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been known to the Chinese (and probably also to the Indians) from time immemorial, though they did not employ it for warlike purposes, except by way of mines and war-rockets or fusees, which latter the Arabs (who under the early Khalifs were in constant communication with both China and India[1]) appear to have early adopted from them and (in all probability) used at the destructive sieges of Mecca in the years A.D. 683 and 691–2.[2] The Greek fire, mentioned by Joinville and other Christian historians of the Crusades and described as exploding in mid-air with a terrible noise, may be reasonably supposed to have been rather some war-rocket of this kind than the (incendiary) composition of naphtha, etc., known by the name. According to Arab chroniclers, bombards or wooden cannon were used at the siege of a town in Africa as early as A.D. 1205, and Ibn Khaldoun and other historians testify that the use of firearms became general among the Moors of Northern Africa and Spain by
- ↑ Sind and Chinese Tartary formed part of the empire of the Ommiade Khalifs and after the conquest, in the first century of the Hegira, of Turkestan, regular commercial communication was established with China by the overland caravan route from Aleppo through Samarcand. Diplomatic relations, also, were early established between the successsors of Mohammed and the sovereigns of Cathay, and the Khalif el Mensour (second of the Abbaside dynasty) was on such terms of alliance with the Emperor Sou-Tsong (a prince of the great Thang dynasty, whose reign was glorified by the most famous of Chinese poets, Li-tai-pé, the Hafiz of the Flowery Land) as to despatch to his aid against a rebel a succour of four thousand Arab troops, who afterwards settled in China, where their descendants are, it is said, still to be traced.
- ↑ See note, Vol. III. p. 194.
