Here the daughter of Erin brought forth this ferocious tyrant, whose maxim of carnage, and of inflicting suffering on humanity was, “My empire can never be well governed, unless a stream of blood flows from the gate of the palace to the gate of the city.”  To do Yezeed justice, he followed out the instincts of his birth, and made war on all the world except the English (or Irish).  Tully’s Letters on Tripoli give a graphic account of the exploits of Yezeed, who, to his inherent cruelty, added a fondness for practical (Hibernian) jokes.

His father sent him several times on a pilgrimage to Mecca to expiate his crimes, when he amused, or alarmed, all the people whose countries he passed through, by his terrific vagaries.  One day he would cut off the heads of a couple of his domestics, and play at bowls with them; another day, he would ride across the path of an European, or a consul, and singe his whiskers with the discharge of a pistol-shot; another day, he would collect all the poor of a district, and gorge them with a razzia he had made on the effects of some rich over-fed Bashaw.  The multitude sometimes implored heaven’s blessing on the head of Yezeed. at other times trembled for their own heads.  Meanwhile, our European consuls made profound obeisance to this son of the Shereef, enthroned in the West.  So the tyrant passed the innocent days of his pilgrimage.  So the godless herd of mankind acquiesced in the divine rights of royalty.

[7] See Appendix at the end of this volume.

[8] The middle Western Region consists of Algiers and part of Tunis.

[9] Pliny, the Elder, confirms this tradition mentioned by Pliny.  Marcus Yarron reports, “that in all Spain there are spread Iberians, Persians, Phoenicians, Celts, and Carthaginians.” (Lib. iii. chap. 2).

[10] In Latin, Mauri, Maurice, Maurici, Maurusci, and it is supposed, so called by the Greeks from their dark complexions.

[11] The more probable derivation of this word is from bar, signifying land, or earth, in contradistinction from the sea, or desert, beyond the cultivable lands to the South.  To give the term more force it is doubled, after the style of the Semitic reduplication.  De Haedo de la Captividad gives a characteristic derivation, like a genuine hidalgo, who proclaimed eternal war against Los Moros.  He says—­“Moors, Alartes, Cabayles, and some Turks, form all of them a dirty, lazy, inhuman, indomitable nation of beasts, and it is for this reason that, for the last few years, I have accustomed myself to call that land the land of Barbary.”

[12] Procopius, de Bello Vandilico, lib. ii. cap. 10.

[13] Some derive it from Sarak, an Arabic word which signifies to steal, and hence, call the conquerors thieves.  Others, and with more probability, derive it from Sharak, the east, and make them Orientals, and others say there is an Arabic word Saracini, which means a pastoral people, and assert that Saracine is a corruption from it, the new Arabian immigrants being supposed to have been pastoral tribes.