voted to the practice of moral and religious duties. But the public virtues of Abubeker and Omar, the prudence of the first, the severity of the second, maintained the peace and prosperity of their reigns. The feeble temper and declining age of Othman were incapable of sustaining the weight of conquest and empire. He chose, and he was deceived; he trusted, and he was betrayed: the most deserving of the faithful became useless or hostile to his government, and his lavish bounty was productive only of ingratitude and discontent. The spirit of discord went forth in the provinces, their deputies assembled at Medina, and the Charegites, the desperate fanatics who disclaimed the yoke of subordination and reason, were confounded among the free-born Arabs, who demanded the redress of their wrongs and the punishment of their oppressors. From Cufa, from Bassora, from Egypt, from the tribes of the desert, they rose in arms, encamped about a league from Medina, and despatched a haughty mandate to their sovereign, requiring him to execute justice, or to descend from the throne. | His repentance began to disarm and disperse the insurgents; but their fury was rekindled by the arts of his enemies; and the forgery of a perfidious secretary was contrived to blast his reputation and precipitate his fall. The caliph had lost the only guard of his predecessors, the esteem and confidence of the Moslems; during a siege of six weeks his water and provisions were intercepted, and the feeble gates of the palace were protected only by the scruples of the more timorous rebels. Forsaken by those who had abused his simplicity, the helpless and venerable caliph expected the approach of death; the brother of Ayesha marched at the head of the assassins; and Othman, with the Koran in his lap, was pierced with June 18. a multitude of wounds. A tumultuous anarchy of five days was appeased by the inauguration of Ali: his refusal would have provoked a general massacre. In this painful situation he supported the becoming pride of the chief of the Hashemites; declared that he had rather serve than reign; rebuked the presumption of the strangers: and required the formal, if not the voluntary, assent of the chiefs of the nation. He has never been accused of promoting the assassin of Omar; though Persia indiscreetly celebrates the festival of that holy martyr. The quarrel between Othman and his subjects was assuaged by the early mediation of Ali; and Hassan, the eldest of his sons, was insulted and wounded in the defence of the caliph. Yet it is doubtful whether the father of Hassan was strenuous and sincere in his opposition to the rcbels; and it is certain that he enjoyed the benefit of their crime. The temptation was indeed of such magnitude as might stagger and corrupt the most obdurate virtue. The ambitious candidate no longer aspired to the barren sceptre of Arabia: the Saracens had been victorious in the east and west; and Death of Othman, A. D. 655. n The plain of Siffin is determined by D'Anville (l'Euphrate et le | the wealthy kingdoms of Persia, Syria, and Egypt, were the patrimony of the commander of the faithful. Reign of Ali, A. D. 655-660. A life of prayer and contemplation had not chilled the martial activity of Ali; but in a mature age, after a long experience of mankind, he still betrayed in his conduct the rashness and indiscretion of youth. In the first days of his reign, he neglected to secure, either by gifts or fetters, the doubtful allegiance of Telha and Zobeir, two of the most powerful of the Arabian chiefs. They escaped from Medina to Mecca, and from thence to Bassora; erected the standard of revolt; and usurped the government of Irak, or Assyria, which they had vainly solicited as the reward of their services. The mask of patriotism is allowed to cover the most glaring inconsistencies; and the enemies, perhaps the assassins, of Othman now demanded vengeance for his blood. They were accompanied in their flight by Ayesha, the widow of the prophet, who cherished, to the last hour of her life, an implacable hatred against the husband and the posterity of Fatima. The most reasonable Moslems were scandalized, that the mother of the faithful should expose in a camp her person and character; but the superstitious crowd was confident that her presence would sanctify the justice, and assure the success, of their cause. At the head of twenty thousand of his loyal Arabs, and nine thousand valiant auxiliaries of Cufa, the caliph encountered and defeated the superior numbers of the rebels under the walls of Bassora. Their leaders, Telha and Zobeir, were slain in the first battle that stained with civil blood the arms