I shall give a brief account of the most remarkable of them, in order of time. In the reign of al Mohdi, the third Khalîf of the race of al Abbâs, one Hakem Ebn Hâshem4, originally of Merû, in Khorasân, who had been an under- secretary to Abu Moslem, the governor of that province, and afterwards turned soldier, passed thence into Mawarâlnahr, where he gave himself out for a prophet. He is generally named by the Arab writers al Mokanna, and sometimes al Borkaí, that is, "the veiled," because he used to cover his face with a veil, or a gilded mask, to conceal his deformity, having lost an eye in the ward, and being otherwise of a despicable appearance; though his followers pretended he did it for the same reasons as Moses did, viz., lest the splendour of his countenance should dazzle the eyes of the beholders. He made a great many proselytes at Nakhshab and Kash, deluding the people with several juggling performances, which they swallowed for miracles, and particularly by causing the appearance of a moon to rise out of a well, for many nights together; whence he was also called, in the Persian tongue, Sâzendeh mah, or the moonmaker. This impious impostor, not content with being reputed a prophet, arrogated divine honours to himself, pretending that the deity resided in his person: and the doctrine whereon he built this was the same with that of the Gholâïtes above mentioned, who affirmed a transmigration or successive manifestation of the divinity through and in certain prophets and holy men, from Adam to these latter days (of which opinion was also Abu Moslem himself);1 but the particular doctrine of al Mokanna was, that the person in whom the deity had last resided was the aforesaid Abu Moslem, and that the same had, since his death, passed into himself. The faction of al Mokanna, who had made himself master of several fortified places in the neighbourhood of the cities above mentioned, growing daily more and more powerful, the Khalîf was at length obliged to send an army to reduce him; at the approach whereof al Mokanna retired into one of his strongest fortresses, which he had well provided for a siege, and sent his emissaries abroad to pursuade people that he raised the dead to life, and knew future events. But, being straitly besieged by the Khalîf's forces, when he found there was no possibility for him to escape, he gave poison, in wine, to his whole family, and all that were with him in the castle; and when they were dead he burnt their bodies, together with their clothes, and all the provisions and cattle; and then, to prevent his own body's being found, he threw himself into the flames, or, as others say, into a tub of aqua fortis, or some other preparation, which consumed every part of him, except only his hair: so that when the besiegers entered the place, they found no creature in it, save one of al Mokanna's concubines, who, suspecting his design, had hid herself, and discovered the whole matter.