Spring waves her flowery banner to the east wind.
By this distich, inserted by the historian, Sahireddin, in his work, the existence of a particular language in Thaberistan is made known to Europe. It consists of a mixture of Mongol, Ouigour, and Persian words.[258] The inspiration of the native poet, had so great an effect upon the two princes, that, without waiting for the khan’s permission, they raised the siege, and marched home, in order fully to enjoy, in their native plains, the delights of returning spring, unmindful of the wrath of Hulaku Khan, of which they soon felt the full weight. Gasan Behadir was despatched from the army, to chastise them for their disobedience. The prince of Ruyan, who had first set his son-in-law the bad example of withdrawing, had the magnanimity to take the whole fault upon himself, and, in order not to expose his own, and his relative’s possessions, to the ravages of the Mongols, he went, of his own accord, to Amul, where Gasan Behadir had encamped. He had the good fortune to appease the khan, and received, both for himself and the shah of Masenderan, a new investiture of their principalities, which had been declared forfeited by their disobedience.
The effect of this invocation of spring, of the Thaberistani poet, is, although in an opposite manner, no less remarkable in martial and literary history, than are the hymns, with which Tyrtæus animated the Spartans to the combat; and, if the Greek poet has been imitated in our own time, in the songs of the Prussian and Austrian soldiery, and with the happiest effect, nevertheless, no siege has ever been raised yet, either by the Pervigilium Veneris, or by Bürger’s imitation of it. This desertion of the siege, by the two commanders, explains its protraction, for full three years; a period, which, without being extended to thirty, appears amply sufficient, since Alamut, the strongest of the Assassin’s fortresses, yielded, on the third day, after being summoned by Hulaku.
After the fall of Alamut, the residence of the grand-master, and the centre of the order, Atamelik Jowaini, the learned vizier and historian, asked and obtained from Hulaku, permission to search the celebrated library and archives of the order, for the purpose of saving the works which might be worthy of the khan’s preserving. He laid aside the Koran and some other precious books, and committed to the flames, not only all the philosophical and sceptical works, containing the Ismailite doctrine, and written in harmony with it, but also all the mathematical and astronomical instruments, and thus at once destroyed every source from which history might have derived a more circumstantial account of the dogmas of the Ismailites, and the statutes of the order. Fortunately, in his own history, he preserved the results of the information which he derived from the library and archives of the order, together with a biographical sketch of Hassan Sabah, from which all the more modern Persian historians, as Mirkhond and Wassaf, have collected their stories, and which we ourselves have likewise followed.[259]
The existence of this library, at the time of the Conquest, convicts of hypocrisy the sixth grand-master, Jelaleddin Nev Musulman; since he could not have committed to the flames, in the presence of the deputies of Kaswin, the archives and doctrinal works of the order which remain preserved, for the inquisitorial zeal of Atamelik Jowaini. This fanatical zeal has, at all periods, but particularly in the middle ages, converted millions of books into ashes. If the west does, not unjustly[260] (as Gibbon believes), accuse the Khalif Omar of the conflagration of the Alexandrian library, the east returns the charge with the accusation of the burning of the books at Tripoli, where an immense library of Arabic works was consumed by the Crusaders.[261] The assertion that, in the former place, the baths were heated for a space of six months with the wisdom of the Greeks, is as extravagant as that in Tripoli alone, three millions of Arabic manuscripts fed the flames: but that both conflagrations were lighted up by the torch of fanaticism, is not, on that account, the less an historical fact, clearly attested and confirmed by the first historians of the east.[262] The library of Alexandria was burnt by the Moslimin, because, according to the instructions of Omar, the Koran only was the book of books, and all knowledge not contained in it was vain and useless. The library at Tripoli was consumed by the Christians, because it contained, for the most part, nothing but the Koran, and the works written on it. At Alamut the Koran was preserved by Jowaini, and the philosophical works written against it, doomed to destruction; and at Fas, a century before, an auto da fe of theological books was held by Sultan Yakub.[263] Had these two alone been lost, there would not be so much reason to complain; but with them, the conflagrations of Alexandria and Alamut swept away treasures of Grecian, Egyptian, Persian, and Indian philosophy.
END OF BOOK VI.
BOOK VII.
Conquest of Bagdad—Fall of the Assassins—Remnant of them.