The caliphs of the house of Abbas, having built the city of Bagdad soon after their accession to the { 241} throne, transferred thither their court and the seat of power. For five centuries they reigned there with various degrees of authority; but foreign wars and domestic revolts gradually dissolved the empire, and their dominion at length passed away. Badhi, the twentieth caliph of the race, was "the last," says Abulfeda, "who harangued the people from the pulpit; who passed the cheerful hour of leisure with men of learning and taste; whose expenses, resources, and treasures, whose table and magnificence, had any resemblance to those of the ancient caliphs." "During the next three centuries," says a modern historian of the Arabian empire, "the successors of Mohammed swayed a feeble sceptre. Sometimes their state was so degraded that they were confined in their palaces like prisoners, and occasionally were almost reduced to the want of corporeal subsistence. The tragic scenes of fallen royalty at length were closed; for, towards the middle of the seventh century of the Hegira, the metropolis of Islamism fell into the hands of Houlagou Khan, the grandson of Zenghis Khan, and emperor of the Moguls and Tartars, who reigned at that period with absolute and unmixed despotism over every nation of the East. The caliph Mostasem, the thirty-seventh of his house, was murdered under circumstances of peculiar barbarity, and the caliphate of Bagdad { 242} expired. Though the dignity and sovereignty of the caliphs were lost by this fatal event, and the soul which animated the form had fled, yet the name existed for three centuries longer in the eighteen descendants of Mostanser Billah, a son, or pretended son, of Daker, the last but one of this race of princes.
"Mostanser Billah and his successors, to the number of eighteen, were called the second dynasty of the Abbassides, and were spiritual chiefs of the Mohammedan religion, but without the slightest vestige of temporal authority. When Selim, emperor of the Turks, conquered Egypt and destroyed the power of the Mamelukes, he carried the caliph, whom he found there a prisoner, to Constantinople, and accepted from him a renunciation of his ecclesiastical supremacy. On the death of the caliph, the family of the Abbassides, once so illustrious, and which had borne the title of caliph for almost eight hundred years, sunk with him from obscurity into oblivion." [4]