APPENDIX I.

_Blood-madness_. See Chapter iii, p. 109.

One of the most striking instances afforded by history of Haematomania in
a tyrant is Ibrahim ibn Ahmed, prince of Africa and Sicily (A.D. 875).
This man, besides displaying peculiar ferocity in his treatment of
enemies and prisoners of war, delighted in the execution of horrible
butcheries within the walls of his own palace. His astrologers having
once predicted that he should die by the hands of a 'small assassin,' he
killed off the whole retinue of his pages, and filled up their places
with a suit of negroes whom he proceeded to treat after the same
fashion. On another occasion, when one of his three hundred eunuchs had
by chance been witness of the tyrant's drunkenness, Ibrahim slaughtered
the whole band. Again, he is said to have put an end to sixty youths,
originally selected for his pleasures, burning them by gangs of five or
six in the furnace, or suffocating them in the hot chambers of his
baths. Eight of his brothers were murdered in his presence; and when
one, who was so diseased that he could scarcely stir, implored to be
allowed to end his days in peace, Ibrahim answered: 'I make no
exceptions.' His own son Abul-Aghlab was beheaded by his orders before
his eyes; and the execution of chamberlains, secretaries, ministers, and
courtiers was of common occurrence. But his fiercest fury was directed
against women. He seems to have been darkly jealous of the perpetuation
of the human race. Wives and concubines were strangled, sawn asunder,
and buried alive, if they showed signs of pregnancy. His female children
were murdered as soon as they saw the light; sixteen of them, whom his
mother managed to conceal and rear at her own peril, were massacred upon
the spot when Ibrahim discovered whom they claimed as father.
Contemporary Arab chroniclers, pondering upon the fierce and gloomy
passions of this man, arrived at the conclusion that he was the subject
of a strange disease, a portentous secretion of black bile producing the
melancholy which impelled him to atrocious crimes. Nor does the
principle on which this diagnosis of his case was founded appear
unreasonable. Ibrahim was a great general, an able ruler, a man of firm
and steady purpose; not a weak and ineffectual libertine whom lust for
blood and lechery had placed below the level of brute beasts. When the
time for his abdication arrived, he threw aside his mantle of state and
donned the mean g