescentius
enjoyed the pleasure or the fame of revenging her husband, by a poison
which she administered to her Imperial lover. It was the design of Otho
the Third to abandon the ruder countries of the North, to erect his
throne in Italy, and to revive the institutions of the Roman monarchy.
But his successors only once in their lives appeared on the banks of the
Tyber, to receive their crown in the Vatican.  Their absence was
contemptible, their presence odious and formidable. They descended from
the Alps, at the head of their barbarians, who were strangers and
enemies to the country; and their transient visit was a scene of tumult
and bloodshed.  A faint remembrance of their ancestors still tormented
the Romans; and they beheld with pious indignation the succession of
Saxons, Franks, Swabians, and Bohemians, who usurped the purple and
prerogatives of the Cæsars.

Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks. -- Part VI.

There is nothing perhaps more adverse to nature and reason than to hold
in obedience remote countries and foreign nations, in opposition to
their inclination and interest. A torrent of Barbarians may pass over
the earth, but an extensive empire must be supported by a refined system
of policy and oppression; in the centre, an absolute power, prompt in
action and rich in resources; a swift and easy communication with the
extreme parts; fortifications to check the first effort of rebellion; a
regular administration to protect and punish; and a well-disciplined
army to inspire fear, without provoking discontent and despair. Far
different was the situation of the German Cæsars, who were ambitious to
enslave the kingdom of Italy. Their patrimonial estates were stretched
along the Rhine, or scattered in the provinces; but this ample domain
was alienated by the imprudence or distress of successive princes; and
their revenue, from minute and vexatious prerogative, was scarcely
sufficient for the maintenance of their household. Their troops were
formed by the legal or voluntary service of their feudal vassals, who
passed the Alps with reluctance, assumed the license of rapine and
disorder, and capriciously deserted before the end of the campaign.
Whole armies were swept away by the pestilential influence of the
climate: the survivors brought back the bones of their princes and
nobles,  and the effects of their own intemperance were often imputed to
the treachery and malice of the Italians, who rejoiced at least in the
calamities of the Barbarians. This irregular tyranny might contend on
equal terms with the petty tyrants of Italy; nor can the people, or the
reader, be much interested in the event of the quarrel. But in the
eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Lombards rekindled the flame of
industry and freedom; and the generous example was at length imitated by
the republics of Tuscany. * In the Italian cities a municipal government
had never been totally abolished; and their first privileges were
granted by the favor and policy of the emperors, who were desirous of
erecting a plebeian barrier against the independence of the nobles. But
their rapid progress, the daily extension of their power and
pretensions, were founded on the numbers and spirit of these rising
communities.  Each city filled the measure of her diocese or district:
the jurisdiction of the counts and bishops, of the marquises and counts,
was banished from the land; and the proudest nobles were persuaded or
compelled to desert their solitary castles, and to embrace the more
honorable character of freemen and magistrates. The legislative
authority was inherent in the general assembly; but the executive powers
were intrusted to three consuls, annually chosen from the three orders
of captains, valvassors,  and commons, into which the republic was
divided. Under the protection of equal law, the labors of agriculture
and commerce were gradually revived; but the martial spirit of the
Lombards was nourished by the presence of danger; and as often as the
bell was rung, or the standard  erected, the gates of the city poured
forth a numerous and intrepid band, whose zeal in their own cause was
soon guided by the use and discipline of arms. At the foot of these
popular ramparts, the pride of the Cæsars was overthrown; and the
invincible genius of liberty prevailed over the two Frederics, the
greatest princes of the middle age; the first, superior perhaps in
military prowess; the second, who undoubtedly excelled in the softer
accomplishments of peace and learning.

Ambitious of restoring the splendor of the purple, Frederic the First
invaded the republics of Lombardy, with the arts of a statesman, the
valor of a soldier, and the cruelty of a tyrant. The recent discovery of
the Pandects had renewed a science most favorable to despotism; and his
venal advocates proclaimed the emperor the absolute master of the lives
and properties of his subjects. His royal prerogatives, in a less odious
sense, were acknowledged in the diet of Roncaglia; and the revenue of
Italy was fixed at thirty thousand pounds of silver,  which were
multiplied to an indefinite demand by the rapine of the fiscal officers.
The obstinate cities were reduced by the terror or the force of his
arms: his captives were delivered to the executioner, or shot from his
military engines; and. after the siege and surrender of Milan, the
buildings of that stately capital were razed to the ground, three
hundred hostages were sent into Germany, and the inhabitants were
dispersed in four villages, under the yoke of the inflexible conqueror.
But Milan soon rose from her ashes; and the league of Lombardy was
cemented by distress: their cause was espoused by Venice, Pope Alexander
the Third, and the Greek emperor: the fabric of oppression was
overturned in a day; and in the treaty of Constance, Frederic
subscribed, with some reservations, the freedom of four-and-twenty
cities. His grandson contended with their vigor and maturity; but
Frederic the Second  was endowed with some personal and peculiar
advantages. His birth and education recommended him to the Italians; and
in the implacable discord of the two factions, the Ghibelins were
attached to the emperor, while the Guelfs displayed the banner of
liberty and the church. The court of Rome had slumbered, when his father
Henry the Sixth was permitted to unite with the empire the kingdoms of
Naples and Sicily; and from these hereditary realms the son derived an
ample and ready supply of troops and treasure. Yet Frederic the Second
was finally oppressed by the arms of the Lombards and the thunders of
the Vatican: his kingdom was given to a stranger, and the last of his
family was beheaded at Naples on a public scaffold. During sixty years,
no emperor appeared in Italy, and the name was remembered only by the
ignominious sale of the last relics of sovereignty.

The Barbarian conquerors of the West were pleased to decorate their
chief with the title of emperor; but it was not their design to invest
him with the despotism of Constantine and Justinian. The persons of the
Germans were free, their conquests were their own, and their national
character was animated by a spirit which scorned the servile
jurisprudence of the new or the ancient Rome. It would have been a vain
and dangerous attempt to impose a monarch on the armed freemen, who were
impatient of a magistrate; on the bold, who refused to obey; on the
powerful, who aspired to command. The empire of Charlemagne and Otho was
distributed among the dukes of the nations or provinces, the counts of
the smaller districts, and the margraves of the marches or frontiers,
who all united the civil and military authority as it had been delegated
to the lieutenants of the first Cæsars. The Roman governors, who, for
the most part, were soldiers of fortune, seduced their mercenary
legions, assumed the Imperial purple, and either failed or succeeded in
their revolt, without wounding the power and unity of government. If the
dukes, margraves, and counts of Germany, were less audacious in their
claims, the consequences of their success were more lasting and
pernicious to the state. Instead of aiming at the supreme rank, they
silently labored to establish and appropriate their provincial
independence. Their ambition was seconded by the weight of their estates
and vassals, their mutual example and support, the common interest of
the subordinate nobility, the change of princes and families, the
minorities of Otho the Third and Henry the Fourth, the ambition of the
popes, and the vain pursuit of the fugitive crowns of Italy and Rome.
All the attributes of regal and territorial jurisdiction were gradually
usurped by the commanders of the provinces; the right of peace and war,
of life and death, of coinage and taxation, of foreign alliance and
domestic economy. Whatever had been seized by violence, was ratified by
favor or distress, was granted as the price of a doubtful vote or a
voluntary service; whatever had been granted to one could not, without
injury, be denied to his successor or equal; and every act of local or
temporary possession was insensibly moulded into the constitution of the
Germanic kingdom. In every province, the visible presence of the duke or
count was interposed between the throne and the nobles; the subjects of
the law became the vassals of a private chief; and the standard which
hereceived from his sovereign, was often raised against him in the
field. The temporal power of the clergy was cherished and exalted by the
superstition or policy of the Carlovingian and Saxon dynasties, who
blindly depended on their moderation and fidelity; and the bishoprics of
Germany were made equal in extent and privilege, superior in wealth and
population, to the most ample states of the military order. As long as
the emperors retained the prerogative of bestowing on every vacancy
these ecclesiastic and secular benefices, their cause was maintained by
the gratitude or ambition of their friends and favorites. But in the
quarrel of the investitures, they were deprived of their influence over
the episcopal chapters; the freedom of election was restored, and the
sovereign was reduced, by a solemn mockery, to his first prayers, the
recommendation, once in his reign, to a single prebend in each church.
The secular governors, instead of being recalled at the will of a
superior, could be degraded only by the sentence of their peers. In the
first age of the monarchy, the appointment of the son to the duchy or
county of his father, was solicited as a favor; it was gradually
obtained as a custom, and extorted as a right: the lineal succession was
often extended to the collateral or female branches; the states of the
empire (their popular, and at length their legal, appellation) were
divided and alienated by testament and sale; and all idea of a public
trust was lost in that of a private and perpetual inheritance. The
emperor could not even be enriched by the casualties of forfeiture and
extinction: within the term of a year, he was obliged to dispose of the
vacant fief; and, in the choice of the candidate, it was his duty to
consult either the general or the provincial diet.

After the death of Frederic the Second, Germany was left a monster with
a hundred heads. A crowd of princes and prelates disputed the ruins of
the empire: the lords of innumerable castles were less prone to obey,
than to imitate, their superiors; and, according to the measure of their
strength, their incessant hostilities received the names of conquest or
robbery. Such anarchy was the inevitable consequence of the laws and
manners of Europe; and the kingdoms of France and Italy were shivered
into fragments by the violence of the same tempest. But the Italian
cities and the French vassals were divided and destroyed, while the
union of the Germans has produced, under the name of an empire, a great
system of a federative republic. In the frequent and at last the
perpetual institution of diets, a national spirit was kept alive, and
the powers of a common legislature are still exercised by the three
branches or colleges of the electors, the princes, and the free and
Imperial cities of Germany. I. Seven of the most powerful feudatories
were permitted to assume, with a distinguished name and rank, the
exclusive privilege of choosing the Roman emperor; and these electors
were the king of Bohemia, the duke of Saxony, the margrave of
Brandenburgh, the count palatine of the Rhine, and the three archbishops
of Mentz, of Treves, and of Cologne. II. The college of princes and
prelates purged themselves of a promiscuous multitude: they reduced to
four representative votes the long series of independent counts, and
excluded the nobles or equestrian order, sixty thousand of whom, as in
the Polish diets, had appeared on horseback in the field of election.
III. The pride of birth and dominion, of the sword and the mitre, wisely
adopted the commons as the third branch of the legislature, and, in the
progress of society, they were introduced about the same æra into the
national assemblies of France England, and Germany. The Hanseatic League
commanded the trade and navigation of the north: the confederates of the
Rhine secured the peace and intercourse of the inland country; the
influence of the cities has been adequate to their wealth and policy,
and their negative still invalidates the acts of the two superior
colleges of electors and princes.

It is in the fourteenth century that we may view in the strongest light
the state and contrast of the Roman empire of Germany, which no longer
held, except on the borders of the Rhine and Danube, a single province
of Trajan or Constantine. Their unworthy successors were the counts of
Hapsburgh, of Nassau, of Luxemburgh, and Schwartzenburgh: the emperor
Henry the Seventh procured for his son the crown of Bohemia, and his
grandson Charles the Fourth was born among a people strange and
barbarous in the estimation of the Germans themselves.  After the
excommunication of Lewis of Bavaria, he received the gift or promise of
the vacant empire from the Roman pontiffs, who, in the exile and
captivity of Avignon, affected the dominion of the earth. The death of
his competitors united the electoral college, and Charles was
unanimously saluted king of the Romans, and future emperor; a title
which, in the same age, was prostituted to the Cæsars of Germany and
Greece. The German emperor was no more than the elective and impotent
magistrate of an aristocracy of princes, who had not left him a village
that he might call his own. His best prerogative was the right of
presiding and proposing in the national senate, which was convened at
his summons; and his native kingdom of Bohemia, less opulent than the
adjacent city of Nuremberg, was the firmest seat of his power and the
richest source of his revenue. The army with which he passed the Alps
consisted of three hundred horse. In the cathedral of St. Ambrose,
Charles was crowned with the ironcrown, which tradition ascribed to the
Lombard monarchy; but he was admitted only with a peaceful train; the
gates of the city were shut upon him; and the king of Italy was held a
captive by the arms of the Visconti, whom he confirmed in the
sovereignty of Milan. In the Vatican he was again crowned with the
goldencrown of the empire; but, in obedience to a secret treaty, the
Roman emperor immediately withdrew, without reposing a single night
within the walls of Rome. The eloquent Petrarch,  whose fancy revived
the visionary glories of the Capitol, deplores and upbraids the
ignominious flight of the Bohemian; and even his contemporaries could
observe, that the sole exercise of his authority was in the lucrative
sale of privileges and titles. The gold of Italy secured the election of
his son; but such was the shameful poverty of the Roman emperor, that
his person was arrested by a butcher in the streets of Worms, and was
detained in the public inn, as a pledge or hostage for the payment of
his expenses.

From this humiliating scene, let us turn to the apparent majesty of the
same Charles in the diets of the empire. The golden bull, which fixes
the Germanic constitution, is promulgated in the style of a sovereign
and legislator. A hundred princes bowed before his throne, and exalted
their own dignity by the voluntary honors which they yielded to their
chief or minister. At the royal banquet, the hereditary great officers,
the seven electors, who in rank and title were equal to kings, performed
their solemn and domestic service of the palace. The seals of the triple
kingdom were borne in state by the archbishops of Mentz, Cologne, and
Treves, the perpetual arch-chancellors of Germany, Italy, and Arles. The
great marshal, on horseback, exercised his function with a silver
measure of oats, which he emptied on the ground, and immediately
dismounted to regulate the order of the guests The great steward, the
count palatine of the Rhine, place the dishes on the table. The great
chamberlain, the margrave of Brandenburgh, presented, after the repast,
the golden ewer and basin, to wash. The king of Bohemia, as great
cup-bearer, was represented by the emperor's brother, the duke of
Luxemburgh and Brabant; and the procession was closed by the great
huntsmen, who introduced a boar and a stag, with a loud chorus of horns
and hounds.  Nor was the supremacy of the emperor confined to Germany
alone: the hereditary monarchs of Europe confessed the preëminence of
his rank and dignity: he was the first of the Christian princes, the
temporal head of the great republic of the West:  to his person the
title of majesty was long appropriated; and he disputed with the pope
the sublime prerogative of creating kings and assembling councils. The
oracle of the civil law, the learned Bartolus, was a pensioner of
Charles the Fourth; and his school resounded with the doctrine, that the
Roman emperor was the rightful sovereign of the earth, from the rising
to the setting sun. The contrary opinion was condemned, not as an error,
but as a heresy, since even the gospel had pronounced, "And there went
forth a decree from Cæsar Augustus, that all the worldshould be taxed."

If we annihilate the interval of time and space between Augustus and
Charles, strong and striking will be the contrast between the two
Cæsars; the Bohemian who concealed his weakness under the mask of
ostentation, and the Roman, who disguised his strength under the
semblance of modesty. At the head of his victorious legions, in his
reign over the sea and land, from the Nile and Euphrates to the Atlantic
Ocean, Augustus professed himself the servant of the state and the equal
of his fellow-citizens. The conqueror of Rome and her provinces assumed
a popular and legal form of a censor, a consul, and a tribune. His will
was the law of mankind, but in the declaration of his laws he borrowed
the voice of the senate and people; and from their decrees their master
accepted and renewed his temporary commission to administer the
republic. In his dress, his domestics,  his titles, in all the offices
of social life, Augustus maintained the character of a private Roman;
and his most artful flatterers respected the secret of his absolute and
perpetual monarchy.

Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.

Part I.

Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants. -- Birth, Character, And
Doctrine Of Mahomet. -- He Preaches At Mecca. -- Flies To Medina. --
Propagates His Religion By The Sword. -- Voluntary Or Reluctant
Submission Of The Arabs. -- His Death And Successors. -- The Claims And
Fortunes Of All And His Descendants.

After pursuing above six hundred years the fleeting Cæsars of
Constantinople and Germany, I now descend, in the reign of Heraclius, on
the eastern borders of the Greek monarchy. While the state was exhausted
by the Persian war, and the church was distracted by the Nestorian and
Monophysite sects, Mahomet, with the sword in one hand and the Koran in
the other, erected his throne on the ruins of Christianity and of Rome.
The genius of the Arabian prophet, the manners of his nation, and the
spirit of his religion, involve the causes of the decline and fall of
the Eastern empire; and our eyes are curiously intent on one of the most
memorable revolutions, which have impressed a new and lasting character
on the nations of the globe.

In the vacant space between Persia, Syria, Egypt, and Æthiopia, the
Arabian peninsula  may be conceived as a triangle of spacious but
irregular dimensions. From the northern point of Beles  on the
Euphrates, a line of fifteen hundred miles is terminated by the Straits
of Bebelmandel and the land of frankincense. About half this length may
be allowed for the middle breadth, from east to west, from Bassora to
Suez, from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea.  The sides of the triangle
are gradually enlarged, and the southern basis presents a front of a
thousand miles to the Indian Ocean. The entire surface of the peninsula
exceeds in a fourfold proportion that of Germany or France; but the far
greater part has been justly stigmatized with the epithets of the
stonyand the sandy. Even the wilds of Tartary are decked, by the hand of
nature, with lofty trees and luxuriant herbage; and the lonesome
traveller derives a sort of comfort and society from the presence of
vegetable life. But in the dreary waste of Arabia, a boundless level of
sand is intersected by sharp and naked mountains; and the face of the
desert, without shade or shelter, is scorched by the direct and intense
rays of a tropical sun. Instead of refreshing breezes, the winds,
particularly from the south-west, diffuse a noxious and even deadly
vapor; the hillocks of sand which they alternately raise and scatter,
are compared to the billows of the ocean, and whole caravans, whole
armies, have been lost and buried in the whirlwind. The common benefits
of water are an object of desire and contest; and such is the scarcity
of wood, that some art is requisite to preserve and propagate the
element of fire. Arabia is destitute of navigable rivers, which
fertilize the soil, and convey its produce to the adjacent regions: the
torrents that fall from the hills are imbibed by the thirsty earth: the
rare and hardy plants, the tamarind or the acacia, that strike their
roots into the clefts of the rocks, are nourished by the dews of the
night: a scanty supply of rain is collected in cisterns and aqueducts:
the wells and springs are the secret treasure of the desert; and the
pilgrim of Mecca,  after many a dry and sultry march, is disgusted by
the taste of the waters which have rolled over a bed of sulphur or salt.
Such is the general and genuine picture of the climate of Arabia. The
experience of evil enhances the value of any local or partial
enjoyments. A shady grove, a green pasture, a stream of fresh water, are
sufficient to attract a colony of sedentary Arabs to the fortunate spots
which can afford food and refreshment to themselves and their cattle,
and which encourage their industry in the cultivation of the palmtree
and the vine. The high lands that border on the Indian Ocean are
distinguished by their superior plenty of wood and water; the air is
more temperate, the fruits are more delicious, the animals and the human
race more numerous: the fertility of the soil invites and rewards the
toil of the husbandman; and the peculiar gifts of frankincense  and
coffee have attracted in different ages the merchants of the world. If
it be compared with the rest of the peninsula, this sequestered region
may truly deserve the appellation of the happy; and the splendid
coloring of fancy and fiction has been suggested by contrast, and
countenanced by distance. It was for this earthly paradise that Nature
had reserved her choicest favors and her most curious workmanship: the
incompatible blessings of luxury and innocence were ascribed to the
natives: the soil was impregnated with gold  and gems, and both the land
and sea were taught to exhale the odors of aromatic sweets. This
division of the sandy, the stony, and the happy, so familiar to the
Greeks and Latins, is unknown to the Arabians themselves; and it is
singular enough, that a country, whose language and inhabitants have
ever been the same, should scarcely retain a vestige of its ancient
geography. The maritime districts of Bahreinand Omanare opposite to the
realm of Persia. The kingdom of Yemendisplays the limits, or at least
the situation, of Arabia Felix: the name of Negedis extended over the
inland space; and the birth of Mahomet has illustrated the province of
Hejazalong the coast of the Red Sea.

The measure of population is regulated by the means of subsistence; and
the inhabitants of this vast peninsula might be outnumbered by the
subjects of a fertile and industrious province. Along the shores of the
Persian Gulf, of the ocean, and even of the Red Sea, the Icthyophagi,
or fish eaters, continued to wander in quest of their precarious food.
In this primitive and abject state, which ill deserves the name of
society, the human brute, without arts or laws, almost without sense or
language, is poorly distinguished from the rest of the animal creation.
Generations and ages might roll away in silent oblivion, and the
helpless savage was restrained from multiplying his race by the wants
and pursuits which confined his existence to the narrow margin of the
seacoast. But in an early period of antiquity the great body of the
Arabs had emerged from this scene of misery; and as the naked wilderness
could not maintain a people of hunters, they rose at once to the more
secure and plentiful condition of the pastoral life. The same life is
uniformly pursued by the roving tribes of the desert; and in the
portrait of the modern Bedoweens, we may trace the features of their
ancestors,  who, in the age of Moses or Mahomet, dwelt under similar
tents, and conducted their horses, and camels, and sheep, to the same
springs and the same pastures. Our toil is lessened, and our wealth is
increased, by our dominion over the useful animals; and the Arabian
shepherd had acquired the absolute possession of a faithful friend and a
laborious slave.  Arabia, in the opinion of the naturalist, is the
genuine and original country of the horse; the climate most propitious,
not indeed to the size, but to the spirit and swiftness, of that
generous animal. The merit of the Barb, the Spanish, and the English
breed, is derived from a mixture of Arabian blood:  the Bedoweens
preserve, with superstitious care, the honors and the memory of the
purest race: the males are sold at a high price, but the females are
seldom alienated; and the birth of a noble foal was esteemed among the
tribes, as a subject of joy and mutual congratulation. These horses are
educated in the tents, among the children of the Arabs, with a tender
familiarity, which trains them in the habits of gentleness and
attachment. They are accustomed only to walk and to gallop: their
sensations are not blunted by the incessant abuse of the spur and the
whip: their powers are reserved for the moments of flight and pursuit:
but no sooner do they feel the touch of the hand or the stirrup, than
they dart away with the swiftness of the wind; and if their friend be
dismounted in the rapid career, they instantly stop till he has
recovered his seat. In the sands of Africa and Arabia, the camelis a
sacred and precious gift. That strong and patient beast of burden can
perform, without eating or drinking, a journey of several days; and a
reservoir of fresh water is preserved in a large bag, a fifth stomach of
the animal, whose body is imprinted with the marks of servitude: the
larger breed is capable of transporting a weight of a thousand pounds;
and the dromedary, of a lighter and more active frame, outstrips the
fleetest courser in the race. Alive or dead, almost every part of the
camel is serviceable to man: her milk is plentiful and nutritious: the
young and tender flesh has the taste of veal:  a valuable salt is
extracted from the urine: the dung supplies the deficiency of fuel; and
the long hair, which falls each year and is renewed, is coarsely
manufactured into the garments, the furniture, and the tents of the
Bedoweens. In the rainy seasons, they consume the rare and insufficient
herbage of the desert: during the heats of summer and the scarcity of
winter, they remove their encampments to the sea-coast, the hills of
Yemen, or the neighborhood of the Euphrates, and have often extorted the
dangerous license of visiting the banks of the Nile, and the villages of
Syria and Palestine. The life of a wandering Arab is a life of danger
and distress; and though sometimes, by rapine or exchange, he may
appropriate the fruits of industry, a private citizen in Europe is in
the possession of more solid and pleasing luxury than the proudest emir,
who marches in the field at the head of ten thousand horse.

Yet an essential difference may be found between the hordes of Scythia
and the Arabian tribes; since many of the latter were collected into
towns, and employed in the labors of trade and agriculture. A part of
their time and industry was still devoted to the management of their
cattle: they mingled, in peace and war, with their brethren of the
desert; and the Bedoweens derived from their useful intercourse some
supply of their wants, and some rudiments of art and knowledge. Among
the forty-two cities of Arabia,  enumerated by Abulfeda, the most
ancient and populous were situate in the happyYemen: the towers of
Saana,  and the marvellous reservoir of Merab,  were constructed by the
kings of the Homerites; but their profane lustre was eclipsed by the
prophetic glories of Medina  and Mecca,  near the Red Sea, and at the
distance from each other of two hundred and seventy miles. The last of
these holy places was known to the Greeks under the name of Macoraba;
and the termination of the word is expressive of its greatness, which
has not, indeed, in the most flourishing period, exceeded the size and
populousness of Marseilles. Some latent motive, perhaps of superstition,
must have impelled the founders, in the choice of a most unpromising
situation. They erected their habitations of mud or stone, in a plain
about two miles long and one mile broad, at the foot of three barren
mountains: the soil is a rock; the water even of the holy well of Zemzem
is bitter or brackish; the pastures are remote from the city; and grapes
are transported above seventy miles from the gardens of Tayef. The fame
and spirit of the Koreishites, who reigned in Mecca, were conspicuous
among the Arabian tribes; but their ungrateful soil refused the labors
of agriculture, and their position was favorable to the enterprises of
trade. By the seaport of Gedda, at the distance only of forty miles,
they maintained an easy correspondence with Abyssinia; and that
Christian kingdom afforded the first refuge to the disciples of Mahomet.
The treasures of Africa were conveyed over the Peninsula to Gerrha or
Katif, in the province of Bahrein, a city built, as it is said, of
rock-salt, by the Chaldæan exiles;  and from thence with the native
pearls of the Persian Gulf, they were floated on rafts to the mouth of
the Euphrates. Mecca is placed almost at an equal distance, a month's
journey, between Yemen on the right, and Syria on the left hand. The
former was the winter, the latter the summer, station of her caravans;
and their seasonable arrival relieved the ships of India from the
tedious and troublesome navigation of the Red Sea. In the markets of
Saana and Merab, in the harbors of Oman and Aden, the camels of the
Koreishites were laden with a precious cargo of aromatics; a supply of
corn and manufactures was purchased in the fairs of Bostra and Damascus;
the lucrative exchange diffused plenty and riches in the streets of
Mecca; and the noblest of her sons united the love of arms with the
profession of merchandise.

The perpetual independence of the Arabs has been the theme of praise
among strangers and natives; and the arts of controversy transform this
singular event into a prophecy and a miracle, in favor of the posterity
of Ismael.  Some exceptions, that can neither be dismissed nor eluded,
render this mode of reasoning as indiscreet as it is superfluous; the
kingdom of Yemen has been successively subdued by the Abyssinians, the
Persians, the sultans of Egypt,  and the Turks;  the holy cities of
Mecca and Medina have repeatedly bowed under a Scythian tyrant; and the
Roman province of Arabia  embraced the peculiar wilderness in which
Ismael and his sons must have pitched their tents in the face of their
brethren. Yet these exceptions are temporary or local; the body of the
nation has escaped the yoke of the most powerful monarchies: the arms of
Sesostris and Cyrus, of Pompey and Trajan, could never achieve the
conquest of Arabia; the present sovereign of the Turks  may exercise a
shadow of jurisdiction, but his pride is reduced to solicit the
friendship of a people, whom it is dangerous to provoke, and fruitless
to attack. The obvious causes of their freedom are inscribed on the
character and country of the Arabs. Many ages before Mahomet,  their
intrepid valor had been severely felt by their neighbors in offensive
and defensive war. The patient and active virtues of a soldier are
insensibly nursed in the habits and discipline of a pastoral life. The
care of the sheep and camels is abandoned to the women of the tribe; but
the martial youth, under the banner of the emir, is ever on horseback,
and in the field, to practise the exercise of the bow, the javelin, and
the cimeter. The long memory of their independence is the firmest pledge
of its perpetuity and succeeding generations are animated to prove their
descent, and to maintain their inheritance. Their domestic feuds are
suspended on the approach of a common enemy; and in their last
hostilities against the Turks, the caravan of Mecca was attacked and
pillaged by fourscore thousand of the confederates. When they advance to
battle, the hope of victory is in the front; in the rear, the assurance
of a retreat. Their horses and camels, who, in eight or ten days, can
perform a march of four or five hundred miles, disappear before the
conqueror; the secret waters of the desert elude his search, and his
victorious troops are consumed with thirst, hunger, and fatigue, in the
pursuit of an invisible foe, who scorns his efforts, and safely reposes
in the heart of the burning solitude. The arms and deserts of the
Bedoweens are not only the safeguards of their own freedom, but the
barriers also of the happy Arabia, whose inhabitants, remote from war,
are enervated by the luxury of the soil and climate. The legions of
Augustus melted away in disease and lassitude;  and it is only by a
naval power that the reduction of Yemen has been successfully attempted.
When Mahomet erected his holy standard,  that kingdom was a province of
the Persian empire; yet seven princes of the Homerites still reigned in
the mountains; and the vicegerent of Chosroes was tempted to forget his
distant country and his unfortunate master. The historians of the age of
Justinian represent the state of the independent Arabs, who were divided
by interest or affection in the long quarrel of the East: the tribe of
Gassanwas allowed to encamp on the Syrian territory: the princes of
Hirawere permitted to form a city about forty miles to the southward of
the ruins of Babylon. Their service in the field was speedy and
vigorous; but their friendship was venal, their faith inconstant, their
enmity capricious: it was an easier task to excite than to disarm these
roving barbarians; and, in the familiar intercourse of war, they learned
to see, and to despise, the splendid weakness both of Rome and of
Persia. From Mecca to the Euphrates, the Arabian tribes  were confounded
by the Greeks and Latins, under the general appellation of Saracens,  a
name which every Christian mouth has been taught to pronounce with
terror and abhorrence.

Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants. -- Part II.

The slaves of domestic tyranny may vainly exult in their national
independence: but the Arab is personally free; and he enjoys, in some
degree, the benefits of society, without forfeiting the prerogatives of
nature. In every tribe, superstition, or gratitude, or fortune, has
exalted a particular family above the heads of their equals. The
dignities of sheick and emir invariably descend in this chosen race; but
the order of succession is loose and precarious; and the most worthy or
aged of the noble kinsmen are preferred to the simple, though important,
office of composing disputes by their advice, and guiding valor by their
example. Even a female of sense and spirit has been permitted to command
the countrymen of Zenobia.  The momentary junction of several tribes
produces an army: their more lasting union constitutes a nation; and the
supreme chief, the emir of emirs, whose banner is displayed at their
head, may deserve, in the eyes of strangers, the honors of the kingly
name. If the Arabian princes abuse their power, they are quickly
punished by the desertion of their subjects, who had been accustomed to
a mild and parental jurisdiction. Their spirit is free, their steps are
unconfined, the desert is open, and the tribes and families are held
together by a mutual and voluntary compact. The softer natives of Yemen
supported the pomp and majesty of a monarch; but if he could not leave
his palace without endangering his life,  the active powers of
government must have been devolved on his nobles and magistrates. The
cities of Mecca and Medina present, in the heart of Asia, the form, or
rather the substance, of a commonwealth. The grandfather of Mahomet, and
his lineal ancestors, appear in foreign and domestic transactions as the
princes of their country; but they reigned, like Pericles at Athens, or
the Medici at Florence, by the opinion of their wisdom and integrity;
their influence was divided with their patrimony; and the sceptre was
transferred from the uncles of the prophet to a younger branch of the
tribe of Koreish. On solemn occasions they convened the assembly of the
people; and, since mankind must be either compelled or persuaded to
obey, the use and reputation of oratory among the ancient Arabs is the
clearest evidence of public freedom.  But their simple freedom was of a
very different cast from the nice and artificial machinery of the Greek
and Roman republics, in which each member possessed an undivided share
of the civil and political rights of the community. In the more simple
state of the Arabs, the nation is free, because each of her sons
disdains a base submission to the will of a master. His breast is
fortified by the austere virtues of courage, patience, and sobriety; the
love of independence prompts him to exercise the habits of self-command;
and the fear of dishonor guards him from the meaner apprehension of
pain, of danger, and of death. The gravity and firmness of the mind is
conspicuous in his outward demeanor; his speech is low, weighty, and
concise; he is seldom provoked to laughter; his only gesture is that of
stroking his beard, the venerable symbol of manhood; and the sense of
his own importance teaches him to accost his equals without levity, and
his superiors without awe.  The liberty of the Saracens survived their
conquests: the first caliphs indulged the bold and familiar language of
their subjects; they ascended the pulpit to persuade and edify the
congregation; nor was it before the seat of empire was removed to the
Tigris, that the Abbasides adopted the proud and pompous ceremonial of
the Persian and Byzantine courts.

In the study of nations and men, we may observe the causes that render
them hostile or friendly to each other, that tend to narrow or enlarge,
to mollify or exasperate, the social character. The separation of the
Arabs from the rest of mankind has accustomed them to confound the ideas
of stranger and enemy; and the poverty of the land has introduced a
maxim of jurisprudence, which they believe and practise to the present
hour. They pretend, that, in the division of the earth, the rich and
fertile climates were assigned to the other branches of the human
family; and that the posterity of the outlaw Ismael might recover, by
fraud or force, the portion of inheritance of which he had been unjustly
deprived. According to the remark of Pliny, the Arabian tribes are
equally addicted to theft and merchandise; the caravans that traverse
the desert are ransomed or pillaged; and their neighbors, since the
remote times of Job and Sesostris,  have been the victims of their
rapacious spirit. If a Bedoween discovers from afar a solitary
traveller, he rides furiously against him, crying, with a loud voice,
"Undress thyself, thy aunt (my wife) is without a garment." A ready
submission entitles him to mercy; resistance will provoke the aggressor,
and his own blood must expiate the blood which he presumes to shed in
legitimate defence. A single robber, or a few associates, are branded
with their genuine name; but the exploits of a numerous band assume the
character of lawful and honorable war. The temper of a people thus armed
against mankind was doubly inflamed by the domestic license of rapine,
murder, and revenge. In the constitution of Europe, the right of peace
and war is now confined to a small, and the actual exercise to a much
smaller, list of respectable potentates; but each Arab, with impunity
and renown, might point his javelin against the life of his countrymen.
The union of the nation consisted only in a vague resemblance of
language and manners; and in each community, the jurisdiction of the
magistrate was mute and impotent. Of the time of ignorance which
preceded Mahomet, seventeen hundred battles  are recorded by tradition:
hostility was imbittered with the rancor of civil faction; and the
recital, in prose or verse, of an obsolete feud, was sufficient to
rekindle the same passions among the descendants of the hostile tribes.
In private life every man, at least every family, was the judge and
avenger of his own cause. The nice sensibility of honor, which weighs
the insult rather than the injury, sheds its deadly venom on the
quarrels of the Arabs: the honor of their women, and of their beards, is
most easily wounded; an indecent action, a contemptuous word, can be
expiated only by the blood of the offender; and such is their patient
inveteracy, that they expect whole months and years the opportunity of
revenge. A fine or compensation for murder is familiar to the Barbarians
of every age: but in Arabia the kinsmen of the dead are at liberty to
accept the atonement, or to exercise with their own hands the law of
retaliation. The refined malice of the Arabs refuses even the head of
the murderer, substitutes an innocent for the guilty person, and
transfers the penalty to the best and most considerable of the race by
whom they have been injured. If he falls by their hands, they are
exposed, in their turn, to the danger of reprisals, the interest and
principal of the bloody debt are accumulated: the individuals of either
family lead a life of malice and suspicion, and fifty years may
sometimes elapse before the account of vengeance be finally settled.
This sanguinary spirit, ignorant of pity or forgiveness, has been
moderated, however, by the maxims of honor, which require in every
private encounter some decent equality of age and strength, of numbers
and weapons. An annual festival of two, perhaps of four, months, was
observed by the Arabs before the time of Mahomet, during which their
swords were religiously sheathed both in foreign and domestic hostility;
and this partial truce is more strongly expressive of the habits of
anarchy and warfare.

