7.
I have said there were three great Sultans of the race of Seljuk, by whom the conquest of the West of Asia was begun and completed; their names are Togrul Beg, Alp Arslan, and Malek Shah. I have not to write their histories, but I may say a few words of their characters and their actions.
1. The first, Togrul, was the son and grandson of Mahometan Martyrs, and he inherited that fanaticism, which made the old Seljuk and the young Michael surrender their lives in their missionary warfare against the enemies of their faith. Each day he repeated the five prayers prescribed for the disciples of Islam; each week he gave two days to fasting; in every city which he made his own, he built a mosque before he built his palace. He introduced vast numbers of his wild countrymen into his provinces, and suffered their nomadic habits, on the condition of their becoming proselytes to his creed. He was the man suited to his time; mere material power was not adequate to the overthrow of the Saracenic sovereignty: rebellion after rebellion had been successful against the Caliph; and at the very time I speak of he was in subjection to a family of the old Persian race. But then he was spiritual head of the Empire as well as temporal; and, though he lay in his palace wallowing in brutal sensuality, he was still a sort of mock-Pope, even after his armies and his territories had been wrested from his hands; but it was the reward of Togrul's zeal to gain from him this spiritual prerogative, retaining which the Caliph could never have fallen altogether. He gave to Togrul the title of Rocnoddîn, or "the firm pillar of religion;" and, what was more to the purpose, he made him his vicegerent over the whole Moslem world. Armed with this religious authority, which was temporal in its operation, he went to war against the various insurgents who troubled the Caliph's repose, and substituted himself for them, a more powerful and insidious enemy than any or all. But even Mahomet, the Caliph's predecessor, would not have denied that Togrul was worthy of his hire; he turned towards Armenia and Asia Minor, and began that terrible war against the Cross, which was to last 500 years. The prodigious number of 130,000 Christians, in battle or otherwise, is said to be the sacrifice he offered up to the false prophet. On his victorious return, he was again recognized by his grateful master as his representative. He made his public entry into the imperial city on horseback. At the palace gate he showed the outward deference to the Caliph's authority which was his policy. He dismounted, his nobles laid aside their arms, and thus they walked respectfully into the recesses of the palace. According to the Saracenic ceremonial, the Caliph received them behind his black veil, the black garment of his family was cast over his shoulders, and the staff of Mahomet was in his hand. Togrul kissed the ground, and waited modestly, till he was led to the throne, and was there allowed to seat himself, and to hear the commission publicly declaring him invested with the authority of the Vicar of the Arch-deceiver. He was then successively clothed in seven robes of honour, and presented with seven slaves, the natives of the seven climates of the Saracenic Empire. His veil was perfumed with musk; two crowns were set upon his head; two scimitars were girded on his side, in token of his double reign over East and West. He twice kissed the Caliph's hand; and his titles were proclaimed by the voice of heralds and the applause of the Moslem.
Such was Togrul Beg, and such was his reward. After these exploits, he marched against his brother (for these Turkish tribes were always quarrelling over their prey), deposed him, strangled him and put to death a number of his adherents, married the Caliph's daughter, and then died without children. His power passed to his nephew Alp Arslan.
