Musa to inculcate the
knowledge and practice of the Koran, accustomed the Africans to obey the
apostle of God and the commander of the faithful. In their climate and
government, their diet and habitation, the wandering Moors resembled the
Bedoweens of the desert. With the religion, they were proud to adopt
the language, name, and origin of Arabs: the blood of the strangers and
natives was insensibly mingled; and from the Euphrates to the Atlantic
the same nation might seem to be diffused over the sandy plains of
Asia and Africa. Yet I will not deny that fifty thousand tents of pure
Arabians might be transported over the Nile, and scattered through the
Lybian desert: and I am not ignorant that five of the Moorish tribes
still retain their barbarous idiom, with the appellation and character
of white Africans.[163]

[A. D. 709.] V. In the progress of conquest from the north and south,
the Goths and the Saracens encountered each other on the confines of
Europe and Africa. In the opinion of the latter, the difference of
religion is a reasonable ground of enmity and warfare.[164] As early as
the time of Othman[165] their piratical squadrons had ravaged the coast
of Andalusia;[166] nor had they forgotten the relief of Carthage by the
Gothic succours. In that age, as well as in the present, the kings of
Spain were possessed of the fortress of Ceuta; one of the columns of
Hercules, which is divided by a narrow strait from the opposite pillar
or point of Europe. A small portion of Mauritania was still wanting to
the African conquest; but Musa, in the pride of victory, was repulsed
from the walls of Ceuta, by the vigilance and courage of count Julian,
the general of the Goths. From his disappointment and perplexity,
Musa was relieved by an unexpected message of the Christian chief,
who offered his place, his person, and his sword, to the successors of
Mahomet, and solicited the disgraceful honour of introducing their arms
into the heart of Spain.[167]

[Footnote 163: The first book of Leo Africanus, and the observations
of Dr. Shaw (p. 220. 223. 227. 247, &c.) will throw some light on the
roving tribes of Barbary, of Arabian or Moorish descent. But Shaw
had seen these savages with distant terror; and Leo, a captive in the
Vatican, appears to have lost more of his Arabic, than he could acquire
of Greek or Roman, learning. Many of his gross mistakes might be
detected in the first period of the Mahometan history.]

[Footnote 164: