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the venom and mischief of his impious compo- CHAP. sitions.

h

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of Egypt,.

for A. D. 638,

June.

From his camp, in Palestine, Amrou had Invasion surprised or anticipated the caliph's leave 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. The pride and the greatness of Pharoah were familiar to the readers of the Koran; and a tenfold repetition of prodigies had been scarcely sufficient to effect, not the victory but the flight of six hundred thousand of the children of Israel: the cities of Egypt were many and populous; their architecture was strong and solid; the Nile, with its numerous branches, was alone an insuperable barrier; and the granary of the imperial city would be obstinately defended by the Roman powers. In this perplexity, the commander of the faithful resigned himself to the decision of chance, or in his opinion, of provi

For the life and character of Amrou, see Ockley, (Hist. of the Saracens, vol. i, p. 28, 63, 94, 328, 342, 344, and to the end of the volume; vol. ii, p. 51, 55, 57, 74, 110-112, 162), and Otter, (Mem. de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xxi, p. 131, 132). The readers of Tacitus may aptly compare Vespasian and Mucianus, with Moawiyah and Amrou. Yet the resemblance is still more in the situation, thau in the characters of the men.

h Al Wakidi had likewise composed a separate history of the conquest of Egypt, which Mr. Ockley could never procure; and his own inquiries (vol. i, p. 344-362) have added very little to the original text of Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii, p. 296-323, vers. Pocock), the Melchite patriarch of Alexandria, who lived three hundred years after the revolution.

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CHAP. dence. At the head of only four thousand Arabs, the intrepid Amrou had marched away from his station of Gaza when he was overtaken

The cities of Mem

bylou, and Cairo.

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by the messenger of Omar. "If you are still in Syria," said the ambiguous mandate, “re treat 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

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your brethren.” The experience, perhaps the secret intelligence, of Amrou 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. After a siege of thirty days he took possession of Farmah or Pelusiam; and that key of Egypt, as it has been justly named, unlocked the entrance of the country, as far as the ruins of Heliopolis and the neighbourhood of the modern Cairo.

On the western side of the Nile, at a small distance to the east of the Pyramids, at a small phis, Ba- distance to the south of the Delta, Memphis, one hundred and fifty furlongs in circumference, displayed the magnificence of ancient kings. Under the reign of the Ptolemies and Cæsars, the seat of government was removed to the sea-coast; the ancient capital was eclipsed by the arts and opulence of Alexandria; the palaces, and at length the temples, were reduced to

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a desolate and ruinous condition: yet in the CHAP. age of Augustus, and even in that of Constantine, Memphis was still numbered among the greatest and most populous of the provincial cities. The banks of the Nile, in this place of the breadth of three thousand feet, were united by two bridges of sixty and of thirty boats, connected in the middle stream by the small island of Rouda, which was covered with gardens and habitations. The eastern extremity of the bridge was terminated by the town of Babylon and the camp of a Roman legion, which protected the passage of the river and the second capital of Egypt. This important fortress, which might fairly be described as a part of Memphis or Misrah, was invested by the arms of the lieutenant of Omar: a reinforcement of four thousand Saracens soon arrived in his camp; and the military engines which battered the walls, may be imputed to the art and labour of his Syrian allies. Yet the siege was protracted to seven months; and the rash invaders were encompassed and threatened by the inundation of the Nile.' Their last

i Strabo, an accurate and attentive spectator, observes of Heliopolis VUVI MED OUV 851 mavegnues ʼn modis, (Geograph, 1 xvii, p. 1158); but of Memphis he declares, πολις δ' εςι μεγαλη τε και ευανδρος δευτηρα μετ' Αλεξα avd gelav, (p. 1161); he notices, however, the mixture of inhabitants and the ruin of the palaces. In the proper Egypt, Ammianus enumerates Memphis among the four cities, maximis urbibus quibus provincia nitet, (xxii, 16); and the name of Memphis appears with distinction in the Roman Itinerary and episcopal lists.

* These rare and curious facts, the breadth (2946 feet) and the bridge of the Nile, are only to be found in the Danish traveller and the Nubian geographer, (p. 98).

From the month of April, the Nile begins imperceptibly to rise: the

swelt

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en

CHAP. assault was bold and successful; they passed the ditch, which had been fortified with iron spikes, applied their scaling-ladders, tered the fortress with the shout of "God is victorious!" and drove the remnant of the Greeks to their boats, and the isle of Rouda. The spot was afterwards recommended to the conqueror by the easy communication with the gulf and the peninsula of Arabia: the remains of Memphis were deserted; the tents of the Arabs were converted into permanent habitations and the first mosch was blessed by the presence of fourscore companions of Mahomet. A new city arose in their camp on the eastward bank of the Nile; and the contiguous quarters of Babylon and Fostat are confounded in their present decay by the appellation of old Misrah or Cairo, of which they form an extensive suburb. But the name of Cairo, the town of victory, more strictly belongs to the modern capital, which was founded in the tenth century by the Fatimite caliphs." has gradually receded from the river, but the continuity of buildings may be traced by an at

It

swell becomes strong and visible in the moon after the summer solstice, Plin. Hist. v, 10) and is usually proclaimed at Cairo on St. Peter's day, (June 29). A register of thirty successive years marks the greatest height of the waters between July 25 and August 18, (Maillet, Description de l'Egypt, lettre xi, p. 67, &c. Pocock's Description of the East, vol. i, p. 200. Shaw's Travels, p. 383).

m Murtadi, Merveilles de l'Egypte, 243-259. He expatiates on the subject with the zeal and minuteness of a citizen and a bigot, and his local traditions have a strong air of truth and accuracy.

n

D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 233.

tentive eye from the monuinents of Sesostris to CHAP. those of Saladin.°

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submission

Yet the Arabs, after a glorious and profita- Voluntary ble enterprise, must have retreated to the de- or me sert, had they not found a powerful alliance in Copts or Jacobites, the heart of the country. The rapid conquest A. D. 638. of Alexander was assisted by the superstition and revolt of the natives; they abhorred their Persian oppressors, the disciples of the Magi, who had burnt the temples of Egypt, and feasted with sacrilegious appetite on the flesh of the god Apis. After a period of ten centuries the same revolution was renewed by a similar cause; and in the support of an incomprehensible creed, the zeal of the Coptic Christians was equally ardent. I have already explained the origin and progress of the Monophysite controversy, and the persecution of the emperors, which converted a sect into a nation, and alienated Egypt from their religion and government. The Saracens were received as the de

• The position of New and of Old Cairo is well known, and has been often described. Two writers who were intimately acquainted with ancient and modern Egypt, have fixed, after a learned inquiry, the city of Memphis at Gizeh, directly opposite the Old Cairo, (Sicard Nouveaux Memoires des Missions du Levant, tom. vi, p. 5, 6. Shaw's Observations and Travels, p. 296-304). Yet we may not disregard the authority or the arguments of Pocock, (vol. i, p. 25-41); Niebuhr, (Voyage, tom. i, p. 77-106), and, above all, of d'Anville, (Description de l'Egypte, p. 111, 112, 130-149), who have removed Memphis towards the village of Mohannah, some miles farther to the south. In their heat, the disputants have forgot that the ample space of a metropolis covers and annihilates the far greater part of the controversy. P See Herodotus, l. iii, c. 27. 28, 29; Ælian. Hist. Var. I. iv, Suidas in xos, tom. ii, p. 774; Diodor. Sicul. tom. ii, 1. xvii, p. 197, edit. Wesseling. Των Περσων ησεβηκότων εις τα ιερα, says the last of these his

torians.

c. 8

;

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