Such was the celebrated empire of the Abbassides in its halcyon days of undiminished power--such the beautiful City of Peace, the favoured home of imperial magnificence, ere the despoiling Tartar had profaned its loveliness and destroyed its grandeur. Yet, when we look beneath the brilliant exterior of these Oriental scenes and characters, we discover, under the splendour and elegance by which the eyes of the world were so long dazzled, the corruption and licentiousness of a government containing within itself the seeds of its own insecurity and ultimate destruction. We behold the absence of all fixed principles of legislation; we frequently find absolute monarchs guided solely by passion or caprice in the administration of arbitrary laws, and swaying the destinies of a people who, as a whole, were far from deriving any substantial advantage from the wealth and greatness of their despotic rulers. We are thus led to observe the evils that necessarily result from a want of those principles of vital religion, without which mere human learning is so inadequate to discipline the passions or direct the reason, and of those just and equal laws, the supremacy of which can alone secure the happiness of a people or the permanency of political institutions.--_Trans_. [7] See note D, page 212. [8] See note E, page 218. [9] See note F, page 313. [10] Cardonne, in his History of Spain. [11] This word signifies, in the Arabic, _Flower_, or _Ornament of the World_. [12] See Note G, page 213. [13] The _dinar_ is estimated by M. Florian to be equal to at least _ten livres_. According to that computation, the aggregate cost of the palace and city of Zahra would amount to considerably more than $14,000,000. _Trans_. [14] See note H, page 214. [15] About $22,500,000. [16] See Note I, page 214. [17] Mahadi, Suleiman, Ali, Abderamus IV., Casim, Jahiah, Hacchem III., Mohammed, Abderamus V., Jahiah II., Hacchem IV., and Jalmar-ben-Mohammed. {85} THIRD EPOCH. CONTAINING AN ACCOUNT OF THE PRINCIPAL KINGDOMS THAT SPRANG FROM THE RUINS OF THE CALIPHATE. _Extending from the Commencement of the Eleventh to the Middle of the Thirteenth Century._ At the commencement of the eleventh century, when the throne of Cordova was daily stained by the blood of some new usurper, the governors of the different cities, as has been already remarked, had assumed the title of kings. Toledo, Saragossa, Seville, Valencia, Lisbon, Huesca, and several other places of inferior importance, each possessed independent sovereigns.