n. But this Barbarian, by his personal merit,
and the extent of his empire, was the greatest prince of his age.
After the settlement of Persia and Syria, he marched at the head of
innumerable armies to achieve the conquest of Turkestan, which had been
undertaken by his father. In his passage of the Oxus, the boatmen, who
had been employed in transporting some troops, complained, that their
payment was assigned on the revenues of Antioch. The sultan frowned at
this preposterous choice; but he miled at the artful flattery of his
vizier. "It was not to postpone their reward, that I selected those
remote places, but to leave a memorial to posterity, that, under your
reign, Antioch and the Oxus were subject to the same sovereign." But
this description of his limits was unjust and parsimonious: beyond the
Oxus, he reduced to his obedience the cities of Bochara, Carizme, and
Samarcand, and crushed each rebellious slave, or independent savage, who
dared to resist. Malek passed the Sihon or Jaxartes, the last boundary
of Persian civilization: the hordes of Turkestan yielded to his
supremacy: his name was inserted on the coins, and in the prayers of
Cashgar, a Tartar kingdom on the extreme borders of China. From the
Chinese frontier, he stretched his immediate jurisdiction or feudatory
sway to the west and south, as far as the mountains of Georgia, the
neighborhood of Constantinople, the holy city of Jerusalem, and the
spicy groves of Arabia Felix. Instead of resigning himself to the luxury
of his harem, the shepherd king, both in peace and war, was in action
and in the field. By the perpetual motion of the royal camp, each
province was successively blessed with his presence; and he is said to
have perambulated twelve times the wide extent of his dominions,
which surpassed the Asiatic reign of Cyrus and the caliphs. Of these
expeditions, the most pious and splendid was the pilgrimage of Mecca:
the freedom and safety of the caravans were protected by his arms; the
citizens and pilgrims were enriched by the profusion of his alms; and
the desert was cheered by the places of relief and refreshment, which
he instituted for the use of his brethren. Hunting was the pleasure, and
even the passion, of the sultan, and his train consisted of forty-seven
thousand horses; but after the massacre of a Turkish chase, for each
piece of game, he bestowed a piece of gold on the poor, a slight
atonement, at the expense of the people, for the cost and