The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 5

E >> Edward Gibbon >> The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 5

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[Footnote 140: The province and city of Tripoli are described by
Leo Africanus (in Navigatione et Viaggi di Ramusio, tom. i.
Venetia, 1550, fol. 76, verso) and Marmol, (Description de
l'Afrique, tom. ii. p. 562.) The first of these writers was a
Moor, a scholar, and a traveller, who composed or translated his
African geography in a state of captivity at Rome, where he had
assumed the name and religion of Pope Leo X. In a similar
captivity among the Moors, the Spaniard Marmol, a soldier of
Charles V., compiled his Description of Africa, translated by
D'Ablancourt into French, (Paris, 1667, 3 vols. in 4to.) Marmol
had read and seen, but he is destitute of the curious and
extensive observation which abounds in the original work of Leo
the African.]

[Footnote 141: Theophanes, who mentions the defeat, rather than
the death, of Gregory. He brands the praefect with the name: he
had probably assumed the purple, (Chronograph. p. 285.)]

A noble Arabian, who afterwards became the adversary of Ali,
and the father of a caliph, had signalized his valor 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 intrusted the execution of
his own stratagem, which inclined the long-disputed balance in
favor 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 armor 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 triumpha 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 favorite, 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 valor 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 honorable 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

[Footnote 142: See in Ockley (Hist. of the Saracens, vol. ii. p.
45) the death of Zobeir, which was honored with the tears of Ali,
against whom he had rebelled. His valor at the siege of Babylon,
if indeed it be the same person, is mentioned by Eutychius,
(Annal. tom. ii. p. 308)]

[Footnote 143: Shaw's Travels, p. 118, 119.]

[Footnote 144: Mimica emptio, says Abulfeda, erat haec, et mira
donatio; quandoquidem Othman, ejus nomine nummos ex aerario prius
ablatos aerario praestabat, (Annal. Moslem. p. 78.) Elmacin (in
his cloudy version, p. 39) seems to report the same job. When
the Arabs be sieged the palace of Othman, it stood high in their
catalogue of grievances.`]

[Footnote 145: Theophan. Chronograph. p. 235 edit. Paris. His
chronology is loose and inaccurate.]

[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 zantine
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 would 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, 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 not
be justified by the ruins of Erbe or Lambesa, the ancient metropolis
of that inland country. As we approach the seacoast, the well-known
titles 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.

[Footnote 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. 1. v. c. 13), that at this time they sent a fleet from
Alexandria into the Sicilian and African seas.]

[Footnote 147: See Novairi (apud Otter, p. 118), Leo Africanus (fol.
81, verso), who reckoned only cinque citta e infinite casal, Marmol
(Description de l'Afrique, tom. iii. p. 33,) and Shaw (Travels,
p. 57, 65-68)]

[Footnote 148: Leo African. fol. 58, verso, 59, recto. Marmol,
tom. ii. p. 415. Shaw, p. 43]

[Footnote 149: Leo African. fol. 52. Marmol, tom. ii. p. 228.]

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 shellfish. 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 Suz descends from the western sides
of mount Atlas, fertilizes, like the Nile, the adjacent soil, and
falls into the sea at a moderate distance from the Canary, or
adjacent 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 afterward 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
another 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 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 scimeters, 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.

[Footnote 150: Regio ignobilis, et vix quicquam illustre sortita,
parvis oppidis habitatur, parva flumina emittit, solo quam viris
meleor et segnitie gentis obscura. Pomponius Mela, i. 5, iii. 10.
Mela deserves the more credit, since his own Phoenician ancestors had
migrated from Tingitana to Spain (see, in ii. 6, a passage of that
geographer so cruelly tortured by Salmasius, Isaac Vossius, and the
most virulent of critics, James Gronovius). He lived at the time of
the final reduction of that country by the emperor Claudius: yet
almost thirty years afterward, Pliny (Hist. Nat. v. i.) complains of
his authors, to lazy to inquire, too proud to confess their ignorance
of that wild and remote province.]

[Footnote 151: The foolish fashion of this citron wood prevailed at Rome
among the men, as much as the taste for pearls among the women. A round
board or table, four or five feet in diameter, sold for the price of
an estate (latefundii taxatione), eight, ten, or twelve thousand
pounds sterling (Plin. Hist. Natur. xiii. 29). I conceive that I
must not confound the tree citrus, with that of the fruit citrum.
But I am not botanist enough to define the former (it is like the
wild cypress) by the vulgar or Linnaean name; nor will I decide
whether the citrum be the orange or the lemon. Salmasius appears to
exhaust the subject, but he too often involves himself in the web of
his disorderly erudition. (Flinian. Exercitat. tom. ii. p 666, &c.)]

[Footnote 152: Leo African. fol. 16, verso. Marmol, tom. ii. p. 28.
This province, the first scene of the exploits and greatness of the
cherifs is often mentioned in the curious history of that dynasty at
the end of the third volume of Marmol, Description de l'Afrique. The
third vol. of The Recherches Historiques sur les Maures (lately
published at Paris) illustrates the history and geography of the
kingdoms of Fez and Morocco.]

