ART. VII.-1. Ousama ibn Mounkidh, un Emir Syrien au premier siècle des Croisades (1095-1188). Par Hartwig Derenbourg. Avec le texte arabe de l'Autobiographie d'Ousama, publié d'après le manuscrit de l'Escurial. Three Vols. Paris, 1886-1893. 2. Siasset Nameh: Traité de Gouvernement. Composé pour le Sultan Melik Shah par le Vizir Nizam oul-Moulk. Traduit par Charles Schefer, Membre de l'Institut. Paris, 1893. 3. Recueil des Historiens des Croisades. Publié par les soins de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. Historiens Orientaux, Tomes I.-III. Paris, 1872-1884. 4. The Crusades: the Story of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. By T. A. Archer and C. L. Kingsford. London, 1894. IN N reading any history of the Crusades, such as the sober and scholarly epitome which has recently appeared under the joint names of Mr. Archer and Mr. Kingsford, one cannot help being struck by the widely different presentment of the characters. The Crusaders stand out clearly enough in their heroic, if barbaric, qualities; many of them are living personalities in the reader's imagination; we can realize what manner of men they were, and understand the rude impulses which prompted their deeds. Of the Saracens, however, their foes in principle, but often their friends and allies in practice, our historians seem to have formed no distinct ideas. 'swarthy painim' whom, as Milton has it, 'champions bold defyed To mortal combat or carriere with lance,' The are presented as misty impersonalities, vague 'types' possessed of no individual characteristics. Their outlandish names repel impatient readers, who find it impossible to take an interest in an unpronounceable person, destitute of qualities and passions-a sort of mechanical lay-figure without even an automaton's attribute of human likeness,-an actor, moreover, who plays an uncertain part in an historical drama whereof the very plot and scenes and dramatis personæ are not only unfamiliar but absolutely unknown. It would not be difficult to reckon up the number of Englishmen who possess a tolerable acquaintance with the internal history of the Mohammedan domination in Asia, Africa, and Europe; and, without some knowledge of the general conditions, it would be extravagant to expect an interest in individual developments. Some grasp of the nature and changes of Muslim civilization is necessary before one can understand the character and achievements of the men our ancestors vainly attempted to subdue. It is true that a subject so unfamiliar, dealing with a civilization so unlike our own, with a religion so little understood even by the citizens of the greatest Mohammedan Empire of modern times, with names and events that certainly do not conciliate the student, demands exceptional gifts in its historian. The dryest History of England compels attention, simply because it is our own history; but the annals of the East do not bear obviously upon the problems of to-day, nor do they awaken the sentiments of patriotism or ancestral pride. Mohammedan history must be introduced to the Western reader with studied preparation of every allurement that may entice and chain his interest. The charm of style, the fascination of a vivid historical imagination, are never more needed than in the attempt to win adherents to a study which has hitherto been relegated to the dusty departments of research,' and has been systematically excluded from every course of academic teaching. There is no modern English history of the East, unfortunately, which can be recommended as literature, for its own sake; there is not even a general history of the Mohammedan period which can be said to atone for its dryness by the accuracy and completeness of its survey. The older historians are obsolete in view of the immense materials brought to hand by recent editors and translators of Arabic and Persian texts, and even among the veterans none but Gibbon-the universal exception -possessed the qualities of style and historical insight which are the preliminary conditions of popularizing an obscure subject; and Gibbon, miraculously accurate as he is, in spite of the comparative poverty of his Oriental materials, could not anticipate the results of modern research. There is little solace in the reflection that we in England are not alone in the want of a worthy history of the medieval East. Indeed it only makes the matter worse when we find that there is no adequate French or German work to fill the place left vacant in our own literature. One Dutch professor stood out conspicuous, richly endowed with the true historical insight, deeply versed in Oriental learning, and gifted with a rare charm of style in the French language he used; but the late Dr. Dozy devoted these remarkable qualities almost exclusively to the period of the Moors in Spain, which he illuminated with masterly research and painted with exquisite finish; and, save for a somewhat sketchy account of the growth of the Mohammedan religion, he did not touch upon the Eastern developments of the Muslim State. No other writer in French on Mohammedan history can can be cited as an example. The Austrian Baron von Kremer compiled a singularly interesting, but fragmentary and disjointed, Culturgeschichte des Orients unter den Chalifen,' which makes no pretence to be a general survey of the Mohammedan Empire; and the standard German history of the Caliphate by Professor Weil, though a monument of Teutonic industry and learning, is at once restricted in scope and portentously dry in treatment. Perhaps in few periods is the want of a really thorough Mohammedan history felt more keenly than in that of the Crusades, for it is obvious that a narrative of a war which inadequately appreciates the character and resources of the enemy can hardly be called a history. In Michaud's day there was little excuse for any such blindness to the other side of the shield; now there is none whatever. For it must not be supposed that the want of a good Mohammedan history is due to a lack of materials, least of all for the Crusading epoch on the contrary, they abound. The splendid publications of the French Academy of Inscriptions have brought the records of the native chroniclers fairly, if cumbrously, within the grasp of all who are ignorant of Oriental languages. The old references to Abulfedæ Annales'-a noble work in its day, by which Reiske and Adler earned the gratitude of generations of students-may now be supplemented and corrected by citations from a number of other chroniclers and travellers who have been made accessible