22 INTRODUCTION. 



did not equal its greatness. Religious disputes, and 

 the jarring interests of families or individuals who 

 claimed an hereditary title to the succession, gave 

 rise to discords and revolts that soon broke down 

 this huge pontifical monarchy into a variety of sep- 

 arate and independent principalities. At a later 

 epoch, too, foreign invasion completed that over- 

 throw Avhich intestine divisions had begun. The 

 quarrels of rival caliphs were succeeded by wars 

 and revolutions not less sanguinary than had marked 

 the rise and establishment of their power. Greeks, 

 Turks, and Tartars, numerous as the locusts from 

 their own deserts, poured in their wild and uMisci- 

 plined swarms on all sides of the Moslem dominions, 

 and in process of time won back the extensive terri- 

 tories which a warlike superstition had wrested from 

 them. New states and kingdoms sprang from this 

 imperial wreck, and gradually settled themselves 

 over the fair -and ample regions wliich the Saracen 

 conquests had embraced. The power and magnifi- 

 cence of the caliphs shrank back into the same ob- 

 scurity from which they had risen. But while their 

 temporal dominion was reduced to its ancient limits 

 within the seas of Arabia, the faith and the fame of 

 Mohammed were left to enjoy all the ascendency 

 which his first triumphs had gained. The victorious 

 nations who threw off the yoke of his feeble suc- 

 cessors retained all their veneration for his reli- 

 oion, and willingly rendered him allegiance as their 

 spiritual master; and at the present day his creed 

 reigns throughout the East with nearly as absolute 

 and undisputed authority over the hearts and con- 

 sciences of men as in the proudest era of Saracen 

 despotism. 



Short as was this career of this military pageant, 

 which achieved such vast and extraordinary^ changes 

 in the moral and political state of a large portion of 

 the world, it is replete with events interesting to the 

 statesman and the philosopher ; unfolding a sene? 