But the spirit of rapine and revenge was attempered by the milder
influence of trade and literature. The solitary peninsula is encompassed
by the most civilized nations of the ancient world; the merchant is the
friend of mankind; and the annual caravans imported the first seeds of
knowledge and politeness into the cities, and even the camps of the
desert. Whatever may be the pedigree of the Arabs, their language is
derived from the same original stock with the Hebrew, the Syriac, and
the Chaldæan tongues; the independence of the tribes was marked by their
peculiar dialects;  but each, after their own, allowed a just preference
to the pure and perspicuous idiom of Mecca. In Arabia, as well as in
Greece, the perfection of language outstripped the refinement of
manners; and her speech could diversify the fourscore names of honey,
the two hundred of a serpent, the five hundred of a lion, the thousand
of a sword, at a time when this copious dictionary was intrusted to the
memory of an illiterate people. The monuments of the Homerites were
inscribed with an obsolete and mysterious character; but the Cufic
letters, the groundwork of the present alphabet, were invented on the
banks of the Euphrates; and the recent invention was taught at Mecca by
a stranger who settled in that city after the birth of Mahomet. The arts
of grammar, of metre, and of rhetoric, were unknown to the freeborn
eloquence of the Arabians; but their penetration was sharp, their fancy
luxuriant, their wit strong and sententious,  and their more elaborate
compositions were addressed with energy and effect to the minds of their
hearers. The genius and merit of a rising poet was celebrated by the
applause of his own and the kindred tribes. A solemn banquet was
prepared, and a chorus of women, striking their tymbals, and displaying
the pomp of their nuptials, sung in the presence of their sons and
husbands the felicity of their native tribe; that a champion had now
appeared to vindicate their rights; that a herald had raised his voice
to immortalize their renown. The distant or hostile tribes resorted to
an annual fair, which was abolished by the fanaticism of the first
Moslems; a national assembly that must have contributed to refine and
harmonize the Barbarians. Thirty days were employed in the exchange, not
only of corn and wine, but of eloquence and poetry. The prize was
disputed by the generous emulation of the bards; the victorious
performance was deposited in the archives of princes and emirs; and we
may read in our own language, the seven original poems which were
inscribed in letters of gold, and suspended in the temple of Mecca.  The
Arabian poets were the historians and moralists of the age; and if they
sympathized with the prejudices, they inspired and crowned the virtues,
of their countrymen. The indissoluble union of generosity and valor was
the darling theme of their song; and when they pointed their keenest
satire against a despicable race, they affirmed, in the bitterness of
reproach, that the men knew not how to give, nor the women to deny.  The
same hospitality, which was practised by Abraham, and celebrated by
Homer, is still renewed in the camps of the Arabs. The ferocious
Bedoweens, the terror of the desert, embrace, without inquiry or
hesitation, the stranger who dares to confide in their honor and to
enter their tent. His treatment is kind and respectful: he shares the
wealth, or the poverty, of his host; and, after a needful repose, he is
dismissed on his way, with thanks, with blessings, and perhaps with
gifts. The heart and hand are more largely expanded by the wants of a
brother or a friend; but the heroic acts that could deserve the public
applause, must have surpassed the narrow measure of discretion and
experience. A dispute had arisen, who, among the citizens of Mecca, was
entitled to the prize of generosity; and a successive application was
made to the three who were deemed most worthy of the trial. Abdallah,
the son of Abbas, had undertaken a distant journey, and his foot was in
the stirrup when he heard the voice of a suppliant, "O son of the uncle
of the apostle of God, I am a traveller, and in distress!" He instantly
dismounted to present the pilgrim with his camel, her rich caparison,
and a purse of four thousand pieces of gold, excepting only the sword,
either for its intrinsic value, or as the gift of an honored kinsman.
The servant of Kais informed the second suppliant that his master was
asleep: but he immediately added, "Here is a purse of seven thousand
pieces of gold, (it is all we have in the house,) and here is an order,
that will entitle you to a camel and a slave;" the master, as soon as he
awoke, praised and enfranchised his faithful steward, with a gentle
reproof, that by respecting his slumbers he had stinted his bounty. The
third of these heroes, the blind Arabah, at the hour of prayer, was
supporting his steps on the shoulders of two slaves. "Alas!" he replied,
"my coffers are empty! but these you may sell; if you refuse, I renounce
them." At these words, pushing away the youths, he groped along the wall
with his staff. The character of Hatem is the perfect model of Arabian
virtue:  he was brave and liberal, an eloquent poet, and a successful
robber; forty camels were roasted at his hospitable feast; and at the
prayer of a suppliant enemy he restored both the captives and the spoil.
The freedom of his countrymen disdained the laws of justice; they
proudly indulged the spontaneous impulse of pity and benevolence.

The religion of the Arabs,  as well as of the Indians, consisted in the
worship of the sun, the moon, and the fixed stars; a primitive and
specious mode of superstition. The bright luminaries of the sky display
the visible image of a Deity: their number and distance convey to a
philosophic, or even a vulgar, eye, the idea of boundless space: the
character of eternity is marked on these solid globes, that seem
incapable of corruption or decay: the regularity of their motions may be
ascribed to a principle of reason or instinct; and their real, or
imaginary, influence encourages the vain belief that the earth and its
inhabitants are the object of their peculiar care. The science of
astronomy was cultivated at Babylon; but the school of the Arabs was a
clear firmament and a naked plain. In their nocturnal marches, they
steered by the guidance of the stars: their names, and order, and daily
station, were familiar to the curiosity and devotion of the Bedoween;
and he was taught by experience to divide, in twenty-eight parts, the
zodiac of the moon, and to bless the constellations who refreshed, with
salutary rains, the thirst of the desert. The reign of the heavenly orbs
could not be extended beyond the visible sphere; and some metaphysical
powers were necessary to sustain the transmigration of souls and the
resurrection of bodies: a camel was left to perish on the grave, that he
might serve his master in another life; and the invocation of departed
spirits implies that they were still endowed with consciousness and
power. I am ignorant, and I am careless, of the blind mythology of the
Barbarians; of the local deities, of the stars, the air, and the earth,
of their sex or titles, their attributes or subordination. Each tribe,
each family, each independent warrior, created and changed the rites and
the object of his fantastic worship; but the nation, in every age, has
bowed to the religion, as well as to the language, of Mecca. The genuine
antiquity of the Caaba ascends beyond the Christian æra; in describing
the coast of the Red Sea, the Greek historian Diodorus  has remarked,
between the Thamudites and the Sabæans, a famous temple, whose superior
sanctity was revered by allthe Arabians; the linen or silken veil, which
is annually renewed by the Turkish emperor, was first offered by a pious
king of the Homerites, who reigned seven hundred years before the time
of Mahomet.  A tent, or a cavern, might suffice for the worship of the
savages, but an edifice of stone and clay has been erected in its place;
and the art and power of the monarchs of the East have been confined to
the simplicity of the original model.  A spacious portico encloses the
quadrangle of the Caaba; a square chapel, twenty-four cubits long,
twenty-three broad, and twenty-seven high: a door and a window admit the
light; the double roof is supported by three pillars of wood; a spout
(now of gold) discharges the rain-water, and the well Zemzen is
protected by a dome from accidental pollution. The tribe of Koreish, by
fraud and force, had acquired the custody of the Caaba: the sacerdotal
office devolved through four lineal descents to the grandfather of
Mahomet; and the family of the Hashemites, from whence he sprung, was
the most respectable and sacred in the eyes of their country.  The
precincts of Mecca enjoyed the rights of sanctuary; and, in the last
month of each year, the city and the temple were crowded with a long
train of pilgrims, who presented their vows and offerings in the house
of God. The same rites which are now accomplished by the faithful
Mussulman, were invented and practised by the superstition of the
idolaters. At an awful distance they cast away their garments: seven
times, with hasty steps, they encircled the Caaba, and kissed the black
stone: seven times they visited and adored the adjacent mountains; seven
times they threw stones into the valley of Mina; and the pilgrimage was
achieved, as at the present hour, by a sacrifice of sheep and camels,
and the burial of their hair and nails in the consecrated ground. Each
tribe either found or introduced in the Caaba their domestic worship:
the temple was adorned, or defiled, with three hundred and sixty idols
of men, eagles, lions, and antelopes; and most conspicuous was the
statue of Hebal, of red agate, holding in his hand seven arrows, without
heads or feathers, the instruments and symbols of profane divination.
But this statue was a monument of Syrian arts: the devotion of the ruder
ages was content with a pillar or a tablet; and the rocks of the desert
were hewn into gods or altars, in imitation of the black stone  of
Mecca, which is deeply tainted with the reproach of an idolatrous
origin. From Japan to Peru, the use of sacrifice has universally
prevailed; and the votary has expressed his gratitude, or fear, by
destroying or consuming, in honor of the gods, the dearest and most
precious of their gifts. The life of a man  is the most precious
oblation to deprecate a public calamity: the altars of Phnicia and
Egypt, of Rome and Carthage, have been polluted with human gore: the
cruel practice was long preserved among the Arabs; in the third century,
a boy was annually sacrificed by the tribe of the Dumatians;  and a
royal captive was piously slaughtered by the prince of the Saracens, the
ally and soldier of the emperor Justinian.  A parent who drags his son
to the altar, exhibits the most painful and sublime effort of
fanaticism: the deed, or the intention, was sanctified by the example of
saints and heroes; and the father of Mahomet himself was devoted by a
rash vow, and hardly ransomed for the equivalent of a hundred camels. In
the time of ignorance, the Arabs, like the Jews and Egyptians, abstained
from the taste of swine's flesh;  they circumcised  their children at
the age of puberty: the same customs, without the censure or the precept
of the Koran, have been silently transmitted to their posterity and
proselytes. It has been sagaciously conjectured, that the artful
legislator indulged the stubborn prejudices of his countrymen. It is
more simple to believe that he adhered to the habits and opinions of his
youth, without foreseeing that a practice congenial to the climate of
Mecca might become useless or inconvenient on the banks of the Danube or
the Volga.

Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants. -- Part III.

Arabia was free: the adjacent kingdoms were shaken by the storms of
conquest and tyranny, and the persecuted sects fled to the happy land
where they might profess what they thought, and practise what they
professed. The religions of the Sabians and Magians, of the Jews and
Christians, were disseminated from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. In a
remote period of antiquity, Sabianism was diffused over Asia by the
science of the Chaldæans  and the arms of the Assyrians. From the
observations of two thousand years, the priests and astronomers of
Babylon  deduced the eternal laws of nature and providence. They adored
the seven gods or angels, who directed the course of the seven planets,
and shed their irresistible influence on the earth. The attributes of
the seven planets, with the twelve signs of the zodiac, and the
twenty-four constellations of the northern and southern hemisphere, were
represented by images and talismans; the seven days of the week were
dedicated to their respective deities; the Sabians prayed thrice each
day; and the temple of the moon at Haran was the term of their
pilgrimage.  But the flexible genius of their faith was always ready
either to teach or to learn: in the tradition of the creation, the
deluge, and the patriarchs, they held a singular agreement with their
Jewish captives; they appealed to the secret books of Adam, Seth, and
Enoch; and a slight infusion of the gospel has transformed the last
remnant of the Polytheists into the Christians of St. John, in the
territory of Bassora.  The altars of Babylon were overturned by the
Magians; but the injuries of the Sabians were revenged by the sword of
Alexander; Persia groaned above five hundred years under a foreign yoke;
and the purest disciples of Zoroaster escaped from the contagion of
idolatry, and breathed with their adversaries the freedom of the desert.
Seven hundred years before the death of Mahomet, the Jews were settled
in Arabia; and a far greater multitude was expelled from the Holy Land
in the wars of Titus and Hadrian. The industrious exiles aspired to
liberty and power: they erected synagogues in the cities, and castles in
the wilderness, and their Gentile converts were confounded with the
children of Israel, whom they resembled in the outward mark of
circumcision. The Christian missionaries were still more active and
successful: the Catholics asserted their universal reign; the sects whom
they oppressed, successively retired beyond the limits of the Roman
empire; the Marcionites and Manichæans dispersed their fantasticopinions
and apocryphal gospels; the churches of Yemen, and the princes of Hira
and Gassan, were instructed in a purer creed by the Jacobite and
Nestorian bishops.  The liberty of choice was presented to the tribes:
each Arab was free to elect or to compose his private religion: and the
rude superstition of his house was mingled with the sublime theology of
saints and philosophers. A fundamental article of faith was inculcated
by the consent of the learned strangers; the existence of one supreme
God who is exalted above the powers of heaven and earth, but who has
often revealed himself to mankind by the ministry of his angels and
prophets, and whose grace or justice has interrupted, by seasonable
miracles, the order of nature. The most rational of the Arabs
acknowledged his power, though they neglected his worship;  and it was
habit rather than conviction that still attached them to the relics of
idolatry. The Jews and Christians were the people of the Book; the Bible
was already translated into the Arabic language,  and the volume of the
Old Testament was accepted by the concord of these implacable enemies.
In the story of the Hebrew patriarchs, the Arabs were pleased to
discover the fathers of their nation. They applauded the birth and
promises of Ismael; revered the faith and virtue of Abraham; traced his
pedigree and their own to the creation of the first man, and imbibed,
with equal credulity, the prodigies of the holy text, and the dreams and
traditions of the Jewish rabbis.

The base and plebeian origin of Mahomet is an unskilful calumny of the
Christians,  who exalt instead of degrading the merit of their
adversary. His descent from Ismael was a national privilege or fable;
but if the first steps of the pedigree  are dark and doubtful, he could
produce many generations of pure and genuine nobility: he sprung from
the tribe of Koreish and the family of Hashem, the most illustrious of
the Arabs, the princes of Mecca, and the hereditary guardians of the
Caaba. The grandfather of Mahomet was Abdol Motalleb, the son of Hashem,
a wealthy and generous citizen, who relieved the distress of famine with
the supplies of commerce. Mecca, which had been fed by the liberality of
the father, was saved by the courage of the son. The kingdom of Yemen
was subject to the Christian princes of Abyssinia; their vassal Abrahah
was provoked by an insult to avenge the honor of the cross; and the holy
city was invested by a train of elephants and an army of Africans. A
treaty was proposed; and, in the first audience, the grandfather of
Mahomet demanded the restitution of his cattle. "And why," said Abrahah,
"do you not rather implore my clemency in favor of your temple, which I
have threatened to destroy?" "Because," replied the intrepid chief, "the
cattle is my own; the Caaba belongs to the gods, and theywill defend
their house from injury and sacrilege." The want of provisions, or the
valor of the Koreish, compelled the Abyssinians to a disgraceful
retreat: their discomfiture has been adorned with a miraculous flight of
birds, who showered down stones on the heads of the infidels; and the
deliverance was long commemorated by the æra of the elephant.  The glory
of Abdol Motalleb was crowned with domestic happiness; his life was
prolonged to the age of one hundred and ten years; and he became the
father of six daughters and thirteen sons. His best beloved Abdallah was
the most beautiful and modest of the Arabian youth; and in the first
night, when he consummated his marriage with Amina,  of the noble race
of the Zahrites, two hundred virgins are said to have expired of
jealousy and despair. Mahomet, or more properly Mohammed, the only son
of Abdallah and Amina, was born at Mecca, four years after the death of
Justinian, and two months after the defeat of the Abyssinians,  whose
victory would have introduced into the Caaba the religion of the
Christians. In his early infancy, he was deprived of his father, his
mother, and his grandfather; his uncles were strong and numerous; and,
in the division of the inheritance, the orphan's share was reduced to
five camels and an Æthiopian maid-servant. At home and abroad, in peace
and war, Abu Taleb, the most respectable of his uncles, was the guide
and guardian of his youth; in his twenty-fifth year, he entered into the
service of Cadijah, a rich and noble widow of Mecca, who soon rewarded
his fidelity with the gift of her hand and fortune. The marriage
contract, in the simple style of antiquity, recites the mutual love of
Mahomet and Cadijah; describes him as the most accomplished of the tribe
of Koreish; and stipulates a dowry of twelve ounces of gold and twenty
camels, which was supplied by the liberality of his uncle.  By this
alliance, the son of Abdallah was restored to the station of his
ancestors; and the judicious matron was content with his domestic
virtues, till, in the fortieth year of his age,  he assumed the title of
a prophet, and proclaimed the religion of the Koran.

According to the tradition of his companions, Mahomet  was distinguished
by the beauty of his person, an outward gift which is seldom despised,
except by those to whom it has been refused. Before he spoke, the orator
engaged on his side the affections of a public or private audience. They
applauded his commanding presence, his majestic aspect, his piercing
eye, his gracious smile, his flowing beard, his countenance that painted
every sensation of the soul, and his gestures that enforced each
expression of the tongue. In the familiar offices of life he
scrupulously adhered to the grave and ceremonious politeness of his
country: his respectful attention to the rich and powerful was dignified
by his condescension and affability to the poorest citizens of Mecca:
the frankness of his manner concealed the artifice of his views; and the
habits of courtesy were imputed to personal friendship or universal
benevolence. His memory was capacious and retentive; his wit easy and
social; his imagination sublime; his judgment clear, rapid, and
decisive. He possessed the courage both of thought and action; and,
although his designs might gradually expand with his success, the first
idea which he entertained of his divine mission bears the stamp of an
original and superior genius. The son of Abdallah was educated in the
bosom of the noblest race, in the use of the purest dialect of Arabia;
and the fluency of his speech was corrected and enhanced by the practice
of discreet and seasonable silence. With these powers of eloquence,
Mahomet was an illiterate Barbarian: his youth had never been instructed
in the arts of reading and writing;  the common ignorance exempted him
from shame or reproach, but he was reduced to a narrow circle of
existence, and deprived of those faithful mirrors, which reflect to our
mind the minds of sages and heroes. Yet the book of nature and of man
was open to his view; and some fancy has been indulged in the political
and philosophical observations which are ascribed to the Arabian
traveller.  He compares the nations and the regions of the earth;
discovers the weakness of the Persian and Roman monarchies; beholds,
with pity and indignation, the degeneracy of the times; and resolves to
unite under one God and one king the invincible spirit and primitive
virtues of the Arabs. Our more accurate inquiry will suggest, that,
instead of visiting the courts, the camps, the temples, of the East, the
two journeys of Mahomet into Syria were confined to the fairs of Bostra
and Damascus; that he was only thirteen years of age when he accompanied
the caravan of his uncle; and that his duty compelled him to return as
soon as he had disposed of the merchandise of Cadijah. In these hasty
and superficial excursions, the eye of genius might discern some objects
invisible to his grosser companions; some seeds of knowledge might be
cast upon a fruitful soil; but his ignorance of the Syriac language must
have checked his curiosity; and I cannot perceive, in the life or
writings of Mahomet, that his prospect was far extended beyond the
limits of the Arabian world. From every region of that solitary world,
the pilgrims of Mecca were annually assembled, by the calls of devotion
and commerce: in the free concourse of multitudes, a simple citizen, in
his native tongue, might study the political state and character of the
tribes, the theory and practice of the Jews and Christians. Some useful
strangers might be tempted, or forced, to implore the rights of
hospitality; and the enemies of Mahomet have named the Jew, the Persian,
and the Syrian monk, whom they accuse of lending their secret aid to the
composition of the Koran.  Conversation enriches the understanding, but
solitude is the school of genius; and the uniformity of a work denotes
the hand of a single artist. From his earliest youth Mahomet was
addicted to religious contemplation; each year, during the month of
Ramadan, he withdrew from the world, and from the arms of Cadijah: in
the cave of Hera, three miles from Mecca,  he consulted the spirit of
fraud or enthusiasm, whose abode is not in the heavens, but in the mind
of the prophet. The faith which, under the name of Islam, he preached to
his family and nation, is compounded of an eternal truth, and a
necessary fiction, That there is only one God, and that Mahomet is the
apostle of God.

It is the boast of the Jewish apologists, that while the learned nations
of antiquity were deluded by the fables of polytheism, their simple
ancestors of Palestine preserved the knowledge and worship of the true
God. The moral attributes of Jehovah may not easily be reconciled with
the standard of humanvirtue: his metaphysical qualities are darkly
expressed; but each page of the Pentateuch and the Prophets is an
evidence of his power: the unity of his name is inscribed on the first
table of the law; and his sanctuary was never defiled by any visible
image of the invisible essence. After the ruin of the temple, the faith
of the Hebrew exiles was purified, fixed, and enlightened, by the
spiritual devotion of the synagogue; and the authority of Mahomet will
not justify his perpetual reproach, that the Jews of Mecca or Medina
adored Ezra as the son of God.  But the children of Israel had ceased to
be a people; and the religions of the world were guilty, at least in the
eyes of the prophet, of giving sons, or daughters, or companions, to the
supreme God. In the rude idolatry of the Arabs, the crime is manifest
and audacious: the Sabians are poorly excused by the preëminence of the
first planet, or intelligence, in their celestial hierarchy; and in the
Magian system the conflict of the two principles betrays the
imperfection of the conqueror. The Christians of the seventh century had
insensibly relapsed into a semblance of Paganism: their public and
private vows were addressed to the relics and images that disgraced the
temples of the East: the throne of the Almighty was darkened by a cloud
of martyrs, and saints, and angels, the objects of popular veneration;
and the Collyridian heretics, who flourished in the fruitful soil of
Arabia, invested the Virgin Mary with the name and honors of a goddess.
The mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation appearto contradict the
principle of the divine unity. In their obvious sense, they introduce
three equal deities, and transform the man Jesus into the substance of
the Son of God:  an orthodox commentary will satisfy only a believing
mind: intemperate curiosity and zeal had torn the veil of the sanctuary;
and each of the Oriental sects was eager to confess that all, except
themselves, deserved the reproach of idolatry and polytheism. The creed
of Mahomet is free from suspicion or ambiguity; and the Koran is a
glorious testimony to the unity of God. The prophet of Mecca rejected
the worship of idols and men, of stars and planets, on the rational
principle that whatever rises must set, that whatever is born must die,
that whatever is corruptible must decay and perish.  In the Author of
the universe, his rational enthusiasm confessed and adored an infinite
and eternal being, without form or place, without issue or similitude,
present to our most secret thoughts, existing by the necessity of his
own nature, and deriving from himself all moral and intellectual
perfection. These sublime truths, thus announced in the language of the
prophet,  are firmly held by his disciples, and defined with
metaphysical precision by the interpreters of the Koran. A philosophic
theist might subscribe the popular creed of the Mahometans;  a creed too
sublime, perhaps, for our present faculties. What object remains for the
fancy, or even the understanding, when we have abstracted from the
unknown substance all ideas of time and space, of motion and matter, of
sensation and reflection? The first principle of reason and revolution
was confirmed by the voice of Mahomet: his proselytes, from India to
Morocco, are distinguished by the name of Unitarians; and the danger of
idolatry has been prevented by the interdiction of images. The doctrine
of eternal decrees and absolute predestination is strictly embraced by
the Mahometans; and they struggle, with the common difficulties, howto
reconcile the prescience of God with the freedom and responsibility of
man; howto explain the permission of evil under the reign of infinite
power and infinite goodness.

The God of nature has written his existence on all his works, and his
law in the heart of man. To restore the knowledge of the one, and the
practice of the other, has been the real or pretended aim of the
prophets of every age: the liberality of Mahomet allowed to his
predecessors the same credit which he claimed for himself; and the chain
of inspiration was prolonged from the fall of Adam to the promulgation
of the Koran.  During that period, some rays of prophetic light had been
imparted to one hundred and twenty-four thousand of the elect,
discriminated by their respective measure of virtue and grace; three
hundred and thirteen apostles were sent with a special commission to
recall their country from idolatry and vice; one hundred and four
volumes have been dictated by the Holy Spirit; and six legislators of
transcendent brightness have announced to mankind the six successive
revelations of various rites, but of one immutable religion. The
authority and station of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Christ, and
Mahomet, rise in just gradation above each other; but whosoever hates or
rejects any one of the prophets is numbered with the infidels. The
writings of the patriarchs were extant only in the apocryphal copies of
the Greeks and Syrians:  the conduct of Adam had not entitled him to the
gratitude or respect of his children; the seven precepts of Noah were
observed by an inferior and imperfect class of the proselytes of the
synagogue;  and the memory of Abraham was obscurely revered by the
Sabians in his native land of Chaldæa: of the myriads of prophets, Moses
and Christ alone lived and reigned; and the remnant of the inspired
writings was comprised in the books of the Old and the New Testament.
The miraculous story of Moses is consecrated and embellished in the
Koran;  and the captive Jews enjoy the secret revenge of imposing their
own belief on the nations whose recent creeds they deride. For the
author of Christianity, the Mahometans are taught by the prophet to
entertain a high and mysterious reverence.  "Verily, Christ Jesus, the
son of Mary, is the apostle of God, and his word, which he conveyed unto
Mary, and a Spirit proceeding from him; honorable in this world, and in
the world to come, and one of those who approach near to the presence of
God."  The wonders of the genuine and apocryphal gospels  are profusely
heaped on his head; and the Latin church has not disdained to borrow
from the Koran the immaculate conception  of his virgin mother. Yet
Jesus was a mere mortal; and, at the day of judgment, his testimony will
serve to condemn both the Jews, who reject him as a prophet, and the
Christians, who adore him as the Son of God. The malice of his enemies
aspersed his reputation, and conspired against his life; but their
intention only was guilty; a phantom or a criminal was substituted on
the cross; and the innocent saint was translated to the seventh heaven.
During six hundred years the gospel was the way of truth and salvation;
but the Christians insensibly forgot both the laws and example of their
founder; and Mahomet was instructed by the Gnostics to accuse the
church, as well as the synagogue, of corrupting the integrity of the
sacred text.  The piety of Moses and of Christ rejoiced in the assurance
of a future prophet, more illustrious than themselves: the evangelical
promise of the Paraclete, or Holy Ghost, was prefigured in the name, and
accomplished in the person, of Mahomet,  the greatest and the last of
the apostles of God.

Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants. -- Part IV.

The communication of ideas requires a similitude of thought and
language: the discourse of a philosopher would vibrate without effect on
the ear of a peasant; yet how minute is the distance of
theirunderstandings, if it be compared with the contact of an infinite
and a finite mind, with the word of God expressed by the tongue or the
pen of a mortal! The inspiration of the Hebrew prophets, of the apostles
and evangelists of Christ, might not be incompatible with the exercise
of their reason and memory; and the diversity of their genius is
strongly marked in the style and composition of the books of the Old and
New Testament. But Mahomet was content with a character, more humble,
yet more sublime, of a simple editor; the substance of the Koran,
according to himself or his disciples, is uncreated and eternal;
subsisting in the essence of the Deity, and inscribed with a pen of
light on the table of his everlasting decrees. A paper copy, in a volume
of silk and gems, was brought down to the lowest heaven by the angel
Gabriel, who, under the Jewish economy, had indeed been despatched on
the most important errands; and this trusty messenger successively
revealed the chapters and verses to the Arabian prophet. Instead of a
perpetual and perfect measure of the divine will, the fragments of the
Koran were produced at the discretion of Mahomet; each revelation is
suited to the emergencies of his policy or passion; and all
contradiction is removed by the saving maxim, that any text of Scripture
is abrogated or modified by any subsequent passage. The word of God, and
of the apostle, was diligently recorded by his disciples on palm-leaves
and the shoulder-bones of mutton; and the pages, without order or
connection, were cast into a domestic chest, in the custody of one of
his wives. Two years after the death of Mahomet, the sacred volume was
collected and published by his friend and successor Abubeker: the work
was revised by the caliph Othman, in the thirtieth year of the Hegira;
and the various editions of the Koran assert the same miraculous
privilege of a uniform and incorruptible text. In the spirit of
enthusiasm or vanity, the prophet rests the truth of his mission on the
merit of his book; audaciously challenges both men and angels to imitate
the beauties of a single page; and presumes to assert that God alone
could dictate this incomparable performance.  This argument is most
powerfully addressed to a devout Arabian, whose mind is attuned to faith
and rapture; whose ear is delighted by the music of sounds; and whose
ignorance is incapable of comparing the productions of human genius.
The harmony and copiousness of style will not reach, in a version, the
European infidel: he will peruse with impatience the endless incoherent
rhapsody of fable, and precept, and declamation, which seldom excites a
sentiment or an idea, which sometimes crawls in the dust, and is
sometimes lost in the clouds. The divine attributes exalt the fancy of
the Arabian missionary; but his loftiest strains must yield to the
sublime simplicity of the book of Job, composed in a remote age, in the
same country, and in the same language.  If the composition of the Koran
exceed the faculties of a man to what superior intelligence should we
ascribe the Iliad of Homer, or the Philippics of Demosthenes? In all
religions, the life of the founder supplies the silence of his written
revelation: the sayings of Mahomet were so many lessons of truth; his
actions so many examples of virtue; and the public and private memorials
were preserved by his wives and companions. At the end of two hundred
years, the Sonna, or oral law, was fixed and consecrated by the labors
of Al Bochari, who discriminated seven thousand two hundred and
seventy-five genuine traditions, from a mass of three hundred thousand
reports, of a more doubtful or spurious character. Each day the pious
author prayed in the temple of Mecca, and performed his ablutions with
the water of Zemzem: the pages were successively deposited on the pulpit
and the sepulchre of the apostle; and the work has been approved by the
four orthodox sects of the Sonnites.

The mission of the ancient prophets, of Moses and of Jesus had been
confirmed by many splendid prodigies; and Mahomet was repeatedly urged,
by the inhabitants of Mecca and Medina, to produce a similar evidence of
his divine legation; to call down from heaven the angel or the volume of
his revelation, to create a garden in the desert, or to kindle a
conflagration in the unbelieving city. As often as he is pressed by the
demands of the Koreish, he involves himself in the obscure boast of
vision and prophecy, appeals to the internal proofs of his doctrine, and
shields himself behind the providence of God, who refuses those signs
and wonders that would depreciate the merit of faith, and aggravate the
guilt of infidelity But the modest or angry tone of his apologies
betrays his weakness and vexation; and these passages of scandal
established, beyond suspicion, the integrity of the Koran.  The votaries
of Mahomet are more assured than himself of his miraculous gifts; and
their confidence and credulity increase as they are farther removed from
the time and place of his spiritual exploits. They believe or affirm
that trees went forth to meet him; that he was saluted by stones; that
water gushed from his fingers; that he fed the hungry, cured the sick,
and raised the dead; that a beam groaned to him; that a camel complained
to him; that a shoulder of mutton informed him of its being poisoned;
and that both animate and inanimate nature were equally subject to the
apostle of God.  His dream of a nocturnal journey is seriously described
as a real and corporeal transaction. A mysterious animal, the Borak,
conveyed him from the temple of Mecca to that of Jerusalem: with his
companion Gabriel he successively ascended the seven heavens, and
received and repaid the salutations of the patriarchs, the prophets, and
the angels, in their respective mansions. Beyond the seventh heaven,
Mahomet alone was permitted to proceed; he passed the veil of unity,
approached within two bow-shots of the throne, and felt a cold that
pierced him to the heart, when his shoulder was touched by the hand of
God. After this familiar, though important conversation, he again
descended to Jerusalem, remounted the Borak, returned to Mecca, and
performed in the tenth part of a night the journey of many thousand
years.  According to another legend, the apostle confounded in a
national assembly the malicious challenge of the Koreish. His resistless
word split asunder the orb of the moon: the obedient planet stooped from
her station in the sky, accomplished the seven revolutions round the
Caaba, saluted Mahomet in the Arabian tongue, and, suddenly contracting
her dimensions, entered at the collar, and issued forth through the
sleeve, of his shirt.  The vulgar are amused with these marvellous
tales; but the gravest of the Mussulman doctors imitate the modesty of
their master, and indulge a latitude of faith or interpretation.  They
might speciously allege, that in preaching the religion it was needless
to violate the harmony of nature; that a creed unclouded with mystery
may be excused from miracles; and that the sword of Mahomet was not less
potent than the rod of Moses.

The polytheist is oppressed and distracted by the variety of
superstition: a thousand rites of Egyptian origin were interwoven with
the essence of the Mosaic law; and the spirit of the gospel had
evaporated in the pageantry of the church. The prophet of Mecca was
tempted by prejudice, or policy, or patriotism, to sanctify the rites of
the Arabians, and the custom of visiting the holy stone of the Caaba.
But the precepts of Mahomet himself inculcates a more simple and
rational piety: prayer, fasting, and alms, are the religious duties of a
Mussulman; and he is encouraged to hope, that prayer will carry him half
way to God, fasting will bring him to the door of his palace, and alms
will gain him admittance.  I. According to the tradition of the
nocturnal journey, the apostle, in his personal conference with the
Deity, was commanded to impose on his disciples the daily obligation of
fifty prayers. By the advice of Moses, he applied for an alleviation of
this intolerable burden; the number was gradually reduced to five;
without any dispensation of business or pleasure, or time or place: the
devotion of the faithful is repeated at daybreak, at noon, in the
afternoon, in the evening, and at the first watch of the night; and in
the present decay of religious fervor, our travellers are edified by the
profound humility and attention of the Turks and Persians. Cleanliness
is the key of prayer: the frequent lustration of the hands, the face,
and the body, which was practised of old by the Arabs, is solemnly
enjoined by the Koran; and a permission is formally granted to supply
with sand the scarcity of water. The words and attitudes of
supplication, as it is performed either sitting, or standing, or
prostrate on the ground, are prescribed by custom or authority; but the
prayer is poured forth in short and fervent ejaculations; the measure of
zeal is not exhausted by a tedious liturgy; and each Mussulman for his
own person is invested with the character of a priest. Among the
theists, who reject the use of images, it has been found necessary to
restrain the wanderings of the fancy, by directing the eye and the
thought towards a kebla, or visible point of the horizon. The prophet
was at first inclined to gratify the Jews by the choice of Jerusalem;
but he soon returned to a more natural partiality; and five times every
day the eyes of the nations at Astracan, at Fez, at Delhi, are devoutly
turned to the holy temple of Mecca. Yet every spot for the service of
God is equally pure: the Mahometans indifferently pray in their chamber
or in the street. As a distinction from the Jews and Christians, the
Friday in each week is set apart for the useful institution of public
worship: the people is assembled in the mosch; and the imam, some
respectable elder, ascends the pulpit, to begin the prayer and pronounce
the sermon. But the Mahometan religion is destitute of priesthood or
sacrifice; and the independent spirit of fanaticism looks down with
contempt on the ministers and the slaves of superstition. * II. The
voluntary  penance of the ascetics, the torment and glory of their
lives, was odious to a prophet who censured in his companions a rash vow
of abstaining from flesh, and women, and sleep; and firmly declared,
that he would suffer no monks in his religion.  Yet he instituted, in
each year, a fast of thirty days; and strenuously recommended the
observance as a discipline which purifies the soul and subdues the body,
as a salutary exercise of obedience to the will of God and his apostle.
During the month of Ramadan, from the rising to the setting of the sun,
the Mussulman abstains from eating, and drinking, and women, and baths,
and perfumes; from all nourishment that can restore his strength, from
all pleasure that can gratify his senses. In the revolution of the lunar
year, the Ramadan coincides, by turns, with the winter cold and the
summer heat; and the patient martyr, without assuaging his thirst with a
drop of water, must expect the close of a tedious and sultry day. The
interdiction of wine, peculiar to some orders of priests or hermits, is
converted by Mahomet alone into a positive and general law;  and a
considerable portion of the globe has abjured, at his command, the use
of that salutary, though dangerous, liquor. These painful restraints
are, doubtless, infringed by the libertine, and eluded by the hypocrite;
but the legislator, by whom they are enacted, cannot surely be accused
of alluring his proselytes by the indulgence of their sensual appetites.
III. The charity of the Mahometans descends to the animal creation; and
the Koran repeatedly inculcates, not as a merit, but as a strict and
indispensable duty, the relief of the indigent and unfortunate. Mahomet,
perhaps, is the only lawgiver who has defined the precise measure of
charity: the standard may vary with the degree and nature of property,
as it consists either in money, in corn or cattle, in fruits or
merchandise; but the Mussulman does not accomplish the law, unless he
bestows a tenthof his revenue; and if his conscience accuses him of
fraud or extortion, the tenth, under the idea of restitution, is
enlarged to a fifth.  Benevolence is the foundation of justice, since we
are forbid to injure those whom we are bound to assist. A prophet may
reveal the secrets of heaven and of futurity; but in his moral precepts
he can only repeat the lessons of our own hearts.

