nd independent prince.

The caliphs of the house of Abbas, having built the city of Bagdad soon
after their accession to the {241} throne, transferred thither their
court and the seat of power. For five centuries they reigned there
with various degrees of authority; but foreign wars and domestic
revolts gradually dissolved the empire, and their dominion at length
passed away. Badhi, the twentieth caliph of the race, was "the last,"
says Abulfeda, "who harangued the people from the pulpit; who passed
the cheerful hour of leisure with men of learning and taste; whose
expenses, resources, and treasures, whose table and magnificence, had
any resemblance to those of the ancient caliphs." "During the next
three centuries," says a modern historian of the Arabian empire, "the
successors of Mohammed swayed a feeble sceptre. Sometimes their state
was so degraded that they were confined in their palaces like
prisoners, and occasionally were almost reduced to the want of
corporeal subsistence. The tragic scenes of fallen royalty at length
were closed; for, towards the middle of the seventh century of the
Hegira, the metropolis of Islamism fell into the hands of Houlagou
Khan, the grandson of Zenghis Khan, and emperor of the Moguls and
Tartars, who reigned at that period with absolute and unmixed despotism
over every nation of the East. The caliph Mostasem, the thirty-seventh
of his house, was murdered under circumstances of peculiar barbarity,
and the caliphate of Bagdad {242} expired. Though the dignity and
sovereignty of the caliphs were lost by this fatal event, and the soul
which animated the form had fled, yet the name existed for three
centuries longer in the eighteen descendants of Mostanser Billah, a
son, or pretended son, of Daker, the last but one of this race of
princes.

"Mostanser Billah and his successors, to the number of eighteen, were
called the second dynasty of the Abbassides, and were spiritual chiefs
of the Mohammedan religion, but without the slightest vestige of
temporal authority. When Selim, emperor of the Turks, conquered Egypt
and destroyed the power of the Mamelukes, he carried the caliph, whom
he found there a prisoner, to Constantinople, and accepted from him a
renunciation of his ecclesiastical supremacy. On the death of the
caliph, the family of the Abbassides, once so illustrious, and which
had borne the title of caliph for almost eight hundred years, sunk with
him from obscurity into obl