tribute; and the resentment of the Greeks was disabled from action
by the mad tyranny of the second Justinian, the just rebellion of his
subjects, and the frequent change of his antagonists and successors.
Till the reign of Abdalmalek, the Saracens had been content with the
free possession of the Persian and Roman treasures, in the coins of
Chosroes and Caesar. By the command of that caliph, a national mint was
established, both for silver and gold, and the inscription of the Dinar,
though it might be censured by some timorous casuists, proclaimed the
unity of the God of Mahomet. [8] Under the reign of the caliph Walid,
the Greek language and characters were excluded from the accounts of the
public revenue. [9] If this change was productive of the invention or
familiar use of our present numerals, the Arabic or Indian ciphers, as
they are commonly styled, a regulation of office has promoted the most
important discoveries of arithmetic, algebra, and the mathematical
sciences. [10]

[Footnote 5: Theophanes, though a Greek, deserves credit for these
tributes, (Chronograph. p. 295, 296, 300, 301,) which are confirmed,
with some variation, by the Arabic History of Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p.
128, vers. Pocock.)]

[Footnote 6: The censure of Theophanes is just and pointed,
(Chronograph. p. 302, 303.) The series of these events may be traced
in the Annals of Theophanes, and in the Abridgment of the patriarch
Nicephorus, p. 22, 24.]

[Footnote 7: These domestic revolutions are related in a clear and
natural style, in the second volume of Ockley's History of the Saracens,
p. 253-370. Besides our printed authors, he draws his materials from
the Arabic Mss. of Oxford, which he would have more deeply searched had
he been confined to the Bodleian library instead of the city jail a fate
how unworthy of the man and of his country!]

[Footnote 8: Elmacin, who dates the first coinage A. H. 76, A.D. 695,
five or six years later than the Greek historians, has compared the
weight of the best or common gold dinar to the drachm or dirhem of
Egypt, (p. 77,) which may be equal to two pennies (48 grains) of our
Troy weight, (Hooper's Inquiry into Ancient Measures, p. 24-36,) and
equivalent to eight shillings of our sterling money. From the same
Elmacin and the Arabian physicians, some dinars as high as two dirhems,
as low as half a dirhem, may be deduced. The piece of silver was the
dirhem, both in value and weight; but an old, though fair