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 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 451 who had entered the citadel were driven back ; and the general, with a friend and a slave, remained a prisoner in the hands of the Christians. When Amrou was conducted before the praefect, he remembered his dignity and forgot his situation ; a lofty de- meanour and resolute language revealed the lieutenant of the caliph, and the battle-axe of a soldier was already raised to strike off the head of the audacious captive. His life was saved by the readiness of his slave, who instantly gave his master a blow on the face, and commanded him, with an angry tone, to be silent in the presence of his superiors. The credulous Greek was deceived : he listened to the offer of a treaty, and his prisoners were dismissed in the hope of a more respectable em- bassy, till the joyful acclamations of the camp announced the return of their general and insulted the folly of the infidels.^-'i At length, after a siege of fourteen months ^'■^~ and the loss of three and twenty thousand men, the Saracens prevailed ; the ^^:Sf^ Greeks embarked their dispirited and diminished numbers, and the standard of Mahomet was planted on the walls of the capital of Egypt. " I have taken," said Amrou to the caliph, " the great city of the West. It is impossible for me to enu- merate the variety of its riches and beauty ; and I shall content myself with observing that it contains four thousand palaces, four thousand baths, four hundred theatres or places of amuse- ment, twelve thousand shops for the sale of vegetable food, and forty thousand tributary Jews. The town has been subdued by force of arms, without treaty or capitulation, and the Moslems are impatient to seize the fruits of their victory." ^'^'^ The com- mander of the faithful rejected with firmness the idea of pillage, and directed his lieutenant to reserve the wealth and revenue of Alexandria for the public service and the propagation of the faith. The inhabitants were numbered ; a tribute was imposed ; the zeal and resentment of the Jacobites were curbed, and the 131 [There seems to be no early authority for this anecdote.] '32 Both Eutychius (.■ nal. torn. ii. p. 319) and Elmacin (Hist. Saracen, p. 28) concur in fixing the taking of Alexandria to Friday of the new moon of Moharram of the twentieth year of the Hegira (December 22, A.D. 640). In reckoning back- wards fourteen months spent before Alexandria, seven months before Babylon, &c. Amrou might have invaded Egypt about the end of the year 638 ; but we are assured that he entered the country the 12th of Bayni, 6th of June (Murtadi, Merveilles de I'Egypte, p. 164. Severus, apud Renaudot, p. 162). The Saracen, and afterwards Lewis IX. of France, halted at Pelusium, or Damietta, during the season of the inundation of the Nile. [For date see Appendix 21.] i33Eutych. Annal. tom. ii. p. 316, 319. [Alexandria capitulated, see Tabari, iii. p. 463 ; John of Nikiu, ch. 121. Al-Biladhurl, like Eutychius, has the false statement that it was stormed. Cp. Mr. E. W. Brooks in Byz. Zeitsch. iv. p. 443. J