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 acci dents 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 154 still holds the second rank in the kingdom of Tunis, from which it is distant about fifty miles to the south: 155 its inland situation, twelve miles westward of the sea, has protected the city from the Greek and Sicilian fleets. When the wild beasts and serpents were extirpated, when the forest, or rather wilderness was cleared, the vestiges of a Roman town were discovered in a sandy plain: the vegetable food of Cairoan is brought from afar; and the scarcity of springs constrains the inhabitants to collect in cisterns and reservoirs a precarious supply of rain-water. These obstacles were subdued by the industry of Akbah; he traced a circumference of three thousand and six hundred paces, which he encompassed with a brick wall; in the space of five years, the governor's palace was sur rounded 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 dis

154 The foundation of Cairoan is mentioned by Ockley, (Hist. of the Saracens, vol. ii. p. 129, 130;) and the situation, mosch, &c., of the city are described by Leo Africanus, (fol. 75,) Marmol, (tom. ii. p. 532,) and Shaw, (p. 115.)

155 A portentous, though frequent, mistake has been the confounding, from a slight similitude of name, the Cyrene of the Greeks, and the Cairoan of the Arabs, two cities which are separated by an interval of a thousand miles along the sea-coast. The great Thuanus has not escaped this fault, the less excusable as it is connected with a formal and elaborate description of Africa, (Historiar. 1. vii. c. 2, in tom. i. p. 240, edit. Buckley.)

cora of the Arabian monarchy. The son of the valiant Zcbeir 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 gen erosity, of his father,156

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; 157 they were joined by the ships and soldiers of Sicily, and a powerful reenforcement of Goths 158 was obtained from the fears and

156 Besides the Arabic chronicles of Abulfeda, Elmacin, and Abulpharagius, under the lxxiiid year of the Hegira, we may consult D'Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orient. p. 7,) and Ockley, (Hist. of the Saracens, vol. ii. p. 339-349.) The latter has given the last and pathetic dialogue between Abdallah and his mother; but he has forgot a physical effect of her grief for his death, the return, at the age of ninety, and fatal consequences, of her menses.

157 Λεόντιος

ἅπαντα τὰ ̔Ρωμαϊκὰ ἐξώπλισε πλύμα, στρατηγόν τε ἐπ' αὐτοῖς ̓Ιωάννην τον Πατρίκιον ἔμπειρον τῶν πολεμίων προχειρι σάμενος προς Καρχηδόνα κατὰ τῶν Σαρακηνῶν ἐξέπεμψεν. Nicephori Constantinopolitani Breviar. p. 28. The patriarch of Constantinople, with Theophanes, (Chronograph. p. 309,) have slightly mentioned this last attempt for the relief of Africa. Pagi (Critica, tom. iii. p. 129, 141) has nicely ascertained the chronology by a strict comparison of the Arabic and Byzantine historians, who often disagree both in time and fact. See likewise a note of Otter, (p. 121.)

158 Dove s'erano ridotti i nobili Romani e i Gotti; and afterwards, i Romani suggirono e i Gotti, lasciarono Carthagine, (Leo African. fol. 72, recto.) I know not from what Arabic writer the African derived

religion of the Spanish monarch. The weight of the con federate 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 159 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 re

mained of Carthage was delivered to the flames, and the col ony of Dido 160 and Cæsar lay desolate above two hundred years, till a part, perhaps a twentieth, of the old circumfer ence 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 stu dents, twenty-five or thirty shops, and the huts of five hun dred peasants, who, in their abject poverty, displayed the ar rogance 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

his Goths; but the fact, though new, is so interesting and so proba. ble, that I will accept it on the slightest authority.

159 This commander is styled by Nicephorus Βασιλεύς Σαρακήνων a vague though not improper definition of the caliph. Theophanes introduces the strange appellation of ПowroovμBodos, which his inter preter Goar explains by Vizir Azem. They may approach the truth, in assigning the active part to the minister, rather than the prince; but they forget that the Ommiades had only a kateb, or secretary, and that the office of Vizier was not revived or instituted till the 132d year of the Hegira, (D'Herhelot, p. 912.)

160 According to Solinus (1. 27, p. 36, edit. Salmas.) the Carthage of Dido stood either 677 or 737 years; a various reading, which proceeds from the difference of MSS. or editions, (Salmas. Plin. Exercit. tom. i. p. 228.) The former of these accounts, which gives 823 years before Christ, is more consistent with the well-weighed testimony of Velleius Paterculus; but the latter is preferred by our chronologist, 'Marsham, Canon. Chron. p. 398,) as more agreeable to the Hebrew and Tyrian annals.

some broken arches of an aqueduct did not guide the footsteps of the inquisitive traveller.161

The Greeks were expelled, but the Arabians were not ye masters of the country. In the interior provinces the Moors or Berbers, 162 so feeble under the first Caesars, 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

161 Leo African. fol. 71, verso; 72, recto. Marmol, tom. ii. p. 445 -447. Shaw, p. 80.

162 The history of the word Barbar may be classed under four periods. 1. In the time of Homer, when the Greeks and Asiatics might probably use a common idiom, the imitative sound of Barbar was applied to the ruder tribes, whose pronunciation was most harsh, whose grammar was most defective. Kas Bugßagiywrot, (Iliad, ii. 367, with the Oxford Scholiast, Clarke's Annotation, and Henry Stephens's Greek Thesaurus, tom. i. p. 720.) 2. From the time, at least, of Herodotus, it was extended to all the nations who were strangers to the language and manners of the Greeks. 3. In the age of Plautus, the Romans submitted to the insult, (Pompeius Festus, 1. ii. p. 48, edit. Dacier,) and freely gave themselves the name of Barbarians. They insensibly claimed an exemption for Italy, and her subject provinces; and at length removed the disgraceful appellation to the savage or hostile nations beyond the pale of the empire. 4. In every sense it was due to the Moors: the familiar word was borrowed from the Latin provincials by the Arabian conquerors, and has justly settled as a local denomination (Barbary) along the northern coas' of A frica.

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 mod. ern 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 *o 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 will not deny that fifty thousand tents of pure Arabians