The loss of Damascus and Jerusalem, the bloody fields of Aiznadin and Yermuk, may be imputed in some degree to the absence or misconduct of the sovereign. Instead of defending the sepulchre of Christ, he involved the church and state in a metaphysical controversy for the unity of his will; and while Heraclius crowned the offspring of his second nuptials, he was tamely stripped of the most valuable part of their inheritance. In the cathedral of Antioch, in the presence of the bishops, at the foot of the crucifix, he bewailed the sins of the prince and people; but his confession instructed the world, that it was vain, and perhaps impious, to resist the judgment of God. The Saracens were invincible in fact, since they were invincible in opinion. After bidding an eternal farewell to Syria, Heraclius secretly embarked with a few attendants, and absolved the faith of his subjects. From the north and south the Saracen troops of Antioch and Jerusalem advanced along the seashore, till their banners were joined under the walls of the Phœnician cities; Tripolis and Tyre were betrayed; and a fleet of fifty transports, which entered without distrust the captive harbours, brought a seasonable supply of arms and provisions to the camp of the Saracens. Their labours were terminated by the unexpected surrender of Cæsarea. The remainder of the province, Ramlah, Ptolemais or Acre, Nablus or Neapolis, Gaza, Askalon, Berytus, Sidon, Gabala, Laodicea, Apamea, Hierapolis, no longer presumed to dispute the will of the conqueror; and Syria bowed under the sceptre of the caliphs, seven hundred years after Pompey had despoiled the last of the Macedonian kings.
The sieges and battles of six campaigns had consumed many thousands of the Moslems. They died with the reputation and the cheerfulness of martyrs; and the simplicity of their faith may be expressed in the words of an Arabian youth, when he embraced, for the last time, his sister and mother; “It is not,” said he, “the delicacies of Syria, or fading delights of this world, that have prompted me to devote my life in the cause of religion. But I seek the favour of God and his apostle; and I have heard from one of the companions of the prophet, that the spirits of the martyrs will be lodged in the crops of green birds, who shall taste the fruits, and drink of the rivers of paradise. Farewell, we shall meet again among the groves and fountains which God has provided for his elect.”
The more fortunate Arabs who survived the war, and persevered in the faith, were restrained by their abstemious leader from the abuse of prosperity. After a refreshment of three days, Abu Obaidah withdrew his troops from the pernicious contagion of the luxury of Antioch, and assured the caliph that their religion and virtue could only be preserved by the hard discipline of poverty and labour. The year of their triumph was marked by a mortality of men and cattle; and twenty-five thousand Saracens were snatched away from the possession of Syria. The death of Abu Obaidah might be lamented by the Christians; but his brethren recollected that he was one of the ten elect, whom the prophet had named heirs of paradise. Khalid survived his brethren about three years; and the tomb of the Sword of God is shown near Emesa. His valour, which founded in Arabia and Syria the empire of the caliphs, was fortified by the opinion of a special providence; and as long as he wore a cap which had been blessed by Mohammed he deemed himself invulnerable amidst the darts of the infidels.
[637-640 A.D.]
The place of the first conquerors was supplied by a new generation of their children and countrymen; Syria became the seat and support of the house of Omayyah; and the revenue, the soldiers, the ships of that powerful kingdom, were consecrated to enlarge on every side the empire of the caliphs. But the Saracens despise a superfluity of fame; and their historians scarcely condescend to mention the subordinate conquests which are lost in the splendour and rapidity of their victorious career. To the north of Syria, they passed Mount Taurus, and reduced to their obedience the province of Cilicia, with its capital Tarsus, the ancient monument of the Assyrian kings. Beyond a second ridge of the same mountains, they spread the flame of war, rather than the light of religion, as far as the shores of the Euxine and the neighbourhood of Constantinople. To the east they advanced to the banks and sources of the Euphrates and Tigris; the long-disputed barrier of Rome and Persia was forever confounded; the walls of Edessa and Amida, of Dara and Nisibis, which had resisted the arms and engines of Sapor or Nushirvan, were levelled in the dust; and the holy city of Abgarus might vainly produce the epistle or the image of Christ to an unbelieving conqueror. To the west the Syrian kingdom is bounded by the sea; and the ruin of Aradus, a small island or peninsula on the coast, was postponed during ten years. But the hills of Libanus abounded in timber; the trade of Phœnicia was populous in mariners; and a fleet of seventeen hundred barks was equipped and manned by the natives of the desert. The imperial navy of the Romans fled before them from the Pamphylian rocks to the Hellespont; but the spirit of the emperor, a grandson of Heraclius, had been subdued before the combat by a dream and a pun. The Saracens rode masters of the sea; and the islands of Cyprus, Rhodes, and the Cyclades, were successively exposed to their rapacious visits. Three hundred years before the Christian era, the memorable, though fruitless siege of Rhodes, by Demetrius, had furnished that maritime republic with the materials and the subject of a trophy. A gigantic statue of Apollo, or the sun, seventy cubits in height, was erected at the entrance of the harbour, a monument of the freedom and the arts of Greece. After standing fifty-six years, the Colossus of Rhodes was overthrown by an earthquake; but the massy trunk, and huge fragments, lay scattered eight centuries on the ground, and are often described as one of the wonders of the ancient world. They were collected by the diligence of the Saracens, and sold to a Jewish merchant of Edessa, who is said to have laden nine hundred camels with the weight of the brass metaclass="underline" an enormous weight, though we should include the hundred colossal figures, and the three thousand statues which adorned the prosperity of the city of the sun.
EGYPT CAPTURED (639 A.D.)
[639-654 A.D.]
The conquest of Egypt may be explained by the character of the victorious Saracen, one of the first of his nation in an age when the meanest of the brethren was exalted above his nature by the spirit of enthusiasm. The birth of Amru was at once base and illustrious; his reason or his interest determined him to renounce the worship of idols; he escaped from Mecca with his friend Khalid, and the prophet of Medina enjoyed at the same moment the satisfaction of embracing the two firmest champions of his cause. His merit was not overlooked by the first two successors of Mohammed; they were indebted to his arms for the conquest of Palestine; and in all the battles and sieges of Syria, he united with the temper of a chief the valour of an adventurous soldier.
From his camp, in Palestine, Amru had surprised or anticipated the caliph’s leave for the invasion of Egypt. The magnanimous Omar trusted in his God and his sword, which had shaken the thrones of Chosroes and Cæsar; but when he compared the slender force of the Moslems with the greatness of the enterprise, he condemned his own rashness and listened to his timid companions. At the head of only four thousand Arabs, the intrepid Amru had marched away from his station of Gaza when he was overtaken by the messenger of Omar. “If you are still in Syria,” said the ambiguous mandate, “retreat without delay; but if, at the receipt of this epistle, you have already reached the frontiers of Egypt, advance with confidence, and depend on the succour of God and of your brethren.” The experience, perhaps the secret intelligence, of Amru had taught him to suspect the mutability of courts; and he continued his march till his tents were unquestionably pitched on Egyptian ground. He there assembled his officers, broke the seal, perused the epistle, gravely inquired the name and situation of the place, and declared his ready obedience to the commands of the caliph.