Ma´sūm’s thirst for conquest was not stayed by this splendid capture. He carried his raids far into Persia, laid Khorāsān waste, and swept off so many of its wretched inhabitants that the price of Persian slaves fell in the Bokhārā bazaar to a few pence.[477] His conduct towards other princes who had the misfortune to be his neighbours was equally devoid of mercy and good faith; and at his death, in 1799,[478] the people of Khiva, Kokand, and Balkh felt that Central Asia had been delivered from a scourge almost as terrible as that wielded by Chingiz Khān. Amongst his own subjects Ma´sūm left behind him a reputation of piety and virtue. “Under his reign,” writes `Abd ul-Kerīm,[479] “the prosperity of Bokhārā excited the envy of Paradise. Religion had then taken a new lease of life. The prince was occupied only in good works, in prayers and practising devotion. He had renounced the pleasures and pomps of this world; he touched neither gold nor silver, and he spent on his own needs only the proceeds of the capitation tax levied from Jews and infidels.” Historians who are not blinded by religious prejudice give us a very different estimate of his character and the influence of his reign. Under this cruel and hypocritical bigot Bokhārā lost the last semblance of national spirit, and succumbed to a terrorism such as that which sapped the power of Spain. Ma´sūm it was who revived the office of Rā´is-i-Sharī`at, or religious censor, which had fallen into desuetude in the rest of Islām. These officials drove the people to prayer with whips, visited neglect of outward observances with severe floggings, and, on its repetition, with death. The use of wine and tobacco was forbidden under the like penalties, and thieves and prostitutes were delivered over without trial to the executioner. Spoliation and the levy of blackmail were carried by these pests to the height of a fine art, and the sanctity of the harem itself was not respected.[480] No system can be conceived which was better calculated to repress all independence of thought and action, and encourage the growth of hypocrisy and even darker vices.