Egyp., a considerable force was collected in the Island of Delta; the natural and artificial channels of the Nile afforded a succession of strong and defensible posts; and the road tc Alexandria was laboriously cleared by the victory of the Sar acens in two-and-twenty days of general or partial combat. In their annals of conquest, the siege of Alexandria 111 is perhaps the most arduous and important enterprise. The first trading city in the world was abundantly replenished with the means of subsistence and defence. Her numerous inhabitants fought for the dearest of human rights, religion and property; and the enmity of the natives seemed to exclude them from the common benefit of peace and toleration. The sea was continually open; and if Heraclius had been awake to the public distress, fresh armies of Romans and Barbarians might have been poured into the harbor to save the second capital of the empire. A circumference of ten miles would have scattered the forces of the Greeks, and favored the strat agems of an active enemy; but the two sides of an oblong square were covered by the sea and the Lake Maræotis, and each of the narrow ends exposed a front of no more than ten furlongs. The efforts of the Arabs were not inadequate to the difficulty of the attempt and the value of the prize. From the throne of Medina, the eyes of Omar were fixed on the camp and city: his voice excited to arms the Arabian tribes and the veterans of Syria; and the merit of a holy war was recommended by the peculiar fame and fertility of Egypt. Anxious for the ruin or expulsion of their tyrants, the faithful natives devoted their labors to the service of Amrou some sparks of martial spirit were perhaps rekindled by the example of their allies; and the sanguine hopes of Mokawkas had fixed his sepulchre in the church of St. Johr. of Alexandria. Eutychius the patriarch observes, that the Saracens fought with the courage of lions: they repulsed the frequent and almost daily sallies of the besieged, and soon assaulted in their turn the walls and towers of the city. In every attack, the sword, the banner of Amrou, glittered in

The local description of Alexandria is perfectly ascertained by the master hand of the first of geographers, (D’Anville, Mémoire sur l'Egypte, p. 52—63;) but we may borrow the eyes of the modern travellers, more especially of Thevenot, (Voyage au Levant, part i. p. 381-395,) Pocock, (vol. i. p. 2-13,) and Niebuhr, (Voyage en Arabie, tom. i. p. 34-43.) Of the two modern rivals Savary and Volney, the one may amuse, the other will instruct

the van of the Moslems On a memorable day, he was be. trayed by his imprudent valor: his followers who had entered the citadel were driven back; and the general, with a friend and a slave, remained a prisoner in the hands of the Christians. When Amrou was conducted before the præfect he remembered his dignity, and forgot his situation: a lofty demeanor, and resolute language, revealed the lieutenant of the caliph, and the battle-axe of a soldier was already raised to strike off the head of the audacious captive. His life was saved by the readiness of his slave, who instantly gave his master a blow on the face, and commanded him, with an angry tone, to be silent in the presence of his superiors. The cred ulous Greek was deceived: he listened to the offer of a treaty, and his prisoners were dismissed in the hope of a more respectable embassy, till the joyful acclamations of the camp announced the return of their general, and insulted the folly of the infidels. At length, after a siege of fourteen months,112 and the loss of three-and-twenty thousand men, the Saracens prevailed: the Greeks embarked their dispirited and dimin ished numbers, and the standard of Mahomet was planted on the walls of the capital of Egypt. "I have taken," said Amrou to the caliph," the great city of the West. It is imFossible for me to enumerate the variety of its riches and beauty; and I shall content myself with observing, that it contains four thousand palaces, four thousand baths, four 'undred theatres or places of amusement, twelve thousand shops for the sale of vegetable food, and forty thousand trib. utary Jews. The town has been subdued by force of arms, without treaty or capitulation, and the Moslems are impatient to seize the fruits of their victory." 113 The commander of the faithful rejected with firmness the idea of pillage, and directed his lieutenant to reserve the wealth and revenue of

112 Both Eutychius (Annal. tom. ii. p. 319) and Elmacin (Hist. Saracen. p. 28) concur in fixing the taking of Alexandria to Friday of the new moon of Moharram of the twentieth year of the Hegira, (December 22, A. D. 640.) In reckoning backwards fourteen months spent before Alexandria, seven months before Babylon, &c., Amrou might have invaded Egypt about the end of the year 638; but we are assured that he entered the country the 12th of Bayni, 6th of June, 'Murtadi, Merveilles de l'Egypte, p. 164. Severus, apud Renaudot, p. 162.) The Saracen, and afterwards Lewis IX. of France, halted at Pelusium, or Damietta, during the season of the inundation of the Nile.

