28 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY

Negroland, resulted in the submission of that country. There was also a sea expedition to Majorca, which was conquered.

By this time (708) Musa was fairly master by sea and land of the whole of North Africa from the Mediter-

ranean to the borders of Negroland. His influence upon the Berber tribes whom he displaced or overthrew was twofold. One effect of his conquests was to drive them from their old habitations in the fruitful northern edge of the desert to find new habitations in the no less fruitful

but already occupied southern edge, where to make room

for them disturbance was necessarily produced among the existing black populations. The other effect was in an exactly opposite direction. It was to draw them into the circle of Arab influence and even to incorporate them with the nation of their conquerors. It is related of Musa that on his return to Egypt at a later period he was on one occasion asked by the Sultan to describe the various peoples whom he had conquered. It came to the turn of the Berbers, and of them he said : " The Berbers, O

Commander of the Faithful, are of all foreign nations the people who resemble most the Arabs in impetuosity, corporal strength, endurance, military science, generosity, only that they are, O Commander of the Faithful, the

most treacherous people upon earth." The Berbers them-

selves had various traditions purporting to show that they were sprung from the same stock as the Arabs. It has already been seen that the innumerable maidens who

were taken with the spoils of Musa's many conquests were regarded as '* inestimable by their beauty and accomplish-

ments," and were distributed among his soldiers for wives. Musa's own sons had sons by Berber wives who rose to high repute. But it was not only by intermarriage, nor by the revival of traditions of a common stock, that the

two races were mixed. It was also Musa's habit to spend the immense sums with which the Sultan rewarded his

victories largely in the purchase of captured Berbers. This he did, his biographer relates, in the interests of