recitation. They went over a tenth part of it daily. And the sound of their voices, says Arabic tradition, was like the continual humming of a hive of bees. Her piety was gratified by accompanying her husband upon this remarkable pilgrimage, and submitting, like himself, to the ostensible humiliation of going all the journey of nearly a thousand miles on foot.

The government at Bagdad was safe in the trusty hands of Yaheia. The provinces were in profound peace. And, thus permitted to dismiss for a time the cares of state, the monarch turned his thoughts to the duties of religion. A number of his escort from the city returned after joining the vast caravan, which had encamped over night upon the plain, and was already await ing his approach.

The most learned doctors of Mohammedan law had been consulted in reference to the caliph's vow, and had given their decision that it must be fulfilled to the letter. And so it was. For Harûn was beyond doubt, notwithstanding many inconsistencies of conduct, a real believer in the Moslem creed. He was, however, fully indulged in every comfort compatible with the conditions of his obligation. Multitudes of servants attended upon him. Thousands of camels laden with provisions, and even with the most luxurious delicacies, were led in his train. He was defended from the rays of the sun by silken canopies, and wherever he trod, the desert was spread with carpets of the softest texture and most beautiful colors-the richest products of Persian looms. The moderate journey of each day was generally performed in the cooler hours of the evening and morning, the remainder was spent in repose and the enjoyment of social pleasures in his tent. The self-denial and mortification of the flesh, in such an act of humility, must have been very edifying to the subjects of the pious imam. We are reminded of the lesson once read him by an ascetic of a different stamp. On a former pilgrimage, made with less ostentation of humility, but also with fewer luxuries, Harûn had met the pious Al Adhem. This real devotee had crossed the desert alone on foot, and with no more provisions than he could carry, making a thousand genuflections every mile. He had spent twelve years in this so-judged work of piety, and was

now slowly making his way back to Damascus. When the young prince accosted him, he responded in the words of an Arabian sonnet, "We attempt to mend the rents in the garment of the world with patches from the robe of religion, which we tear for that purpose, destroying the latter, while that which we would repair perishes in our hands. Happy the servant who has chosen God for his master, and who employs the wealth of time only to secure an interest in that of eternity!"

Bagdad, from which this singular procession had gone forth, was itself one of the most remarkable facts of that period of history. The rapidity of its growth was then, and perhaps is still, without a parallel. Not much over thirty years before, its foundations had been laid by Al Mansur, grandfather of the reigning caliph, and numbers of its inhabitants could remember when not a house marked the site of its now busy streets; yet, in that brief period, it had become the chief city of the world. Its vast mass of buildings, crowded together, as if each one sought shelter from the burning sun in the shadow of his neighbor, covered both banks of the Tigris for miles, differing at the same time from all other Mohammedan cities, in embracing, for the respiration of its pent up inhabitants, several open squares, beautified with trees and verdure, and cooled by the play of fountains. The palace and grounds of the caliphs alone extended to a circumference of three miles. Beyond the circuit of the walls, spread out on every side an apparently endless array of suburban residences, intermingled with gardens and tall groves of palm. And proudly over the broad expanse rose the loftly domes and slender minarets of its hundred mosques. The description of Bagdad by Benjamin of Tudela, which is ordinarily copied, was drawn in the twelfth century, when its resources had greatly diminished, and after it had been almost laid waste by an inundation of the Tigris; but of its magnitude and population in the reign of Harûn we may conjecture from the statement that, a few years later, eight hundred thousand men and sixty thousand women went forth from them to honor the funeral of the holy Ebn Hanbal. It was then the metropolis of the largest and wealthiest empire of the world, and the abode of its most powerful nobles. Thither flocked

the seekers of office and honor, of all ranks and expectations. The patronage of the caliphs had encouraged men of learning to court its privileges, and the youth of Arabia and Persia, of Mesopotamia and Syria, of Armenia and Babylon, whether actuated by the love of knowledge or ambition, by curiosity or pleasure, expected the gratification of their wishes in Bagdad. The wealth of a people, recently enriched by the rapid conquest of enormous possessions, was still pouring into this capital of their dominions, and the most valuable commerce of the world centred in its bazaars. There the merchant caravans, which at Balkh had met and exchanged goods with those from India and China, deposited their silks, their spices, their gold, and their gems. There the Arabian brought his myrrh, his frankincense, and other valuable gums. There were to be seen the ivory of Ethiopia and her birds of tropical plumage, with the agricultural products of Egypt. There the Armenian came to trade the exports of his mountain land, of the more distant Caucasus and of the regions beyond the Euxine, for the beautiful wares of the south and east. And there the Syrian exchanged his goods purchased from the Frankish sailors of the Levant. Thus the relations of Bagdad to the empire of which it was the capital, caused the principal wealth of all the provinces to flow through its gates in transportation from one to another.

