DISSERTATION ON THE 
pendent settlers* there, and to the increasing power of the Persians, 
who were gaining in this part a decided superiority, and who suc- 
ceeded at last in driving them from the country, though they mo- 
lested the coast afterwards by frequent invasions, and kept up their 
influence in the Red Sea even to a later period than the time of 
Mahomet ; for we find in Abulfeda,t that the King of Abyssinia gave 
protection to all the refugees who then fled from Arabia, among 
whom were some of the first families in that country, particularly 
Gafar, the son of Abu Taleb, in defiance of all the solicitations 
made to him to give them up. Afterwards, when the Mahomedan 
dynasty became all-powerful in this quarter of the world, though 
all their Arabian possessions were taken from them, their com- 
merce and their consequence annihilated, their country invaded, 
and even their capital itself endangered, yet the Abyssinians re- 
mained firm ; and alone, of all the nations of the East, succesfuUy 
continued to defend their faith against the ferocious attacks of the 
surrounding Mahomedan states. Yet the struggle in which they 
were engaged was severe indeed ; and it is almost certain that they 
would ultimately, and even shortly, have sunk under it, had not, 
almost at this last extremity, the Portuguese arrived, after the dis- 
covery of the passage round the Cape of Good Hope, to their assist- 
ance. This happened in the year of our Lord 154 i , when Claudius 
sat on the throne, who, as well as his father David, to whom he had 
just succeeded, had been for some years engaged in a defensive war 
against Mahomet Gragne, King of Adel, one of the most blood- 
* These may be what are often called the Abyssinians in Arabia, which afterwards, 
confused even Ludolf. 
t Abulfeda Muslemiis, Vol. I. 
