A. D. 749.

A. D. 837.

A. D. 1053-1076.

a

a lieutenant of Africa informed the caliph that the tribute of the infidels was abolished by their conversion," and, though he sought to disguise his fraud and rebellion, his specious pretence was drawn from the rapid and extensive progress of the Mahometan faith. In the next age, an extraordinary mission of five bishops was detached from Alexandria to Cairoan. They were ordained by the Jacobite patriarch to cherish and revive the dying embers of christianity: " but the interposition of a foreign prelate, a stranger to the Latins, an enemy to the catholics, supposes the decay and dissolution of the African hierarchy. It was no longer the time when the successor of St. Cyprian, at the head of a numerous synod, could maintain an equal contest with the ambition of the Roman pontiff. In the eleventh century, the unfortunate priest who was seated on the ruins of Carthage, implored the alms and the protection of the Vatican; and he bitterly complains that his naked body had been scourged by the Saracens, and that his authority was disputed by the four suffragans, the tottering pillars of his throne. Two epistles of Gregory the seventh are destined to soothe the distress of the catholics and the pride of a Moorish prince. The pope assures the sultan that they both worship the same God, and may hope to meet in the bosom of Abraham; but the complaint, that three bishops could no longer be found to consecrate a brother, announces the speedy and inevitable ruin of the episcopal order. The christians of Africa and and Spain, A. D. 1149, &c. Spain had long since submitted to the practice of circumcision and the legal abstinence from wine and pork; and the name of Mozarabese (adoptive Arabs) was applied to their civil or religious conformity. About the middle of the twelfth century the worship of Christ and the succession of pastors were abolished along the coast of Barbary, and in the kingdoms of Cordova and Seville, of Valencia and Grenada. The throne of the Almohades, or Unitarians, was founded on the blindest fanaticism, and their extrordinary rigour might be

The letter of Abdoulrahman, governor or tyrant of Africa, to the caliph Aboul Abbas, the first of the Abbassides, is dated A. H. 132. (Cardonne, Hist. de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne, tom. i. p. 168.)

a Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 66. Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 287, 288.

b Among the Epistles of the Popes, see Leo IX. epist. 3. Gregor. VII. I. i. epist. 22, 23. I. iii. epist. 19, 20, 21; and the criticisms of Pagi, (tom. iv. A. D. 1053, No. 14. A. D. 1073, No. 13.) who investigates the name and family of the Moorish prince, with whom the proudest of the Roman pontiffs so politely corresponds.

Mozarabes, or Mostarabes, adscititii, as it is interpreted in Latin. (Pocock, Specimen Hist. Arabum, p. 39, 40. Bibliot. Arabico-Hispana, tom. ii. p. 18.) The Mozarabic liturgy, the ancient ritual of the church of Toledo, has been attacked by the popes, and exposed to the doubt. ful trials of the sword and of fire. (Marian. Hist. Hispan. tom. i. 1. ix. c. 18. p. 378.) It was, or rather it is, in the Latin tongue; yet in the eleventh century it was found necessary (A. Æ. C. 1687. A. D. 1039.) to transcribe an Arabic version of the canons of the councils of Spain, (Bibliot. Arab. Hist. tom. i. p. 547.) for the use of the bishops and clergy in the Moorish kingdoms.

d About the middle of the tenth century, the clergy of Cordova_was reproached with this criminal compliance, by the intrepid envoy of the emperor Otho I. (Vit. Johan, Gorz, in Secul. Benedict. V. No. 115. apud Fleury, Hist. Eccles, tom. xii. p. 91.)

e Pagi, Critica, tom. iv. A. D. 1149, No. 8, 9. He justly observes, that when Seville, &c. were retaken by Ferdinand of Castille, no chris. tians, except captives, were found in the place; and that the

tolerant zeal of the princes of Sicily and Castille, of Arragon and Portugal. The faith of the Mozarabes was occasionally revived by the A. D. 1535. papal missionaries; and, on the landing of Charles the fifth, some families of Latin christians were encouraged to rear their heads at Tunis and Algiers. But the seed of the gospel was quickly eradicated, and the long province from Tripoli to the Atlantic has lost all memory of the language and religion of Rome.

