d their arms to the more easy
attempt of plundering the European and Asiatic coasts of the Propontis;
and, after keeping the sea from the month of April to that of September,
on the approach of winter they retreated fourscore miles from the
capital, to the Isle of Cyzicus, in which they had established their
magazine of spoil and provisions. So patient was their perseverance,
or so languid were their operations, that they repeated in the six
following summers the same attack and retreat, with a gradual abatement
of hope and vigor, till the mischances of shipwreck and disease, of
the sword and of fire, compelled them to relinquish the fruitless
enterprise. They might bewail the loss, or commemorate the martyrdom,
of thirty thousand Moslems, who fell in the siege of Constantinople;
and the solemn funeral of Abu Ayub, or Job, excited the curiosity of the
Christians themselves.

That venerable Arab, one of the last of the companions of Mahomet, was
numbered among the ansars, or auxiliaries, of Medina, who sheltered the
head of the flying prophet. In his youth he fought, at Beder and
Ohud, under the holy standard: in his mature age he was the friend
and follower of Ali; and the last remnant of his strength and life
was consumed in a distant and dangerous war against the enemies of the
Koran. His memory was revered; but the place of his burial was neglected
and unknown, during a period of seven hundred and eighty years, till the
conquest of Constantinople by Mahomet the Second. A seasonable vision
(for such are the manufacture of every religion) revealed the holy spot
at the foot of the walls and the bottom of the harbor; and the mosch of
Ayub has been deservedly chosen for the simple and martial inauguration
of the Turkish sultans. [4]

[Footnote 1: Theophanes places the seven years of the siege of
Constantinople in the year of our Christian aera, 673 (of the
Alexandrian 665, Sept. 1,) and the peace of the Saracens, four years
afterwards; a glaring inconsistency! which Petavius, Goar, and Pagi,
(Critica, tom. iv. p. 63, 64,) have struggled to remove. Of the
Arabians, the Hegira 52 (A.D. 672, January 8) is assigned by Elmacin,
the year 48 (A.D. 688, Feb. 20) by Abulfeda, whose testimony I esteem
the most convenient and credible.]

[Footnote 2: For this first siege of Constantinople, see Nicephorus,
(Breviar. p. 21, 22;) Theophanes, (Chronograph. p. 294;) Cedrenus,
(Compend. p. 437;) Zonaras, (Hist. tom. ii. l. xiv. p. 89;)