Its geographical situation was also favorable to success. On the banks of a broad and deep river, which at its lowest in the autumn gave not less than fourteen feet of water, with a breadth of two hundred yards, navigable for nearly six hundred miles, and passing through one of the most fertile regions of Asia; within, also, a few miles of the Euphrates, which extends far westward the irrigation of the same vast plain, and with which the Tigris was connected by several canals; just where the ancient Mesopotamia and Babylonia met upon the borders of Assyria, constituting thereby a central point common to those central provinces of the Saracenic dominion, and having full control of their most convenient routes of commerce, Bagdad united the geographical advantages of both--the Nineveh and Babylon of old. When these things are fully taken into consideration, the rapid growth and early splendor of that celebrated city.

are discovered to be due to the singular combination of causes which centred there.

This new civilization was, in several respects, isolated from all that had gone before. At no great distance, upon that same broad plain, had formerly stood Babylon, the earliest abode of postdiluvian man; but her lofty walls had been humbled in the dust long ago. Higher up the Tigris had Nineveh flourished-the pride of Assyria; but her glories had also passed away. The Persian empire, which absorbed them both, had in its turn fallen beneath a stronger arm. A few miles down the Tigris, the oriental successors of Alexander the Great had established in Seleucia the capital of their dominion; but the Greek refinement of the east had been extinguished by invasion, and, for more than four hundred years, the semi-barbarous Parthian had ruled and devastated the land. But his reign had also come to a close, and the mouldering ruins of Ctesiphon were mingled with those of Seleucia. The princes of the house of Sassan had attempted to revive the ancient superiority of Persia, and near that same spot, in the city of Modayn, had chosen the place of their throne. But Sassanide rule had also passed away, and the ruined palace of Nushirvan alone remained to mark the site where their metropolis had stood. The Chaldean, the Assyrian, the Greek, the Parthian, and the former and latter Persians had all, in turn, come and gone. Ages of war, and famine, and pestilence, and miasma, from rich but neglected lands, and many other evils which follow in the train of war, had laid waste those plains, swept off the races who had formerly developed their resources, and laid their once renowned and powerful cities in the dust. Other inhabitants, chiefly from the nomadic tribes of Arabia and central Asia, had come in and sparsely occupied the desolated country-races to whom its previous history was utterly unknown, and who gazed in stupid and ignorant wonder upon the piles of ruins which rose upon the dreary and unhealthy wilderness. The age of the Abbassides opened upon the eastern world as the morning after a dark and stormy night; or like the awakening of a new life, where the old had sunk and died, and given place to the long-continued silence of the grave.

When Mohammed first announced his claims to belief and obedience, the king of Persia, Khosru, after having subdued all Syria, Egypt, and Asia Minor, was seated in his camp in sight of Constantinople. At the end of ten years, the Greek emperor, Heraclius, invaded Persia and laid it waste even to the gates of Modayn; and when, a few years afterward, the Mohammedans fell upon those countries, they found them already enfeebled by reciprocal injuries. Accordingly, Saracenic conquest proceeded with astounding rapidity. In twenty years after the death of their prophet, their banners waved triumphantly from the borders of Lybia to the wilds of Tartary, and from the mountains of Armenia to the Indian Sea. A few years more added to their dominion all northern Africa to the Atlantic Ocean, and the Spanish peninsula, with the exception of only the mountains of Asturias, while another wing was extended over Cabul, Afghanistan, and the Punjab, to the plains of India.

The headquarters of this new power was first at Medina, where the prophet himself and his first five caliphs, or successors, reigned, in the simple, rude manner of Arab sheikhs. But it was found that a little city, far away in the desert, was ill-suited to be the capital of a great empire; and when the sons of Ommiah came to the chair of the caliphate, Damascus was made the seat of monarchy. But Damascus, however well suited to be the head of a realm of which Syria is the principal part, was inconvenient to many portions of that which now acknowledged Saracenic rule. For this, as well as for other reasons, the Abbassides sought for a more central and generally-accessible metropolis. Al Saffah, the first of that dynasty, fixed his throne at Hashemiah, on the Euphrates; but his successor, Al Mansur, with a truer judgment, selected the banks of the Tigris, not far from the place preferred by the Seleucida; and there, in the year seven hundred and sixty-two of the Christian era, he laid the foundations of Bagdad.