2. Alp Arslan, the second Sultan of the line of Seljuk, is said to signify in Turkish "the courageous lion:" and the Caliph gave its possessor the Arabic appellation of Azzaddin, or "Protector of Religion." It was the distinctive work of his short reign to pass from humbling the Caliph to attacking the Greek Emperor. Togrul had already invaded the Greek provinces of Asia Minor, from Cilicia to Armenia, along a line of 600 miles, and here it was that he had achieved his tremendous massacres of Christians. Alp Arslan renewed the war; he penetrated to Cæsarea in Cappadocia, attracted by the gold and pearls which encrusted the shrine of the great St. Basil. He then turned his arms against Armenia and Georgia, and conquered the hardy mountaineers of the Caucasus, who at present give such trouble to the Russians. After this he encountered, defeated, and captured the Greek Emperor. He began the battle with all the solemnity and pageantry of a hero of romance. Casting away his bow and arrows, he called for an iron mace and scimitar; he perfumed his body with musk, as if for his burial, and dressed himself in white, that he might be slain in his winding-sheet. After his victory, the captive Emperor of New Rome was brought before him in a peasant's dress; he made him kiss the ground beneath his feet, and put his foot upon his neck. Then, raising him up, he struck or patted him three times with his hand, and gave him his life and, on a large ransom, his liberty. At this time the Sultan was only forty-four years of age, and seemed to have a career of glory still before him. Twelve hundred nobles stood before his throne; two hundred thousand soldiers marched under his banner. As if dissatisfied with the South, he turned his arms against his own paternal wildernesses, with which his family, as I have related, had a feud. New tribes of Turks seem to have poured down, and were wresting Sogdiana from the race of Seljuk, as the Seljukians had wrested it from the Gaznevides. Alp had not advanced far into the country, when he met his death from the hand of a captive. A Carismian chief had withstood his progress, and, being taken, was condemned to a lingering execution. On hearing the sentence, he rushed forward upon Alp Arslan; and the Sultan, disdaining to let his generals interfere, bent his bow, but, missing his aim, received the dagger of his prisoner in his breast. His death, which followed, brings before us that grave dignity of the Turkish character, of which we have already had an example in Mahmood. Finding his end approaching, he has left on record a sort of dying confession:—"In my youth," he said, "I was advised by a sage to humble myself before God, to distrust my own strength, and never to despise the most contemptible foe. I have neglected these lessons, and my neglect has been deservedly punished. Yesterday, as from an eminence, I beheld the numbers, the discipline, and the spirit of my armies; the earth seemed to tremble under my feet, and I said in my heart, Surely thou art the king of the world, the greatest and most invincible of warriors. These armies are no longer mine; and, in the confidence of my personal strength, I now fall by the hand of an assassin." On his tomb was engraven an inscription, conceived in a similar spirit. "O ye, who have seen the glory of Alp Arslan exalted to the heavens, repair to Maru, and you will behold it buried in the dust."[42] Alp Arslan was adorned with great natural qualities both of intellect and of soul. He was brave and liberal: just, patient, and sincere: constant in his prayers, diligent in his alms, and, it is added, witty in his conversation;—but his gifts availed him not.
3. It often happens in the history of states and races, in which there is found first a rise and then a decline, that the greatest glories take place just then when the reverse is beginning or begun. Thus, for instance, in the history of the Ottoman Turks, to which I have not yet come, Soliman the Magnificent is at once the last and greatest of a series of great Sultans. So was it as regards this house of Seljuk. Malek Shah, the son of Alp Arslan, the third sovereign, in whom its glories ended, is represented to us in history in colours so bright and perfect, that it is difficult to believe we are not reading the account of some mythical personage. He came to the throne at the early age of seventeen; he was well-shaped, handsome, polished both in manners and in mind; wise and courageous, pious and sincere. He engaged himself even more in the consolidation of his empire than in its extension. He reformed abuses; he reduced the taxes; he repaired the high roads, bridges, and canals; he built an imperial mosque at Bagdad; he founded and nobly endowed a college. He patronised learning and poetry, and he reformed the calendar. He provided marts for commerce; he upheld the pure administration of justice, and protected the helpless and the innocent. He established wells and cisterns in great numbers along the road of pilgrimage to Mecca; he fed the pilgrims, and distributed immense sums among the poor.
He was in every respect a great prince; he extended his conquests across Sogdiana to the very borders of China. He subdued by his lieutenants Syria and the Holy Land, and took Jerusalem. He is said to have travelled round his vast dominions twelve times. So potent was he, that he actually gave away kingdoms, and had for feudatories great princes. He gave to his cousin his territories in Asia Minor, and planted him over against Constantinople, as an earnest of future conquests; and he may be said to have finally allotted to the Turcomans the fair regions of Western Asia, over which they roam to this day.
All human greatness has its term; the more brilliant was this great Sultan's rise, the more sudden was his extinction; and the earlier he came to his power, the earlier did he lose it He had reigned twenty years, and was but thirty-seven years old, when he was lifted up with pride and came to his end. He disgraced and abandoned to an assassin his faithful vizir, at the age of ninety-three, who for thirty years had been the servant and benefactor of the house of Seljuk. After obtaining from the Caliph the peculiar and almost incommunicable title of "the commander of the faithful," unsatisfied still, he wished to fix his own throne in Bagdad, and to deprive his impotent superior of his few remaining honours. He demanded the hand of the daughter of the Greek Emperor, a Christian, in marriage. A few days, and he was no more; he had gone out hunting, and returned indisposed; a vein was opened, and the blood would not flow. A burning fever took him off, only eighteen days after the murder of his vizir, and less than ten before the day when the Caliph was to have been removed from Bagdad.