After the revolution of eleven cen- Toleration of turies, the Jews and christians of the the christians. Turkish empire enjoy the liberty of conscience which was granted by the Arabian caliphs. During the first age of the conquest, they suspected the loyalty of the catholics, whose name of Melchites betrayed their secret attachment to the Greek emperor, while the Nestorians and Jacobites, his inveterate enemies, approved themselves the sincere and voluntary friends of the Mahometan government.s Yet this partial jealousy was healed by time and submission: the churches of Egypt were shared with the catholics; and all the oriental sects were included in the common benefits of toleration. The rank, the immunities, the domestic jurisdiction, of the patriarchs, the bishops, and the clergy, were protected by the civil magistrate: the learning of individuals recommended them to the employments of secretaries and physicians: they were enriched by the lucrative collection of the revenue: and their merit was sometimes raised to the command of cities and provinces. A caliph of the house of Abbas was heard to declare that the christians were most worthy of trust in the administration of Persia. "The Moslems," said he, "will abuse their present fortune; the Magians regret their fallen greatness; and the Jews are impatient for their approaching deliverance." But the slaves of desTheir hardships. potism are exposed to the alternatives of favour and disgrace. The captive churches of the east have been afflicted in every age by the avarice or bigotry of their rulers; and the ordinary and legal restraints must be offensive to the pride, or the zeal, of the christians.k About two hundred Mozarabic churches of Africa and Spain, described by James à Vitriaco, A. D. 1218, (Hist. Hierosol. c. 80. 1095. in Gest. Dei per Francos,) are copied from some older book. I shall add, that the date of the Hegira 677. (A. D. 1278.) must apply to the copy, not the composition, of a treatise of jurisprudence, which states the civil rights of the christians of Cordova, (Bibliot. Arab. Hist. tom. i. p. 471.) and that the Jews were the only dissenters whom Abul Waled, king of Grenada, (A. D. 1313.) could either discountenance or tolerate. (tom. ii. p. 288.)

f Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 288. Leo Africanus would have flattered his Roman masters, could he have discovered any latent relics of the christianity of Africa.

g Absit (said the catholic to the vizir of Bagdad) ut pari loco habeas Nestorianos, quorum præter Arabas nullus alius rex est, et Græcos quorum reges amovendo Arabibus bello non desistunt, &c. See in the Collections of Assemannus (Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. 94-101.) the state of the Nestorians under the caliphs. That of the Jacobites is more concisely exposed in the Preliminary Dissertation of the second volume of Assemannus.

b Eutych. Annal. tom. ii. p. 384. 387, 388. Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 205, 206 257. 332. A taint of the Monothelite heresy might render the first of these Greek patriarchs less loyal to the emperors and less obnoxious to the Arabs.

i Motadhed, who had reigned from A. D. 892-902. The Magians still held their name and rank among the religions of the empire. (Assemanni, Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. 97.)

k Reland explains the general restraints of the Mahometan policy

barrier of the empire, till they were disarmed and transplanted by the suspicious policy of the Greeks.' After the revolt of Arabia and Persia, the house of Ommiyah was reduced to the kingdoms of Syria and Egypt: their distress and fear enforced their compliance with the pressing demands of the christians; and the tribute was increased to a slave, a horse, and a thousand pieces of gold, for each of the three hundred and sixty-five days of the solar year. But as soon as the empire was again united by the arms and policy of Abdalmalek, he disclaimed a badge of servitude not less injurious to his conscience than to his pride; he discontinued the payment of the tribute; and the resentment of the Greeks was disabled from action by the mad tyranny of the second Justinian, the just rebellion of his subjects, and the frequent change of his antagonists and successors. Till the reign of Abdalmalek, the Saracens had been content with the free possession of the Persian and Roman treasures, in the coin of Chosroes and Cæsar. By the command of that caliph, a national mint was established, both for silver and gold; and the inscription of the dinar, though it might be censured by some timorous casuists, proclaimed the unity of the God of Mahomet.h Under the reign of the caliph | Walid, the Greek language and characters were excluded from the accounts of the public revenue.i If this change was productive of the invention or familiar use of our present numerals, the Arabic or Indian cyphers, as they are commonly styled, a regulation of office has promoted the most important discoveries of arithmetic, algebra, and the mathematical sciences.*