[Footnote 153: Otter (p. 119,) has given the strong tone of fanaticism
to this exclamation, 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. 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 in 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 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 mosque 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

[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
seacoast 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.

[Footnote 154: The foundation of Cairoan is mentioned by Ockley (Hist.
of the Saracens, vol. ii. p. 129, 130); and the situation, mosque, &c.
of the city are described by Leo Africanus (fol. 75), Marmol (tom. ii.
p. 532), and Shaw (p. 115).]

[Footnote 155: A portentous, though frequent mistake, has been the
confounding, from a slight similitude of name, the Cyrene of the
Greeks, and the Cairoan of the Arabs, two cities which are separated
by an interval of a thousand miles along the seacoast. The great
Thuanus has not escaped this fault, the less excusable as it is
connected with a formal and elaborate description of Africa
(Historiar. l. vii. c. 2, in tom. i. p. 240, edit. Buckley).]

[Footnote 156: Besides the Arabic Chronicles of Abulfeda, Elmacin,
and Abulpharagius, under the lxxiiid year of the Hegira, we may
consult nd'Herbelot (Bibliot. Orient. p. 7,) and Ockley (Hist. of the
Saracens, vol. ii. p. 339-349). The latter has given the last and
pathetic dialogue between Abdallah and his mother; but he has forgot
a physical effect of her grief for his death, the return, at the age
of ninety, and fatal consequences of her menses.]

[Footnote 157: The patriarch of Constantinople, with Theophanes
(Chronograph. p. 309,) have slightly mentioned this last attempt for
the relief or Africa. Pagi (Critica, tom. iii. p. 129. 141,) has nicely
ascertained the chronology by a strict comparison of the Arabic and
Byzantine historians, who often disagree both in time and fact. See
likewise a note of Otter (p. 121).]

[Footnote 158: Dove s'erano ridotti i nobili Romani e i Gotti; and
afterward, i Romani suggirono e i Gotti lasciarono Carthagine.
(Leo African. for. 72, recto) I know not from what Arabic writer the
African derived his Goths; but the fact, though new, is so interesting
and so probable, that I will accept it on the slightest authority.]

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 the 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; and the Greeks and Goths were again defeated;
and their timely embarkation saved them from the sword of Hassan, who
had invested the slight and insufficient rampart of their camp.
Whatever yet remained of Carthage was delivered to the flames, and
the colony of Dido^160 and Cesar 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 mosque, 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 in 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

[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 Cesars, so formidable to
the Byzantine princes, maintained a disorderly resistance to the
religion and power of the successors of Mahomet. 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 the 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
down, the means of subsistence were extirpated, a fertile and
populous garden was changed into a desert, and the historians of a
more recent period could discern the frequent traces of the
prosperity and devastation of their ancestors.

[Footnote 159: This commander is styled by Nicephorus, --------
a vague though not improper definition of the caliph. Theophanes
introduces the strange appellation of ----------, which his interpreter
Goar explains by Vizir Azem. They may approach the truth, in assigning
the active part to the minister, rather than the prince; but they
forget that the Ommiades had only a kaleb, or secretary, and that the
office of Vizir was not revived or instituted till the 132d year of
the Hegira (d'Herbelot, 912).]

[Footnote 160: According to Solinus (1.27, p. 36, edit. Salmas),
the Carthage of Dido stood either 677 or 737 years; a various reading,
which proceeds from the difference of MSS. or editions (Salmas, Plinian.
Exercit tom i. p. 228) The former of these accounts, which gives 823
years before Christ, is more consistent with the well-weighed
testimony of Velleius Paterculus: but the latter is preferred by our
chronologists (Marsham, Canon. Chron. p. 398,) as more agreeable to
the Hebrew and Syrian annals.]

[Footnote 161: Leo African. fo1. 71, verso; 72, recto. Marmol,
tom. ii. p.445-447. Shaw, p.80.]

[Footnote 162: The history of the word Barbar may be classed under four
periods, 1. In the time of Homer, when the Greeks and Asiatics might
probably use a common idiom, the imitative sound of Barbar was
applied to the ruder tribes, whose pronunciation was most harsh,
whose grammar was most defective. 2. From the time, at least, of
Herodotus, it was extended to all the nations who were strangers to
the language and manners of the Greeks. 3. In the age, of Plautus,
the Romans submitted to the insult (Pompeius Festus, l. ii. p. 48,
edit. Dacier), and freely gave themselves the name of Barbarians.
They insensibly claimed an exemption for Italy, and her subject
provinces; and at length removed the disgraceful appellation to the
savage or hostile nations beyond the pale of the empire. 4. In every
sense, it was due to the Moors; the familiar word was borrowed from
the Latin Provincials by the Arabian conquerors, and has justly
settled as a local denomination (Barbary) along the northern coast of
Africa.]