llegiance to the league. Only the three Hanse towns of Hamburg,
Bremen, and Lubeck renewed the compact, which, however, to-day is
purely nominal. The Hansa had fulfilled its great historic mission. It
had impressed the stamp of German culture upon the North; given German
commerce the supremacy over that of all other nations; protected the
northern and eastern boundaries of the empire at a time when the
imperial power was impotent and the State disrupted; and maintained
and extended the prestige of the German flag in the northern seas.
Said a great German writer: "When all on land was steeped in
particularism, the Hansa, our people upon the sea, alone remained
faithful to the German spirit and to German tradition."

MAMELUKES USURP POWER IN EGYPT

A.D. 1250

SIR WILLIAM MUIR

From A.D. 969 to 1171 the Arabian dynasty of caliphs called
Fatimites--because they professed to trace their descent
from Fatima, the daughter of Mahomet--reigned in Egypt.
Their downfall was due to their own decline into imbecility,
through which they fell into the hands of Turkish viziers
who, keeping their nominal masters in subserviency,
themselves assumed the actual rule.

For several generations the caliphs of Bagdad, under whose
sway the Fatimites were now reduced, had attracted to their
capital slaves from Turcoman and Mongol hordes. These slaves
they used both as bodyguards and as contingents to offset
the dominating influence of the Arab soldiery in their
affairs. In the end the slaves superseded the Arab soldiers
altogether, and from bondmen became masters of the court.
They stirred up riots and rebellion and hastened the fall of
the effete caliphate.

Under the Eyyubite dynasty in Egypt, which Saladin founded
about 1174, the same practice was followed with the same
results. The Eyyubites were strangers in Egypt, and welcomed
the support of foreign myrmidons. Slave dealers bought
children of conquered tribes in Central Asia, promising them
great fortunes in the West. These children, together with
prisoners of war from the eastern hordes, streamed into
Egypt, where they were again bought by the rulers, who thus
unwittingly prepared the way for their own destruction. The
military body created by Saladin, called mamelukes
("slaves;" literally "the possessed"), obtained ascendency
in