II. 2. XI. AND THE INVASION OF DONGOLA i6i
extorted money so blatantly from the Coptic Patriarch of Alexandria, Anba Kha'il, that the latter went up-country to ask for assistance. The king of Abyssinia^, Cyriacus, was so indignant at the humiliation
thus inflicted on his spiritual chief that he marched on Egypt with
100,000 horsemen and 100,000 camels....When the Nubians [i.e.
Ahyssinians] entered Egypt, they plundered and slew, and took many
prisoners, and laid waste many inhabited places in Upper Egypt as they marched towards Misr. Now when the ruler of Egypt heard what was the cause of their coming, and was told as follows: "when the patriarch of Egypt went up to ask assistance of the Christians in Upper Egypt, news of this reached the king of Nubia and the king of Abyssinia and [another] king subject to the jurisdiction of the patriarch of Egypt, and [the first named] was indignant at the news " ; then [the Governor of Egypt] released the patriarch from his obligations and ceased to extort money from him, and begged him to write to the king of Nubia and bid him return [to his own country]. So the patriarch wrote to the king as he was requested and the king returned, and no longer acted as he had done, but departed to
his own country.
XI In 750 A.D. the 'Abbasid dynasty supplanted that of the Om- mayyads, and Marwan, the last ruler of the defeated party, met his death a fugitive in Egypt. The first 'Abbasid Khalifa was 'Abdulla
^ Abu Salih calls Cyriacus "King of Nubia," but he is vague on this point. Later (p. 272), speaking apparently of contemporary affairs (c. 1208 a.d.), he says: "The number of kings in Nubia is thirteen and all these rule the land under the supremacy of Cyriacus, the Great King; and all of them are priests and celebrate the liturgy within the sanctuary, as long as they reign without killing a man with their own hands; but if a king kills a man, he may no longer celebrate the liturgy
...etc." But if we continue we find in the account of Abyssinia (p. 286): "All the kings of Abyssinia are priests, and celebrate the liturgy within the sanctuary, as long as they reign without slaying any man with their own hand ; but after slaying a man they can no longer celebrate the liturgy; and the conditions by which they are bound after they have killed a man have already been spoken of in this book."
It seems that, as Evetts says, "this proves the confusion in the mind of our author of Nubia with Abyssinia." Abu Salih, also under the heading of "Abyssinia" (which,as wehave seen earlier,heincludesin the term" India": see p. 49, above) says: "The King of El Mukurra, who is an Abyssinian and is an orthodox king, is the great king among the kings of his country, because he has an extensive kingdom, including distant regions in the north of the country, and has many troops ; and he is the fourth of the kings of the earth, and no king on earth is strong enough to resist him; and at a certain place in his country he possesses the Ark of Noah" (p. 286, and cp. p. 296). Here, too, he seems to have involved himself in the same confusion, for the description given would apply to Abyssinia but never to Nubia or the district of Mukurra. Thus there can be little doubt, I think, that it was the Abyssinians who were chiefly responsible for the attack on Egypt about 737. A minor point supporting the theory is Abu Salih's remark apropos of the 100,000 horsemen. "Now Nubian horses are small, like the largest of the Egs^ptian asses, but have a great power of enduring fatigue" (p. 268). No one who has been in the Sudan for long can fail to recognize in this description the "habashi" {i.e. Abyssinian) pony, and it is not indigenous to any other part of Africa but Abyssinia. At the same time it is clear from the sentences which follow in the text that the Nubians assisted the Abyssinians, and the mention of camelmen at once suggests the Bega tribes.