Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/425

 OF THE EOMAN EMPIRE 403 same period may be compared to their most popular works, which are never vivified by the spirit of philosophy and freedom. The Oriental /ihnin/ of a Fi'enchman ^■' would instruct the most learned mufti of the East ; and perhaps the Arabs might not find in a single historian so clear and comprehensive a narrative of their own exploits, as that which will be deduced in the ensuing sheets. I. In the first year of the first caliph, his lieutenant Caled, the invasion of 1 c >-i 1 * 1 1 (• 1 f» 1 1 1 11 Persia. AD. sword of (jod and the scourge of the infidels, advanced to tiie632[033] banks of the Euphrates, and reduced the cities of Anbar and Hira. ^^'estward of the ruins of Babylon, a tribe of sedentary Arabs had fixed themselves on the verge of the desert ; and Hira was the seat of a race of kings who had embraced the Christian religion and reigned above six hundred years under the shadow of the throne of Persia. i'' The last of the xMondars was defeated and slain by Caled; his son was sent a captive to Medina; hisCEattieof nobles bowed before the successor of the prophet ; the people was tempted by the example and success of their countrymen ; and the caliph accepted as the first fruits of foreign conquest an annual tribute of seventy thousand pieces ofgokl.^" Tlie con- querors, and even their historians, were astonished by the dawn of their future greatness : " In the same year," says Elmacin, " Caled fought many signal battles ; an immense multitude of in- fidels was slaughtered ; and spoils, infinite and innumei'able, were acquired l)y the victorious Moslems "^^ But the invincible Caled was soon transferred to the Syrian war ; the invasion of the Per- sian fnmtier was conducted by less active, or less prudent, com- manders ; the Saracens were repulsed with loss in the passage of the Euphrates ; and, though they chastised the insolent pur- 15 Bibliotheque Orientale, par M. d'Herbelot, in folio, Paris, 1697. For the character of the respectable author, consult his friend Thdvenot (Voyages du Levant, part i. chap. i.). His work is an agreeable miscellany, which must gratify every taste ; but I never can digest the alphabetical order, and 1 find him more satisfactory in the Persian than the Arabic history. The recent supplement from the pa]5ers of MM. Visdelou and Galland (in folio, La Haye, 1779) is of a different cast, a medley of tales, proverbs, and Chinese antiquities. "> Pocock will explain the chronology (Specimen Hist. Arabum, p. 66-74), S-^d d'Anville the geography (I'Euphrate et le Tigre, p. 125), of the dynasty of the Almondars [al-Mundhirj. The English scholar understood more Arabic than the mufti of .-leppo (Ockley, vol. ii. p. 34) ; the French geographer is equally at home in every age and every climate of the world. [The vassal state of Hira, which sprung from the cam^ of an Aral) chief (as the name signifies), was perhaps founded about the middle of the third cent. A.D., in the reign of Sapor L Cp. Noldeke, Tabari, p. 25.] '^[Hira was allowed to remain Christian.] 18 Fecit et Chaled plurima in hoc anno proclia, in quibus vicenmt Muslimi, et iiifidelium inmiensd multitudine occisa spolia infinita et innumera sunt nacti (Hist. Saracenica, p. 20). The Christian annalist slides into the national and compen- dious term of infidels, and I often adopt (I hope without scandal) this characteristic mode of expression.