Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

of submission, and the caliph was resolved on victory. One hundred and thirty-five thousand regular soldiers received pay, and were inscribed in the military roll; and above three hundred thousand persons of every denomination marched under the black standard of the Abbassides. They swept the surface of Asia Minor far beyond Tyana and Ancyra, and invested the Pontic Heraclea,91 once a flourishing state, now a paltry town; at that time capable of sustaining in her antique walls a month's [A.D. 806] siege against the forces of the East. The ruin was complete, the spoil was ample; but, if Harun had been conversant with Grecian story, he would have regretted the statue of Hercules, whose attributes, the club, the bow, the quiver, and the lion's hide, were sculptured in massy gold. The progress of desolation by sea and land, from the Euxine to the isle of Cyprus, compelled the emperor Nicephorus to retract his haughty defiance. In the new treaty, the ruins of Heraclea were left for ever as a lesson and a trophy; and the coin of the tribute was marked with the image and superscription of Harun and his three sons.92 Yet this plurality of lords might contribute to remove the dishonour of the Roman name. After the death of their father, the heirs of the caliph were involved in civil discord, and the conqueror, the liberal Almamon, was sufficiently engaged in the restoration of domestic peace and the introduction of foreign science.

The Arabs
subdue the
isle of
Crete,
A.D. 823

Under the reign of Almamon at Bagdad, of Michael the Stammerer at Constantinople, the islands of Crete 93 and Sicily

induced him to retreat; but the tribute was not paid and he repassed the Taurus at the end of the year to exact it. The battle in which 40,000 Greeks are said to have fallen was fought in the following year, A.D. 804, but Hārūn's general, Jabril, led the invaders. Heraclea was not taken till a subsequent campaign, A.D. 806. Cp. Weil, op. cit., ii. p. 159-60. Tabari, ed. de Goeje, iii. 695-8.]

91 M. de Tournefort, in his coasting voyage from Constantinople to Trebizond, passed a night at Heraclea or Eregri. His eye surveyed the present state, his reading collected the antiquities of the city (Voyage du Levant, tom. iii. lettre xvi. p. 23-35). We have a separate history of Heraclea in the fragments of Memnon, which are preserved by Photius. [The Heraclea which Harun took is not the Pontic city, but Eregli, west of Tyana.]

92 The wars of Harun al Rashid against the Roman empire are related by Theophanes (p. 384, 385, 391, 396, 407, 408 [sub A.M. 6274, 6281, 6287, 6298, 6300]), Zonaras (tom. ii. 1. xv. p. 115, 124 [c. 10 and c. 15]), Cedrenus (p. 477, 478 [ii. p. 34, ed. Bonn]), Eutychius (Annal. tom. ii. p. 407), Elmacin (Hist. Saracen. p. 136, 151, 152), Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 147, 151), and Abulfeda (p. 156, 166-168). [An English translation of extracts from the most important Arabic sources (Tabari, Baladhuri, &c.) is given by E. W. Brooks, Byzantines and Arabs in the Time of the Early Abbasids, English Historical Review, Oct. 1900 and Jan. 1901. See Weil, op. cit., ii. p. 155 sqq.]

93 The authors from whom I have learned the most of the ancient and modern state of Crete are Belon (Observations, &c., c. 3-20, Paris, 1555), Tournefort

were subdued by the Arabs. The former of these conquests is disdained by their own writers, who were ignorant of the fame of Jupiter and Minos, but it has not been overlooked by the Byzantine historians, who now begin to cast a clearer light on the affairs of their own times.94 A band of Andalusian volunteers, discontented with the climate or government of Spain, explored the adventures of the sea; but, as they sailed in no more than ten or twenty galleys, their warfare must be branded with the name of piracy. As the subjects and sectaries of the white party, they might lawfully invade the dominions of the black caliphs. A rebellious faction introduced them into Alexandria; they cut in pieces both friends and foes, pillaged the churches and the mosques, sold above six thousand Christian captives, and maintained their station in the capital of Egypt, till they were oppressed by the forces and the presence of Almamon himself. From the mouth of the Nile to the Hellespont, the islands and sea-coasts, both of the Greeks and Moslems, were exposed to their depredations; they saw, they envied, they tasted the fertility of Crete, and soon returned with forty galleys to a more serious attack. The Andalusians wandered over the land fearless and unmolested; but, when they descended with their plunder to the sea-shore, their vessels were in flames, and their chief, Abu Caab, confessed himself the author of the mis- [Abu Hafs]

(Voyage du Levant, tom. i. lettre ii. et iii.), and Meursius (CRETA, in his works, tom. iii. p. 343-544). Although Crete is styled by Homer riepa, by Dionysius Amaph Te Kal etßoros, I cannot conceive that mountainous island to surpass, or even to equal, in fertility the greater part of Spain.