Whilst the caliph Walid sat idle on Second siege of Constantinople, the throne of Damascus, while his A. D. 716–718. lieutenants achieved the conquest of Transoxiana and Spain, a third army of Saracens overspread the provinces of Asia Minor, and approached the borders of the Byzantine capital. But the attempt and disgrace of the second siege was reserved for his brother Soliman, whose ambition appears to have been quickened by a more active and martial spirit. In the revolutions of the Greek empire, after the tyrant Justinia had been punished and avenged, an humble secretary, Anastasius or Artemius, was promoted by chance or merit to the vacant purple. He was

f The censure of Theophanes is just and pointed, την 'Ρωμαϊκήν δυναςείαν ακρωτηρίασας . . . . πανδεινα κακα πεπονθεν ἡ Ρωμανία TO TV Apaẞov μexрi тov vvv. (Chronograph. p. 302, 303.) The series of these events may be traced in the Annals of Theophanes, and in the Abridgment of the Patriarch Nicephorus, p. 22-24.

g These domestic revolutions are related in a clear and natural style, in the second volume of Ockley's History of the Saracens, p. 253-370. Besides our printed authors, he draws his materials from the Arabic MSS. of Oxford, which he would have more deeply searched, had he been confined to the Bodleian library instead of the city jail; a fate how unworthy of the man and of his country!

h Elmacin, who dates the first coinage A. H. 76. A. D. 695. five or six years later than the Greek historians, has compared the weight of the best or common gold dinar, to the drachm or dirhem of Egypt, (p. 77.) which may be equal to two pennies (48 grains) of our Troy weight, (Hooper's Inquiry into Ancient Measures, p. 24--36.) and equivalent to eight shillings of our sterling money. From the same Elmacin and the Arabian physicians, some dinars as high as two dirhems, as low as half a dirhem, may be deduced. The piece of silver was the dirhem, both in value and weight; but an old, though fair coin, struck at Waset, A. H. 88. and preserved in the Bodleian library, wants four

He

alarmed by the sound of war; and his ambassador returned from Damascus with the tremendous news, that the Saracens were preparing an armament by sea and land, such as would transcend the experience of the past, or the belief of the present, age. The precautions of Anastasius were not unworthy of his station, or of the impending danger. issued a peremptory mandate, that all persons who were not provided with the means of subsistence for a three years' siege, should evacuate the city : the public granaries and arsenals were abundantly replenished; the walls were restored and strengthened; and the engines for casting stones, or darts, or fire, were stationed along the ramparts, or in the brigantines of war, of which an additional number was hastily constructed. To prevent is safer, as well as more honourable, than to repel an attack; and a design was meditated, above the usual spirit of the Greeks, of burning the naval stores of the enemy, the cypress timber that had been hewn in Mount Libanus, and was piled along the sea-shore of Phoenicia, for the service of the Egyptian fleet. This generous enterprise was defeated by the cowardice or treachery of the troops, who, in the new language of the empire, were styled of the obsequian theme. They murdered their chief, deserted their standard in the isle of Rhodes, dispersed themselves over the adjacent continent, and deserved pardon or reward by investing with the purple a simple officer of the revenue. The name of Theodosius might recommend him to the senate and people; but, after some months, he sunk into a cloister, and resigned, to the firmer hand of Leo the Isaurian, the urgent defence of the capital and empire. The most formidable of the Saracens, Moslemah, the brother of the caliph, was advancing at the head of one hundred and twenty thousand Arabs and Persians, the greater part mounted on horses or camels; and the successful sieges of Tyana, Amorium, and Pergamus, were of sufficient duration to exercise their skill and to elevate their hopes. At the well-known passage of Abydus, on the Hellespont, the Mahometan arms were transported, for the first time, from Asia to Europe. From thence, wheeling round the Thracian cities of the Propontis, Moslemah invested Constantinople on the land side, surrounded his camp with a ditch and rampart, prepared and planted his en

grains of the Cairo standard. (See the Modern Univ. History, tom. i. p. 548. of the French translation.)

