er made a body of one hundred and sixty
thousand men. His state officers stood near him in the most splendid
apparel, their belts shining with gold and gems. Near them were seven
thousand black and white eunuchs. The porters or doorkeepers were in
number seven hundred. Barges and boats, with the most superb
decorations, were swimming on the Tigris. Nor was the palace itself
less splendid, in which were hung thirty-eight thousand pieces of
tapestry, twelve thousand five hundred of which were of silk
embroidered with gold. The carpets on the floor were twenty-two
thousand. A hundred lions were brought out, with a keeper to each
lion. Among the other spectacles of rare and stupendous luxury was a
tree of gold and silver, which opened itself into eighteen larger
branches, upon which and the other smaller branches sat birds of every
sort, made also of gold and silver. The tree glittered with leaves of
the same metals; and while its branches, through machinery, appeared to
move of themselves, the several birds upon them warbled their natural
notes."

When, moreover, decline had once commenced, its progress was
accelerated by the means taken {238} to arrest it. After the regular
troops had been corrupted by faction, the caliphs, for the defence of
their person and government, formed a militia; but the soldiers
composing this force, not unfrequently foreigners, soon governed with a
military despotism similar to that of the janizaries of Turkey, the
Mamelukes of Egypt, or the praetorian guards of Rome; and, in addition
to these causes of decay, a furious spirit of sectarianism tore asunder
the very strength and heart of the empire. The colossal power of the
successors of Mohammed, suddenly towering to its awful height, almost
as suddenly fell, as if to yield more perfect confirmation of the
truth, that all earthly things are destined to pass away, while the
word of the living God abideth for ever.

Spain, as has been seen, was the first distant province of the Arabian
empire which succeeded in separating itself and setting up an
independent caliph. As this country had been brought under the Moslem
yoke by means chiefly furnished from the northern states of Africa, its
independence was likely to produce a corresponding effect upon those
states. They were governed in the name of the Bagdad caliphs; but for
nearly a century they had been growing into independence, under rulers
usually known, from the name of their pr