un to the succession, but he died before his plans had matured,
and Harun became caliph in the year 786.

The reign of Harun er-Rashid was the most brilliant epoch of the empire
of Islamism, and his glory penetrated from the far East to the western
countries of Europe, where his name is still celebrated.

[Illustration: 347.jpg DOOR OF AN ARABIAN HOUSE.]

Harun seems to have been as reluctant as his father and grandfather were
before him to leave a province too long in the hands of a governor, and
he even surpassed them in his precautionary measures. In the year 171
of the Hegira, he recalled Ali ibn Suleiman, and gave the government of
Egypt to Musa ibn Isa, a descendant of the Caliph Ali.

Thereafter the governors were changed on an average of once a year,
and their financial duties were separately administered. Musa ibn Isa,
however, held the appointment of Governor of Egypt on three separate
occasions, and of his third period Said ibn Batrik tells the following
anecdote:

"While Obaid Allah ibn el-Mahdi was ruling in Egypt," he relates, "he
sent a beautiful young Koptic slave to his brother, the caliph, as a
gift. The Egyptian odalisk so charmed the caliph that he fell violently
in love with her. Suddenly, however, the favourite was laid prostrate
by a malady which the court physicians could neither cure nor even
diagnose. The girl insisted that, being Egyptian, only an Egyptian
physician could cure her. The caliph instantly ordered his brother to
send post haste the most skilful doctor in Egypt. This proved to be the
Melchite patriarch, for in those days Koptic priests practised medicine
and cultivated other sciences. The patriarch set out for Baghdad,
restored the favourite to health, and in reward received from the
caliph an imperial diploma, which restored to the orthodox Christians
or Melchites all those privileges of which they had been deprived by the
Jacobite heretics since their union with the conqueror Amr ibn el-Asi."

If this story be true, one cannot but perceive the plot skilfully laid
and carried out by the powerful clergy, to whom any means, even the
sending of a concubine to the caliph, seemed legitimate to procure the
restoration of their supremacy and the humiliation of their adversaries.

[Illustration: 349.jpg A VEILED BEAUTY]

The year 204 of the Hegira was memorable for the death of the Iman
Muhammed ibn Idris, surnamed esh-Shafi. This celebrated doctor was the
founder of one of the fo