of Sicily by

the emperor Henry VI., A.D. 1194.

The hopes, or at least the wishes, of Falcandus were at first Conquest of gratified by the free and unanimous election of Tancred, the kingdom the grandson of the first king, whose birth was illegitimate, but whose civil and military virtues shone without a blemish. During four years, the term of his life and reign, he stood in arms on the farthest verge of the Apulian frontier against the powers of Germany; and the restitution of a royal captive, of Constantia herself, without injury or ransom, may appear to surpass the most liberal measure of policy or reason. After his decease the kingdom of his widow and infant son fell without a struggle, and Henry pursued his victorious march from Capua to Palermo. The political balance of Italy was destroyed by his success; and if the pope and the free cities had consulted their obvious and real interest, they would have combined the powers of earth and heaven to prevent the dangerous union of the German empire with the kingdom of Sicily. But the subtle policy, for which the Vatican has so often been praised or arraigned, was on this occasion blind and inactive; and if it were true that Celestine the Third had kicked away the Imperial crown from the head of the prostrate Henry,137 such an act of impotent pride could serve only to cancel an obligation and provoke an enemy. The Genoese, who enjoyed a beneficial trade and establishment in Sicily, listened to the promise of his boundless gratitude and speedy departure: 138 their fleet commanded the straits of Messina, and opened the harbour of Palermo ; and the first act of his government was to abolish the privileges and to seize the property of these imprudent allies. The last hope of Falcandus was defeated by the discord of the Christians and Mahometans: they fought in the capital; several thousands of the latter were slain, but their surviving brethren fortified the mountains, and disturbed above thirty years the peace of the island. By the policy of Frederic the Second, sixty thousand Saracens were transplanted to Nocera in Apulia. In their wars against the Roman church, the emperor and his son Mainfroy were strengthened and disgraced by the service of the enemies of Christ; and this national colony maintained their religion and manners in the heart of Italy till they were extirpated, at the end of the thirteenth century, by the zeal and revenge of the house of Anjou. 139 All the calamities which the

137 The testimony of an Englishman, of Roger de Hoveden (p. 689), will lightly weigh against the silence of German and Italian history (Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. x. p. 156). The priests and pilgrims, who returned from Rome, exalted, by every tale, the omnipotence of the holy father.

138 Ego enim in eo cum Teutonicis manere non debeo (Caffari, Annal. Genuenses, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. vi. p. 367, 368).

139 For the Saracens of Sicily and Nocera, see the Annals of Muratori (tom. x. p. 149,

140

prophetic orator had deplored were surpassed by the cruelty and avarice of the German conqueror. He violated the royal sepulchres," and explored the secret treasures of the palace, Palermo, and the whole kingdom; the pearls and jewels, however precious, might be easily removed, but one hundred and sixty horses were laden with the gold and silver of Sicily." The young king, his mother and sisters, and the nobles of both sexes, were separately confined in the fortresses of the Alps, and, on the slightest rumour of rebellion, the captives were deprived of life, of their eyes, or of the hope of posterity. Constantia herself was touched with sympathy for the miseries of her country, and the heiress of the Norman line might struggle to check her despotic husband, and to save the patrimony of her new-born son, of an emperor so famous in the next age under the name of Frederic the Second. Ten years after this revolu- Final extion, the French monarchs annexed to their crown the the Normans. duchy of Normandy: the sceptre of her ancient dukes had A.D. 1204. been transmitted, by a grand-daughter of William the Conqueror, to the house of Plantagenet; and the adventurous Normans, who had raised so many trophies in France, England, and Ireland, in Apulia, Sicily, and the East, were lost, either in victory or servitude, among the vanquished nations.

tinction of

and A.D. 1223, 1247), Giannone (tom. ii. p. 385), and of the originals, in Muratori's Collection, Richard de St. Germano (tom. vii. p. 996), Matteo Spinelli de Giovenazzo (tom. vii. p. 1064), Nicholas de Jamsilla (tom. x. p. 494), and Matteo Villani (tom. xiv. 1. vii. p. 103). The last of these insinuates, that, in reducing the Saracens of Nocera, Charles II. of Anjou employed rather artifice than violence.

