Читать книгу Jerusalem, the City of Herod and Saladin онлайн

71 страница из 120

For several days the fighting continued with fluctuating fortune, but at last an incident happened which decided the contest in favour of the Mohammedans. A native of Homs who happened to be staying in the neighbourhood of Yarmúk, had hospitably entertained some of the Grecian officers; this kindness they requited by the violation of his wife and the murder of his infant son. Maddened by his wrongs, and unable to obtain redress from the Greek general, he went over to the Mohammedans, and, having betrayed the Christians into an ambuscade near the ford of the river, they were attacked and completely routed by their enemies; more than forty thousand men perishing by the sword or being whirled away by the resistless stream and drowned. Thus the same licentious barbarity and corruption which, more than Arab prowess, had contributed to the success of the Muslim arms at the outset of the war, ultimately resulted in the entire overthrow of the Christian power in the East.

Nothing now remained to complete the triumph of the invaders but the capture of Jerusalem itself; accordingly a little time after the decisive battle of Yarmúk (A.D. 636), Abu ‘Obeidah prepared to march upon the Holy City. Yezíd ibn abi Sufiyán was sent forward with a detachment of five thousand men; Abu ‘Obeidah himself brought up the main body a few days later, and was joined shortly after by the division under ‘Άmer ibn el ‘Άs. Desiring to afford the inhabitants every opportunity of coming to terms without further bloodshed, the general, before actually commencing hostilities, halted at the ford of the Jordan, and indited a letter to the Christian Patriarch and people of Ælia, demanding their immediate submission, and requiring them either to embrace the Mohammedan faith, or to pay the usual tribute exacted from unbelievers. “If you refuse,” said he, “you will have to contend with people who love the taste of death more than you love wine and swine’s flesh, and rest assured that I will come up against you, and will not depart until I have slain all the able-bodied men among you, and carried off your women and children captive.”