Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/459

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 437 days, he regulated the present and future state of his Syrian conquests. Medina might be jealous lest the caliph should be detained by the sanctity of Jerusalem or the beauty of Damascus; her apprehensions were dispelled by his prompt and voluntary return to the tomb of the apostle.^^ To achieve what yet remained of the Syrian war, the caliph of Aleppo had formed two separate armies : a chosen detachment, under ad. eas Amrou and Yezid, was left in the camp of Palestine ; while the larger division, under the standard of Abu Obeidah and Caled, marched away to the north against Antioch and Aleppo. ^°*^ The latter of these, the Bercea of the Greeks, was not yet illustrious as the capital of a province or a kingdom ; and the inhabitants, by anticipating their submission and pleading their poverty, obtained a moderate composition for their lives and religion. But the castle of Aleppo,^^'^ distinct from the city, stood erect on a lofty artificial mound : the sides were sharpened to a pre- cipice, and faced with freestone ; and the breadth of the ditch might be filled with water from the neighbouring springs. After a loss of three thousand men, the garrison was still equal to the defence ; and Youkinna, their valiant and hereditary chief, had murdered his brother, an holy monk, for daring to pronounce the name of peace. In a siege of four or five months, the hardest of the Syrian war, great numbers of the Saracens were killed and wounded ; their removal to the distance of a mile could not seduce the vigilance of Youkinna ; nor could the Christians be terrified by the execution of three hundred captives, whom they beheaded before the castle-wall. The silence, and caliphs, covered the ground of the ancient temple (naai'oi> tov ii.eya.ov vaoii Sdneiov, says Phocas), a length of 215, a breadth of 172, toises. The Nubian geographer declares that this magnificent structure was second only in size and beauty to the great moschof Cordova (p. 113), whose present state Mr. Swinburne has so elegantly represented (Travels into Spain, p. 296-302). sy Of the many Arabic tarikhs or chronicles of Jerusalem (d'Herbelot, p. 867), Ockley found one among the Pocock Mss. of O.xford (vol. i. p. 257), which he has used to supply the defective narrative of Al Wakidi. i"0 [Antioch and Aleppo had fallen along with Epiphania, Laodicea, and Chalcis in A.D. 636 (after the fall of Emesa). But the Romans made an attempt to recover North Syria in a.d. 638 ; most of these towns received them with open arms ; and it was with this revolt that Abu Obaida and Khalid had now to cope.] I'^iThe Persian historian of Timur (torn. iii. 1. v. c. 21, p. 300) describes the castle of Aleppo as founded on a rock one hundred cubits in height ; a proof, says the French translator, that he had never visited the place. It is now m the midst of the city, of no strength, with a single gate, the circuit is about 500 or 600 paces, and the ditch half full of stagnant water (Voyages de Tavernier, tom. i. p. 149. Pocock, vol. ii. part i. p. 150). The fortresses of the East are contemptible to an Eiu-opean eye.