of the Moslems. After passing through the ranks to animate the troops, Ayesha had chosen her post amidst the dangers of the field. In the heat of the action, seventy men, who held the bridle of her camel, were successively killed or wounded; and the cage, or litter, in which she sat, was struck with javelins and darts like the quills of a porcupine. The venerable captive sustained with firmness the reproaches of the conqueror, and was speedily dismissed to her proper station, at the tomb of Mahomet, with the respect and tenderness that was still due to the widow of the apostle. After this victory, which was styled the Day of the Camel, Ali marched against a more formidable adversary; against Moawiyah, the son of Abu Sophian, who had assumed the title of caliph, and whose claim was supported by the forces of Syria and the interest of the house of Ommiyah. From the passage of Thapsacus, the plain of Siffin" extends along the western bank of the Euphrates. On this spacious and level theatre, the two competitors waged a desultory war of one hundred and ten days. In the course of ninety actions or skirmishes, the loss of Ali was estimated at twenty-five, that of Moawiyah at forty-five, thousand soldiers; and the list of the slain was dignified with the names of five and twenty veterans who had fought at Beder Tigre, p. 29.) to be the Campus Barbaricus of Procopius. under the standard of Mahomet. In this sanguinary contest the lawful caliph displayed a superior character of valour and humanity. His troops were strictly enjoined to await the first onset of the enemy, to spare their flying brethren, and to respect the bodies of the dead, and the chastity of the female captives. He generously proposed to save the blood of the Moslems by a single combat; but his trembling rival declined the challenge as a sentence of inevitable death. The ranks of the Syrians were broken by the charge of a hero who was mounted on a pyebald horse, and wielded with irresistible force his ponderous and two-edged sword. As often as he smote a rebel, he shouted the Allah Acbar, "God is victorious;" and in the tumult of a nocturnal battle, he was heard to repeat four hundred times that tremendous exclamation. The prince of Damascus already meditated his flight, but the certain victory was snatched from the grasp of Ali by the disobedience and enthusiasm of his troops. Their conscience was awed by the solemn appeal to the books of the Koran which Moawiyah exposed on the foremost lances; and Ali was compelled to yield to a disgraceful truce and an insidious compromise. He retreated with sorrow and indignation to Cufa; his party was discouraged; the distant provinces of Persia, of Yemen, and of Egypt, were subdued or seduced by his crafty rival; and the stroke of fanaticism, which was aimed against the three chiefs of the nation, was fatal only to the cousin of Mahomet. In the temple of Mecca, three Charegites or enthusiasts discoursed of the disorders of the church and state they soon agreed, that the deaths of Ali, of Moawiyah, and of his friend Amrou, the viceroy of Egypt, would restore the peace and unity of religion. Each of the assassins chose his victim, poisoned his dagger, devoted his life, and secretly repaired to the scene of action. Their resolution was equally desperate but the first mistook the person of Amrou, and stabbed the deputy who occupied his seat; the prince of Damascus was dangerously hurt by the second; the lawful caliph, in the mosch of Cufa, received a mortal wound from the hand of the third. He expired in the sixtythird year of his age, and mercifully recommended to his children, that they would despatch the murderer by a single stroke. The sepulchre of Ali was concealed from the tyrants of the house of Ommiyah ; but in the fourth age of the Hegira, a tomb, a temple, a city, arose near the ruins of Cufa. Many thousands of the Shiites repose in holy ground at the feet of the vicar of God; and the desert is vivified by the numerous and annual visits of the Persians, who esteem their devotion not less meritorious than the pilgrimage of Mecca. o Abulfeda, a modern Sonnite, relates the different opinions concerning the burial of Ali, but adopts the sepulchre of Cufa, hodie famâ numeroque religiose frequentantium celebratum. This number is reckoned by Niebuhr to amount annually to 2000 of the dead, and 5000 of the living, (tom. ii. p. 208, 209.) PAll the tyrauts of Persia, from Adhad el Dowlat (A. D. 977, D'Herbelot, p 58, 59. 