18 CALIPHS OF BAGDAD.. 



merit was passed across his eyes, and in this 

 wretched state he is said to have prolonged an 

 existence of sixteen years, during which he was 

 regularly seen every Friday, with other blind men- 

 dicants, at the gates of the principal mosque of his 

 own capital, soliciting the alms of the charitable. 

 Of the succeeding monarchs, five, Mottaki, Mostakfi, 

 Mostarched, Alrashed, and Mostasem, met the same 

 fate. With a few exceptions, the power of the 

 Abbassides, after Rhadi, was reduced to an empty 

 pageant, — a mere gilded phantom. Sometimes their 

 condition was so degraded, that they were confined 

 like prisoners in their palace, exposed to blows and 

 insults, and scarcely allowed the ordinary means of 

 subsistence. So entirely was Rhadi the creature of 

 Ibn Rayek, his Emir al Omra (commander of com- 

 manders), an officer first instituted by him, and supe- 

 rior to the vizier, that he could not draw a single 

 dinar from the treasury for his own use without the 

 permission of this absolute minister, who even 

 officiated in the great mosque, and had his name 

 inserted in the public prayers. 



Usurpers had risen up in almost every province, 

 and erected themselves into independent sovereigns. 

 The dominions of the once mighty Emperors of the 

 Faithful were nearly circumscribed within the walls 

 of Bagdad, which still contained an innumerable 

 multitude of inhabitants, vain of their past fortune, 

 discontented with their present state, and oppressed 

 by the demands of a needy government, whose 

 exchequer had heretofore been replenished by 

 the spoil and the tribute of nations. Irak, the 

 greater part of Persia, the provinces round the Cas- 

 pian and beyond the Oxus, had recognised other 

 masters. Syria and Arabia no longer obeyed the 

 caliph ; while the rulers of Egypt and the West had 

 withdrawn their allegiance from the humbled pon- 

 tiff on the banks of the Tigris. Corruption and 

 venality pervaded every department of the state ; 



