34 THE DECLINE AND FALL prince and people. And the sword of the Saracens became less forniidabie, when their youth was drawn away from the camp to the college, when the armies of the faithful presumed to read and to reflect. Yet the foolish vanity of the Greeks was jealous of their studies, and reluctantly imparted the sacred fire to the barbarians of the East.^-^ Wars of In the bloody conflict of the Ommiades and Abbassides, the Eashid Greeks had stolen the opportunitv of avenging their wrongs and arainst the ,.■,.. Vi * .-,' . .'" i i i EbmaaE A.D. eularffuiff their limits. But a severe retribution was exacted by Mohadi,* the third caliph of the new dynasty, who seized in his turn the favourable opportunity, while a woman and a child, Irene and Constantine, were seated on the Byzantine throne. An army of ninety-five thousand Persians and Arabs was sent from the Tigris to the Thracian Bosphorus, under the command of Harun,^^ or Aaron, the second son of the commander of the fiiithful. His encampment on the opposite heights of Chr^'sopolis, or Scutari, informed Irene, in her palace of Constantinople, of the loss of her troops and provinces. With the consent or connivance of their sovereign, her ministers subscribed an ignominious peace ; and the exchange of some royal gifts could not disguise the annual tribute of seventy thousand dinars of gold, which was imposed on the Roman empire. The Saracens had too rashly advanced into the midst of a distant and hostile land : their re- treat was solicited by the promise of faithful guides and plentiful markets ; and not a Greek had courage to whisper that their weary forces might be surrounded and destroyed in their neces- sar- passage between a slippery mountain and the river San- [4.D. 786] garius. Five years after this expedition, Harun ascended the throne of his father .ind his elder brother ; ** the most powerful and vigorous monarch of his race, illustrious in the West as the ally of Charlemagne, and familiar to the most childish readers as the perpetual hero of the Arabian tales. His title to the €kJotc(' TTottjo-ei rots c9re(Ti, &c. ; Cedrenus, p. 548 [ii. p. 169, ed. Bonn], who relates how manfully the emperor refused a mathematician to the instances and offers of the caliph .AJmamon. This absurd scruple is expressed almost in the same words by the continuatorof Theophanes(Scriptores post Theophanem, p. 118 [p. 190, ed. Bonn]). [The continuation of Theophanes is the source of i>cylitzes, who was the source of Cedrenus.] ^[Al-Mahdi Mohammad ibn Mansur, a.d. 775-785.]
- ^See the reign and character of Harun al Rashid [Harun ar-Rashld, caliph
786-809 A.D.], in the Bibliothtque Orientale, p. 431-433, under his proper title; and in the relative articles to which M. d'Herbelot refers. That learned collector has shewn much taste in stripping the Oriental chronicles of Ujeir instructive and amusing anecdotes. ^[.bu Mohammad Musa Al-Hadi, A.D. 785-6.]