140 Muratori quotes a passage from Arnold of Lubec (1. iv. c. 20): Reperit thesauros absconditos, et omnem lapidum pretiosorum et gemmarum gloriam, ita ut oneratis 160 somariis, gloriose ad terram suam redierit. Roger de Hoveden, who mentions the violation of the royal tombs and corpses, computes the spoil of Salerno at 200,000 ounces of gold (p. 746). On these occasions I am almost tempted to exclaim with the listening maid in La Fontaine, "Je voudrois bien avoir ce qui manque."

a It is remarkable that at the same time the tombs of the Roman emperors, even of Constantine himself, were violated and ransacked by their degenerate successor Alexius Comnenus, in order to enable

him to pay the "German" tribute exacted by the menaces of the emperor Henry. See the end of the first book of the Life of Alexius in Nicetas, p. 632, edit. Bonn. -M.

L

VOL. VII.

CHAPTER LVII.

THE TURKS OF THE HOUSE OF SELJUK. THEIR REVOLT AGAINST MAHMUD, CONQUEROR OF HINDOSTAN. TOGRUL SUBDUES PERSIA, AND PROTECTS THE CALIPHS. DEFEAT AND CAPTIVITY OF THE EMPEROR ROMANUS DIOGENES BY ALP ARSLAN. POWER AND MAGNIFICENCE OF MALEK SHAH. CONQUEST OF ASIA MINOR AND SYRIA. - STATE AND OPPRESsion of JERUSALEM -PILGRIMAGES TO THE HOLY SEPULCHRE.

THE TURKS.

FROM the isle of Sicily the reader must transport himself beyond the Caspian Sea to the original seat of the Turks or Turkmans, against whom the first crusade was principally directed.* Their Scythian empire of the sixth century was long since dissolved, but the name was still famous among the Greeks and Orientals, and the fragments of the nation, each a powerful and independent people, were scattered over the desert from China to the Oxus and the Danube: the colony of Hungarians b was admitted into the republic of Europe, and the thrones of Asia were occupied by slaves and soldiers of Turkish extraction. While Apulia and Sicily were subdued by the Norman lance, a swarm of these northern shepherds overspread the kingdoms of Persia; their princes of the race of Seljuk erected a splendid and solid empire from Samarcand to the confines of Greece and Egypt, and the Turks have maintained their dominion in Asia Minor till the victorious crescent has been planted on the dome of St. Sophia.

One of the greatest of the Turkish princes was Mamood or Mahmud,' the Gaznevide, who reigned in the eastern provinces of

I am indebted for his character and history to D'Herbelot (Bibliothèque Orientale, Mahmud, p. 533-537), M. de Guignes (Histoire des Huns, tom. iii. p. 155-173), and our countryman Colonel Alexander Dow (vol. i. p. 23-83). In the two first volumes of his History of Hindostan he styles himself the translator of the Persian Ferishta; but in his florid text it is not easy to distinguish the version and the original.d

Mahmud the

A.D.

997-1028.

Persia one thousand years after the birth of Christ. His father Sebectagi was the slave of the slave of the slave of the commander of the faithful. But in this descent of servitude Gaznevide, the first degree was merely titular, since it was filled by the sovereign of Transoxiana and Chorasan, who still paid a nominal allegiance to the caliph of Bagdad. The second rank was that of a minister of state, a lieutenant of the Samanides, who broke, by his revolt, the bonds of political slavery. But the third step was a state of real and domestic servitude in the family of that rebel, from which Sebectagi, by his courage and dexterity, ascended to the supreme command of the city and province of Gazna,3 as the son-in-law and successor of his grateful master. The falling dynasty of the Samanides was at first protected, and at last overthrown, by their servants, and, in the public disorders, the fortune of Mahmud continually increased. For him the title of Sultan was first invented;b and his kingdom was enlarged from Transoxiana to the neighbourhood of Ispahan, from the shores of the Caspian to the mouth of the Indus. But the principal source of his fame and riches was the holy war which he waged against the Gentoos of Hindostan. In this foreign narrative I may not consume a page, and a volume would scarcely suffice to recapitulate the battles and sieges of his twelve expeditions. Never was the Musulman hero stan.

4

His twelve expeditions

into Hindo

2 The dynasty of the Samanides continued 125 years, A.D. 874-999, under ten princes. See their succession and ruin in the Tables of M. de Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 404-406). They were followed by the Gaznevides, A.D. 999-1183 (see tom. i. p. 239, 240). His division of nations often disturbs the series of time and place.

3 Gaznah hortos non habet: est emporium et domicilium mercaturæ Indicæ. Abulfedæ Geograph. Reiske, tab. xxiii. p. 349; D'Herbelot, p. 364. It has not been visited by any modern traveller.

