a city, arose near the ruins of Cufa.177 Many thousands of the Shiites repose in holy ground at the feet of the vicar of God; and the desert is vivified by the numerous and annual visits of the Persians, who esteem their devotion not less meritorious than the pilgrimage of Mecca.

The persecutors of Mahomet usurped the inheritance of his children; and the champions of idolatry became the supreme heads of his religion and empire. The opposition of Abu Sophian had been fierce and obstinate; his conver sion was tardy and reluctant; his new faith was fortified by necessity and interest; he served, he fought, perhaps he believed; and the sins of the time of ignorance were expiated by the recent merits of the family of Ommiyah. Moawiyan, the son of Abu Sophian, and of the cruel Henda, was dignified, in his early youth, with the office or title of secretary of the prophet: the judgment of Omar intrusted him with the government of Syria; and he administered that important province above forty years, either in a subordinate or supreme rank. Without renouncing the fame of valor and liberality, he affected the reputation of humanity and moderation: a grateful people was attached to their benefactor; and the victorious Moslems were enriched with the spoils of Cyprus and Rhodes. The sacred duty of pursuing the assassins of Othman was the engine and pretence of his ambition. The bloody shirt of the martyr was exposed in the mosch of Damascus the emir deplored the fate of his injured kinsman; and sixty thousand Syrians were engaged in his service by an oath of fidelity and revenge. Amrou, the conqueror of Egypt, himself an army, was the first who saluted the new monarch, and divulged the dangerous secret, that the Arabian caliphs might be created elsewhere than in the city of the prophet.178 The policy of Moawiyah eluded the valor of his rival; and, after the death of Ali, he negotiated the abdication of his son Hassan, whose mind was either above or below the government of the world, and who retired without a sigh from the palace of Cufa to an humble cell near the

177 The city of Meshed Ali, five or six miles from the ruins of Cufa, and one hundred and twenty to the south of Bagdad, is of the size and form of the modern Jerusalem. Meshed Hosein, larger and more populous, is at the distance of thirty miles

178 I borrow, on this occasion, the strong sense and expression of Tacitus, Hist. i. 4 :) Evulgato imperi arcano posse imperstorem alibi quam Roma fieri.

tomb of his grandfather. The aspiring wishes of the caliph were finally crowned by the important change of an elective to an hereditary kingdom. Some murmurs of freedom o fanaticism attested the reluctance of the Arabs, and four citi. zens of Medina refused the oath of fidelity; but the designs of Moawiyah were conducted with vigor and address; and his son Yezid, a feeble and dissolute youth, was proclaimed as the commander of the faithful and the successor of the apostle of God

A familiar story is related of the benevolence of one of the sons of Ali. In serving at table, a slave had inadvertently dropped a dish of scalding broth on his master: the heedless wretch fell prostrate, to deprecate his punishment, and repeated a verse of the Koran : "Paradise is for those who command their anger: 99 "I am not angry: 99 "and for

those who pardon offences: " "I pardon your offence :". "and for those who return good for evil:"-"I give you your liberty, and four hundred pieces of silver." With an equal measure of piety, Hosein, the younger brother of IIassan, inherited a remnant of his father's spirit, and served with honor against the Christians in the siege of Constantinople. The primogeniture of the line of Hashem, and the holy character of grandson of the apostle, had centred in his person, and he was at liberty to prosecute his claim against Yezid, the tyrant of Damascus, whose vices he despised, and whose title he had never deigned to acknowledge. A list was secretly transmitted from Cufa to Medina, of one hundred and forty thousand Moslems, who professed their attachment to his cause, and who were eager to draw their swords so soon as he should appear on the banks of the Euphrates. Against the advice of his wisest friends, he resolved to trust his person and family in the hands of a perfidious people. He traversed the desert of Arabia with a timorous retinue of women and children; but as he approached the confines of Irak he was alarmed by the solitary or hostile face of the country, and suspected either the defection or ruin of his party. His fears were just: Obeidollah, the governor of Cufa, had extinguished the first sparks of an insurrection; and Hosein, in the plain of Kerbela, was encompassed by a body of five thousand horse, who intercepted his communica tion with the city and the river. He might still have escaped to a fortress in the desert, that had defied the power of Cæsar and Chosroes, and confided in the fidelity of the tribe of Tai

hich would have armed ten thousand warriors in his de fence. In a conference with the chief of the enemy, he pro posed the option of three honorable conditions: that he should be allowed to return to Medina, or be stationed in a frontier garrison against the Turks, or safely conducted to the pres ence of Yezid. But the commands of the caliph, or his lieutenant, were stern and absolute; and Hosein was informed that he must either submit as a captive and a criminal to the commander of the faithful, or expect the consequences of his rebellion. "Do you think," replied he, "to terrify me with death?" And, during the short respite of a night," he prepared with calm and solemn resignation to encounter his fate He checked the lamentations of his sister Fatima, who deplored the impending ruin of his house. "Our trust," said Hosein, "is in God alone. All things, both in heaven and earth, must perish and return to their Creator. My brother, my father, my mother, were better than me, and every Mussulman has an example in the prophet." He pressed his friends to consult their safety by a timely flight: they unanimously refused to desert or survive their beloved master: and their courage was fortified by a fervent prayer and the assurance of paradise. On the morning of the fatal day, he mounted on horseback, with his sword in one hand and the Koran in the other: his generous band of martyrs consisted only of thirty-two horse and forty foot; but their flanks and rear were secured by the tent-ropes, and by a deep trench which they had filled with lighted fagots, according to the practice of the Arabs. The enemy advanced with reluctance, and one of their chiefs deserted, with thirty followers, to claim the partnership of inevitable death. In every close onset, or single combat, the despair of the Fatimites was invincible; but the surrounding multitudes galled them from a distance with a cloud of arrows, and the horses and men were successively slain: a truce was allowed on both sides for the hour of prayer; and the battle at length expired by the death of the last companions of Hosein. Alone, weary, and wounded, he seated himself at the door of his tent. he tasted a drop of water, he was pierced in the mouth with a dart; and his son and nephew, two beautiful youths, were killed in his arms. He lifted his hands to heaven; they were

