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bala, Laodicea, Apamea, Hierapolis, no longer presumed to dispute the will of the conqueror; and Syria bowed under the sceptre of the caliphs," &c.'

The Saracens formed the first woe,-not the last,that came on idolatrous Christendom. On their invasion of the Roman empire, Jerusalem was rather to be given unto the Gentiles, than rescued from them. Ages were thereafter to intervene before the land should reach the last degree of predicted desolation. The judgments of the Lord were to be executed in it on those who had anew profaned it by their idolatries. But while this charge was given to the Saracens, which, as all students of prophecy well know, they failed not to execute, a prohibition was simultaneously written in the book of the Lord, and as simultaneously issued in the appointed time, against laying the land desolate; and stripped as it would finally be, like an oak that had cast its leaves, not a tree or green thing was then to be hurt. It was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men that had not the seal of God on their foreheads. The unconscious "commander of the faithful" thus issued his instructions accordingly to the chiefs of the Syrian army. "When you fight the battles of the Lord, acquit yourselves like men, without turning your backs; but let not your victory be stained with the blood of women and children. Destroy no palm-trees, nor burn any fields of corn. Cut down no fruit-trees, nor do any mischief to cattle, only such as you kill to eat. When When you make any covenant or article, stand to it, and be as good as your word. As you go on, you will find some religious persons who live retired in monasteries, let them alone, and neither kill them, nor

2

1 Gibbon's Hist. chap. li. passim.

2 Rev. ix. 4.

destroy their monasteries; and you will find another sort of people that belong to the synagogue of Satan, who have shorn crowns; be sure you cleave their sculls, and give them no quarter till they either turn Mahometans or pay tribute.”1

"The rapacious tribes of the desert" made Syria their own, and richly was their conquest rewarded. Notwithstanding "the slow ravages of despotism and superstition," and its subjugation to the Persians, to whom for fourteen years it had been given for a prey, till reconquered by Heraclius, Syria could still boast of its numerous cities; and its fertile soil sustained a vast population. Five thousand ass-loads (proverbially great) of figs and olives, necessarily the produce of a single year, gave proof, as part of the tax imposed upon one city, that the combined excellence of climate and soil were not then lost upon man; and that the circumjacent region might lay claim to be a portion of a land, where every man might sit under his own fig-tree, and the lords of which, in the expressive language of Scripture, might" dip their feet in oil."

Edifices of Saracenic structure, scattered over Syria, show that these invaders, like the Romans, sought to perpetuate their conquest, and made it their work to build rather than destroy. But these were chiefly mosques or castles, the former displacing churches, the latter for repressing the inhabitants, as well as resisting foreign foes. "The tribute, the Koran, or the sword," were not the heralds of prosperity and peace. Syria faded rather than flourished under the dominion of those "hordes of fanatics that issued from the desert," and whose office it was to torment rather than to destroy.

Gibbon's Hist. vol. ix. p. 381.

The promised land was to be given only for a limited period to any alien race, while its ancient inhabitants were scattered abroad. The Arabs, like the Romans, claimed it by right of conquest as their own. But though they appointed the land, which the Lord called His, into their possession with the joy of all their heart, and shall still strive to regain or retain it, as they first won it by the sword; and though they said, while the stronghold of Zion was in their hands, and Saracen fortresses towered throughout the land on the heights of Israel, even the high places are ours in possession, yet they were there only to execute judgments, as the temporary tenants of a land that was not theirs. Their possession of it was not unchallenged or undisturbed. After its subjugation to them, Judea "ceased not to be the scene of grand revolutions." The victors becoming successively the vanquished, it was in after ages the contested territory of Saracens, Persians, Turks, Egyptians, and Fatimites, till, in still more bloody warfare between Christians and Mahometans, it became, as described by Gibbon," the theatre of nations," where the tragedy of the crusades was enacted,-the battle-field of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The land which men called Christians sought to redeem, by a frenzy that matched the fierce fanaticism of Moslems, was thereby smitten with another curse.

'D'Herbelot, Bibliothèque Orientale, p. 269.

CHAPTER IV.

SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF SYRIA IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

"I WILL GIVE IT INTO THE HANDS OF THE STRANGERS FOR A PREY, AND TO THE WICKED OF THE EARTH FOR A SPOIL; AND THEY SHALL POLLUTE IT."-Ezek. vii. 21. "THOU LAND DEVOUREST UP MEN, AND HAST BEREAVED THY NATIONS.

Ezek. xxxvi. 13.

SYRIA, peopled by conflicting races, could scarcely be said to repose under the dominion of the caliphs. It was at best, as under the Romans, a subjugated country, a prey and a spoil to strangers. The comparatively quiescent state which succeeded to its conquest, was soon, from various causes, disturbed anew; and this prophecy, together with many others, ever meets with renewed illustrations in all its history, while it was given, age after age, to the wicked for a prey, the sword of the Lord shall devour from the one end of the land even to the other end of the land; no flesh shall have peace. Even the subjugated Christians soon persecuted each other. The general council of Constantinople (A.D. 681) condemned the Maronites; and, chased from the greater part of the cities of Syria, they betook themselves to the mountains of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon. In a few years after, Syria was the scene of fierce contests between Ali the cousin and son-in-law of Mahomet, and Moaviah, the caliph of the Omniades, whose cause the Syrians espoused. Profiting by their divisions and mutual conflicts, the Maronites descended from their mountains, and ravaged all the land from the extremity of Lebanon to the vicinity of

1 Ezek. vii. 21.

3

3 Herbelot Bibliothèque Orientale, p. 557.

2 Jer. xii. 12.

4 Ibid. p. 90-93, 588, 9.

Jerusalem. The termination of the dynasty of the Omniades, and the commencement of that of the Abassides was marked by great earthquakes, which overthrew a great number of churches and monasteries beyond the Jordan, and throughout Syria; and the violent and frequent shocks destroyed many cities. The death of Haroun-al-Raschid (A.D. 808) plunged Syria into new calamities. While his sons disputed for the empire, various usurpers invaded and ravaged Syria. Eleutheropolis, the capital of Idumea, was destroyed, and that flourishing city never recovered from its overthrow. Ascalon, Gaza, Sariphea, and many other cities were pillaged; and the barbarians spread everywhere desolation and terror. These troubles continued till towards the close of the ninth century; the caliphate of Bagdad itself began to be shaken by the insurrectionary Turks; and when the Saracenic empire was dismembered, Syria was convulsed.3

The Arabs have never ceased, by predatory inroads or forced possession, to devour the land over which they could no longer solely domineer; and they did not suffer so fair a region to be wrested from their grasp without repeated desolating wars. But the energy of their empire had departed; and Syria could no longer be retained. The Thoulounid Turks, first slaves, then masters, having obtained in Egypt all of sovereignty but the name, Syria became the scene of their warfare with the caliphs. Ahmet, ruling uncontrolled in Egypt, like a modern despot, passed (A.D. 874) from thence as a conqueror to the farthest bounds of Syria, and subjected to his sway Damascus, Hamah, Aleppo, and Antioch.* His con

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Guene, Lettres, Mém. de Litterature, tom. iii. p. 318. 2 Ibid. p. 319.

3 Ibid. pp. 320, 321.

• Histoire Générale des Huns, des Turcs, &c. par De Guignes, tom. ii. pp. 131, 132. Ahmed amassed immense treasures, which he left to his

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