The two articles of belief, and the four practical duties, of Islam, are
guarded by rewards and punishments; and the faith of the Mussulman is
devoutly fixed on the event of the judgment and the last day. The
prophet has not presumed to determine the moment of that awful
catastrophe, though he darkly announces the signs, both in heaven and
earth, which will precede the universal dissolution, when life shall be
destroyed, and the order of creation shall be confounded in the
primitive chaos. At the blast of the trumpet, new worlds will start into
being: angels, genii, and men will arise from the dead, and the human
soul will again be united to the body. The doctrine of the resurrection
was first entertained by the Egyptians;  and their mummies were
embalmed, their pyramids were constructed, to preserve the ancient
mansion of the soul, during a period of three thousand years. But the
attempt is partial and unavailing; and it is with a more philosophic
spirit that Mahomet relies on the omnipotence of the Creator, whose word
can reanimate the breathless clay, and collect the innumerable atoms,
that no longer retain their form or substance.  The intermediate state
of the soul it is hard to decide; and those who most firmly believe her
immaterial nature, are at a loss to understand how she can think or act
without the agency of the organs of sense.

The reunion of the soul and body will be followed by the final judgment
of mankind; and in his copy of the Magian picture, the prophet has too
faithfully represented the forms of proceeding, and even the slow and
successive operations, of an earthly tribunal. By his intolerant
adversaries he is upbraided for extending, even to themselves, the hope
of salvation, for asserting the blackest heresy, that every man who
believes in God, and accomplishes good works, may expect in the last day
a favorable sentence. Such rational indifference is ill adapted to the
character of a fanatic; nor is it probable that a messenger from heaven
should depreciate the value and necessity of his own revelation. In the
idiom of the Koran,  the belief of God is inseparable from that of
Mahomet: the good works are those which he has enjoined, and the two
qualifications imply the profession of Islam, to which all nations and
all sects are equally invited. Their spiritual blindness, though excused
by ignorance and crowned with virtue, will be scourged with everlasting
torments; and the tears which Mahomet shed over the tomb of his mother
for whom he was forbidden to pray, display a striking contrast of
humanity and enthusiasm.  The doom of the infidels is common: the
measure of their guilt and punishment is determined by the degree of
evidence which they have rejected, by the magnitude of the errors which
they have entertained: the eternal mansions of the Christians, the Jews,
the Sabians, the Magians, and idolaters, are sunk below each other in
the abyss; and the lowest hell is reserved for the faithless hypocrites
who have assumed the mask of religion. After the greater part of mankind
has been condemned for their opinions, the true believers only will be
judged by their actions. The good and evil of each Mussulman will be
accurately weighed in a real or allegorical balance; and a singular mode
of compensation will be allowed for the payment of injuries: the
aggressor will refund an equivalent of his own good actions, for the
benefit of the person whom he has wronged; and if he should be destitute
of any moral property, the weight of his sins will be loaded with an
adequate share of the demerits of the sufferer. According as the shares
of guilt or virtue shall preponderate, the sentence will be pronounced,
and all, without distinction, will pass over the sharp and perilous
bridge of the abyss; but the innocent, treading in the footsteps of
Mahomet, will gloriously enter the gates of paradise, while the guilty
will fall into the first and mildest of the seven hells. The term of
expiation will vary from nine hundred to seven thousand years; but the
prophet has judiciously promised, that all his disciples, whatever may
be their sins, shall be saved, by their own faith and his intercession
from eternal damnation. It is not surprising that superstition should
act most powerfully on the fears of her votaries, since the human fancy
can paint with more energy the misery than the bliss of a future life.
With the two simple elements of darkness and fire, we create a sensation
of pain, which may be aggravated to an infinite degree by the idea of
endless duration. But the same idea operates with an opposite effect on
the continuity of pleasure; and too much of our present enjoyments is
obtained from the relief, or the comparison, of evil. It is natural
enough that an Arabian prophet should dwell with rapture on the groves,
the fountains, and the rivers of paradise; but instead of inspiring the
blessed inhabitants with a liberal taste for harmony and science,
conversation and friendship, he idly celebrates the pearls and diamonds,
the robes of silk, palaces of marble, dishes of gold, rich wines,
artificial dainties, numerous attendants, and the whole train of sensual
and costly luxury, which becomes insipid to the owner, even in the short
period of this mortal life. Seventy-two Houris, or black-eyed girls, of
resplendent beauty, blooming youth, virgin purity, and exquisite
sensibility, will be created for the use of the meanest believer; a
moment of pleasure will be prolonged to a thousand years; and his
faculties will be increased a hundred fold, to render him worthy of his
felicity. Notwithstanding a vulgar prejudice, the gates of heaven will
be open to both sexes; but Mahomet has not specified the male companions
of the female elect, lest he should either alarm the jealousy of their
former husbands, or disturb their felicity, by the suspicion of an
everlasting marriage. This image of a carnal paradise has provoked the
indignation, perhaps the envy, of the monks: they declaim against the
impure religion of Mahomet; and his modest apologists are driven to the
poor excuse of figures and allegories. But the sounder and more
consistent party adhere without shame, to the literal interpretation of
the Koran: useless would be the resurrection of the body, unless it were
restored to the possession and exercise of its worthiest faculties; and
the union of sensual and intellectual enjoyment is requisite to complete
the happiness of the double animal, the perfect man. Yet the joys of the
Mahometan paradise will not be confined to the indulgence of luxury and
appetite; and the prophet has expressly declared that all meaner
happiness will be forgotten and despised by the saints and martyrs, who
shall be admitted to the beatitude of the divine vision.

The first and most arduous conquests of Mahomet  were those of his wife,
his servant, his pupil, and his friend;  since he presented himself as a
prophet to those who were most conversant with his infirmities as a man.
Yet Cadijah believed the words, and cherished the glory, of her husband;
the obsequious and affectionate Zeid was tempted by the prospect of
freedom; the illustrious Ali, the son of Abu Taleb, embraced the
sentiments of his cousin with the spirit of a youthful hero; and the
wealth, the moderation, the veracity of Abubeker confirmed the religion
of the prophet whom he was destined to succeed. By his persuasion, ten
of the most respectable citizens of Mecca were introduced to the private
lessons of Islam; they yielded to the voice of reason and enthusiasm;
they repeated the fundamental creed, "There is but one God, and Mahomet
is the apostle of God;" and their faith, even in this life, was rewarded
with riches and honors, with the command of armies and the government of
kingdoms. Three years were silently employed in the conversion of
fourteen proselytes, the first-fruits of his mission; but in the fourth
year he assumed the prophetic office, and resolving to impart to his
family the light of divine truth, he prepared a banquet, a lamb, as it
is said, and a bowl of milk, for the entertainment of forty guests of
the race of Hashem. "Friends and kinsmen," said Mahomet to the assembly,
"I offer you, and I alone can offer, the most precious of gifts, the
treasures of this world and of the world to come. God has commanded me
to call you to his service. Who among you will support my burden? Who
among you will be my companion and my vizier?"  No answer was returned,
till the silence of astonishment, and doubt, and contempt, was at length
broken by the impatient courage of Ali, a youth in the fourteenth year
of his age. "O prophet, I am the man: whosoever rises against thee, I
will dash out his teeth, tear out his eyes, break his legs, rip up his
belly. O prophet, I will be thy vizier over them." Mahomet accepted his
offer with transport, and Abu Taled was ironically exhorted to respect
the superior dignity of his son. In a more serious tone, the father of
Ali advised his nephew to relinquish his impracticable design. "Spare
your remonstrances," replied the intrepid fanatic to his uncle and
benefactor; "if they should place the sun on my right hand, and the moon
on my left, they should not divert me from my course." He persevered ten
years in the exercise of his mission; and the religion which has
overspread the East and the West advanced with a slow and painful
progress within the walls of Mecca. Yet Mahomet enjoyed the satisfaction
of beholding the increase of his infant congregation of Unitarians, who
revered him as a prophet, and to whom he seasonably dispensed the
spiritual nourishment of the Koran. The number of proselytes may be
esteemed by the absence of eighty-three men and eighteen women, who
retired to Æthiopia in the seventh year of his mission; and his party
was fortified by the timely conversion of his uncle Hamza, and of the
fierce and inflexible Omar, who signalized in the cause of Islam the
same zeal, which he had exerted for its destruction. Nor was the charity
of Mahomet confined to the tribe of Koreish, or the precincts of Mecca:
on solemn festivals, in the days of pilgrimage, he frequented the Caaba,
accosted the strangers of every tribe, and urged, both in private
converse and public discourse, the belief and worship of a sole Deity.
Conscious of his reason and of his weakness, he asserted the liberty of
conscience, and disclaimed the use of religious violence:  but he called
the Arabs to repentance, and conjured them to remember the ancient
idolaters of Ad and Thamud, whom the divine justice had swept away from
the face of the earth.

Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants. -- Part V.

The people of Mecca were hardened in their unbelief by superstition and
envy. The elders of the city, the uncles of the prophet, affected to
despise the presumption of an orphan, the reformer of his country: the
pious orations of Mahomet in the Caaba were answered by the clamors of
Abu Taleb. "Citizens and pilgrims, listen not to the tempter, hearken
not to his impious novelties. Stand fast in the worship of Al Lâta and
Al Uzzah." Yet the son of Abdallah was ever dear to the aged chief: and
he protected the fame and person of his nephew against the assaults of
the Koreishites, who had long been jealous of the preëminence of the
family of Hashem. Their malice was colored with the pretence of
religion: in the age of Job, the crime of impiety was punished by the
Arabian magistrate;  and Mahomet was guilty of deserting and denying the
national deities. But so loose was the policy of Mecca, that the leaders
of the Koreish, instead of accusing a criminal, were compelled to employ
the measures of persuasion or violence. They repeatedly addressed Abu
Taleb in the style of reproach and menace. "Thy nephew reviles our
religion; he accuses our wise forefathers of ignorance and folly;
silence him quickly, lest he kindle tumult and discord in the city. If
he persevere, we shall draw our swords against him and his adherents,
and thou wilt be responsible for the blood of thy fellow-citizens." The
weight and moderation of Abu Taleb eluded the violence of religious
faction; the most helpless or timid of the disciples retired to
Æthiopia, and the prophet withdrew himself to various places of strength
in the town and country. As he was still supported by his family, the
rest of the tribe of Koreish engaged themselves to renounce all
intercourse with the children of Hashem, neither to buy nor sell,
neither to marry not to give in marriage, but to pursue them with
implacable enmity, till they should deliver the person of Mahomet to the
justice of the gods. The decree was suspended in the Caaba before the
eyes of the nation; the messengers of the Koreish pursued the Mussulman
exiles in the heart of Africa: they besieged the prophet and his most
faithful followers, intercepted their water, and inflamed their mutual
animosity by the retaliation of injuries and insults. A doubtful truce
restored the appearances of concord till the death of Abu Taleb
abandoned Mahomet to the power of his enemies, at the moment when he was
deprived of his domestic comforts by the loss of his faithful and
generous Cadijah. Abu Sophian, the chief of the branch of Ommiyah,
succeeded to the principality of the republic of Mecca. A zealous votary
of the idols, a mortal foe of the line of Hashem, he convened an
assembly of the Koreishites and their allies, to decide the fate of the
apostle. His imprisonment might provoke the despair of his enthusiasm;
and the exile of an eloquent and popular fanatic would diffuse the
mischief through the provinces of Arabia. His death was resolved; and
they agreed that a sword from each tribe should be buried in his heart,
to divide the guilt of his blood, and baffle the vengeance of the
Hashemites. An angel or a spy revealed their conspiracy; and flight was
the only resource of Mahomet.  At the dead of night, accompanied by his
friend Abubeker, he silently escaped from his house: the assassins
watched at the door; but they were deceived by the figure of Ali, who
reposed on the bed, and was covered with the green vestment of the
apostle. The Koreish respected the piety of the heroic youth; but some
verses of Ali, which are still extant, exhibit an interesting picture of
his anxiety, his tenderness, and his religious confidence. Three days
Mahomet and his companion were concealed in the cave of Thor, at the
distance of a league from Mecca; and in the close of each evening, they
received from the son and daughter of Abubeker a secret supply of
intelligence and food. The diligence of the Koreish explored every haunt
in the neighborhood of the city: they arrived at the entrance of the
cavern; but the providential deceit of a spider's web and a pigeon's
nest is supposed to convince them that the place was solitary and
inviolate. "We are only two," said the trembling Abubeker. "There is a
third," replied the prophet; "it is God himself." No sooner was the
pursuit abated than the two fugitives issued from the rock, and mounted
their camels: on the road to Medina, they were overtaken by the
emissaries of the Koreish; they redeemed themselves with prayers and
promises from their hands. In this eventful moment, the lance of an Arab
might have changed the history of the world. The flight of the prophet
from Mecca to Medina has fixed the memorable æra of the Hegira,  which,
at the end of twelve centuries, still discriminates the lunar years of
the Mahometan nations.

The religion of the Koran might have perished in its cradle, had not
Medina embraced with faith and reverence the holy outcasts of Mecca.
Medina, or the city, known under the name of Yathreb, before it was
sanctified by the throne of the prophet, was divided between the tribes
of the Charegites and the Awsites, whose hereditary feud was rekindled
by the slightest provocations: two colonies of Jews, who boasted a
sacerdotal race, were their humble allies, and without converting the
Arabs, they introduced the taste of science and religion, which
distinguished Medina as the city of the Book. Some of her noblest
citizens, in a pilgrimage to the Caaba, were converted by the preaching
of Mahomet; on their return, they diffused the belief of God and his
prophet, and the new alliance was ratified by their deputies in two
secret and nocturnal interviews on a hill in the suburbs of Mecca. In
the first, ten Charegites and two Awsites united in faith and love,
protested, in the name of their wives, their children, and their absent
brethren, that they would forever profess the creed, and observe the
precepts, of the Koran. The second was a political association, the
first vital spark of the empire of the Saracens.  Seventy-three men and
two women of Medina held a solemn conference with Mahomet, his kinsman,
and his disciples; and pledged themselves to each other by a mutual oath
of fidelity. They promised, in the name of the city, that if he should
be banished, they would receive him as a confederate, obey him as a
leader, and defend him to the last extremity, like their wives and
children. "But if you are recalled by your country," they asked with a
flattering anxiety, "will you not abandon your new allies?" "All
things," replied Mahomet with a smile, "are now common between us your
blood is as my blood, your ruin as my ruin. We are bound to each other
by the ties of honor and interest. I am your friend, and the enemy of
your foes." "But if we are killed in your service, what," exclaimed the
deputies of Medina, "will be our reward?" "Paradise," replied the
prophet. "Stretch forth thy hand." He stretched it forth, and they
reiterated the oath of allegiance and fidelity. Their treaty was
ratified by the people, who unanimously embraced the profession of
Islam; they rejoiced in the exile of the apostle, but they trembled for
his safety, and impatiently expected his arrival. After a perilous and
rapid journey along the sea-coast, he halted at Koba, two miles from the
city, and made his public entry into Medina, sixteen days after his
flight from Mecca. Five hundred of the citizens advanced to meet him; he
was hailed with acclamations of loyalty and devotion; Mahomet was
mounted on a she-camel, an umbrella shaded his head, and a turban was
unfurled before him to supply the deficiency of a standard. His bravest
disciples, who had been scattered by the storm, assembled round his
person; and the equal, though various, merit of the Moslems was
distinguished by the names of Mohageriansand Ansars, the fugitives of
Mecca, and the auxiliaries of Medina. To eradicate the seeds of
jealousy, Mahomet judiciously coupled his principal followers with the
rights and obligations of brethren; and when Ali found himself without a
peer, the prophet tenderly declared, that hewould be the companion and
brother of the noble youth. The expedient was crowned with success; the
holy fraternity was respected in peace and war, and the two parties vied
with each other in a generous emulation of courage and fidelity. Once
only the concord was slightly ruffled by an accidental quarrel: a
patriot of Medina arraigned the insolence of the strangers, but the hint
of their expulsion was heard with abhorrence; and his own son most
eagerly offered to lay at the apostle's feet the head of his father.

From his establishment at Medina, Mahomet assumed the exercise of the
regal and sacerdotal office; and it was impious to appeal from a judge
whose decrees were inspired by the divine wisdom. A small portion of
ground, the patrimony of two orphans, was acquired by gift or purchase;
on that chosen spot he built a house and a mosch, more venerable in
their rude simplicity than the palaces and temples of the Assyrian
caliphs. His seal of gold, or silver, was inscribed with the apostolic
title; when he prayed and preached in the weekly assembly, he leaned
against the trunk of a palm-tree; and it was long before he indulged
himself in the use of a chair or pulpit of rough timber.  After a reign
of six years, fifteen hundred Moslems, in arms and in the field, renewed
their oath of allegiance; and their chief repeated the assurance of
protection till the death of the last member, or the final dissolution
of the party. It was in the same camp that the deputy of Mecca was
astonished by the attention of the faithful to the words and looks of
the prophet, by the eagerness with which they collected his spittle, a
hair that dropped on the ground, the refuse water of his lustrations, as
if they participated in some degree of the prophetic virtue. "I have
seen," said he, "the Chosroes of Persia and the Cæsar of Rome, but never
did I behold a king among his subjects like Mahomet among his
companions." The devout fervor of enthusiasm acts with more energy and
truth than the cold and formal servility of courts.

In the state of nature, every man has a right to defend, by force of
arms, his person and his possessions; to repel, or even to prevent, the
violence of his enemies, and to extend his hostilities to a reasonable
measure of satisfaction and retaliation. In the free society of the
Arabs, the duties of subject and citizen imposed a feeble restraint; and
Mahomet, in the exercise of a peaceful and benevolent mission, had been
despoiled and banished by the injustice of his countrymen. The choice of
an independent people had exalted the fugitive of Mecca to the rank of a
sovereign; and he was invested with the just prerogative of forming
alliances, and of waging offensive or defensive war. The imperfection of
human rights was supplied and armed by the plenitude of divine power:
the prophet of Medina assumed, in his new revelations, a fiercer and
more sanguinary tone, which proves that his former moderation was the
effect of weakness:  the means of persuasion had been tried, the season
of forbearance was elapsed, and he was now commanded to propagate his
religion by the sword, to destroy the monuments of idolatry, and,
without regarding the sanctity of days or months, to pursue the
unbelieving nations of the earth. The same bloody precepts, so
repeatedly inculcated in the Koran, are ascribed by the author to the
Pentateuch and the Gospel. But the mild tenor of the evangelic style may
explain an ambiguous text, that Jesus did not bring peace on the earth,
but a sword: his patient and humble virtues should not be confounded
with the intolerant zeal of princes and bishops, who have disgraced the
name of his disciples. In the prosecution of religious war, Mahomet
might appeal with more propriety to the example of Moses, of the Judges,
and the kings of Israel. The military laws of the Hebrews are still more
rigid than those of the Arabian legislator.  The Lord of hosts marched
in person before the Jews: if a city resisted their summons, the males,
without distinction, were put to the sword: the seven nations of Canaan
were devoted to destruction; and neither repentance nor conversion,
could shield them from the inevitable doom, that no creature within
their precincts should be left alive. * The fair option of friendship,
or submission, or battle, was proposed to the enemies of Mahomet. If
they professed the creed of Islam, they were admitted to all the
temporal and spiritual benefits of his primitive disciples, and marched
under the same banner to extend the religion which they had embraced.
The clemency of the prophet was decided by his interest: yet he seldom
trampled on a prostrate enemy; and he seems to promise, that on the
payment of a tribute, the least guilty of his unbelieving subjects might
be indulged in their worship, or at least in their imperfect faith. In
the first months of his reign he practised the lessons of holy warfare,
and displayed his white banner before the gates of Medina: the martial
apostle fought in person at nine battles or sieges;  and fifty
enterprises of war were achieved in ten years by himself or his
lieutenants. The Arab continued to unite the professions of a merchant
and a robber; and his petty excursions for the defence or the attack of
a caravan insensibly prepared his troops for the conquest of Arabia. The
distribution of the spoil was regulated by a divine law:  the whole was
faithfully collected in one common mass: a fifth of the gold and silver,
the prisoners and cattle, the movables and immovables, was reserved by
the prophet for pious and charitable uses; the remainder was shared in
adequate portions by the soldiers who had obtained the victory or
guarded the camp: the rewards of the slain devolved to their widows and
orphans; and the increase of cavalry was encouraged by the allotment of
a double share to the horse and to the man. From all sides the roving
Arabs were allured to the standard of religion and plunder: the apostle
sanctified the license of embracing the female captives as their wives
or concubines, and the enjoyment of wealth and beauty was a feeble type
of the joys of paradise prepared for the valiant martyrs of the faith.
"The sword," says Mahomet, "is the key of heaven and of hell; a drop of
blood shed in the cause of God, a night spent in arms, is of more avail
than two months of fasting or prayer: whosoever falls in battle, his
sins are forgiven: at the day of judgment his wounds shall be
resplendent as vermilion, and odoriferous as musk; and the loss of his
limbs shall be supplied by the wings of angels and cherubim." The
intrepid souls of the Arabs were fired with enthusiasm: the picture of
the invisible world was strongly painted on their imagination; and the
death which they had always despised became an object of hope and
desire. The Koran inculcates, in the most absolute sense, the tenets of
fate and predestination, which would extinguish both industry and
virtue, if the actions of man were governed by his speculative belief.
Yet their influence in every age has exalted the courage of the Saracens
and Turks. The first companions of Mahomet advanced to battle with a
fearless confidence: there is no danger where there is no chance: they
were ordained to perish in their beds; or they were safe and
invulnerable amidst the darts of the enemy.

Perhaps the Koreish would have been content with the flight of Mahomet,
had they not been provoked and alarmed by the vengeance of an enemy, who
could intercept their Syrian trade as it passed and repassed through the
territory of Medina. Abu Sophian himself, with only thirty or forty
followers, conducted a wealthy caravan of a thousand camels; the fortune
or dexterity of his march escaped the vigilance of Mahomet; but the
chief of the Koreish was informed that the holy robbers were placed in
ambush to await his return. He despatched a messenger to his brethren of
Mecca, and they were roused, by the fear of losing their merchandise and
their provisions, unless they hastened to his relief with the military
force of the city. The sacred band of Mahomet was formed of three
hundred and thirteen Moslems, of whom seventy-seven were fugitives, and
the rest auxiliaries; they mounted by turns a train of seventy camels,
(the camels of Yathreb were formidable in war;) but such was the poverty
of his first disciples, that only two could appear on horseback in the
field.  In the fertile and famous vale of Beder,  three stations from
Medina, he was informed by his scouts of the caravan that approached on
one side; of the Koreish, one hundred horse, eight hundred and fifty
foot, who advanced on the other. After a short debate, he sacrificed the
prospect of wealth to the pursuit of glory and revenge, and a slight
intrenchment was formed, to cover his troops, and a stream of fresh
water, that glided through the valley. "O God," he exclaimed, as the
numbers of the Koreish descended from the hills, "O God, if these are
destroyed, by whom wilt thou be worshipped on the earth? -- Courage, my
children; close your ranks; discharge your arrows, and the day is your
own." At these words he placed himself, with Abubeker, on a throne or
pulpit,  and instantly demanded the succor of Gabriel and three thousand
angels. His eye was fixed on the field of battle: the Mussulmans fainted
and were pressed: in that decisive moment the prophet started from his
throne, mounted his horse, and cast a handful of sand into the air: "Let
their faces be covered with confusion." Both armies heard the thunder of
his voice: their fancy beheld the angelic warriors:  the Koreish
trembled and fled: seventy of the bravest were slain; and seventy
captives adorned the first victory of the faithful. The dead bodies of
the Koreish were despoiled and insulted: two of the most obnoxious
prisoners were punished with death; and the ransom of the others, four
thousand drams of silver, compensated in some degree the escape of the
caravan. But it was in vain that the camels of Abu Sophian explored a
new road through the desert and along the Euphrates: they were overtaken
by the diligence of the Mussulmans; and wealthy must have been the
prize, if twenty thousand drams could be set apart for the fifth of the
apostle. The resentment of the public and private loss stimulated Abu
Sophian to collect a body of three thousand men, seven hundred of whom
were armed with cuirasses, and two hundred were mounted on horseback;
three thousand camels attended his march; and his wife Henda, with
fifteen matrons of Mecca, incessantly sounded their timbrels to animate
the troops, and to magnify the greatness of Hobal, the most popular
deity of the Caaba. The standard of ven and Mahomet was upheld by nine
hundred and fifty believers: the disproportion of numbers was not more
alarming than in the field of Beder; and their presumption of victory
prevailed against the divine and human sense of the apostle. The second
battle was fought on Mount Ohud, six miles to the north of Medina;  the
Koreish advanced in the form of a crescent; and the right wing of
cavalry was led by Caled, the fiercest and most successful of the
Arabian warriors. The troops of Mahomet were skilfully posted on the
declivity of the hill; and their rear was guarded by a detachment of
fifty archers. The weight of their charge impelled and broke the centre
of the idolaters: but in the pursuit they lost the advantage of their
ground: the archers deserted their station: the Mussulmans were tempted
by the spoil, disobeyed their general, and disordered their ranks. The
intrepid Caled, wheeling his cavalry on their flank and rear, exclaimed,
with a loud voice, that Mahomet was slain. He was indeed wounded in the
face with a javelin: two of his teeth were shattered with a stone; yet,
in the midst of tumult and dismay, he reproached the infidels with the
murder of a prophet; and blessed the friendly hand that stanched his
blood, and conveyed him to a place of safety Seventy martyrs died for
the sins of the people; they fell, said the apostle, in pairs, each
brother embracing his lifeless companion;  their bodies were mangled by
the inhuman females of Mecca; and the wife of Abu Sophian tasted the
entrails of Hamza, the uncle of Mahomet. They might applaud their
superstition, and satiate their fury; but the Mussulmans soon rallied in
the field, and the Koreish wanted strength or courage to undertake the
siege of Medina. It was attacked the ensuing year by an army of ten
thousand enemies; and this third expedition is variously named from the
nations, which marched under the banner of Abu Sophian, from the
ditchwhich was drawn before the city, and a camp of three thousand
Mussulmans. The prudence of Mahomet declined a general engagement: the
valor of Ali was signalized in single combat; and the war was protracted
twenty days, till the final separation of the confederates. A tempest of
wind, rain, and hail, overturned their tents: their private quarrels
were fomented by an insidious adversary; and the Koreish, deserted by
their allies, no longer hoped to subvert the throne, or to check the
conquests, of their invincible exile.

Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants. -- Part VI.

The choice of Jerusalem for the first kebla of prayer discovers the
early propensity of Mahomet in favor of the Jews; and happy would it
have been for their temporal interest, had they recognized, in the
Arabian prophet, the hope of Israel and the promised Messiah. Their
obstinacy converted his friendship into implacable hatred, with which he
pursued that unfortunate people to the last moment of his life; and in
the double character of an apostle and a conqueror, his persecution was
extended to both worlds.  The Kainoka dwelt at Medina under the
protection of the city; he seized the occasion of an accidental tumult,
and summoned them to embrace his religion, or contend with him in
battle. "Alas!" replied the trembling Jews, "we are ignorant of the use
of arms, but we persevere in the faith and worship of our fathers; why
wilt thou reduce us to the necessity of a just defence?" The unequal
conflict was terminated in fifteen days; and it was with extreme
reluctance that Mahomet yielded to the importunity of his allies, and
consented to spare the lives of the captives. But their riches were
confiscated, their arms became more effectual in the hands of the
Mussulmans; and a wretched colony of seven hundred exiles was driven,
with their wives and children, to implore a refuge on the confines of
Syria. The Nadhirites were more guilty, since they conspired, in a
friendly interview, to assassinate the prophet. He besieged their
castle, three miles from Medina; but their resolute defence obtained an
honorable capitulation; and the garrison, sounding their trumpets and
beating their drums, was permitted to depart with the honors of war. The
Jews had excited and joined the war of the Koreish: no sooner had the
nationsretired from the ditch, than Mahomet, without laying aside his
armor, marched on the same day to extirpate the hostile race of the
children of Koraidha. After a resistance of twenty-five days, they
surrendered at discretion. They trusted to the intercession of their old
allies of Medina; they could not be ignorant that fanaticism obliterates
the feelings of humanity. A venerable elder, to whose judgment they
appealed, pronounced the sentence of their death; seven hundred Jews
were dragged in chains to the market-place of the city; they descended
alive into the grave prepared for their execution and burial; and the
apostle beheld with an inflexible eye the slaughter of his helpless
enemies. Their sheep and camels were inherited by the Mussulmans: three
hundred cuirasses, five hundred piles, a thousand lances, composed the
most useful portion of the spoil. Six days' journey to the north-east of
Medina, the ancient and wealthy town of Chaibar was the seat of the
Jewish power in Arabia: the territory, a fertile spot in the desert, was
covered with plantations and cattle, and protected by eight castles,
some of which were esteemed of impregnable strength. The forces of
Mahomet consisted of two hundred horse and fourteen hundred foot: in the
succession of eight regular and painful sieges they were exposed to
danger, and fatigue, and hunger; and the most undaunted chiefs despaired
of the event. The apostle revived their faith and courage by the example
of Ali, on whom he bestowed the surname of the Lion of God: perhaps we
may believe that a Hebrew champion of gigantic stature was cloven to the
chest by his irresistible cimeter; but we cannot praise the modesty of
romance, which represents him as tearing from its hinges the gate of a
fortress and wielding the ponderous buckler in his left hand.  After the
reduction of the castles, the town of Chaibar submitted to the yoke. The
chief of the tribe was tortured, in the presence of Mahomet, to force a
confession of his hidden treasure: the industry of the shepherds and
husbandmen was rewarded with a precarious toleration: they were
permitted, so long as it should please the conqueror, to improve their
patrimony, in equal shares, for hisemolument and their own. Under the
reign of Omar, the Jews of Chaibar were transported to Syria; and the
caliph alleged the injunction of his dying master; that one and the true
religion should be professed in his native land of Arabia.

Five times each day the eyes of Mahomet were turned towards Mecca,  and
he was urged by the most sacred and powerful motives to revisit, as a
conqueror, the city and the temple from whence he had been driven as an
exile. The Caaba was present to his waking and sleeping fancy: an idle
dream was translated into vision and prophecy; he unfurled the holy
banner; and a rash promise of success too hastily dropped from the lips
of the apostle. His march from Medina to Mecca displayed the peaceful
and solemn pomp of a pilgrimage: seventy camels, chosen and bedecked for
sacrifice, preceded the van; the sacred territory was respected; and the
captives were dismissed without ransom to proclaim his clemency and
devotion. But no sooner did Mahomet descend into the plain, within a
day's journey of the city, than he exclaimed, "They have clothed
themselves with the skins of tigers: " the numbers and resolution of the
Koreish opposed his progress; and the roving Arabs of the desert might
desert or betray a leader whom they had followed for the hopes of spoil.
The intrepid fanatic sunk into a cool and cautious politician: he waived
in the treaty his title of apostle of God; concluded with the Koreish
and their allies a truce of ten years; engaged to restore the fugitives
of Mecca who should embrace his religion; and stipulated only, for the
ensuing year, the humble privilege of entering the city as a friend, and
of remaining three days to accomplish the rites of the pilgrimage. A
cloud of shame and sorrow hung on the retreat of the Mussulmans, and
their disappointment might justly accuse the failure of a prophet who
had so often appealed to the evidence of success. The faith and hope of
the pilgrims were rekindled by the prospect of Mecca: their swords were
sheathed; * seven times in the footsteps of the apostle they encompassed
the Caaba: the Koreish had retired to the hills, and Mahomet, after the
customary sacrifice, evacuated the city on the fourth day. The people
was edified by his devotion; the hostile chiefs were awed, or divided,
or seduced; and both Kaled and Amrou, the future conquerors of Syria and
Egypt, most seasonably deserted the sinking cause of idolatry. The power
of Mahomet was increased by the submission of the Arabian tribes; ten
thousand soldiers were assembled for the conquest of Mecca; and the
idolaters, the weaker party, were easily convicted of violating the
truce. Enthusiasm and discipline impelled the march, and preserved the
secret till the blaze of ten thousand fires proclaimed to the astonished
Koreish the design, the approach, and the irresistible force of the
enemy. The haughty Abu Sophian presented the keys of the city, admired
the variety of arms and ensigns that passed before him in review;
observed that the son of Abdallah had acquired a mighty kingdom, and
confessed, under the cimeter of Omar, that he was the apostle of the
true God. The return of Marius and Scylla was stained with the blood of
the Romans: the revenge of Mahomet was stimulated by religious zeal, and
his injured followers were eager to execute or to prevent the order of a
massacre. Instead of indulging their passions and his own,  the
victorious exile forgave the guilt, and united the factions, of Mecca.
His troops, in three divisions, marched into the city: eight-and-twenty
of the inhabitants were slain by the sword of Caled; eleven men and six
women were proscribed by the sentence of Mahomet; but he blamed the
cruelty of his lieutenant; and several of the most obnoxious victims
were indebted for their lives to his clemency or contempt. The chiefs of
the Koreish were prostrate at his feet. "What mercy can you expect from
the man whom you have wronged?" "We confide in the generosity of our
kinsman." "And you shall not confide in vain: begone! you are safe, you
are free" The people of Mecca deserved their pardon by the profession of
Islam; and after an exile of seven years, the fugitive missionary was
enthroned as the prince and prophet of his native country.  But the
three hundred and sixty idols of the Caaba were ignominiously broken:
the house of God was purified and adorned: as an example to future
times, the apostle again fulfilled the duties of a pilgrim; and a
perpetual law was enacted that no unbeliever should dare to set his foot
on the territory of the holy city.

