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They had been cut off from the water, and suffered all the agonies of thirst. His eldest son, Ally Akbar, after ten different assaults on the enemy, in each of which he slew two or three, complained bitterly of his sufferings from heat and thirst. "His father arose, and introducing his own tongue within the parched lips of his favorite child, thus endeavored to alleviate his sufferings by the only means of which his enemies had not yet been able to deprive him." Ally was slain and cut to pieces in his sight: this wrung from him his first and only cry; then it was that his sister Zeyneb rushed from the tent. The rest, including his nephew, fell in succession. Hosein's horse was wounded - he fell to the ground. The hour of prayer, between noon and sunset, had arrived; the Imaun began the religious duties: - as Hosein prayed, he heard the cries of his infant child Abdallah, only twelve months old. The child was, at his desire, placed on his bosom: as he wept over it, it was transfixed by an arrow. Hosein dragged himself to the Euphrates: as he slaked his burning thirst, his mouth was pierced by an arrow: he drank his own blood. Wounded in four-and-thirty places, he still gallantly resisted. A soldier named Zeraiah gave the fatal wound: his head was cut off by Ziliousheng. Price, p. 402, 410. - M.]

[Footnote 180: Niebuhr the Dane (Voyages en Arabie, &c., tom. ii. p. 208, &c.) is, perhaps, the only European traveller who has dared to visit Meshed Ali and Meshed Hosein. The two sepulchres are in the hands of the Turks, who tolerate and tax the devotion of the Persian heretics. The festival of the death of Hosein is amply described by Sir John Chardin, a traveller whom I have often praised.]

When the sisters and children of Ali were brought in chains to the throne of Damascus, the caliph was advised to extirpate the enmity of a popular and hostile race, whom he had injured beyond the hope of reconciliation. But Yezid preferred the councils of mercy; and the mourning family was honorably dismissed to mingle their tears with their kindred at Medina. The glory of martyrdom superseded the right of primogeniture; and the twelve imams, ^181 or pontiffs, of the Persian creed, are Ali, Hassan, Hosein, and the lineal descendants of Hosein to the ninth generation. Without arms, or treasures, or subjects, they successively enjoyed the veneration of the people, and provoked the jealousy of the reigning caliphs: their tombs, at Mecca or Medina, on the banks of the Euphrates, or in the province of Chorasan, are still visited by the devotion of their sect. Their names were often the pretence of sedition and civil war; but these royal saints despised the pomp of the world: submitted to the will of God and the injustice of man; and devoted their innocent lives to the study and practice of religion. The twelfth and last of the Imams, conspicuous by the title of Mahadi, or the Guide, surpassed the solitude and sanctity of his predecessors. He concealed himself in a cavern near Bagdad: the time and place of his death are unknown; and his votaries pretend that he still lives, and will appear before the day of judgment to overthrow the tyranny of Dejal, or the Antichrist. ^182 In the lapse of two or three centuries, the posterity of Abbas, the uncle of Mahomet, had multiplied to the number of thirty-three thousand: ^183 the race of Ali might be equally prolific: the meanest individual was above the first and greatest of princes; and the most eminent were supposed to excel the perfection of angels. But their adverse fortune, and the wide extent of the Mussulman empire, allowed an ample scope for every bold and artful imposture, who claimed affinity with the holy seed: the sceptre of the Almohades, in Spain and Africa; of the Fatimites, in Egypt and Syria; ^184 of the Sultans of Yemen; and of the Sophis of Persia; ^185 has been consecrated by this vague and ambiguous title. Under their reigns it might be dangerous to dispute