Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/357

 OF THE KOMAN EMPIRE 335 fined to Bagdad and the adjacent province. Their tyrants, the Seljukian sultans, had followed the common law of the Asiatic dynasties, the unceasing round of valour, greatness, discord, de- generacy, and decay : their spirit and power were unequal to the defence of religion ; and, in his distant realm of Persia, the Christians were strangers to the name and the arms of Sangiar, the last hero of his race.^^ While the sultans were involved in The Atateks the silken web of the harem, the pious task was undertaken by ° ^'^ their slaves, the Atabeks,*- a Turkish name, which, like the [Guardians] Byzantine patricians, may be translated by Father of the Prince. Ascansar, a valiant Turk, had been the favourite of Malek Shah, [Aksnnknr] from whom he received the privilege of standing on the right hand of the throne ; but, in the civil wai-s that ensued on the monarch's death, he lost his head and the government of Aleppo. His domestic emirs persevered in their attachment to his son zenghi. Zenghi, who proved his first arms against the Franks in the de- [um] feat of Antioch ; thirty campaigns in the service of the caliph and sultan established his military fame ; and he was invested with the command of Mosul, as the only champion that could avenge the cause of the prophet. The public hope was not disappointed : after a siege of twenty-five days, he stormed the city of Edessa, and recovered from the Franks their conquests beyond the Euphrates : ^-^ the martial tribes of Curdistan were subdued by the independent sovereign of Mosul and Aleppo : his soldiers were taught to behold the camp as their only country ; they trusted to his liberality for their rewards ; and their absent families were protected by the vigilance of Zenghi. Noureddin. At the head of these veterans, his son Noureddin gradually [ua6]u74 united the Mahometan powers ; added the kingdom of Damascus torn. ii. p. i. p. 230-261. Such was his valour that he was styled the second Alexander ; and such the extravagant love of his subjects that they prayed for the sultan a year after his decease. Yet Sangiar might have been made prisoner by the Franks, as well as by the Uzes [Ghuzz]. He reigned near fifty years (a.d. 1103- 1152), and was a munificent patron of Persian poetry. [Muizz ad-dIn Abu-1-Harilh Sinjar, A.D. 1117-1157; his power was practically confined to Khurasan.] •*2See the Chronology of the Atabeks of Irak and Syria, in de Guignes, torn. i. p. 254 ; and the reigns of Zenghi and Noureddin in the same ■writer (torn. ii. p. ii. p. 147-221), who uses the Arabic text of Benelathir, Ben Schouna, and Abulfeda ; the Bibliotheque Orientale, under the articles Atabeks and Noureddin ; and the Dynasties of Abulpharagius, p. 250-267, vers. Pocock. [For life of Zengi see Stanley Lane-Poole, Saladin, chaps. 3 and 4; for the genealogy of the Atabeks, the same writer's Mohammadan Dynasties.] ''•' William of Tyre (1. xvi. c. 4, 5, 7) describes the loss of Edessa, and the death of Zenghi. The corruption of his name into Sanguin, afforded the Latins a comfortable allusion to his sanguinary character and end, fit sanguine sanguino- lenius.
 * ^See his article in the Bibliothfeque Orientale of d'Herbelot, and de Guignes,