The conquest of Mecca determined the faith and obedience of the Arabian
tribes;  who, according to the vicissitudes of fortune, had obeyed, or
disregarded, the eloquence or the arms of the prophet. Indifference for
rites and opinions still marks the character of the Bedoweens; and they
might accept, as loosely as they hold, the doctrine of the Koran. Yet an
obstinate remnant still adhered to the religion and liberty of their
ancestors, and the war of Honain derived a proper appellation from the
idols, whom Mahomet had vowed to destroy, and whom the confederates of
Tayef had sworn to defend.  Four thousand Pagans advanced with secrecy
and speed to surprise the conqueror: they pitied and despised the supine
negligence of the Koreish, but they depended on the wishes, and perhaps
the aid, of a people who had so lately renounced their gods, and bowed
beneath the yoke of their enemy. The banners of Medina and Mecca were
displayed by the prophet; a crowd of Bedoweens increased the strength or
numbers of the army, and twelve thousand Mussulmans entertained a rash
and sinful presumption of their invincible strength. They descended
without precaution into the valley of Honain: the heights had been
occupied by the archers and slingers of the confederates; their numbers
were oppressed, their discipline was confounded, their courage was
appalled, and the Koreish smiled at their impending destruction. The
prophet, on his white mule, was encompassed by the enemies: he attempted
to rush against their spears in search of a glorious death: ten of his
faithful companions interposed their weapons and their breasts; three of
these fell dead at his feet: "O my brethren," he repeatedly cried, with
sorrow and indignation, "I am the son of Abdallah, I am the apostle of
truth! O man, stand fast in the faith! O God, send down thy succor!" His
uncle Abbas, who, like the heroes of Homer, excelled in the loudness of
his voice, made the valley resound with the recital of the gifts and
promises of God: the flying Moslems returned from all sides to the holy
standard; and Mahomet observed with pleasure that the furnace was again
rekindled: his conduct and example restored the battle, and he animated
his victorious troops to inflict a merciless revenge on the authors of
their shame. From the field of Honain, he marched without delay to the
siege of Tayef, sixty miles to the south-east of Mecca, a fortress of
strength, whose fertile lands produce the fruits of Syria in the midst
of the Arabian desert. A friendly tribe, instructed (I know not how) in
the art of sieges, supplied him with a train of battering-rams and
military engines, with a body of five hundred artificers. But it was in
vain that he offered freedom to the slaves of Tayef; that he violated
his own laws by the extirpation of the fruit-trees; that the ground was
opened by the miners; that the breach was assaulted by the troops. After
a siege of twenty-days, the prophet sounded a retreat; but he retreated
with a song of devout triumph, and affected to pray for the repentance
and safety of the unbelieving city. The spoils of this fortunate
expedition amounted to six thousand captives, twenty-four thousand
camels, forty thousand sheep, and four thousand ounces of silver: a
tribe who had fought at Honain redeemed their prisoners by the sacrifice
of their idols; but Mahomet compensated the loss, by resigning to the
soldiers his fifth of the plunder, and wished, for their sake, that he
possessed as many head of cattle as there were trees in the province of
Tehama. Instead of chastising the disaffection of the Koreish, he
endeavored to cut out their tongues, (his own expression,) and to secure
their attachment by a superior measure of liberality: Abu Sophian alone
was presented with three hundred camels and twenty ounces of silver; and
Mecca was sincerely converted to the profitable religion of the Koran.

The fugitivesand auxiliariescomplained, that they who had borne the
burden were neglected in the season of victory "Alas!" replied their
artful leader, "suffer me to conciliate these recent enemies, these
doubtful proselytes, by the gift of some perishable goods. To your guard
I intrust my life and fortunes. You are the companions of my exile, of
my kingdom, of my paradise." He was followed by the deputies of Tayef,
who dreaded the repetition of a siege. "Grant us, O apostle of God! a
truce of three years, with the toleration of our ancient worship." "Not
a month, not an hour." "Excuse us at least from the obligation of
prayer." "Without prayer religion is of no avail." They submitted in
silence: their temples were demolished, and the same sentence of
destruction was executed on all the idols of Arabia. His lieutenants, on
the shores of the Red Sea, the Ocean, and the Gulf of Persia, were
saluted by the acclamations of a faithful people; and the ambassadors,
who knelt before the throne of Medina, were as numerous (says the
Arabian proverb) as the dates that fall from the maturity of a
palm-tree. The nation submitted to the God and the sceptre of Mahomet:
the opprobrious name of tribute was abolished: the spontaneous or
reluctant oblations of arms and tithes were applied to the service of
religion; and one hundred and fourteen thousand Moslems accompanied the
last pilgrimage of the apostle.

When Heraclius returned in triumph from the Persian war, he entertained,
at Emesa, one of the ambassadors of Mahomet, who invited the princes and
nations of the earth to the profession of Islam. On this foundation the
zeal of the Arabians has supposed the secret conversion of the Christian
emperor: the vanity of the Greeks has feigned a personal visit of the
prince of Medina, who accepted from the royal bounty a rich domain, and
a secure retreat, in the province of Syria.  But the friendship of
Heraclius and Mahomet was of short continuance: the new religion had
inflamed rather than assuaged the rapacious spirit of the Saracens, and
the murder of an envoy afforded a decent pretence for invading, with
three thousand soldiers, the territory of Palestine, that extends to the
eastward of the Jordan. The holy banner was intrusted to Zeid; and such
was the discipline or enthusiasm of the rising sect, that the noblest
chiefs served without reluctance under the slave of the prophet. On the
event of his decease, Jaafar and Abdallah were successively substituted
to the command; and if the three should perish in the war, the troops
were authorized to elect their general. The three leaders were slain in
the battle of Muta,  the first military action, which tried the valor of
the Moslems against a foreign enemy. Zeid fell, like a soldier, in the
foremost ranks: the death of Jaafar was heroic and memorable: he lost
his right hand: he shifted the standard to his left: the left was
severed from his body: he embraced the standard with his bleeding
stumps, till he was transfixed to the ground with fifty honorable
wounds. * "Advance," cried Abdallah, who stepped into the vacant place,
"advance with confidence: either victory or paradise is our own." The
lance of a Roman decided the alternative; but the falling standard was
rescued by Caled, the proselyte of Mecca: nine swords were broken in his
hand; and his valor withstood and repulsed the superior numbers of the
Christians. In the nocturnal council of the camp he was chosen to
command: his skilful evolutions of the ensuing day secured either the
victory or the retreat of the Saracens; and Caled is renowned among his
brethren and his enemies by the glorious appellation of the Sword of
God. In the pulpit, Mahomet described, with prophetic rapture, the
crowns of the blessed martyrs; but in private he betrayed the feelings
of human nature: he was surprised as he wept over the daughter of Zeid:
"What do I see?" said the astonished votary. "You see," replied the
apostle, "a friend who is deploring the loss of his most faithful
friend." After the conquest of Mecca, the sovereign of Arabia affected
to prevent the hostile preparations of Heraclius; and solemnly
proclaimed war against the Romans, without attempting to disguise the
hardships and dangers of the enterprise. The Moslems were discouraged:
they alleged the want of money, or horses, or provisions; the season of
harvest, and the intolerable heat of the summer: "Hell is much hotter,"
said the indignant prophet. He disdained to compel their service: but on
his return he admonished the most guilty, by an excommunication of fifty
days. Their desertion enhanced the merit of Abubeker, Othman, and the
faithful companions who devoted their lives and fortunes; and Mahomet
displayed his banner at the head of ten thousand horse and twenty
thousand foot. Painful indeed was the distress of the march: lassitude
and thirst were aggravated by the scorching and pestilential winds of
the desert: ten men rode by turns on one camel; and they were reduced to
the shameful necessity of drinking the water from the belly of that
useful animal. In the mid-way, ten days' journey from Medina and
Damascus, they reposed near the grove and fountain of Tabuc. Beyond that
place Mahomet declined the prosecution of the war: he declared himself
satisfied with the peaceful intentions, he was more probably daunted by
the martial array, of the emperor of the East. But the active and
intrepid Caled spread around the terror of his name; and the prophet
received the submission of the tribes and cities, from the Euphrates to
Ailah, at the head of the Red Sea. To his Christian subjects, Mahomet
readily granted the security of their persons, the freedom of their
trade, the property of their goods, and the toleration of their worship.
The weakness of their Arabian brethren had restrained them from opposing
his ambition; the disciples of Jesus were endeared to the enemy of the
Jews; and it was the interest of a conqueror to propose a fair
capitulation to the most powerful religion of the earth.

Till the age of sixty-three years, the strength of Mahomet was equal to
the temporal and spiritual fatigues of his mission. His epileptic fits,
an absurd calumny of the Greeks, would be an object of pity rather than
abhorrence;  but he seriously believed that he was poisoned at Chaibar
by the revenge of a Jewish female.  During four years, the health of the
prophet declined; his infirmities increased; but his mortal disease was
a fever of fourteen days, which deprived him by intervals of the use of
reason. As soon as he was conscious of his danger, he edified his
brethren by the humility of his virtue or penitence. "If there be any
man," said the apostle from the pulpit, "whom I have unjustly scourged,
I submit my own back to the lash of retaliation. Have I aspersed the
reputation of a Mussulman? let him proclaim mythoughts in the face of
the congregation. Has any one been despoiled of his goods? the little
that I possess shall compensate the principal and the interest of the
debt." "Yes," replied a voice from the crowd, "I am entitled to three
drams of silver." Mahomet heard the complaint, satisfied the demand, and
thanked his creditor for accusing him in this world rather than at the
day of judgment. He beheld with temperate firmness the approach of
death; enfranchised his slaves (seventeen men, as they are named, and
eleven women;) minutely directed the order of his funeral, and moderated
the lamentations of his weeping friends, on whom he bestowed the
benediction of peace. Till the third day before his death, he regularly
performed the function of public prayer: the choice of Abubeker to
supply his place, appeared to mark that ancient and faithful friend as
his successor in the sacerdotal and regal office; but he prudently
declined the risk and envy of a more explicit nomination. At a moment
when his faculties were visibly impaired, he called for pen and ink to
write, or, more properly, to dictate, a divine book, the sum and
accomplishment of all his revelations: a dispute arose in the chamber,
whether he should be allowed to supersede the authority of the Koran;
and the prophet was forced to reprove the indecent vehemence of his
disciples. If the slightest credit may be afforded to the traditions of
his wives and companions, he maintained, in the bosom of his family, and
to the last moments of his life, the dignity * of an apostle, and the
faith of an enthusiast; described the visits of Gabriel, who bade an
everlasting farewell to the earth, and expressed his lively confidence,
not only of the mercy, but of the favor, of the Supreme Being. In a
familiar discourse he had mentioned his special prerogative, that the
angel of death was not allowed to take his soul till he had respectfully
asked the permission of the prophet. The request was granted; and
Mahomet immediately fell into the agony of his dissolution: his head was
reclined on the lap of Ayesha, the best beloved of all his wives; he
fainted with the violence of pain; recovering his spirits, he raised his
eyes towards the roof of the house, and, with a steady look, though a
faltering voice, uttered the last broken, though articulate, words: "O
God! . . . . . pardon my sins . . . . . . . Yes, . . . . . . I come, . .
. . . . among my fellow-citizens on high;" and thus peaceably expired on
a carpet spread upon the floor. An expedition for the conquest of Syria
was stopped by this mournful event; the army halted at the gates of
Medina; the chiefs were assembled round their dying master. The city,
more especially the house, of the prophet, was a scene of clamorous
sorrow of silent despair: fanaticism alone could suggest a ray of hope
and consolation. "How can he be dead, our witness, our intercessor, our
mediator, with God? By God he is not dead: like Moses and Jesus, he is
wrapped in a holy trance, and speedily will he return to his faithful
people." The evidence of sense was disregarded; and Omar, unsheathing
his cimeter, threatened to strike off the heads of the infidels, who
should dare to affirm that the prophet was no more. The tumult was
appeased by the weight and moderation of Abubeker. "Is it Mahomet," said
he to Omar and the multitude, "or the God of Mahomet, whom you worship?
The God of Mahomet liveth forever; but the apostle was a mortal like
ourselves, and according to his own prediction, he has experienced the
common fate of mortality." He was piously interred by the hands of his
nearest kinsman, on the same spot on which he expired:  Medina has been
sanctified by the death and burial of Mahomet; and the innumerable
pilgrims of Mecca often turn aside from the way, to bow, in voluntary
devotion,  before the simple tomb of the prophet.

At the conclusion of the life of Mahomet, it may perhaps be expected,
that I should balance his faults and virtues, that I should decide
whether the title of enthusiast or impostor more properly belongs to
that extraordinary man. Had I been intimately conversant with the son of
Abdallah, the task would still be difficult, and the success uncertain:
at the distance of twelve centuries, I darkly contemplate his shade
through a cloud of religious incense; and could I truly delineate the
portrait of an hour, the fleeting resemblance would not equally apply to
the solitary of Mount Hera, to the preacher of Mecca, and to the
conqueror of Arabia. The author of a mighty revolution appears to have
been endowed with a pious and contemplative disposition: so soon as
marriage had raised him above the pressure of want, he avoided the paths
of ambition and avarice; and till the age of forty he lived with
innocence, and would have died without a name. The unity of God is an
idea most congenial to nature and reason; and a slight conversation with
the Jews and Christians would teach him to despise and detest the
idolatry of Mecca. It was the duty of a man and a citizen to impart the
doctrine of salvation, to rescue his country from the dominion of sin
and error. The energy of a mind incessantly bent on the same object,
would convert a general obligation into a particular call; the warm
suggestions of the understanding or the fancy would be felt as the
inspirations of Heaven; the labor of thought would expire in rapture and
vision; and the inward sensation, the invisible monitor, would be
described with the form and attributes of an angel of God.  From
enthusiasm to imposture, the step is perilous and slippery: the dæmon of
Socrates  affords a memorable instance, how a wise man may deceive
himself, how a good man may deceive others, how the conscience may
slumber in a mixed and middle state between self-illusion and voluntary
fraud. Charity may believe that the original motives of Mahomet were
those of pure and genuine benevolence; but a human missionary is
incapable of cherishing the obstinate unbelievers who reject his claims
despise his arguments, and persecute his life; he might forgive his
personal adversaries, he may lawfully hate the enemies of God; the stern
passions of pride and revenge were kindled in the bosom of Mahomet, and
he sighed, like the prophet of Nineveh, for the destruction of the
rebels whom he had condemned. The injustice of Mecca and the choice of
Medina, transformed the citizen into a prince, the humble preacher into
the leader of armies; but his sword was consecrated by the example of
the saints; and the same God who afflicts a sinful world with pestilence
and earthquakes, might inspire for their conversion or chastisement the
valor of his servants. In the exercise of political government, he was
compelled to abate of the stern rigor of fanaticism, to comply in some
measure with the prejudices and passions of his followers, and to employ
even the vices of mankind as the instruments of their salvation. The use
of fraud and perfidy, of cruelty and injustice, were often subservient
to the propagation of the faith; and Mahomet commanded or approved the
assassination of the Jews and idolaters who had escaped from the field
of battle. By the repetition of such acts, the character of Mahomet must
have been gradually stained; and the influence of such pernicious habits
would be poorly compensated by the practice of the personal and social
virtues which are necessary to maintain the reputation of a prophet
among his sectaries and friends. Of his last years, ambition was the
ruling passion; and a politician will suspect, that he secretly smiled
(the victorious impostor!) at the enthusiasm of his youth, and the
credulity of his proselytes.  A philosopher will observe, that
theircredulity and hissuccess would tend more strongly to fortify the
assurance of his divine mission, that his interest and religion were
inseparably connected, and that his conscience would be soothed by the
persuasion, that he alone was absolved by the Deity from the obligation
of positive and moral laws. If he retained any vestige of his native
innocence, the sins of Mahomet may be allowed as an evidence of his
sincerity. In the support of truth, the arts of fraud and fiction may be
deemed less criminal; and he would have started at the foulness of the
means, had he not been satisfied of the importance and justice of the
end. Even in a conqueror or a priest, I can surprise a word or action of
unaffected humanity; and the decree of Mahomet, that, in the sale of
captives, the mothers should never be separated from their children, may
suspend, or moderate, the censure of the historian.

Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants. -- Part VII.

The good sense of Mahomet  despised the pomp of royalty: the apostle of
God submitted to the menial offices of the family: he kindled the fire,
swept the floor, milked the ewes, and mended with his own hands his
shoes and his woollen garment. Disdaining the penance and merit of a
hermit, he observed, without effort or vanity, the abstemious diet of an
Arab and a soldier. On solemn occasions he feasted his companions with
rustic and hospitable plenty; but in his domestic life, many weeks would
elapse without a tire being kindled on the hearth of the prophet. The
interdiction of wine was confirmed by his example; his hunger was
appeased with a sparing allowance of barley-bread: he delighted in the
taste of milk and honey; but his ordinary food consisted of dates and
water. Perfumes and women were the two sensual enjoyments which his
nature required, and his religion did not forbid; and Mahomet affirmed,
that the fervor of his devotion was increased by these innocent
pleasures. The heat of the climate inflames the blood of the Arabs; and
their libidinous complexion has been noticed by the writers of
antiquity.  Their incontinence was regulated by the civil and religious
laws of the Koran: their incestuous alliances were blamed; the boundless
license of polygamy was reduced to four legitimate wives or concubines;
their rights both of bed and of dowry were equitably determined; the
freedom of divorce was discouraged, adultery was condemned as a capital
offence; and fornication, in either sex, was punished with a hundred
stripes.  Such were the calm and rational precepts of the legislator:
but in his private conduct, Mahomet indulged the appetites of a man, and
abused the claims of a prophet. A special revelation dispensed him from
the laws which he had imposed on his nation: the female sex, without
reserve, was abandoned to his desires; and this singular prerogative
excited the envy, rather than the scandal, the veneration, rather than
the envy, of the devout Mussulmans. If we remember the seven hundred
wives and three hundred concubines of the wise Solomon, we shall applaud
the modesty of the Arabian, who espoused no more than seventeen or
fifteen wives; eleven are enumerated who occupied at Medina their
separate apartments round the house of the apostle, and enjoyed in their
turns the favor of his conjugal society. What is singular enough, they
were all widows, excepting only Ayesha, the daughter of Abubeker. She
was doubtless a virgin, since Mahomet consummated his nuptials (such is
the premature ripeness of the climate) when she was only nine years of
age. The youth, the beauty, the spirit of Ayesha, gave her a superior
ascendant: she was beloved and trusted by the prophet; and, after his
death, the daughter of Abubeker was long revered as the mother of the
faithful. Her behavior had been ambiguous and indiscreet: in a nocturnal
march she was accidentally left behind; and in the morning Ayesha
returned to the camp with a man. The temper of Mahomet was inclined to
jealousy; but a divine revelation assured him of her innocence: he
chastised her accusers, and published a law of domestic peace, that no
woman should be condemned unless four male witnesses had seen her in the
act of adultery.  In his adventures with Zeineb, the wife of Zeid, and
with Mary, an Egyptian captive, the amorous prophet forgot the interest
of his reputation. At the house of Zeid, his freedman and adopted son,
he beheld, in a loose undress, the beauty of Zeineb, and burst forth
into an ejaculation of devotion and desire. The servile, or grateful,
freedman understood the hint, and yielded without hesitation to the love
of his benefactor. But as the filial relation had excited some doubt and
scandal, the angel Gabriel descended from heaven to ratify the deed, to
annul the adoption, and gently to reprove the apostle for distrusting
the indulgence of his God. One of his wives, Hafna, the daughter of
Omar, surprised him on her own bed, in the embraces of his Egyptian
captive: she promised secrecy and forgiveness, he swore that he would
renounce the possession of Mary. Both parties forgot their engagements;
and Gabriel again descended with a chapter of the Koran, to absolve him
from his oath, and to exhort him freely to enjoy his captives and
concubines, without listening to the clamors of his wives. In a solitary
retreat of thirty days, he labored, alone with Mary, to fulfil the
commands of the angel. When his love and revenge were satiated, he
summoned to his presence his eleven wives, reproached their disobedience
and indiscretion, and threatened them with a sentence of divorce, both
in this world and in the next; a dreadful sentence, since those who had
ascended the bed of the prophet were forever excluded from the hope of a
second marriage. Perhaps the incontinence of Mahomet may be palliated by
the tradition of his natural or preternatural gifts;  he united the
manly virtue of thirty of the children of Adam: and the apostle might
rival the thirteenth labor  of the Grecian Hercules.  A more serious and
decent excuse may be drawn from his fidelity to Cadijah. During the
twenty-four years of their marriage, her youthful husband abstained from
the right of polygamy, and the pride or tenderness of the venerable
matron was never insulted by the society of a rival. After her death, he
placed her in the rank of the four perfect women, with the sister of
Moses, the mother of Jesus, and Fatima, the best beloved of his
daughters. "Was she not old?" said Ayesha, with the insolence of a
blooming beauty; "has not God given you a better in her place?" "No, by
God," said Mahomet, with an effusion of honest gratitude, "there never
can be a better! She believed in me when men despised me; she relieved
my wants, when I was poor and persecuted by the world."

In the largest indulgence of polygamy, the founder of a religion and
empire might aspire to multiply the chances of a numerous posterity and
a lineal succession. The hopes of Mahomet were fatally disappointed. The
virgin Ayesha, and his ten widows of mature age and approved fertility,
were barren in his potent embraces. The four sons of Cadijah died in
their infancy. Mary, his Egyptian concubine, was endeared to him by the
birth of Ibrahim. At the end of fifteen months the prophet wept over his
grave; but he sustained with firmness the raillery of his enemies, and
checked the adulation or credulity of the Moslems, by the assurance that
an eclipse of the sun was not occasioned by the death of the infant.
Cadijah had likewise given him four daughters, who were married to the
most faithful of his disciples: the three eldest died before their
father; but Fatima, who possessed his confidence and love, became the
wife of her cousin Ali, and the mother of an illustrious progeny. The
merit and misfortunes of Ali and his descendants will lead me to
anticipate, in this place, the series of the Saracen caliphs, a title
which describes the commanders of the faithful as the vicars and
successors of the apostle of God.

The birth, the alliance, the character of Ali, which exalted him above
the rest of his countrymen, might justify his claim to the vacant throne
of Arabia. The son of Abu Taleb was, in his own right, the chief of the
family of Hashem, and the hereditary prince or guardian of the city and
temple of Mecca. The light of prophecy was extinct; but the husband of
Fatima might expect the inheritance and blessing of her father: the
Arabs had sometimes been patient of a female reign; and the two
grandsons of the prophet had often been fondled in his lap, and shown in
his pulpit as the hope of his age, and the chief of the youth of
paradise. The first of the true believers might aspire to march before
them in this world and in the next; and if some were of a graver and
more rigid cast, the zeal and virtue of Ali were never outstripped by
any recent proselyte. He united the qualifications of a poet, a soldier,
and a saint: his wisdom still breathes in a collection of moral and
religious sayings;  and every antagonist, in the combats of the tongue
or of the sword, was subdued by his eloquence and valor. From the first
hour of his mission to the last rites of his funeral, the apostle was
never forsaken by a generous friend, whom he delighted to name his
brother, his vicegerent, and the faithful Aaron of a second Moses. The
son of Abu Taleb was afterwards reproached for neglecting to secure his
interest by a solemn declaration of his right, which would have silenced
all competition, and sealed his succession by the decrees of Heaven. But
the unsuspecting hero confided in himself: the jealousy of empire, and
perhaps the fear of opposition, might suspend the resolutions of
Mahomet; and the bed of sickness was besieged by the artful Ayesha, the
daughter of Abubeker, and the enemy of Ali. *

The silence and death of the prophet restored the liberty of the people;
and his companions convened an assembly to deliberate on the choice of
his successor. The hereditary claim and lofty spirit of Ali were
offensive to an aristocracy of elders, desirous of bestowing and
resuming the sceptre by a free and frequent election: the Koreish could
never be reconciled to the proud preëminence of the line of Hashem; the
ancient discord of the tribes was rekindled, the fugitivesof Mecca and
the auxiliariesof Medina asserted their respective merits; and the rash
proposal of choosing two independent caliphs would have crushed in their
infancy the religion and empire of the Saracens. The tumult was appeased
by the disinterested resolution of Omar, who, suddenly renouncing his
own pretensions, stretched forth his hand, and declared himself the
first subject of the mild and venerable Abubeker. * The urgency of the
moment, and the acquiescence of the people, might excuse this illegal
and precipitate measure; but Omar himself confessed from the pulpit,
that if any Mussulman should hereafter presume to anticipate the
suffrage of his brethren, both the elector and the elected would be
worthy of death.  After the simple inauguration of Abubeker, he was
obeyed in Medina, Mecca, and the provinces of Arabia: the Hashemites
alone declined the oath of fidelity; and their chief, in his own house,
maintained, above six months, a sullen and independent reserve; without
listening to the threats of Omar, who attempted to consume with fire the
habitation of the daughter of the apostle. The death of Fatima, and the
decline of his party, subdued the indignant spirit of Ali: he
condescended to salute the commander of the faithful, accepted his
excuse of the necessity of preventing their common enemies, and wisely
rejected his courteous offer of abdicating the government of the
Arabians. After a reign of two years, the aged caliph was summoned by
the angel of death. In his testament, with the tacit approbation of his
companions, he bequeathed the sceptre to the firm and intrepid virtue of
Omar. "I have no occasion," said the modest candidate, "for the place."
"But the place has occasion for you," replied Abubeker; who expired with
a fervent prayer, that the God of Mahomet would ratify his choice, and
direct the Mussulmans in the way of concord and obedience. The prayer
was not ineffectual, since Ali himself, in a life of privacy and prayer,
professed to revere the superior worth and dignity of his rival; who
comforted him for the loss of empire, by the most flattering marks of
confidence and esteem. In the twelfth year of his reign, Omar received a
mortal wound from the hand of an assassin: he rejected with equal
impartiality the names of his son and of Ali, refused to load his
conscience with the sins of his successor, and devolved on six of the
most respectable companions the arduous task of electing a commander of
the faithful. On this occasion, Ali was again blamed by his friends  for
submitting his right to the judgment of men, for recognizing their
jurisdiction by accepting a place among the six electors. He might have
obtained their suffrage, had he deigned to promise a strict and servile
conformity, not only to the Koran and tradition, but likewise to the
determinations of two seniors.  With these limitations, Othman, the
secretary of Mahomet, accepted the government; nor was it till after the
third caliph, twenty-four years after the death of the prophet, that Ali
was invested, by the popular choice, with the regal and sacerdotal
office. The manners of the Arabians retained their primitive simplicity,
and the son of Abu Taleb despised the pomp and vanity of this world. At
the hour of prayer, he repaired to the mosch of Medina, clothed in a
thin cotton gown, a coarse turban on his head, his slippers in one hand,
and his bow in the other, instead of a walking-staff. The companions of
the prophet, and the chiefs of the tribes, saluted their new sovereign,
and gave him their right hands as a sign of fealty and allegiance.

The mischiefs that flow from the contests of ambition are usually
confined to the times and countries in which they have been agitated.
But the religious discord of the friends and enemies of Ali has been
renewed in every age of the Hegira, and is still maintained in the
immortal hatred of the Persians and Turks.  The former, who are branded
with the appellation of Shiitesor sectaries, have enriched the Mahometan
creed with a new article of faith; and if Mahomet be the apostle, his
companion Ali is the vicar, of God. In their private converse, in their
public worship, they bitterly execrate the three usurpers who
intercepted his indefeasible right to the dignity of Imam and Caliph;
and the name of Omar expresses in their tongue the perfect
accomplishment of wickedness and impiety.  The Sonnites, who are
supported by the general consent and orthodox tradition of the
Mussulmans, entertain a more impartial, or at least a more decent,
opinion. They respect the memory of Abubeker, Omar, Othman, and Ali, the
holy and legitimate successors of the prophet. But they assign the last
and most humble place to the husband of Fatima, in the persuasion that
the order of succession was determined by the decrees of sanctity.  An
historian who balances the four caliphs with a hand unshaken by
superstition, will calmly pronounce that their manners were alike pure
and exemplary; that their zeal was fervent, and probably sincere; and
that, in the midst of riches and power, their lives were devoted to the
practice of moral and religious duties. But the public virtues of
Abubeker and Omar, the prudence of the first, the severity of the
second, maintained the peace and prosperity of their reigns. The feeble
temper and declining age of Othman were incapable of sustaining the
weight of conquest and empire. He chose, and he was deceived; he
trusted, and he was betrayed: the most deserving of the faithful became
useless or hostile to his government, and his lavish bounty was
productive only of ingratitude and discontent. The spirit of discord
went forth in the provinces: their deputies assembled at Medina; and the
Charegites, the desperate fanatics who disclaimed the yoke of
subordination and reason, were confounded among the free-born Arabs, who
demanded the redress of their wrongs and the punishment of their
oppressors. From Cufa, from Bassora, from Egypt, from the tribes of the
desert, they rose in arms, encamped about a league from Medina, and
despatched a haughty mandate to their sovereign, requiring him to
execute justice, or to descend from the throne. His repentance began to
disarm and disperse the insurgents; but their fury was rekindled by the
arts of his enemies; and the forgery of a perfidious secretary was
contrived to blast his reputation and precipitate his fall. The caliph
had lost the only guard of his predecessors, the esteem and confidence
of the Moslems: during a siege of six weeks his water and provisions
were intercepted, and the feeble gates of the palace were protected only
by the scruples of the more timorous rebels. Forsaken by those who had
abused his simplicity, the hopeless and venerable caliph expected the
approach of death: the brother of Ayesha marched at the head of the
assassins; and Othman, with the Koran in his lap, was pierced with a
multitude of wounds. * A tumultuous anarchy of five days was appeased by
the inauguration of Ali: his refusal would have provoked a general
massacre. In this painful situation he supported the becoming pride of
the chief of the Hashemites; declared that he had rather serve than
reign; rebuked the presumption of the strangers; and required the
formal, if not the voluntary, assent of the chiefs of the nation. He has
never been accused of prompting the assassin of Omar; though Persia
indiscreetly celebrates the festival of that holy martyr. The quarrel
between Othman and his subjects was assuaged by the early mediation of
Ali; and Hassan, the eldest of his sons, was insulted and wounded in the
defence of the caliph. Yet it is doubtful whether the father of Hassan
was strenuous and sincere in his opposition to the rebels; and it is
certain that he enjoyed the benefit of their crime. The temptation was
indeed of such magnitude as might stagger and corrupt the most obdurate
virtue. The ambitious candidate no longer aspired to the barren sceptre
of Arabia; the Saracens had been victorious in the East and West; and
the wealthy kingdoms of Persia, Syria, and Egypt were the patrimony of
the commander of the faithful.

Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants. -- Part VIII.

A life of prayer and contemplation had not chilled the martial activity
of Ali; but in a mature age, after a long experience of mankind, he
still betrayed in his conduct the rashness and indiscretion of youth. *
In the first days of his reign, he neglected to secure, either by gifts
or fetters, the doubtful allegiance of Telha and Zobeir, two of the most
powerful of the Arabian chiefs. They escaped from Medina to Mecca, and
from thence to Bassora; erected the standard of revolt; and usurped the
government of Irak, or Assyria, which they had vainly solicited as the
reward of their services. The mask of patriotism is allowed to cover the
most glaring inconsistencies; and the enemies, perhaps the assassins, of
Othman now demanded vengeance for his blood. They were accompanied in
their flight by Ayesha, the widow of the prophet, who cherished, to the
last hour of her life, an implacable hatred against the husband and the
posterity of Fatima. The most reasonable Moslems were scandalized, that
the mother of the faithful should expose in a camp her person and
character;  but the superstitious crowd was confident that her presence
would sanctify the justice, and assure the success, of their cause. At
the head of twenty thousand of his loyal Arabs, and nine thousand
valiant auxiliaries of Cufa, the caliph encountered and defeated the
superior numbers of the rebels under the walls of Bassora.  Their
leaders, Telha and Zobeir, §were slain in the first battle that stained
with civil blood the arms of the Moslems. || After passing through the
ranks to animate the troops, Ayesha had chosen her post amidst the
dangers of the field. In the heat of the action, seventy men, who held
the bridle of her camel, were successively killed or wounded; and the
cage or litter, in which she sat, was stuck with javelins and darts like
the quills of a porcupine. The venerable captive sustained with firmness
the reproaches of the conqueror, and was speedily dismissed to her
proper station at the tomb of Mahomet, with the respect and tenderness
that was still due to the widow of the apostle. * After this victory,
which was styled the Day of the Camel, Ali marched against a more
formidable adversary; against Moawiyah, the son of Abu Sophian, who had
assumed the title of caliph, and whose claim was supported by the forces
of Syria and the interest of the house of Ommiyah. From the passage of
Thapsacus, the plain of Siffin  extends along the western bank of the
Euphrates. On this spacious and level theatre, the two competitors waged
a desultory war of one hundred and ten days. In the course of ninety
actions or skirmishes, the loss of Ali was estimated at twenty-five,
that of Moawiyah at forty-five, thousand soldiers; and the list of the
slain was dignified with the names of five-and-twenty veterans who had
fought at Beder under the standard of Mahomet. In this sanguinary
contest the lawful caliph displayed a superior character of valor and
humanity.  His troops were strictly enjoined to await the first onset of
the enemy, to spare their flying brethren, and to respect the bodies of
the dead, and the chastity of the female captives. He generously
proposed to save the blood of the Moslems by a single combat; but his
trembling rival declined the challenge as a sentence of inevitable
death. The ranks of the Syrians were broken by the charge of a hero who
was mounted on a piebald horse, and wielded with irresistible force his
ponderous and two-edged sword. As often as he smote a rebel, he shouted
the Allah Acbar, "God is victorious!" and in the tumult of a nocturnal
battle, he was heard to repeat four hundred times that tremendous
exclamation. The prince of Damascus already meditated his flight; but
the certain victory was snatched from the grasp of Ali by the
disobedience and enthusiasm of his troops. Their conscience was awed by
the solemn appeal to the books of the Koran which Moawiyah exposed on
the foremost lances; and Ali was compelled to yield to a disgraceful
truce and an insidious compromise. He retreated with sorrow and
indignation to Cufa; his party was discouraged; the distant provinces of
Persia, of Yemen, and of Egypt, were subdued or seduced by his crafty
rival; and the stroke of fanaticism, which was aimed against the three
chiefs of the nation, was fatal only to the cousin of Mahomet. In the
temple of Mecca, three Charegites or enthusiasts discoursed of the
disorders of the church and state: they soon agreed, that the deaths of
Ali, of Moawiyah, and of his friend Amrou, the viceroy of Egypt, would
restore the peace and unity of religion. Each of the assassins chose his
victim, poisoned his dagger, devoted his life, and secretly repaired to
the scene of action. Their resolution was equally desperate: but the
first mistook the person of Amrou, and stabbed the deputy who occupied
his seat; the prince of Damascus was dangerously hurt by the second; the
lawful caliph, in the mosch of Cufa, received a mortal wound from the
hand of the third. He expired in the sixty-third year of his age, and
mercifully recommended to his children, that they would despatch the
murderer by a single stroke. * The sepulchre of Ali  was concealed from
the tyrants of the house of Ommiyah;  but in the fourth age of the
Hegira, a tomb, a temple, a city, arose near the ruins of Cufa.  Many
thousands of the Shiites repose in holy ground at the feet of the vicar
of God; and the desert is vivified by the numerous and annual visits of
the Persians, who esteem their devotion not less meritorious than the
pilgrimage of Mecca.

