GOVERNMENT OF ARABIA. ' 111 



emirs, who gratified the pride and vengeance of his 

 conqueror in the captivity of an iron cage. This 

 decisive victory cost the Uvcs of about 200,000 Turks 

 and nearly as many Tartars. The dominions of this 

 wonderful man were inferior in extent only to those 

 of the Saracens in the zenith of their power. 



The star of Timur rose and set amid scenes of 

 carnage ; and his race, as well as his empire, might 

 have become extinct, had not Baber, the grandson 

 of Abu Seyd already mentioned, after a long and 

 noble struggle against the Uzbeck Tartars, the ene- 

 mies and subverters of his family, retired to India, 

 where his great talents obtained 'for him one of the 

 most splendid thrones in the world. This sultan was 

 the first that received the title of Emperor of Hin- 

 dostan, and Avith him commenced (A. D. 1526) the 

 sovereignty of the Great Mogul in that peninsula, 

 which flourished till the beginning of the eighteenth 

 century, when it received its death-blow in the fall 

 of Aurengzebe (A. D. 1707),— a prince who raised it 

 to the zenith of its glory, and whose sway extended 

 over a region containing 64,000,000 inhabitants. 

 His successors have in their turn vanished from the 

 scene ; and their richest kingdoms are now pos- 

 sessed by a company of British merchants. 



Though the Turkish sultans could not, like the 

 Arabian cahphs, style themselves the descendants 

 and successors of the apostle of God, they piously 

 espoused the cause of the Koran ; and, like the Sa- 

 racens, affected to wage war only for the interest* 

 of Islam. Selim I., after reducing the whole penin- 

 sula of Mesopotamia, made himself master, in 1516, 

 of Syria and Eg>^pt. The Arabs alone refused him 

 their obedience. Since the ruin of the caliphate, 

 they had in a great measure shaken off the foreign 

 authorities to which they had been partly subject. 

 The neighbouring powers, too much engrossed with 

 their own quarrels, had never attempted their sub- 

 jugation ; till the Portuguese, under Gama, made 

 their appearance in the Red Sea (A. D. 1504). 



