First invasion by Abdallah, A.D. 647
The conquest of Africa, from the Nile to the Atlantic Ocean,
(138) was first attempted by the arms of the caliph Othman.
The pious design was approved by the companions of
Mahomet and the chiefs of the tribes; and twenty thousand
Arabs marched from Medina, with the gifts and the blessing
of the commander of the faithful. They were joined in the
camp of Memphis by twenty thousand of their countrymen; and
the conduct of the war was entrusted to Abdallah, (139) the son of Said and the foster-brother of the caliph, who had
lately supplanted the conqueror and lieutenant of Egypt. Yet
the favour of the prince, and the merit of his favourite,
could not obliterate the guilt of his apostasy. The early
conversion of Abdallah, and his skilful pen, had recommended
him to the important office of transcribing the sheets of
the Koran: he betrayed his trust, corrupted the text,
derided the errors which he had made, and fled to Mecca to
escape the justice, and expose the ignorance, of the
apostle. After the conquest of Mecca, he fell prostrate at
the feet of Mahomet; his tears, and the entreaties of
Othman, extorted a reluctant pardon; out the prophet
declared that he had so long hesitated, to allow time for
some zealous disciple to avenge his injury in the blood of
the apostate. With apparent fidelity and effective merit,
he served the religion which it was no longer his interest
to desert: his birth and talents gave him an honourable rank
among the Koreish; and, in a nation of cavalry, Abdallah was
renowned as the boldest and most dexterous horseman of
Arabia. At the head of forty thousand Moslems, he advanced
from Egypt into the unknown countries of the West. The sands
of Barca might be impervious to a Roman legion but the Arabs
were attended by their faithful camels; and the natives of
the desert beheld without terror the familiar aspect of the
soil and climate. After a painful march, they pitched their
tents before the walls of Tripoli, (140) a maritime city in
which the name, the wealth, and the inhabitants of the
province had gradually centred, and which now maintains the
third rank among the states of Barbary. A reinforcement of
Greeks was surprised and cut in pieces on the sea-shore; but
the fortifications of Tripoli resisted the first assaults;
Gregory and his daughter. and the Saracens were tempted by the approach of the
praefect Gregory (141) to relinquish the labours of the siege
for the perils and the hopes of a decisive action. If his
standard was followed by one hundred and twenty thousand
men, the regular bands of the empire must have been lost in
the naked and disorderly crowd of Africans and Moors, who
formed the strength, or rather the numbers, of his host. He
rejected with indignation the option of the Koran or the
tribute; and during several days the two armies were
fiercely engaged from the dawn of light to the hour of noon,
when their fatigue and the excessive heat compelled them to
seek shelter and refreshment in their respective camps. The
daughter of Gregory, a maid of incomparable beauty and
spirit, is said to have fought by his side: from her
earliest youth she was trained to mount on horseback, to
draw the bow, and to wield the cimeter; and the richness of
her arms and apparel were conspicuous in the foremost ranks
of the battle. Her hand, with a hundred thousand pieces of
gold, was offered for the head of the Arabian general, and
the youths of Africa were excited by the prospect of the
glorious prize. At the pressing solicitation of his
brethren, Abdallah withdrew his person from the field; but
the Saracens were discouraged by the retreat of their
leader, and the repetition of these equal or unsuccessful
conflicts.
Victory of the Arabs.
A noble Arabian, who afterwards became the adversary of Ali,
and the father of a caliph, had signalized his valour in
Egypt, and Zobeir (142) was the first who planted the
scaling-ladder against the walls of Babylon. In the African
war he was detached from the standard of Abdallah. On the
news of the battle, Zobeir, with twelve companions, cut his
way through the camp of the Greeks, and pressed forwards,
without tasting either food or repose, to partake of the
dangers of his brethren. He cast his eyes round the field:
"Where," said he, "is our general?" "In his tent." "Is the
tent a station for the general of the Moslems?" Abdallah
represented with a blush the importance of his own life, and
the temptation that was held forth by the Roman praefect.