Up to that time, the history of Mohammedanism had been little else than war and conquest-the victorious career of half-savage hordes, spreading a deeper barbarism wheresoever they appeared. With the end of the Ommiade dynasty the fury of their conquests

abated. Comparatively few permanent additions were afterwards made to their possessions. But they did not at once settle down into harmonious order. Internal broils succeeded. The whole reign of Al Saffah and a great part of that of Al Mansur were agitated by fierce and desolating civil wars. Only in the latter years of Al Mansur, and after Spain had seceded from his government, was the caliphate permitted to enjoy the blessings of peace. Then did Mohammedan civilization begin. And rapid as their conquests had been, the progress of the Saracens upon the path of refinement was not less so.

There was something singular, also, in the nature of that Mohammedan rule; being not the domination of a race, nor of a dynasty, nor of one great and successful nation. It was not, like that of Athens and Rome, the working of a wise and well-conducted political system. It was not, like that of the Germanic tribes, the result of necessity acting upon physical valor and strong natural intellect. It was not, like that of Charlemagne, a structure built up by one great and absolute monarch. It was different from anything that had ever before appeared-a vast dominion, acquired, held together, and governed by a religious doctrine in the use of the sword. The Hebrew exterminated the previous occupants of the small country which he claimed, and sought only to preserve his religion pure for himself; the Saracenic power compelled into compliance, and held by a common profession of faith, its otherwise heteroge neous subjects. It was not merely Arabian, although it took its rise among the tribes of the desert, but included, at the height of its greatness, elements from all nations, which its borders comprehended. And all, whatever their origin, took on the same Mohammedan type. Rome conquered as many different nations, and held them together by the most complete civil code; and yet, at the end of centuries, if one floated loose from her control, it was to cease to be Roman: when Mohammedans broke off from the central government, they never declined their original allegiance; it was only to choose another leader under precisely the same laws, recognizing the same source of legislation. For to them their religion was everything. The absorption of civil into ecclesiastical power was never so

complete in any other empire of such

varied materials.

The skill of generals and bravery of troops may account for success in battle; but there must be some motive to take them there. Multitudes of those who fought most bravely in the armies of the Saracen, were of countries where valor seemed to have been worn out. What had breathed that new life into the languid heart of the Syrian, Egyptian, and Persian? What new principle had kindled up energy and enthusiasm where they seemed to be dead? What was the cause for which men thus rushed from victory to victory, and shed their blood and threw away their lives? Shall we say it was love of plunder? If so, why had they not been as brave under their native leaders? Why were the Greek emperors and the kings of Persia comparatively weak, if that was the only motive? No; their success sprang from the fervent apprehension of a grand idea. In the midst of a world given up to debasing superstition, when even Christianity, both east and west, was popularly degraded into a system of idolatry and hero-worship, Mohammed had proclaimed the truth, that the only proper object of human adoration is the God who created the heavens and the earth. To us, familiar with that doctrine, its elevating effect upon the characters of its believers is imperfectly recognized; but a moment's comparison of them with idolaters anywhere will satisfy the unprejudiced mind that there is a dignity, a grandeur, and energy, conferred upon the human spirit by the recognized presence of its Creator; while idolatry, or even that modified form of it which consists in obstructing the light of Deity by a symbol, degrades the feelings of the worshiper, and, in the course of time, also enfeebles his understanding. The superiority of Greeks and Romans is to be connected with the fact, that so many of them distinguished themselves from other heathen by rising above the mythology which prevailed in their time. But, for the same reason, it was never more than partial. It belonged only to a class. Those who, with Socrates, and Plato, and Cicero, could neglect the popular idolatry, to seek after nearer views of the true God, were the springs of classic civilization. It was the sublime truth of the unity of God, and the lofty enthusiasm conferred by offering

worship immediately in the Almighty presence, which constituted the element of power in the Mohammedan system. It was this which lifted up and set erect men formerly prostrate before creatures of the earth, or the workmanship of their own hands.

But the purest theism, however elevating, would become only cold speculation if not associated with some assurance of God's interest in man, and something to be done to meet the divine approbation. These Mohammed endeavored to supply, by presenting what he termed a revelation made to himself; by calling upon his followers to believe in himself, as commissioned to reveal it ; and, in addition to certain meritorious observances, to extend by force the adoption of his doctrine. Here it was, however, that he fell into those errors, if not designed imposture, which expose his teaching to just condemnation. And, as the highest rewards of heaven were held out to the soldier who fell in battle for that faith, it is not wonderful that, notwithstanding its fundamental dogma, civilization was the latest work which it effected. It began with subjugation; and, for one hundred and forty years. wars and terrific scenes of upturned nationalities alone marked its progress; and the only feature that, so far, distinguished it from any other barbarous invasion, was the planting of one religion and the extinction of every other. The Sabaism of Arabia, the fire-worship of Persia, and the so-called Christianity of Syria and Egypt. alike went down before it. Over all that vast dominion, in those days, the faith of Islam alone was tolerated.

