CONQUESTS OF THE SARACENS. 3iO 



emerging from barbarism, the various wonders which 

 rose before them in all directions, like the effect of 

 magic, must have been a striking spectacle. We 

 may therefore believe them when they affirm, what 

 is not improbable, that the different articles of mer- 

 chandise,— the rich and beautiful pieces of manu- 

 facture which fell a prey on this occasion,— were 

 in such incalculable abundance, that the thirtieth 

 part of their estimate was more than the imagination 

 could embrace. The gold and silver, the various 

 wardrobes and precious furniture, surpassed, says 

 Abulfeda, the calculation of fancy or numbers ; and 

 the historian Elmacin ventured to compute these 

 untold and almost infinite stores at the value of 

 3,000,000,000 pieces of gold.* 



One article in this prodigious booty, before which 

 all others seemed to recede in comparison, was the 

 superb and celebrated carpet of silk and gold cloth, 

 sixty cubits in length and as many in breadth, 

 which decorated one of the apartments of the 

 palace. It was Avrought into a paradise or garden, 

 with jewels of the most curious and costly species ; 



* Gibbon (in a note, chap, li.) ventures to arraign the accu- 

 racy of Elmacin, or rather of the Latin version of Erpenius. 

 But the accuracy of the Saracen historian, and his learned 

 translator, is confirmed by Ockley (vol. i. p. 230), the original 

 Arabic being correctly rendered 3,000,000,000 pieces of gold. 

 The pompous arrogance of Gibbon, who confessed himself 

 " totally ignorant" of oriental languages, is rather amusing, in 

 charging with error a man who is celebrated as the restorer of 

 Arabic literature in Europe. " Erpenius fehcissimus ille Ara- 

 bicarum literarum butaurator" is the comphment paid him by 

 Hottino-er If we take each of these pieces at the value of a 

 dinar which in all probability was the price meant, then the 

 whole will be equivalent to 1,387,500,000/. sterhng, exceeding 

 by 139 159,375?. sterling the total value of gold and silver ex- 

 tracted from the mines of America between the years 1499 and 

 1803 a period of 304 years. But when we take into account the 

 difference in the value of monev then and now. the whole 

 produce of all the gold and silver mines on the globe would not 

 amount to that sum in 1000 years. 



