the holy temple of Mekka. Two years after, Mahomet accused the Koreish of a breach of the truce, and, with an army of ten thousand men, marched to besiege Mekka. No sooner did he appear before the walls than the city surrendered at discretion. Abu Sofian, long the enemy of Mahomet and his religion, presented the keys of the city to the prophet, and embraced his doctrines. Though a conqueror and an impostor, on this occasion Mahomet was not cruel; his anger was directed rather against the gods of his country than its inhabitants. He destroyed the whole of the idols of the Kaaba, but executed no more than three men and one woman belonging to the party of his enemies. By a pretended order from heaven, the keys of the Kaaba were entrusted to Othman Ebn Telha; and the sacred black stone was retained, having been rendered a renewed object of veneration by the prophet's holy touch. Mahomet remained only fifteen days at Mekka; and after reducing the powerful tribes of Hawazan and Thakif, returned in triumph to Medina.

The conquest of Mekka and of the Koreish was the signal for the submission of the rest of Arabia. Ambassadors poured in upon the prophet of Islam from all quarters, to make submission in the name of their different tribes; and the ninth of the Hegira is styled the year of embassies. Mahomet, now at the head of a numerous and enthusiastic host, directed his attention to the hostile designs upon the East of Heraclius the Roman emperor. He declared war against that sovereign; but after leading a large army to the confines of Syria, finding nothing meditated, he returned to Medina, and upon his return, performed the pilgrimage of valediction, the rites and ceremonies of which were intended as a model to Moslems

of all succeeding ages. On this occasion about 100,000 believers composed his train. The influence and religion of Mahomet continued rapidly to extend. Between the taking of Mekka and the time of his death, not more than three years elapsed. In that short period he had destroyed the idols of Arabia; had extended his conquests to the borders of the Greek and Persian empires; had rendered his name formidable to those once mighty nations; had tried his arms against the disciplined troops of the former, and defeated them in a desperate encounter at Muta. His throne was now firmly established, and an impetus given to the Arabians, that in a few years induced them to invade, and enabled them to subdue, a great portion of the globe. Part of India, Persia, the Greek empire, the whole of Asia Minor, Egypt, Barbary, and Spain, were successively reduced by their victorious arms. And although Mahomet did not live to see such mighty conquests, he laid the first foundations of this wide-spreading dominion.

Mahomet's health had been gradually declining for three years previous to his decease, in consequence of poison administered to him by a Jewess, in his favourite dish, a shoulder of mutton, with a view of trying his prophetic character; but a fever proved the immediate cause of his death. The effect of this poison, which so long preyed upon his constitution, was sometimes so agonizing, that he would be heard to cry out, "Oh! none of all the prophets ever suffered such torments as I now feel!" Till within three days of his death, he regularly officiated in the mosque, and preached to his people. "If there be any man," he said, from the pulpit, "whom I have unjustly scourged, I submit my own back to the lash of retaliation. If I have aspersed the reputation of any Mussulman, let him proclaim my faults in the face of the congregation. If I have despoiled any one of his goods, let him come forward: the little which I

possess shall

compensate the debt: I would rather be accused in this world than at the day of judgment. As soon as he was conscious of his danger, he enfranchised his slaves, and directed the order of his funeral. The traditions of his followers relate, that at the hour of his death he maintained the same character he had borne through life, describing the visits of Gabriel, and expressing a lively satisfaction at the benefits he considered himself to have conferred on mankind. He expired, with his head reclining in the lap of the youngest and best beloved of his wives, Ayesha, in the eleventh year of the Hegira (June, A.D. 632) at the age of sixty-three. In the very chamber at Medina, where he died, his remains were deposited, and a simple monument placed over them, the story of the hanging coffin of Mahomet being an absurd fiction.

