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460 THE DECLINE AND FALL queror and lieutenant of Egypt- Yet the favour of the prince and the merit of his favourite could not obliterate the guilt of his apostacy. The early conversion of Abdallah and his skilful pen had recommended him to the important office of transcribing the sheets of the Koran ; he betrayed his trust, corrupted the text, derided the errors which he had made, and fled to Mecca to escape the justice, and expose the ignorance, of the apostle. After the conquest of Mecca, he fell prostrate at the feet of Mahomet ; his tears and the entreaties of Othman extorted a reluctant pardon ; but the prophet declared that he had so long hesitated to allow time for some zealous disciple to avenge his injury in the blood of the apostate. With apparent fidelity and effective inerit, he served the religion which it was no longer his interest to desert : his birth and talents gave him an honourable rank among the Koreish ; and, in a nation of cavalry, Abdallah was renowned as the boldest and most dexterous horseman of Arabia. At the head of forty thousand Moslems, he 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 uarne, the wealth, and the inhabitants, of the province had gradually cen- tred, 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 prffifect the approach of the praefect Gregoiy ^- to relinquish the labours his daughter jgj ^^^ province and city of Tripoli are described by Leo Africanus (in Navi- gatione et Viaggi di Ramusio, torn. i. Venetia, 1550, fol. 76, verso), and Marmol (Description de I'Afrique, torn. ii. p. 562). The first of these writers was a Moor, a scholar, and a traveller, who composed or translated his African geography in a state of captivity at Rome, where he had assumed the name and religion of pope Leo X. [His work has been recently edited for the Hakluyt See. by Dr. R. Brown.] In a similar captivity among the Moors, the Spaniard Marmol, a soldier of Charles V., compiled his Description of Africa, translated by d'Ablancourt into French (Paris, 1667, 3 vols, in 4to). Marmol had read and seen, but he is destitute of the curious and extensive observation which abounds in the original work of Leo the African. 162 Theophanes, who mentions the defeat, rather than the death, of Gregory. He brands the prasfect with the name of Tuoan'os ; he had probably assumed the purple (Chronograph, p. 285 suh A.M. 6139])- [There is no doubt that Gregory revolted against Constans and was proclaimed emperor. Cp. Ibn Abd al Hakam [loc. cif. p. 304), who speaks of him as "a king named Jorejir (or Jirjir) who had at first administered the country as lieutenant of Heraclius, but had then revolted against his master and struck dinars with his own image. His