418 EXTENT OF THE SARACEN EMPIRE. 



powerful and absolute sovereigns on earth. Yet 

 such was the fact. Their caliphs exercised a most 

 unlimited and undefined prerogative, unfettered by 

 popular rights, the votes of a senate, or the laws of 

 a free constitution. They united in their own per- 

 son the regal and sacerdotal characters ; and if the 

 Koran was the rule of their actions, they were the 

 supreme judges and interpreters of that divine book. 

 They reigned by the right of conquest over nations 

 to whom the name of liberty was unknown, and 

 who had not yet learned to detest those acts of vio- 

 lence and severity that were exercised at their ex- 

 pense. Under the last of the Ommiades, the Sara- 

 cen empire extended 200 days' journey from east to 

 west ; and though the long and narrow province of 

 Africa, — the sleeve of the robe, as their writers style 

 it, — were withdrawn, the solid and compact domin- 

 ion within the Jaxartes, the Hellespont, and the 

 Indus, would spread on every side to the measure 

 of five months of the march of a caravan in length, 

 and four in breadth. From this estimate an import- 

 ant fragment was soon detached by the revolt of 

 Spain ; but its loss was more than counterbalanced 

 by the subsequent conquests in India, Tartary, and 

 European Turkey. This vast empire was ruled by 

 a wretched political system, in which we seek in 

 vain for the union and discipline that pervaded the 

 government of Augustus and the Antonines. The 

 only national feature was that general resemblance 

 of manners and opinions which the progress of 

 Islam had diffused over this immense space. The 

 language and laws of the Koran were studied with 

 equal devotion at Samarcand and Seville ; the Moor 

 and the Indian embraced as countrymen and brothers 

 in the Temple of Mecca; and the Arabian language 

 was adopted as the popular idiom in all the prov- 

 inces to the westward of the Tigris. 



END OF VOL. I. 



«ft -7"? 