The most authentic and circumstantial intelligence is obtained from the four books of the Continuation of Theophanes, compiled by the pen or the command of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, with the Life of his father Basil the Macedonian (Scriptores post Theophanem, p. 1-162, a Francis. Combefis., Paris, 1685). The loss of Crete and Sicily is related, 1. ii. p. 46-52. To these we may add the secondary evidence of Joseph Genesius (1. ii. p. 21, Venet. 1783 [p. 46-49, ed. Bonn]), George Cedrenus (Compend. p. 506-508 [ii. p. 92 sqq. ed. Bonn]), and John Scylitzes Caropalata (apud Baron. Annal. Eccles. A.D. 827, No. 24, &c.). But the modern Greeks are such notorious plagiaries that I should only quote a plurality of names. [These historiographical implications are not quite correct. Genesius is not a "secondary" authority in relation to the Scriptores post Theophanem; on the contrary, he is a source of the Continuation of Theophanes. See above, Appendix 1 to vol. 5, p. 535; for the sources of Genesius himself, ib. p. 584. The order of "plagiarism" is (1) Genesius, (2) Continuation of Theophanes, (3) Scylitzes, (4) Cedrenus.]

* Renaudot (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 251-256, 268-270) has described the ravages of the Andalusian Arabs in Egypt, but has forgot to connect them with the conquest of Crete. [Tabari places the conquest of Crete in A.H. 210. The first expeditions probably belong to A.D. 824-5. Ĉp. A. Vasil'ev, Vizantiia i Araby, i. 46

chief. Their clamours accused his madness or treachery. "Of what do you complain?" replied the crafty emir. "I have brought you to a land flowing with milk and honey. Here is your true country; repose from your toils, and forget the barren place of your nativity." "And our wives and children ?” "Your beauteous captives will supply the place of your wives, and in their embraces you will soon become the fathers of a new progeny." The first habitation was their camp, with a ditch and rampart, in the bay of Suda; but an apostate monk led them to a more desirable position in the eastern parts; and [Khandak] the name of Candax, their fortress and colony, had been extended to the whole island, under the corrupt and modern appellation of Candia. The hundred cities of the age of Minos were diminished to thirty; and of these, only one, most probably Cydonia, had courage to retain the substance of freedom and the profession of Christianity. The Saracens of Crete soon repaired the loss of their navy; and the timbers of mount Ida were launched into the main. During an hostile period, of one hundred and thirty-eight years, the princes of Constantinople attacked these licentious corsairs with fruitless curses and ineffectual arms.

and of Sicily,

96

The loss of Sicily 6 was occasioned by an act of superstitious A.D. 827-878 rigour. An amorous youth, who had stolen a nun from her cloister, was sentenced by the emperor to the amputation of his [A.D. 826] tongue. Euphemius 97 appealed to the reason and policy of the Saracens of Africa; and soon returned with the Imperial purple,

96 Anλoî (says the continuator of Theophanes, l. ii. p. 51 [p. 32, ed. Bonn]) &è ταῦτα σαφέστατα καὶ πλατικώτερον ἡ τότε γραφεῖσα Θεογνώστῳ καὶ εἰς χεῖρας ἐλθοῦσα huv. This [contemporary] history of the loss of Sicily is no longer extant. Muratori (Annali d'Italia, tom. vii. p. 7, 19, 21, &c.) has added some circumstances from the Italian chronicles. [For the Saracens in Sicily the chief modern work is M. Amari's Storia dei Musulmani di Sicilia, in 3 vols. (1854-68). The same scholar published a collection of Arabic texts relating to the history of Sicily (1857) and an Italian translation thereof (Bibloteca arabo-sicula, versione italiana, 1880). There had been several previous Saracen descents on Sicily: in A.D. 652 (the island was defended by the Exarch Olympius); in A.D. 669 Syracuse was plundered. Both these invasions were from Syria. Then in A.D. 704 the descents from Africa began under Mūsa with the destruction of an unnamed town on the west coast, which Amari has identified with Lilybæum. The new town of Marsa-Ali (Marsala) took its place. In 705 Syracuse was plundered again; and the island was repeatedly invaded in the eighth century. A. Holm has summarised these invasions in vol. 3 of his Geschichte Siciliens im Alterthum (1898), p. 316 sqq. See also Vasil'ev, op. cit., i. and ii.]

97

[Euphemius revolted and declared himself Emperor in A.D. 826. See Amari Storia d. Mus. i. 239 sqq. He was soon thrust aside by the Saracens. His name' survives in the name of the town Calatafimi.]

[graphic][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors]

CAPTURE OF SYRACUSE BY THE SARACENS. FROM THE MS. OF SKYLITZES AT MADRID

« НазадПродовжити »