42 CALIPHS OF AFRICA. 



they invested Syracuse. This city was delivered 

 by the Greeks ; the apostate youth was slain, and 

 his African auxiliaries reduced to the necessity 

 of feeding on the flesh of their own horses. In 

 their turn they were assisted by a powerful rein- 

 forcement from Andalusia; and by degrees the 

 western and largest portion of the island was sub- 

 dued. Palermo became the seat of the emir or 

 governor (A. H. 228), and the navy of the Saracens 

 rode with ease in its commodious harbour. Syra- 

 cuse resisted the Moslem yoke for a period of fifty 

 years ; and in the last fatal siege, her citizens dis- 

 played some remnant of the valour which had for- 

 merly baffled the power of Athens and Carthage. 

 The cruelties and exactions of the Arabs were enor- 

 mous. The silver plate of the cathedral weighed 

 5000 pounds, and the entire spoil was computed at 

 1,000,000 pieces of gold (about 462,500/.). 



For more than two centuries the emperors of 

 Constantinople, the princes of Beneventum, and the 

 Moslem armies, contended in all the horrors of war 

 for the possession of Sicily. By degrees, the reli- 

 gion and language of the Greeks were eradicated ; 

 and such was the docility of the new proselytes, that 

 15,000 boys submitted to be circumcised and clothed 

 on the same day with the son of the African caliph. 

 In the year 953, Hassan, governor of Sicily, sent a 

 powerful army to the coast of Italy. At Reggio 

 the innabitants and the garrison had fled ; but the 

 imperial forces were overthrown, and their com- 

 mander, with several ofliicers of note, taken prison- 

 ers in the action. Successive squadrons issued from 

 the harbours of Palermo, Biserta, and Tunis. A 

 hundred and fifty towns of Calabria and Campania 

 were attacked and pillaged ; and had the Saracens 

 been united, the land of Romulus, and the patrimony 

 of St. Peter's successors, must have fallen an easy 

 and glorious accession to the empire of Mohammed- 

 No event in the military history of the Arabs 



