36 CALIPHS OP BAGDAD. 



sora, were pillaged ; Bagdad itself was filled will 

 consternation ; for the daring Abu Taher, with no 

 more than 500 horse, had advanced to Anbar, and 

 threatened to attack the City of Peace. A lieuten- 

 ant had recommended the Karmathian chief to with- 

 draw; when the latter, to evince the determination of 

 his troops, turned to three of his companions, and at 

 his command the first plunged a dagger into his own 

 breast ; the second leapt into the Tigris ; and the 

 third cast himself headlong from a precipice. " Re- 

 late," continued he, (t to your master what you have 

 seen ; before the evening he shall be chained among 

 my dogs." The Saracen camp was surprised, and 

 before the evening the menace was literally execu- 

 ted. Mecca was an object of aversion to the Kar- 

 mathians, and in the 317th year of the Hejira 

 (A. D. 929) Abu Taher entered the sacred city at the 

 season of the pilgrimage. Every species of cruelty 

 and profanation was committed. Thirty thousand 

 citizens and strangers were put to the sword ; and 

 the most venerable relics of the Moslem faith were 

 carried off, or trampled in the dust. After this 

 bloody and sacrilegious exploit the turbulent fana- 

 tics continued to infest the borders of Irak, Syria, 

 and Egypt; and though they received occasional 

 checks from the Mohammedan arms, they were for 

 two centuries the pest and scourge of the caliphate. 

 The unwieldy magnitude of the Saracen empire 

 itself, and the number of independent principalities 

 that sprung up in its bosom, were other obvious and 

 powerful accessaries to its destruction. Almamoun 

 might proudly assert that it was easier for him to 

 rule the East and the West than to manage a chess- 

 board of two feet square ; yet errors in the game of 