4 By the ambassador of the caliph of Bagdad, who employed an Arabian or Chaldaic word that signifies lord and master (D'Herbelot, p. 825). It is interpreted Avrozgarwę, Bagintos Basidio, by the Byzantine writers of the xith century; and the name (You Tavis, Soldanus) is familiarly employed in the Greek and Latin languages, after it had passed from the Gaznevides to the Seljukides, and other emirs of Asia and Egypt. Ducange (Dissertation xvi. sur Joinville, p. 238-240, Gloss. Græc. et Latin.) labours to find the title of Sultan in the ancient kingdom of Persia: but his proofs are mere shadows; a proper name in the Themes of Constantine (ii. 11 [tom. iii. p. 61, ed. Bonn]), an anticipation of Zonaras, &c., and a medal of Kai Khosrou, not (as he believes) the Sassanide of the vith, but the Seljukide of Iconium of the xiiith century (De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 246).

"lation, he has filled his work with his "own observations, which have been so "embodied in the text that Gibbon de"clares it impossible to distinguish the "translator from the original author." Preface, p. vii.-M.

"Sebuctecin, Weil, Geschichte der Chalifen, vol. iii. p. 60.-S.

b It is uncertain when the title of Sultan was first used, but it seems at all events to have been older than the time of Mahmud. It is mentioned by Halebi under the reign of Motawaccel; but according to Ibn Chaldun it was first assumed by the Bowides. Weil, ibid. vol. ii. p. 345, note.-S.

6

dismayed by the inclemency of the seasons, the height of the mountains, the breadth of the rivers, the barrenness of the desert, the multitudes of the enemy, or the formidable array of their elephants of war. The sultan of Gazna surpassed the limits of the conquests of Alexander; after a march of three months, over the hills of Cashmir and Thibet, he reached the famous city of Kinoge, on the Upper Ganges, and, in a naval combat on one of the branches of the Indus, he fought and vanquished four thousand boats of the natives. Delhi, Lahor, and Multan were compelled to open their gates; the fertile kingdom of Guzarat attracted his ambition and tempted his stay; and his avarice indulged the fruitless project of discovering the golden and aromatic isles of the Southern Ocean. On the payment of a tribute the rajahs preserved their dominions, the people their lives and fortunes: but to the religion of Hindostan the zealous Musulman was cruel and inexorable; many hundred temples or pagodas were levelled with the ground, many thousand idols were demolished, and the servants of the prophet were stimulated and rewarded by the precious materials of which they were composed. The pagoda of Sumnat was situate on the promontory of Guzarat, in the neighbourhood of Diu, one of the last remaining possessions of the Portuguese." It was endowed with the revenue of two thousand villages; two thousand Brahmins were consecrated to the service of the deity, whom they washed each morning and evening in water from the distant Ganges; the subordinate ministers consisted of three hundred musicians, three hundred barbers, and five hundred dancing girls, conspicuous for their birth or beauty. Three sides of the temple were protected by the ocean, the narrow isthmus was fortified by a

5 Ferishta (apud Dow, Hist. of Hindostan, vol. i. p. 49) mentions the report of a gun in the Indian army. But as I am slow in believing this premature (A.D. 1008) use of artillery, I must desire to scrutinise first the text and then the authority of Ferishta, who lived in the Mogul court in the last century.

6 Kinoge, or Canouge (the old Palimbothra), is marked in latitude 27° 3', longitude 80° 13′. See D'Anville (Antiquité de l'Inde, p. 60-62), corrected by the local knowledge of Major Rennell (in his excellent Memoir on his Map of Hindostan, p. 37-43): 300 jewellers, 30,000 shops for the areca nut, 60,000 bands of musicians, &c. (Abulfed. Geograph. tab. xv. p. 274; Dow, vol. i. p. 16), will allow an ample deduction.

7 The idolaters of Europe, says Ferishta (Dow, vol. i. p. 66). Consult Abulfeda (p. 272) and Rennell's Map of Hindostan,

This passage is differently written in the various manuscripts I have seen; and in some the word tope (gun) has been written for nupth naphtha), and toofung (musket) for khudung (arrow). But no Persian or Arabic history speaks of gunpowder before the time usually assigned for its invention (A.D. 1317); long after

which it was first applied to the purposes of war. Briggs's Ferishta, vol. i. p. 47, note.-M.

b Mr. Wilson (Hindu Drama, vol. iii. p. 12) and Schlegel (Indische Bibliothek, vol. ii. p. 394) concur in identifying Palimbothra with the Patalipura of the Indians, the Patna of the moderns.-M.