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a mile could not seduce the vigilance of Youkinna ; nor CHAP. 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 differ

ence 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 centinels; and the thirty brethren, repeating a pious ejaculation, “O apostle of God, help and " deliver us!” were successively drawn up by the long folds

CHAP. of their turbans. With bold and cautious footsteps, Dames LI.

explored the palace of the governor, who celebrated, in riots ous 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 honourable 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 86 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 in 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 se

condary rank of a provincial town.87 Flight of In the life of Heraclius, the glories of the Persian war Heraclius, A. D. 638. 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 his hasty departure from the scene of action ; but the hero was CHAP. no more ; and the loss of Damascus and Jerusalem, the

LI. 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 so th the troops of Antioch and Jerusalem advanced along the sea shore, till their banners were joined under the walls of the Phænician cities: Tripoli and Tyre were betrayed; and a fleet of fifty trans-End of the

Syrian war. ports, which entered without distrust the captive harbours,

88

88 See Ockley (vol. i. p. 308. 312), who laughs at the credulity of his author. When Heraclius bade farewell to Syria, Vale Syria et ultimum vale, he prophesied that the Romans should never re-enter the province till the birth of an inauspicious child, the future scourge of the empire. Abulfeda, p. 68. I am perfectly ignorant of the mystic sense, or nonsense, of this prediction.

VOL. VI.

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90

The con

CHAP. brought a seasonable supply of arms and provisions to the

camp of the Saracens. Their labours were terminated by the unexpected surrender of Cæsarea: the Roman prince had embarked in the night; 89 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 Achre, 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.

The sieges and battles of six campaigns had consumed querors of. Syria,

many thousands of the Moslems. They died with the repuA. D. tation and the cheerfulness of martyrs; and the simplicity 633...639.

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 fa

vour 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 foun“tains 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 apostacy and damnation of a

ܪ

89 In the loose and obscure chronology of the times, I am guided by an au. thentic record (in the book of ceremonies of Constantine Porphyrogenitus), which certifies that, June 4, A. D. 638, the emperor crowned his younger son Heraclius in the presence of his eldest Constantine, and in the palace of Constantinople ; that January 1, A. D. 639, the royal procession visited the great church, and on the 4th of the same month, the hippodrome.

90 Sixty-five years before Christ, Syria Pontusque monumenta sunt Cn. Pompeii virtutis (Vell. Patercul. ii. 38), rather of his fortune and power: he adjudged Syria to be a Roman province, and the last of the Seleucides were incapable of drawing a sword in the defence of their patrimony (see the originai texts collected by Usher, Annal. p. 420).

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son, who had renounced the promises of God, and the in- CHAP. tercession 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 Obei. dah 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 labour. 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 dropt 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 fa“mily 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 shewn in the neighbourhood of Emesa. His valour, 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 deem. ed himself invulnerable amidst the darts of the infidels.

The place of the first conquerors was supplied by a new

91 Abulfeda, Annal. Moslem. p. 73. Mahomet could artfully vary the praises of his disciples. Of Omar he was accustomed to say that if a prophet could arise after himself, it would be Omar; and that in a general calamity, Omar would be excepted by the divine justice (Ockley, vol. i. p. 221).