116

OBSEQUIES OF ABU AYUB.

[CHI. LII. the month of April to that of September, on the approach of winter they retreated fourscore miles from the capital, to the isle of Cyzicus, in which they had established their magazine of spoil and provisions. So patient was their perseverance, or so languid were their operations, that they repeated, in the six following summers, the same attack and retreat, with a gradual abatement of hope and vigour, till the mischances of shipwreck and disease, of the sword and of fire, compelled them to relinquish the fruitless enterprise. They might bewail the loss, or commemorate the martyrdom, of thirty thousand Moslems, who fell in the siege of Constantinople; and the solemn funeral of Abu Ayub, or Job, excited the curiosity of the Christians themselves. That venerable Arab, one of the last of the companions of Mahomet, was numbered among the ansars, or auxiliaries, of Medina, who sheltered the head of the flying prophet. In his youth he fought, at Beder and Ohud, under the holy standard; in his mature age he was the friend and follower of Ali; and the last remnant of his strength and life was consumed in a distant and dangerous war against the enemies of the Koran. His memory was revered; but the place of his burial was neglected and unknown, during a period of seven hundred and eighty years, till the conquest of Constantinople by Mahomet the Second. A seasonable vision (for such are the manufacture of every religion) revealed the holy spot at the foot of the walls and the bottom of the harbour; and the mosch of Ayub has been deservedly chosen for the simple and martial inauguration of the Turkish sultans.*

The event of the siege revived, both in the East and West, the reputation of the Roman arms, and cast a momentary shade over the glories of the Saracens. The Greek ambassador was favourably received at Damascus, in a general council of the emirs or Koreish; a peace, or truce of thirty years, was ratified between the two empires; and the stipulation of an annual tribute, fifty horses of a noble breed, fifty slaves, and three thousand

* Demetrius Cantemir's Hist. of the Othman Empire, p. 105, 106. Rycaut's State of the Ottoman Empire, p. 10, 11. Voyages de Thevenot, part 1, p. 189. The Christians, who suppose that the martyr Abu Ayub is vulgarly confounded with the patriarch Job, betray their own ignorance rather than that of the Turks.

pieces of gold, degraded the majesty of the commander of the faithful.* The aged caliph was desirous of possessing his dominions, and ending his days in tranquillity and repose; while the Moors and Indians trembled at his name, his palace and city of Damascus was insulted by the Mardaites, or Maronites, of mount Libanus, the firmest 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

*Theophanes, though a Greek, deserves credit for these tributes (Chronograph. p. 295, 296. 300, 301), which are confirmed, with some variation, by the Arabic History of Abulpharagius. (Dynast. p. 128, vers. Pocock). + The censure of Theophanes is just πάνδεινα

and pointed, τὴν Ῥωμαικὴν δυναστείαν ἀκρωτηριάσας . κακὰ πέπονθεν ἡ Ρωμανία ὑπὸ τῶν ̓Αράβων μεχρὶ τοῦ νῦν. (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. 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! [D'Israeli, in his "Calamities of Authors," shows that this is not a solitary blot on our literary annals. It has been already noticed by Gibbon in ch. 51 (p. 52). But Oxford was not the scene of Ockley's imprisonment. The Introd uction to his second volume is dated from Cambridge Castle. See the Memoir prefixed

118

THE ARABIC COINS AND CIPHERS.

[CH. LII. dinar, though it might be censured by some timorous casuists, proclaimed the unity of the God of Mahomet.* Under the reign of the caliph Waled, the Greek language and characters were excluded from the accounts of the public revenue. If this change was productive of the invention or familiar use of our present numerals, the Arabic or Indian ciphers, as they are commonly styled, a regulation of office has promoted the most important discoveries of arithmetic, algebra, and the mathematical sciences.

Bohn's Edition of his History.-ED.]

* 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 (forty-eight 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 grains of the Cairo standard. (See the Modern Univ. Hist. tom. i. p. 548, of the French translation.) [The law of Mahomet forbade all imitation of the human figure. The first Mahometans therefore used the coins of the lands which they conquered. When they found it necessary to issue their own, they could only determine their value by copying on one side the monies current among them, while they covered the obverse with texts of the Koran. Abdalmelik's first mint-master was a Jew, named Somyor. Their gold dinar weighed seventy-two grains of barley, and was worth about nine shillings. But the Arabian term for these coins was Markusch. By the diffusion of commerce they were circulated over Europe and introduced the term marcus, mark, into the monetary vocabulary of every country. They were copied by our Anglo-Saxon Offa, whose name appears on one of his coins among the words, "Mahomet is the prophet of God." Ockley, p. 487. Condé, p. 76. Humphrey's Manual, p. 414. 518. 534. Bohn's Editions.-ED.] † Καὶ ἐκωλυσε γράφεσθαι ἑλληνιστὶ τοὺς δημοσίους τῶν λογοθεσίων κώδικας, ἀλλ ̓ ̓Αραβίοις αὐτὰ παρασημαίνεσθαι χωρὶς τῶν ψήφων, ἐπειδὴ ἀδύνατον τῆ ἐκείνων γλώσση μονάδα, ἢ δυάδα, ἢ τριάδα, ἢ ὀκτὼ μovrpia ypάpeceat. Theophan. Chronograph. p. 314. defect, if it really existed, must have stimulated the ingenuity of the Arabs to invent or borrow. According to a new, though probable, notion, maintained by M. de Villoison (Anecdota Græca, tom. ii. p. 152-157), our ciphers 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.

This

A

Whilst the caliph Waled sat idle on the throne of Damascus, while his 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 Justinian had been punished and avenged, a humble secretary, Anastasius or Artemius, was promoted by chance or merit to the vacant purple. He was 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. He 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 division of the themes or provinces, described by Constantine Porphyrogenitus (de Thematibus, 1. 1, 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.) [The term Obsequium was introduced into the Pandects (1.37. Tit. 15), and Justinian's Code (1. 6. Tit. 6), to denote the respectful obedience due to superiors, as from children to parents and from

120

SECOND SIEGE OF

[CH. LII. 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 sank 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 engines of assault, and declared, by words and actions, 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

freedmen to masters. It was thence flatteringly applied to the services of attendants in the palace, and the pomp of retinue that surrounded the emperor in public. Of this his guards were an important section; and the legion set apart for that duty was thence styled Obsequian. Accustomed to an idle life at Constantinople, their employment in actual warfare may have provoked discontent and revolt. The Asiatic district, to which the name of Obsequium Thema was given, was probably so distinguished, for the generally quiet and loyal deportment of its inhabitants. Ducange, 4. 1301. Zedler, 25. 270.-ED.]

* [In describing the second siege of Constantinople, the words "for the first time," cannot have been so inadvertently used, as to apply to more than the passage across the Hellespont at Abydus. Gibbon's German translator has so understood and rendered them.-ED.]