95.) to Nadir Shah, (A. D. 1743, Hist. de Nadir Shah, tom. ii. p. 155.) have euriched the tomb of Ali with the spoils of The The persecutors of Mahomet usurp- Reign of Moawiyah, ed the inheritance of his children; and A. D. 655, or the champions of idolatry became the 661-680. supreme heads of his religion and empire. opposition of Abu Sophian had been fierce and obstinate; his conversion was tardy and reluctant; his new faith was fortified by necessity and interest; he served, he fought, perhaps he believed; and the sins of the time of ignorance were expiated by the recent merits of the family of Ommiyah. Moawiyah, the son of Abu Sophian, and of the cruel Henda, was dignified in his early youth with the office or title of secretary of the prophet: the judgment of Omar intrusted him with the government of Syria; and he administered that important province above forty years, either in a subordinate or supreme rank. Without renouncing the fame of valour and liberality, he affected the reputation of humanity and moderation: a grateful people were attached to their benefactor; and the victorious Moslems were enriched with the spoils of Cyprus and Rhodes. The sacred duty of pursuing the assassins of Othman was the engine and pretence of his ambition. The bloody shirt of the martyr was exposed in the mosch of Damascus: the emir deplored the fate of his injured kinsman; and sixty thousand Syrians were engaged in his service by an oath of fidelity and revenge. Amrou, the conqueror of Egypt, himself an army, was the first who saluted the new monarch, and divulged the dangerous secret, that the Arabian caliphs might be created elsewhere than in the city of the prophet. The policy of Moawiyah eluded the valour of his rival; and, after the death of Ali, he negociated the abdication of his son Hassan, whose mind was either above or below the government of the world, and who retired without a sigh from the palace of Cufa to an humble cell near the tomb of his grandfather. The aspiring wishes of the caliph were finally crowned by the important change of an elective to an hereditary kingdom. Some murmurs of freedom or fanaticism attested the reluctance of the Arabs, and four citizens of Medina refused the oath of fidelity; but the designs of Moawiyah were conducted with vigour and address; and his son Yezid, a feeble and dissolute youth, was proclaimed as the commander of the faithful and the successor of the apostle of God. A familiar story is related of the Death of Hosein, benevolence of one of the sons of Ali. A. D. 680. Oct. 10. In serving at table, a slave had inadvertently dropt a dish of scalding broth on his master: the heedless wretch fell prostrate, to deprecate his punishment, and repeated a verse of the Koran : "Paradise is for those who command their anger: "I am not angry :"-" and for those who the people. The dome is copper, with a bright and massy gilding, which glitters to the sun at the distance of many a mile. q The city of Meshud Ali, five or six miles from the ruins of Cufa, and one hundred and twenty to the south of Bagdad, is of the size and form of the modern Jerusalem. Meshed Hosein, larger and more populous, is at the distance of thirty miles. r I borrow, on this occasion, the strong sense and expression of Tacitus: (Hist. i. 4.) Evulgato imperii arcano posse imperatorem alibi quam Romæ fieri. pardon offences :"-" I pardon your offence:"" and assurance of paradise. On the morning of the fatal for those who return good for evil:"-" I give you day, he mounted on horseback, with his sword in one your liberty, and four hundred pieces of silver." | hand and the Koran in the other: his generous band With an equal measure of piety, Hosein, the younger of martyrs consisted only of thirty-two horse and brother of Hassan, inherited a remnant of his fa- forty foot; but their flanks and rear were secured ther's spirit, and served with honour against the by the tent-ropes, and by a deep trench which they christians in the siege of Constantinople. The pri- had filled with lighted faggots, according to the mogeniture of the line of Hashem, and the holy practice of the Arabs. The enemy advanced with character of grandson of the apostle, had centred reluctance; and one of their chiefs deserted, with in his person, and he was at liberty to prosecute his thirty followers, to claim the partnership of inevitclaim against Yezid, the tyrant of Damascus, whose able death. In every close onset, or single combat, vices he despised, and whose title he had never the despair of the Fatimites was invincible; but deigned to acknowledge. A list was secretly trans the surrounding multitudes galled them from a dismitted from Cufa to Medina, of one hundred and tance with a cloud of arrows, and the horses and forty thousand Moslems, who professed their attach- men were successively slain: