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 254 THE DECLINE AND FALL ITnder the Fatimite caliphs. A.D. 969-1076 [SucceedB in Egypt. A.D. 996] The revolution which transferred the sceptre from the Ab- bassides to the Fatimites was a benefit, rather 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 im- piety 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 mosques and colleges : twelve hundred and ninety copies of the Koran were transcribed at his expense in letters of gold ; and his 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 per- suaded 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 ''See d'Herbelot (Bibliot. Orientale, p. 411), Renaudot (Hist. Patriarch. Ale.x. 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. [Al-Hakim Abu-Ali al-Mansur reigned in Egypt from 996 to 1020.] ^^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, torn, ii p. 354-357) and the second volume of the recent and instructive Travels of M. de Vol- ney. [The religion of the Druses has been thoroughly investigated by Silvestre de Sacy in his Expose de la religion des Druses, in two volumes, 1838.] ™["It was not in his 'divine character' that Hakem 'hated the Jews and Christians,' but in that of a Mahometan bigot, which he displayed in the earlier