duction even of the abstract
sciences; and the more rigid doctors of the law condemned the rash and
pernicious curiosity of Almamon. To the thirst of martyrdom, the vision
of paradise, and the belief of predestination, we must ascribe the
invincible enthusiasm of the prince and people. And the sword of the
Saracens became less formidable when their youth was drawn away from the
camp to the college, when the armies of the faithful presumed to read
and to reflect. Yet the foolish vanity of the Greeks was jealous
of their studies, and reluctantly imparted the sacred fire to the
Barbarians of the East.

In the bloody conflict of the Ommiades and Abbassides, the Greeks had
stolen the opportunity of avenging their wrongs and enlarging their
limits. But a severe retribution was exacted by Mohadi, the third caliph
of the new dynasty, who seized, in his turn, the favorable opportunity,
while a woman and a child, Irene and Constantine, were seated on the
Byzantine throne. An army of ninety-five thousand Persians and Arabs
was sent from the Tigris to the Thracian Bosphorus, under the command
of Harun, or Aaron, the second son of the commander of the faithful. His
encampment on the opposite heights of Chrysopolis, or Scutari, informed
Irene, in her palace of Constantinople, of the loss of her troops
and provinces. With the consent or connivance of their sovereign, her
ministers subscribed an ignominious peace; and the exchange of some
royal gifts could not disguise the annual tribute of seventy thousand
dinars of gold, which was imposed on the Roman empire. The Saracens had
too rashly advanced into the midst of a distant and hostile land: their
retreat was solicited by the promise of faithful guides and plentiful
markets; and not a Greek had courage to whisper, that their weary forces
might be surrounded and destroyed in their necessary passage between
a slippery mountain and the River Sangarius. Five years after this
expedition, Harun ascended the throne of his father and his elder
brother; the most powerful and vigorous monarch of his race, illustrious
in the West, as the ally of Charlemagne, and familiar to the most
childish readers, as the perpetual hero of the Arabian tales. His title
to the name of _Al Rashid_ (the _Just_) is sullied by the extirpation of
the generous, perhaps the innocent, Barmecides; yet he could listen to
the complaint of a poor widow who had been pillaged by his troops, and
who dared, in a passage of the