a truce was allowment to his cause, and who were eager to draw their ed on both sides for the hour of prayer; and the swords so soon as he should appear on the banks of battle at length expired by the death of the last of the Euphrates. Against the advice of his wisest the companions of Hosein. Alone, weary and friends, he resolved to trust his person and family wounded, he seated himself at the door of his tent. in the hands of a perfidious people. He traversed As he tasted a drop of water, he was pierced in the desert of Arabia with a timorous retinue of the mouth with a dart; and his son and nephew, women and children; but as he approached the two beautiful youths, were killed in his arms. confines of Irak, he was alarmed by the solitary or He lifted his hands to heaven, they were full of hostile face of the country, and suspected either the blood, and he uttered a funeral prayer for the defection or ruin of his party. His fears were just; | living and the dead. In a transport of despair his Obeidollah, the governor of Cufa, had extinguished sister issued from the tent, and abjured the general the first sparks of an insurrection; and Hosein, in of the Cufians, that he would not suffer Hosein the plain of Kerbela, was encompassed by a body to be murdered before his eyes: a tear trickled down of five thousand horse, who intercepted his commu- his venerable beard; and the boldest of his soldiers nication with the city and the river. He might still fell back on every side as the dying hero threw have escaped to a fortress in the desert, that had himself among them. The remorseless Shamer, a defied the power of Cæsar and Chosroes, and con- name detested by the faithful, reproached their fided in the fidelity of Tai, which would have armed cowardice; and the grandson of Mahomet was ten thousand warriors in his defence. In a confer- slain with three and thirty strokes of lances and ence with the chief of the enemy, he proposed the swords. After they had trampled on his body, they option of three honourable conditions; that he carried his head to the castle of Cufa, and the inshould be allowed to return to Medina, or be station-human Obeidollah struck him on the mouth with a ed in a frontier garrison against the Turks, or safely conducted to the presence of Yezid. But the commands of the caliph, or his lieutenant, were stern and absolute; and Hosein was informed that he must either submit as a captive and a criminal to the commander of the faithful, or expect the consequences of his rebellion. "Do you think," replied he, " to terrify me with death?" And, during the short respite of a night, he prepared with calm and solemn resignation to encounter his fate. He checked the lamentations of his sister Fatima, who deplored the impending ruin of his house. trust," said Hosein, "is in God alone. All things, both in heaven and earth, must perish and return to their Creator. My brother, my father, my mother, were better than me, and every mussulman has an example in the prophet." He pressed his friends to consult their safety by a timely flight: they unanimously refused to desert or survive their beloved master; and their courage was fortified by a fervent prayer and the "Our I have abridged the interesting narrative of Ockley. (tom. ii. p. 170-231.) It is long and minute; but the pathetic almost always consists in the detail of little circumstances. 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 66 cane: "Alas!" exclaimed an aged mussulman, " on Ali. 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. u The general article of Imam, in D'Herbelot's Bibliotheque, will indicate the succession; and the lives of the twelve are given under their respective names, 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. In the lapse of two or three centuries the posterity of Abbas, the uncle of Mahomet, had multiplied to the number of thirtythree thousand: 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 impostor, who claimed affinity with the holy seed: the sceptre of the Almohades in Spain and Africa, of the Fatimites in Egypt and Syria,' of the sultans of Yemen, and of the sophis of Persia, has been consecrated by this vague and ambiguous title. Under their reigns it might be dangerous to dispute the legitimacy of their birth; and one of the Fatimite caliphs silenced an indiscreet question by drawing his scymitar: "This," said Moez," is my pedigree; and these, casting native land. The fame and merit of Mahomet would ennoble a plebeian race, and the ancient blood of the Koreish transcends the recent majesty of the kings of the earth. The talents of Mahomet are entitled Success of Mahomet. to