Damas cus, and the Grecian fleets might have explored a pas sage to the holy cities of Arabia.127 Of his new conquest, the caliph Omar had an imperfect knowledge from the voice of fame and the legends of the Koran. He requested that his lieutenant would place before his eyes the realm of Pharaoh and the Amalekites; and the answer of Amrou exhibits a lively and not unfaithful picture of that singular country.128 "O commander of the faithful, Egypt is a compound of black earth and green plants be tween a pulverized mountain and a red sand. The distance from Syene to the sea is a month's journey for a horseman. Along the valley descends a river, on which the blessing of the Most High reposes both in the evening and morning, and which rises and falls with the revolutions of the sun and moon. When the annual dispensation of Providence unlocks the springs and fountains that nourish the earth, the Nile rolls his swelling and sounding waters through the realm of Egypt: the fields are overspread by the salutary flood; and the villages communicate with each other in their painted barks. The retreat of the inundation deposits a fertilizing mud for the reception of the various seeds: the crowds of husbandmen who blacken the land may be compared to a swarm of industrious ants; and their native indolence is quickened by the lash of the task-master, and the promise of the flowers and fruits of a plentiful increase. Their hope is seldom deceived; but the riches which they extract from the wheat, the barley, and the rice, the legumes, the fruit-trees, and the cattle, are unequally shared between those who labor and those who possess. According to the vicissitudes of the seasons, the face of the country is adorned with a silver wave, a verdant emerald, and the deep yellow of a golden harvest." 129 Yet this ben 127 On these obscure canals, the reader may try to satisfy himself from D'Anville, (Mem. sur l'Egypte, p. 108-110, 124, 132,) and a learned thesis, maintained and printed at Strasburg in the year 1770, (Jungendorum marium fluviorumque molimina, p. 39-47, 68-70.) Even the supine Turks have agitated the old project of joining the two seas, (Mémoires du Baron de Tott, tom. iv.) 128 A small volume, des Merveilles, &c., de l'Egypte, composed in the xiiith century by Murtadi of Cairo, and translated from an Arabic MS. of Cardinal Mazarin, was published by Pierre Vatier, Paris, 1666. The antiquities of Egypt are wild and legendary; but the writer deserves credit and esteem for his account of the conquest and geog. aphy of his native country, (see the correspondence of Amrou and mar, p. 279-289.) 10 In a twenty years' residence at Cairo, the consul Maillet had eficia rder is sometimes interrupted; and the long delay and sudden swell of the river in the first year of the conquest might afford some color to an edifying fable. It is said, that the annual sacrifice of a virgin 130 had been interdicted by the piety of Omar; and that the Nile lay sullen and inactive in his shallow bed, till the mandate of the caliph was cast into the obedient stream, which rose in a single night to the height of sixteen cubits. The admiration of the Arabs for their nev conquest encouraged the license of their romantic spirit. We may read, in the gravest authors, that Egypt was crowded with twenty thousand cities or villages: 131 that, exclusive of the Greeks and Arabs, the Copts alone were found, on the assessment, six millions of tributary subjects,132 or twenty millions of either sex, and of every age: that three hundred millions of gold or silver were annually paid to the treasury of the caliphs.133 Our reason must be startled by these extravagant contemplated that varying scene, the Nile, (lettre ii. particularly p. 70, 75;) the fertility of the land, (lettre ix.) From a college at Cambridge, the poetic eye of Gray had seen the same objects with a keener glance : What wonder in the sultry climes tnat spread, (Mason's Works and Memoirs of Gray, p. 199, 200.) 130 Murtadi, p. 164-167. The reader will not easily credit a human sacrifice under the Christian emperors, or a miracle of the successors of Mahomet. 131 Maillet, Description de l'Egypte, p. 22. He mentions this number as the common opinion; and adds, that the generality of these villages contain two or three thousand persons, and that many of them are more populous than our large cities. 