"Retort," said Zobeir, "on the infidels their ungenerous
attempt. Proclaim through the ranks that the head of Gregory
shall be repaid with his captive daughter, and the equal sum
of one hundred thousand pieces of gold." To the courage and
discretion of Zobeir the lieutenant of the caliph entrusted
the execution of his own stratagem, which inclined the
long-disputed balance in favour of the Saracens. Supplying by
activity and artifice the deficiency of numbers, a part of
their forces lay concealed in their tents, while the
remainder prolonged an irregular skirmish with the enemy
till the sun was high in the heavens. On both sides they
retired with fainting steps: their horses were unbridled,
their armour was laid aside, and the hostile nations
prepared, or seemed to prepare, for the refreshment of the
evening, and the encounter of the ensuing day. On a sudden
the charge was sounded; the Arabian camp poured forth a
swarm of fresh and intrepid warriors; and the long line of
the Greeks and Africans was surprised, assaulted,
overturned, by new squadrons of the faithful, who, to the
eye of fanaticism, might appear as a band of angels
descending from the sky. The praefect himself was slain by
the hand of Zobeir: his daughter, who sought revenge and
death, was surrounded and made prisoner; and the fugitives
involved in their disaster the town of Sufetula, to which
they escaped from the sabres and lances of the Arabs.
Sufetula was built one hundred and fifty miles to the south
of Carthage: a gentle declivity is watered by a running
stream, and shaded by a grove of juniper-trees; and, in the
ruins of a triumphal arch, a portico, and three temples of
the Corinthian order, curiosity may yet admire the
magnificence of the Romans. (143) After the fall of this
opulent city, the provincials and Barbarians implored on all
sides the mercy of the conqueror. 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 captives 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; (144) 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 claimed 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 praefect's daughter at the sight of
Zobeir revealed the valour and modesty of that gallant
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 labored 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 interesting
narrative of Zobeir; and as the orator forgot nothing except
the merit of his own counsels and actions, the name of
Abdallah was joined by the Arabians with the heroic names of
Caled and Amrou. (145)
Progress of the Saracens, A.D. 665-689.
The Western conquests of the Saracens were suspended near
twenty years, till their dissensions were composed by the
establishment of the house of Ommiyah; and the caliph
Moawiyah was invited by the cries of the Africans
themselves. The successors of Heraclius had been informed of
the tribute which they had been compelled to stipulate with
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 power, 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 be difficult, nor is it necessary,
to trace the accurate line of the progress of Akbah. The
interior regions have been peopled by the Orientals with
fictitious armies and imaginary citadels. In the warlike
province of Zab, or Numidia, four-score 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 not be justified by the ruins of Erbe or
Lambesa, the ancient metropolis of that inland country. As
we approach the sea-coast, the well-known cities of Bugia
(148) and Tangier (149) define 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 length penetrated to the verge of the
Atlantic and the great desert. 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 Canary, 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, preaching the unity of thy holy name,
and putting to the sword the rebellious nations who worship
any other gods than thee."(153) Yet this Mohammedan 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 danger 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 scimitars, 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; he
was overthrown by a powerful army which Constantinople had
sent to the relief of Carthage.
The foundation of Cairoan, A.D. 670-675.
It had been the frequent practice of the Moorish tribes to
join the invaders, to share the plunder, to profess the
faith, and to revolt to their savage state of independence
and idolatry 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 Saracens. 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 (154) 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
west-ward 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 Numidian 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. The son of the valiant Zobeir
maintained a war of twelve years, a siege of seven months,
against the house of Ommiyah. Abdallah was said to unite the
fierceness of the lion with the subtlety of the fox; but if
he inherited the courage, he was devoid of the generosity,
of his father.(156)
Conquest of Carthage, A.D. 692-698.
The return of domestic peace allowed the caliph Abdalmalek
to resume the conquest of Africa; the standard was delivered
to Hassan, governor of Egypt, and the revenue of that
kingdom, with an army of forty thousand men, was consecrated
to the important service. In the vicissitudes of war, the
interior provinces had been alternately won and lost by the
Saracens. But the sea-coast still remained in the hands of
the Greeks; the predecessors of Hassan had respected the
name and fortifications of Carthage; and the number of its
defenders was recruited by the fugitives of Cabes and
Tripoli. The arms of Hassan were bolder and more fortunate:
he reduced and pillaged the metropolis of Africa; and the
mention of scaling-ladders may justify the suspicion that he
anticipated by a sudden assault the more tedious operations
of a regular siege. But the joy of the conquerors was soon
disturbed by the appearance of the Christian succours. The
praefect and patrician John, a general of experience and
renown, embarked at Constantinople the forces of the Eastern
empire ;(157) they were joined by the ships and soldiers of Sicily, and a powerful reinforcement of Goths(158) was
obtained from the fears and religion of the Spanish monarch.