The persecutors of Mahomet usurped the inheritance of his children; and
the champions of idolatry became the supreme heads of his religion and
empire. The opposition of Abu Sophian had been fierce and obstinate; his
conversion was tardy and reluctant; his new faith was fortified by
necessity and interest; he served, he fought, perhaps he believed; and
the sins of the time of ignorance were expiated by the recent merits of
the family of Ommiyah. Moawiyah, the son of Abu Sophian, and of the
cruel Henda, was dignified, in his early youth, with the office or title
of secretary of the prophet: the judgment of Omar intrusted him with the
government of Syria; and he administered that important province above
forty years, either in a subordinate or supreme rank. Without renouncing
the fame of valor and liberality, he affected the reputation of humanity
and moderation: a grateful people was attached to their benefactor; and
the victorious Moslems were enriched with the spoils of Cyprus and
Rhodes. The sacred duty of pursuing the assassins of Othman was the
engine and pretence of his ambition. The bloody shirt of the martyr was
exposed in the mosch of Damascus: the emir deplored the fate of his
injured kinsman; and sixty thousand Syrians were engaged in his service
by an oath of fidelity and revenge. Amrou, the conqueror of Egypt,
himself an army, was the first who saluted the new monarch, and divulged
the dangerous secret, that the Arabian caliphs might be created
elsewhere than in the city of the prophet.  The policy of Moawiyah
eluded the valor of his rival; and, after the death of Ali, he
negotiated the abdication of his son Hassan, whose mind was either above
or below the government of the world, and who retired without a sigh
from the palace of Cufa to an humble cell near the tomb of his
grandfather. The aspiring wishes of the caliph were finally crowned by
the important change of an elective to an hereditary kingdom. Some
murmurs of freedom or fanaticism attested the reluctance of the Arabs,
and four citizens of Medina refused the oath of fidelity; but the
designs of Moawiyah were conducted with vigor and address; and his son
Yezid, a feeble and dissolute youth, was proclaimed as the commander of
the faithful and the successor on the apostle of God.

A familiar story is related of the benevolence of one of the sons of
Ali. In serving at table, a slave had inadvertently dropped a dish of
scalding broth on his master: the heedless wretch fell prostrate, to
deprecate his punishment, and repeated a verse of the Koran: "Paradise
is for those who command their anger: " -- "I am not angry: " -- "and
for those who pardon offences: " -- "I pardon your offence: " -- "and
for those who return good for evil: " -- "I give you your liberty and
four hundred pieces of silver." With an equal measure of piety, Hosein,
the younger brother of Hassan, inherited a remnant of his father's
spirit, and served with honor against the Christians in the siege of
Constantinople. The primogeniture of the line of Hashem, and the holy
character of grandson of the apostle, had centred in his person, and he
was at liberty to prosecute his claim against Yezid, the tyrant of
Damascus, whose vices he despised, and whose title he had never deigned
to acknowledge. A list was secretly transmitted from Cufa to Medina, of
one hundred and forty thousand Moslems, who professed their attachment
to his cause, and who were eager to draw their swords so soon as he
should appear on the banks of the Euphrates. Against the advice of his
wisest friends, he resolved to trust his person and family in the hands
of a perfidious people. He traversed the desert of Arabia with a
timorous retinue of women and children; but as he approached the
confines of Irak he was alarmed by the solitary or hostile face of the
country, and suspected either the defection or ruin of his party. His
fears were just: Obeidollah, the governor of Cufa, had extinguished the
first sparks of an insurrection; and Hosein, in the plain of Kerbela,
was encompassed by a body of five thousand horse, who intercepted his
communication with the city and the river. He might still have escaped
to a fortress in the desert, that had defied the power of Cæsar and
Chosroes, and confided in the fidelity of the tribe of Tai, which would
have armed ten thousand warriors in his defence. In a conference with
the chief of the enemy, he proposed the option of three honorable
conditions: that he should be allowed to return to Medina, or be
stationed in a frontier garrison against the Turks, or safely conducted
to the presence of Yezid. But the commands of the caliph, or his
lieutenant, were stern and absolute; and Hosein was informed that he
must either submit as a captive and a criminal to the commander of the
faithful, or expect the consequences of his rebellion. "Do you think,"
replied he, "to terrify me with death?" And, during the short respite of
a night, * he prepared with calm and solemn resignation to encounter his
fate. He checked the lamentations of his sister Fatima, who deplored the
impending ruin of his house. "Our trust," said Hosein, "is in God alone.
All things, both in heaven and earth, must perish and return to their
Creator. My brother, my father, my mother, were better than me, and
every Mussulman has an example in the prophet." He pressed his friends
to consult their safety by a timely flight: they unanimously refused to
desert or survive their beloved master: and their courage was fortified
by a fervent prayer and the assurance of paradise. On the morning of the
fatal day, he mounted on horseback, with his sword in one hand and the
Koran in the other: his generous band of martyrs consisted only of
thirty-two horse and forty foot; but their flanks and rear were secured
by the tent-ropes, and by a deep trench which they had filled with
lighted fagots, according to the practice of the Arabs. The enemy
advanced with reluctance, and one of their chiefs deserted, with thirty
followers, to claim the partnership of inevitable death. In every close
onset, or single combat, the despair of the Fatimites was invincible;
but the surrounding multitudes galled them from a distance with a cloud
of arrows, and the horses and men were successively slain; a truce was
allowed on both sides for the hour of prayer; and the battle at length
expired by the death of the last companions of Hosein. Alone, weary, and
wounded, he seated himself at the door of his tent. As he tasted a drop
of water, he was pierced in the mouth with a dart; and his son and
nephew, two beautiful youths, were killed in his arms. He lifted his
hands to heaven; they were full of blood; and he uttered a funeral
prayer for the living and the dead. In a transport of despair his sister
issued from the tent, and adjured the general of the Cufians, that he
would not suffer Hosein to be murdered before his eyes: a tear trickled
down his venerable beard; and the boldest of his soldiers fell back on
every side as the dying hero threw himself among them. The remorseless
Shamer, a name detested by the faithful, reproached their cowardice; and
the grandson of Mahomet was slain with three-and-thirty strokes of
lances and swords. After they had trampled on his body, they carried his
head to the castle of Cufa, and the inhuman Obeidollah struck him on the
mouth with a cane: "Alas," exclaimed an aged Mussulman, "on these lips
have I seen the lips of the apostle of God!" In a distant age and
climate, the tragic scene of the death of Hosein will awaken the
sympathy of the coldest reader.  * On the annual festival of his
martyrdom, in the devout pilgrimage to his sepulchre, his Persian
votaries abandon their souls to the religious frenzy of sorrow and
indignation.

When the sisters and children of Ali were brought in chains to the
throne of Damascus, the caliph was advised to extirpate the enmity of a
popular and hostile race, whom he had injured beyond the hope of
reconciliation. But Yezid preferred the councils of mercy; and the
mourning family was honorably dismissed to mingle their tears with their
kindred at Medina. The glory of martyrdom superseded the right of
primogeniture; and the twelve imams,  or pontiffs, of the Persian creed,
are Ali, Hassan, Hosein, and the lineal descendants of Hosein to the
ninth generation. Without arms, or treasures, or subjects, they
successively enjoyed the veneration of the people, and provoked the
jealousy of the reigning caliphs: their tombs, at Mecca or Medina, on
the banks of the Euphrates, or in the province of Chorasan, are still
visited by the devotion of their sect. Their names were often the
pretence of sedition and civil war; but these royal saints despised the
pomp of the world: submitted to the will of God and the injustice of
man; and devoted their innocent lives to the study and practice of
religion. The twelfth and last of the Imams, conspicuous by the title of
Mahadi, or the Guide, surpassed the solitude and sanctity of his
predecessors. He concealed himself in a cavern near Bagdad: the time and
place of his death are unknown; and his votaries pretend that he still
lives, and will appear before the day of judgment to overthrow the
tyranny of Dejal, or the Antichrist.  In the lapse of two or three
centuries, the posterity of Abbas, the uncle of Mahomet, had multiplied
to the number of thirty-three thousand:  the race of Ali might be
equally prolific: the meanest individual was above the first and
greatest of princes; and the most eminent were supposed to excel the
perfection of angels. But their adverse fortune, and the wide extent of
the Mussulman empire, allowed an ample scope for every bold and artful
imposture, who claimed affinity with the holy seed: the sceptre of the
Almohades, in Spain and Africa; of the Fatimites, in Egypt and Syria;
of the Sultans of Yemen; and of the Sophis of Persia;  has been
consecrated by this vague and ambiguous title. Under their reigns it
might be dangerous to dispute the legitimacy of their birth; and one of
the Fatimite caliphs silenced an indiscreet question by drawing his
cimeter: "This," said Moez, "is my pedigree; and these," casting a
handful of gold to his soldiers, -- "and these are my kindred and my
children." In the various conditions of princes, or doctors, or nobles,
or merchants, or beggars, a swarm of the genuine or fictitious
descendants of Mahomet and Ali is honored with the appellation of
sheiks, or sherifs, or emirs. In the Ottoman empire they are
distinguished by a green turban; receive a stipend from the treasury;
are judged only by their chief; and, however debased by fortune or
character, still assert the proud preëminence of their birth. A family
of three hundred persons, the pure and orthodox branch of the caliph
Hassan, is preserved without taint or suspicion in the holy cities of
Mecca and Medina, and still retains, after the revolutions of twelve
centuries, the custody of the temple, and the sovereignty of their
native land. The fame and merit of Mahomet would ennoble a plebeian
race, and the ancient blood of the Koreish transcends the recent majesty
of the kings of the earth.

The talents of Mahomet are entitled to our applause; but his success
has, perhaps, too strongly attracted our admiration. Are we surprised
that a multitude of proselytes should embrace the doctrine and the
passions of an eloquent fanatic? In the heresies of the church, the same
seduction has been tried and repeated from the time of the apostles to
that of the reformers. Does it seem incredible that a private citizen
should grasp the sword and the sceptre, subdue his native country, and
erect a monarchy by his victorious arms? In the moving picture of the
dynasties of the East, a hundred fortunate usurpers have arisen from a
baser origin, surmounted more formidable obstacles, and filled a larger
scope of empire and conquest. Mahomet was alike instructed to preach and
to fight; and the union of these opposite qualities, while it enhanced
his merit, contributed to his success: the operation of force and
persuasion, of enthusiasm and fear, continually acted on each other,
till every barrier yielded to their irresistible power. His voice
invited the Arabs to freedom and victory, to arms and rapine, to the
indulgence of their darling passions in this world and the other: the
restraints which he imposed were requisite to establish the credit of
the prophet, and to exercise the obedience of the people; and the only
objection to his success was his rational creed of the unity and
perfections of God. It is not the propagation, but the permanency, of
his religion, that deserves our wonder: the same pure and perfect
impression which he engraved at Mecca and Medina, is preserved, after
the revolutions of twelve centuries, by the Indian, the African, and the
Turkish proselytes of the Koran. If the Christian apostles, St. Peter or
St. Paul, could return to the Vatican, they might possibly inquire the
name of the Deity who is worshipped with such mysterious rites in that
magnificent temple: at Oxford or Geneva, they would experience less
surprise; but it might still be incumbent on them to peruse the
catechism of the church, and to study the orthodox commentators on their
own writings and the words of their Master. But the Turkish dome of St.
Sophia, with an increase of splendor and size, represents the humble
tabernacle erected at Medina by the hands of Mahomet. The Mahometans
have uniformly withstood the temptation of reducing the object of their
faith and devotion to a level with the senses and imagination of man. "I
believe in one God, and Mahomet the apostle of God," is the simple and
invariable profession of Islam. The intellectual image of the Deity has
never been degraded by any visible idol; the honors of the prophet have
never transgressed the measure of human virtue; and his living precepts
have restrained the gratitude of his disciples within the bounds of
reason and religion. The votaries of Ali have, indeed, consecrated the
memory of their hero, his wife, and his children; and some of the
Persian doctors pretend that the divine essence was incarnate in the
person of the Imams; but their superstition is universally condemned by
the Sonnites; and their impiety has afforded a seasonable warning
against the worship of saints and martyrs. The metaphysical questions on
the attributes of God, and the liberty of man, have been agitated in the
schools of the Mahometans, as well as in those of the Christians; but
among the former they have never engaged the passions of the people, or
disturbed the tranquillity of the state. The cause of this important
difference may be found in the separation or union of the regal and
sacerdotal characters. It was the interest of the caliphs, the
successors of the prophet and commanders of the faithful, to repress and
discourage all religious innovations: the order, the discipline, the
temporal and spiritual ambition of the clergy, are unknown to the
Moslems; and the sages of the law are the guides of their conscience and
the oracles of their faith. From the Atlantic to the Ganges, the Koran
is acknowledged as the fundamental code, not only of theology, but of
civil and criminal jurisprudence; and the laws which regulate the
actions and the property of mankind are guarded by the infallible and
immutable sanction of the will of God. This religious servitude is
attended with some practical disadvantage; the illiterate legislator had
been often misled by his own prejudices and those of his country; and
the institutions of the Arabian desert may be ill adapted to the wealth
and numbers of Ispahan and Constantinople. On these occasions, the Cadhi
respectfully places on his head the holy volume, and substitutes a
dexterous interpretation more apposite to the principles of equity, and
the manners and policy of the times.

His beneficial or pernicious influence on the public happiness is the
last consideration in the character of Mahomet. The most bitter or most
bigoted of his Christian or Jewish foes will surely allow that he
assumed a false commission to inculcate a salutary doctrine, less
perfect only than their own. He piously supposed, as the basis of his
religion, the truth and sanctity of theirprior revolutions, the virtues
and miracles of their founders. The idols of Arabia were broken before
the throne of God; the blood of human victims was expiated by prayer,
and fasting, and alms, the laudable or innocent arts of devotion; and
his rewards and punishments of a future life were painted by the images
most congenial to an ignorant and carnal generation. Mahomet was,
perhaps, incapable of dictating a moral and political system for the use
of his countrymen: but he breathed among the faithful a spirit of
charity and friendship; recommended the practice of the social virtues;
and checked, by his laws and precepts, the thirst of revenge, and the
oppression of widows and orphans. The hostile tribes were united in
faith and obedience, and the valor which had been idly spent in domestic
quarrels was vigorously directed against a foreign enemy. Had the
impulse been less powerful, Arabia, free at home and formidable abroad,
might have flourished under a succession of her native monarchs. Her
sovereignty was lost by the extent and rapidity of conquest. The
colonies of the nation were scattered over the East and West, and their
blood was mingled with the blood of their converts and captives. After
the reign of three caliphs, the throne was transported from Medina to
the valley of Damascus and the banks of the Tigris; the holy cities were
violated by impious war; Arabia was ruled by the rod of a subject,
perhaps of a stranger; and the Bedoweens of the desert, awakening from
their dream of dominion, resumed their old and solitary independence.

Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.

Part I.

The Conquest Of Persia, Syria, Egypt, Africa, And Spain, By The Arabs Or
Saracens. -- Empire Of The Caliphs, Or Successors Of Mahomet. -- State
Of The Christians, &c., Under Their Government.

The revolution of Arabia had not changed the character of the Arabs: the
death of Mahomet was the signal of independence; and the hasty structure
of his power and religion tottered to its foundations. A small and
faithful band of his primitive disciples had listened to his eloquence,
and shared his distress; had fled with the apostle from the persecution
of Mecca, or had received the fugitive in the walls of Medina. The
increasing myriads, who acknowledged Mahomet as their king and prophet,
had been compelled by his arms, or allured by his prosperity. The
polytheists were confounded by the simple idea of a solitary and
invisible God; the pride of the Christians and Jews disdained the yoke
of a mortal and contemporary legislator. The habits of faith and
obedience were not sufficiently confirmed; and many of the new converts
regretted the venerable antiquity of the law of Moses, or the rites and
mysteries of the Catholic church; or the idols, the sacrifices, the
joyous festivals, of their Pagan ancestors. The jarring interests and
hereditary feuds of the Arabian tribes had not yet coalesced in a system
of union and subordination; and the Barbarians were impatient of the
mildest and most salutary laws that curbed their passions, or violated
their customs. They submitted with reluctance to the religious precepts
of the Koran, the abstinence from wine, the fast of the Ramadan, and the
daily repetition of five prayers; and the alms and tithes, which were
collected for the treasury of Medina, could be distinguished only by a
name from the payment of a perpetual and ignominious tribute. The
example of Mahomet had excited a spirit of fanaticism or imposture, and
several of his rivals presumed to imitate the conduct, and defy the
authority, of the living prophet. At the head of the fugitivesand
auxiliaries, the first caliph was reduced to the cities of Mecca,
Medina, and Tayef; and perhaps the Koreish would have restored the idols
of the Caaba, if their levity had not been checked by a seasonable
reproof. "Ye men of Mecca, will ye be the last to embrace, and the first
to abandon, the religion of Islam?" After exhorting the Moslems to
confide in the aid of God and his apostle, Abubeker resolved, by a
vigorous attack, to prevent the junction of the rebels. The women and
children were safely lodged in the cavities of the mountains: the
warriors, marching under eleven banners, diffused the terror of their
arms; and the appearance of a military force revived and confirmed the
loyalty of the faithful. The inconstant tribes accepted, with humble
repentance, the duties of prayer, and fasting, and alms; and, after some
examples of success and severity, the most daring apostates fell
prostrate before the sword of the Lord and of Caled. In the fertile
province of Yemanah,  between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Persia, in a
city not inferior to Medina itself, a powerful chief (his name was
Moseilama) had assumed the character of a prophet, and the tribe of
Hanifa listened to his voice. A female prophetess * was attracted by his
reputation; the decencies of words and actions were spurned by these
favorites of Heaven;  and they employed several days in mystic and
amorous converse. An obscure sentence of his Koran, or book, is yet
extant;  and in the pride of his mission, Moseilama condescended to
offer a partition of the earth. The proposal was answered by Mahomet
with contempt; but the rapid progress of the impostor awakened the fears
of his successor: forty thousand Moslems were assembled under the
standard of Caled; and the existence of their faith was resigned to the
event of a decisive battle. * In the first action they were repulsed by
the loss of twelve hundred men; but the skill and perseverance of their
general prevailed; their defeat was avenged by the slaughter of ten
thousand infidels; and Moseilama himself was pierced by an Æthiopian
slave with the same javelin which had mortally wounded the uncle of
Mahomet. The various rebels of Arabia without a chief or a cause, were
speedily suppressed by the power and discipline of the rising monarchy;
and the whole nation again professed, and more steadfastly held, the
religion of the Koran. The ambition of the caliphs provided an immediate
exercise for the restless spirit of the Saracens: their valor was united
in the prosecution of a holy war; and their enthusiasm was equally
confirmed by opposition and victory.

From the rapid conquests of the Saracens a presumption will naturally
arise, that the caliphs  commanded in person the armies of the faithful,
and sought the crown of martyrdom in the foremost ranks of the battle.
The courage of Abubeker,  Omar,  and Othman,  had indeed been tried in
the persecution and wars of the prophet; and the personal assurance of
paradise must have taught them to despise the pleasures and dangers of
the present world. But they ascended the throne in a venerable or mature
age; and esteemed the domestic cares of religion and justice the most
important duties of a sovereign. Except the presence of Omar at the
siege of Jerusalem, their longest expeditions were the frequent
pilgrimage from Medina to Mecca; and they calmly received the tidings of
victory as they prayed or preached before the sepulchre of the prophet.
The austere and frugal measure of their lives was the effect of virtue
or habit, and the pride of their simplicity insulted the vain
magnificence of the kings of the earth. When Abubeker assumed the office
of caliph, he enjoined his daughter Ayesha to take a strict account of
his private patrimony, that it might be evident whether he were enriched
or impoverished by the service of the state. He thought himself entitled
to a stipend of three pieces of gold, with the sufficient maintenance of
a single camel and a black slave; but on the Friday of each week he
distributed the residue of his own and the public money, first to the
most worthy, and then to the most indigent, of the Moslems. The remains
of his wealth, a coarse garment, and five pieces of gold, were delivered
to his successor, who lamented with a modest sigh his own inability to
equal such an admirable model. Yet the abstinence and humility of Omar
were not inferior to the virtues of Abubeker: his food consisted of
barley bread or dates; his drink was water; he preached in a gown that
was torn or tattered in twelve places; and the Persian satrap, who paid
his homage to the conqueror, found him asleep among the beggars on the
steps of the mosch of Medina. conomy is the source of liberality, and
the increase of the revenue enabled Omar to establish a just and
perpetual reward for the past and present services of the faithful.
Careless of his own emolument, he assigned to Abbas, the uncle of the
prophet, the first and most ample allowance of twenty-five thousand
drachms or pieces of silver. Five thousand were allotted to each of the
aged warriors, the relics of the field of Beder; and the last and
meanest of the companions of Mahomet was distinguished by the annual
reward of three thousand pieces. One thousand was the stipend of the
veterans who had fought in the first battles against the Greeks and
Persians; and the decreasing pay, as low as fifty pieces of silver, was
adapted to the respective merit and seniority of the soldiers of Omar.
Under his reign, and that of his predecessor, the conquerors of the East
were the trusty servants of God and the people; the mass of the public
treasure was consecrated to the expenses of peace and war; a prudent
mixture of justice and bounty maintained the discipline of the Saracens,
and they united, by a rare felicity, the despatch and execution of
despotism with the equal and frugal maxims of a republican government.
The heroic courage of Ali,  the consummate prudence of Moawiyah,
excited the emulation of their subjects; and the talents which had been
exercised in the school of civil discord were more usefully applied to
propagate the faith and dominion of the prophet. In the sloth and vanity
of the palace of Damascus, the succeeding princes of the house of
Ommiyah were alike destitute of the qualifications of statesmen and of
saints.  Yet the spoils of unknown nations were continually laid at the
foot of their throne, and the uniform ascent of the Arabian greatness
must be ascribed to the spirit of the nation rather than the abilities
of their chiefs. A large deduction must be allowed for the weakness of
their enemies. The birth of Mahomet was fortunately placed in the most
degenerate and disorderly period of the Persians, the Romans, and the
Barbarians of Europe: the empires of Trajan, or even of Constantine or
Charlemagne, would have repelled the assault of the naked Saracens, and
the torrent of fanaticism might have been obscurely lost in the sands of
Arabia.

In the victorious days of the Roman republic, it had been the aim of the
senate to confine their councils and legions to a single war, and
completely to suppress a first enemy before they provoked the
hostilities of a second. These timid maxims of policy were disdained by
the magnanimity or enthusiasm of the Arabian caliphs. With the same
vigor and success they invaded the successors of Augustus and those of
Artaxerxes; and the rival monarchies at the same instant became the prey
of an enemy whom they had been so long accustomed to despise. In the ten
years of the administration of Omar, the Saracens reduced to his
obedience thirty-six thousand cities or castles, destroyed four thousand
churches or temples of the unbelievers, and edified fourteen hundred
moschs for the exercise of the religion of Mahomet. One hundred years
after his flight from Mecca, the arms and the reign of his successors
extended from India to the Atlantic Ocean, over the various and distant
provinces, which may be comprised under the names of, I. Persia; II.
Syria; III. Egypt; IV. Africa; and, V. Spain. Under this general
division, I shall proceed to unfold these memorable transactions;
despatching with brevity the remote and less interesting conquests of
the East, and reserving a fuller narrative for those domestic countries
which had been included within the pale of the Roman empire. Yet I must
excuse my own defects by a just complaint of the blindness and
insufficiency of my guides. The Greeks, so loquacious in controversy,
have not been anxious to celebrate the triumphs of their enemies.  After
a century of ignorance, the first annals of the Mussulmans were
collected in a great measure from the voice of tradition.  Among the
numerous productions of Arabic and Persian literature,  our interpreters
have selected the imperfect sketches of a more recent age.  The art and
genius of history have ever been unknown to the Asiatics;  they are
ignorant of the laws of criticism; and our monkish chronicle of the same
period may be compared to their most popular works, which are never
vivified by the spirit of philosophy and freedom. The Oriental libraryof
a Frenchman  would instruct the most learned mufti of the East; and
perhaps the Arabs might not find in a single historian so clear and
comprehensive a narrative of their own exploits as that which will be
deduced in the ensuing sheets.

I. In the first year of the first caliph, his lieutenant Caled, the
Sword of God, and the scourge of the infidels, advanced to the banks of
the Euphrates, and reduced the cities of Anbar and Hira. Westward of the
ruins of Babylon, a tribe of sedentary Arabs had fixed themselves on the
verge of the desert; and Hira was the seat of a race of kings who had
embraced the Christian religion, and reigned above six hundred years
under the shadow of the throne of Persia.  The last of the Mondars * was
defeated and slain by Caled; his son was sent a captive to Medina; his
nobles bowed before the successor of the prophet; the people was tempted
by the example and success of their countrymen; and the caliph accepted
as the first-fruits of foreign conquest an annual tribute of seventy
thousand pieces of gold. The conquerors, and even their historians, were
astonished by the dawn of their future greatness: "In the same year,"
says Elmacin, "Caled fought many signal battles: an immense multitude of
the infidels was slaughtered; and spoils infinite and innumerable were
acquired by the victorious Moslems."  But the invincible Caled was soon
transferred to the Syrian war: the invasion of the Persian frontier was
conducted by less active or less prudent commanders: the Saracens were
repulsed with loss in the passage of the Euphrates; and, though they
chastised the insolent pursuit of the Magians, their remaining forces
still hovered in the desert of Babylon.

The indignation and fears of the Persians suspended for a moment their
intestine divisions. By the unanimous sentence of the priests and
nobles, their queen Arzema was deposed; the sixth of the transient
usurpers, who had arisen and vanished in three or four years since the
death of Chosroes, and the retreat of Heraclius. Her tiara was placed on
the head of Yezdegerd, the grandson of Chosroes; and the same æra, which
coincides with an astronomical period,  has recorded the fall of the
Sassanian dynasty and the religion of Zoroaster.  The youth and
inexperience of the prince (he was only fifteen years of age) declined a
perilous encounter: the royal standard was delivered into the hands of
his general Rustam; and a remnant of thirty thousand regular troops was
swelled in truth, or in opinion, to one hundred and twenty thousand
subjects, or allies, of the great king. The Moslems, whose numbers were
reënforced from twelve to thirty thousand, had pitched their camp in the
plains of Cadesia:  and their line, though it consisted of fewer men,
could produce more soldiers, than the unwieldy host of the infidels. I
shall here observe, what I must often repeat, that the charge of the
Arabs was not, like that of the Greeks and Romans, the effort of a firm
and compact infantry: their military force was chiefly formed of cavalry
and archers; and the engagement, which was often interrupted and often
renewed by single combats and flying skirmishes, might be protracted
without any decisive event to the continuance of several days. The
periods of the battle of Cadesia were distinguished by their peculiar
appellations. The first, from the well-timed appearance of six thousand
of the Syrian brethren, was denominated the day of succor. The day of
concussionmight express the disorder of one, or perhaps of both, of the
contending armies. The third, a nocturnal tumult, received the whimsical
name of the night of barking, from the discordant clamors, which were
compared to the inarticulate sounds of the fiercest animals. The morning
of the succeeding day * determined the fate of Persia; and a seasonable
whirlwind drove a cloud of dust against the faces of the unbelievers.
The clangor of arms was reechoed to the tent of Rustam, who, far unlike
the ancient hero of his name, was gently reclining in a cool and
tranquil shade, amidst the baggage of his camp, and the train of mules
that were laden with gold and silver. On the sound of danger he started
from his couch; but his flight was overtaken by a valiant Arab, who
caught him by the foot, struck off his head, hoisted it on a lance, and
instantly returning to the field of battle, carried slaughter and dismay
among the thickest ranks of the Persians. The Saracens confess a loss of
seven thousand five hundred men;  and the battle of Cadesia is justly
described by the epithets of obstinate and atrocious.  The standard of
the monarchy was overthrown and captured in the field -- a leathern
apron of a blacksmith, who in ancient times had arisen the deliverer of
Persia; but this badge of heroic poverty was disguised, and almost
concealed, by a profusion of precious gems.  After this victory, the
wealthy province of Irak, or Assyria, submitted to the caliph, and his
conquests were firmly established by the speedy foundation of Bassora,
a place which ever commands the trade and navigation of the Persians. As
the distance of fourscore miles from the Gulf, the Euphrates and Tigris
unite in a broad and direct current, which is aptly styled the river of
the Arabs. In the midway, between the junction and the mouth of these
famous streams, the new settlement was planted on the western bank: the
first colony was composed of eight hundred Moslems; but the influence of
the situation soon reared a flourishing and populous capital. The air,
though excessively hot, is pure and healthy: the meadows are filled with
palm-trees and cattle; and one of the adjacent valleys has been
celebrated among the four paradises or gardens of Asia. Under the first
caliphs the jurisdiction of this Arabian colony extended over the
southern provinces of Persia: the city has been sanctified by the tombs
of the companions and martyrs; and the vessels of Europe still frequent
the port of Bassora, as a convenient station and passage of the Indian
trade.

Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs. -- Part II.

After the defeat of Cadesia, a country intersected by rivers and canals
might have opposed an insuperable barrier to the victorious cavalry; and
the walls of Ctesiphon or Madayn, which had resisted the battering-rams
of the Romans, would not have yielded to the darts of the Saracens. But
the flying Persians were overcome by the belief, that the last day of
their religion and empire was at hand; the strongest posts were
abandoned by treachery or cowardice; and the king, with a part of his
family and treasures, escaped to Holwan at the foot of the Median hills.
In the third month after the battle, Said, the lieutenant of Omar,
passed the Tigris without opposition; the capital was taken by assault;
and the disorderly resistance of the people gave a keener edge to the
sabres of the Moslems, who shouted with religious transport, "This is
the white palace of Chosroes; this is the promise of the apostle of
God!" The naked robbers of the desert were suddenly enriched beyond the
measure of their hope or knowledge. Each chamber revealed a new treasure
secreted with art, or ostentatiously displayed; the gold and silver, the
various wardrobes and precious furniture, surpassed (says Abulfeda) the
estimate of fancy or numbers; and another historian defines the untold
and almost infinite mass, by the fabulous computation of three thousands
of thousands of thousands of pieces of gold.  Some minute though curious
facts represent the contrast of riches and ignorance. From the remote
islands of the Indian Ocean a large provision of camphire  had been
imported, which is employed with a mixture of wax to illuminate the
palaces of the East. Strangers to the name and properties of that
odoriferous gum, the Saracens, mistaking it for salt, mingled the
camphire in their bread, and were astonished at the bitterness of the
taste. One of the apartments of the palace was decorated with a carpet
of silk, sixty cubits in length, and as many in breadth: a paradise or
garden was depictured on the ground: the flowers, fruits, and shrubs,
were imitated by the figures of the gold embroidery, and the colors of
the precious stones; and the ample square was encircled by a variegated
and verdant border.  The Arabian general persuaded his soldiers to
relinquish their claim, in the reasonable hope that the eyes of the
caliph would be delighted with the splendid workmanship of nature and
industry. Regardless of the merit of art, and the pomp of royalty, the
rigid Omar divided the prize among his brethren of Medina: the picture
was destroyed; but such was the intrinsic value of the materials, that
the share of Ali alone was sold for twenty thousand drams. A mule that
carried away the tiara and cuirass, the belt and bracelets of Chosroes,
was overtaken by the pursuers; the gorgeous trophy was presented to the
commander of the faithful; and the gravest of the companions
condescended to smile when they beheld the white beard, the hairy arms,
and uncouth figure of the veteran, who was invested with the spoils of
the Great King.  The sack of Ctesiphon was followed by its desertion and
gradual decay. The Saracens disliked the air and situation of the place,
and Omar was advised by his general to remove the seat of government to
the western side of the Euphrates. In every age, the foundation and ruin
of the Assyrian cities has been easy and rapid: the country is destitute
of stone and timber; and the most solid structures  are composed of
bricks baked in the sun, and joined by a cement of the native bitumen.
The name of Cufadescribes a habitation of reeds and earth; but the
importance of the new capital was supported by the numbers, wealth, and
spirit, of a colony of veterans; and their licentiousness was indulged
by the wisest caliphs, who were apprehensive of provoking the revolt of
a hundred thousand swords: "Ye men of Cufa," said Ali, who solicited
their aid, "you have been always conspicuous by your valor. You
conquered the Persian king, and scattered his forces, till you had taken
possession of his inheritance." This mighty conquest was achieved by the
battles of Jalula and Nehavend. After the loss of the former, Yezdegerd
fled from Holwan, and concealed his shame and despair in the mountains
of Farsistan, from whence Cyrus had descended with his equal and valiant
companions. The courage of the nation survived that of the monarch:
among the hills to the south of Ecbatana or Hamadan, one hundred and
fifty thousand Persians made a third and final stand for their religion
and country; and the decisive battle of Nehavend was styled by the Arabs
the victory of victories. If it be true that the flying general of the
Persians was stopped and overtaken in a crowd of mules and camels laden
with honey, the incident, however slight and singular, will denote the
luxurious impediments of an Oriental army.