132 Eutych. Annal. tom. ii. p. 308, 311. The twenty millions are computed from the following data: one twelfth of mankind above sixty, one third below sixteen, the proportion of men to women as seventeen to sixteen, (Recherches sur la Population de la France, p. 71, 72.) The president Goguet (Origine des Arts, &c., tom. iii. p. 26, &c.) bestows twenty-seven millions on ancient Egypt, because the seventeen hundred companions of Sesostris were born on the same day 133 Elmacin, Hist. Saracen. p. 218; and this gross lump Swalowed without scruple by D'Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orient. p. 1031,) Ar- . buthnot, (Tables of Ancient Coins, p. 262,) and De Guignes, (Hist. des Huns, tom. iii. p. 135.) They might allege the not less extravagant iberality of Appian in favor of the Ptolemies (in præfat.) of seventyfour myriads, 740,000 talents, an annual income of 185, or near 360, 4 assertions; and they will become more palpable, if we assume the compass and measure the extent of habitable ground: a valley from the tropic to Memphis seldom broader than twelve miles, and the triangle of the Delta, a flat surface of two thousand one hundred square leagues, compose a twelfth part of the magnitude of France.134 A more accurate re search will justify a more reasonable estimate. The three hundred millions, created by the error of a scribe, are reduced to the decent revenue of four millions three hundred thousand pieces of gold, of which nine hundred thousand were consumed by the pay of the soldiers.135 Two authentic lists, of the present and of the twelfth century, are circumscribed within the respectable number of two thousand seven hundred villages and towns.136 After a long residence at Cairo, a French consul has ventured to assign about four millions of Mahometans Christians, and Jews, for the ample, though not incredible scope of the population of Egypt.137 IV. The conquest of Africa, from the Nile to the Atlantic Ocean,1 138 was first attempted by the arms of the caliph Oth millions of pounds sterling, according as we reckon by the Egyptian or the Alexandrian talent, (Bernard, de Ponderibus Antiq. p. 186.) 134 See the measurement of D'Anville, (Mém. sur l'Egypte, p. 23, &c.) After some peevish cavils, M. Pauw (Recherches sur les Egyptiens, tom. i. p. 118-121) can only enlarge his reckoning to 2250 square leagues. 135 Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alexand. p. 334, who calls the common reading or version of Elmacin, error librarii. His own emendation, of 4,300,000 pieces, in the ixth century, maintains a probable medium between the 3,000,000 which the Arabs acquired by the conquest of Egypt, (idem, p. 168,) and the 2,400,000 which the sultan of Constantinople levied in the last century, (Pietro della Valle, tom. i. p. 352; Thevenot, part i. p. 824.) Pauw (Recherches, tom. ii. p. 365 -373) gradually raises the revenue of the Pharaohs, the Ptolemies, and the Cæsars, from six to fifteen millions of German crowns. 136 The list of Schultens (Index Geograph. ad calcem Vit. Saladin. p. 5) contains 2396 places; that of D'Anville, (Mém. sur l'Egypte, p. 29,) from the divan of Cairo, enumerates 2696. He 137 See Maillet, (Description de l'Egypte, p. 28,) who seems to argue with candor and judgment. I am much better satisfied with the observations than with the reading of the French consul. was ignorant of Greek and Latin literature, and his fancy is too much delighted with the fictions of the Arabs. Their best knowledge is collected by Abulfeda, (Descript. Ægypt. Arab. et Lat. à Joh. David Michaelis, Göttingæ, in 4to., 1776;) and in two recent voyages into Egypt, we are amused by Savary, and instructed by Volney. I wish the letter could travel over the globe. 138 My conquest of Africa is drawn from two French interpreters of man. The p ous design was approved by the companiens of Mahomet and the chiefs of the tribes; and twenty thousand Arabs marched from Medina, with the gifts and the blessing of the commander of the faithful. They were joined in the camp of Memphis by twenty thousand of their countrymen ; and the conduct of the war was intrusted to Abdallah,139 the son of Said and the foster-brother of the caliph, who had lately supplanted the conqueror and lieutenant of Egypt. Yet the favor of the prince, and the merit of his favorite, could not obliterate the guilt of his apostasy. The early conversion of Abdallah, and his skilful pen, had recommended him to the important office of transcribing the sheets of the Koran: