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Updated: May 16, 2025
'Indeed! I'll do anything. Speak! Can we bribe? can we cleave their skulls? can we 'Calm thyself, my friend. There is no need of bribes, no need of bloodshed. We must make terms. 'Terms! We might have made them on the plain of Nehauend. Terms! Terms with a captive victim? 'Why victim? 'Is Arslan then so generous?
The rule of the Abassids of Bagdad had been well-nigh demolished by the Seljukian Turks in 1058. They founded in the eleventh century an extensive empire. The sultan, Alp Arslan, took the emperor, Romanus IV. Diogenes, prisoner , and conquered Armenia.
A prince of the royal line, Cutulmish, the son of Izrail, the son of Seljuk, had fallen in a battle against Alp Arslan and the humane victor had dropped a tear over his grave. His five sons, strong in arms, ambitious of power, and eager for revenge, unsheathed their cimeters against the son of Alp Arslan.
Here Alroy rested one night, to refresh his men, and on the ensuing morn pushed on to the Persian frontier, unexpectedly attacked the advanced posts of Alp Arslan, and beat them back with great loss into the province.
An ample share of their wisdom and virtue is due to a Persian vizier, who ruled the empire under the reigns of Alp Arslan and his son. Nizam, one of the most illustrious ministers of the East, was honored by the caliph as an oracle of religion and science; he was trusted by the sultan as the faithful vicegerent of his power and justice.
The medley of things seen and half understood has left patterns damascened upon my memory with intricate clearness: immense droves of camels coming up from the wilderness to be sold in the market; factories of inlaid woodwork and wrought brasswork in which hundreds of young children, with beautiful and seeming-merry faces, are hammering and filing and cutting out the designs traced by the draughtsmen who sit at their desks like schoolmasters; vast mosques with rows of marble columns, and floors covered with bright-coloured rugs, and files of men, sometimes two hundred in a line, with a leader in front of them, making their concerted genuflections toward Mecca; costly interiors of private houses which outwardly show bare white-washed walls, but within welcome the stranger to hospitality of fruits, coffee, and sweetmeats, in stately rooms ornamented with rich tiles and precious marbles, looking upon arcaded courtyards fragrant with blossoming orange-trees and musical with tinkling fountains; tombs of Moslem warriors and saints, Saladin, the Sultan Beibars, the Sheikh Arslân, the philosopher Ibn-el-Arabi, great fighters now quiet, and restless thinkers finally satisfied; public gardens full of rose-bushes, traversed by clear, swift streams, where groups of women sit gossiping in the shade of the trees or in little kiosques, the Mohammedans with their light veils not altogether hiding their olive faces and languid eyes, the Christians and Jewesses with bare heads, heavy necklaces of amber, flowers behind their ears, silken dresses of soft and varied shades; cafés by the river, where grave and important Turks pose for hours on red velvet divans, smoking the successive cigarette or the continuous nargileh.
His veil was perfumed with musk; two crowns were set upon his head; two scimitars were girded on his side, in token of his double reign over East and West. He twice kissed the Caliph's hand; and his titles were proclaimed by the voice of heralds and the applause of the Moslem. Such was Togrul Beg, and such was his reward. His power passed to his nephew Alp Arslan.
'Thy meaning, not thy means, are evident. 'They are in thy power. 'In mine? 'Tis a deep riddle. Pr'ythee solve it. 'Thou wilt be summoned at to-morrow's noon before this Arslan. There in the presence of the assembled people who are now with him as much as they were with thee, thou wilt be accused of magic, and of intercourse with the infernal powers. Plead guilty. 'Well! is there more?
He had made a speech according to the advice and instructions of his councillors, who had assured him that the tone he adopted would induce Alroy to confess all that he required, and especially to vindicate the reputation of the Princess Schirene, who had already contrived to persuade Alp Arslan that she was the most injured of her sex.
His eyes were cast upon the ground. Apparently he was buried in profound thought, or had delivered himself up to despair. 'Prepare the stakes, said Alp Arslan. An involuntary, but universal, shudder might be distinguished through the whole assembly. A slave advanced and offered Alroy a scroll. He recognised the Nubian who belonged to Honain.
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