our applause, but his success has perhaps too strongly attracted our admiration. Are we surprised that a multitude of proselytes should embrace the doctrine and the passions of an eloquent fanatic? In the heresies of the church, the same seduction has been tried and repeated from the time of the apostles to that of the reformers. Does it seem incredible that a private citizen should grasp the sword and the sceptre, subdue his native country, and erect a monarchy by his victorious arms? In the moving picture of the dynasties of the east, a hundred fortunate usurpers have arisen from a baser origin, surmounted more formidable obstacles, and filled a large scope of empire and conquest. Mahomet was alike instructed to preach and to fight, and the union of these opposite qualities, while it enhanced his merit, contributed to his success the operation of force and persuasion, of enthusiasm and fear, continually acted on each other, till every barrier yielded to their irresistible power. His voice invited the Arabs to freedom and victory, to arms and rapine, to the indulgence of their darling passions in this world and the other: the restraints which he imposed were requisite to establish the credit of the prophet, and to exercise the obedience of the people; and the only objection to his success was his rational creed of the unity and perfections of God. It is not the propagation but the per- Permanency of manency of his religion that deserves our wonder the same pure and perfect impression which he engraved at Mecca and Medina, is preserved after the revolutions of twelve centuries, by the Indian, the African, and the Turkish proselytes of the Koran. If the christian apostles, St. Peter or St. Paul, could return to the Vatican, they might possibly inquire the name of the Deity who is worshipped with such mysterious rites in that magnificent temple: at Oxford or Geneva, they would experience less surprise; but it might still be incumbent on them to peruse the catechism of the his religion. a handful of gold to his soldiers, " and these are my kindred and my children." In the various conditions of princes, or doctors, or nobles, or merchants, or beggars, a swarm of the genuine or fictitious descendants of Mahomet and Ali is honoured with the appellation of sheiks, or sherifs, or emirs. In the Ottoman empire, they are distinguished by a green turban, receive a stipend from the treasury, are judged only by their chief, and, however debased by fortune or character, still assert the proud pre-church, and to study the orthodox commentators on eminence of their birth. A family of three hundred persons, the pure and orthodox branch of the caliph Hassan, is preserved without taint or suspicion in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and still retains, after the revolutions of twelve centuries, the custody of the temple and the sovereignty of their x The name of Antichrist may seem ridiculous, but the Mahometans have liberally borrowed the fables of every religion. (Sale's Prelimi nary Discourse, p. 80. 82.) In the royal stable of Ispahan, two horses were always kept saddled, one for the Mahadi himself, the other for his lieutenant, Jesus the son of Mary. y In the year of the Hegira 200. (A. D. 815.) See D'Herbelot, p. 546. z D'Herbelot, p. 342, The enemies of the Fatimites disgraced them by a Jewish origin. Yet they accurately deduced their genealogy from Jaafar, the sixth Imam; and the impartial Abulfeda allows (Annal. Moslem. p. 230.) that they were owned by many, qui absque controversia genuini sunt Alidarum, homines propaginum suæ gentis exacte callentes. He quotes some lines from the celebrated Scherif or Rhadi, Egone humiliatem induam in terris hostium? (I suspect him their own writings and the words of their Master. But the Turkish dome of St. Sophia, with an increase of splendour and size, represents the humble tabernacle erected at Medina by the hands of Mahomet. The Mahometans have uniformly withstood the temptation of reducing the objects of their faith to be an Edrissite of Sicily,) cum in Egypto sit Chalifa de gente Alii, quocum ego communem habeo patrem et vindicem. a The kings of Persia of the last dynasty are descended from Sheik Sefi, a saint of the fourteenth century, and through him from Moussa Cassem, the son of Hosein, the son of Ali. (Olearius, p. 957. Chardin, tom. iii. p. 288) But I cannot trace the intermediate degrees in any genuine or fabulous pedigree. If they were truly Fatimites, they might draw their origin from the princes of Mazanderan, who reigned in the ninth century. (D'Herbelot, p. 96.) b The present state of the family of Mahomet and Ali is most