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 56 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Mulzz al- dawla] [Fatimids. A.D. 909-Un] Enterprises of the Greeks. A.D. 9€0 the chief commanders, the emirs al Omra^^^^ imprisoned or de- posed their sovereigns, and violated the sanctuary of the mosque and harem. If the caHphs escaped to the camp or court of any neighbouring prince, their dehverance was a change of servitude, till they were prompted by despair to invite the Bowides, the sultans of Persia, M-ho silenced the factions of Bagdad by their irresistible arms. The civil and military powers were assumed by Moezaldowlat, the second of the three brothers, and a stipend of sixty thousand pounds sterling was assigned by his generosity for the private expense of the commander of the faithful. But on the fortieth day, at the audience of the ambassadors of Chorasan, and in the presence of a trembling multitude, the caliph was dragged from his throne to a dungeon, by the com- mand of the stranger, and the rude hands of his Dilemites. His palace was pillaged, his eyes were put out, and the mean ambi- tion of the Abbassides aspired to the vacant station of danger and disgrace. In the school of adversity, the luxurious caliphs resumed the grave and abstemious virtues of the pi-imitive times. Despoiled of their armour and silken robes, they fasted, they prayed, they studied the Koran and the tradition of the Sonnites ; they performed with zeal and knowledge the functions of their ecclesiastical character. The respect of nations still waited on the successors of the apostle, the oracles of the law and con- science of the faithful ; and the weakness or division of their tyrants sometimes restored the Abbassides to the sovereignty of Bagdad. But their misfortunes had been embittered by the triumph of the Fatimites, the real or spurious progeny of Ali. Arising from the exti-emity of Africa, these successful rivals extinguished in Egypt and Syria both the spiritual and temporal authority of the Abbassides ; and the monarch of the Nile in- sulted the humble pontiff' on the banks of the Tigris. In the declining age of the caliphs, in the century which elapsed after the war of Theophilus and Motassem, the hostile transactions of the two nations were confined ta^ome inroads by sea and land, the fruits of their close vicinity and indelible hatred. But, when the Eastern world was convulsed and broken, the Greeks were roused from their lethargy by the hopes of conquest '•■'■" The office of vizir was superseded by the emir al Omra Tamir al-umara] Imperator Imperatorum, a title first instituted by Rahdi [Weil quotes an instance of its use under al-Muktadir, Radl's father, op. fit., ii. p. 559I and which merged at length in the Bowides and Seljukidas ; vectigalibus, et tributis et curiis per omnes reglones prrefecit. jussitque in omnibus suggestis nominis ejus in concionibus men- tionem fieri (Abulpharagius, Dynast, p. 199). It is likewise mentioned by Elmacin (p. 254, 25s).