commander pronounced the death of the caliph Mostasem, the last of the temporal successors of Mahomet; whose noble kinsmen, of the race of Abbas, had reigned in Asia above five hundred years. Whatever might be the designs of the conqueror, the holy cities of Mecca and Medina 26 were protected by the Arabian desert; but the Moguls spread beyond the Tigris and Euphrates, pillaged Aleppo and Damascus, and threatened to join the Franks in the deliverance of Jerusalem. Egypt was lost, had she been defended only by her feeble offspring; but the Mamalukes had breathed in their infancy the keenness of a Scythian air: equal in valor, superior in discipline, they met the Moguls in many a well-fought field; and drove back the stream of hostility to the eastward of the Euphrates. 261 But it overflowed with resistless violence the kingdoms of Armenia 262 and Anatolia, of which the former was possessed by the Christians, and the latter by the Turks. The sultans of Iconium opposed some resistance to the Mogul arms, till Azzadin sought a refuge among the Greeks of Constantinople, and his feeble successors, the last of the Seljukian dynasty, were finally extirpated by the khans of Persia. 263 231 (return) [ See the curious account of the expedition of Holagou, translated from the Chinese, by M. Abel Remusat, Mélanges Asiat. 2d ser. tom. i. p. 171.—M.] 24 (return) [ All that can be known of the Assassins of Persia and Syria is poured from the copious, and even profuse, erudition of M. Falconet, in two _Mémoires_ read before the Academy of Inscriptions, (tom. xvii. p. 127—170.) * Note: Von Hammer’s History of the Assassins has now thrown Falconet’s Dissertation into the shade.—M.] 25 (return) [ The Ismaelians of Syria, 40,000 Assassins, had acquired or founded ten castles in the hills above Tortosa. About the year 1280, they were extirpated by the Mamalukes.] 251 (return) [ Compare Von Hammer, Geschichte der Assassinen, p. 283, 307. Wilken, Geschichte der Kreuzzüge, vol. vii. p. 406. Price, Chronological Retrospect, vol. ii. p. 217—223.—M.] 26 (return) [ As a proof of the ignorance of the Chinese in foreign transactions, I must observe, that some of their historians extend the conquest of Zingis himself to Medina, the country of Mahomet, (Gaubil p. 42.)] 261 (return) [ Compare Wilken, vol. vii. p. 410.—M.] 262 (return) [ On the friendly relations of the Armenians with the Mongols see Wilken, Geschichte der Kreuzzüge, vol. vii. p. 402. They eagerly desired an alliance against the Mahometan powers.—M.] 263 (return) [ Trebizond escaped, apparently by the dexterous politics of the sovereign, but it acknowledged the Mogul supremacy. Falmerayer, p. 172.—M.]