1 Και εκώλυσε γράφεσθαι ἑλληνίζι τους δημοσίους των λογοθεσιών κωδικας, αλλ' Αραβίοις αυτα παρασημαινέσθαι χωρις των ψήφων, επειδη αδύνατον τῇ εκείνων γλώσση μονάδα, η δυάδα, η τριάδα, η οκτω havn тpia yрapertai. Theophau. Chronograph. p. 314. This defect, if it really existed, must have stimulated the ingenuity of the Arabs to invent or borrow.

k According to a new, though probable, notion, maintained by M. de Villoison, (Anecdota Græca, tom. ii. p. 152-157.) our cyphers are not of Indian or Arabic invention. They were used by the Greek 'and Latin arithmeticians long before the age of Boethius. After the extinction of science in the west, they were adopted by the Arabic versions from the original MSS. and restored to the Latins about the eleventh century.

1 In the division of the themes, or provinces described by Constantine Porphyrogenitus, (de Thematibus, 1. i. p. 9, 10.) the obsequium, a Latin appellation of the army and palace, was the fourth in the public order. Nice was the metropolis, and its jurisdiction extended from the Hellespont over the adjacent parts of Bithynia and Phrygia. (See the two maps prefixed by Delisle to the Imperium Orientale of Banduri.)

a patient resolution of expecting the return of seed-time and harvest, should the obstinacy of the besieged prove equal to his own. The Greeks would gladly have ransomed their religion and empire, by a fine or assessment of a piece of gold on the head of each inhabitant of the city; but the ❘ liberal offer was rejected with disdain, and the presumption of Moslemah was exalted by the speedy approach and invincible force of the navies of Egypt and Syria. They are said to have amounted to eighteen hundred ships: the number betrays their inconsiderable size; and of the twenty stout and capacious vessels, whose magnitude impeded their progress, each was manned with no more than one hundred heavy-armed soldiers. This huge armada proceeded on a smooth sea, and with a gentle gale, towards the mouth of the Bosphorus; the surface of the strait was overshadowed, in the language of the Greeks, with a moving forest, and the same fatal night had been fixed by the Saracen chief for a general assault by sea and land. To allure the confidence of the enemy, the emperor had thrown aside the chain that usually guarded the entrance of the harbour; but while they hesitated whether they should seize the opportunity, or apprehend the snare, the ministers of destruction were at hand. The fireships of the Greeks were launched against them, the Arabs, their arms, and vessels, were involved in the same flames, the disorderly fugitives were dashed against each other or overwhelmed in the waves; and I no longer find a vestige of the fleet, that had threatened to extirpate the Roman name. A still more fatal and irreparable loss was that of the caliph Soliman, who died of an indigestion in his camp near Kinnisrin or Chalcis in Syria, as he was preparing to lead against Constantinople the remaining forces of the east. The brother of Moslemah was succeeded by a kinsman and an enemy; and the throne of an active and able prince was degraded by the useless and pernicious virtues of a bigot. While he started and satisfied the scruples of a blind conscience, the siege was continued through the winter by the neglect, rather than by the resolution, of the caliph Omar." The winter proved uncommonly rigorous: above a hundred days the ground was covered with deep snow, and the natives of the sultry climes of Egypt and Arabia lay torpid and almost lifeless in their frozen camp. They revived on the return of spring; a second effort had been made in their

