CHAP. arch, a portico, and three temples of the Corinthian order,

curiosity may yet admire the magnificence of the Ro-
mans.143 After the fall of this opulent city, the provincials
and Barbarians implored on all sides the mercy of the con-
queror. 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 cap-
tives and the wealth of their African expedition. The caliph's
fifth was granted to a favourite, 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 claim-
ed 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 valour and modesty of that gal-
lant 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 laboured 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 honourable
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 inter-
esting narrative of Zobeir; and, as the orator forgot no-
thing except the merit of his own counsels and actions, the
name of Abdallah was joined by the Arabians with the he-
roic names of Caled and Amrou.145

cens in

A.D.

The western conquests of the Saracens were suspended CHAP.

LI. near twenty years, till their dissentions were composed by the establishment of the house of Ommiyah: and the caliph

Progress of Moawiyah was invited by the cries of the Africans them- the Saraselves. The successors of Heraclius had been informed of Africa, - the tribute which they had been compelled to stipulate with

665...689. 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 pow. er, 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 adventurers of Syria and Egypt.146 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 inten rior 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;147 and a circumference of three leagues will be justified by the ruins of Erbe or Lambesa, the ancient metropolis of that inland country. As we approach the sea

а

146 Theophanes (in Chronograph p. 293.) inserts the vague rumours that might reach Constantinople, of the western conquests of the Arabs; and I learn from Paul Warnefrid, deacon of Aquileia (de Gestis Langobard. I. v. c. 13), that at this time they sent a fleet from Alexandria into the Sicilian and African seas.

147 See Novairi (apud Otter, p. 118), Leo Africanus (fol. 81. verso ), who reckons only cinque citta è infinite casal, Marmol (Description de l'Afrique, tom. ïi. p. 33), and Shaw (Travels, p. 57.65...68). VOL. VI.

3 C

LI.

CHAP. coast, the well-known cities of Bugia,"48 and Tangier149 de

fine the more certain limits of the Saracen victories. A remnant of trade still adheres to the commodious harbour 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 province of Mauritania Tingitana, 150 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,151 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, 152 and at

LI.

length penetrated to the verge of the Atlantic and the great CHAP. desart. The river Sus descends from the western sides of mount Atlas, fertilises, like the Nile, the adjacent soil, and falls into the sea at a moderate distance from the Ganary, 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 richest 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 the 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, preach“ ing the unity of thy holy name, and putting to the sword “the rebellious nations who worship any other gods than " thee."153 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 honourable 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 dan. ger, 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 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;

153 Orter (p. 119.) has given the strong tone of fanaticism to this exclama. tion, which Cardonne (p. 37) has softened to a pious wish of preaching the Koran. Yet they had both the same text of Novairi before their eyes.

a

A.

CHAP. he was overthrown by a powerful army, which ConstantiLI.

nople had sent to the relief of Carthage. Foundation

It had heen the frequent practice of the Moorish tribes to of Cairoan, join the invaders, to share the plunder, to profess the faith, 670.675 and to revolt to their savage state of independence and ido

latry, 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 Sa. racens. 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 54 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 surrounded with a sufficient number of private habitations; a spacious mosch was supported by five hundred columns of granite, porphyry, and Numi. dian 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.