in French; and innumerable special monographs, scattered about the Transactions of learned societies, have thrown a flood of light upon what ought no longer to be termed an obscure period. Yet the majority of English readers are indubitably under the impression-if they are burdened by an impression at all—that the Saracens of the twelfth century were the same people living in much the same conditions as the Saracens whom the learned Cambridge Professor, Simon Ockley, introduced to an inappreciative public as they appeared in the first tumultuous wave of the new-born faith. All that the average schoolboy' knows on the subject-if he knows even that is the imaginative portraiture of painim' chivalry in the 'Talisman.' If only Sir Walter Scott had possessed the materials which now lie ready to the hands of his unworthy successors, what a Talisman there would have been! Now the very first and commonest impression, that the Saracens of Saladin's age were Arabs, is a mistake. There were Arabs among them, undoubtedly, but the fighting element, the anti-crusading impulse, the tactical skill, came from a totally distinct distinct race. The political world upon which the infant Saladin looked out in his cradle days in 1138 was widely different from the old empire of the Caliphate. The whole condition of Syria had vitally changed even in the lifetime of his father. The flaming zeal which had carried the victorious armies of Islam from their Arabian muster-ground to the desert of Sind on the east and the surge of the Atlantic on the west, had not availed to keep together, in the well-knit organization of a united State, the vast empire so suddenly, so amazingly, acquired. The Caliphate lasted indeed for over six hundred years, but it retained its imperial sway for scarcely a third of that time. In the seventh century the soldiers of the Arabian Prophet had rapidly subdued Egypt, Syria, Persia, and even the country beyond the Oxus, and early in the eighth they rounded off their conquest of the Barbary coast by the annexation of Spain. Such an empire, composed of contentious and rival races, and extending over remotely distant provinces, could not long be held in strict subjection to a central government issuing its patents of command from Damascus or Baghdad. The provincial proconsul' of the Mohammedan system was even more apt to acquire virtual independence than his Roman prototype. The very idea of the Caliphate, which was as much an ecclesiastical as an administrative authority, encouraged the local governors to assume powers which were not irreconcilable with the homage due to a spiritual chief; and the religious schisms of Islam, especially the strange and fanatical devotion inspired by the persecuted lineage of Aly, led by a different road to the dismemberment of the State. Already, in the ninth century, the extremities of the Mohammedan empire were in the hands of rulers who either repudiated the authority of the Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad, or at least tendered him, as Commander of the Faithful, a purely conventional homage. The Caliph's writ-or its Arabic equivalent—even in the days of the son of the good Harun erRashid,' did not run in Spain or Morocco, and met but a qualified respect in Tunis. Egypt on the one hand, and Northeast Persia on the other, soon followed the lead of the extreme West, and by the middle of the tenth century the temporal power of the Caliph hardly extended beyond the walls of his own palace, within which his authority was grievously shackled by the guard of mercenaries whom he had imprudently imported in self-defence. This state of papal impotence continued with little change until the extinction of the Baghdad Caliphate by the Mongols in 1258. Now and again, by the weakness of their neighbours or the personal ascendency of an individual Caliph, Caliph, the Abbasids temporarily recovered a part of their territorial power in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates; yet even then, although the Caliph had a larger army and possessed a wider dominion than his predecessors had enjoyed, his authority was restricted to a narrow territory in Mesopotamia, and his influence, save as pontiff of Islam, counted for almost nothing in Saladin's political world. This political world was practically bounded by the Tigris on the east and the Libyan desert on the west. For a century and a half before Saladin began to mix in affairs of State, Egypt had been ruled by the Fatimid Caliphs, a schismatic dynasty claiming spiritual supremacy by right of descent from Aly, the son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed, and therefore repudiating all recognition of the Abbasid Caliphate of Baghdad. Still more nearly affecting the politics of the Crusades was the situation in Syria and Mesopotamia. The whole of these districts, from the mountains of Kurdistan to the Lebanon, are in race and politics allied with Arabia. Large tribes of Arabs were settled from early times in the fertile valleys of Mesopotamia, where their names are still preserved in the geographical divisions. Bedawy tribes wandered annually from Arabia to the pasture-lands of the Euphrates, as they wander to this day; and many clans were, and are still, permanently settled in all parts of Syria. The decay of the Caliphate naturally encouraged the foundation of Arab kingdoms in the regions dominated by Arab tribes, and, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the greater part of Syria and Mesopotamia owned the supremacy of Arab dynasties; but by the twelfth these had all passed away. The Arabs remained in their wonted seats, and camped over all the country to the upper valleys of Diyar Bekr, as they do now; but they no longer ruled the lands where they pastured their flocks. The supremacy of the Arab in those regions was gone for ever, and the rule of the Turk had begun. The Turks who swept over Persia, Mesopotamia, and Syria in the course of the eleventh century were led by the descendants of Seljuk, a Turkoman chieftain from the Kirghiz steppes. In a rapid series of campaigns they first overran the greater part of Persia; other Turkish tribes came to swell their armies; and the whole of Western Asia, from the borders of Afghanistan to the frontier of the Greek Empire and the confines of Egypt, was gradually united under Seljuk rule. Persians, Arabs, and Kurds alike bowed before the overwhelming wave of conquest. But, wide as was their dominion, the significance of the Seljuk invasion lies deeper than mere territorial expansion. Their |