guise of a humble penitent, and vowed a pilgrimage to Mecca through seas of infidel blood.
His first enterprise was directed to the extirpation of the Christians of Sicily. They still retained possession of the Val Demona, and the country round Messina and Syracuse, in a state of quasi-independence, though tributary to, and liable to incursions from, the Mussulman conquerors; who on their side of the island, were divided by diversity of origin into two hostile camps, the tribes of Arab and Persian lineage settled in and about Palermo, being perpetually at war with the native African colonists of the district of Girgenti. The Palermitans under a Persian leader named Rakamarûweih, had for four years been in arms against the mother country, and Abdallah, when unexpectedly summoned to change places with his father, was engaged in a successful campaign against them, in alliance with their hereditary foes, the Berbers of Girgenti. He had not only taken Palermo after three pitched battles, in which the flower of its population perished, but had defeated the Byzantine army on the mainland, and sacked Reggio, where his clemency to the vanquished had excited his father's indignation. No such gentle treatment had the Christians of Calabria and Syracuse to expect from the fierce penitent, who now came to his island dominions in the full exercise there of the sovereignty abdicated on the continent of Africa.
Palermo, girt with suburbs so extensive as to number two hundred mosques without the walls, and dominated in the centre by the oval citadel known as the Cassaro, was in those days as great a cosmopolitan centre as Constantinople in our own; and its population, in the emphatic words of the monk Theodosius, included representatives of the Saracenic brood, gathered from the four cardinal points of the compass. There Greeks and Lombards chaffered over their wares with Jews and Persians; Arabs and Berbers jostled Tartars and negroes on the crowded quays; beards and hair of every cut and color, every cast of features and tone of complexion contrasted sharply in the liquid shadow of the narrow streets; the flowing robe and majestic turban of the Oriental, the scanty garments of the tropical savage, the rude furs of the northern barbarian, mingled in picturesque confusion under the amber Sicilian sunlight; in short, all varieties of race and costume included in the vast dominions of the Mussulman empire seemed to have sent typical specimens to the City of the Golden Shell.[1] Such was the motley population among which Ibrahim came to recruit volunteers for the holy war, and raise the standard of the prophet to the cry of "Death to the unbelievers!"
He moved thence against Taormina, the central stronghold of Christianity in the island, held by its choicest champions, reinforced by a Byzantine garrison, and excited to resistance by the preaching of Sant' Elia, the aged saint and prophet of Castrogiovanni, who, like a Sicilian Savonarola, exhorted the inhabitants to penance and prayer, foretelling the destruction impending over the city, and the approaching triumph of the terrible Brachimo. His sinister predictions were but too quickly and fatally realized. Ibrahim's fury of bravery and fanaticism secured the victory to his followers in a great battle outside the walls, and his infernal genius contrived to surprise his enemies even within the impregnable fortifications where they thought themselves secure. Urging his negro guards up the precipitous rock on a side deemed impracticable, he launched them among the bewildered garrison to the terrible cry of "Akbar Allah," the knell of the hapless Christians. Mercy to the vanquished was no part of the sanctity aimed at by the warrior penitent of Islam, and a terrible scene of indiscriminate carnage followed; the city was burned, and all the inhabitants who failed to make their escape were ruthlessly put to the sword without regard to age, sex, or condition. Amongst the prisoners taken was the aged bishop, Procopius, and his venerable aspect seems to have inspired some pity in the inhuman breast of the victor, who offered not only to spare his grey hairs if he consented to abjure his faith, but to raise him to such a position that he should be second only to himself in Sicily. Procopius only replied with a smile.
"Why do you smile?" exclaimed the fierce Mussulman; "do you not know who speaks to you?" "The demon, by your lips," was the undaunted answer of the captive, "wherefore I smile at his suggestions." The infuriated tyrant not only ordered his instant execution, but had his heart torn out "that he might seek in it the secret of the proud soul that had defied him;" and, according to the chronicler, he went so far as actually to devour it in his unnatural frenzy. The fellow-
- ↑ Amari. Storia dei Musulmani in Sicilia, vol. ii., p. 32.
