r molestation; but an
army of their brethren had been cut in pieces on the side of Bithynia,
and the remains of the fleet were so repeatedly damaged by tempest and
fire, that only five galleys entered the port of Alexandria to relate
the tale of their various and almost incredible disasters. [15]

[Footnote 11: In the division of the Themes, or provinces described
by Constantine Porphyrogenitus, (de Thematibus, l. i. p. 9, 10,) the
Obsequium, a Latin appellation of the army and palace, was the fourth in
the public order. Nice was the metropolis, and its jurisdiction extended
from the Hellespont over the adjacent parts of Bithynia and Phrygia,
(see the two maps prefixed by Delisle to the Imperium Orientale of
Banduri.)]

[Footnote 1111: Compare page 274. It is singular that Gibbon should
thus contradict himself in a few pages. By his own account this was the
second time.--M.]

[Footnote 1112: The account of this siege in the Tarikh Tebry is a very
unfavorable specimen of Asiatic history, full of absurd fables, and
written with total ignorance of the circumstances of time and place.
Price, vol. i. p. 498--M.]

[Footnote 12: The caliph had emptied two baskets of eggs and of figs,
which he swallowed alternately, and the repast was concluded with marrow
and sugar. In one of his pilgrimages to Mecca, Soliman ate, at a single
meal, seventy pomegranates, a kid, six fowls, and a huge quantity of
the grapes of Tayef. If the bill of fare be correct, we must admire the
appetite, rather than the luxury, of the sovereign of Asia, (Abulfeda,
Annal. Moslem. p. 126.) * Note: The Tarikh Tebry ascribes the death
of Soliman to a pleurisy. The same gross gluttony in which Soliman
indulged, though not fatal to the life, interfered with the military
duties, of his brother Moslemah. Price, vol. i. p. 511.--M.]

[Footnote 1211: Major Price's estimate of Omar's character is much more
favorable. Among a race of sanguinary tyrants, Omar was just and humane.
His virtues as well as his bigotry were active.--M.]

[Footnote 13: See the article of Omar Ben Abdalaziz, in the Bibliotheque
Orientale, (p. 689, 690,) praeferens, says Elmacin, (p. 91,) religionem
suam rebus suis mundanis. He was so desirous of being with God, that
he would not have anointed his ear (his own saying) to obtain a perfect
cure of his last malady. The caliph had only one shirt, and in an age of
luxury, his annual expense was no more than two drachms, (Abulpharagius,
p. 131