accurately described by Demetrius Cantemir, (Hist of the Othman empire, p. 94.) and Niebuhr. (Description de l' Arabie, p. 9-16, 317, &c.) It is much to be lamented, that the Danish traveller was unable to pur. chase the chronicles of Arabia. of human victims was expiated by prayer, and fasting, and alms, the laudable or innocent arts of devotion; and his rewards and punishments of a future life were painted by the images most congenial to an ignorant and carnal generation. Mahomet was perhaps incapable of dictating a moral and political system for the use of his countrymen : but he breathed among the faithful a spirit of charity and friendship, recommended the practice of the social virtues, and checked, by his laws and precepts, the thirst of revenge and the oppression of widows and orphans. The hostile tribes were united in faith and obedience, and the valour which had been idly spent in domestic quarrels, was vigor impulse been less powerful, Arabia, free at home, and formidable abroad, might have flourished under a succession of her native monarchs. Her sovereignty was lost by the extent and rapidity of conquest. The colonies of the nation were scattered over the east and west, and their blood was mingled with the blood of their converts and captives. After the reign of three caliphs, the throne was transported from Medina to the valley of Damascus and the banks of the Tigris; the holy cities were vio and devotion to a level with the senses and imagination of man. "I believe in one God, and Mahomet the apostle of God," is the simple and invariable profession of Islam. The intellectual image of the Deity has never been degraded by any visible idol; the honours of the prophet have never transgressed the measure of human virtue; and his living precepts have restrained the gratitude of his disciples within the bounds of reason and religion. The votaries of Ali have indeed consecrated the memory of their hero, his wife, and his children; and some of the Persian doctors pretend that the divine essence was incarnate in the person of the Imams ; but their superstition is universally condemned by the Sonnites; and their impiety has afforded a sea-ously directed against a foreign enemy. Had the sonable warning against the worship of saints and martyrs. The metaphysical questions on the attributes of God, and the liberty of man, have been agitated in the schools of the Mahometans, as well as in those of the christians; but among the former they have never engaged the passions of the people or disturbed the tranquillity of the state. The cause of this important difference may be found in the separation or union of the regal and sacerdotal characters. It was the interest of the caliphs, the successors of the prophet and commanders of the faith-lated by impious war; Arabia was ruled by the rod ful, to repress and discourage all religious innovations: the order, the discipline, the temporal and spiritual ambition of the clergy, are unknown to the Moslems; and the sages of the law are the guides of their conscience and the oracles of their faith. From the Atlantic to the Ganges, the Koran is acknowledged as the fundamental code, not only of theology but of civil and criminal jurisprudence; and the laws which regulate the actions and the property of mankind, are guarded by the infallible and immutable sanction of the will of God. This religious servitude is attended with some practical disadvantage; the illiterate legislator had been often misled by his own prejudices and those of his country; and the institutions of the Arabian desert may be ill adapted to the wealth and numbers of Ispahan and Constantinople. On these occasions, the Cadhi respectfully places on his head the holy volume, and substitutes a dexterous interpretation more apposite to the principles of equity, and the manners and policy of the times. His merit towards His beneficial or pernicious influ- e The writers of the Modern Universal History (vol. i. and ii.) have compiled, in 850 folio pages, the life of Maliomet and the annals of the caliphs. They enjoyed the advantage of reading, and sometimes correcting, the Arabic text; yet, notwithstanding their high-sounding boasts, I cannot find, after the conclusion of my work, that they have of a subject, perhaps of a stranger; and the Bedoweens of the desert, awakening from their dream of dominion, resumed their old and solitary independence. CHAP. LI. The conquest of Persia, Syria, Egypt, Africa, and Spain, by the Arabs or Saracens.—Empire of the caliphs, or successors of Mahomet.-State of the christians, &c. under their government. Union of the A. D. 632. THE revolution of Arabia had not |