In 1012 Hakem renewed the greater part of his absurd police regulations. He forbade women to take any part in funeral ceremonies, or to visit the tombs of their deceased relatives; the edicts against wine and forbidden fruits were more rigidly enforced; all the vines were destroyed, and their cultivation for the future prohibited; immense quantities of raisins were burnt, and the merchants forbidden to expose the fruit for sale; the same course was taken with regard to honey and dates, and no compensation whatever was allowed to the owners. In 1014 he ordered all the women of Cairo to confine themselves rigorously to their houses, and forbade them even to appear at the doors or windows, and shoemakers were forbidden to make shoes for them. This state of constraint they were compelled to endure until his death,—that is, for more than seven years and a half. It is related that, passing one day by certain baths, he heard a noise inside, and on being informed that some women were there, in contravention of his law, he ordered the doors and other approaches to be walled up, and the entire number perished of starvation. But it would be tedious to detail the numerous acts of fanaticism and folly of which he was guilty. Suffice it to say, that he committed every extravagance which could shock the prejudices or offend the scruples of his subjects. At last his folly reached its height, and he gave himself out to be the Deity incarnate, and called upon all men to render him divine honours. In these preposterous pretensions he was supported (perhaps instigated in the first place) by certain Persian _Da‘ís_, or emissaries of the Batení sect, of whom the principal were Mohammed ibn Ismail ed Darazí and Hamza ibn Alí ibn Ahmed el Hadí. These persons endeavoured to spread their doctrines in Cairo itself; but although a certain number of persons, impelled either by fear or love of gain, did acknowledge the divinity of the caliph and abjure the Mussulman religion—yet the greater part of the populace shrank from the profession of such impiety, and Hamza and Ed Darazí were compelled to seek safety in flight. They chose Syria for the next scene of their operations, and found ready believers in the mountaineers of Lebanon and Hermon—men who still clung in secret to the idolatrous sun-worship of their forefathers. Thus was the sect of the Druzes established in Syria: they take their name from Ed Darazí, but they regard Hamza as the true founder of their religion. And for eight hundred years a hardy and intelligent race have acknowledged for their god one of the maddest monsters that the world has ever produced! As for Hakem himself, his extravagant conduct could not long go unpunished. In the year 1021 he was assassinated, by the orders of his own sister, while engaged in one of his nocturnal ceremonies in Jebel Mokattem, where he was in the habit of retiring “to worship the planet Saturn, and hold converse with the devil.”