don with an offering of two hundred thousand pieces of gold The remainder of the province, Ramlah, Ptolemais or Acre, 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 scep tre of the caliphs seven hundred years after Pompey had despoiled the last of the Macedonian kings.90

The sieges and battles of six campaigns had consumed many thousands of the Moslems. They died with the reptation and the cheerfulness of martyrs; and the simplicity 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 favor 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 fountains 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 apostasy and damnation of a son, who had renounced the promises of God, and the intercession of the prophet, to occupy, with the priests and deacons, the lowest mansions of hell. The more fortunate Arabs, who survived the war ana persevered in the faith, were restrained by their abstemious leader from the abuse of prosperity. After a refreshment of

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.

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 heir patrimony, (see the original texts collected by Usher, Annal. p

three days, Abu Obeidah 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 labor. But the virtue of Omar, however rigorous to himself, was kind and liberal to his brethren. After a just tribute of praise and thanksgiv ing, he dropped 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 res themselves, and partake freely of those good things which the country affordeth. If any of the Saracens have no family 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 twentyfive thousand Saracens were snatched away from the posses sion 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.91 Caled survived his brethren about three years; and the tomb of the Sword of God is shown in the neighborhood of Emesa. His valor, 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 deemed himself invulnerable amidst the darts of the infidels.*

The place of the first conquerors was supplied by a new generation of their children and countrymen: Syria became

"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 accepted by the divine justice, (Ockley, vol. i. p. 221.)

Khaled, according to the Rouzont Uzzuffa, (Price, p. 90,) after having been deprived of his ample share of the plunder of Syria by the jealousy of Omar, died, possessed only of his horse, his arms, and a single slave. Yet Omar was obliged to acknowledge to his lamenting parent, that never mother had produced a son like Khaled.-M.

the seat and support of the house of Ommiyah; and the revenue, the soldiers, the ships of that powerful kingdom were consecrated to enlarge on every side the empire of the caliphs. But the Saracens despise a superfluity of fame; and their historians scarcely condescend to mention the subordi. nate conquests which are lost in the splendor and rapidity of their victorious career. To the north of Syria, they passed Mount Taurus, and reduced to their obedience the province of Cilicia, with its capital Tarsus, the ancient monument of the Assyrian kings. Beyond a second ridge of the same mountains, they spread the flame of war, rather than the light of religion, as far as the shores of the Euxine and the neigh borhood of Constantinople. To the east they advanced to the banks and sources of the Euphrates and Tigris: 92 the longdisputed barrier of Rome and Persia was forever confounded; the walls of Edessa and Amida, of Dara and Nisibis, which had resisted the arms and engines of Sapor or Nushirvan, were levelled in the dust; and the holy city of Abgarus might vainly produce the epistle or the image of Christ to an unbe lieving conqueror. To the west the Syrian kingdom is bounded by the sea and the ruin of Aradus, a small island or peninsula on the coast, was postponed during ten years. But the hills of Libanus abounded in timber; the trade of Phoenicia was populous in mariners; and a fleet of seventeen hundred barks was equipped and manned by the natives of the desert. The Imperial navy of the Romans fled before them from the Pamphylian rocks to the Hellespont; but the spirit of the einperor, a grandson of Heraclius, had been subdued before the combat by a dream and a pun.93 The Saracens rode

92 Al Wakidi had likewise written a history of the conquest of Diarbekir, or Mesopotamia, (Ockley, at the end of the iid vol.,) which o ir interpreters do not appear to have seen. The Chronicle of Dionysi is of Telmar, the Jacobite patriarch, records the taking of Edessa A. D. 637, and of Dara A. D. 641, (Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii. p. 103;) and the attentive may glean some doubtful information from the Chronography of Theophanes, (p. 285-287.) Most of the towns of Mesopotamia yielded by surrender, (Abulpharag. p. 112.)