The private character of Mahomet seems to have been rather amiable. He was simple in his manners, frugal in his diet, affectionate in the relations of life; and the exhausted state of his coffers at his death proved the sincerity of his exhortations to benevolence. In the indulgence of his amorous propensities, however, he was licentious; and although some apology for this may be found in the clime and manners of his country, nothing can excuse the vile impositions which he palmed upon his followers as revelations from heaven, dispensing him, in this matter, from those laws which he himself had imposed upon them. After Kadijah, his first wife, died, and when the sunshine of prosperity beamed upon him, he kept eleven wives, and what is remarkable, all of them were widows, except Ayesha, whom he married when she was only nine years of age.3 Of his character as a prophet, legislator, and conqueror, a general view may be gathered from the history of his transactions. He was indebted to Judaism and Christianity for most that was systematic in his religion; but his civil polity was rude and barbarous; and being rendered immutable by its alliance with his creed and doctrines, it has proved a complete bar to progressive improvement in all the countries which have received his law. As a conqueror, especially as an Asiatic conqueror, he might be esteemed clement, were it not for the massacre of the Koreihite Jews, and one or two individual assassinations to which he was accessory. Among his decrees, one of them may be particularized as indicating genuine humanity: he enacted, that, in the sale of captives, the infant should not be separated from the mother. On the whole, while the characters of impostor and usurper are abundantly evident, it is possible, that some strong conviction of the unity and spiritual nature of the Deity, and a wish to exalt and improve his countrymen, may have been mingled up with the policy and ambition by which this extraordinary founder of the faith of succeeding myriads was so memorably distinguished.

Khalifate.] On the death of Mahomet, Abu Bekr was elected khalif or successor of Mahomet in the spiritual as well as temporal empire which he had erected. An insurrection broke out among the several tribes of independent Arabs, which was soon quelled by the sanguinary Khaled, surnamed the Sword of God, whose severity in this enterprize drew down upon him the anger of Abu Bekr. When tranquillity was restored, Abu

As a set-off to the reported incontinence of Mahomet, it should be stated, that during the twenty-four years he lived with Kadijah, he never insulted her society by a rival, and, till his death, held her memory in grateful remembrance.

"Was she not

old?" said Ayesha, conscious of her own youth and beauty, "and has not God given you a better in her place?" "No!" said Mahomet; "there never can be a better. She believed in me when men despised me: she relieved my wants when I was poor and persecuted by the world."

IV.

2 F

Bekr published his resolution to spread the true faith through Syria at the point of the sword. A large army assembled round Medina, the command of which was given to Yezid Ebn Abu Sofian. A second army, destined for the subjugation of Palestine, was raised, through the enthusiasm inspired by the successes of the first, and Amrou was nominated the general. Khaled was sent to co-operate with Abu Obeidah, to whom Yezid had resigned his charge. The fall of Bostra, which was hastened by the treachery of the Roman governor, opened the way to Damascus. The battle of Aiznadin in July 633, in which 50,000 Christians and infidels are said to have been slain, decided the fate of the capital of Syria. Emesa and Baalbek were taken the following year, and the Syro-Grecians made a last and ineffectual stand in the open field, on the banks of the Hieromax. Jerusalem sustained a siege of four months, at the end of which the patriarch Sophronius obtained, as a term of capitulation, the honour of delivering up the holy city to the khaliff Omar in person, who had succeeded to the khalifate on the death of Abu Bekr. The conquest of Aleppo, A.D. 638, after a long siege, and that of Antioch which followed, completed the subjugation of Syria. The fall of Alexandria before the forces of Amrou decided the fate of Egypt in the same year; and the destruction, by order of Omar, of the famous library in that city, is well known in the history of literature. The battle of Kadesia, two stations from Kufa, and the capture of Medayen (Ctesiphon) had already made the Moslems the masters of Persia almost to the banks of the Oxus. But while his arms were subjugating the finest provinces of the east, Omar fell by the hand of an assassin; and Othman, the secretary of Mahomet, was proclaimed khalif in the 23d year of the Hegira. Othman's administration, however, was feeble, and unable to curb the spirits of the Moslem chiefs, who were elated with power and flushed with victory. An insurrection broke out, which was inflamed by Ayesha, the widow of the prophet. Othman was besieged and slain in his palace in the 82d year of his age and the 35th of the Hegira. Ali, who was married to Fatima, the daughter of Kadijah, and the only surviving child of the prophet, was invited to the throne of Arabia. But his reign was short and tumultuous. Moawiyah, the son of Abu Sofian, possessed the affections of the army of Syria, and the various lieutenants throughout the empire refused to recognize the authority of Ali. Two powerful chieftans, Telha and Zobeir, escaped into Irak, accompanied by Ayesha, who bore an implacable hatred against the husband and family of Fatima, and there raised the standard of revolt. Ali marched at the head of his followers from Medina to Bassora, where he encountered and defeated the rebels. Telha and Zobeir were both slain, and Ayesha was led a captive into the tent of Ali, who dismissed her to her proper station at the tomb of her husband, under the guard of his two sons, Hassan and Hossein. Ali then marched his victorious troops against Moawiyah, who had assumed the title of khalif. The rival khalifs met on the plains of Seffein ; and during several months various battles took place with various success, until, through a stratagem of Amrou, the conqueror of Egypt, and friend of Moawiyah, who hoisted the koran on the points of the lances of the Syrian soldiers, exclaiming that that book ought to decide all differences, hostilities were suspended, and a negotiation ensued. But three Charegitesa sect of religious and political zealots, considering that nothing but the deaths of Ali, Moawiyah, and Amrou could restore tranquillity to Arabia, entered into a confederacy to destroy them. They poisoned their swords, and each chose his victim. Moawiyah was wounded, but recovered; Am

