liberal taste
invited the artists of Constantinople, the most skilful sculptors and
architects of the age; and the buildings were sustained or adorned by
twelve hundred columns of Spanish and African, of Greek and Italian
marble. The hall of audience was incrusted with gold and pearls, and
a great basin in the centre was surrounded with the curious and costly
figures of birds and quadrupeds. In a lofty pavilion of the gardens, one
of these basins and fountains, so delightful in a sultry climate,
was replenished not with water, but with the purest quicksilver. The
seraglio of Abdalrahman, his wives, concubines, and black eunuchs,
amounted to six thousand three hundred persons: and he was attended to
the field by a guard of twelve thousand horse, whose belts and cimeters
were studded with gold. [49]

[Footnote 41: The geographer D'Anville, (l'Euphrate et le Tigre, p.
121-123,) and the Orientalist D'Herbelot, (Bibliotheque, p. 167, 168,)
may suffice for the knowledge of Bagdad. Our travellers, Pietro
della Valle, (tom. i. p. 688-698,) Tavernier, (tom. i. p. 230-238,)
Thevenot, (part ii. p. 209-212,) Otter, (tom. i. p. 162-168,) and
Niebuhr, (Voyage en Arabie, tom. ii. p. 239-271,) have seen only its
decay; and the Nubian geographer, (p. 204,) and the travelling Jew,
Benjamin of Tuleda (Itinerarium, p. 112-123, a Const. l'Empereur, apud
Elzevir, 1633,) are the only writers of my acquaintance, who have known
Bagdad under the reign of the Abbassides.]

[Footnote 42: The foundations of Bagdad were laid A. H. 145, A.D. 762.
Mostasem, the last of the Abbassides, was taken and put to death by the
Tartars, A. H. 656, A.D. 1258, the 20th of February.]

[Footnote 43: Medinat al Salem, Dar al Salem. Urbs pacis, or, as it is
more neatly compounded by the Byzantine writers, (Irenopolis.) There is
some dispute concerning the etymology of Bagdad, but the first syllable
is allowed to signify a garden in the Persian tongue; the garden of
Dad, a Christian hermit, whose cell had been the only habitation on the
spot.]

[Footnote 44: Reliquit in aerario sexcenties millies mille stateres. et
quater et vicies millies mille aureos aureos. Elmacin, Hist. Saracen.
p. 126. I have reckoned the gold pieces at eight shillings, and the
proportion to the silver as twelve to one. But I will never answer for
the numbers of Erpenius; and the Latins are scarcely above the savages
in the language of arithmetic.]

[Footnote 45: D'Herbelot, p. 530. Abulfe