Soon after his return from this expedition, Abbas became ill and died, and his remains, committed to the grave by his sorrowing followers, were, after the departure of the latter, dug up by the Greeks, insulted by every device of impotent malice which hatred and fear could suggest, and finally consumed by fire; the only means of revenge available to his pusillanimous adversaries, who had so frequently experienced the vindictiveness of his temper and the power of his arms. During the eleven years of his administration, the Christians were subjected to continuous warfare. Like the Great Al-Mansur, he understood perfectly the advantages of allowing an enemy no time to replenish his treasury or to recruit his strength. By the efforts of his military genius the boundaries of the imperial domain had been annually contracted, until little territory acknowledged the supremacy of Constantinople except that in the immediate vicinity of Syracuse. His political sagacity suggested the alliance with the disaffected states of Italy, and the establishment of Moslem settlements on the main-land as a basis of future military operations and a perpetual menace to both the imperial and the papal courts. The death of the Emir Abbas was the signal of discord and contention in every Saracen community in Sicily. The tribal prejudices of the different factions which had been temporarily repressed by the iron will of the deceased governor now manifested themselves with greater violence than ever. The Berbers, the Yemenites, and the Ismailians arrayed themselves against one another in a bitter triangular contest. Assassination became of every-day occurrence. The property of citizens was not secure from the rapacious and insubordinate soldiery even within the walls of castles. With the commission of every fresh outrage, the animosity of the rival factions was inflamed and intensified. Towns and districts became mutually and vindictively hostile. As was the case in all the countries governed by the Mohammedan polity, whose regulations were incapable of controlling the antagonistic elements which from the very foundation of a state threatened its dismemberment, the Sicilian colony disclosed the same symptoms of ruin, and began to exhibit a tendency to disintegration even before the sovereignty of the Moslems had been fully established over the island. A monarch of far different temper from his predecessors was now seated upon the throne of the Cæsars. The career of Basil, the Macedonian, whose statesmanlike qualities and inflexible resolution had reformed the administration of the Empire, had suppressed the abuses of the Church, and had challenged the respect of the barbarians, seemed to indicate an adversary far more to be feared than the two Michaels,--the “Stammerer” and the “Drunkard,”--under whose disgraceful reigns the successes of the Moslems had been principally obtained.