18 Eutvch. Aunal tom. H. p. 310, 31.

Alexandria for the public service and the propagation of the faith: the inhabitants were numbered; a tribute was imposed the zeal and resentment of the Jacobites were curbed, and the Melchites who submitted to the Arabian yoke were indged in the obscure but tranquil exercise of their worship. The intelligence of this disgraceful and calamitous event afflicted the declining health of the emperor; and Heraclius died of a dropsy about seven weeks after the loss of Alexandria 114 Under the minority of his grandson, the clamors of a people, deprived of their daily sustenance, compelled the Byzantine court to undertake the recovery of the capital of Egypt. In the space of four years, the harbor and fortifications of Alexandria were twice occupied by a fleet and army of Romans. They were twice expelled by the valor of Amrou, who was recalled by the domestic peril from the distant wars of Tripoli and Nubia. But the facility of the attempt, the repetition of the insult, and the obstinacy of the resistance, provoked him to swear, that if a third time he drove the infidels into the sea, he would render Alexandria as accessible on all sides as the house of a prostitute. Faithful to his promise, he dismantled several parts of the walls and towers; but the people was spared in the chastisement of the city, and the mosch of Mercy was erected on the spot where the victorious general had stopped the fury of his troops.

I should deceive the expectation of the reader, if I passed in silence the fate of the Alexandrian library, as it is described by the learned Abulpharagius. The spirit of Amrou was more curious and liberal than that of his brethren, and in his leisure hours, the Arabian chief was pleased with the conversation of John, the last disciple of Ammonius, and who derived the surname of Philoponus from his laborious studies of grammar and philosophy.115 Emboldened by this familiar

114 Notwithstanding some inconsistencies of Theophanes and Cedrenus, the accuracy of Pagi (Critica, tom. ii. p. 824) has extracted from Nicephorus and the Chronicon Orientale the true date of the death of Heraclius, February 11th, A. D. 641, fifty days after the loss of Alexandria. A fourth of that time was sufficient to convey the intelligence.

115 Many treatises of this lover of labor (viónovos) are still extant; but for readers of the present age, the printed and unpublished are nearly in the same predicament. Moses and Aristotle are the chict objects of his verbose commentaries, one of which is dated as early as May 10tn, A. D. 617, (Fabric. Bibliot. Græc. tom. ix. p. 458–468.) A modern, (John Le Clerc,) who sometimes assumed the same name,

intercourse, Philoponus presumed to solicit a gift, inestimable in his opinion, contemptible in that of the Barbarians — the royal library, which alone, among the spoils of Alexandria had not been appropriated by the visit and the seal of the conqueror. Amrou was inclined to gratify the wish of the grammarian, but his rigid integrity refused to alienate the minutest object without the consent of the caliph ; and the well-known answer of Omar was inspired by the ignorance of a fanatic. "If these writings of the Greeks agree with the book of God, they are useless, and need not be preserved. if they disagree, they are pernicious, and ought to be de stroyed." The sentence was executed with blind obedience the volumes of paper or parchment were distributed to the four thousand baths of the city; and such was their incredible multitude, that six months were barely sufficient for the consumption of this precious fuel. Since the Dynasties of Abulpharagius 116 have been given to the world in a Latin version, the tale has been repeatedly transcribed; and every scholar, with pious indignation, has deplored the irreparable shipwreck of the learning, the arts, and the genius, of antiquity. For my own part, I am strongly tempted to deny both the fact and the consequences.* The fact is indeed marvellous. "Read and wonder!" says the historian himself: and

was equal to old Philoponus in diligence, and far superior in good sense and real knowledge.