The geography of Persia is darkly delineated by the Greeks and Latins;
but the most illustrious of her cities appear to be more ancient than
the invasion of the Arabs. By the reduction of Hamadan and Ispahan, of
Caswin, Tauris, and Rei, they gradually approached the shores of the
Caspian Sea: and the orators of Mecca might applaud the success and
spirit of the faithful, who had already lost sight of the northern bear,
and had almost transcended the bounds of the habitable world.  Again,
turning towards the West and the Roman empire, they repassed the Tigris
over the bridge of Mosul, and, in the captive provinces of Armenia and
Mesopotamia, embraced their victorious brethren of the Syrian army. From
the palace of Madayn their Eastern progress was not less rapid or
extensive. They advanced along the Tigris and the Gulf; penetrated
through the passes of the mountains into the valley of Estachar or
Persepolis, and profaned the last sanctuary of the Magian empire. The
grandson of Chosroes was nearly surprised among the falling columns and
mutilated figures; a sad emblem of the past and present fortune of
Persia:  he fled with accelerated haste over the desert of Kirman,
implored the aid of the warlike Segestans, and sought an humble refuge
on the verge of the Turkish and Chinese power. But a victorious army is
insensible of fatigue: the Arabs divided their forces in the pursuit of
a timorous enemy; and the caliph Othman promised the government of
Chorasan to the first general who should enter that large and populous
country, the kingdom of the ancient Bactrians. The condition was
accepted; the prize was deserved; the standard of Mahomet was planted on
the walls of Herat, Merou, and Balch; and the successful leader neither
halted nor reposed till his foaming cavalry had tasted the waters of the
Oxus. In the public anarchy, the independent governors of the cities and
castles obtained their separate capitulations: the terms were granted or
imposed by the esteem, the prudence, or the compassion, of the victors;
and a simple profession of faith established the distinction between a
brother and a slave. After a noble defence, Harmozan, the prince or
satrap of Ahwaz and Susa, was compelled to surrender his person and his
state to the discretion of the caliph; and their interview exhibits a
portrait of the Arabian manners. In the presence, and by the command, of
Omar, the gay Barbarian was despoiled of his silken robes embroidered
with gold, and of his tiara bedecked with rubies and emeralds: "Are you
now sensible," said the conqueror to his naked captive -- "are you now
sensible of the judgment of God, and of the different rewards of
infidelity and obedience?" "Alas!" replied Harmozan, "I feel them too
deeply. In the days of our common ignorance, we fought with the weapons
of the flesh, and my nation was superior. God was then neuter: since he
has espoused your quarrel, you have subverted our kingdom and religion."
Oppressed by this painful dialogue, the Persian complained of
intolerable thirst, but discovered some apprehension lest he should be
killed whilst he was drinking a cup of water. "Be of good courage," said
the caliph; "your life is safe till you have drunk this water: " the
crafty satrap accepted the assurance, and instantly dashed the vase
against the ground. Omar would have avenged the deceit, but his
companions represented the sanctity of an oath; and the speedy
conversion of Harmozan entitled him not only to a free pardon, but even
to a stipend of two thousand pieces of gold. The administration of
Persia was regulated by an actual survey of the people, the cattle, and
the fruits of the earth;  and this monument, which attests the vigilance
of the caliphs, might have instructed the philosophers of every age.

The flight of Yezdegerd had carried him beyond the Oxus, and as far as
the Jaxartes, two rivers  of ancient and modern renown, which descend
from the mountains of India towards the Caspian Sea. He was hospitably
entertained by Tarkhan, prince of Fargana,  a fertile province on the
Jaxartes: the king of Samarcand, with the Turkish tribes of Sogdiana and
Scythia, were moved by the lamentations and promises of the fallen
monarch; and he solicited, by a suppliant embassy, the more solid and
powerful friendship of the emperor of China.  The virtuous Taitsong,
the first of the dynasty of the Tang may be justly compared with the
Antonines of Rome: his people enjoyed the blessings of prosperity and
peace; and his dominion was acknowledged by forty-four hordes of the
Barbarians of Tartary. His last garrisons of Cashgar and Khoten
maintained a frequent intercourse with their neighbors of the Jaxartes
and Oxus; a recent colony of Persians had introduced into China the
astronomy of the Magi; and Taitsong might be alarmed by the rapid
progress and dangerous vicinity of the Arabs. The influence, and perhaps
the supplies, of China revived the hopes of Yezdegerd and the zeal of
the worshippers of fire; and he returned with an army of Turks to
conquer the inheritance of his fathers. The fortunate Moslems, without
unsheathing their swords, were the spectators of his ruin and death. The
grandson of Chosroes was betrayed by his servant, insulted by the
seditious inhabitants of Merou, and oppressed, defeated, and pursued by
his Barbarian allies. He reached the banks of a river, and offered his
rings and bracelets for an instant passage in a miller's boat. Ignorant
or insensible of royal distress, the rustic replied, that four drams of
silver were the daily profit of his mill, and that he would not suspend
his work unless the loss were repaid. In this moment of hesitation and
delay, the last of the Sassanian kings was overtaken and slaughtered by
the Turkish cavalry, in the nineteenth year of his unhappy reign.  * His
son Firuz, an humble client of the Chinese emperor, accepted the station
of captain of his guards; and the Magian worship was long preserved by a
colony of loyal exiles in the province of Bucharia.  His grandson
inherited the regal name; but after a faint and fruitless enterprise, he
returned to China, and ended his days in the palace of Sigan. The male
line of the Sassanides was extinct; but the female captives, the
daughters of Persia, were given to the conquerors in servitude, or
marriage; and the race of the caliphs and imams was ennobled by the
blood of their royal mothers.

After the fall of the Persian kingdom, the River Oxus divided the
territories of the Saracens and of the Turks. This narrow boundary was
soon overleaped by the spirit of the Arabs; the governors of Chorasan
extended their successive inroads; and one of their triumphs was adorned
with the buskin of a Turkish queen, which she dropped in her precipitate
flight beyond the hills of Bochara.  But the final conquest of
Transoxiana,  as well as of Spain, was reserved for the glorious reign
of the inactive Walid; and the name of Catibah, the camel driver,
declares the origin and merit of his successful lieutenant. While one of
his colleagues displayed the first Mahometan banner on the banks of the
Indus, the spacious regions between the Oxus, the Jaxartes, and the
Caspian Sea, were reduced by the arms of Catibah to the obedience of the
prophet and of the caliph.  A tribute of two millions of pieces of gold
was imposed on the infidels; their idols were burnt or broken; the
Mussulman chief pronounced a sermon in the new mosch of Carizme; after
several battles, the Turkish hordes were driven back to the desert; and
the emperors of China solicited the friendship of the victorious Arabs.
To their industry, the prosperity of the province, the Sogdiana of the
ancients, may in a great measure be ascribed; but the advantages of the
soil and climate had been understood and cultivated since the reign of
the Macedonian kings. Before the invasion of the Saracens, Carizme,
Bochara, and Samarcand were rich and populous under the yoke of the
shepherds of the north. * These cities were surrounded with a double
wall; and the exterior fortification, of a larger circumference,
enclosed the fields and gardens of the adjacent district. The mutual
wants of India and Europe were supplied by the diligence of the Sogdian
merchants; and the inestimable art of transforming linen into paper has
been diffused from the manufacture of Samarcand over the western world.

II. No sooner had Abubeker restored the unity of faith and government,
than he despatched a circular letter to the Arabian tribes. "In the name
of the most merciful God, to the rest of the true believers. Health and
happiness, and the mercy and blessing of God, be upon you. I praise the
most high God, and I pray for his prophet Mahomet. This is to acquaint
you, that I intend to send the true believers into Syria  to take it out
of the hands of the infidels. And I would have you know, that the
fighting for religion is an act of obedience to God." His messengers
returned with the tidings of pious and martial ardor which they had
kindled in every province; and the camp of Medina was successively
filled with the intrepid bands of the Saracens, who panted for action,
complained of the heat of the season and the scarcity of provisions, and
accused with impatient murmurs the delays of the caliph. As soon as
their numbers were complete, Abubeker ascended the hill, reviewed the
men, the horses, and the arms, and poured forth a fervent prayer for the
success of their undertaking. In person, and on foot, he accompanied the
first day's march; and when the blushing leaders attempted to dismount,
the caliph removed their scruples by a declaration, that those who rode,
and those who walked, in the service of religion, were equally
meritorious. His instructions  to the chiefs of the Syrian army were
inspired by the warlike fanaticism which advances to seize, and affects
to despise, the objects of earthly ambition. "Remember," said the
successor of the prophet, "that you are always in the presence of God,
on the verge of death, in the assurance of judgment, and the hope of
paradise. Avoid injustice and oppression; consult with your brethren,
and study to preserve the love and confidence of your troops. When you
fight the battles of the Lord, acquit yourselves like men, without
turning your backs; but let not your victory be stained with the blood
of women or children. Destroy no palm-trees, nor burn any fields of
corn. Cut down no fruit-trees, nor do any mischief to cattle, only such
as you kill to eat. When you make any covenant or article, stand to it,
and be as good as your word. As you go on, you will find some religious
persons who live retired in monasteries, and propose to themselves to
serve God that way: let them alone, and neither kill them nor destroy
their monasteries:  And you will find another sort of people, that
belong to the synagogue of Satan, who have shaven crowns;  be sure you
cleave their skulls, and give them no quarter till they either turn
Mahometans or pay "tribute." All profane or frivolous conversation, all
dangerous recollection of ancient quarrels, was severely prohibited
among the Arabs: in the tumult of a camp, the exercises of religion were
assiduously practised; and the intervals of action were employed in
prayer, meditation, and the study of the Koran. The abuse, or even the
use, of wine was chastised by fourscore strokes on the soles of the
feet, and in the fervor of their primitive zeal, many secret sinners
revealed their fault, and solicited their punishment. After some
hesitation, the command of the Syrian army was delegated to Abu Obeidah,
one of the fugitives of Mecca, and companions of Mahomet; whose zeal and
devotion was assuaged, without being abated, by the singular mildness
and benevolence of his temper. But in all the emergencies of war, the
soldiers demanded the superior genius of Caled; and whoever might be the
choice of the prince, the Sword of Godwas both in fact and fame the
foremost leader of the Saracens. He obeyed without reluctance; * he was
consulted without jealousy; and such was the spirit of the man, or
rather of the times, that Caled professed his readiness to serve under
the banner of the faith, though it were in the hands of a child or an
enemy. Glory, and riches, and dominion, were indeed promised to the
victorious Mussulman; but he was carefully instructed, that if the goods
of this life were his only incitement, theylikewise would be his only
reward.

Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs. -- Part III.

One of the fifteen provinces of Syria, the cultivated lands to the
eastward of the Jordan, had been decorated by Roman vanity with the name
of Arabia;  and the first arms of the Saracens were justified by the
semblance of a national right. The country was enriched by the various
benefits of trade; by the vigilance of the emperors it was covered with
a line of forts; and the populous cities of Gerasa, Philadelphia, and
Bosra,  were secure, at least from a surprise, by the solid structure of
their walls. The last of these cities was the eighteenth station from
Medina: the road was familiar to the caravans of Hejaz and Irak, who
annually visited this plenteous market of the province and the desert:
the perpetual jealousy of the Arabs had trained the inhabitants to arms;
and twelve thousand horse could sally from the gates of Bosra, an
appellation which signifies, in the Syriac language, a strong tower of
defence. Encouraged by their first success against the open towns and
flying parties of the borders, a detachment of four thousand Moslems
presumed to summon and attack the fortress of Bosra. They were oppressed
by the numbers of the Syrians; they were saved by the presence of Caled,
with fifteen hundred horse: he blamed the enterprise, restored the
battle, and rescued his friend, the venerable Serjabil, who had vainly
invoked the unity of God and the promises of the apostle. After a short
repose, the Moslems performed their ablutions with sand instead of
water;  and the morning prayer was recited by Caled before they mounted
on horseback. Confident in their strength, the people of Bosra threw
open their gates, drew their forces into the plain, and swore to die in
the defence of their religion. But a religion of peace was incapable of
withstanding the fanatic cry of "Fight, fight! Paradise, paradise!" that
reechoed in the ranks of the Saracens; and the uproar of the town, the
ringing of bells,  and the exclamations of the priests and monks
increased the dismay and disorder of the Christians. With the loss of
two hundred and thirty men, the Arabs remained masters of the field; and
the ramparts of Bosra, in expectation of human or divine aid, were
crowded with holy crosses and consecrated banners. The governor Romanus
had recommended an early submission: despised by the people, and
degraded from his office, he still retained the desire and opportunity
of revenge. In a nocturnal interview, he informed the enemy of a
subterraneous passage from his house under the wall of the city; the son
of the caliph, with a hundred volunteers, were committed to the faith of
this new ally, and their successful intrepidity gave an easy entrance to
their companions. After Caled had imposed the terms of servitude and
tribute, the apostate or convert avowed in the assembly of the people
his meritorious treason: "I renounce your society," said Romanus, "both
in this world and the world to come. And I deny him that was crucified,
and whosoever worships him. And I choose God for my Lord, Islam for my
faith, Mecca for my temple, the Moslems for my brethren, and Mahomet for
my prophet; who was sent to lead us into the right way, and to exalt the
true religion in spite of those who join partners with God."

The conquest of Bosra, four days' journey from Damascus,  encouraged the
Arabs to besiege the ancient capital of Syria.  At some distance from
the walls, they encamped among the groves and fountains of that
delicious territory,  and the usual option of the Mahometan faith, of
tribute or of war, was proposed to the resolute citizens, who had been
lately strengthened by a reenforcement of five thousand Greeks. In the
decline, as in the infancy, of the military art, a hostile defiance was
frequently offered and accepted by the generals themselves:  many a
lance was shivered in the plain of Damascus, and the personal prowess of
Caled was signalized in the first sally of the besieged. After an
obstinate combat, he had overthrown and made prisoner one of the
Christian leaders, a stout and worthy antagonist. He instantly mounted a
fresh horse, the gift of the governor of Palmyra, and pushed forwards to
the front of the battle. "Repose yourself for a moment," said his friend
Derar, "and permit me to supply your place: you are fatigued with
fighting with this dog." "O Dear!" replied the indefatigable Saracen,
"we shall rest in the world to come. He that labors to-day shall rest
to-morrow." With the same unabated ardor, Caled answered, encountered,
and vanquished a second champion; and the heads of his two captives who
refused to abandon their religion were indignantly hurled into the midst
of the city. The event of some general and partial actions reduced the
Damascenes to a closer defence: but a messenger, whom they dropped from
the walls, returned with the promise of speedy and powerful succor, and
their tumultuous joy conveyed the intelligence to the camp of the Arabs.
After some debate, it was resolved by the generals to raise, or rather
to suspend, the siege of Damascus, till they had given battle to the
forces of the emperor. In the retreat, Caled would have chosen the more
perilous station of the rear-guard; he modestly yielded to the wishes of
Abu Obeidah. But in the hour of danger he flew to the rescue of his
companion, who was rudely pressed by a sally of six thousand horse and
ten thousand foot, and few among the Christians could relate at Damascus
the circumstances of their defeat. The importance of the contest
required the junction of the Saracens, who were dispersed on the
frontiers of Syria and Palestine; and I shall transcribe one of the
circular mandates which was addressed to Amrou, the future conqueror of
Egypt. "In the name of the most merciful God: from Caled to Amrou,
health and happiness. Know that thy brethren the Moslems design to march
to Aiznadin, where there is an army of seventy thousand Greeks, who
purpose to come against us, that they may extinguish the light of God
with their mouths; but God preserveth his light in spite of the
infidels.  As soon therefore as this letter of mine shall be delivered
to thy hands, come with those that are with thee to Aiznadin, where thou
shalt find us if it please the most high God." The summons was
cheerfully obeyed, and the forty-five thousand Moslems, who met on the
same day, on the same spot ascribed to the blessing of Providence the
effects of their activity and zeal.

About four years after the triumph of the Persian war, the repose of
Heraclius and the empire was again disturbed by a new enemy, the power
of whose religion was more strongly felt, than it was clearly
understood, by the Christians of the East. In his palace of
Constantinople or Antioch, he was awakened by the invasion of Syria, the
loss of Bosra, and the danger of Damascus. * An army of seventy thousand
veterans, or new levies, was assembled at Hems or Emesa, under the
command of his general Werdan:  and these troops consisting chiefly of
cavalry, might be indifferently styled either Syrians, or Greeks, or
Romans: Syrians, from the place of their birth or warfare; Greeksfrom
the religion and language of their sovereign; and Romans, from the proud
appellation which was still profaned by the successors of Constantine.
On the plain of Aiznadin, as Werdan rode on a white mule decorated with
gold chains, and surrounded with ensigns and standards, he was surprised
by the near approach of a fierce and naked warrior, who had undertaken
to view the state of the enemy. The adventurous valor of Derar was
inspired, and has perhaps been adorned, by the enthusiasm of his age and
country. The hatred of the Christians, the love of spoil, and the
contempt of danger, were the ruling passions of the audacious Saracen;
and the prospect of instant death could never shake his religious
confidence, or ruffle the calmness of his resolution, or even suspend
the frank and martial pleasantry of his humor. In the most hopeless
enterprises, he was bold, and prudent, and fortunate: after innumerable
hazards, after being thrice a prisoner in the hands of the infidels, he
still survived to relate the achievements, and to enjoy the rewards, of
the Syrian conquest. On this occasion, his single lance maintained a
flying fight against thirty Romans, who were detached by Werdan; and,
after killing or unhorsing seventeen of their number, Derar returned in
safety to his applauding brethren. When his rashness was mildly censured
by the general, he excused himself with the simplicity of a soldier.
"Nay," said Derar, "I did not begin first: but they came out to take me,
and I was afraid that God should see me turn my back: and indeed I
fought in good earnest, and without doubt God assisted me against them;
and had I not been apprehensive of disobeying your orders, I should not
have come away as I did; and I perceive already that they will fall into
our hands." In the presence of both armies, a venerable Greek advanced
from the ranks with a liberal offer of peace; and the departure of the
Saracens would have been purchased by a gift to each soldier, of a
turban, a robe, and a piece of gold; ten robes and a hundred pieces to
their leader; one hundred robes and a thousand pieces to the caliph. A
smile of indignation expressed the refusal of Caled. "Ye Christian dogs,
you know your option; the Koran, the tribute, or the sword. We are a
people whose delight is in war, rather than in peace: and we despise
your pitiful alms, since we shall be speedily masters of your wealth,
your families, and your persons." Notwithstanding this apparent disdain,
he was deeply conscious of the public danger: those who had been in
Persia, and had seen the armies of Chosroes confessed that they never
beheld a more formidable array. From the superiority of the enemy, the
artful Saracen derived a fresh incentive of courage: "You see before
you," said he, "the united force of the Romans; you cannot hope to
escape, but you may conquer Syria in a single day. The event depends on
your discipline and patience. Reserve yourselves till the evening. It
was in the evening that the Prophet was accustomed to vanquish." During
two successive engagements, his temperate firmness sustained the darts
of the enemy, and the murmurs of his troops. At length, when the spirits
and quivers of the adverse line were almost exhausted, Caled gave the
signal of onset and victory. The remains of the Imperial army fled to
Antioch, or Cæsarea, or Damascus; and the death of four hundred and
seventy Moslems was compensated by the opinion that they had sent to
hell above fifty thousand of the infidels. The spoil was inestimable;
many banners and crosses of gold and silver, precious stones, silver and
gold chains, and innumerable suits of the richest armor and apparel. The
general distribution was postponed till Damascus should be taken; but
the seasonable supply of arms became the instrument of new victories.
The glorious intelligence was transmitted to the throne of the caliph;
and the Arabian tribes, the coldest or most hostile to the prophet's
mission, were eager and importunate to share the harvest of Syria.

The sad tidings were carried to Damascus by the speed of grief and
terror; and the inhabitants beheld from their walls the return of the
heroes of Aiznadin. Amrou led the van at the head of nine thousand
horse: the bands of the Saracens succeeded each other in formidable
review; and the rear was closed by Caled in person, with the standard of
the black eagle. To the activity of Derar he intrusted the commission of
patrolling round the city with two thousand horse, of scouring the
plain, and of intercepting all succor or intelligence. The rest of the
Arabian chiefs were fixed in their respective stations before the seven
gates of Damascus; and the siege was renewed with fresh vigor and
confidence. The art, the labor, the military engines, of the Greeks and
Romans are seldom to be found in the simple, though successful,
operations of the Saracens: it was sufficient for them to invest a city
with arms, rather than with trenches; to repel the allies of the
besieged; to attempt a stratagem or an assault; or to expect the
progress of famine and discontent. Damascus would have acquiesced in the
trial of Aiznadin, as a final and peremptory sentence between the
emperor and the caliph; her courage was rekindled by the example and
authority of Thomas, a noble Greek, illustrious in a private condition
by the alliance of Heraclius.  The tumult and illumination of the night
proclaimed the design of the morning sally; and the Christian hero, who
affected to despise the enthusiasm of the Arabs, employed the resource
of a similar superstition. At the principal gate, in the sight of both
armies, a lofty crucifix was erected; the bishop, with his clergy,
accompanied the march, and laid the volume of the New Testament before
the image of Jesus; and the contending parties were scandalized or
edified by a prayer that the Son of God would defend his servants and
vindicate his truth. The battle raged with incessant fury; and the
dexterity of Thomas,  an incomparable archer, was fatal to the boldest
Saracens, till their death was revenged by a female heroine. The wife of
Aban, who had followed him to the holy war, embraced her expiring
husband. "Happy," said she, "happy art thou, my dear: thou art gone to
they Lord, who first joined us together, and then parted us asunder. I
will revenge thy death, and endeavor to the utmost of my power to come
to the place where thou art, because I love thee. Henceforth shall no
man ever touch me more, for I have dedicated myself to the service of
God." Without a groan, without a tear, she washed the corpse of her
husband, and buried him with the usual rites. Then grasping the manly
weapons, which in her native land she was accustomed to wield, the
intrepid widow of Aban sought the place where his murderer fought in the
thickest of the battle. Her first arrow pierced the hand of his
standard-bearer; her second wounded Thomas in the eye; and the fainting
Christians no longer beheld their ensign or their leader. Yet the
generous champion of Damascus refused to withdraw to his palace: his
wound was dressed on the rampart; the fight was continued till the
evening; and the Syrians rested on their arms. In the silence of the
night, the signal was given by a stroke on the great bell; the gates
were thrown open, and each gate discharged an impetuous column on the
sleeping camp of the Saracens. Caled was the first in arms: at the head
of four hundred horse he flew to the post of danger, and the tears
trickled down his iron cheeks, as he uttered a fervent ejaculation; "O
God, who never sleepest, look upon they servants, and do not deliver
them into the hands of their enemies." The valor and victory of Thomas
were arrested by the presence of the Sword of God; with the knowledge of
the peril, the Moslems recovered their ranks, and charged the assailants
in the flank and rear. After the loss of thousands, the Christian
general retreated with a sigh of despair, and the pursuit of the
Saracens was checked by the military engines of the rampart.

After a siege of seventy days,  the patience, and perhaps the
provisions, of the Damascenes were exhausted; and the bravest of their
chiefs submitted to the hard dictates of necessity. In the occurrences
of peace and war, they had been taught to dread the fierceness of Caled,
and to revere the mild virtues of Abu Obeidah. At the hour of midnight,
one hundred chosen deputies of the clergy and people were introduced to
the tent of that venerable commander. He received and dismissed them
with courtesy. They returned with a written agreement, on the faith of a
companion of Mahomet, that all hostilities should cease; that the
voluntary emigrants might depart in safety, with as much as they could
carry away of their effects; and that the tributary subjects of the
caliph should enjoy their lands and houses, with the use and possession
of seven churches. On these terms, the most respectable hostages, and
the gate nearest to his camp, were delivered into his hands: his
soldiers imitated the moderation of their chief; and he enjoyed the
submissive gratitude of a people whom he had rescued from destruction.
But the success of the treaty had relaxed their vigilance, and in the
same moment the opposite quarter of the city was betrayed and taken by
assault. A party of a hundred Arabs had opened the eastern gate to a
more inexorable foe. "No quarter," cried the rapacious and sanguinary
Caled, "no quarter to the enemies of the Lord: " his trumpets sounded,
and a torrent of Christian blood was poured down the streets of
Damascus. When he reached the church of St. Mary, he was astonished and
provoked by the peaceful aspect of his companions; their swords were in
the scabbard, and they were surrounded by a multitude of priests and
monks. Abu Obeidah saluted the general: "God," said he, "has delivered
the city into my hands by way of surrender, and has saved the believers
the trouble of fighting." "And am I not," replied the indignant Caled,
"am I not the lieutenant of the commander of the faithful? Have I not
taken the city by storm? The unbelievers shall perish by the sword. Fall
on." The hungry and cruel Arabs would have obeyed the welcome command;
and Damascus was lost, if the benevolence of Abu Obeidah had not been
supported by a decent and dignified firmness. Throwing himself between
the trembling citizens and the most eager of the Barbarians, he adjured
them, by the holy name of God, to respect his promise, to suspend their
fury, and to wait the determination of their chiefs. The chiefs retired
into the church of St. Mary; and after a vehement debate, Caled
submitted in some measure to the reason and authority of his colleague;
who urged the sanctity of a covenant, the advantage as well as the honor
which the Moslems would derive from the punctual performance of their
word, and the obstinate resistance which they must encounter from the
distrust and despair of the rest of the Syrian cities. It was agreed
that the sword should be sheathed, that the part of Damascus which had
surrendered to Abu Obeidah, should be immediately entitled to the
benefit of his capitulation, and that the final decision should be
referred to the justice and wisdom of the caliph.  A large majority of
the people accepted the terms of toleration and tribute; and Damascus is
still peopled by twenty thousand Christians. But the valiant Thomas, and
the free-born patriots who had fought under his banner, embraced the
alternative of poverty and exile. In the adjacent meadow, a numerous
encampment was formed of priests and laymen, of soldiers and citizens,
of women and children: they collected, with haste and terror, their most
precious movables; and abandoned, with loud lamentations, or silent
anguish, their native homes, and the pleasant banks of the Pharpar. The
inflexible soul of Caled was not touched by the spectacle of their
distress: he disputed with the Damascenes the property of a magazine of
corn; endeavored to exclude the garrison from the benefit of the treaty;
consented, with reluctance, that each of the fugitives should arm
himself with a sword, or a lance, or a bow; and sternly declared, that,
after a respite of three days, they might be pursued and treated as the
enemies of the Moslems.

The passion of a Syrian youth completed the ruin of the exiles of
Damascus. A nobleman of the city, of the name of Jonas,  was betrothed
to a wealthy maiden; but her parents delayed the consummation of his
nuptials, and their daughter was persuaded to escape with the man whom
she had chosen. They corrupted the nightly watchmen of the gate Keisan;
the lover, who led the way, was encompassed by a squadron of Arabs; but
his exclamation in the Greek tongue, "The bird is taken," admonished his
mistress to hasten her return. In the presence of Caled, and of death,
the unfortunate Jonas professed his belief in one God and his apostle
Mahomet; and continued, till the season of his martyrdom, to discharge
the duties of a brave and sincere Mussulman. When the city was taken, he
flew to the monastery, where Eudocia had taken refuge; but the lover was
forgotten; the apostate was scorned; she preferred her religion to her
country; and the justice of Caled, though deaf to mercy, refused to
detain by force a male or female inhabitant of Damascus. Four days was
the general confined to the city by the obligation of the treaty, and
the urgent cares of his new conquest. His appetite for blood and rapine
would have been extinguished by the hopeless computation of time and
distance; but he listened to the importunities of Jonas, who assured him
that the weary fugitives might yet be overtaken. At the head of four
thousand horse, in the disguise of Christian Arabs, Caled undertook the
pursuit. They halted only for the moments of prayer; and their guide had
a perfect knowledge of the country. For a long way the footsteps of the
Damascenes were plain and conspicuous: they vanished on a sudden; but
the Saracens were comforted by the assurance that the caravan had turned
aside into the mountains, and must speedily fall into their hands. In
traversing the ridges of the Libanus, they endured intolerable
hardships, and the sinking spirits of the veteran fanatics were
supported and cheered by the unconquerable ardor of a lover. From a
peasant of the country, they were informed that the emperor had sent
orders to the colony of exiles to pursue without delay the road of the
sea-coast, and of Constantinople, apprehensive, perhaps, that the
soldiers and people of Antioch might be discouraged by the sight and the
story of their sufferings. The Saracens were conducted through the
territories of Gabala  and Laodicea, at a cautious distance from the
walls of the cities; the rain was incessant, the night was dark, a
single mountain separated them from the Roman army; and Caled, ever
anxious for the safety of his brethren, whispered an ominous dream in
the ear of his companion. With the dawn of day, the prospect again
cleared, and they saw before them, in a pleasant valley, the tents of
Damascus. After a short interval of repose and prayer, Caled divided his
cavalry into four squadrons, committing the first to his faithful Derar,
and reserving the last for himself. They successively rushed on the
promiscuous multitude, insufficiently provided with arms, and already
vanquished by sorrow and fatigue. Except a captive, who was pardoned and
dismissed, the Arabs enjoyed the satisfaction of believing that not a
Christian of either sex escaped the edge of their cimeters. The gold and
silver of Damascus was scattered over the camp, and a royal wardrobe of
three hundred load of silk might clothe an army of naked Barbarians. In
the tumult of the battle, Jonas sought and found the object of his
pursuit: but her resentment was inflamed by the last act of his perfidy;
and as Eudocia struggled in his hateful embraces, she struck a dagger to
her heart. Another female, the widow of Thomas, and the real or supposed
daughter of Heraclius, was spared and released without a ransom; but the
generosity of Caled was the effect of his contempt; and the haughty
Saracen insulted, by a message of defiance, the throne of the Cæsars.
Caled had penetrated above a hundred and fifty miles into the heart of
the Roman province: he returned to Damascus with the same secrecy and
speed On the accession of Omar, the Sword of Godwas removed from the
command; but the caliph, who blamed the rashness, was compelled to
applaud the vigor and conduct, of the enterprise.

Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs. -- Part IV.

Another expedition of the conquerors of Damascus will equally display
their avidity and their contempt for the riches of the present world.
They were informed that the produce and manufactures of the country were
annually collected in the fair of Abyla,  about thirty miles from the
city; that the cell of a devout hermit was visited at the same time by a
multitude of pilgrims; and that the festival of trade and superstition
would be ennobled by the nuptials of the daughter of the governor of
Tripoli. Abdallah, the son of Jaafar, a glorious and holy martyr,
undertook, with a banner of five hundred horse, the pious and profitable
commission of despoiling the infidels. As he approached the fair of
Abyla, he was astonished by the report of this mighty concourse of Jews
and Christians, Greeks, and Armenians, of natives of Syria and of
strangers of Egypt, to the number of ten thousand, besides a guard of
five thousand horse that attended the person of the bride. The Saracens
paused: "For my own part," said Abdallah, "I dare notgo back: our foes
are many, our danger is great, but our reward is splendid and secure,
either in this life or in the life to come. Let every man, according to
his inclination, advance or retire." Not a Mussulman deserted his
standard. "Lead the way," said Abdallah to his Christian guide, "and you
shall see what the companions of the prophet can perform." They charged
in five squadrons; but after the first advantage of the surprise, they
were encompassed and almost overwhelmed by the multitude of their
enemies; and their valiant band is fancifully compared to a white spot
in the skin of a black camel.  About the hour of sunset, when their
weapons dropped from their hands, when they panted on the verge of
eternity, they discovered an approaching cloud of dust; they heard the
welcome sound of the tecbir,  and they soon perceived the standard of
Caled, who flew to their relief with the utmost speed of his cavalry.
The Christians were broken by his attack, and slaughtered in their
flight, as far as the river of Tripoli. They left behind them the
various riches of the fair; the merchandises that were exposed for sale,
the money that was brought for purchase, the gay decorations of the
nuptials, and the governor's daughter, with forty of her female
attendants. The fruits, provisions, and furniture, the money, plate, and
jewels, were diligently laden on the backs of horses, asses, and mules;
and the holy robbers returned in triumph to Damascus. The hermit, after
a short and angry controversy with Caled, declined the crown of
martyrdom, and was left alive in the solitary scene of blood and
devastation.

Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs. -- Part V.

Syria,  one of the countries that have been improved by the most early
cultivation, is not unworthy of the preference.  The heat of the climate
is tempered by the vicinity of the sea and mountains, by the plenty of
wood and water; and the produce of a fertile soil affords the
subsistence, and encourages the propagation, of men and animals. From
the age of David to that of Heraclius, the country was overspread with
ancient and flourishing cities: the inhabitants were numerous and
wealthy; and, after the slow ravage of despotism and superstition, after
the recent calamities of the Persian war, Syria could still attract and
reward the rapacious tribes of the desert. A plain, of ten days'
journey, from Damascus to Aleppo and Antioch, is watered, on the western
side, by the winding course of the Orontes. The hills of Libanus and
Anti-Libanus are planted from north to south, between the Orontes and
the Mediterranean; and the epithet of hollow(Clesyria) was applied to a
long and fruitful valley, which is confined in the same direction, by
the two ridges of snowy mountains.  Among the cities, which are
enumerated by Greek and Oriental names in the geography and conquest of
Syria, we may distinguish Emesa or Hems, Heliopolis or Baalbec, the
former as the metropolis of the plain, the latter as the capital of the
valley. Under the last of the Cæsars, they were strong and populous; the
turrets glittered from afar: an ample space was covered with public and
private buildings; and the citizens were illustrious by their spirit, or
at least by their pride; by their riches, or at least by their luxury.
In the days of Paganism, both Emesa and Heliopolis were addicted to the
worship of Baal, or the sun; but the decline of their superstition and
splendor has been marked by a singular variety of fortune. Not a vestige
remains of the temple of Emesa, which was equalled in poetic style to
the summits of Mount Libanus,  while the ruins of Baalbec, invisible to
the writers of antiquity, excite the curiosity and wonder of the
European traveller.  The measure of the temple is two hundred feet in
length, and one hundred in breadth: the front is adorned with a double
portico of eight columns; fourteen may be counted on either side; and
each column, forty-five feet in height, is composed of three massy
blocks of stone or marble. The proportions and ornaments of the
Corinthian order express the architecture of the Greeks: but as Baalbec
has never been the seat of a monarch, we are at a loss to conceive how
the expense of these magnificent structures could be supplied by private
or municipal liberality.  From the conquest of Damascus the Saracens
proceeded to Heliopolis and Emesa: but I shall decline the repetition of
the sallies and combats which have been already shown on a larger scale.
In the prosecution of the war, their policy was not less effectual than
their sword. By short and separate truces they dissolved the union of
the enemy; accustomed the Syrians to compare their friendship with their
enmity; familiarized the idea of their language, religion, and manners;
and exhausted, by clandestine purchase, the magazines and arsenals of
the cities which they returned to besiege. They aggravated the ransom of
the more wealthy, or the more obstinate; and Chalcis alone was taxed at
five thousand ounces of gold, five thousand ounces of silver, two
thousand robes of silk, and as many figs and olives as would load five
thousand asses. But the terms of truce or capitulation were faithfully
observed; and the lieutenant of the caliph, who had promised not to
enter the walls of the captive Baalbec, remained tranquil and immovable
in his tent till the jarring factions solicited the interposition of a
foreign master. The conquest of the plain and valley of Syria was
achieved in less than two years. Yet the commander of the faithful
reproved the slowness of their progress; and the Saracens, bewailing
their fault with tears of rage and repentance, called aloud on their
chiefs to lead them forth to fight the battles of the Lord. In a recent
action, under the walls of Emesa, an Arabian youth, the cousin of Caled,
was heard aloud to exclaim, "Methinks I see the black-eyed girls looking
upon me; one of whom, should she appear in this world, all mankind would
die for love of her. And I see in the hand of one of them a handkerchief
of green silk, and a cap of precious stones, and she beckons me, and
calls out, Come hither quickly, for I love thee." With these words,
charging the Christians, he made havoc wherever he went, till, observed
at length by the governor of Hems, he was struck through with a javelin.

