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"But all this and more is recorded by orators and poets who have exhausted the mines of eloquence in the description," says Al-Makkari, who, after enlarging upon "the running streams, the luxuriant gardens, the stately buildings for the accommodation of the guards and high functionaries the throngs of soldiers, pages, eunuchs, and slaves, attired in robes of silk and brocade, moving to and fro through its broad streets and the crowds of judges, katibs, theologians, and poets, walking with becoming gravity through the spacious halls and ample courts of the palace," concludes with a burst of pious enthusiasm.

The system of government under these princes, appears to have remained in nearly the same form as it had been fixed by Abdurrahman I. The monarch nominated, during his lifetime, one of his sons as his successor; and the wali-al-ahd, or crown-prince, thus selected, received the oaths of allegiance of the dignitaries of the state, and was admitted to a share in the administration a wise regulation, which prevented the recurrence of the civil wars arising from the ambition of princes of the blood, which had distracted the reigns of Al-hakem I. and Abdurrahman II. The council of the sovereign was composed of the vizirs or ministers of the different departments, the katibs or secretaries, and the chiefs of the law; the walis of the six great provinces into which Abdurrahman I. divided his empire, as well as the municipal chiefs of the principal cities were also summoned on emergencies: while the prime minister, or highest officer of the state, in whom, as in the Turkish Vizir-Azem, the supreme direction of both civil and military affairs was vested, was designated the Hajib or chamberlain.

KATIBS or writers were the persons employed in public offices: the directors, clerks and secretaries in government service were all called katib. Khalifs' Nauruz. This another name for Nauruz Khasa "New Year's day proper," in which it was customary to offer presents to the sovereign. The old Persian custom of celebrating Nauruz existed at Baghdad under the Abbaside Khalifs.

We retired for the night at about eight o'clock. The form of the whole camp, when pitched, consisting of about a dozen very large tents, was as follows: The Bey's tent in the centre, which was surrounded at a distance of about forty feet with those of the Bash-Hamba of the Arabs, the Agha of the Arabs, the Sahab-el-Tabah, Haznadar or treasurer, the Bash-Boab, and that of the English tourists; then further off were the tents of the Katibs and Bash-Katib, the Bash-Hamba of the Turks, the doctors, and the domestics of the Bey, with the cookery establishment.