Audi quid factum

116 Abulpharag. Dynast. p. 114, vers. Pocock. sit et mirare. It would be endless to enumerate the moderns who have wondered and believed, but I may distinguish with honor the rational scepticism of Renaudot, (Hist. Aiex. Patriarch. p. 170 :) historia... habet aliquid aлurov ut Arabibus familiare est.

Since this period several new Mahometan authorities have been adduced to support the authority of Abulpharagius. That of, I. Abdollatiph, by Professor White: II. Of Makrizi; I have seen a MS. extract from this writer: III. Of Ibn Chaledun: and after them Hadschi Chalfa. See Von Hammer, Geschichte der Assassinen, p. 17. Reinhard, in a German Dissertation, printed at Göttingen, 1792, and St. Croix, (Magasin Encyclop tom. iv. p. 433,) have examined the question. Among Oriental scholars, Professor White, M. St. Martin, Von Hammer, and Silv. de Sacy, consider the fact of the burning the library, by the command of Omar, beyond question. Compare St. Martin's note, vol. xi. p. 296. A Mahometan writer brings a similar charge against the Crusaders. The library of Trip oli is said to have contained the incredible number of three millions of volumes. On the capture of the city, Count Bertram of St. Giles, er ter ing the first room, which contained nothing but the Koran, ordered the whole to be burnt, as the works of the false prophet of Arabia. Sce Wil-. te Gesch. der Kreuzzüge, vol. ii. p. 211.-M.

the so itary report of a stranger who wrote at the end of six hundred years on the confines of Media, is overbalanced by he silence of two annausts of a more early date, both Chris. ians, both natives of Egypt, and the most ancient of whom, the patriarch Eutychius, has amply described the conquest of Alexandria.117 The rigid sentence of Omar is repugnant to the sound and orthodox precept of the Mahometan casuists: they expressly declare, that the religious books of the Jews and Christians, which are acquired by the right of war, should never be committed to the flames; and that the works of profane science, historians or poets, physicians or philosophers, may be lawfully applied to the use of the faithful.118 A more destructive zeal may perhaps be attributed to the first successors of Mahomet; yet in this instance, the conflagration would have speedily expired in the deficiency of materials I shall not recapitulate the disasters of the Alexandrian libra ry, the involuntary flame that was kindled by Cæsar in his own defence,119 or the mischievous bigotry of the Christians, who studied to destroy the monuments of idolatry. 120 But if we gradually descend from the age of the Antonines to that of Theodosius, we shall learn from a chain of contemporary witnesses, that the royal palace and the temple of Serapis no longer contained the four, or the seven, hundred thousand volumes, which had been assembled by the curiosity and magnificence of the Ptolemies.121 Perhaps the church and

117 This curious anecdote will be vainly sought in the annals of Eutychius, and the Saracenic history of Elmacin. The silence of Abulfeda, Murtadi, and a crowd of Moslems, is less conclusive, from their ignorance of Christian literature.

118 See Reland, de Jure Militari Mohammedanorum, in his iiid volume of Dissertations, p. 37. The reason for not burning the religious books of the Jews or Christians, is derived from the respect that is due to the name of God.

119 Consult the collections of Frensheim (Supplement. Livian, c. 12, 43) and Usher, (Anal. p. 469.) Livy himself had styled the Alexandrian library, elegantiæ regum curæque egregium opus; a liberal encomium, for which he is pertly criticized by the narrow stoicism of Seneca, (De Tranquillitate Animi, c. 9,) whose wisdom, on this occasion, deviates into nonsense.

120 See this History, vol. iii. p. 146.

19 Aulus Gellius, (Noctes Atticæ, vi. 17,) Ammianus Marcellinus, (xx. 16,) and Orosius, (1. vi. c. 15.) They all speak in the past tense, and the words of Ammianus are remarkably strong: fuerunt Bibliothecæ innumerabiles; et loquitur monumentorum veterum con, inens Bides, &c