Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/424

 390 The Killing of the Khazar Kings.

kuhbd a tent is pitched. Every one of these damsels is attended by a eunuch, who guards her behind a curtain. Now when the king desires to take his pleasure with any of them, he sends to the eunuch, her guardian, by whom in less than the twinkling of an eye she is brought and placed in the king's bed. But the eunuch stands sentinel before the door of the royal chamber, and when the damsel is dismissed by the king, the eunuch takes her by the hand and leads her home, and does not thereafter leave her even for a moment.

" When the sovereign king rides on horseback in public, the whole army marches out to escort him in procession, but an interval of a mile is left between him and these cavalry. Nor does any of his subjects see him without falling on his face and humbly doing him reverence, and not raising his head until the king has passed by.

" Forty years are fixed for their king's reign. If he exceeds that term even by one day, his citizens and courtiers put him to death, alleging as the reason, that his mental powers are decayed and his wisdom impaired.

" A regiment sent by him on an expedition never turns its back on the enemy ; for were it to take to flight, every soldier who should return to the king would pay for it with his head. But if the officers or the viceroy run away, the king sends for them, with their wives and children, and in their presence bestows their wives and children on others, together with their beasts of burden, furniture, weapons, and houses. It sometimes happens that he cuts them through the middle and hangs up the severed parts ; some- times he hangs them by the neck from trees. Occasionally, when he is favourably disposed to them, he makes them his grooms." ^

Such is the account of the Khazar kings which the Arab geographer Yakut has extracted from the original narrative

^C. M. Fraehn, " Veteres Memoriae Chasarorum," etc., Menioires de rAcadimie Impiriale des Sciences de Si. Petersbotirg, viii. (1822), pp. 589-593.