e; the active power of enthusiasm had decayed, and the
mercenary forces of the caliphs were recruited in those climates of the
North, of which valor is the hardy and spontaneous production. Of the
Turks [97] who dwelt beyond the Oxus and Jaxartes, the robust youths,
either taken in war or purchased in trade, were educated in the
exercises of the field, and the profession of the Mahometan faith. The
Turkish guards stood in arms round the throne of their benefactor,
and their chiefs usurped the dominion of the palace and the provinces.
Motassem, the first author of this dangerous example, introduced
into the capital above fifty thousand Turks: their licentious conduct
provoked the public indignation, and the quarrels of the soldiers and
people induced the caliph to retire from Bagdad, and establish his
own residence and the camp of his Barbarian favorites at Samara on
the Tigris, about twelve leagues above the city of Peace. [98] His son
Motawakkel was a jealous and cruel tyrant: odious to his subjects, he
cast himself on the fidelity of the strangers, and these strangers,
ambitious and apprehensive, were tempted by the rich promise of a
revolution. At the instigation, or at least in the cause of his son,
they burst into his apartment at the hour of supper, and the caliph
was cut into seven pieces by the same swords which he had recently
distributed among the guards of his life and throne. To this throne, yet
streaming with a father's blood, Montasser was triumphantly led; but in
a reign of six months, he found only the pangs of a guilty conscience.
If he wept at the sight of an old tapestry which represented the crime
and punishment of the son of Chosroes, if his days were abridged by
grief and remorse, we may allow some pity to a parricide, who exclaimed,
in the bitterness of death, that he had lost both this world and the
world to come. After this act of treason, the ensigns of royalty, the
garment and walking-staff of Mahomet, were given and torn away by the
foreign mercenaries, who in four years created, deposed, and murdered,
three commanders of the faithful. As often as the Turks were inflamed
by fear, or rage, or avarice, these caliphs were dragged by the
feet, exposed naked to the scorching sun, beaten with iron clubs, and
compelled to purchase, by the abdication of their dignity, a short
reprieve of inevitable fate. [99] At length, however, the fury of the
tempest was spent or diverted: the Abbassides returned to