rou's secretary received the blow which was meditated for his master; and Ali was mortally stabbed in the mosque at Kufah. He died in the 63d year of his age, and left behind him the character of being the bravest and most virtuous of the Mahometan khalifs. His son Hassan succeeded to the khalifate, but soon resigned in favour of Moawiyah, and retired to Medina, where he was poisoned at the instigation of the latter. Moawiyah, now supreme lord of the Moslem world, transferred the seat of empire to Damascus, and sent a powerful army, under his son Yezid, to besiege Constantinople, the seat of the Roman empire; but the army returned to Syria without performing any services of importance. The Moslem arms, however, were more successful in Tartary and Africa under Saad and Okbha. On the death of Moawiyah, and accession of Yezid, an attempt was made to reinstate the family of Ali on the throne; but it proved unsuccessful. Yezid, however, behaved with clemency to the rival race; and the reputed descendants of Ali and Fatima are still numerous throughout the Mahometan world. In Arabia, Persia, and India, they are styled shereefs or seids; in Syria and Turkey, emirs.

From A.D. 661 to 750, the house of Moawiyah, commonly called the dy. nasty of the Ommiades, continued to enjoy the khalifate; but in the reign of Merwaun, an insurrection was made in favour of the great-grandson of Abbas, the uncle of the prophet, which terminated in a general massacre of the descendants of Moawiyah. The first of the Abassides fixed his court at Kufah, whence it was transferred to Haschemiah on the Euphrates; and Al Mansor, the second prince of the family, erected the magnificent city of Bagdad, which continued to be the residence of the Mahometan khalifs till its destruction by Hulaku the Tartar, about the middle of the 13th century. But the civil jurisdiction of the khalifate gradually diminished in the extent and power of its sway. Real or nominal descendants of Ali and Fatima had possessed themselves of the thrones of Egypt and Western Africa; and a prince of the Ommiades, who escaped the general massacre of his family, was founder of an independent kingdom in Spain. Thus, the sovereignty of Arabia was lost by the extent and rapidity of foreign conquest; and from being the seat and centre, it sank into a mere province of the Mahommedan empire. About the beginning of the 16th century, the Turks took captive, at Cairo, Mohammed XII., the last of the Abassides, and received from him, at Constantinople, the formal renunciation of the khalifate. The keys of the temple of Mekka were also delivered up by the Fatimite shereef, and from that time the ecclesiastical supremacy belonged to the Turkish sultans. The remaining history of Arabia, with the exception of what relates to two sects of religionists, the Karmathians and the Wahabys, that arose at different times, exhibits nothing more interesting than the squabbles of petty chieftains, and the rise and fall of different sheikhdoms or principalities.

