Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/67

 OF THE KOMAX EMPIRE 47 he reflect with the most pleasure, when he was summoned by the angel of death ? ^^* With Motassem, the eighth of the Abbassides, the glory of Disorders of his family and nation expired. When the Arabian conquerors guards^^ a.d. had spread themselves over the East, and were mingled with the ~ ' senile crowds of Persia, Syria, and Egypt, they insensibly lost the freebom and martial virtues of the desert. The courage of the South is the artificial fruit of discipline and prejudice ; the active power of enthusiasm had decayed, and the mercenary forces of the caliphs were recruited in those climates of the North, of which valour is the hardy and spontaneous production. Of the Turks ^^^ who dwelt upon the Oxus and Jaxartes, the robust youths, either taken in war or purchased in trade, were educated in the exercises of the field and the profession of the Mahometan faith. The Turkish guards stood in arms round the throne of their benefactor, and their chiefs usurped the dominion of the palace and the provinces. Motassem, the first author of this dangerous example, introduced into the capital above fifty thousand Turks : their licentious conduct provoked the public indignation, and the quarrels of the soldiers and people induced the caliph to retire from Bagdad, and establish his own residence and the camp of his barbarian favourites at Samara on the Tigris, about tAvelve leagues above the city of Peace. ^i*' His son Motawakkel was a jealous and cruel tvrant : odious to his [Mutawakkn. subjects, he cast himself on the fidelity of the strangers, and these strangers, ambitious and apprehensive, were tempted by the rich promise of a revolution. At the instigation, or at least in the cause, of his son, they burst into his apartment at the hour of supper, and the caliph was cut into seven pieces by the same swords which he had recently distributed among the guards of his life and throne. To this throne, yet streaming with a father's blood, Montasser was triumphantlv led ; but in a [Muntasir. ^ • A.D. 861-2] iiJ For Theophilus. Motassem, and the Amorian war, see the Continuator of Theophanes (1. iii. p. 77-84 [p. 124 sgt/. ed. Bonn]), Genesius (1. iii. p. 24-34 [p. 51 J^^.]), Cedrenus (528-532 [ii. 129 si/a. ed. Bonn]), Elmacin (Hist. .Saracen, p. 180), Abulpharagius (Dynast, p. 165, 166), Abulfeda (Annal. Moslem, p. 191), d'Herbelot (Bibliot. Orientale, p. 639, 640). 11' M. de Guignes, who sometimes leaps, and sometimes stumbles, in the gulf between Chinese and Mahometan story, thinks he can see that these Turks are the Hoei-ke, alias the Kao-tche, or higk-waggons ; that they were divided into fifteen hordes, from China and Siberia to the dominions of the caliphs and Sanianides, &c. (Hist, des Huns, tom. iii. p. 1-33, 124-131). 11^ He changed the old name of Sumere, or Samara, into the fanciful title of Ser-men-rai, that which gives pleasure at first (d'Herbelot, Bibliotht^que Orientale, p. 8o3 ; d'.' ville, I'Euphrate et le Tigre, p. 97, 98). [Surra men rad = ' ' who so saw, rejoiced".]