126 CIVIL HISTORY AND 



caliphs of the East. Long before the downfal of 

 the Abbassides, Arabia had shared in the declining 

 fortunes of its masters. Instead of being the seat 

 of the successors of the Prophet, or the centre of 

 a mighty empire, it had dwindled into the condi- 

 tion of a province ; where, except in the character of 

 pontiff, the power of the sovereign was little regard- 

 ed. Amidst the distractions of foreign wars many 

 chiefs of the interior shook off their precarious al- 

 legiance, and resumed their ancient habits of inde- 

 pendence. Only the coast and the principal cities 

 acknowledged the yoke of the neighbouring mo- 

 narchs; 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 Command- 

 ers of the Faithful had been stript of much valuable 

 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 that 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 des 





