* * * * * * * *
Such was the celebrated empire of the Abbassides in its halcyon days of undiminished power—such the beautiful City of Peace, the favoured home of imperial magnificence, ere the despoiling Tartar had profaned its loveliness and destroyed its grandeur. Yet, when we look beneath the brilliant exterior of these Oriental scenes and characters, we discover, under the splendour and elegance by which the eyes of the world were so long dazzled, the corruption and licentiousness of a government containing within itself the seeds of its own insecurity and ultimate destruction. We behold the absence of all fixed principles of legislation; we frequently find absolute monarchs guided solely by passion or caprice in the administration of arbitrary laws, and swaying the destinies of a people who, as a whole, were far from deriving any substantial advantage from the wealth and greatness of their despotic rulers. We are thus led to observe the evils that necessarily result from a want of those principles of vital religion, without which mere human learning is so inadequate to discipline the passions or direct the reason, and of those just and equal laws, the supremacy of which can alone secure the happiness of a people or the permanency of political institutions.—Trans.
[7] See note D, page 212.
[8] See note E, page 218.
[9] See note F, page 313.
[10] Cardonne, in his History of Spain.
[11] This word signifies, in the Arabic, Flower, or Ornament of the World.
[12] See Note G, page 213.
[13] The dinar is estimated by M. Florian to be equal to at least ten livres. According to that computation, the aggregate cost of the palace and city of Zahra would amount to considerably more than $14,000,000. Trans.
[14] See note H, page 214.