LVII.

Fatimite

A.D. 969

1076.

by the Latin crusaders, and is annually repeated by CHAP. the clergy of the Greek, Armenian, and Coptic sects," who impose on the credulous spectators" for their own benefit, and that of their tyrants. In every age, a principle of tòleration has been fortified by a sense of interest; and the revenue of the prince and his emir was increased each year, by the expense and tribute of so many thousand strangers. The revolution which transferred the sceptre from Under the the Abassides to the Fatimites was a benefit, rather caliphs, than an injury, to the Holy Land. A sovereign resident in Egypt was more sensible of the importance of Christian trade; and the emirs of Palestine were less remote from the justice and power of the throne. But the third of these Fatimite caliphs was the famous Hakem, a frantic youth, who was delivered by his impiety and despotism from the fear either of God or man; and whose reign was a wild mixture of vice and folly. Regardless of the most ancient customs of Egypt, he imposed on the women an absolute confinement: the restraint excited the clamours of both sexes; their clamours provoked his fury; a part of Old Cairo was delivered to the flames; and the guards and citizens were engaged many days in a bloody conflict. At first the caliph declared himself a zealous Musulman, the founder or benefactor of moschs and colleges: twelve hundred and ninety copies of the Koran were

is confirmed by another pilgrin some years older; and Mosheim ascribes the invention to the Franks, soon after the decease of Charlemagne.

m Our travellers, Sandys (p. 134), Thevenot (p. 621-627), Maundrell (p. 94, 95), &c. describe this extravagant farce. The Catholics are puzzled to decide, when the miracle ended, and the trick began.

n The Orientals themselves confess the fraud, and plead necessity and edification (Mémoires du Chevalier D'Arvieux, tom. ii. p. 140. Joseph Abudacni, Hist. Copt. c. 20); but I will not attempt, with Mosheim, to explain the mode. Our travellers have failed with the blood of St. Januarius at Naples.

• See D'Herbelot (Bibliot. Orientale, p. 411), Renaudot (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 390. 397. 400, 401), Elmacin (Hist. Saracen. p. 321-323), and Marei (p. 384-386), an historian of Egypt, translated by Reiske from Arabic into German, and verbally interpreted to me by a friend.

VOL. VII.

X

CHAP. transcribed at his expense in letters of gold; and his LVII. edict extirpated the vineyards of the Upper Egypt.

But his vanity was soon flattered by the hope of introducing a new religion; he aspired above the fame of a prophet, and styled himself the visible image of the most high God, who, after nine apparitions on earth, was at length manifest in his royal person. At the name of Hakem, the lord of the living and the dead, every knee was bent in religious adoration: his mysteries were performed on a mountain near Cairo: sixteen thousand converts had signed his profession of faith; and at the present hour, a free and warlike people, the Druses of Mount Libanus, are persuaded of the life and divinity of a madman and tyrant." In his divine character, Hakem hated the Jews and Christians, as the servants of his rivals; while some remains of prejudice or prudence still pleaded in favour of the law of Mahomet. Both in Egypt and Palestine, his cruel and wanton persecution made some martyrs and many apostates: the common rights, and special privileges of the sectaries were equally disregarded; and a general interdict was laid on the Sacrilege of devotion of strangers and natives. The temple of the A. D. 1009. Christian world, the church of the Resurrection, was

Hakem,

demolished to its foundations; the luminous prodigy of Easter was interrupted, and much profane labour was exhausted to destroy the cave in the rock which properly constitutes the holy sepulchre. At the report of this sacrilege, the nations of Europe were astonished and afflicted: but instead of arming in the defence of the Holy Land, they contented themselves

P The religion of the Druses is concealed by their ignorance and hypocrisy. Their secret doctrines are confined to the elect who profess a contemplative life; and the vulgar Druses, the most indifferent of men, occasionally conform to the worship of the Mahometans and Christians of their neighbourhood. The little that is, or deserves to be, known, may be seen in the industrious Niebuhr (Voyages, tom. ii. p. 354-357), and the second volume of the recent and instructive Travels of M. de Volney.

LVII.

with burning, or banishing, the Jews, as the secret CHAP. advisers of the impious barbarian. Yet the calamities of Jerusalem were in some measure alleviated by the inconstancy or repentance of Hakem himself; and the royal mandate was sealed for the restitution of the churches, when the tyrant was assassinated by the emissaries of his sister. The succeeding caliphs resumed the maxims of religion and policy; a free toleration was again granted; with the pious aid of the emperor of Constantinople, the holy sepulchre arose from its ruins; and, after a short abstinence, the pilgrims returned with an increase of appetite to the spiritual feast. In the sea-voyage of Palestine, the dangers were frequent, and the opportunities rare: but the conversion of Hungary opened a safe communication between Germany and Greece. The charity of St. Stephen, the apostle of his kingdom, relieved and conducted his itinerant brethren; and Increase of pilgrimages, from Belgrade to Antioch, they traversed fifteen hun- A.D. 1024, dred miles of a Christian empire. Among the Franks, the zeal of pilgrimage prevailed beyond the example of former times: and the roads were covered with multitudes of either sex, and of every rank, who professed their contempt of life, so soon as they should have kissed the tomb of their Redeemer. Princes and prelates abandoned the care of their dominions; and the numbers of these pious caravans were a prelude to the armies which marched in the ensuing age under the banner of the cross. About thirty years before the first crusade, the archbishop of Mentz,

