Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/429

OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 407 Omar, passed the Tigris without opposition ; the capital was taken by assault ; and the disorderly resistance of the people oave a keener edge to the sabres of the Moslems, who shouted with religious transport, "This is the white palace of Chosroes, this is the promise of the apostle of God ! " The naked robbers of the desert were suddenly enriched beyond the measure of their hope or knowledge. Each chamber revealed a new treas- ure, secreted with art or ostentatiously displayed ; the gold and silver, the various wardrobes and precious furniture, surpassed (says Abulfeda) the estimate of fancy or numbers ; and another historian defines the untold and almost infinite mass by the fabulous computation of three thousands of thousands of thou- sands of pieces of gold.-^ Some minute though curious facts represent the contrast of riches and ignoi'ance. From the remote islands of the Indian Ocean, a large pi'ovision of camphire '^^ had been imported, which is employed with a mixture of wax to illuminate the palaces of the East. Strangers to the name and properties of that odoriferous gum, the Saracens, mistaking it for salt, mingled the camphire in their bread and were astonished at the bitterness of the taste. One of the apartments of the palace was decorated with a carpet of silk, sixty cubits in length and as many in breadth ; a paradise or garden was depictured on the ground ; the flowers, fruits, and shrubs were imitated by the figures of the gold embroidery and the colours of the precious stones ; and the ample square was encircled by a variegated and verdant border. The Arabian general persuaded his soldiers to relinquish their claim in the reasonable hope that the eyes of the caliph would be delighted with the splendid workmanship of nature and industry. Regardless of the merit of art and the )iomp of royalty, the rigid Omar divided the prize among his brethren of Medina ; the picture was destroyed ; but such was the intrinsic value of the materials that the share of Ali alone was sold for twenty thousand drachms. A mule that carried away the tiara and cuirass, the belt and bracelets of Chosroes, was '9 Mente vix potest numerove comprehendi quanta spolia . . . nostris cesserint. Abulfeda, p. 69. Yet I still suspect that the extravagant numbers of Elmacin may be the error, not of the text, but of the version. The best translators from the Greek, for instance, I find to be very poor arithmeticians. [The translation here seems to be correct.] 20 The camphire tree grows in China and Japan; but many hundredweight of those meaner sorts are exchanged for a single pound of the more precious gum of Borneo and Sumatra (Raynal, Hist. Philosoph. torn. i. p. 362-365. Dictionnaire d'Hist. Naturelle par Bomare. Miller's Gardener's Dictionary). These may be the islands of the first climate from whence the Arabians imported their camphire (Geograph. Nub. p. 34, 35 ; d'Herbelot, p. 232).