ition of Mamun a bodyguard of
3000. Backed by this force he seems to have persuaded the ailing caliph
to designate him as his successor. The chroniclers content themselves
with recording that he himself wrote in the name of the caliph to the
chief authorities in Bagdad and elsewhere that he was to be the
successor. His accession, however, met at first with active opposition
in the army, where a powerful party demanded that Abbas should take the
place of his father. Abbas, however, publicly renounced all pretension
to the Caliphate, and the whole army accepted Motasim, who immediately
had the fortifications of Tyana demolished and hastened back to Bagdad,
where he made his public entry on the 20th of September 833.

Motasim wanted officers for his bodyguard. Immediately after his coming
to Bagdad, he bought all the Turkish slaves living there who had
distinguished themselves. Among them were Ashnas, Itakh, Wasif, Sima,
all of whom later became men of great influence. The guard was composed
of an undisciplined body of soldiers, who, moreover, held in open
contempt the religious precepts of Islam. Tired of the excesses
committed by these Turks, the people of Bagdad beat or killed as many of
them as they could lay hands on, and Motasim, not daring to act with
severity against either his guard or the citizens, took the course of
quitting the city. Having bought in 834 territories at Samarra, a small
place situated a few leagues above Bagdad, he caused a new residence to
be built there, whose name, which could be interpreted "Unhappy is he
who sees it," was changed by him into Sorra-man-ra'a, "Rejoiced is he
who sees it." Leaving the government of the capital in the hands of his
son Harun al-Wathiq, he established himself at Samarra in 836. This
resolution of Motasim was destined to prove fatal to his dynasty; for it
placed the caliphs at the mercy of their praetorians. In fact, from the
time of Wathiq, the Caliphate became the plaything of the Turkish guard,
and its decline was continuous.

In the time of the civil war the marshlands in Irak between Basra and
Wasit had been occupied by a large population of Indians, called _yat_,
or, according to the Arabic pronunciation, _Zott_, who infested the
roads and levied a heavy tribute from the ships ascending and descending
the Tigris. From the year 821 onwards Mamun had tried in vain to bring
them to submission. When Motasim came back to Bagdad, after the death of
his brother, h