Note 342 — Chapter XXI · RISING IN NORTHERN SYRIA. A.H. XVII. A.D. 638.

Nothing illustrates the vagueness of the Syrian narrative so forcibly as the uncertainty of the year in which Cæsarea fell. Byzantine historians make the siege last seven years, and place the fall in the year A.H. 19, that is, A.D. 640. Various traditions place it in every year between A.H. 14 and A.H. 20, and represent the siege as having lasted, some three, some four, some seven years.

A Jew is said to have betrayed the town by discovering to the Arabs an undefended aqueduct, through which they effected an entrance. The population was mixed; 70,000, we are told, were Greeks, fed (murtazac) from the public stores; 30,000 Samaritans; and 200,000 (?) Jews. It was a sad fate that of the captives. It is mentioned incidentally that two were made over to the daughters of Asâd ibn Zorâra, one of the twelve leaders, in place of two from Ain Tamar, who had died in their service. Multitudes of Greeks—men and women—must have pined miserably in a strange land and in hopeless servitude. And amongst these there must have been many women of gentle birth forced into menial office, or if young and fair to look upon, reserved for a worse fate—liable, when their masters were tired of them, to be sold into other hands. No wonder that Al Kindy, in his Apology, inveighs, with scathing denunciation, against the slavery practised in these Moslem crusades.