Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/493

OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 471 of the revolt Cahina had most probably contributed her share of destruction ; and the alarm of universal ruin might terrify and alienate the cities that had reluctantly yielded to her un- worthy yoke. They no longer hoped, perhaps they no longer wished, the return of their Byzantine sovereigns : their present servitude was not alleviated by the benefits of order and justice ; and the most zealous Catholic must prefer the imperfect truths of the Koran to the blind and rude idolatry of the Moors. The general of the Saracens was again received as the saviour of the province ; the friends of civil society conspired against the savages of the land ; and the royal prophetess was slain in the first battle, which overturned the baseless fabric of her super- stition and empire. The same spirit revived imder the suc- cessor of Hassan ; it was finally quelled by the activity of Musa ^^^ [MSsaibn and his two sons ; but the number of the rebels may be presumed ^^^^'""^ from that of three hundred thousand captives ; sixty thousand of whom, the caliph's fifth, were sold for the profit of the public treasury. Thirty thousand of the barbarian youth were enlisted in the troops ; and the pious labours of Musa, to inculcate the know- ledge and practice of the Koran, accustomed the Africans to obey the apostle of God and the commander of the faithful. In their climate and government, their diet and habitation, the wandering Moors resembled the Bedoweens of the desert. With Adoption of the religion, they were proud to adojDt the language, name, and ** " origin of Arabs ; the blood of the strangers and natives was in- sensibly mingled ; and from the Euphrates to the Atlantic the same nation might seem to be diffused over the sandy plains of Asia and Afx'ica. Yet I will not deny that fifty thousand tents of pure Arabians might be transported over the Nile, and scattered through the Libyan desert ; and I am not ignorant that five of the Moorish tribes still retain their harharum idiom, with the appellation and character of while Africans. ^^ V. In the ])rogress of conquest from the north and south, spain. the Goths and the Saracens encountered each other on the tions and *" confines of Europe and Africa. In the opinion of the latter, the'S'lSs. '^ '^ A.D. 709 ^•'2 [Musa seems to have succeeded Hasan in a.d. 704. See A. Miiller, Der Islam im Morgen- und Abendlande, i. p. 422. Weil adopts the date a.d. 698 given by Ibn Kutaiba.] 1^"^ The first book of Leo Africanus and the observations of Dr. Shaw (p. 220, 223, 227, 247, &c.) will throw some light on the roving tribes of Barbary, of Arabian or Moorish descent. But Shaw had seen these savages with distant terror ; and Leo, a captive in the Vatican, appears to have lost more of his Arabic, than he could acquire of Greek or Roman, learning. Many of his gross mistakes might be detected in the first period of the Mahometan history.