Karmathians.] Near the close of the ninth century, (the 277th year of the Hegira,) a new prophet of the name of Karmath, appeared in the neighbourhood of Kufah, and soon gained an immense number of followers, occasioning great disturbance throughout Arabia. A persecution assisted the progress of this new sect, which aimed at an entire reformation of Mahometanism. The Karmathians made themselves masters of Bahhrein; Bassorah and Kufah were successively taken and pillaged; and Abu Thaher, the successor of Karmath, led his troops across the desert to the holy city, where 30,000 citizens and strangers were put to the sword, and the black stone of the Kaaba was borne away in triumph, but afterwards restored,

With a considerable principality in the heart of Arabia, these Karmathians continued, for a long time, the scourge of the khalifate, obliging it to pay an annual tribute that the pilgrimage to Mekka might be regularly performed.

Wahabys.] This is the name of another sect, which, more than half a century ago, started up in the province of Nedjed. It was originally directed solely to religious reform, and was rather an attempt to bring back Mahommedanism to its early simplicity than a new religion. Abdel Wahabe, the founder of this sect, was a native of El Howta, the chief seat of a tribe of the name of Temyn, in Nedjed. He was a man of education, having pursued his studies successively at Bassorah, Bagdad, and Damascus. His first doctrines probably extended no further than to his own peculiar interpretation of the koran; and his disciples were confined, for several years, to a few tribes of the desert. By degrees, however, they spread more widely; and the design of reforming the old religion of his country seems to have given place in his mind to that of establishing a new one. Different accounts are given of his creed, but it seems, in substance, to approach nearly to pure theism. When his influence became extensive, and his followers numerous, the sheikhs who did not acknowledge his authority attacked him in his native city. He defended himself successfully; and, on a subsequent occasion, defeated an army of 4000 men which had been raised against him. Mahomet Saoud, an emir in Nedjed, married Wahabe's daughter, and adopted his doctrines. By his exertions, and the exertions of his son and grandson, the spiritual power and temporal authority of the Wahabys were carried to a great extent. Two armies sent against Abdul Aziz (son of Mahomet Saoud) by the pacha of Bagdad were weakened by his address and discomfited by his valour. An expedition, led by the shereef of Mekka in 1794, was not more successful. The Atubis, the most powerful of the tribes who inhabit the coast, adopted the tenets of the Wahabys. The holy shrine at Carbela, where the pious Moslems annually wept the untimely death of the sons of Ali, was attacked by them in 1802, the tombs destroyed, and the town ransacked. The Wahabys now aspired to the possession of Mekka and Medina. Ghalib, the reigning shereef, was so unpopular among his subjects, that even his brother-in-law, Mozeifé, deserted to the Wahabys. In January, 1803, Abdul Aziz entrusted Mozeifé with the command of 12,000 men, who, in several battles, defeated the shereef. Tayif, where Ghalib had his finest palace and most flourishing gardens, was laid siege to and taken. All the holy tombs were destroyed, and among them, that of Abdullah Ebn Abbas, the uncle of Mahomet, a monument celebrated throughout Arabia for its beauty and sanctity. Mozeifé was appointed governor of Tayif, and Sâoud, the eldest son of Abdul Aziz, took the command of the army, with which he marched against Mekka so rapidly, that Ghalib fled, panic-struck, to Djidda; and on the 27th of April, 1803, the holy city fell into the hands of the Wahabite general. Many splendid tombs and other holy places were destroyed and plundered; but the Kaaba was uninjured. The following letter, which Sâoud transmitted to the Grand Seignior, conveys some notion of his views and transactions :—

"Saoud to Selim

"I entered Mekka on the fourth day of Moharem, in the 1218th year of the Hegira. I kept peace towards the inhabitants. I destroyed all the tombs that were idolatrously worshipped. I abolished the levying of