the band, the firft movement threw the prince and his courtiers into violent and inceffant laughter; the next melted all into tears; and the laft lulled even the performers afleep.

C

SECT. VII.

Private war among the Eastern nations compared with that which prevailed in Europe during the middle ages. Compofitions for homicide. The holy months of the Arabians contrafted with the Treuga Dei, and Pax Regis of Europe. Captivity and Slavery.

A

VARIETY of cuftoms, we may here ob

serve, prevailed amongst the independent tribes of Pagan Arabians and Tartars, which were either abolished or modified, when they became united under princes of ability and power. One of these was the destructive system of Private War. In every state where the arm of the civil magiftrate has been too feeble to check or chaftife the crimes of men, private revenge feems naturally to have ufurped the place of legal punishment. We find it in full vigour in the middle ages, and univerfally adopted in every European state. And

fo forcible is the prejudice of ancient habit, that even where fovereigns gained strength fufficient, to fubftitute the laws of reason for the practices of barbarity, they found it not prudent to overturn at once this pernicious offspring of uncultivated minds: but, by loading it with expenfive compofitions, they endeavoured to make its ravages lefs hurtful to fociety. Similar but more favage principles appear to have regulated those Eastern nations. If an Arabian had loft a near relation, a wife, or even a flave, he fingled out from among the Captives, when victorious, a freeman for each, and facrificed them in cold blood. This was not confidered as barbarous: it was rather a point of honour; which avarice alone appears to have mitigated: the hufband, relations, or mafter of the deceased, being permitted to dispense with their fanguinary vengeance, in confideration of a mulet. We accordingly find, about the birth of Mohammed, that ten camels were the compenfation for a flaughtered man; without any apparent diftinction between the freeman and the flave. Mohammed, powerful as he was, durft not, any more than the lawgivers of Europe, fo far oppose the general genius of the people, as entirely to abolish this brutal cuftom: but he endeavoured to mitigate or regulate it by fe

veral paffages in the Alcoran; in which, among other circumftances, a diftinction is made of rank and fex. In after-times, the compofition of ten camels was found inadequate to check the prevalence of private vengeance and, in the Sonna, it was accordingly raised to a hundred : probably for the fame reasons which dictated an encrease of the fanguinary fines among the Lombards and other European nations: because those fines having been originally fixed when the people were poor; they were found too trifling, when, by the extent of their conquests, they had become powerful and rich. It does not however appear, that any thing fimilar to the European Fredum, or proportion paid to the public treafury, fubfifted among the Eastern nations; the whole of the compenfation being received by the relations or mafter of the flaughtered perfon. In the Eaft, as well as in Europe, the relations of the principals in a quarrel feem to have been bound by honour and cuftom to espouse their party, and to revenge their death; one of the higheft reproaches, with which one Arabian could upbraid another, being an accufation of having left the blood of his friend unrevenged. The facred months of the Arabians appear to have been far fuperior to the Treuga Dei or the Pax Regis

of Europe. Three following months in every year, with another one intermediate, muft have tended far more effectually to foften exafperated minds, than the interval of three days in a week; which would, in general, only give them a breathing time to prepare for fresh hoftilities. Thofe European ordinances were, at the fame time, too often difregarded; whilft in Arabia, they took the heads from their fpears, and obferved this great falutary law fo religiously, that from the earliest periods of record or tradition, they furnished but four or five inftances where it had been infringed; and these were stamped with the epithet of impiety, and the univerfal execration of the people.

a

ONE circumstance, however, appears ftrongly to have distinguished the private wars in the Eaft from thofe of the Weft. The manners of Afia feem, in all ages, to have pointed to domestic slavery: and Mohammed, in Arabia, made that an article of religion, which had anciently been only a cuftom. The Captives were, in confequence, with few exceptions, conftantly reduced to a state of fervitude; and little diftinction feems, in general, to have been made between a princefs and her female flave; excepting what she derived from a superiority of perfonal accomplishments. Thofe

ideas the Arabians retained amidst their extenfive conquefts. Many instances might be given; but I fhall confine myself to two; as they regard the daughters of the two greatest princes then in the world.-In an action after the fiege of Damafcus, in 635, amongst other prifoners was the daughter of Heraclius, Emperor of Greece, and widow of the Governor of that city. Rafi, the Arabian commander, to whose lot the fell, prefented her, without ceremony, as a flave, to Jonas, a Grecian, who had embraced the Mohammedan religion; but Jonas, from a principle of honour, returned her, with all her jewels, unranfomed to her father. When the Arabians conquered Perfia, Shirin Banu, the daughter of king Yezdejird, was one of the captives, and was publicly exposed to fale in the city of Medina; but the liberal-minded Ali thought differently from his countrymen on this occafion: he declared, that the offspring of princes ought not to be fold and married her immediately to his fon Hoffain. This anecdote I met with in the mutilated manufcript, formerly mentioned, the author of which I have not been able to discover. Ifmael Sefi, who mounted the throne of Perfia in the year 1502, derived his descent, as observed before, (p. 73.) from the Khalif Ali; and as he claimed re