The History of the Small Pox Author:James Moore Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ., CHAP. III. ' : .' i !". : i-'l!"1 . ; ' i. THE SMALL POX APPEARS. IN ARABIA, AND FOLLOWS THE TRACK OF THE SARACENS. HPHE war of the Elephant was a... more » religious war of great celebrity in Arabia : but the truth was so obscured by Oriental fictions, as not to have been developed even by the penetration of Gibbon ; and as the incidents were intimately connected with the history of the Small Pox, it is necessary briefly to relate them. Abrahah , an Abyssinian prince and a Christian was Viceroy of Yaman. He built a magnificent church at Sanaa, with the pious design of attracting the Arabian pilgrims "from the idolatrous worship at Caaba, and of inducing them to pay their devotions to the true God ; and so convert them to Christianity. In the year 568, the inhabitants of Meccawere alarmed by finding their ancient temple neglected; and some of them secretly entered the church of Sanaa at night, and denied the walls, and the altar, by smearing them with filth. Abrahah was so incensed at the profanation, that he swore he would raze the Caaba to the ground; and having soon assembled a large army, he marched directly to Mecca, mounted upon a huge elephant. Abdol Motalleb the grandfather of Mahomet presided in Mecca, and according to the Arabian historians, was aided by Heaven. For when Abrahah attempted to enter the city, his elephant knelt down, then turned round, and could not be forced to advance; while he was disconcerted by this incident, a large flock of supernatural birds, named Abahil, came flying from the sea The plumage of some of those birds was black, and their bills were white; others had green feathers with yellow bills. All of them were armed, each carrying a small stone the size .of a pea in its bill, and two in its talons. These stones were inscribed with th...« less