93 He dreamt that he was at Thessalonica, a harmless and unmeaning vision; but his soothsayer, or his cowardice, understood the sure oinen of a defeat concealed in that inauspicious word 91; àààÿ vízyn

It has been published in Arabic by M. Ewald, St. Martin, vel xi 9288; aut its authenticity is lo abted. - M.

masters of the sea; and the islands of Cyprus, Rhodes, and the Cyclades, were successively exposed to their rapacious visits. Three hundred years before the Christian era, the memorable though fruitless siege of Rhodes 94 by Demetrius had furnished that maritime republic with the materials and the subject of a trophy. A gigantic statue of Apollo, or the sun, seventy cubits in height, was erected at the entrance of the harbor, a monument of the freedom and the arts of Greece. After standing fifty-six years, the colossus of Rhodes was overthrown by an earthquake; but the massy trunk, and huge fragments, lay scattered eight centuries on the ground, and are often described as one of the wonders of the ancient world. They were collected by the diligence of the Saracens, and sold to a Jewish merchant of Edessa, who is said to have laden nine hundred camels with the weight of the brass metal ; an enormous weight, though we should include the hundred colossal figures,95 and the three thousand statues, which adorned the prosperity of the city of the sun.

II. The conquest of Egypt may be explained by the character of the victorious Saracen, one of the first of his nation, in an age when the meanest of the brethren was exalted above his nature by the spirit of enthusiasm. The birth of Amrou was at once base and illustrious; his mother, a notorious prostitute, was unable to decide among five of the Koreish; but the proof of resemblance adjudged the child to Aasi, the oldest of her lovers.96 The youth of Amrou was impelled by the passions and prejudices of his kindred his poetic genius was exercised in satirical verses against the person and doctrine of Mahomet; his dexterity was employed by the

Give to another the victory, (Theoph. p. 286. Zonaras, tom. ii. l. xiv. p. 88.)

94 Every passage and every fact that relates to the isle, the city, and the colossus of Rhodes, are compiled in the laborious treatise of Meursius, who has bestowed the same diligence on the two larger islands of the Crete and Cyprus. See, in the iiid vol. of his works, ti Rhodus of Meursius, (1. i. c. 15, p. 715-719.) The Byzantine writer, Theophanes and Constantine, have ignorantly prolonged the term to 1360 years, and ridiculously divide the weight among 30,000 camels. 95 Čentum colossi alium nobilitaturi locum, says Pliny, with his sual spirit. Hist. Natur. xxxiv. 18.

96 We learn this anecdote from a spirited old woman, who reviled o their faces the caliph and his friend. She was encouraged by the alence of Amrou and the liber ility of Moawiyah, (Abulfeda, Annal Moslerc. p 111.)

reigning faction to pursue the religious exiles who had taken refuge in the court of the Ethiopian king." Yet he returned from his embassy a secret proselyte; his reason or his interest determined him to renounce the worship of idols; he escaped from Mecca with his friend Caled; and the prophet of Medina enjoyed at the same moment the satisfaction of embracing the two firmest champions of his cause. The impatience of Amrou to lead the armies of the faithful was checked by the reproof of Omar, who advised him not to seek power and dominion, since he who is a subject to-day, may be a prince to-morrow. Yet his merit was not overlooked by the two first successors of Mahomet; they were indebted to his arms for the conquest of Palestine; and in all the battles and sieges of Syria, he united with the temper of a chief the valor of an adventurous soldier. In a visit to Medina, the caliph expressed a wish to survey the sword which had cut down so many Christian warriors; the son of Aasi unsheathed a short and ordinary cimeter; and as he perceived the surprise of Omar, "Alas," said the modest Saracen, "the sword itself, without the arm of its master, is neither sharper nor more weighty than the sword of Pharezdak the poet." After the conquest of Egypt, he was recalled by the jealousy of the caliph Othman; but in the subsequent troubles, the ambition of a soldier, a statesman, and an orator, emerged from a private station. His powerful support, both in council and in the field, established the throne of the Ommiades; the administration and revenue of Egypt were restored by the gratitude of Moawiyah to a faithful friend who had raised himself above the rank of a subject; and Amrou ended his days in the palace and city which he had founded on the banks of the Nile. His dying speech to his children is celebrated by the Arabians as a model of eloquence and wisdom: he deplored the errors of his youth; but if the penitent was still infected by the vanity of a poet, he might exaggerate the venom,and mischief of his impious compositions.99

99 98

"Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. ii. p. 46, &c., who quotes the Abyssinian history, or romance of Abdel Balcides. Yet the fact of the embassy and ambassador may be allowed.

98 This saying is preserved by Pocock, (Not. ad Carmen Tograi. p. 184,) and justly applauded by Mr. Harris, (Philosophical Arrange. ments, p. 350.)

For the life and character of Amrou, see Ockley (Hist. of the Saracens, vol. i. p. 28, 63, 94, 328, 342, 344, and to the end of the