The elements of political weakness and decay soon began to be developed in the chief seat of the Saracen empire. In the earliest days of the caliphate, after the accession of the Ommiade dynasty, the princes of Damascus were regarded as the heads of the Moslem faith; while the governors of Arabia successively obtained, as to civil rule, their independence. To this the widely-extended wars in which the caliphs were engaged no doubt {236} contributed. Other provinces followed the example; and, as the empire enlarged, the remoteness and degeneracy of the Syrian court encouraged the governors to assume to themselves everything except the name of king, and to render their dignities hereditary. All the provinces were nominally connected with the empire by the payment of tribute; but means were easily devised to withhold this, under pretence of prosecuting the wars of the caliph, though really to strengthen his rebellious deputies against him. If in this we discover a want of efficiency in the government, we need not be surprised: the systems of the Macedonian hero and of the Roman conquerors were equally defective; and perhaps we should attribute such deficiency to a wise and beneficent arrangement of Providence, which, that oppression may never become permanent and universal, permits not any empire for a very long time to hold dominion over countries dissimilar in their habits and character and independent of each other. To the establishment of these separate states, the luxury and effeminacy of the court at Damascus in no small degree contributed. In the early periods of the caliphate, simplicity and charity chiefly distinguished their rulers; but, as the wealth and power of the Saracens increased, they imitated the splendour and magnificence of the monarchs of Persia {237} and Greece. Abulfeda says of the court in the year 917: "The Caliph Moctadi's whole army, both horse and foot, were under arms, which together made a body of one hundred and sixty thousand men. His state officers stood near him in the most splendid apparel, their belts shining with gold and gems. Near them were seven thousand black and white eunuchs. The porters or doorkeepers were in number seven hundred. Barges and boats, with the most superb decorations, were swimming on the Tigris. Nor was the palace itself less splendid, in which were hung thirty-eight thousand pieces of tapestry, twelve thousand five hundred of which were of silk embroidered with gold. The carpets on the floor were twenty-two thousand. A hundred lions were brought out, with a keeper to each lion. Among the other spectacles of rare and stupendous luxury was a tree of gold and silver, which opened itself into eighteen larger branches, upon which and the other smaller branches sat birds of every sort, made also of gold and silver. The tree glittered with leaves of the same metals; and while its branches, through machinery, appeared to