Gentle and merciful, therefore, to the peaceful inhabitants, respectful to the gloomy anchorite and industrious monk, but breathing death and disgrace against the proud bishop and ambitious presbyter, the mighty horde moved on. Syria fell; the Persian monarchy was menaced, and its western provinces seized; a Christian kingdom called Hira, situated on the confines of Babylonia, was made tributary to Medina; and Khaled stood triumphant on the banks of the Euphrates, and sent a message to the Great King, commanding him either to receive the faith, or atone for his incredulity with half his wealth. The despot's ears were unaccustomed to such words, and the fiery deluge went on. At the end of the third year, Abou Beker died, and Omar was the successor appointed by his will. This was already a departure from the law of popular election, but Islam was busy with its conquests far from its central home, and accepted the nomination. Khaled's course continued westward and eastward, forcing his resistless wedge between the exhausted but still majestic empires of the Greeks and Persians. Blow after blow resounded as the great march went on. Constantinople, and Madayn upon the Tigris, the capitals of Christianity and Mithrism, were equally alarmed and equally powerless. Omar, the Caliph--the word means the Successor of the Apostle--determined to join the army which was encamped against the walls of Jerusalem, and added fresh vigour to the assailants by the knowledge that they fought under his eye.
Heraclius, the degenerate inheritor of the throne of Constantine, and Yezdegird, the successor of Darius and Xerxes, if they had moved towards the seat of war would have been surrounded by all the pomp of their exalted stations. Battalions of guards would have encompassed their persons, and countless officers of their courts attended their progress.
Omar, who saw already the world at his feet, journeyed by slow stages on a wretched camel, carrying his provisions hanging from his saddle-bow, and slept at night under the shelter of some tree, or on the margin of some well. He had but one suit, and that of worsted material, and yet his word was law to all those breathless listeners, and wherever he placed his foot from that moment became holy ground. Jerusalem and Aleppo yielded; Antioch, the chief seat of Grecian government, fell into his hands; Tyre and Tripoli submitted to his power; and the Saracenic hosts only paused when they reached the border of the sea, which they knew washed the fairest shores of Africa and Europe. It did not much matter who was in nominal command. Khaled died; Amru took his place; and yet the tide went on. The great city of Alexandria, which disputed with Constantinople the title of Capital of the World, with its almost fabulous wealth, its four thousand palaces, and five thousand baths, and four hundred theatres, was twice taken, and brought on the submission and conversion of the whole of Egypt. Amru in his hours of leisure was devoted to the cultivation of taste and genius. In John the Grammarian, a Christian student, he found a congenial spirit. Poetry, philosophy, and rhetoric were treated of in the conversations of the Arabic conqueror and the monkish scholar. At last, in reliance on his literary taste, the priest confided to the Moslem that in a certain building in the town there was a library so vast that it had no equal on earth either for number or value of the manuscripts it contained. This was too important a treasure to be dealt with without the express sanction of the Caliph. So the Christian legend is, that Omar replied to the announcement of his general, "Either what those books contain is in the Koran, or it is not. If it is, these volumes are useless; if it is not, they are wicked. Burn them." The skins and parchments heated the baths of Alexandria for many months, irrecoverable monuments of the past, and an everlasting disgrace to the Saracen name. Yet the story has been doubted; at least, the extent of the destruction. Rather, it has been supposed, the ignorant fanaticism of the illiterate monks, in covering with the legends of saints the obliterated lines of the classic authors, has been more destructive to the literary treasures of those ancient times than the furious zeal of Amru or the bigotry of Omar.