Note 219 — Chapter V · TRAVNIK AND FOINICA.

‘There can be no doubt,’ says Sir Gardner Wilkinson, ‘that the crescent on the Turkish arms is an old Byzantine emblem copied by the Moslems on their invasion of the provinces of the empire.’ It had been chosen of old, so the story goes, by Byzantium because she had been saved from a night attack of Philip by the moon coming out and revealing the approach of the enemy. See Dalmatia, &c. vol. ii. p. 184. The Osmanlìs must have borrowed the device from their Saracenic predecessors.