he betrayed his trust, corrupted the text, derided the errors which he had made, and fled to Mecca to escape the justice, and expose the ignorance, of the apostle. After the conquest of Mecca, he fell prostrate at the feet of Mahomet; his tears, and the entreaties of Othman, extorted a reluctant pardon; but the prophet declared that he had so long hesitated, to allow time for some zealous disciple to avenge his injury in the blood of the apostate. With apparent fidelity and effective merit, he served the religion which it was no longer his interest to desert his birth and talents gave him an honorable rank among the Koreish; and, in a nation of cavalry, Abdallah was renowned as the boldest and most dexterous horseman of Arabia. At the head of forty thousand Moslems, he advanced from Egypt into the unknown countries of the West. The sands of Barca might be impervious to a Roman legion; but the Arabs were attended by their faithful camels; and the natives of the desert beheld without terror the familiar aspect of the soil and climate. After a painful march, they pitched their tents before the walls of Tripoli,140 a maritime Arabic literature, Cardonne (Hist. de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne sous la Domination des Arabes, tom. i. p. 8-55) and Otter, (Hist. de l'Académie des Inscriptions, tom. xxi. p. 111-125, and 136.) They derive their principal information from Novairi, who composed, A. D. 1331, an Encyclopædia in more than twenty volumes. The five general parts successively treat of, 1. Physics; 2. Man; 3. Animals; 4. Plants; and, 5. History; and the African affairs are discussed in the vith chapter of the vth section of this last part, (Reiske, Prodidagmata ad Hagji Chalifa Tabulas, p. 232-234.) Among the older historians wo are quoted by Novairi we may distinguish the original narrative of a soldier who led the van of the Moslems. : 139 See the history of Abdallah, in Abulfeda (Vit. Mohammed, p 109) and Gagnier, (Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 45--48.) 10 The province and city of Tripoli are described by Leo Africanu} 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 141 to relinquish the labors of the siege for the perils and the hopes of a decisive action. If his standard was followed by one hundred and twenty thousand men, the regular bands of the empire must have been lost in the naked and disorderly crowd of Africans and Moors, who formed the strength, or rather the numbers, of his host. He rejected with indignation the option of the Koran or the tribute; and during several days the two armies were fiercely engaged from the dawn of light to the hour of noon, when their fatigue and the excessive heat compelled them to seek shelter and refreshment in their respective camps. The daughter of Gregory, a maid of incomparable beauty and spirit, is said to have fought by his side: from her earliest youth she was trained to mount on horseback, to draw the bow, and to wield the cimeter; and the richness of her arms and apparel were conspicuous in the foremost ranks of the battle. Her hand, with a hundred thousand pieces of gold, was offered for the head of the Arabian general, and the youths of Africa were excited by the prospect of the glorious prize. At the pressing solicitation of his brethren, Abdallah withdrew his person from the field; but the Saracens were discouraged by the retreat of their leader, and the repetition of these equal or unsuccessful conflicts. A noble Arabian, who afterwards became the adversary of Ali, and the father of a caiiph, had signalized his valor in (in Navigatione et Viaggi di Ramusio, tom. i. Venetia, 1550, fol. 76, verso) and Marmol, (Description de l'Afrique, tom. ii. p. 562.) The first of these writers was a Moor, a scholar, and a traveller, who composed or translated his African geography in a state of captivity at Rome, where he had assumed the name and religion of Pope Leo X. In a similar captivity among the Moors, the Spaniard Marmol, a soldier of Charles V., compiled his Description of Africa, translated by D'Ablancourt into French, (Paris, 1667, 3 vols. in 4to.) Marmol had read and seen, but he is destitute of the curious and extensive observation which abounds in the original work of Leo the African. 141 Theophanes, who mentions the defeat, rather than the death, of Gregory. He brands the præfect with the name of Tiguivos: he had probably assumed the purple, (Chronograph p. 285.) |