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  • But [the Arabs'] friendship was venal, their faith inconstant, their enmity capricious: it was an easier task to excite than to disarm these roving barbarians; and, in the familiar intercourse of war, they learned to see, and to despise, the splendid weakness both of Rome and of Persia.

    Edward Gibbon (2013). “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: The Modern Library Collection (Complete and Unabridged)”, p.894, Modern Library