men; who, sending word to the ships, the rest of their forces landed and joined them.  In the mean time a messenger in disguise was sent to acquaint Yezid with what was done.  As soon as he returned, Youkinna was for falling upon the townsmen upon the wall; but Basil said, “Perhaps God might lead some of them into the right way,” and persuaded him to place the men so as to prevent their coming down from the wall.  This done, they cried out, “La Ilaha,” etc.  The people, perceiving themselves betrayed and the prisoners at liberty, were in the utmost confusion, none of them being able to stir a step or lift up a hand.  The Saracens in the camp, hearing the noise in the city, knew what it meant, and, marching up, Youkinna opened the gates and let them in.  Those that were in the city fled, some one way and some another, and were pursued by the Saracens and put to the sword.  Those upon the wall cried, “Quarter!” but Yezid told them that since they had not surrendered, but the city was taken by force, they were all slaves.  “However,” said he, “we of our own accord set you free, upon condition you pay tribute; and if any of you has a mind to change his religion, he shall fare as well as we do.”  The greatest part of them turned Mahometans.  When Constantine heard of the loss of Tripoli and Tyre his heart failed him, and taking shipping with his family and the greater part of his wealth he departed for Constantinople.  All this while Amrou ben-el-Ass lay before Caesarea.  In the morning when the people came to inquire after Constantine, and could hear no tidings of him nor his family, they consulted together, and with one consent surrendered the city to Amrou, paying down for their security two thousand pieces of silver, and delivering into his hands all that Constantine had been obliged to leave behind him of his property.  Thus was Caesarea lost in the year of our Lord 638, being the seventeenth year of the Hegira and the fifth of Omar’s reign, which answers to the twenty-ninth year of the emperor Heraclius.  After the taking of Caesarea all the other places in Syria which as yet held out, namely, Ramlah, Acre, Joppa, Ascalon, Gaza, Sichem (or Nablos), and Tiberias, surrendered, and in a little time after the people of Beiro Zidon, Jabalah, and Laodicea followed their example; so that there remained nothing more for the Saracens to do in Syria, who, in little more than six years from the time of their first expedition in Abu-Beker’s reign, had succeeded in subduing the whole of that large, wealthy, and populous country.

Syria did not remain long in the possession of those persons who had the chief hand in subduing it, for in the eighteenth year of the Hegira the mortality in Syria, both among men and beasts, was so terrible, particularly at Emaus and the adjacent territory, that the Arabs called that year the year of destruction.  By that pestilence the Saracens lost five-and-twenty thousand men, among whom were Abu Obeidah, who was then fifty-eight years old; Serjabil Ebn Hasanah, formerly Mahomet’s secretary; and Yezid Ebn Abu Sofian, with several other officers of note.  Kaled survived them about three years, and then died; but the place of his burial—­consequently of his death, for they did not use in those days to carry them far—­is uncertain; some say at Hems, others at Medina.