History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce, Volume 1 (of 4)

by W. S. Lindsay

Rapid conquests;

of Jerusalem, A.D. 636;

of Alexandria, A.D. 638;

and of Africa, A.D. 647.

Hatred of the Christians, love of spoil, and contempt for danger were the ruling passions of the Saracens; nor could the prospect of instant death shake their religious confidence, nor stay a course of conquest, on all occasions made in “the name of the most merciful God.” Bozrah and Damascus soon fell into their hands, as well as Abyla, thirty miles distant, where the produce and manufactures of the country were then collected at a great annual fair. Three years afterwards Jerusalem was besieged and taken, and the Syrian seaports captured. The possession of Tyre, not yet wholly obliterated, and of the province of Cilicia, secured them the command of the whole of the eastern Mediterranean. Extending their conquests to the shores of the Euxine, they threatened—indeed, for a short time, besieged—Constantinople, though in this, and in subsequent attempts, they failed with heavy loss.[349] These facts show how early in their history they were able to extend their conquering and marauding expeditions both by land and by sea. Egypt was an easy and rich prey to them. But Alexandria, still a great and flourishing city, offered the most strenuous resistance to the invaders. Abundantly supplied, and easily replenished with the means of subsistence and defence, her numerous inhabitants fought for the dearest of human rights, religion and property; and if the Emperor Heraclius had been awake to the public distress, fresh armies might have been poured into the harbour before the fleet of the Saracens had taken up their position before it. But the power of the Infidels prevailed, and after a siege of fourteen months, and the loss of twenty-three thousand of their men, the standard of Muhammed was planted on the walls of the capital of Egypt. In ten years more Africa, from the Nile to the Atlantic Ocean, fell into their hands. Shortly afterwards Cyprus, Rhodes, and Sicily were taken; Spain overrun, except the Asturias and Biscay; and Capua and Genoa became their possession by conquest.

Sieges of Constantinople, A.D. 668-675.

Although it cost the Saracens a siege of fourteen months, and a heavy loss of men, before they were able to take Alexandria, Constantinople from its stronger position offered a still more determined resistance. In the first siege thirty thousand Moslems are said to have been slain; but the destruction which awaited them on the occasion of the second was by far the heaviest reverse their arms had as yet sustained. Commanded by their ablest general, at the head of one hundred and twenty thousand men, they had deemed success certain, and little anticipated the serious resistance the city really made. The Greeks were, however, resolved at all costs to force back these terrible invaders, who had plundered almost with impunity so many lands. All persons not provided with the means of subsistence for a year’s siege were ordered to leave the city, the public granaries and arsenals were abundantly replenished, the walls restored and strengthened, and engines for casting stones, or darts of fire, were stationed along the ramparts or in vessels of war, of which an additional number were hastily constructed. The Greeks, on perceiving that the Saracen fleet had been largely reinforced from Egypt and Syria, were at first induced to offer the large ransom of a piece of gold for each person in the city; but, on the contemptuous rejection of this proposal, the Muhammedan chief imagining he had the game in his own hands, they determined on a most daring expedient to get rid of the fleet that threatened their destruction. As it slowly approached, with a fair wind and over a smooth sea, overshadowing the Straits like a moving forest, the Greeks suddenly launched fire-ships[350] into the midst of the dense mass, and involved in one general and terrible conflagration their own and every vessel of the invading squadrons. The destruction of the Saracenic Armada was complete.

The fate of the Saracen army, though not quite so disastrous, was one of heavy loss and great suffering, materially increased by a severe frost which covered the ground with snow for more than one hundred days. In the spring the survivors, aided with new levies of troops from Africa, made a fresh attempt to storm the city; but, on this proving as futile as their former efforts had been, they at length withdrew, and for seven hundred years more Constantinople was spared the desecration of the Infidel flag.

FOOTNOTES:

[325] Much confusion has been made by various writers on the subject of the Goths and Vandals, and, perhaps, by the majority of them, these tribes have been somewhat carelessly classed together. The real fact is, they were two distinct branches of the one great nation of the Suevi. The distinction of Ostro (or Eastern) and Visi (or Western) Goths was made in the third century, when they broke into Dacia. Those from Mecklenburg and Pomerania were called Visi-Goths; those from south Prussia and north-west Poland took the name of Ostro-Goths.