History of the Moorish Empire in Europe, Vol. 2 (of 3)

by S. P. Scott

Notwithstanding their extensive preparations for the campaign, the Saracens were unprovided with the military appliances necessary to make the siege successful. Their engineers had not yet attained that superiority in their profession which subsequently enabled them to rank with the best soldiers of the age. Their great victories had been won, for the most part, by the activity of their operations, and by their intrepid behavior in the face of an enemy rather than by endurance and discipline. The transports were inadequate to an attack by water, which required the services of a fleet of well-built and well-protected galleys. In addition to these disadvantages, the force of Ibn-Forat had been reduced by the establishment of garrisons, by the casualties of battle, by disease, by desertion. A large detachment was constantly detailed to guard the prisoners and the spoil. Entire companies of Berbers, weary of the monotony and restraints of the camp, had abandoned the army after the battle, to indulge in their favorite pastimes of rapine and massacre. Thus hampered, a partial and ineffectual blockade was all that the Moorish general could hope to accomplish. He therefore threw up intrenchments and despatched a messenger to Africa for reinforcements.

It was not long before a more formidable enemy than the Byzantines attacked the camp of the besiegers. The country had been completely stripped of provisions by the foraging parties of both armies. Such supplies as had been overlooked by the Sicilians were wasted or destroyed by the Moors, who began to experience the effects of their improvidence in the sufferings of starvation. The soldiers devoured their horses. But these were not sufficiently numerous to satisfy the cravings of hunger, and the famishing Moslems were driven to the use of unwholesome plants and herbs. A mutiny broke out, which was at once suppressed by the iron will of the undaunted commander, who threatened, in case the mutineers did not return to their duty, to burn his ships. At length reinforcements and an abundant supply of provisions appeared in the camp, and, the spirits of the soldiery having revived, the lines were drawn still closer around the beleaguered city.

The latter had been strengthened by an army of Venetians under the Doge, Justinian Participazus, who had been ordered by the Emperor, Michael the Stammerer, to drive the Moslems from Syracuse. The task, however, proved too arduous for the dignitary, who seems to have been endowed with more conceit than military ability. While their communications by sea were not intercepted, the people of Syracuse were in no danger of famine, but on the land side the city was completely invested. The country was gradually occupied by the Saracens; a large force commanded by the governor of Palermo was decoyed into an ambush and cut to pieces; the prestige of victory tempted many subjects of the Emperor to renounce their allegiance and their faith for the code of Mohammed; and, although no impression had yet been made on the stupendous fortifications, the advantages of the war seemed to be entirely on the side of the Moslems. Disheartened by their enforced inactivity, and harassed by the clamors of the peasantry, who had witnessed from the ramparts the spoliation and ruin of their homes, the Sicilian authorities made overtures for peace, which were disdainfully refused.

But fortune, which had hitherto favored the invader, now deserted his standard. A pestilence, the result of exposure and unwholesome food, decimated the besiegers. Among the first to succumb was the veteran general, whose martial spirit and indomitable energy had been the soul of the enterprise. With him perished the only hand capable of restraining and utilizing the unruly elements which composed the Saracen army. Insubordination and tumult immediately arose. Amidst the confusion, the hostages and the commanders of fortresses and towns subdued by the Moslem arms who were detained as prisoners escaped. Information was at once spread throughout the island of the loss sustained by the enemy and of the demoralized condition of his camp. Confidence and order were not restored by the announcement that Mohammed-Ibn-al-Gewari had, by the suffrages of the soldiery, been raised to the dignity of lieutenant of the Sultan, when it was disclosed that his promotion had been brought about by the enemies of the sovereign; his chief title to their favor being subserviency to a faction whose overthrow had been mainly effected by the courage and address of the deceased commander. The favorable auspices under which the operations of the Moslems had hitherto been conducted no longer encouraged them with the prospect of success. Disease in its most appalling form, aggravated by neglect of the simplest sanitary precautions, stalked through their encampment. In addition to these misfortunes, the kingdom of Ziadet-Allah was harassed by the incursion of a band of Tuscan adventurers, who defeated the Sultan’s troops in a series of encounters and carried their victorious standards almost to the gates of Kairoan. Under these discouraging circumstances it was determined to raise the siege. The troops and baggage were embarked; but just as the fleet was ready to sail, a great squadron, sent by the Emperor to relieve the city, closed the entrance to the harbor. The Moorish army was hastily landed, the supplies and camp equipage were thrown into the sea, and the ships set on fire to avoid their seizure by the enemy. The sick were abandoned to their fate, and the disheartened soldiery, almost without provisions or the means of shelter, took refuge in the mountains, a day’s journey from the scene of their privations and discomfiture. Thus ended the first siege of Syracuse, whose immunity from capture was due more to the strength of its walls and the deficiency of its besiegers in military engines than to the resolution and intrepidity of its defenders. Half a century was to elapse before the cry of the muezzin would be heard from the tower of the cathedral, or the tramp of the Arab squadrons resound through the streets which had witnessed the exploits of Pyrrhus, Agathocles, and Marcellus.

