256 A BRIEF SURVEY OF HUMAN HISTORY

office ; where schools and colleges abounded ; whither philosophers,,
students, doctors, poets, and theologians came from all parts of

the civilized globe......The provincial capitals were embellished

with vast public buildings, and linked together by an effective
and rapid service of posts and caravans; the frontiers were
secure and well garrisoned, the army loyal, efficient and brave ;
the governors and ministers honest and forbearing. The empire
stretched with equal strength and unimpaired control from the
Ciiician gates to Aden, and from Egypt to Central Asia. Chris-
tian?. Pagans, Jews, as well as Moslems, were employed in the

government service___Traffic and wealth had taken the place of

revolution and famine___ Pestilence and disease were met by

imperial hospitals and government physicians. ... In government
business the rough-and-ready methods of Arabian administration
had fiiven place to a complicated system of Divans, initiated
partly from the Roman, but chiefly taken from the Persian system
of government. Posts, Finance, Privy Seal, Crown Lands, Justice
and Military Affairs were each administered by separate bureaux
in the hands of ministers and officials ; an army of clerks, scribes,
writers and accountants swarmed into these offices and gradually
swept the whole power of the government into their own hands
by separating the Commander of the Faithful from any direct
intercourse with his subjects.

" The Imperial Palace and the entourage were equally based
on Roman and Persian precedents. Eunuchs, closely veiled
' harems' of women, guards, spies, go-betweens, jesters, poets, and
dwarfs clustered around the person of the Commander of the
Faithful, each, in his degree, endeavouring to gain the royal favour
and indirectly distracting the royal mind from affairs of business
and state.

" Meanwhile the mercantile trade of the East poured gold into
Bagdad, and supplemented the other enormous stream of money
derived from the contributions of plunder and loot despatched to
the capital by the commanders of the victorious raiding forces
which harried Asia Minor, India, and Turkestan. The seemingly
unending supply of Turkish slaves and Byzantine specie added
to the richness of the revenues of Irak and, combined with the
vast commercial traffic of which Bagdad was the centre, produced
a large and powerful moneyed class, composed of the sons, of
generals, officialst landed proprietors, royal favourites, merchants,.