• According to Major Price's authorities, a much longer time elapsed (p. 400. &)-M

full of blood; and he uttered a funeral prayer for the ving and the dead In a transport of despair his sister issued from the tent, and adjured the general of the Cufians, that he would not suffer Hosein to be murdered before his eyes: a tear trickled down his venerable beard; and the boldest of his soldiers fell back on every side as the dying hero threw himself among them. The remorseless Shamer, a name detested by the faithful, reproached their cowardice; and the grandson of Mahomet was slain with three-and-thirty strokes of lances and swords. After they had trampled on his body. they carried his head to the castle of Cufa, and the inhuman Obeidollah struck him on the mouth with a cane: "Alas," exclaimed an aged Mussulman, "on these lips have I seen the lips of the apostle of God! In a distant age and climate, the tragic scene of the death of Hosein will awaken the sym. pathy of the coldest reader.179 * On the annual festival of his martyrdom, in the devout pilgrimage to his sepulchre, his Persian votaries abandon their souls to the religious frenzy of sorrow and indignation.180

179 I have abridged the interesting narrative of Ockley, (tom. ii. p 170-231.) It is long and minute; but the pathetic, almost always, consists in the detail of little circumstances.

180 Niebuhr the Dane (Voyages en Arabie, &c., tom. ii. p. 208, &c.) is, perhaps, the only European traveller who has dared to visit Meshed Ali and Meshed Hosein. The two sepulchres are in the hands of the Turks, who tolerate and tax the devotion of the Persian heretics.

* The account of Hosein's death, in the Persian Tarikh Tebry, is much longer; in some circumstances, more pathetic, than that of Ockley, followed by Gibbon. His family, after his defenders were all slain, perished in succession before his eyes. They had been cut off from the water, and suffered all the agonies of thirst. His eldest son, Ally Akbar, after ten different assaults on the enemy, in each of which he slew two or three, complained bitterly of his sufferings from heat and thirst. "His father arose, and introducing his own tongue within the parched lips of his favorite child, thus endeavored to alleviate his sufferings by the only means of which his enemies had not yet been able to deprive him." Ally was slain and cut to pieces in his sight: this wrung from him his first and only cry; then it was that his sister Zeyneb rushed from the tent. The rest, including his nephew, fell in succession. Hosein's horse was wounded - he fell to the ground. The hour of prayer, between noon and sunset, had arrived; the Imaun began the religious duties:-as Hosein prayed, he heard the cries of his infant child Abdallah, only twelve months old. The child was, at his desire, placed on his bosom as he wept over it, it was transfixed by an arrow. Hosein dragged himself to the Euphrates as he slaked his burning thirst, his mouth was pierced by an arrow: he drank his own blood. Wounded in four-and-thirty places, he still gallantly resisted. A soldier named Zeraiah gave the fatal wound: his head was cut off by Zilwusheng Price, p. 402, 410. — M.

When the sisters and children of Ali were brought in chains to the throne of Damascus, the caliph was advised to extirpate the enmity of a popular and hostile race, whom he had injured, beyond the hope of reconciliation. But Yezid preferred the councils of mercy; and the mourning family was honorably dismissed to mingle their tears with their kindred at Medina. The glory of martyrdom superseded the right of primogeni ture; and the twelve IMAMS,' 181 or pontiffs, of the Persian creed, are Ali, Hassan, Hosein, and the lineal descendants of Hosein to the ninth generation. Without arms, or treasures or subjects, they successively enjoyed the veneration of the people, and provoked the jealousy of the reigning caliphs their tombs, at Mecca or Medina, on the banks of the Euphra tes, or in the province of Chorasan, are still visited by the devotion of their sect. Their names were often the pretence of sedition and civil war; but these royal saints despised the pomp of the world: submitted to the will of God and the injustice of man; and devoted their innocent lives to the study and practice of religion. The twelfth and last of the Imams, conspicuous by the title of Mahadi, or the Guide, surpassed the solitude and sanctity of his predecessors. He concealed himself in a cavern near Bagdad: the time and place of his death are unknown; and his votaries pretend that he still lives, and will appear before the day of judgment to overthrow the tyranny of Dejal, or the Antichrist.182 In the lapse of two or three centuries, the posterity of Abbas, the uncle of Mahomet, had multiplied to the number of thirtythree thousand: 183 the race of Ali might be equally prolific : the meanest individual was above the first and greatest of princes; and the most eminent were supposed to excel the perfection of angels. But their adverse fortune, and the wide extent of the Mussulman empire, allowed an ample scope

The festival of the death of Hosein is amply described by Sir John Chardin, a traveller whom I have often praised.

181 The general article of Imam, in D'Herbelot's Bibliothèque, will indicate the succession; and the lives of the twelve are given under their respective names.

182 The name of Antichrist may seem ridiculous, but the Mahometans have liberally borrowed the fables of every religion, (Sale's Pre'iminary Discourse, p. 80, 82.) In the royal stable of spahan, twe horses were always kept saddled, one for the Mahadi himself, the other for his lieutenant, Jesus the son of Mary.

183 In the year of the Hegira 200, (A. D 815.) See D'Herbelat, p