It was incumbent on the Saracens to exert the full powers of their valor
and enthusiasm against the forces of the emperor, who was taught, by
repeated losses, that the rovers of the desert had undertaken, and would
speedily achieve, a regular and permanent conquest. From the provinces
of Europe and Asia, fourscore thousand soldiers were transported by sea
and land to Antioch and Cæsarea: the light troops of the army consisted
of sixty thousand Christian Arabs of the tribe of Gassan. Under the
banner of Jabalah, the last of their princes, they marched in the van;
and it was a maxim of the Greeks, that for the purpose of cutting
diamond, a diamond was the most effectual. Heraclius withheld his person
from the dangers of the field; but his presumption, or perhaps his
despondency, suggested a peremptory order, that the fate of the province
and the war should be decided by a single battle. The Syrians were
attached to the standard of Rome and of the cross: but the noble, the
citizen, the peasant, were exasperated by the injustice and cruelty of a
licentious host, who oppressed them as subjects, and despised them as
strangers and aliens.  A report of these mighty preparations was
conveyed to the Saracens in their camp of Emesa, and the chiefs, though
resolved to fight, assembled a council: the faith of Abu Obeidah would
have expected on the same spot the glory of martyrdom; the wisdom of
Caled advised an honorable retreat to the skirts of Palestine and
Arabia, where they might await the succors of their friends, and the
attack of the unbelievers. A speedy messenger soon returned from the
throne of Medina, with the blessings of Omar and Ali, the prayers of the
widows of the prophet, and a reënforcement of eight thousand Moslems. In
their way they overturned a detachment of Greeks, and when they joined
at Yermuk the camp of their brethren, they found the pleasing
intelligence, that Caled had already defeated and scattered the
Christian Arabs of the tribe of Gassan. In the neighborhood of Bosra,
the springs of Mount Hermon descend in a torrent to the plain of
Decapolis, or ten cities; and the Hieromax, a name which has been
corrupted to Yermuk, is lost, after a short course, in the Lake of
Tiberias.  The banks of this obscure stream were illustrated by a long
and bloody encounter. * On this momentous occasion, the public voice,
and the modesty of Abu Obeidah, restored the command to the most
deserving of the Moslems. Caled assumed his station in the front, his
colleague was posted in the rear, that the disorder of the fugitive
might be checked by his venerable aspect, and the sight of the yellow
banner which Mahomet had displayed before the walls of Chaibar. The last
line was occupied by the sister of Derar, with the Arabian women who had
enlisted in this holy war, who were accustomed to wield the bow and the
lance, and who in a moment of captivity had defended, against the
uncircumcised ravishers, their chastity and religion.  The exhortation
of the generals was brief and forcible: "Paradise is before you, the
devil and hell-fire in your rear." Yet such was the weight of the Roman
cavalry, that the right wing of the Arabs was broken and separated from
the main body. Thrice did they retreat in disorder, and thrice were they
driven back to the charge by the reproaches and blows of the women. In
the intervals of action, Abu Obeidah visited the tents of his brethren,
prolonged their repose by repeating at once the prayers of two different
hours, bound up their wounds with his own hands, and administered the
comfortable reflection, that the infidels partook of their sufferings
without partaking of their reward. Four thousand and thirty of the
Moslems were buried in the field of battle; and the skill of the
Armenian archers enabled seven hundred to boast that they had lost an
eye in that meritorious service. The veterans of the Syrian war
acknowledged that it was the hardest and most doubtful of the days which
they had seen. But it was likewise the most decisive: many thousands of
the Greeks and Syrians fell by the swords of the Arabs; many were
slaughtered, after the defeat, in the woods and mountains; many, by
mistaking the ford, were drowned in the waters of the Yermuk; and
however the loss may be magnified,  the Christian writers confess and
bewail the bloody punishment of their sins.  Manuel, the Roman general,
was either killed at Damascus, or took refuge in the monastery of Mount
Sinai. An exile in the Byzantine court, Jabalah lamented the manners of
Arabia, and his unlucky preference of the Christian cause.  He had once
inclined to the profession of Islam; but in the pilgrimage of Mecca,
Jabalah was provoked to strike one of his brethren, and fled with
amazement from the stern and equal justice of the caliph These
victorious Saracens enjoyed at Damascus a month of pleasure and repose:
the spoil was divided by the discretion of Abu Obeidah: an equal share
was allotted to a soldier and to his horse, and a double portion was
reserved for the noble coursers of the Arabian breed.

After the battle of Yermuk, the Roman army no longer appeared in the
field; and the Saracens might securely choose, among the fortified towns
of Syria, the first object of their attack. They consulted the caliph
whether they should march to Cæsarea or Jerusalem; and the advice of Ali
determined the immediate siege of the latter. To a profane eye,
Jerusalem was the first or second capital of Palestine; but after Mecca
and Medina, it was revered and visited by the devout Moslems, as the
temple of the Holy Land which had been sanctified by the revelation of
Moses, of Jesus, and of Mahomet himself. The son of Abu Sophian was sent
with five thousand Arabs to try the first experiment of surprise or
treaty; but on the eleventh day, the town was invested by the whole
force of Abu Obeidah. He addressed the customary summons to the chief
commanders and people of Ælia.

"Health and happiness to every one that follows the right way! We
require of you to testify that there is but one God, and that Mahomet is
his apostle. If you refuse this, consent to pay tribute, and be under us
forthwith. Otherwise I shall bring men against you who love death better
than you do the drinking of wine or eating hog's flesh. Nor will I ever
stir from you, if it please God, till I have destroyed those that fight
for you, and made slaves of your children." But the city was defended on
every side by deep valleys and steep ascents; since the invasion of
Syria, the walls and towers had been anxiously restored; the bravest of
the fugitives of Yermuk had stopped in the nearest place of refuge; and
in the defence of the sepulchre of Christ, the natives and strangers
might feel some sparks of the enthusiasm, which so fiercely glowed in
the bosoms of the Saracens. The siege of Jerusalem lasted four months;
not a day was lost without some action of sally or assault; the military
engines incessantly played from the ramparts; and the inclemency of the
winter was still more painful and destructive to the Arabs. The
Christians yielded at length to the perseverance of the besiegers. The
patriarch Sophronius appeared on the walls, and by the voice of an
interpreter demanded a conference. * After a vain attempt to dissuade
the lieutenant of the caliph from his impious enterprise, he proposed,
in the name of the people, a fair capitulation, with this extraordinary
clause, that the articles of security should be ratified by the
authority and presence of Omar himself. The question was debated in the
council of Medina; the sanctity of the place, and the advice of Ali,
persuaded the caliph to gratify the wishes of his soldiers and enemies;
and the simplicity of his journey is more illustrious than the royal
pageants of vanity and oppression. The conqueror of Persia and Syria was
mounted on a red camel, which carried, besides his person, a bag of
corn, a bag of dates, a wooden dish, and a leathern bottle of water.
Wherever he halted, the company, without distinction, was invited to
partake of his homely fare, and the repast was consecrated by the prayer
and exhortation of the commander of the faithful.  But in this
expedition or pilgrimage, his power was exercised in the administration
of justice: he reformed the licentious polygamy of the Arabs, relieved
the tributaries from extortion and cruelty, and chastised the luxury of
the Saracens, by despoiling them of their rich silks, and dragging them
on their faces in the dirt. When he came within sight of Jerusalem, the
caliph cried with a loud voice, "God is victorious. O Lord, give us an
easy conquest!" and, pitching his tent of coarse hair, calmly seated
himself on the ground. After signing the capitulation, he entered the
city without fear or precaution; and courteously discoursed with the
patriarch concerning its religious antiquities.  Sophronius bowed before
his new master, and secretly muttered, in the words of Daniel, "The
abomination of desolation is in the holy place."  At the hour of prayer
they stood together in the church of the resurrection; but the caliph
refused to perform his devotions, and contented himself with praying on
the steps of the church of Constantine. To the patriarch he disclosed
his prudent and honorable motive. "Had I yielded," said Omar, "to your
request, the Moslems of a future age would have infringed the treaty
under color of imitating my example." By his command the ground of the
temple of Solomon was prepared for the foundation of a mosch;  and,
during a residence of ten days, he regulated the present and future
state of his Syrian conquests. Medina might be jealous, lest the caliph
should be detained by the sanctity of Jerusalem or the beauty of
Damascus; her apprehensions were dispelled by his prompt and voluntary
return to the tomb of the apostle.

To achieve what yet remained of the Syrian war the caliph had formed two
separate armies; a chosen detachment, under Amrou and Yezid, was left in
the camp of Palestine; while the larger division, under the standard of
Abu Obeidah and Caled, marched away to the north against Antioch and
Aleppo. The latter of these, the Beræa of the Greeks, was not yet
illustrious as the capital of a province or a kingdom; and the
inhabitants, by anticipating their submission and pleading their
poverty, obtained a moderate composition for their lives and religion.
But the castle of Aleppo,  distinct from the city, stood erect on a
lofty artificial mound the sides were sharpened to a precipice, and
faced with free-stone; and the breadth of the ditch might be filled with
water from the neighboring springs. After the loss of three thousand
men, the garrison was still equal to the defence; and Youkinna, their
valiant and hereditary chief, had murdered his brother, a holy monk, for
daring to pronounce the name of peace. In a siege of four or five
months, the hardest of the Syrian war, great numbers of the Saracens
were killed and wounded: their removal to the distance of a mile could
not seduce the vigilance of Youkinna; nor could the Christians be
terrified by the execution of three hundred captives, whom they beheaded
before the castle wall. The silence, and at length the complaints, of
Abu Obeidah informed the caliph that their hope and patience were
consumed at the foot of this impregnable fortress. "I am variously
affected," replied Omar, "by the difference of your success; but I
charge you by no means to raise the siege of the castle. Your retreat
would diminish the reputation of our arms, and encourage the infidels to
fall upon you on all sides. Remain before Aleppo till God shall
determine the event, and forage with your horse round the adjacent
country." The exhortation of the commander of the faithful was fortified
by a supply of volunteers from all the tribes of Arabia, who arrived in
the camp on horses or camels. Among these was Dames, of a servile birth,
but of gigantic size and intrepid resolution. The forty-seventh day of
his service he proposed, with only thirty men, to make an attempt on the
castle. The experience and testimony of Caled recommended his offer; and
Abu Obeidah admonished his brethren not to despise the baser origin of
Dames, since he himself, could he relinquish the public care, would
cheerfully serve under the banner of the slave. His design was covered
by the appearance of a retreat; and the camp of the Saracens was pitched
about a league from Aleppo. The thirty adventurers lay in ambush at the
foot of the hill; and Dames at length succeeded in his inquiries, though
he was provoked by the ignorance of his Greek captives. "God curse these
dogs," said the illiterate Arab; "what a strange barbarous language they
speak!" At the darkest hour of the night, he scaled the most accessible
height, which he had diligently surveyed, a place where the stones were
less entire, or the slope less perpendicular, or the guard less
vigilant. Seven of the stoutest Saracens mounted on each other's
shoulders, and the weight of the column was sustained on the broad and
sinewy back of the gigantic slave. The foremost in this painful ascent
could grasp and climb the lowest part of the battlements; they silently
stabbed and cast down the sentinels; and the thirty brethren, repeating
a pious ejaculation, "O apostle of God, help and deliver us!" were
successively drawn up by the long folds of their turbans. With bold and
cautious footsteps, Dames explored the palace of the governor, who
celebrated, in riotous merriment, the festival of his deliverance. From
thence, returning to his companions, he assaulted on the inside the
entrance of the castle. They overpowered the guard, unbolted the gate,
let down the drawbridge, and defended the narrow pass, till the arrival
of Caled, with the dawn of day, relieved their danger and assured their
conquest. Youkinna, a formidable foe, became an active and useful
proselyte; and the general of the Saracens expressed his regard for the
most humble merit, by detaining the army at Aleppo till Dames was cured
of his honorable wounds. The capital of Syria was still covered by the
castle of Aazaz and the iron bridge of the Orontes. After the loss of
those important posts, and the defeat of the last of the Roman armies,
the luxury of Antioch  trembled and obeyed. Her safety was ransomed with
three hundred thousand pieces of gold; but the throne of the successors
of Alexander, the seat of the Roman government of the East, which had
been decorated by Cæsar with the titles of free, and holy, and inviolate
was degraded under the yoke of the caliphs to the secondary rank of a
provincial town.

In the life of Heraclius, the glories of the Persian war are clouded on
either hand by the disgrace and weakness of his more early and his later
days. When the successors of Mahomet unsheathed the sword of war and
religion, he was astonished at the boundless prospect of toil and
danger; his nature was indolent, nor could the infirm and frigid age of
the emperor be kindled to a second effort. The sense of shame, and the
importunities of the Syrians, prevented the hasty departure from the
scene of action; but the hero was no more; and the loss of Damascus and
Jerusalem, the bloody fields of Aiznadin and Yermuk, may be imputed in
some degree to the absence or misconduct of the sovereign. Instead of
defending the sepulchre of Christ, he involved the church and state in a
metaphysical controversy for the unity of his will; and while Heraclius
crowned the offspring of his second nuptials, he was tamely stripped of
the most valuable part of their inheritance. In the cathedral of
Antioch, in the presence of the bishops, at the foot of the crucifix, he
bewailed the sins of the prince and people; but his confession
instructed the world, that it was vain, and perhaps impious, to resist
the judgment of God. The Saracens were invincible in fact, since they
were invincible in opinion; and the desertion of Youkinna, his false
repentance and repeated perfidy, might justify the suspicion of the
emperor, that he was encompassed by traitors and apostates, who
conspired to betray his person and their country to the enemies of
Christ. In the hour of adversity, his superstition was agitated by the
omens and dreams of a falling crown; and after bidding an eternal
farewell to Syria, he secretly embarked with a few attendants, and
absolved the faith of his subjects.  Constantine, his eldest son, had
been stationed with forty thousand men at Cæsarea, the civil metropolis
of the three provinces of Palestine. But his private interest recalled
him to the Byzantine court; and, after the flight of his father, he felt
himself an unequal champion to the united force of the caliph. His
vanguard was boldly attacked by three hundred Arabs and a thousand black
slaves, who, in the depth of winter, had climbed the snowy mountains of
Libanus, and who were speedily followed by the victorious squadrons of
Caled himself. From the north and south the troops of Antioch and
Jerusalem advanced along the sea-shore till their banners were joined
under the walls of the Phnician cities: Tripoli and Tyre were betrayed;
and a fleet of fifty transports, which entered without distrust the
captive harbors, brought a seasonable supply of arms and provisions to
the camp of the Saracens. Their labors were terminated by the unexpected
surrender of Cæsarea: the Roman prince had embarked in the night;  and
the defenceless citizens solicited their pardon with an offering of two
hundred thousand pieces of gold. The remainder of the province, Ramlah,
Ptolemais or Acre, Sichem or Neapolis, Gaza, Ascalon, Berytus, Sidon,
Gabala, Laodicea, Apamea, Hierapolis, no longer presumed to dispute the
will of the conqueror; and Syria bowed under the sceptre of the caliphs
seven hundred years after Pompey had despoiled the last of the
Macedonian kings.

Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs. -- Part VI.

The sieges and battles of six campaigns had consumed many thousands of
the Moslems. They died with the reputation and the cheerfulness of
martyrs; and the simplicity of their faith may be expressed in the words
of an Arabian youth, when he embraced, for the last time, his sister and
mother: "It is not," said he, "the delicacies of Syria, or the fading
delights of this world, that have prompted me to devote my life in the
cause of religion. But I seek the favor of God and his apostle; and I
have heard, from one of the companions of the prophet, that the spirits
of the martyrs will be lodged in the crops of green birds, who shall
taste the fruits, and drink of the rivers, of paradise. Farewell, we
shall meet again among the groves and fountains which God has provided
for his elect." The faithful captives might exercise a passive and more
arduous resolution; and a cousin of Mahomet is celebrated for refusing,
after an abstinence of three days, the wine and pork, the only
nourishment that was allowed by the malice of the infidels. The frailty
of some weaker brethren exasperated the implacable spirit of fanaticism;
and the father of Amer deplored, in pathetic strains, the apostasy and
damnation of a son, who had renounced the promises of God, and the
intercession of the prophet, to occupy, with the priests and deacons,
the lowest mansions of hell. The more fortunate Arabs, who survived the
war and persevered in the faith, were restrained by their abstemious
leader from the abuse of prosperity. After a refreshment of three days,
Abu Obeidah withdrew his troops from the pernicious contagion of the
luxury of Antioch, and assured the caliph that their religion and virtue
could only be preserved by the hard discipline of poverty and labor. But
the virtue of Omar, however rigorous to himself, was kind and liberal to
his brethren. After a just tribute of praise and thanksgiving, he
dropped a tear of compassion; and sitting down on the ground, wrote an
answer, in which he mildly censured the severity of his lieutenant:
"God," said the successor of the prophet, "has not forbidden the use of
the good things of this world to faithful men, and such as have
performed good works. Therefore you ought to have given them leave to
rest themselves, and partake freely of those good things which the
country affordeth. If any of the Saracens have no family in Arabia, they
may marry in Syria; and whosoever of them wants any female slaves, he
may purchase as many as he hath occasion for." The conquerors prepared
to use, or to abuse, this gracious permission; but the year of their
triumph was marked by a mortality of men and cattle; and twenty-five
thousand Saracens were snatched away from the possession of Syria. The
death of Abu Obeidah might be lamented by the Christians; but his
brethren recollected that he was one of the ten elect whom the prophet
had named as the heirs of paradise.  Caled survived his brethren about
three years: and the tomb of the Sword of God is shown in the
neighborhood of Emesa. His valor, which founded in Arabia and Syria the
empire of the caliphs, was fortified by the opinion of a special
providence; and as long as he wore a cap, which had been blessed by
Mahomet, he deemed himself invulnerable amidst the darts of the
infidels. *

The place of the first conquerors was supplied by a new generation of
their children and countrymen: Syria became the seat and support of the
house of Ommiyah; and the revenue, the soldiers, the ships of that
powerful kingdom were consecrated to enlarge on every side the empire of
the caliphs. But the Saracens despise a superfluity of fame; and their
historians scarcely condescend to mention the subordinate conquests
which are lost in the splendor and rapidity of their victorious career.
To the northof Syria, they passed Mount Taurus, and reduced to their
obedience the province of Cilicia, with its capital Tarsus, the ancient
monument of the Assyrian kings. Beyond a second ridge of the same
mountains, they spread the flame of war, rather than the light of
religion, as far as the shores of the Euxine, and the neighborhood of
Constantinople. To the eastthey advanced to the banks and sources of the
Euphrates and Tigris:  the long disputed barrier of Rome and Persia was
forever confounded the walls of Edessa and Amida, of Dara and Nisibis,
which had resisted the arms and engines of Sapor or Nushirvan, were
levelled in the dust; and the holy city of Abgarus might vainly produce
the epistle or the image of Christ to an unbelieving conqueror. To the
westthe Syrian kingdom is bounded by the sea: and the ruin of Aradus, a
small island or peninsula on the coast, was postponed during ten years.
But the hills of Libanus abounded in timber; the trade of Phnicia was
populous in mariners; and a fleet of seventeen hundred barks was
equipped and manned by the natives of the desert. The Imperial navy of
the Romans fled before them from the Pamphylian rocks to the Hellespont;
but the spirit of the emperor, a grandson of Heraclius, had been subdued
before the combat by a dream and a pun.  The Saracens rode masters of
the sea; and the islands of Cyprus, Rhodes, and the Cyclades, were
successively exposed to their rapacious visits. Three hundred years
before the Christian æra, the memorable though fruitless siege of Rhodes
by Demetrius had furnished that maritime republic with the materials and
the subject of a trophy. A gigantic statue of Apollo, or the sun,
seventy cubits in height, was erected at the entrance of the harbor, a
monument of the freedom and the arts of Greece. After standing fifty-six
years, the colossus of Rhodes was overthrown by an earthquake; but the
massy trunk, and huge fragments, lay scattered eight centuries on the
ground, and are often described as one of the wonders of the ancient
world. They were collected by the diligence of the Saracens, and sold to
a Jewish merchant of Edessa, who is said to have laden nine hundred
camels with the weight of the brass metal; an enormous weight, though we
should include the hundred colossal figures,  and the three thousand
statues, which adorned the prosperity of the city of the sun.

II. The conquest of Egypt may be explained by the character of the
victorious Saracen, one of the first of his nation, in an age when the
meanest of the brethren was exalted above his nature by the spirit of
enthusiasm. The birth of Amrou was at once base and illustrious; his
mother, a notorious prostitute, was unable to decide among five of the
Koreish; but the proof of resemblance adjudged the child to Aasi, the
oldest of her lovers.  The youth of Amrou was impelled by the passions
and prejudices of his kindred: his poetic genius was exercised in
satirical verses against the person and doctrine of Mahomet; his
dexterity was employed by the reigning faction to pursue the religious
exiles who had taken refuge in the court of the Æthiopian king.  Yet he
returned from this embassy a secret proselyte; his reason or his
interest determined him to renounce the worship of idols; he escaped
from Mecca with his friend Caled; and the prophet of Medina enjoyed at
the same moment the satisfaction of embracing the two firmest champions
of his cause. The impatience of Amrou to lead the armies of the faithful
was checked by the reproof of Omar, who advised him not to seek power
and dominion, since he who is a subject to-day, may be a prince
to-morrow. Yet his merit was not overlooked by the two first successors
of Mahomet; they were indebted to his arms for the conquest of
Palestine; and in all the battles and sieges of Syria, he united with
the temper of a chief the valor of an adventurous soldier. In a visit to
Medina, the caliph expressed a wish to survey the sword which had cut
down so many Christian warriors; the son of Aasi unsheathed a short and
ordinary cimeter; and as he perceived the surprise of Omar, "Alas," said
the modest Saracen, "the sword itself, without the arm of its master, is
neither sharper nor more weighty than the sword of Pharezdak the poet."
After the conquest of Egypt, he was recalled by the jealousy of the
caliph Othman; but in the subsequent troubles, the ambition of a
soldier, a statesman, and an orator, emerged from a private station. His
powerful support, both in council and in the field, established the
throne of the Ommiades; the administration and revenue of Egypt were
restored by the gratitude of Moawiyah to a faithful friend who had
raised himself above the rank of a subject; and Amrou ended his days in
the palace and city which he had founded on the banks of the Nile. His
dying speech to his children is celebrated by the Arabians as a model of
eloquence and wisdom: he deplored the errors of his youth but if the
penitent was still infected by the vanity of a poet, he might exaggerate
the venom and mischief of his impious compositions.

From his camp in Palestine, Amrou had surprised or anticipated the
caliph's leave for the invasion of Egypt. The magnanimous Omar trusted
in his God and his sword, which had shaken the thrones of Chosroes and
Cæsar: but when he compared the slender force of the Moslems with the
greatness of the enterprise, he condemned his own rashness, and listened
to his timid companions. The pride and the greatness of Pharaoh were
familiar to the readers of the Koran; and a tenfold repetition of
prodigies had been scarcely sufficient to effect, not the victory, but
the flight, of six hundred thousand of the children of Israel: the
cities of Egypt were many and populous; their architecture was strong
and solid; the Nile, with its numerous branches, was alone an
insuperable barrier; and the granary of the Imperial city would be
obstinately defended by the Roman powers. In this perplexity, the
commander of the faithful resigned himself to the decision of chance,
or, in his opinion, of Providence. At the head of only four thousand
Arabs, the intrepid Amrou had marched away from his station of Gaza when
he was overtaken by the messenger of Omar. "If you are still in Syria,"
said the ambiguous mandate, "retreat without delay; but if, at the
receipt of this epistle, you have already reached the frontiers of
Egypt, advance with confidence, and depend on the succor of God and of
your brethren." The experience, perhaps the secret intelligence, of
Amrou had taught him to suspect the mutability of courts; and he
continued his march till his tents were unquestionably pitched on
Egyptian ground. He there assembled his officers, broke the seal,
perused the epistle, gravely inquired the name and situation of the
place, and declared his ready obedience to the commands of the caliph.
After a siege of thirty days, he took possession of Farmah or Pelusium;
and that key of Egypt, as it has been justly named, unlocked the
entrance of the country as far as the ruins of Heliopolis and the
neighborhood of the modern Cairo.

On the Western side of the Nile, at a small distance to the east of the
Pyramids, at a small distance to the south of the Delta, Memphis, one
hundred and fifty furlongs in circumference, displayed the magnificence
of ancient kings. Under the reign of the Ptolemies and Cæsars, the seat
of government was removed to the sea-coast; the ancient capital was
eclipsed by the arts and opulence of Alexandria; the palaces, and at
length the temples, were reduced to a desolate and ruinous condition:
yet, in the age of Augustus, and even in that of Constantine, Memphis
was still numbered among the greatest and most populous of the
provincial cities.  The banks of the Nile, in this place of the breadth
of three thousand feet, were united by two bridges of sixty and of
thirty boats, connected in the middle stream by the small island of
Rouda, which was covered with gardens and habitations.  The eastern
extremity of the bridge was terminated by the town of Babylon and the
camp of a Roman legion, which protected the passage of the river and the
second capital of Egypt. This important fortress, which might fairly be
described as a part of Memphis or Misrah, was invested by the arms of
the lieutenant of Omar: a reënforcement of four thousand Saracens soon
arrived in his camp; and the military engines, which battered the walls,
may be imputed to the art and labor of his Syrian allies. Yet the siege
was protracted to seven months; and the rash invaders were encompassed
and threatened by the inundation of the Nile.  Their last assault was
bold and successful: they passed the ditch, which had been fortified
with iron spikes, applied their scaling ladders, entered the fortress
with the shout of "God is victorious!" and drove the remnant of the
Greeks to their boats and the Isle of Rouda. The spot was afterwards
recommended to the conqueror by the easy communication with the gulf and
the peninsula of Arabia; the remains of Memphis were deserted; the tents
of the Arabs were converted into permanent habitations; and the first
mosch was blessed by the presence of fourscore companions of Mahomet.  A
new city arose in their camp, on the eastward bank of the Nile; and the
contiguous quarters of Babylon and Fostat are confounded in their
present decay by the appellation of old Misrah, or Cairo, of which they
form an extensive suburb. But the name of Cairo, the town of victory,
more strictly belongs to the modern capital, which was founded in the
tenth century by the Fatimite caliphs.  It has gradually receded from
the river; but the continuity of buildings may be traced by an attentive
eye from the monuments of Sesostris to those of Saladin.

Yet the Arabs, after a glorious and profitable enterprise, must have
retreated to the desert, had they not found a powerful alliance in the
heart of the country. The rapid conquest of Alexander was assisted by
the superstition and revolt of the natives: they abhorred their Persian
oppressors, the disciples of the Magi, who had burnt the temples of
Egypt, and feasted with sacrilegious appetite on the flesh of the god
Apis.  After a period of ten centuries, the same revolution was renewed
by a similar cause; and in the support of an incomprehensible creed, the
zeal of the Coptic Christians was equally ardent. I have already
explained the origin and progress of the Monophysite controversy, and
the persecution of the emperors, which converted a sect into a nation,
and alienated Egypt from their religion and government. The Saracens
were received as the deliverers of the Jacobite church; and a secret and
effectual treaty was opened during the siege of Memphis between a
victorious army and a people of slaves. A rich and noble Egyptian, of
the name of Mokawkas, had dissembled his faith to obtain the
administration of his province: in the disorders of the Persian war he
aspired to independence: the embassy of Mahomet ranked him among
princes; but he declined, with rich gifts and ambiguous compliments, the
proposal of a new religion.  The abuse of his trust exposed him to the
resentment of Heraclius: his submission was delayed by arrogance and
fear; and his conscience was prompted by interest to throw himself on
the favor of the nation and the support of the Saracens. In his first
conference with Amrou, he heard without indignation the usual option of
the Koran, the tribute, or the sword. "The Greeks," replied Mokawkas,
"are determined to abide the determination of the sword; but with the
Greeks I desire no communion, either in this world or in the next, and I
abjure forever the Byzantine tyrant, his synod of Chalcedon, and his
Melchite slaves. For myself and my brethren, we are resolved to live and
die in the profession of the gospel and unity of Christ. It is
impossible for us to embrace the revelations of your prophet; but we are
desirous of peace, and cheerfully submit to pay tribute and obedience to
his temporal successors." The tribute was ascertained at two pieces of
gold for the head of every Christian; but old men, monks, women, and
children, of both sexes, under sixteen years of age, were exempted from
this personal assessment: the Copts above and below Memphis swore
allegiance to the caliph, and promised a hospitable entertainment of
three days to every Mussulman who should travel through their country.
By this charter of security, the ecclesiastical and civil tyranny of the
Melchites was destroyed:  the anathemas of St. Cyril were thundered from
every pulpit; and the sacred edifices, with the patrimony of the church,
were restored to the national communion of the Jacobites, who enjoyed
without moderation the moment of triumph and revenge. At the pressing
summons of Amrou, their patriarch Benjamin emerged from his desert; and
after the first interview, the courteous Arab affected to declare that
he had never conversed with a Christian priest of more innocent manners
and a more venerable aspect.  In the march from Memphis to Alexandria,
the lieutenant of Omar intrusted his safety to the zeal and gratitude of
the Egyptians: the roads and bridges were diligently repaired; and in
every step of his progress, he could depend on a constant supply of
provisions and intelligence. The Greeks of Egypt, whose numbers could
scarcely equal a tenth of the natives, were overwhelmed by the universal
defection: they had ever been hated, they were no longer feared: the
magistrate fled from his tribunal, the bishop from his altar; and the
distant garrisons were surprised or starved by the surrounding
multitudes. Had not the Nile afforded a safe and ready conveyance to the
sea, not an individual could have escaped, who by birth, or language, or
office, or religion, was connected with their odious name.

By the retreat of the Greeks from the provinces of Upper Egypt, a
considerable force was collected in the Island of Delta; the natural and
artificial channels of the Nile afforded a succession of strong and
defensible posts; and the road to Alexandria was laboriously cleared by
the victory of the Saracens in two-and-twenty days of general or partial
combat. In their annals of conquest, the siege of Alexandria  is perhaps
the most arduous and important enterprise. The first trading city in the
world was abundantly replenished with the means of subsistence and
defence. Her numerous inhabitants fought for the dearest of human
rights, religion and property; and the enmity of the natives seemed to
exclude them from the common benefit of peace and toleration. The sea
was continually open; and if Heraclius had been awake to the public
distress, fresh armies of Romans and Barbarians might have been poured
into the harbor to save the second capital of the empire. A
circumference of ten miles would have scattered the forces of the
Greeks, and favored the stratagems of an active enemy; but the two sides
of an oblong square were covered by the sea and the Lake Maræotis, and
each of the narrow ends exposed a front of no more than ten furlongs.
The efforts of the Arabs were not inadequate to the difficulty of the
attempt and the value of the prize. From the throne of Medina, the eyes
of Omar were fixed on the camp and city: his voice excited to arms the
Arabian tribes and the veterans of Syria; and the merit of a holy war
was recommended by the peculiar fame and fertility of Egypt. Anxious for
the ruin or expulsion of their tyrants, the faithful natives devoted
their labors to the service of Amrou: some sparks of martial spirit were
perhaps rekindled by the example of their allies; and the sanguine hopes
of Mokawkas had fixed his sepulchre in the church of St. John of
Alexandria. Eutychius the patriarch observes, that the Saracens fought
with the courage of lions: they repulsed the frequent and almost daily
sallies of the besieged, and soon assaulted in their turn the walls and
towers of the city. In every attack, the sword, the banner of Amrou,
glittered in the van of the Moslems. On a memorable day, he was betrayed
by his imprudent valor: his followers who had entered the citadel were
driven back; and the general, with a friend and slave, remained a
prisoner in the hands of the Christians. When Amrou was conducted before
the præfect, he remembered his dignity, and forgot his situation: a
lofty demeanor, and resolute language, revealed the lieutenant of the
caliph, and the battle-axe of a soldier was already raised to strike off
the head of the audacious captive. His life was saved by the readiness
of his slave, who instantly gave his master a blow on the face, and
commanded him, with an angry tone, to be silent in the presence of his
superiors. The credulous Greek was deceived: he listened to the offer of
a treaty, and his prisoners were dismissed in the hope of a more
respectable embassy, till the joyful acclamations of the camp announced
the return of their general, and insulted the folly of the infidels. At
length, after a siege of fourteen months,  and the loss of
three-and-twenty thousand men, the Saracens prevailed: the Greeks
embarked their dispirited and diminished numbers, and the standard of
Mahomet was planted on the walls of the capital of Egypt. "I have
taken," said Amrou to the caliph, "the great city of the West. It is
impossible for me to enumerate the variety of its riches and beauty; and
I shall content myself with observing, that it contains four thousand
palaces, four thousand baths, four hundred theatres or places of
amusement, twelve thousand shops for the sale of vegetable food, and
forty thousand tributary Jews. The town has been subdued by force of
arms, without treaty or capitulation, and the Moslems are impatient to
seize the fruits of their victory."  The commander of the faithful
rejected with firmness the idea of pillage, and directed his lieutenant
to reserve the wealth and revenue of Alexandria for the public service
and the propagation of the faith: the inhabitants were numbered; a
tribute was imposed, the zeal and resentment of the Jacobites were
curbed, and the Melchites who submitted to the Arabian yoke were
indulged in the obscure but tranquil exercise of their worship. The
intelligence of this disgraceful and calamitous event afflicted the
declining health of the emperor; and Heraclius died of a dropsy about
seven weeks after the loss of Alexandria.  Under the minority of his
grandson, the clamors of a people, deprived of their daily sustenance,
compelled the Byzantine court to undertake the recovery of the capital
of Egypt. In the space of four years, the harbor and fortifications of
Alexandria were twice occupied by a fleet and army of Romans. They were
twice expelled by the valor of Amrou, who was recalled by the domestic
peril from the distant wars of Tripoli and Nubia. But the facility of
the attempt, the repetition of the insult, and the obstinacy of the
resistance, provoked him to swear, that if a third time he drove the
infidels into the sea, he would render Alexandria as accessible on all
sides as the house of a prostitute. Faithful to his promise, he
dismantled several parts of the walls and towers; but the people was
spared in the chastisement of the city, and the mosch of Mercywas
erected on the spot where the victorious general had stopped the fury of
his troops.

Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs. -- Part VII.

