But the Golden Age soon faded away. Provinces rebelled. Lieutenants assumed independence. Faction and tumult became the chronic state of the capital, and riotous attack was ever threatening the helpless Caliphs at their very door. The reason is not far to search for. A change had come over the military forces of the empire. From the very first, the Abbasside Caliphs had regarded the Arab tribes, the real backbone of the Caliphate, with a jealous and distrustful eye; and these, cast at last aside, and the stipendiary support of the Dewân withdrawn, were now rapidly returning to nomad life, or mingling with the settled population. Instead of trusting them, or playing off one tribe against another, as the Omeyyads did, the Caliphs of Baghdad, in an evil hour, introduced Turkish mercenaries from Central Asia; and, by-and-by, they committed the protection of their own persons to a body-guard of these. The servant soon came to be the master. The staff pierced the hand that leaned upon it. The Caliphate became the sport and plaything of the Turkish soldiery, and sank in impotency and contempt. * * * * * [Sidenote: Politico-religious influences still surviving.] Islam had now run its course of growth and change. After this, we see no new phase development, spiritual, social, or political. The considerations and incentives peculiar to the Moslem faith, and those connected with the native tribes and families in which it took its birth, became for the most part faint and feeble with the lapse of time, or merged into the common motives which influence mankind. The Mahometan world, as it advanced in years, we find guided more and more by ordinary mundane causes. Nations rise and fall, as elsewhere they rise and fall. Rebellion and vicissitude alternate with prosperity and peace. Yet some of the principles and causes of action which I have sought to trace, though in later times less prominent, have never altogether ceased to operate. Of the four great powers which influenced the fortunes of the Moslem world during the first two centuries, only one, the Alyite, remains unimpaired. The _Arab tribes_ ceased in the third century to be a distinct military force, the arbiter of Moslem dynasties, as well as the means by which the Faith was spread. Gorged with the prey of the world, they had already lost their early fire, when the fence set up by Omar between them and the conquered races having been broken down, the grand military organisation was swept away, and their place taken by mercenary levies. Henceforth we meet them no more as an independent force in the body politic. The _Coreish_, with the collapse of the Caliphate, have passed out of sight, excepting as a race of noble memories. The Abbassides are known no longer. But _Alyite_ influence, unaffected by the lapse of time, is at some points stronger now even than it ever was. And although the Arabs, as a military institution, have long ago