f silence they had
been sowing the seeds of future conquests; in their short period of
action they were gathering the fruit of past labours and sufferings. The
Saracenic empire stood apparently as before; but, as soon as a Turk
showed himself at the head of a military force within its territory, he
found himself surrounded by the armies of his kindred which had been so
long in its pay; he was joined by the tribes of Turcomans, to whom the
Romans in a former age had shown the passes of the Caucasus; and he
could rely on the reserve of innumerable swarms, ever issuing out of his
native desert, and following in his track. Such was the state of Western
Asia in the middle of the eleventh century.

7.

I have said there were three great Sultans of the race of Seljuk, by
whom the conquest of the West of Asia was begun and completed; their
names are Togrul Beg, Alp Arslan, and Malek Shah. I have not to write
their histories, but I may say a few words of their characters and their
actions.

1. The first, Togrul, was the son and grandson of Mahometan Martyrs, and
he inherited that fanaticism, which made the old Seljuk and the young
Michael surrender their lives in their missionary warfare against the
enemies of their faith. Each day he repeated the five prayers prescribed
for the disciples of Islam; each week he gave two days to fasting; in
every city which he made his own, he built a mosque before he built his
palace. He introduced vast numbers of his wild countrymen into his
provinces, and suffered their nomadic habits, on the condition of their
becoming proselytes to his creed. He was the man suited to his time;
mere material power was not adequate to the overthrow of the Saracenic
sovereignty: rebellion after rebellion had been successful against the
Caliph; and at the very time I speak of he was in subjection to a family
of the old Persian race. But then he was spiritual head of the Empire as
well as temporal; and, though he lay in his palace wallowing in brutal
sensuality, he was still a sort of mock-Pope, even after his armies and
his territories had been wrested from his hands; but it was the reward
of Togrul's zeal to gain from him this spiritual prerogative, retaining
which the Caliph could never have fallen altogether. He gave to Togrul
the title of Rocnoddin, or "the firm pillar of religion;" and, what was
more to the purpose, he made him his vicegerent over the whole Moslem
world. Armed with this religious autho