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 Philoponusfrom his laborious studies of
grammar and philosophy.  Emboldened by this familiar intercourse,
Philoponus presumed to solicit a gift, inestimable in hisopinion,
contemptible in that of the Barbarians -- the royal library, which
alone, among the spoils of Alexandria, had not been appropriated by the
visit and the seal of the conqueror. Amrou was inclined to gratify the
wish of the grammarian, but his rigid integrity refused to alienate the
minutest object without the consent of the caliph; and the well-known
answer of Omar was inspired by the ignorance of a fanatic. "If these
writings of the Greeks agree with the book of God, they are useless, and
need not be preserved: if they disagree, they are pernicious, and ought
to be destroyed." The sentence was executed with blind obedience: the
volumes of paper or parchment were distributed to the four thousand
baths of the city; and such was their incredible multitude, that six
months were barely sufficient for the consumption of this precious fuel.
Since the Dynasties of Abulpharagius  have been given to the world in a
Latin version, the tale has been repeatedly transcribed; and every
scholar, with pious indignation, has deplored the irreparable shipwreck
of the learning, the arts, and the genius, of antiquity. For my own
part, I am strongly tempted to deny both the fact and the consequences.
* The fact is indeed marvellous. "Read and wonder!" says the historian
himself: and the solitary report of a stranger who wrote at the end of
six hundred years on the confines of Media, is overbalanced by the
silence of two annalist of a more early date, both Christians, both
natives of Egypt, and the most ancient of whom, the patriarch Eutychius,
has amply described the conquest of Alexandria.  The rigid sentence of
Omar is repugnant to the sound and orthodox precept of the Mahometan
casuists they expressly declare, that the religious books of the Jews
and Christians, which are acquired by the right of war, should never be
committed to the flames; and that the works of profane science,
historians or poets, physicians or philosophers, may be lawfully applied
to the use of the faithful.  A more destructive zeal may perhaps be
attributed to the first successors of Mahomet; yet in this instance, the
conflagration would have speedily expired in the deficiency of
materials. I should not recapitulate the disasters of the Alexandrian
library, the involuntary flame that was kindled by Cæsar in his own
defence,  or the mischievous bigotry of the Christians, who studied to
destroy the monuments of idolatry.  But if we gradually descend from the
age of the Antonines to that of Theodosius, we shall learn from a chain
of contemporary witnesses, that the royal palace and the temple of
Serapis no longer contained the four, or the seven, hundred thousand
volumes, which had been assembled by the curiosity and magnificence of
the Ptolemies.  Perhaps the church and seat of the patriarchs might be
enriched with a repository of books; but if the ponderous mass of Arian
and Monophysite controversy were indeed consumed in the public baths,  a
philosopher may allow, with a smile, that it was ultimately devoted to
the benefit of mankind. I sincerely regret the more valuable libraries
which have been involved in the ruin of the Roman empire; but when I
seriously compute the lapse of ages, the waste of ignorance, and the
calamities of war, our treasures, rather than our losses, are the
objects of my surprise. Many curious and interesting facts are buried in
oblivion: the three great historians of Rome have been transmitted to
our hands in a mutilated state, and we are deprived of many pleasing
compositions of the lyric, iambic, and dramatic poetry of the Greeks.
Yet we should gratefully remember, that the mischances of time and
accident have spared the classic works to which the suffrage of
antiquity  had adjudged the first place of genius and glory: the
teachers of ancient knowledge, who are still extant, had perused and
compared the writings of their predecessors;  nor can it fairly be
presumed that any important truth, any useful discovery in art or
nature, has been snatched away from the curiosity of modern ages.

In the administration of Egypt,  Amrou balanced the demands of justice
and policy; the interest of the people of the law, who were defended by
God; and of the people of the alliance, who were protected by man. In
the recent tumult of conquest and deliverance, the tongue of the Copts
and the sword of the Arabs were most adverse to the tranquillity of the
province. To the former, Amrou declared, that faction and falsehood
would be doubly chastised; by the punishment of the accusers, whom he
should detest as his personal enemies, and by the promotion of their
innocent brethren, whom their envy had labored to injure and supplant.
He excited the latter by the motives of religion and honor to sustain
the dignity of their character, to endear themselves by a modest and
temperate conduct to God and the caliph, to spare and protect a people
who had trusted to their faith, and to content themselves with the
legitimate and splendid rewards of their victory. In the management of
the revenue, he disapproved the simple but oppressive mode of a
capitation, and preferred with reason a proportion of taxes deducted on
every branch from the clear profits of agriculture and commerce. A third
part of the tribute was appropriated to the annual repairs of the dikes
and canals, so essential to the public welfare. Under his
administration, the fertility of Egypt supplied the dearth of Arabia;
and a string of camels, laden with corn and provisions, covered almost
without an interval the long road from Memphis to Medina.  But the
genius of Amrou soon renewed the maritime communication which had been
attempted or achieved by the Pharaohs the Ptolemies, or the Cæsars; and
a canal, at least eighty miles in length, was opened from the Nile to
the Red Sea. * This inland navigation, which would have joined the
Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, was soon discontinued as useless and
dangerous: the throne was removed from Medina to Damascus, and the
Grecian fleets might have explored a passage to the holy cities of
Arabia.

Of his new conquest, the caliph Omar had an imperfect knowledge from the
voice of fame and the legends of the Koran. He requested that his
lieutenant would place before his eyes the realm of Pharaoh and the
Amalekites; and the answer of Amrou exhibits a lively and not unfaithful
picture of that singular country.  "O commander of the faithful, Egypt
is a compound of black earth and green plants, between a pulverized
mountain and a red sand. The distance from Syene to the sea is a month's
journey for a horseman. Along the valley descends a river, on which the
blessing of the Most High reposes both in the evening and morning, and
which rises and falls with the revolutions of the sun and moon. When the
annual dispensation of Providence unlocks the springs and fountains that
nourish the earth, the Nile rolls his swelling and sounding waters
through the realm of Egypt: the fields are overspread by the salutary
flood; and the villages communicate with each other in their painted
barks. The retreat of the inundation deposits a fertilizing mud for the
reception of the various seeds: the crowds of husbandmen who blacken the
land may be compared to a swarm of industrious ants; and their native
indolence is quickened by the lash of the task-master, and the promise
of the flowers and fruits of a plentiful increase. Their hope is seldom
deceived; but the riches which they extract from the wheat, the barley,
and the rice, the legumes, the fruit-trees, and the cattle, are
unequally shared between those who labor and those who possess.
According to the vicissitudes of the seasons, the face of the country is
adorned with a silverwave, a verdant emerald, and the deep yellow of a
goldenharvest."  Yet this beneficial order is sometimes interrupted; and
the long delay and sudden swell of the river in the first year of the
conquest might afford some color to an edifying fable. It is said, that
the annual sacrifice of a virgin  had been interdicted by the piety of
Omar; and that the Nile lay sullen and inactive in his shallow bed, till
the mandate of the caliph was cast into the obedient stream, which rose
in a single night to the height of sixteen cubits. The admiration of the
Arabs for their new conquest encouraged the license of their romantic
spirit. We may read, in the gravest authors, that Egypt was crowded with
twenty thousand cities or villages:  that, exclusive of the Greeks and
Arabs, the Copts alone were found, on the assessment, six millions of
tributary subjects,  or twenty millions of either sex, and of every age:
thatthree hundred millions of gold or silver were annually paid to the
treasury of the caliphs.  Our reason must be startled by these
extravagant assertions; and they will become more palpable, if we assume
the compass and measure the extent of habitable ground: a valley from
the tropic to Memphis seldom broader than twelve miles, and the triangle
of the Delta, a flat surface of two thousand one hundred square leagues,
compose a twelfth part of the magnitude of France.  A more accurate
research will justify a more reasonable estimate. The three hundred
millions, created by the error of a scribe, are reduced to the decent
revenue of four millions three hundred thousand pieces of gold, of which
nine hundred thousand were consumed by the pay of the soldiers.  Two
authentic lists, of the present and of the twelfth century, are
circumscribed within the respectable number of two thousand seven
hundred villages and towns.  After a long residence at Cairo, a French
consul has ventured to assign about four millions of Mahometans,
Christians, and Jews, for the ample, though not incredible, scope of the
population of Egypt.

IV. The conquest of Africa, from the Nile to the Atlantic Ocean,  was
first attempted by the arms of the caliph Othman. The pious design was
approved by the companions of Mahomet and the chiefs of the tribes; and
twenty thousand Arabs marched from Medina, with the gifts and the
blessing of the commander of the faithful. They were joined in the camp
of Memphis by twenty thousand of their countrymen; and the conduct of
the war was intrusted to Abdallah,  the son of Said and the
foster-brother of the caliph, who had lately supplanted the conqueror
and lieutenant of Egypt. Yet the favor of the prince, and the merit of
his favorite, could not obliterate the guilt of his apostasy. The early
conversion of Abdallah, and his skilful pen, had recommended him to the
important office of transcribing the sheets of the Koran: he betrayed
his trust, corrupted the text, derided the errors which he had made, and
fled to Mecca to escape the justice, and expose the ignorance, of the
apostle. After the conquest of Mecca, he fell prostrate at the feet of
Mahomet; his tears, and the entreaties of Othman, extorted a reluctant
pardon; out the prophet declared that he had so long hesitated, to allow
time for some zealous disciple to avenge his injury in the blood of the
apostate. With apparent fidelity and effective merit, he served the
religion which it was no longer his interest to desert: his birth and
talents gave him an honorable rank among the Koreish; and, in a nation
of cavalry, Abdallah was renowned as the boldest and most dexterous
horseman of Arabia. At the head of forty thousand Moslems, he advanced
from Egypt into the unknown countries of the West. The sands of Barca
might be impervious to a Roman legion but the Arabs were attended by
their faithful camels; and the natives of the desert beheld without
terror the familiar aspect of the soil and climate. After a painful
march, they pitched their tents before the walls of Tripoli,  a maritime
city in which the name, the wealth, and the inhabitants of the province
had gradually centred, and which now maintains the third rank among the
states of Barbary. A reënforcement 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
præfect Gregory  to relinquish the labors of the siege for the perils
and the hopes of a decisive action. If his standard was followed by one
hundred and twenty thousand men, the regular bands of the empire must
have been lost in the naked and disorderly crowd of Africans and Moors,
who formed the strength, or rather the numbers, of his host. He rejected
with indignation the option of the Koran or the tribute; and during
several days the two armies were fiercely engaged from the dawn of light
to the hour of noon, when their fatigue and the excessive heat compelled
them to seek shelter and refreshment in their respective camps. The
daughter of Gregory, a maid of incomparable beauty and spirit, is said
to have fought by his side: from her earliest youth she was trained to
mount on horseback, to draw the bow, and to wield the cimeter; and the
richness of her arms and apparel were conspicuous in the foremost ranks
of the battle. Her hand, with a hundred thousand pieces of gold, was
offered for the head of the Arabian general, and the youths of Africa
were excited by the prospect of the glorious prize. At the pressing
solicitation of his brethren, Abdallah withdrew his person from the
field; but the Saracens were discouraged by the retreat of their leader,
and the repetition of these equal or unsuccessful conflicts.

A noble Arabian, who afterwards became the adversary of Ali, and the
father of a caliph, had signalized his valor in Egypt, and Zobeir  was
the first who planted the scaling-ladder against the walls of Babylon.
In the African war he was detached from the standard of Abdallah. On the
news of the battle, Zobeir, with twelve companions, cut his way through
the camp of the Greeks, and pressed forwards, without tasting either
food or repose, to partake of the dangers of his brethren. He cast his
eyes round the field: "Where," said he, "is our general?" "In his tent."
"Is the tent a station for the general of the Moslems?" Abdallah
represented with a blush the importance of his own life, and the
temptation that was held forth by the Roman præfect. "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 præfect himself was
slain by the hand of Zobeir: his daughter, who sought revenge and death,
was surrounded and made prisoner; and the fugitives involved in their
disaster the town of Sufetula, to which they escaped from the sabres and
lances of the Arabs. Sufetula was built one hundred and fifty miles to
the south of Carthage: a gentle declivity is watered by a running
stream, and shaded by a grove of juniper-trees; and, in the ruins of a
triumphal arch, a portico, and three temples of the Corinthian order,
curiosity may yet admire the magnificence of the Romans.  After the fall
of this opulent city, the provincials and Barbarians implored on all
sides the mercy of the conqueror. His vanity or his zeal might be
flattered by offers of tribute or professions of faith: but his losses,
his fatigues, and the progress of an epidemical disease, prevented a
solid establishment; and the Saracens, after a campaign of fifteen
months, retreated to the confines of Egypt, with the captives and the
wealth of their African expedition. The caliph's fifth was granted to a
favorite, on the nominal payment of five hundred thousand pieces of
gold;  but the state was doubly injured by this fallacious transaction,
if each foot-soldier had shared one thousand, and each horseman three
thousand, pieces, in the real division of the plunder. The author of the
death of Gregory was expected to have claimed the most precious reward
of the victory: from his silence it might be presumed that he had fallen
in the battle, till the tears and exclamations of the præfect's daughter
at the sight of Zobeir revealed the valor and modesty of that gallant
soldier. The unfortunate virgin was offered, and almost rejected as a
slave, by her father's murderer, who coolly declared that his sword was
consecrated to the service of religion; and that he labored for a
recompense far above the charms of mortal beauty, or the riches of this
transitory life. A reward congenial to his temper was the honorable
commission of announcing to the caliph Othman the success of his arms.
The companions the chiefs, and the people, were assembled in the mosch
of Medina, to hear the interesting narrative of Zobeir; and as the
orator forgot nothing except the merit of his own counsels and actions,
the name of Abdallah was joined by the Arabians with the heroic names of
Caled and Amrou.

Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs. -- Part VIII.

The Western conquests of the Saracens were suspended near twenty years,
till their dissensions were composed by the establishment of the house
of Ommiyah; and the caliph Moawiyah was invited by the cries of the
Africans themselves. The successors of Heraclius had been informed of
the tribute which they had been compelled to stipulate with the Arabs,
but instead of being moved to pity and relieve their distress, they
imposed, as an equivalent or a fine, a second tribute of a similar
amount. The ears of the Byzantine ministers were shut against the
complaints of their poverty and ruin: their despair was reduced to
prefer the dominion of a single master; and the extortions of the
patriarch of Carthage, who was invested with civil and military power,
provoked the sectaries, and even the Catholics of the Roman province, to
abjure the religion as well as the authority of their tyrants. The first
lieutenant of Moawiyah acquired a just renown, subdued an important
city, defeated an army of thirty thousand Greeks, swept away fourscore
thousand captives, and enriched with their spoils the bold adventures of
Syria and Egypt.  But the title of conqueror of Africa is more justly
due to his successor Akbah. He marched from Damascus at the head of ten
thousand of the bravest Arabs; and the genuine force of the Moslems was
enlarged by the doubtful aid and conversion of many thousand Barbarians.
It would be difficult, nor is it necessary, to trace the accurate line
of the progress of Akbah. The interior regions have been peopled by the
Orientals with fictitious armies and imaginary citadels. In the warlike
province of Zab, or Numidia, fourscore thousand of the natives might
assemble in arms; but the number of three hundred and sixty towns is
incompatible with the ignorance or decay of husbandry;  and a
circumference of three leagues will not be justified by the ruins of
Erbe or Lambesa, the ancient metropolis of that inland country. As we
approach the seacoast, the well-known cities of Bugia  and Tangier
define the more certain limits of the Saracen victories. A remnant of
trade still adheres to the commodious harbor of Bugia which, in a more
prosperous age, is said to have contained about twenty thousand houses;
and the plenty of iron which is dug from the adjacent mountains might
have supplied a braver people with the instruments of defence. The
remote position and venerable antiquity of Tingi, or Tangier, have been
decorated by the Greek and Arabian fables; but the figurative
expressions of the latter, that the walls were constructed of brass, and
that the roofs were covered with gold and silver, may be interpreted as
the emblems of strength and opulence. The provinces of Mauritania
Tingitana,  which assumed the name of the capital, had been imperfectly
discovered and settled by the Romans; the five colonies were confined to
a narrow pale, and the more southern parts were seldom explored except
by the agents of luxury, who searched the forests for ivory and the
citron-wood,  and the shores of the ocean for the purple shell-fish. The
fearless Akbah plunged into the heart of the country, traversed the
wilderness in which his successors erected the splendid capitals of Fez
and Morocco,  and at length penetrated to the verge of the Atlantic and
the great desert. The river Sus descends from the western sides of Mount
Atlas, fertilizes, like the Nile, the adjacent soil, and falls into the
sea at a moderate distance from the Canary, or Fortunate Islands. Its
banks were inhabited by the last of the Moors, a race of savages,
without laws, or discipline, or religion; they were astonished by the
strange and irresistible terrors of the Oriental arms; and as they
possessed neither gold nor silver, the riches spoil was the beauty of
the female captives, some of whom were afterwards sold for a thousand
pieces of gold. The career, though not the zeal, of Akbah was checked by
the prospect of a boundless ocean. He spurred his horse into the waves,
and raising his eyes to heaven, exclaimed with a tone of a fanatic,
"Great God! if my course were not stopped by this sea, I would still go
on, to the unknown kingdoms of the West, preaching the unity of thy holy
name, and putting to the sword the rebellious nations who worship any
other Gods than thee."  Yet this Mahometan Alexander, who sighed for new
worlds, was unable to preserve his recent conquests. By the universal
defection of the Greeks and Africans, he was recalled from the shores of
the Atlantic, and the surrounding multitudes left him only the resource
of an honorable death. The last scene was dignified by an example of
national virtue. An ambitious chief, who had disputed the command and
failed in the attempt, was led about as a prisoner in the camp of the
Arabian general. The insurgents had trusted to his discontent and
revenge; he disdained their offers, and revealed their designs. In the
hour of danger, the grateful Akbah unlocked his fetters, and advised him
to retire; he chose to die under the banner of his rival. Embracing as
friends and martyrs, they unsheathed their cimeters, broke their
scabbards, and maintained an obstinate combat, till they fell by each
other's side on the last of their slaughtered countrymen. The third
general or governor of Africa, Zuheir, avenged and encountered the fate
of his predecessor. He vanquished the natives in many battles; he was
overthrown by a powerful army, which Constantinople had sent to the
relief of Carthage.

It had been the frequent practice of the Moorish tribes to join the
invaders, to share the plunder, to profess the faith, and to revolt to
their savage state of independence and idolatry, on the first retreat or
misfortune of the Moslems. The prudence of Akbah had proposed to found
an Arabian colony in the heart of Africa; a citadel that might curb the
levity of the Barbarians, a place of refuge to secure, against the
accidents of war, the wealth and the families of the Saracens. With this
view, and under the modest title of the station of a caravan, he planted
this colony in the fiftieth year of the Hegira. In the present decay,
Cairoan  still holds the second rank in the kingdom of Tunis, from which
it is distant about fifty miles to the south:  its inland situation,
twelve miles westward of the sea, has protected the city from the Greek
and Sicilian fleets. When the wild beasts and serpents were extirpated,
when the forest, or rather wilderness, was cleared, the vestiges of a
Roman town were discovered in a sandy plain: the vegetable food of
Cairoan is brought from afar; and the scarcity of springs constrains the
inhabitants to collect in cisterns and reservoirs a precarious supply of
rain-water. These obstacles were subdued by the industry of Akbah; he
traced a circumference of three thousand and six hundred paces, which he
encompassed with a brick wall; in the space of five years, the
governor's palace was surrounded with a sufficient number of private
habitations; a spacious mosch was supported by five hundred columns of
granite, porphyry, and Numidian marble; and Cairoan became the seat of
learning as well as of empire. But these were the glories of a later
age; the new colony was shaken by the successive defeats of Akbah and
Zuheir, and the western expeditions were again interrupted by the civil
discord of the Arabian monarchy. The son of the valiant Zobeir
maintained a war of twelve years, a siege of seven months against the
house of Ommiyah. Abdallah was said to unite the fierceness of the lion
with the subtlety of the fox; but if he inherited the courage, he was
devoid of the generosity, of his father.

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 sea-coast 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 succors. The præfect and patrician John, a
general of experience and renown, embarked at Constantinople the forces
of the Eastern empire;  they were joined by the ships and soldiers of
Sicily, and a powerful reenforcement of Goths  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 harbor; 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 faithful  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
neighborhood of Utica: 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 Dido
and Cæsar 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 mosch, 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.

The Greeks were expelled, but the Arabians were not yet masters of the
country. In the interior provinces the Moors or Berbers,  so feeble
under the first Cæsars, 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 succors 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 savior 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
the public treasury. Thirty thousand of the Barbarian youth were
enlisted in the troops; and the pious labors 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
Libyan desert: and I am not ignorant that five of the Moorish tribes
still retain their barbarousidiom, with the appellation and character of
whiteAfricans.

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.

As early as the time of Othman,  their piratical squadrons had ravaged
the coast of Andalusia;  nor had they forgotten the relief of Carthage
by the Gothic succors. 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 honor of introducing their arms
into the heart of Spain.  If we inquire into the cause of his treachery,
the Spaniards will repeat the popular story of his daughter Cava;  * 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 motive of
interest and policy more congenial to the breast of a veteran statesman.
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 favors 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 hand 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 Pyrenæan mountains, the successors of Alaric had slumbered
in a long peace: the walls of the cities 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.

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 event  is fixed to the
month of Ramadan, of the ninety-first year of the Hegira, to the month
of July, seven hundred and forty-eight years from the Spanish æra of
Cæsar,  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:  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 and the most favorable 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
landed  at the pillar or point of Europe; the corrupt and familiar
appellation of Gibraltar (Gebel al 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
malecontents were attracted by the influence of Julian, and a crowd of
Africans most greedily tasted the temporal blessings of the Koran. In
the neighborhood of Cadiz, the town of Xeres  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 valor 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 genera: 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 in 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 Btis or Guadalquivir.
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."

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 Saracen. "The
king of the Goths is slain; their princes have fled before you, the army
is routed, the nation is astonished. Secure with sufficient detachments
the cities of Btica; 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 sea-coast of Btica, 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 Btis to the Tagus  was directed
through the Sierra Morena, that separates Andalusia and Castille, till
he appeared in arms under the walls of Toledo.  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 and 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 of Mahomet was maintained till the final æra 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 needless to enumerate the cities that
yielded on his approach, or again to describe the table of emerald,
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 term
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.  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 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.

Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs. -- Part IX.

On the intelligence of this rapid success, the applause of Musa
degenerated into envy; and he began, not to complain, but to fear, that
Tarik would leave him nothing to subdue. At the head of ten thousand
Arabs and eight thousand Africans, he passed over in person from
Mauritania to Spain: the first of his companions were the noblest of the
Koreish; his eldest son was left in the command of Africa; the three
younger brethren were of an age and spirit to second the boldest
enterprises of their father. At his landing in Algezire, he was
respectfully entertained by Count Julian, who stifled his inward
remorse, and testified, both in words and actions, that the victory of
the Arabs had not impaired his attachment to their cause. Some enemies
yet remained for the sword of Musa. The tardy repentance of the Goths
had compared their own numbers and those of the invaders; the cities
from which the march of Tarik had declined considered themselves as
impregnable; and the bravest patriots defended the fortifications of
Seville and Merida. They were successively besieged and reduced by the
labor of Musa, who transported his camp from the Btis to the Anas, from
the Guadalquivir to the Guadiana. When he beheld the works of Roman
magnificence, the bridge, the aqueducts, the triumphal arches, and the
theatre, of the ancient metropolis of Lusitania, "I should imagine,"
said he to his four companions, "that the human race must have united
their art and power in the foundation of this city: happy is the man who
shall become its master!" He aspired to that happiness, but the
Emeritanssustained on this occasion the honor of their descent from the
veteran legionaries of Augustus  Disdaining the confinement of their
walls, they gave battle to the Arabs on the plain; but an ambuscade
rising from the shelter of a quarry, or a ruin, chastised their
indiscretion, and intercepted their return. The wooden turrets of
assault were rolled forwards to the foot of the rampart; but the defence
of Merida was obstinate and long; and the castle of the martyrswas a
perpetual testimony of the losses of the Moslems. The constancy of the
besieged was at length subdued by famine and despair; and the prudent
victor disguised his impatience under the names of clemency and esteem.
The alternative of exile or tribute was allowed; the churches were
divided between the two religions; and the wealth of those who had
fallen in the siege, or retired to Gallicia, was confiscated as the
reward of the faithful. In the midway between Merida and Toledo, the
lieutenant of Musa saluted the vicegerent of the caliph, and conducted
him to the palace of the Gothic kings. Their first interview was cold
and formal: a rigid account was exacted of the treasures of Spain: the
character of Tarik was exposed to suspicion and obloquy; and the hero
was imprisoned, reviled, and ignominiously scourged by the hand, or the
command, of Musa. Yet so strict was the discipline, so pure the zeal, or
so tame the spirit, of the primitive Moslems, that, after this public
indignity, Tarik could serve and be trusted in the reduction of the
Tarragonest province. A mosch was erected at Saragossa, by the
liberality of the Koreish: the port of Barcelona was opened to the
vessels of Syria; and the Goths were pursued beyond the Pyrenæan
mountains into their Gallic province of Septimania or Languedoc.  In the
church of St. Mary at Carcassone, Musa found, but it is improbable that
he left, seven equestrian statues of massy silver; and from his termor
column of Narbonne, he returned on his footsteps to the Gallician and
Lusitanian shores of the ocean. During the absence of the father, his
son Abdelaziz chastised the insurgents of Seville, and reduced, from
Malaga to Valentia, the sea-coast of the Mediterranean: his original
treaty with the discreet and valiant Theodemir  will represent the
manners and policy of the times. "The conditions of peace agreed and
sworn between Abdelaziz, the son of Musa, the son of Nassir, and
Theodemir prince of the Goths. In the name of the most merciful God,
Abdelaziz makes peace on these conditions: thatTheodemir shall not be
disturbed in his principality; nor any injury be offered to the life or
property, the wives and children, the religion and temples, of the
Christians: thatTheodemir shall freely deliver his seven * cities,
Orihuela, Valentola, Alicanti Mola, Vacasora, Bigerra, (now Bejar,) Ora,
(or Opta,) and Lorca: thathe shall not assist or entertain the enemies
of the caliph, but shall faithfully communicate his knowledge of their
hostile designs: thathimself, and each of the Gothic nobles, shall
annually pay one piece of gold, four measures of wheat, as many of
barley, with a certain proportion of honey, oil, and vinegar; and that
each of their vassals shall be taxed at one moiety of the said
imposition. Given the fourth of Regeb, in the year of the Hegira
ninety-four, and subscribed with the names of four Mussulman witnesses."
Theodemir and his subjects were treated with uncommon lenity; but the
rate of tribute appears to have fluctuated from a tenth to a fifth,
according to the submission or obstinacy of the Christians.  In this
revolution, many partial calamities were inflicted by the carnal or
religious passions of the enthusiasts: some churches were profaned by
the new worship: some relics or images were confounded with idols: the
rebels were put to the sword; and one town (an obscure place between
Cordova and Seville) was razed to its foundations. Yet if we compare the
invasion of Spain by the Goths, or its recovery by the kings of Castile
and Arragon, we must applaud the moderation and discipline of the
Arabian conquerors.

The exploits of Musa were performed in the evening of life, though he
affected to disguise his age by coloring with a red powder the whiteness
of his beard. But in the love of action and glory, his breast was still
fired with the ardor of youth; and the possession of Spain was
considered only as the first step to the monarchy of Europe. With a
powerful armament by sea and land, he was preparing to repass the
Pyrenees, to extinguish in Gaul and Italy the declining kingdoms of the
Franks and Lombards, and to preach the unity of God on the altar of the
Vatican. From thence, subduing the Barbarians of Germany, he proposed to
follow the course of the Danube from its source to the Euxine Sea, to
overthrow the Greek or Roman empire of Constantinople, and returning
from Europe to Asia, to unite his new acquisitions with Antioch and the
provinces of Syria.  But his vast enterprise, perhaps of easy execution,
must have seemed extravagant to vulgar minds; and the visionary
conqueror was soon reminded of his dependence and servitude. The friends
of Tarik had effectually stated his services and wrongs: at the court of
Damascus, the proceedings of Musa were blamed, his intentions were
suspected, and his delay in complying with the first invitation was
chastised by a harsher and more peremptory summons. An intrepid
messenger of the caliph entered his camp at Lugo in Gallicia, and in the
presence of the Saracens and Christians arrested the bridle of his
horse. His own loyalty, or that of his troops, inculcated the duty of
obedience: and his disgrace was alleviated by the recall of his rival,
and the permission of investing with his two governments his two sons,
Abdallah and Abdelaziz. His long triumph from Ceuta to Damascus
displayed the spoils of Africa and the treasures of Spain: four hundred
Gothic nobles, with gold coronets and girdles, were distinguished in his
train; and the number of male and female captives, selected for their
birth or beauty, was computed at eighteen, or even at thirty, thousand
persons. As soon as he reached Tiberias in Palestine, he was apprised of
the sickness and danger of the caliph, by a private message from
Soliman, his brother and presumptive heir; who wished to reserve for his
own reign the spectacle of victory. Had Walid recovered, the delay of
Musa would have been criminal: he pursued his march, and found an enemy
on the throne. In his trial before a partial judge against a popular
antagonist, he was convicted of vanity and falsehood; and a fine of two
hundred thousand pieces of gold either exhausted his poverty or proved
his rapaciousness. The unworthy treatment of Tarik was revenged by a
similar indignity; and the veteran commander, after a public whipping,
stood a whole day in the sun before the palace gate, till he obtained a
decent exile, under the pious name of a pilgrimage to Mecca. The
resentment of the caliph might have been satiated with the ruin of Musa;
but his fears demanded the extirpation of a potent and injured family. A
sentence of death was intimated with secrecy and speed to the trusty
servants of the throne both in Africa and Spain; and the forms, if not
the substance, of justice were superseded in this bloody execution. In
the mosch or palace of Cordova, Abdelaziz was slain by the swords of the
conspirators; they accused their governor of claiming the honors of
royalty; and his scandalous marriage with Egilona, the widow of Roderic,
offended the prejudices both of the Christians and Moslems. By a
refinement of cruelty, the head of the son was presented to the father,
with an insulting question, whether he acknowledged the features of the
rebel? "I know his features," he exclaimed with indignation: "I assert
his innocence; and I imprecate the same, a juster fate, against the
authors of his death." The age and despair of Musa raised him above the
power of kings; and he expired at Mecca of the anguish of a broken
heart. His rival was more favorably treated: his services were forgiven;
and Tarik was permitted to mingle with the crowd of slaves.  I am
ignorant whether Count Julian was rewarded with the death which he
deserved indeed, though not from the hands of the Saracens; but the tale
of their ingratitude to the sons of Witiza is disproved by the most
unquestionable evidence. The two royal youths were reinstated in the
private patrimony of their father; but on the decease of Eba, the elder,
his daughter was unjustly despoiled of her portion by the violence of
her uncle Sigebut. The Gothic maid pleaded her cause before the caliph
Hashem, and obtained the restitution of her inheritance; but she was
given in marriage to a noble Arabian, and their two sons, Isaac and
Ibrahim, were received in Spain with the consideration that was due to
their origin and riches.

A province is assimilated to the victorious state by the introduction of
strangers and the imitative spirit of the natives; and Spain, which had
been successively tinctured with Punic, and Roman, and Gothic blood,
imbibed, in a few generations, the name and manners of the Arabs. The
first conquerors, and the twenty successive lieutenants of the caliphs,
were attended by a numerous train of civil and military followers, who
preferred a distant fortune to a narrow home: the private and public
interest was promoted by the establishment of faithful colonies; and the
cities of Spain were proud to commemorate the tribe or country of their
Eastern progenitors. The victorious though motley bands of Tarik and
Musa asserted, by the name of Spaniards, their original claim of
conquest; yet they allowed their brethren of Egypt to share their
establishments of Murcia and Lisbon. The royal legion of Damascus was
planted at Cordova; that of Emesa at Seville; that of Kinnisrin or
Chalcis at Jaen; that of Palestine at Algezire and Medina Sidonia. The
natives of Yemen and Persia were scattered round Toledo and the inland
country, and the fertile seats of Grenada were bestowed on ten thousand
horsemen of Syria and Irak, the children of the purest and most noble of
the Arabian tribes.  A spirit of emulation, sometimes beneficial, more
frequently dangerous, was nourished by these hereditary factions. Ten
years after the conquest, a map of the province was presented to the
caliph: the seas, the rivers, and the harbors, the inhabitants and
cities, the climate, the soil, and the mineral productions of the earth.
In the space of two centuries, the gifts of nature were improved by the
agriculture,  the manufactures, and the commerce, of an industrious
people; and the effects of their diligence have been magnified by the
idleness of their fancy. The first of the Ommiades who reigned in Spain
solicited the support of the Christians; and in his edict of peace and
protection, he contents himself with a modest imposition of ten thousand
ounces of gold, ten thousand pounds of silver, ten thousand horses, as
many mules, one thousand cuirasses, with an equal number of helmets and
lances.  The most powerful of his successors derived from the same
kingdom the annual tribute of twelve millions and forty-five thousand
dinars or pieces of gold, about six millions of sterling money;  a sum
which, in the tenth century, most probably surpassed the united revenues
of the Christians monarchs. His royal seat of Cordova contained six
hundred moschs, nine hundred baths, and two hundred thousand houses; he
gave laws to eighty cities of the first, to three hundred of the second
and third order; and the fertile banks of the Guadalquivir were adorned
with twelve thousand villages and hamlets. The Arabs might exaggerate
the truth, but they created and they describe the most prosperous æra of
the riches, the cultivation, and the populousness of Spain.

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;  but a wise policy supplied the
obligation of justice; and after some acts of intolerant zeal, the
Mahometan conquerors of Hindostan have spared the pagods of that devout
and populous country. The disciples of Abraham, of Moses, and of Jesus,
were solemnly invited to accept the more perfectrevelation of Mahomet;
but if they preferred the payment of a moderate tribute, they were
entitled to the freedom of conscience and religious worship.  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.

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  might, under the reverend name of Abraham, be
dexterously connected with the chain of divine revelation. Their evil
principle, the dæmon 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.  The milder sentiment was consecrated by
the practice of Mahomet  and the prudence of the caliphs; the Magians or
Ghebers were ranked with the Jews and Christians among the people of the
written law;  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.  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 Iman 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
neverexisted; the inquisition was silenced and their conscience was
satisfied (says the historian Mirchond ) with this holy and meritorious
perjury.  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.  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.

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;  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:  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  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(adoptive
Arabs) was applied to their civil or religious conformity.  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.  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.

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.  Yet this partial
jealousy was healed by time and submission; the churches of Egypt were
shared with the Catholics;  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."  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.  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.

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.  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.

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.  They were animated
by a genuine or fictitious saying of the prophet, that, to the first
army which besieged the city of the Cæsars, 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;  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.  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.

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.  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.  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. 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 Cæsar. 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.  Under
the reign of the caliph Walid, the Greek language and characters were
excluded from the accounts of the public revenue.  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.

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 Phnicia, 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.  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, * 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.  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,  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.  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.  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,  the hopeless
Moslemah received from the caliph the welcome permission of retreat. *
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.

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.  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.  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,  or liquid
bitumen, a light, tenacious, and inflammable oil,  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.  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
artillerymight 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  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,  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,  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.