In the elevated and salubrious region where stood the city of Mineo, to which they were led by Euphemius, the Saracens speedily found relief. The plague disappeared. Foraging parties were sent out, which returned with an abundance of supplies. The strength and courage of the despairing Moslems were restored; several fortified places fell into the hands of their flying squadrons, and, finally, they felt themselves strong enough to attempt an enterprise of the greatest importance. Near the interior of the island stood the fortress of Castrogiovanni,—the Castrum-Ennæ of antiquity. It was built upon a rock rising high above a table-land, whose surface, broken and rugged from the effects of volcanic action, resembled in its sharp and undulating ridges the billows of a stormy sea. Upon the summit of the rock once stood a temple dedicated to the worship of the goddess Ceres, the favorite deity of the pagan Sicilians. Every resource of engineering skill had been brought to bear to insure the impregnability of this formidable citadel. Numerous springs supplied the inhabitants with fresh water. With its natural advantages for defence, supplemented thus with all the artifices of human ingenuity, the siege of Castrogiovanni might well have deterred the boldest captain. But, undismayed by their unfortunate experience at Syracuse, the Moslems intrenched themselves before this stronghold. A sally of the Byzantine garrison was repulsed with great carnage. Communication with the surrounding country was cut off. In order publicly to announce the permanence of their occupancy, substantial barracks were raised for the troops, and money bearing the name and device of the Aghlabite dynasty was coined from silver reserved from the share of royal spoil. Once more the Saracens were called upon to pay the last honors to their general, and the army chose as its commander, Zobeir-Ibn-Ghauth. The latter proved no match for the active Theodotus, governor of Castrogiovanni, who craftily intercepted and cut to pieces a foraging detachment, and soon afterwards defeated the Moslems in a pitched battle in which they lost a thousand men. The siege was raised; the invaders retreated in confusion to Mineo; the inhabitants of the smaller fortresses, which the Moslems had occupied on their route, rebelled and massacred the garrisons; the sight of a turbaned horseman was sufficient to infuriate the peasantry of an entire province; and after two years of frightful privation and incessant conflict, the Moslems saw themselves restricted to the isolated fortified towns of Mineo and Mazara, which they themselves had taken without difficulty, and of whose possession they were scarcely sure for a single day in the face of a vindictive and determined enemy.

While the affairs of the invaders had grown desperate, and the speedy abandonment of the island seemed inevitable, fortune, with her proverbial fickleness, once more smiled upon them. A fleet manned by Spanish adventurers and commanded by an experienced officer, Asbagh-Ibn-Wikil, landed supplies and troops which strengthened the position of the despairing Saracens. The Greek emperor, Michael the Stammerer, died, and was succeeded by the weak and cruel Theophilus, who, amidst the pleasures of the Byzantine capital and the indulgence of his savage and perfidious instincts, had neither time nor treasure to devote to the recovery of the most important island of his dominions. The Venetian squadron in the pay of the Emperor, left without co-operation with the land forces, seeing little prospect of victory and still less of plunder, sailed ingloriously away, abandoning the decimated Byzantine army to the tender mercies of the Moorish pirates, who landing on all sides again swarmed over the island.

The civil commotions which had for a time seriously menaced the power of Ziadet-Allah having been quelled, he now felt himself at liberty to afford substantial aid to his subjects in Sicily. An imposing fleet of three hundred ships, transporting an army of twenty thousand men, sailed in the year 830 from the harbors of Africa. A force including such a great variety of nationalities had rarely assembled under the banner of any leader. Every tribe of Berbers and Arabs, from the Nile to the Atlantic, was represented in this motley and turbulent host. Yemenite exiles, refugees from Persia, renegade Greeks, and Spanish Moors of every faction which, in turn, had desolated the most enchanting and fertile provinces of the Peninsula, hastened to enlist in the invading army. The politic Ziadet-Allah offered with success tempting inducements to the enrolment of the Tunisian rebels who had recently disputed his authority; convinced that few of those dangerous subjects who could be prevailed upon to face the pestilential climate of the Sicilian coast and the weapons of the Byzantine veterans would ever return to vex the tranquillity of his empire. This expedition also was placed under the command of Asbagh-Ibn-Wikil, whose former attempt, already mentioned, had been merely in the nature of a reconnoissance. The invading army, despite its formidable appearance, failed to realize the expectations which had been raised by its numbers and its boasted valor. Without discipline, and wholly bent on plunder, its force was consumed in mutinous tumults and predatory excursions. The country, already devastated by the roving squadrons of both nations, was now compelled to sustain another oppressive visitation by robbers more pitiless and more insatiable than their predecessors. Still the enterprise of Asbagh was not entirely fruitless. Theodotus, the Byzantine general, was defeated and slain under the walls of Mineo, and the strong town of Ghalulia was taken by storm. But here the plague broke out in the Moslem camp. Asbagh and his principal officers perished; the deaths increased so rapidly that a retreat was resolved upon, and the Saracens, after sustaining considerable loss at the hands of the enemy, embarked in disorder and returned, a portion to Africa, but the majority to Spain.