Only with the rise of Bagdad, and the wise and firm reign of the first caliphs of the house of Abbas, did the period of Mohammedan refinement begin. At the date of which we are now speaking, it had been in operation not much over a quarter of a century; yet such had been the rapidity of its progress, that already a wider range of commerce, a greater refinement of manners, a nobler simplicity of worship, and a higher tone of popular morals, were to be found in Bagdad than had for centuries been combined in any city of the west. While the nominal Christian in Constantinople was bowing down before a picture, and Rome was offering her adoration to an image in stone, at Bagdad, the devout Mohammedan presented his

petitions before the God who is a spirit. The caliph Al Mahadi, father of Harûn, and altogether one of the most beautiful characters that ever sat upon an oriental throne, was one evening engaged in private prayer. Rabbeia, his chamberlain, had occasion to enter the apartment-it was one of severe, yet beautiful simplicity-the walls and ceiling were of stucco of the purest white, without a picture, bust, or ornament-the floor was covered with rich, crimson carpet, and a sofa of the same color stood on one side-through a large window the moonlight was shedding its soft, silvery lustre-the caliph was standing clothed in robes of white linen, absorbed in his devotions, and the low, tremulous tones of his voice, as well as his tears, spoke the intensity of his emotion, as he recited passages of the Koran, and poured out his fervent intercession in behalf of the people over whom he was appointed to rule. The chamberlain declares that he drew back in silent awe, not so much of the monarch as of the divine presence with which he was impressed.

A fundamental element of Saracenic refinement was. the recognition and single worship of the only true and living God. A second was, the literature, which, from this time forward, for several generations, they continued to cultivate. Poetry had long been familiar to the Arabic language; and to commit it to memory, and quote it with readiness, and appropriately, had, from time immemorial, been the favorite accomplishment of the Arabian youth; but, previous to the Koran, their written prose was certainly scanty, to say the least. From the death of Mohammed to the rise of Bagdad, the Koran seems to have satisfied all their literary demands; though the celebrated story of their destruction of the Alexandrian library is very questionable. They were, however, beyond alt dispute, like most of their enemies, illiterate barbarians during the most of that time. But, under the more favorable circumstances attendant upon the rise of the new capital, and the prudent government of Mahadi and Harûn, literature began to flourish, and its producers to be held in honor. Especially under the latter and his elder son, Al Mamûn, Bagdad became the great literary emporium of the world. Several poets, of illustrious name where their

language is spoken, flourished there. The caliph Harûn was himself a poet of no mean capacity. And, beside her learned doctors of Mohammedan theology and law, as Abu Hanifa, Samak, Mobarek, and Abu Josef, her grammarians, as Sibouieh and Kessaï, that city could boast of the earliest honors won by Saracenic genius in the natural sciences and medicine; and Gabriel and Messué are the names standing at the beginning of that roll which afterward bore those of Avicenna, Al Bazis, and Averroes. Entrance was also made at this time upon the pursuit of mathematics, in which the Arabic language became not less distinguished. But zealous as was the cultivation of native resources, collection and translation from abroad proceeded to a stil greater extent. The works of Greek philosophers and mathematicians were eagerly sought after at Bagdad. Some of these have reached modern times only through the medium of the Arabic translation. From India and Persia, they also derived contributions to both their literature and science. Hundreds of camels, laden with books, were to be seen entering the gates of Bagdad, both from the east and from the west; and Greek, Persian and Hebrew were, for the time, called upon to render up their treasures to the Arabic. Reading thus became a popular accomplishment, and the refining influences of knowledge made their impression upon the manners of the city.

A third element was the cultivation of the industrial arts. The mechanics of Bagdad had attained to a high degree of skill in finishing articles of the most elegant luxury, at a time when the west was ignorant of the rudiments of such workmanship; and agriculture of the Babylonian plain was once more revived, supplying the new population with abundant food, and covering the land with beauty.

The fine arts were, to some extent, forbidden. Painting and sculpture are completely excluded from the studies of a good Mussulman, by the precept that forbids the making of any image, or likeness, of man or beast, lest it might possibly become an object of worship. But architecture received a new variety of style from their attention to its beauties; and music, twin-brother of poetry, flourished by his side. In the reign of Harûn, Mousali and Ibra