[7]Now Tibesh, in the kingdom of Algiers.
[8]Such is the substance of this affair as related by Procopius; and we may add, in the words of the eloquent Gibbon, “The arrival of fresh troops, and more skilful commanders, soon checked the insolence of the Moors: seventeen of their princes were slain in the same battle; and the doubtful and transient submission of their tribes was celebrated with lavish applause by the people of Constantinople. Successive inroads had reduced the province of Africa to one-third of the measure of Italy; yet the Roman emperors continued to reign above a century over Carthage, and the fruitful coast of the Mediterranean.” The state of Northern Africa, at this period of the empire, is strongly painted in the observations which follow.
“But the victories and the losses of Justinian were alike pernicious to mankind; and such was the desolation of Africa, that in many parts a stranger might wander whole days without meeting the face either of a friend or an enemy. The nation of the Vandals had disappeared; they once amounted to an hundred and sixty thousand warriors, without including the children, the women, or the slaves. Their numbers were infinitely surpassed by the number of the Moorish families extirpated in a relentless war; and the same destruction was retaliated on the Romans and their allies, who perished by the climate, their mutual quarrels, and the rage of the barbarians. When Procopius first landed, he admired the populousness of the cities and country, strenuously exercised in the labours of commerce and agriculture. In less than twenty years, that busy scene was converted into a silent solitude; the wealthy citizens escaped to Sicily and Constantinople; and the secret historian has confidently affirmed, that five millions of Africans were consumed by the wars and government of the Emperor Justinian[a].”
[a]Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. vii. p. 353.
[9]Il resto de’ diserti di Libia, cio è di Augela fino al Nilo, è habitato d’Arabi et da un popolo detto Levata, che è pure Africano, . . .—(5ta parte, p. 72.)
[10]“The desert which separates Egypt from Lybia” (it is Major Rennell who speaks) “is to be regarded as the proper desert of Lybia: and it may be a question whether the tribe of Levata, although now found in the interior of the country, may not have originally inhabited the sea-coast; and that the Greeks denominated Africa (Libya) from them. This was the part of Africa the nearest to Greece, and the first colonised by the Greeks; and it is a known fact, that the Adyrmachidæ and Nasamones, who in the days of Herodotus, inhabited the coast, were at a succeeding period, found in the inland parts about Ammon and Augela. Mr. Park saw a wandering tribe named Lubey, whom he compares, in respect to their habits and mode of life, to gipsies[a].”
[a]Illustrations of Herodotus, (p. 409.)
[11]Tunc Mauri, Levatæ appellati, Leptim Magnam (neque enim longe absunt) cum exercitu venere, &c.—(Hist. Vandal. ut supra.)
[12]Ηδη γαρ Λιβυη μεν επι Λιβυης λεγεται υπο των πολλων Ελληνων εχειν τουνομα γυναικος αυτοχθονος. (Melp. § μεʹ.) It may be at the same time remarked, that some writers have derived the term Libya from the Arabic word لوب (Lūb) which signifies thirst, and might therefore be without impropriety applied to a dry and sultry region. We may add that לביא (Libȳa) is the Phœnician, or Hebrew term for a lioness; and Libya is emphatically the country of lions—the “leonum arida nutrix.” לובימ (Lubīm) is the term used for Libyans in holy writ, and the common burthen of Nubian songs at the present day is—o-sī, o-ēh, to Lūbătŏ—of which we could never gain any other translation from the natives, than that it applied to their own country. Lūbătŏ was occasionally pronounced clearly Nūbătŏ, and it was sometimes impossible to tell which of the two pronunciations was intended.
[13]Bakshees, or Baksheesh, is the Arab term for a gratuity or pecuniary consideration.