Meanwhile a great blow had been struck by a detachment of Asbagh’s army acting, as it seems, independently of his orders. A division of Africans appeared suddenly before Palermo. The siege, which lasted a year, was pushed with an energy and a perseverance hitherto unprecedented in the military operations of the impetuous but easily disheartened Moslems. The defeat of the Greeks before Mineo deprived the garrison of all hope of relief from that quarter. The Emperor, with characteristic negligence, afforded but slight and ineffectual aid. Abandoned to their fate, the soldiery, reinforced by the public-spirited citizens, conducted an heroic but unavailing defence. In addition to the inevitable casualties of war, their ranks were reduced by hunger and the plague. From seventy thousand their numbers fell to three thousand within twelve months,—an almost incredible mortality. It was not in the power of human endurance to longer support such sufferings and privations. The governor negotiated an honorable capitulation, and the remnant of the garrison was permitted to depart without hinderance, retaining their arms and effects. The slaves of the Byzantine patricians experienced a change of masters, and the most famous insular emporium of the Mediterranean, whose traditions dated to the highest antiquity, whose history was inseparably interwoven with the stirring events of the fierce struggle of Rome and Carthage for the supremacy of the world, whose magnificence and sensuality were proverbial among the polished voluptuaries of Italy and the Orient, passed into the hands of the Saracen, to be raised under his auspices to a still higher degree of commercial greatness and material prosperity.

With the excellent base of operations afforded by the capture of Palermo, the affairs of the Moslems assumed a more promising aspect. No longer were they confined to the insufficient and precarious shelter of isolated castles and insignificant hamlets. The naval advantages of the city, whose harbor had been improved and enlarged by the labor of many successive nations, were incalculable. Easy and rapid communication was now possible with the ports of Africa. Supplies and reinforcements could be introduced into any part of the island in defiance of the utmost exertions of the naval power of Constantinople. The fertile territory included in this new conquest was capable, even under an imperfect and negligent system of cultivation, of furnishing support to a numerous army. Nor was the prestige attaching to the name of Palermo the least of the manifold benefits resulting from its possession. No city was better known throughout the countries bordering on the Mediterranean. It was founded by the Phœnicians. It had been one of the most frequented marts of antiquity. Tyre, Carthage, Athens, Rome, Constantinople, had in turn been enriched by its commerce, and had contaminated it with their vices. In natural advantages, in facility of intercourse with distant countries, in the possession of a trade established long before any mentioned in the earliest historical records, in the boundless agricultural possibilities of its adjacent territory, in the convenience and excellence of its port as a naval station, Palermo could vie with even the greatest commercial centres of the ancient or the medieval world. For the power which could take and hold such a city, the subjugation of Sicily was but a question of time.

The serious results of its occupation soon became apparent even to the inefficient and corrupt government of the Bosphorus. The depopulation of the city, where streets of palaces and rows of elegant suburban villas awaited the claim of the military adventurer, allured from every settlement of Northern Africa swarms of ferocious and intrepid soldiers of fortune. From a Christian community, Palermo was, as if by magic, metamorphosed into a colony of Islam. The cathedral became a Djalma; the churches were transformed into mosques. In accordance with Moorish custom, separate quarters were assigned to the votaries of different religions, and set apart for the maintenance of various branches of traffic. The entire city assumed an Oriental aspect. Flowing robes and lofty turbans took the place of the ungraceful Byzantine and Italian costumes. The veiled ladies of the harems, attended by gorgeously attired eunuchs, glided silently through the streets or peered coquettishly through projecting lattices at the passing stranger. The beasts of burden peculiar to the East, trooping along like the march of a caravan, became too common to excite the attention of the curious multitude. Everywhere appeared canals, aqueducts, fountains. The vegetation recalled to the traveller the date plantations and oleander groves of the Nile and the Euphrates. The villas of the military chieftain and the opulent merchant were counterparts of the exquisite palaces of Seville and Damascus. The genius of Arab civilization found nowhere a more favorable field for its exercise than at Palermo. Within a few months after its capture scarcely anything remained to suggest that the city had not always been Mohammedan. Every circumstance of time and locality was propitious to the foundation of a new and powerful Moslem state which, in subsequent times, was fated to influence the destiny and to form the civilization of some of the greatest monarchies of Christendom.