tine (c. 312), in the form of Christian pilgrim travel. This was a
feature peculiar to the zealots of early Christianity, found in only a
slight degree among their Jewish predecessors in the annual pilgrimage to
Jerusalem, and almost wholly wanting in other pre-Christian peoples. Chief
among these early pilgrims were the two Placentians, John and Antonine the
Elder (c. 303), who, in their wanderings to Jerusalem, seem to have started
a movement which culminated centuries later in the crusades.[415] In 333 a
Bordeaux pilgrim compiled the first Christian guide-book, the _Itinerary
from Bordeaux to Jerusalem_,[416] and from this time on the holy pilgrimage
never entirely ceased.

Still another certain route for the entrance of the numerals into Christian
Europe was through the pillaging and trading carried on by the Arabs on the
northern shores of the Mediterranean. As early as 652 A.D., in the
thirtieth year of the Hejira, the Mohammedans descended upon the shores of
Sicily and took much spoil. Hardly had the wretched Constans given place to
the {106} young Constantine IV when they again attacked the island and
plundered ancient Syracuse. Again in 827, under Asad, they ravaged the
coasts. Although at this time they failed to conquer Syracuse, they soon
held a good part of the island, and a little later they successfully
besieged the city. Before Syracuse fell, however, they had plundered the
shores of Italy, even to the walls of Rome itself; and had not Leo IV, in
849, repaired the neglected fortifications, the effects of the Moslem raid
of that year might have been very far-reaching. Ibn Khord[=a][d.]beh, who
left Bagdad in the latter part of the ninth century, gives a picture of the
great commercial activity at that time in the Saracen city of Palermo. In
this same century they had established themselves in Piedmont, and in 906
they pillaged Turin.[417] On the Sorrento peninsula the traveler who climbs
the hill to the beautiful Ravello sees still several traces of the Arab
architecture, reminding him of the fact that about 900 A.D. Amalfi was a
commercial center of the Moors.[418] Not only at this time, but even a
century earlier, the artists of northern India sold their wares at such
centers, and in the courts both of H[=a]r[=u]n al-Rash[=i]d and of
Charlemagne.[419] Thus the Arabs dominated the Mediterranean Sea long
before Venice

"held the gorgeous East in fee
And was the safeguard of the West,"

a