The Fury of Conquest in the West
In the West, however, a stout resistance was encountered. The Saracens besieged Constantinople, against which they carried on a siege of eight years (A.D. 668-675); but every assault was repelled by torrents of terrible Greek fire. A second siege, forty years afterward, met a like result. In North Africa, too, they encountered long and obstinate resistance; but finally the whole northern coast—Cyrene, Tripoli, Carthage—was subdued; and in A. D. 710 a host of turbaned Arabs, with unsheathed scimitars, under Tarik-ben-Zaid, crossed the narrow strait into Spain and landed on the rock which commemorates the name of their leader (“Gibraltar,” i. e., Jebel Tarik, the Mountain of Tarik).