Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/469

OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 447 Egypt. This important fortress, which might fairly be described as a part of Memphis, or Misrah, was invested by the arms of the [mibt] lieutenant of Omar : a reinforcement of four thousand Saracens soon arrived in his camp ; and the military engines, which battered the walls, may be imputed to the art and labour of his Syrian allies. Yet the siege was protracted to seven months ; and the rash invaders were encompassed and threatened by the inundation of the Nile.^^^ Their last assault was bold and suc- cessful : they passed the ditch, which had been fortified with iron spikes, applied their scaling-ladders, entered the fortress with the shout of " God is victorious ! " and drove the remnant of the Greeks to their boats and the isle of Rouda. The spot was afterwards recommended to the conqueror by the easy com- munication with the gulf and the peninsula of Arabia : the remains of Memphis were deserted ; the tents of the Arabs were converted into permanent habitations ; and the first mosch was blessed by the presence of fourscore companions of Mahomet. 1^2 A new city arose in their camp on the eastward bank of the Nile ; [Fu«tat "the and the contiguous quarters of Babylon and Fostat are confounded in their present decay by the appellation of old Misrah or Cairo, of which they form an extensive suburb. But the name of Cairo, the town of victory, more strictly belongs to the modern capital, which was founded in the tenth century by the Fatimite caliphs.^'^ It has gradually receded from the river,^^-^^ but the continuity of buildings may be traced by an attentive eye from the monuments of Sesostris to those of Saladin.^24 121 From the month of .A-pril, the Nile begins imperceptibly to rise ; the swell becomes strong and visible in the moon after the summer solstice (Plin. Hist. Nat. V. 10), and is usually proclaimed at Cairo on St. Peter's day (June 29). A register of thirty successive years marks the greatest height of the waters between July 25 and August 18 (Maillet, Description de I'Egypte, lettre xi. p. 67, &c. Pocock's Description of the East, vol. i. p. 200. Shaw's Travels, p. 383). i22Murtadi, Merveilles de I'Egypte, p. 243-259. He expatiates on the subject with the zeal and minuteness of a citizen and a bigot, and his local traditions have a strong air of truth and accuracy. laaQ'Herbelot, Bibliothfeque Orientale, p. 233. '2-'* [The river has receded towards the west. On the different sites included in Cairo and " Old Misr " see Lane, Cairo fifty years ago (1896), ch. i. and x. ; and S. Lane-Poole, Art of the Saracens in Egypt, p. 4-9. Memphis is about fourteen miles south of Cairo.] ^'^^The position of New and of Old Cairo is well known, and has been often described. Two writers who were intimately acquainted with ancient and modern Egypt, have fixed, after a learned inquiry, the city of Memphis at Gizeh, directly opposite the old Cairo (Sicard, Nouveaux M^moires des Missions du Levant, tom. vi. p. 5, 6. Shaw's Observations and Travels, p. 296-304). Yet we may not dis- regard the authority or the arguments of Pocock (vol. i. p. 25-41), Niebuhr (Voyage, tom. i. 77-106), and, above all, of D'Anville (Description de I'Egypte, p.