Sarmin, Maarah, and Antioch, and threatened the entire destruction of the Mahometans, they shut up their cattle and grain in their fortresses, and set fire to all that they could not save. The Mogul army was so numerous that it occupied the space of three days journeying in length from Bacca to Beer; but such, then, were the contests for Syria and within it, that the battles between such numerous hosts were so long contested and fierce, that victory long hung in the balance, and when at last the Moguls, after immense slaughter, gave way, the Mussulmen retired to Hamah. To its environs the Moguls speedily returned, and advanced to Emesa, which in such desperate warfare they took, after every Mussulman had been put to the sword. Another battle, contested for two days, terminated in the overthrow of the Moguls, who had power to devour and to despoil, but not to retain possession of Syria, which the Mamelukes enslaved.1

No less than in other ages, Syria, under the Mamelukes, was given unto strangers for a prey, and to the wicked of the earth for a spoil. All the different corps of their army amounted to nearly three hundred thousand men. Each emir or chief had a portion of land assigned him; the peasantry furnished provisions; and bread was distributed among the soldiers. Insurrectionary movements repeatedly indicated the severity of the bondage; but the descendants of ancient conquerors had in their turn to experience that peace was not the portion of those who dwelt in a land on which the curses of the covenant had fallen. Earthquakes, levelling the walls of many cities, had paved the way for Mameluke domination in Syria. And when their dominion

De Guignes, tom. iii. p. 274.

Ibid. tom. iv. p. 251.

was drawing to a close, their power was broken by the renowned Tamerlane; and the conquests of a Tartar prepared the way for the subjection of Syria to the Ottoman yoke.

"The Syrian emirs were assembled at Aleppo to repel the invasion; they confided in the fame and discipline of the Mamelukes, in the temper of their swords and lances of the purest steel of Damascus, in the strength of their walled cities, and in the populousness of sixty thousand villages, and, instead of sustaining a siege, they threw open their gates, and arrayed their forces in the plain. But these forces were not cemented by virtue and union, and some powerful emirs had been seduced to desert or betray their more loyal companions. Timour's front was covered with a line of Indian elephants, whose turrets were filled with archers and Greek fire. The rapid evolutions of his cavalry completed the dismay and disorder; the Syrian crowds fell back on each other; many thousands were stifled or slaughtered in the entrance of the great street; the Moguls entered with the fugitives, and, after a short defence, the citadel-the impregnable citadel of Aleppo-was surrendered by cowardice or treachery. The streets of Aleppo streamed with blood, and re-echoed with the cries of mothers and children, with the shrieks of violated virgins. The rich plunder that was abandoned to his soldiers might stimulate their avarice, but their cruelty was enforced by the peremptory command of producing an adequate number of heads, which, according to his custom, were curiously piled up in columns and pyramids. The Moguls celebrated the feast of the victory, while the surviving Moslems passed the night in tears and in chains. I shall not dwell on the march of the destroyer from Aleppo to Damascus, where he was rudely encountered, and almost overthrown, by the

armies of Egypt. Abandoned by their prince, the inhahabitants of Damascus still defended their walls; and Timour consented to raise the siege, if they would adorn his retreat with a gift or ransom; each article of nine pieces. But no sooner had he introduced himself into the city, under colour of a truce, than he perfidiously violated the treaty; imposed a contribution of ten millions of gold, and animated his troops to chastise the posterity of those Syrians who had executed, or approved the murder of the grandson of Mahomet. A family which had given honourable burial to the head of Hosein, and a colony of artificers whom he sent to labour at Samarcand, were alone rescued in the general massacre; and, after a period of seven centuries, Damascus was reduced to ashes, because a Tartar was moved by religious zeal to avenge the blood of an Arab.-Timour in his return to the Euphrates delivered Aleppo to the flames. In the pillage of Syria, the Moguls had acquired immense riches."

When the power of the Mamelukes was thus broken, and the Moguls had vanished with their prey, the time seemed to be come when Syria could free itself from a foreign yoke; and many of its emirs, stimulated by ambition or revenge, strove to cast off the sovereignty of the sultan of Egypt. One of these, Dgiakam, declaring for the rebels, made himself master of Tripoli, Hamah, and Aleppo. Another, Scheikh Mahmoud, sent an army to take Saphet by surprise; but failing in the assault, he prepared many engines to throw (burning) naphtha and stones into the city, and (A.D. 1405) laid siege to it with a numerous army in vain.3 Syria became the scene of successive civil wars; and Egypt was invaded by the "rebels." But the sultan, with an un2 Ibid. p. 25.

1 Gibbon, vol. xii. pp. 23, 24.

3 De Guignes' Hist. tom. v. p. 294.

exampled intrepidity, pursued them, till, driven from city to city, Scheikh Mahmoud was besieged in the castle of Sarkud beyond Bosra. Thither machines were transported from Sobaiba, Saphet, and Damascus, which were raised against the castle; and from which stones of sixty pounds weight were thrown. When such means were ineffectual, another machine of still larger dimensions and power, from which projectiles of eighty-six pounds were cast, was carried from Damascus in separate parts, the materials of which formed the burden of two hundred camels. The castle was finally delivered up; and the rebel chief resumed the government of Tripoli, (A.D. 1409.) New revolts succeeded, and new sieges took place. The governors of Gaza and Damascus raised the standard of rebellion, and were joined by those of Hamah, Aleppo, Roum, Tripoli, and many others. (A.D. 1415.) When the crusaders had long ceased to descend in armed myriads on its shores, Syria was divided against itself, and by a two-fold intestine war strove to cast off the tyranny of Circassian slaves, the lords of Egypt. Again and again the sultan brought his armies to quell the insurrectionary commotions, and to perpetuate the bondage; and the ravages of war were alternated in Egypt and Syria till the second dynasty of the Mamelukes was brought to an end by a foreign power. For ere a third part of the fifteenth century had elapsed, the Ottomans, more fell destroyers by peace than others by war, overthrew their empire, and took possession of Syria, as if in order to accomplish what such multitudinous hosts and incessant wars could not effect, and to reduce it, in the progress of ages of decay, to the last degree of predicted desolation. which the land was to reach, till its expatriated, but still covenanted children, should return.

'De Guignes' Hist. tom. v. pp. 303, 304.

2 Ibid. p. 311.

CHAPTER V.

STATE OF SYRIA IN THE MIDDLE AGES, &c.

The middle ages may be said to present to view the middle stage in the progress of the general desolation and depopulation of Syria. Of cities that anciently exulted in their opulence and splendour, many had passed into oblivion. Jerusalem which fell an easy prey to 20,000 crusaders, was not like that Jerusalem which long withstood the might of imperial Rome, and in whose fall a million of human victims perished. When restored after many centuries to be the metropolis of a kingdom, it was not like the city in which Solomon reigned. And scarcely a shadow of his glory rested on the heaven-stricken hills of Judah, when, after the close of many crusading wars, an emperor of Germany, who saw little more of the land, could make a mockery of the kingdom of Jerusalem compared to that of Naples. Antioch could not boast of nine hundred thousand inhabitants, when it could yield up as prisoners but a ninth part of the number, at a time when the crusaders finally lost the first city of Syria they had taken. Nor could Kinnesrin, at that time as down to the days of the Saracens, pay, besides gold, a redeeming tribute of figs and other fruits, in loads told by the thousand. The cities and towns of Ephraim and Judah, with villages attached to each, were not then numbered by hundreds, as in the days of Joshua; and few of the sixty cities of the kingdom of Bashan remained in their populousness and strength,