GOVERNMENT OF ARABIA. 109 



a mighty empire, it had dwindled into the condi- 

 tion of a province ; where, except in the cliaracter 

 of pontiff, the power of the sovereign was httle re- 

 garded. Amid the distractions of foreign wars many 

 chiefs of the interior shook off their precarious alle- 

 giance, and resumed their ancient habits of inde- 

 pendence. Only the coast and the principal cities 

 acknowledged the yoke of the neighbouring mon- 

 archs ; and during the hostilities which for 300 

 years desolated the continent of Asia, the Arabs 

 mingled with the auxiliary bands that swelled the 

 ranks of the Egyptians and Persians in their san- 

 guinary campaigns against the Turks and Tartars. 



In the West, their unwieldy empire, despoiled of 

 Spain, Africa, and the Mediterranean islands, had 

 shrunk within its original boundary, the Red Sea; 

 but their power was not increased by the dismem- 

 berment of these remote provinces. The com- 

 manders of the faithful had been stripped of much val- 

 uable territory in Asia by Mahmoud of Ghizni and his 

 successors, the founders of the Mohammedan power 

 in India. The race of the Gaurides and the Afghans, 

 who had supplanted the descendants of tliat warlike 

 sultan (A. D. 1160), and extended the dominions and 

 the faith of Islam from Delhi and Lahore to the dis- 

 tant extremity of the vast province of Bengal, yielded 

 in their turn to the swords of the Moguls (A. D.1413), 

 who, from being the conquerors, became the sove- 

 reigns of that peninsula. Persia, whose jewelled 

 sceptre had fallen from the nerveless grasp of the 

 despicable successors of Omar and Ali, was long a 

 prey to every daring adventurer who had the courage 

 to seize it. For a hundred years it was ruled by 

 Hoolaku and his descendants, whose fortunes may 

 be said to have ended with the weak and indolent 

 Abu Seyd (A. D. 1356) ; for the few princes that suc- 

 ceeded him were mere pageants, whom the nobles 

 of the court elevated or cast down as suited the 

 purposes of then* ambition. From an obscure ad- 



VoL. II.— K 



