Our Iron Age commences in the East, where it witnessed the extinction of the Princes of the Captivity by the ignominious death of the last sovereign, the downfall of the schools, and the dispersion of the community, which from that period remained an abject and degraded part of the population. During the ninth and tenth centuries the Caliphate fell into weakness and confusion, and split up into several kingdoms under conflicting sovereigns, and at the same time Judaism in the East was distracted by continual disputes between the Princes of the Captivity and the masters of the schools. The tribunals of the civil and temporal powers of the Eastern Jewish community were in perpetual collision, so that this singular state was weakened internally by its own dissensions. When a violent and rapacious caliph, Ahmed Kader, ascended the throne, he cast a jealous look on the powers of his vassal sovereign, and, without pretext, he seized Scherira, the prince of the community, now a hundred years old, imprisoned him and his son Hai, and confiscated their wealth. Hai escaped to resume his office and to transmit its honours and its dangers to Hezekiah, who was elected chief of the community, but after a reign of two years was arrested with all his family by order of the caliph Abdallah Kaim ben Marillah (A.D. 1036). The schools were closed. Many of the learned fled to Spain, where the revulsion under the Almohades had not yet taken place; all were dispersed. Among the rest two of the sons of the unfortunate Prince of the Captivity effected their escape to Spain, while the last of the House of David who reigned over the Jews of the Dispersion in Babylonia perished on the scaffold. The Jewish communities in Palestine suffered a slower but more complete dissolution. Benjamin of Tudela in the compilation of his travels in the twelfth century gives a humiliating account of the few brethren who still clung, in dire poverty and meanness, to their native land. In Tyre he found 400 Jews, mostly glass-blowers. There were in Jerusalem only 200, almost all dyers of wool. Ascalon contained 153 Jews; Tiberias, the seat of learning, and of the kingly patriarchate, but fifty. In the Byzantine Empire the number of Jews had greatly diminished. We pursue our dark progress to the West, where we find all orders gradually arrayed in fierce and implacable animosity against the race of Isræl. Every passion was in arms against them. In that singular structure, the feudal system, which rose like a pyramid from the villeins, or slaves attached to the soil, to the monarch who crowned the edifice, the, Jews alone found no proper place. In France and England they were the actual property of the king, and there was nowhere any tribunal to which they could appeal.