the first author of this dangerous example, introduced into the capital above fifty thousand Turks: their licentious conduct provoked the public indignation, and the quarrels of the soldiers and people induced the caliph to retire from Bagdad, and establish his own residence and the camp of his Barbarian favorites at Samara on the Tigris, about twelve leagues above the city of Peace. ^98 His son Motawakkel was a jealous and cruel tyrant: odious to his subjects, he cast himself on the fidelity of the strangers, and these strangers, ambitious and apprehensive, were tempted by the rich promise of a revolution. At the instigation, or at least in the cause of his son, they burst into his apartment at the hour of supper, and the caliph was cut into seven pieces by the same swords which he had recently distributed among the guards of his life and throne. To this throne, yet streaming with a father's blood, Montasser was triumphantly led; but in a reign of six months, he found only the pangs of a guilty conscience. If he wept at the sight of an old tapestry which represented the crime and punishment of the son of Chosroes, if his days were abridged by grief and remorse, we may allow some pity to a parricide, who exclaimed, in the bitterness of death, that he had lost both this world and the world to come. After this act of treason, the ensigns of royalty, the garment and walking-staff of Mahomet, were given and torn away by the foreign mercenaries, who in four years created, deposed, and murdered, three commanders of the faithful. As often as the Turks were inflamed by fear, or rage, or avarice, these caliphs were dragged by the feet, exposed naked to the scorching sun, beaten with iron clubs, and compelled to purchase, by the abdication of their dignity, a short reprieve of inevitable fate. ^99 At length, however, the fury of the tempest was spent or diverted: the Abbassides returned to the less turbulent residence of Bagdad; the insolence of the Turks was curbed with a firmer and more skilful hand, and their numbers were divided and destroyed in foreign warfare. But the nations of the East had been taught to trample on the successors of the prophet; and the blessings of domestic peace were obtained by the relaxation of strength and discipline. So uniform are the mischiefs of military despotism, that I seem to repeat the story of the praetorians of Rome. ^100
[Footnote 97: M. de Guignes, who sometimes leaps, and sometimes stumbles, in the gulf between Chinese and Mahometan story, thinks he can see, that these Turks are the Hoei-ke, alias the Kao-tche, or high-wagons; that they were divided into fifteen hordes, from China and Siberia to the dominions of the caliphs and Samanides, &c., (Hist. des Huns, tom. iii. p. 1 - 33, 124 - 131.)]
[Footnote 98: He changed the old name of Sumera, or Samara, into the fanciful title of Sermen-rai, that which gives pleasure at first sight, (D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 808. D'Anville, l'Euphrate et le Tigre p. 97, 98.)]
[Footnote 99: Take a specimen, the death of the caliph Motaz: Correptum pedibus pertrahunt, et sudibus probe permulcant, et spoliatum laceris vestibus in sole collocant, prae cujus acerrimo aestu pedes alternos attollebat et demittebat. Adstantium aliquis misero colaphos continuo ingerebat, quos ille objectis manibus avertere studebat ..... Quo facto traditus tortori fuit, totoque triduo cibo potuque prohibitus ..... Suffocatus, &c. (Abulfeda, p. 206.) Of the caliph Mohtadi, he says, services ipsi perpetuis ictibus contundebant, testiculosque pedibus conculcabant, (p. 208.)]
[Footnote 100: See under the reigns of Motassem, Motawakkel, Montasser, Mostain, Motaz, Mohtadi, and Motamed, in the Bibliotheque of D'Herbelot, and the now familiar Annals of Elmacin, Abulpharagius, and Abulfeda.]
While the flame of enthusiasm was damped by the business, the pleasure, and the knowledge, of the age, it burnt with concentrated heat in the breasts of the chosen few, the congenial spirits, who were ambitious of reigning either in this world or in the next. How carefully