410 
Schismatic Greeks, Copts, Druses, Mamelukes, Jews, 
and other races, who do not resemble each other in 
any thing, unless it be in the inveterate and deep-root- 
ed hatred which they bear each other; such are the 
elements that compose this mass. 
The Christians, formerly plunged in scholastic 
quarrels, the Arabs divided by the same cause, and 
wanting constitution which might confirm the succes- 
sion to the throne of the Caliphat, opened by their de- 
plorable apathy the way to that irruption of the almost 
savage Tartars, who overturned successively die 
thrones of the Abbassides and of the Constantines, 
upon the ruins of which they founded the empire of 
the Crescent. 
Chance, which made them begin their conquests in 
Asia, then governed by the successors of Mouhham- 
med, rendered these idolatrous Tartars, Mahometans. 
If they had been begun by Europe they would have 
been Christians. Every worship, founded upon the su- 
blime idea of one Supreme Being, must convince and 
attract the idolatrous man. 
From this cause the Turks have been and still are 
strangers to the customs of Europe. If they had been 
converted to the Christian faith, they would have be- 
come Europeans. 
As the Caliphs Abbasides had protected the arts 
and sciences, which the irruption of the V andals had 
caused to fly from Europe, these Tartars found with 
religion, the elements of civilization, of which at first 
they availed themselves in a slight degree; but their 
progress was at the same time repressed by some 
dogmas, which, in proscribing the fine arts, establish- 
ing the doctrine of fatality, proclaiming hatred and 
aversion to all individuals strangers to Islamism, de- 
