colony in the heart of Africa; a citadel that might curb
the levity of the Barbarians, a place of refuge to secure, against the
accidents of war, the wealth and the families of the Saracens. With this
view, and under the modest title of the station of a caravan, he planted
this colony in the fiftieth year of the Hegira. In the present decay,
Cairoan still holds the second rank in the kingdom of Tunis, from which
it is distant about fifty miles to the south: its inland situation,
twelve miles westward of the sea, has protected the city from the Greek
and Sicilian fleets. When the wild beasts and serpents were extirpated,
when the forest, or rather wilderness, was cleared, the vestiges of
a Roman town were discovered in a sandy plain: the vegetable food of
Cairoan is brought from afar; and the scarcity of springs constrains the
inhabitants to collect in cisterns and reservoirs a precarious supply
of rain-water. These obstacles were subdued by the industry of Akbah; he
traced a circumference of three thousand and six hundred paces, which
he encompassed with a brick wall; in the space of five years, the
governor's palace was surrounded with a sufficient number of private
habitations; a spacious mosch was supported by five hundred columns of
granite, porphyry, and Numidian marble; and Cairoan became the seat of
learning as well as of empire. But these were the glories of a later
age; the new colony was shaken by the successive defeats of Akbah and
Zuheir, and the western expeditions were again interrupted by the
civil discord of the Arabian monarchy. The son of the valiant Zobeir
maintained a war of twelve years, a siege of seven months against the
house of Ommiyah. Abdallah was said to unite the fierceness of the lion
with the subtlety of the fox; but if he inherited the courage, he was
devoid of the generosity, of his father.

The return of domestic peace allowed the caliph Abdalmalek to resume the
conquest of Africa; the standard was delivered to Hassan, governor of
Egypt, and the revenue of that kingdom, with an army of forty thousand
men, was consecrated to the important service. In the vicissitudes of
war, the interior provinces had been alternately won and lost by the
Saracens. But the sea-coast still remained in the hands of the Greeks;
the predecessors of Hassan had respected the name and fortifications of
Carthage; and the number of its defenders was recruited by the
fugitives of Cabes and Tripoli. The arms of Hass