the Koreish; and, in a nation
of cavalry, Abdallah was renowned as the boldest and most dexterous
horseman of Arabia. At the head of forty thousand Moslems, he advanced
from Egypt into the unknown countries of the West. The sands of Barca
might be impervious to a Roman legion but the Arabs were attended by
their faithful camels; and the natives of the desert beheld without
terror the familiar aspect of the soil and climate. After a painful
march, they pitched their tents before the walls of Tripoli, a maritime
city in which the name, the wealth, and the inhabitants of the province
had gradually centred, and which now maintains the third rank among the
states of Barbary. A reenforcement of Greeks was surprised and cut in
pieces on the sea-shore; but the fortifications of Tripoli resisted the
first assaults; and the Saracens were tempted by the approach of the
praefect Gregory to relinquish the labors of the siege for the perils
and the hopes of a decisive action. If his standard was followed by one
hundred and twenty thousand men, the regular bands of the empire must
have been lost in the naked and disorderly crowd of Africans and Moors,
who formed the strength, or rather the numbers, of his host. He rejected
with indignation the option of the Koran or the tribute; and during
several days the two armies were fiercely engaged from the dawn of light
to the hour of noon, when their fatigue and the excessive heat compelled
them to seek shelter and refreshment in their respective camps. The
daughter of Gregory, a maid of incomparable beauty and spirit, is said
to have fought by his side: from her earliest youth she was trained to
mount on horseback, to draw the bow, and to wield the cimeter; and the
richness of her arms and apparel were conspicuous in the foremost ranks
of the battle. Her hand, with a hundred thousand pieces of gold, was
offered for the head of the Arabian general, and the youths of Africa
were excited by the prospect of the glorious prize. At the pressing
solicitation of his brethren, Abdallah withdrew his person from the
field; but the Saracens were discouraged by the retreat of their leader,
and the repetition of these equal or unsuccessful conflicts.

A noble Arabian, who afterwards became the adversary of Ali, and the
father of a caliph, had signalized his valor in Egypt, and Zobeir was
the first who planted the scaling-ladder against the walls of Babylon.
In the African war he was detached from the stand