LI

hour of danger, the grateful Akbah unlocked his CHA P. fetters, and advised him to retire; he chose to die under the banner of his rival. Embracing as friends and martyrs, they unsheathed their scymetars, 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.

tion of

A. D.

670-675.

It had been the frequent practice of the Moorish Foundatribes to join the invaders, to share the plunder, Cairoan, 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 its present decay, Cairoan * still holds the second rank in the kingdom of Tunis, from which it is distant about fifty miles

* 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.)

TAY

CHA P. miles to the south; its inland situation, twelve miles westward of the sea, has protected the city prestward

LI

D9 to

from the Greek and Sicilian fleets. When the Compuo) wild beasts and serpents were extirpated, when the forest, or rather wilderness, was cleared, the vesAtiges 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 gover-1 nor'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 i 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

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

lion with the subtlety of the fox; but if he inhe- c HA P. rited the courage, he was devoid of the generosity

of his father *.

LI.

Conquest

thage,

· The return of domestic peace allowed the ca- of Carliph Abdalmalek to resume the conquest of Africa; A. D. the standard was delivered to Hassan governor of 692–698. 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 scalingladders may justify the suspicion that he anticipated, by a sudden assault, the more tedious operations of a regular siege. But the joy of the conquerors was soon disturbed by the appearance of the Christian succours. The præfect and patrician John, a general of experience and renown, embarked at Constantinople the forces of the Eastern empire t; they were joined by the ships

Besides the Arabic chronicles of Abulfeda, Elmacin, and Abulpharagius, under the seventy-third 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 not forgot a physical effect of her grief for his death, the return, at the age of ninety, and fatal consequences,

of her menses.

† Λεοντιος. . . . απαντα τα Ραμαίκα εξωπλισε πλοίμα, σρατηγον αυτοις Ιωάννην τον Πατρικιον εμπείρον των πολεμίων προχειρισα

τι επι

μενος

LI..

1

CHA P. and soldiers of Sicily, and a powerful reinforcement 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 harbour; the Arabs retired to Cairoan, or Tripoli; the Christians landed; the citizens hailed the ensign of the cross, and the winter was idly wasted in the dream of victory or deliverance. But Africa was irrecoverably lost: The zeal and resentment of the commander of the 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 neighbourhood of Utica: The Greeks and Goths were again defeated; and their timely embarkation saved them from the sword of Hassan,

*

Mi who

μενος προς Καρχηδόνα κατα των Σαρακηνων εξέπεμψεν. Nicephori 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.)

* Doves' 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 his Goths; but the fact, though new, is so interesting and so probable, that I will accept it on the slightest authority.

This commander is stiled by Nicephorus Barthaus Zagaxevar, a vague though not improper definition of the caliph. Theophanes introduces the strange appellation of Προτοσύμβολος, which his interpreter Goar explains by Vizir Azem. They may approach the truth, in assigning the active part to the minister, rather than the prince; but they forgot that the Ommiades had only a kateb, or secretary, and that the office of Vizir was not revived or instituted till the 132d year of the Hegira, (d'Herbelot, p. 912.)

who had invested the slight, and insufficient ram- CHA P. part of their camp. Whatever yet remained of LI. 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 Final conwere not yet masters of the country. In the in- quest of Africa, terior provinces, the Moors or Berbers ‡, so feeble A. D.

under

* 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. Plinian. 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 chronologists, (Marsham, Canon. Chron. p. 398.) as more agreeable to the Hebrew and Tyrian annals.

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

The history of the word Barbor may be classed under four periods. 1. In the time of Homer, when the Greeks and Asiatics

698-709.