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In 1361 Adrianople succumbed to the attacks of Orkhan's son, Murad I, whose sway was soon acknowledged in Thrace and Macedonia, and who was destined to lead the victorious Ottoman armies as far north as the Danube. But though the provinces of the corrupt and effete Byzantine Empire were falling into the hands of the Turks, the Slavs were still unsubdued.
It was plundered in turn by one Mongol horde after another until the Turks, under Murad the Fourth, eventually secured it. Naturally, after being the scene of so much looting and such massacres, there is little left of the original city of the caliphs. Then, too, in Mesopotamia there is practically no stone, and everything was built of brick, which readily lapses back to its original state.
Learning that a still larger body of Turks was attempting to cut off his communications with the king's army he attacked that also and put it to flight. After that he joined his corps with the main army under the king; and indeed none too soon. Sultan Murad suddenly arrived with the main body of his forces, which he strongly intrenched in the narrowest passes of the Balkans.
Murad Bey far surpassed this blood-thirsty monarch in address and strength. The former, we are told by travellers in Egypt, has been known, when riding past an ox, to cut off its head with one stroke of his scimitar. The capital was dyed with the blood of Charles's murdered subjects.
Newspaper biographies of him constantly appeared, but he had evaded every attempt to include him and his portrait in the Lives of Successful Men. The publishers of these useful volumes for stimulating speculation and ambition did not dare to take the least liberties with Murad Ault. The man was like the boy whom Philip remembered.
I dreamed three times, when I was recovering from the plague, that a genius appeared to me, and said, in a reproachful tone, 'Murad, where is the vase that was entrusted to thy care? "This dream operated strongly upon my imagination.
He was an Arnaut or Albanian, who was captured by an Algerine pirate at the age of twelve, and early showed a turn for adventure. When his patron was engaged at the siege of Malta in 1565, young Murād gave him the slip, and went on a private cruise of his own, in which he contrived to split his galleot upon a rock.
Over the Bab Aly and Bab Abbas is a long inscription, also in the Solouth character, placed there by Sultan Murad Ibn Soleyman, in A.H. 984, after he had repaired the whole building. Kotobeddyn has given this inscription at length; it occupies several pages in his history, and is a monument of the Sultan's vanity.
He received congratulatory visits, and composed an apology attested by a judicial declaration by the cadi, in which the memory of Murad and his brother was declared accursed.
Then he went in to his mother and told her what had passed whereat she was gladdened with exceeding gladness: so he carried her to Gharib, and they two embraced and rejoiced in each other. Then Fakhr Taj and Murad Shah islamised and expounded The Faith to their troops, who all made profession with heart and tongue.
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