The weight of the confederate navy broke the chain that
guarded the entrance of the harbour; the Arabs retired to
Cairoan, or Tripoli; the Christians landed; the citizens
hailed the ensign of the cross, and the winter was idly
wasted in the dream of victory or deliverance. But Africa
was irrecoverably lost; the zeal and resentment of be
commander of the faithful(159) prepared in the ensuing spring a more numerous armament by sea and land; and the patrician
in his turn was compelled to evacuate the post and
fortifications of Carthage. A second battle was fought in
the neighbourhood of Utica: the Greeks and Goths were again
defeated; and their timely embarkation saved them from the
sword of Hassan, who had invested the slight a and
insufficient rampart of their camp. Whatever yet remained
of Carthage was delivered to the flames, and the colony of
Dido(160) and Caesain lay desolate above two hundred years, till a part, perhaps a twentieth, of the old circumference
was repeopled by the first of the Fatimite caliphs. In the
beginning of the sixteenth-century the second capital of
the West was represented by a mosch, a college without
students, twenty-five or thirty shops, and the huts of five
hundred peasants, who, in their abject poverty, displayed
the arrogance of the Punic senators. Even that paltry
village was swept away by the Spaniards whom Charles the
Fifth had stationed n the fortress of the Goletta. The ruins
of Carthage have perished; and the place might be unknown if
some broken arches of an aqueduct did not guide the
footsteps of the inquisitive traveller.(161)
Final conquest of Africa, A.D. 698-709.
The Greeks were expelled, but the Arabians were not yet
masters of the country. In the interior provinces the Moors
or Berbers,(162) so feeble under the first Caesars, so formidable to the Byantine princes, maintained a disorderly
resistance to the religion and power of the successors of
Mohammed. Under the standard of their queen Cahina the
independent tribes acquired some degree of union and
discipline; and as the Moors respected in their females the
character of a prophetess, they attacked the invaders with
an enthusiasm similar to their own. The veteran bands of
Hassan were inadequate to the defence of Africa: the
conquests of an age were lost in a single day; and the
Arabian chief overwhelmed by the torrent, retired to the
confines of Egypt, and expected, five years, the promised
succours of the caliph. After the retreat of the Saracens,
the victorious prophetess assembled the Moorish chiefs, and
recommended a measure of strange and savage policy. "Our
cities," said she, "and the gold and silver which they
contain, perpetually attract the arms of he Arabs. These
vile metals are not the objects of our ambition; we content
ourselves with the simple productions of the earth. Let us
destroy these cities; let us bury in their ruins those
pernicious treasures; and when the avarice of our foes shall
be destitute of temptation, perhaps they will cease to
disturb the tranquillity of a warlike people." The proposal
was accepted with unanimous applause. From Tangier to
Tripoli the buildings, or at least the fortifications, were
demolished, the fruit-trees were cut own, the means of
subsistence were extirpated, fertile and populous garden was
changed into desert, and the historians of a more recent
period could discern the frequent traces of the prosperity
and devastation of their ancestors. Such is the tale of the
modern Arabians. Yet I strongly suspect that their ignorance
of antiquity, the love of the marvellous, and the fashion of
extolling the philosophy of barbarians, has induced them to
describe, as one voluntary act, the calamities of three
hundred years since the first fury of the Donatists and
Vandals. In the progress of the revolt Cahina had most
probably contributed her share of destruction, and the alarm
of universal ruin might terrify and alienate the cities that
had reluctantly yielded to her unworthy yoke. They no longer
hoped, perhaps they no longer wished, the return of their
Byzantine sovereigns: their present servitude was not
alleviated by the benefits of order and justice; and the
most zealous Catholic must prefer the imperfect truths of
the Koran to the blind and rude idolatry of the Moors. The
general of the Saracens was again received as the saviour of
the province: the friends of civil society conspired against
the savages of the land and the royal prophetess was slain
in the first battle, which overturned the baseless fabric of
her superstition and empire. The same spirit revived under
the successor of Hassan: it was finally quelled by the
activity of Musa and his two sons; but the number of the
rebels may be presumed from that of three hundred thousand
captives; sixty thousand of whom, the caliph's fifth, were
sold for the profit of the public treasury. Thirty thousand
of the barbarian youth were enlisted in the troops; and the
pious labours of Musa, to inculcate the knowledge and
practice of the Koran, accustomed the Africans to obey the
apostle of God and the commander of the faithful. In their
climate and government, their diet and habitation, the
wandering Moors resembled the Bedoweens of the desert. Adoption of the Moors. With the religion they were proud to adopt the language, name,
and origin of Arabs: the blood of the strangers and natives
was insensibly mingled; and from the Euphrates to the
Atlantic the same nation might seem to be diffused over the
sandy plains of Asia and Africa. Yet I will not deny that
fifty thousand tents of pure Arabians might be transported
over the Nile, and scattered through the Libyan desert; and
I am not ignorant that five of the Moorish tribes still
retain their barbarous idiom, with the appellation
and character of white Africans.(163)
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