m

m The caliph had emptied two baskets of eggs and of figs, which he swallowed alternately, and the repast was concluded with marrow and sugar. In one of his pilgrimages to Mecca, Soliman ate, at a single meal, seventy pomegranates, a kid, six fowls, and a huge quantity of the grapes of Tayef. If the bill of fare be correct, we must admire the appetite, rather than the luxury, of the sovereign of Asia. (Abulfeda, Annal. Moslem. p. 126)

n See the article of Omar Ben Abdalaziz, in the Bibliotheque Orien. tale, (p. 689, 690.) præferens, says Elmacin, (p. 91.) religionem suam rebus suis mundanis. He was so desirous of being with God, that he would not have anointed his ear (his own saying) to obtain a perfect cure of his last malady. The caliph had only one shirt, and in an age of luxury, his annual expense was no more than two drachms. (Abulpharagius, p. 131.) Haud diu gavisus eo principe fuit orbis Moslemus. (Abulfeda, p. 127.)

• Both Nicephorus and Theophanes agree that the siege of Constantinople was raised the 15th of August; (A. D. 718.) but as the former,

arrival of two numerous fleets, laden with corn, and arms, and soldiers; the first from Alexandria, of four hundred transports and galleys; the second of three hundred and sixty vessels from the ports of Africa. But the Greek fires were again kindled, and if the destruction was less complete, it was owing to the experience which had taught the Moslems to remain at a safe distance, or to the perfidy of the Egyptian mariners, who deserted with their ships to the emperor of the christians. The trade and navigation of the capital were restored; and the produce of the fisheries supplied the wants, and even the luxury, of the inhabitants. But the calamities of famine and disease were soon felt by the troops of Moslemah, and as the former was miserably assuaged, so the latter was dreadfully propagated, by the pernicious nutriment which hunger compelled them to extract from the most unclean or unnatural food. The spirit of conquest, and even of enthusiasm, was extinct: the Saracens could no longer straggle beyond their lines, either single or in small parties, without exposing themselves to the merciless retaliation of the Thracian peasants. An army of Bulgarians was attracted from the Danube by the gifts and promises of Leo; and these savage auxiliaries made some atonement for the evils which they had inflicted on the empire, by the defeat and slaughter of twenty-two thousand Asiatics. A report was dexterously scattered, that the Franks, the unknown nations of the Latin world, were arming by sea and land in the defence of the christian cause, and their formidable aid was expected with far different sensations in the camp and city. At length, after a siege of thirteen months, the hopeless Moslemah Failure and rereceived from the caliph the welcome treat of the Sarapermission of retreat. The march of the Arabian cavalry over the Hellespont and through the provinces of Asia, was executed without delay or molestation; but an army of their brethren had been cut in pieces on the side of Bithynia, and the remains of the fleet were so repeatedly damaged by the tempest and fire, that only five galleys entered the port of Alexandria to relate the tale of their various and almost incredible disasters.P

cens.

use of the Greek fire.

In the two sieges, the deliverance Invention and of Constantinople may be chiefly ascribed to the novelty, the terrors, and the real efficacy of the Greek fire. The important

our best witness, affirms that it continued thirteen months, the latter must be mistaken in supposing that it began on the same day of the preceding year. I do not find that Pagi has remarked this inconsistency.

P In the second siege of Constantinople, I have followed Nicephorus, (Brev. p. 33-36.) Theophanes, (Chronograph. p. 324–334.) Cedrenus, (Compend. p. 449-452) Zonaras, (tom. ii. p. 98-102) Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p. 88.) Abulfeda, (Annal. Moslem. p. 126.) and Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 130.) the most satisfactory of the Arabs.

q Our sure and indefatigable guide in the middle ages and Byzantine history, Charles du Fresne du Cange, has treated in several places of the Greek fire, and his collections leave few gleanings behind. See particularly Glossar. Med. et Infim. Græcitat. p. 1275. sub voce Ilvp Waλaoσiov, vypov. Glossar. Med. et Iufim. Latinitat. Ignus Græcus. Observations sur Villehardouin, p. 305, 306. Observations sur Joinville, p. 71, 72.