MFK OF MOHAMMED. 257 



• 



to have been kept with religious care on account 

 of its great virtue in curing diseases, until it fell 

 into the hands of the Turkish sultan, Morad Khan, 

 who ordered the precious relic to be enclosed in a 



chest of gold.* • . • * u- -u- i. 



Peace and submission reigned in Arabia, which 

 now presented the singular spectacle of unity in faith 

 and government. The five kings in Yemen had 

 confessed that their eyes were opened to the true 

 light, and consented to hold their crowns under the 

 jurisdiction of the Moslem vicegerents. Ali continued 

 at the head of an army to preach Islam to these 

 happy regions ; the inhabitants contributing with 

 their own hands to the demolition of their altars 

 and their gods. The next two years of the Hejira 

 were allotted to the final adjustment of certain reli- 

 gious matters, and the reception of deputies and 

 orators who flocked from all quarters to the court of 

 Medina. While his lieutenants were thus saluted 

 with respect in every province between the Indian 

 and Mediterranean Seas, the ambassadors who knelt 

 before the throne of the Prophet " outnumbered the 

 dates that fall from the palm-tree in its maturity." 

 They were received with condescension and kind- 

 ness ; and the year of embassies, the ninth of the 

 Hejira, proclaimed the extraordinary concourse 



* The substance of this instrument, the Diploma Sccuritatis 

 Ailensibus, is to be found in Abulfeda (Vita, cap. h'ii. p 125) ; 

 Gagnier(La Vie, lib. vi. chap. 11) ; and Savary (Abr^g^ de la 

 Vie, p. 195). It was published in Arabic and Latin by Gabriel 

 Sionita, at Paris, in 1630. Bayle (Diet, art, Mahom.), Renau- 

 dot (Hist. Patriarch. Alexand. p. 169), and Abulfarage (Asse- 

 man. Biblioth. Orient.), admit its authenticity. Grotius and 

 Hottinger (Hist. Orient, p. 237) doubt it ; and Mosheim gives m 

 to the opinion that it was a forgery of the Syrian and Arabian 

 monks, to mitigate the severities of the Saracens. — Ecclesiast. 

 Hist. Cent, vii. part ii. chap. 5. To the possession of the mantle 

 in question, the Turks used to attribute the success of their 

 arms ; and believed that they owed their prosperity and the 

 cure of all their maladies to their drinking the water in which 

 it had been dipped. — Savary, note, p. 197. 



Y2 