a See Glaber, 1. iii. c. 7. and the Annals of Baronius and Pagi, A.D. 1009. r Per idem tempus ex universo orbe tam innumerabilis multitudo cœpit confluere ad sepulchrum Salvatoris Hierosolymis, quantum nullus hominum prius sperare poterat. Ordo inferioris plebis . . . . . mediocres . reges et comites præsules . . . . . mulieres multæ nobiles cum pauperioribus. ... Pluribus enim erat mentis desiderium mori priusquam ad propria reverterentur (Glaber, 1. iv. c. 6. Bouquet, Historians of France, tom. x. p. 50).

....

.....

› Glaber, 1. iii. c. 1. Katona (Hist. Critic. Regum Hungariæ, tom. i. p. 304311) examines whether St. Stephen founded a monastery at Jerusalem.

&c.

LVII.

CHAP. with the bishops of Utrecht, Bamberg, and Ratisbon, undertook this laborious journey from the Rhine to the Jordan; and the multitude of their followers amounted to seven thousand persons. At Constantinople, they were hospitably entertained by the emperor; but the ostentation of their wealth provoked the assault of the wild Arabs; they drew their swords with scrupulous reluctance, and sustained a siege in the village of Capernaum, till they were rescued by the venal protection of the Fatimite emir. After visiting the holy places, they embarked for Italy, but only a remnant of two thousand arrived in safety in their native land. Ingulphus, a secretary of William the Conqueror, was a companion of this pilgrimage: he observes that they sallied from Normandy, thirty stout and well-appointed horsemen; but that they repassed the Alps, twenty miserable palmers, with the staff in their hand, and the wallet at their back.t

Conquest of Jerusalem by the

Turks,

-1096.

After the defeat of the Romans, the tranquillity of the Fatimite caliphs was invaded by the Turks." One A. D. 1076 of the lieutenants of Malek Shah, Atsiz the Carizmian, marched into Syria at the head of a powerful army, and reduced Damascus by famine and the sword. Hems, and the other cities of the province, acknowledged the caliph of Bagdad and the sultan of Persia; and the victorious emir advanced without resistance to the banks of the Nile: the Fatimite was preparing to fly into the heart of Africa; but the negroes of his guard and the inhabitants of Cairo made a desperate sally, and repulsed the Turk from the confines of Egypt. In his retreat, he indulged the licence of slaughter and rapine: the judge and notaries of Jerusalem were invited to his camp; and

t Baronius (A. D. 1064, No 43—56) has transcribed the greater part of the original narratives of Ingulphus, Marianus, and Lambertus.

u See Elmacin (Hist. Saracen. p. 349, 350) and Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 237. vers. Pocock). M. de Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. iii. part i. p. 215, 216) adds the testimonies, or rather the names, of Abulfeda and Novairi.

LVII.

their execution was followed by the massacre of three CHAP. thousand citizens. The cruelty or the defeat of Atsiz was soon punished by the sultan Toucush, the brother of Malek Shah, who, with a higher title and more formidable powers, asserted the dominion of Syria and Palestine. The house of Seljuk reigned about twenty years in Jerusalem; but the hereditary command of the holy city and territory was intrusted or abandoned to the emir Ortok, the chief of a tribe of Turkmans, whose children, after their expulsion from Palestine, formed two dynasties on the borders of Armenia and Assyria." The oriental Christians and the Latin pilgrims deplored a revolution, which, instead of the regular government and old alliance of the caliphs, imposed on their necks the iron yoke of the strangers of the North. In his court and camp the great sultan had adopted in some degree the arts and manners of Persia; but the body of the Turkish nation, and more especially the pastoral tribes, still breathed the fierceness of the desert. From Nice to Jerusalem, the western countries of Asia were a scene of foreign and domestic hostility; and the shepherds of Palestine, who held a precarious sway on a doubtful frontier, had neither leisure nor capacity to await the slow profits of commercial and religious freedom. The pilgrims, who, through innumerable perils, had reached the gates of Jerusalem, were the victims of private rapine or public oppression, and often sunk

▾ From the expedition of Isar Atsiz (A.H. 469, A.D. 1076), to the expulsion of the Ortokides (A. D. 1096). Yet William of Tyre (1. i. c. 6. p. 633) asserts, that Jerusalem was thirty-eight years in the hands of the Turks; and an Arabic chronicle, quoted by Pagi (tom. iv. p. 202), supposes, that the city was reduced by a Carizmian general to the obedience of the caliph of Bagdad, A. H. 463, A. D. 1070. These early dates are not very compatible with the general history of Asia; and I am sure, that as late as A. D. 1064, the regnum Babylonicum (of Cairo) still prevailed in Palestine (Baronius, A. D. 1064, No 56).

w De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 249–252.

* Willerm. Tyr. 1. i. c. 8. p. 634. who strives hard to magnify the Christian grievances. The Turks exacted an aureus from each pilgrim! The caphar of the Franks is now fourteen dollars: and Europe does not complain of this voluntary tax.