d at
Baghdad. A great part of the booty, however, had been sent to Mangu Khan."
(_Hulagu's Exp._, Bretschneider, _Med. Res._ I. p. 120.) Ch'ang Te says
(_Si Shi Ki_, p. 139): "The palace of the Ha-li-fa was built of fragrant
and precious woods. The walls of it were constructed of black and white
jade. It is impossible to imagine the quantity of gold and precious stones
found there."--H. C.]

NOTE 7.--

"I said to the Kalif: 'Thou art old,
Thou hast no need of so much gold.
Thou shouldst not have heaped and hidden it here,
Till the breath of Battle was hot and near,
But have sown through the land these useless hoards
To spring into shining blades of swords,
And keep thine honour sweet and clear.
* * * * *
Then into his dungeon I locked the drone,
And left him to feed there all alone
In the honey-cells of his golden hive:
Never a prayer, nor a cry, nor a groan
Was heard from those massive walls of stone,
Nor again was the Kalif seen alive.'
This is the story, strange and true,
That the great Captain Alau
Told to his brother, the Tartar Khan,
When he rode that day into Cambalu.
By the road that leadeth to Ispahan." (_Longfellow_.)[1]

The story of the death of Mosta'sim Billah, the last of the Abbaside
Khalifs, is told in much the same way by Hayton, Ricold, Pachymeres, and
Joinville. The memory of the last glorious old man must have failed him,
when he says the facts were related by some merchants who came to King
Lewis, when before Saiette (or Sidon), viz. in 1253, for the capture of
Baghdad occurred five years later. Mar. Sanuto says melted gold was poured
down the Khalif's throat--a transfer, no doubt, from the old story of
Crassus and the Parthians. Contemporary Armenian historians assert that
Hulaku slew him with his own hand.

All that Rashiduddin says is: "The evening of Wednesday, the 14th of
Safar, 656 (20th February, 1258), the Khalif was put to death in the
village of Wakf, with his eldest son and five eunuchs who had never
quitted him." Later writers say that he was wrapt in a carpet and trodden
to death by horses.

[Cf. _The Story of the Death of the last Abbaside Caliph, from the Vatican
MS. of Ibn-al-Furat_, by G. le Strange (_Jour. R. As. Soc._, April, 1900,
pp. 293-300). This is the story of the death of the Khalif told by
Ibn-al-Furat (born in Cairo, 1335 A.D.):

"Then Hulagu gave command, and the Caliph was left a-hungeri