camp in Palestine, Amrou had surprised or anticipated the caliph's leave for the invasion of Egypt. The magnanimous Omar trusted in his God and his sword, which had shaken the thrones of Chosroes and Cesar; but, when he compared the slender force of the Moslems with the greatness of the enterprise, he condemned his own rashness, and listened to his timid companions. The pride and the greatness of Pharaoh were familiar to the readers of the Koran; and a tenfold repetition of prodigies had been scarcely sufficient to effect, not the victory, but the flight, of six hundred thousand of the Children of Israel: the cities of Egypt were many and populous; their architecture was strong and solid; the Nile, with its numerous branches, was alone an insuperable barrier; and the granary of the imperial city would be obstinately defended by the Roman powers. In this perplexity, the commander of the faithful resigned himself to the decision of chance, or, in his opinion, of providence. At the head of only four thousand Arabs, the intrepid Amrou had marched away from his station of Gaza, when he was overtaken by the messenger of Omar. If you are still in Syria, said the ambiguous mandate, retreat without delay; but if, at the receipt of this epistle, you have already reached the frontiers of Egypt, advance with confidence, and depend on the succour of God and of your brethren. The experience, perhaps the secret intelligence, of Amrou had taught him to suspect the mutability of courts; and he continued his march till his tents were unquestionably pitched on Egyptian ground. He there assembled his officers, broke the seal, perused the epistle, gravely inquired the name and situation of the place, and declared his ready obedience to the commands of the caliph. After a siege of thirty days, he took possession of Farmah or Pelusium; and that key of Egypt, as it has been justly named, unJocked the entrance of the country, as far as the ruins of Heliopolis and the neighbourhood of the modern Cairo."*

The conquest of the African province soon followed that of Egypt. "At the head of forty thousand Mos

* Hist. of Decline and Fall, Vol. 1x p. 427, 428, 429.

...........

lems, Abdallah 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, a maritime city, in which the name, the wealth, and the inhabitants, of the province had gradually centered, 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; and the Saracens were tempted by the approach of the prefect Gregory to relinquish the labours of the siege for the perils and the hopes of a decisive action-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-After the fall of this opulent city, the provincials and barbarians implored on all sides the mercy of the conqueror-The western conquests of the Saracens were suspended near twenty years, till their dissensions were composed by the establishment of the house of Ommiyah-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. But the title of conqueror of Africa is more justly due to his successor Akbah-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, 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; fertilizes, 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 same fatality attended the Gothic kingdom of Spain like most of the other conquests of the Saracens, it fell into their hands by indulging in the hollow security of peaceful carelessness. The perfidious count Julian "revealed, in his epistles, or in a personal interview with the Arab general Musa, the wealth and nakedness of his country; the weakness of an unpopular prince; the degeneracy of an effeminate people. The Goths were no longer the victorious barbarians, who had humbled the pride of Rome, despoiled the queen of nations, and penetrated from the Danube to the Atlantic ocean. Secluded from the world by the Pyrendan mountains, the successors of Alaric had slumbered in a long peace: the walls of the cities were mouldered into dust the youth had abandoned the exercise of arms; and the presumption of their ancient renown would expose them in a field of battle to the first assault of the invaders. The ambitious Saracen was fired by the ease and importance of the attempt; but the execution was delayed till he had consulted the commander of the faithful; and his messenger returned with the permission of Walid to annex the unknown kingdoms of the West to the religion and

* Hist, of Decline and Fall, Vol. x. p. 450-458.

throne of the caliphs. In his residence of Tangier, Musa, with secrecy and caution, continued his correspondence, and hastened his preparations. But the remorse of the conspirators was soothed by the fallacious assurance, that he should content himself with the glory and spoil, without aspiring to establish the Moslems beyond the sea that separates Africa from Europe." Musa having at length invaded Spain, its Gothic sovereign and nobility too late perceived the magnitude of the danger. "In the neighbourhood of Cadiz, the town of Xeres has been illustrated by the encounter which determined the fate of the kingdom. The stream of the Guadalete, which falls into the bay, divided the two camps, and marked the advancing and retreating skirmishes of three successive and bloody days. On the fourth day, the two armies joined a more serious and decisive issue; but Alaric would have blushed at the sight of his unworthy successor, sustaining on his head a diadem of pearls, encumbered with a flowing robe of gold and silken embroidery, and reclining on a litter or car of ivory drawn by two white mules." This battle terminated in the complete victory of the Saracens ;" and the remains of the Gothic army were scattered or destroyed in the flight and pursuit of the three following days."+ Thus has the Mohammedan little horn destroyed many while slumbering in a state of false security; and thus accurately has the prophecy of Daniel been fulfilled.

6. The only remaining peculiarity, which the angel ascribes to this tyrannical superstition, is still future: it is destined to be broken without hand-This event is to take place at the close of the 2200 years, which, as we have seen, synchronizes with the termination of the 1260 years; when the spiritual sanctuary will begin to be cleansed from the abominations of the two-fold Apostacy. In the prediction of Daniel, Mohammedism alone is spoken of: its two principal supporters, the Saracens and the Turks, are not discriminated from each other: a gen

• The resemblance between the effeminate and unwarlike habiliments of the Spanish Roderic and the Persian Rustam cannot but have been observed by the reader. Each "was destroyed in negligent security."

+ Hist. of Decline and Fall, Vol. 1x, p. 469–474. VOL. I.

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eral history of the superstition, from its commencement to its termination, is given, without descending to particularize the nations, by which it should be successively patronized. In the Revelation of St. John this deficiency is amply supplied and we are furnished with two distinct and accurate paintings both of the Saracenic locusts under their exterminating leader, and of the Eu phratèan horsemen of the four Turkish sultanies. "The sovereignty of Arabia was lost," long before the expiration of the 2200 years, "by the extent and rapidity of conquest. The colonies of the nation were scattered over the East and the West, and their blood was mingled with the blood of their converts and captives. After the reign of three caliphs, the throne was transported from Medina to the valley of Damascus and the banks of the Tigris; the holy cities were violated by impious war; Arabia was ruled by the rod of a subject, perhaps of a stranger; and the Bedoweens of the desert, awakening from their dream of dominion, resumed their old and solitary independence." The Turks at present, jointly with the Persians, occupy the place and empire of the Saracens; and the little horn of Mohammedism has branched out into the rival sects of the Shiites and the Sonnites. It appears however from the Apocalypse, that the Ottoman power, like its predecessor the Saracenic Caliphate, will be annihilated previous to the complete expiration of the 2200 and the 1260 years, and consequently previous to the downfall of the Roman beast under his last head and of his little horn the papal false prophet. The mystic waters of the Euphrates are to be completely dried up under the sixth vial; and by their exhaustion are to prepare a way for the kings from the East, and for the gathering together of the grand confederacy of the beast, the false prophet, and the kings of the Latin earth, to their destruction at Megiddo: but the confederacy itself is not to be destroyed till the seventh vial is poured out, and till the 1260 years are fully accomplished. The downfall of the Ottoman empire,

* Rev. ix.

+ Hist. of Decline and Fall, Vol. 1x. p. 953.

Compare Rev. ix. 14, 15. xvi. 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. with xvi. 17—21. and xix. I! -21. These matters will be discussed more fully hereafter.