imposed, as an equivalent or a fine, a second tribute of a similar amount. The ears of the Byzantine ministers were shut against the complaints of their poverty and ruin ; their despair was reduced to prefer the dominion of a single master ; and the extortions of the patriarch[1] of Carthage, who was invested with civil and military power, provoked the sectaries, and even the Catholics, of the Roman province to abjure the religion as well as the authority of their tyrants. [AD. 665] The first lieutenant [2] of Moawiyah acquired a just renown, subdued an important city, defeated an army of thirty thousand Greeks, swept away four- score thousand captives, and enriched with their spoils the bold adventurers of Syria and Egypt.[3] But the title of conqueror of Africa is more justly due to his successor Akbah. [Okba ibn Nafi] He marched from Damascus at the head of ten thousand of the bravest Arabs ; and the genuine force of the Moslems was enlarged by the doubtful aid and conversion of many thousand barbarians. [AD. 669] It would be difficult, nor is it necessary, to trace the accurate line of the progress of Akbah. The interior regions have been peopled by the Orientals with fictitious armies and imaginary citadels.[4] In the warlike province of Zab or Numidia, four-score thousand of the natives might assemble in arms; but the number of three hundred and sixty towns is incompatible with the ignorance or decay of husbandry;[5] and a circumference [AD. 683] of three leagues will not be justified by the ruins of Erbe or Lambesa, the ancient metropolis of that inland country. As we approach the sea-coast the well-known cities of Bugia[6] and Tangier[7] define the more certain limits of the Saracen victories. A remnant of trade still adheres to the commodious harbour of Bugia, which, in a more prosperous age, is said to have contained about twenty thousand houses ; and the plenty
- ↑ [This is presumably a misprint for Patrician.]
- ↑ [Moāwiya ibn Hudaij.]
- ↑ Theophanes (in Chronograph, p. 293 [A.M. 6161]) inserts the vague rumours that might reach Constantinople, of the western conquests of the Arabs; and I learn from Paul Warnefrid, deacon of Aquileia (de Gestis Langobard. 1. v. c. 13), that at this time they sent a fleet from Alexandria into the Sicilian and African seas. [The army of 30,000 was sent over from Sicily by the Emperor Constans.]
- ↑ [Not imaginary. North Africa is full of the remains of Byzantine citadels. Cp. above, vol. iv. p. 250, note iii.]
- ↑ See Novairi (apud Otter, p. 118), Leo Africanus (fol. 81, verso), who reckons only cinque citta e infinite casale, Marmol (Description de l'Afrique, torn. iii. p. 33), and Shaw (Travels, p. 57, 65-68).
- ↑ Leo African, fol. 58, verso; 59, recto. Marmol, tom. ii. p. 415. Shaw, p. 43.
- ↑ Leo African, fol. 52. Marmol, tom. ii. p. 228.
