his beard in the caliph's presence; and the whole divan shed
tears at his melancholy tale. ^36 But the commanders of the
faithful could only weep; they were themselves captives in the
hands of the Turks: some temporal power was restored to the last
age of the Abbassides; but their humble ambition was confined to
Bagdad and the adjacent province. Their tyrants, the Seljukian
sultans, had followed the common law of the Asiatic dynasties,
the unceasing round of valor, greatness, discord, degeneracy, and
decay; their spirit and power were unequal to the defence of
religion; and, in his distant realm of Persia, the Christians
were strangers to the name and the arms of Sangiar, the last hero
of his race. ^37 While the sultans were involved in the silken
web of the harem, the pious task was undertaken by their slaves,
the Atabeks, ^38 a Turkish name, which, like the Byzantine
patricians, may be translated by Father of the Prince. Ascansar,
a valiant Turk, had been the favorite of Malek Shaw, from whom he
received the privilege of standing on the right hand of the
throne; but, in the civil wars that ensued on the monarch's
death, he lost his head and the government of Aleppo. His
domestic emirs persevered in their attachment to his son Zenghi,
who proved his first arms against the Franks in the defeat of
Antioch: thirty campaigns in the service of the caliph and sultan
established his military fame; and he was invested with the
command of Mosul, as the only champion that could avenge the
cause of the prophet. The public hope was not disappointed: after
a siege of twenty-five days, he stormed the city of Edessa, and
recovered from the Franks their conquests beyond the Euphrates:
^39 the martial tribes of Curdistan were subdued by the
independent sovereign of Mosul and Aleppo: his soldiers were
taught to behold the camp as their only country; they trusted to