Invasion of Egypt.  I have not space, nor indeed does it comport with the intention of this work, to relate, in such detail as I have given to the fall of Jerusalem, other conquests of the Saracens—­conquests which eventually established a Mohammedan empire far exceeding in geographical extent that of Alexander, and even that of Rome.  But, devoting a few words to this subject, it may be said that Magianism received a worse blow than that which had been inflicted on Christianity; The fate of Persia was settled at the battle of Cadesia.  At the sack of Ctesiphon, the treasury, the royal arms, and an unlimited spoil, fell into the hands of the Saracens.  Not without reason do they call the battle of Nehavend the victory of victories.”  In one direction they advanced to the Caspian, in the other southward along the Tigris to Persepolis.  The Persian king fled for his life over the great Salt Desert, from the columns and statues of that city which had lain in ruins since the night of the riotous banquet of Alexander.  One division of the Arabian army forced the Persian monarch over the Oxus.  He was assassinated by the Turks.  His son was driven into China, and became a captain in the Chinese emperor’s guards.  The country beyond the Oxus was reduced.  It paid a tribute of two million pieces of gold.  While the emperor at Peking was demanding the friendship of the khalif at Medina, the standard of the Prophet was displayed on the banks of the Indus.

Among the generals who had greatly distinguished themselves in the Syrian wars was Amrou, destined to be the conqueror of Egypt; for the khalifs, not content with their victories on the North and East, now turned their eyes to the West, and prepared for the annexation of Africa.  As in the former cases, so in this, sectarian treason assisted them.  The Saracen army was hailed as the deliverer of the Jacobite Church; the Monophysite Christians of Egypt, that is, they who, in the language of the Athanasian Creed, confounded the substance of the Son, proclaimed, through their leader, Mokaukas, that they desired no communion with the Greeks, either in this world or the next, that they abjured forever the Byzantine tyrant and his synod of Chalcedon.  They hastened to pay tribute to the khalif, to repair the roads and bridges, and to supply provisions and intelligence to the invading army.

Fall of Alexandria.  Memphis, one of the old Pharaonic capitals, soon fell, and Alexandria was invested.  The open sea behind gave opportunity to Heraclius to reenforce the garrison continually.  On his part, Omar, who was now khalif sent to the succor of the besieging army the veteran troops of Syria.  There were many assaults and many sallies.  In one Amrou himself was taken prisoner by the besieged, but, through the dexterity of a slave, made his escape.  After a siege of fourteen months, and a loss of twenty-three thousand men, the Saracens captured the city.  In his dispatch to the Khalif, Amrou enumerated the splendors of the great city of the West “its four thousand palaces, four thousand baths, four hundred theatres, twelve thousand shops for the sale of vegetable food, and forty thousand tributary Jews.”