n the invaders, to share the plunder, to profess the faith, and to
revolt in their savage state of independence and idolatry, on the first
retreat or misfortune of the Moslems. The prudence of Akbah had proposed
to found an Arabian colony in the heart of Africa; a citadel that might
curb the levity of the Barbarians, a place of refuge to secure, against
the accidents of war, the wealth and the families of the Saracens. With
this view, and under the modest title of the station of a caravan, he
planted this colony in the fiftieth year of the Hegira. In its present
decay, Cairoan[154] still holds the second rank in the kingdom of Tunis,
from which it is distant about fifty miles to the south;[155] its inland
situation, twelve miles westward of the sea, has protected the city from
the Greek and Sicilian fleets. When the wild beasts and serpents were
extirpated, when the forest, or rather wilderness, was cleared, the
vestiges of a Roman town were discovered in a sandy plain: the vegetable
food of Cairoan is brought from afar; and the scarcity of springs
constrains the inhabitants to collect in cisterns and reservoirs a
precarious supply of rain water. These obstacles were subdued by the
industry of Akbah; he traced a circumference of three thousand and six
hundred paces, which he encompassed with a brick wall; in the space
of five years, the governor's palace was surrounded with a sufficient
number of private habitations; a spacious mosque was supported by five
hundred columns of granite, porphyry, and Numidian marble; and Cairoan
became the seat of learning as well as of empire. But these were the
glories of a later age; the new colony was shaken by the successive
defeats of Akbah and Zuheir, and the western expeditions were again
interrupted by the civil discord of the Arabian monarchy. The son of the
valiant Zobeir maintained a war of twelve years, a siege of seven months
against the house of Ommiyah. Abdallah was said to unite the fierceness
of the lion with the subtlety of the fox; but if he inherited the
courage, he was devoid of the generosity, of his father.[156]

[A. D. 692-698.] The return of domestic peace allowed the caliph
Abdalmalek to resume the conquest of Africa; the standard was delivered
to Hassan governor of Egypt, and the revenue of that kingdom, with an
army of forty thousand men, was consecrated to the important service. In
the vicissitudes of war, the interior provinces had been alternately won
and los