she makes on many occasions, without perceiving that she must have been very well skilled in grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, and mathematics; nay, that she must have had some knowledge of law, physic, and divinity; all which is very rare and uncommon in any of that sex."

JOHN II., emperor of the East, of the family of Comnenus, was born in 1088, and succeeded his father Alexius in 1118. He had the appellation of Calo Johannes or John the Handsome, which some assert to have been ironical, and others serious. But whatever were his bodily qualities, his soul was formed in the mould of moral beauty, and few possessors of a throne have graced it with purer manners, and more humane principles. Soon after his accession, a conspiracy was excited by his sister, the celebrated Anna Comnena, to depose him in favour of her husband Bryennius. It was discovered, and the conspirators were seized and convicted; but the emperor's clemency limited their punishment to the forfeiture of their estates, which he afterwards restored. This was the only domestic trouble by which his reign was disturbed; and he had the happiness of being able, during an administration of twenty-five years, to banish capital punishments from the whole empire. His mildness of disposition did not, however, prevent him from engaging in active warfare against his public enemies. In the second year of his reign he marched against the Turks, who had made an inroad into Phrygia, and after several engagements, forced them back within their former limits. He repulsed the Scythians, who had crossed the Danube, and invaded Thrace.

SARACENS AND TURKS.

ALP-ARSLAU, the second sultan of the dynasty of Seljuk, in Persia, was the son of David, and great-grandson of Seljuk, the founder of the dynasty. He was born, A.D. 1030, of the Hegira, 421. In the place of Israel, which was his original name, he assumed that of Mahammed, when he embraced the Mussulman faith, and he was afterwards surnamed Alp-Arslau, which, in the Turkish language, signifies a valiant lion, on account of his military prowess. Having held the chief command of Khorasan, for ten years, as lieutenant of his uncle, Togrel Beg, he succeeded him in 1063; and at the commencement of his reign saw himself sole monarch of Persia, from the river Ama to the Tigris. In 1068 he invaded the Roman empire, the seat of which was then at Constantinople; and, at the head of forty thousand cavalry, according to the highest accounts, he defeated Romanus Diogenes, commanding an army of one hundred thousand men, in the Armenian territory, and took him prisoner, but treated him kindly

till he was ransomed, when he was dismissed, loaded with presents. After a reign of ten years, in which he was not more distinguished for his valour than for his liberality, piety, patience, justice, and sincerity, he was stabbed by a desperate Carizinian, whom he had taken prisoner, in 1072. His words to his attendants, when he found his end approaching, are worthy of record: "In my youth," said he, "I was advised by a wise man to humble myself before God, never to confide in my own strength, or despise the most contemptible enemy. These lessons I have neglected, for which I have now met deserved punishment. Yesterday when I beheld from an eminence the number and discipline of my troops, I said, in the confidence of my heart, What power on earth can oppose me! what man dares to attack me!' To-day, vainly trusting to my own strength and dexterity, I foolishly checked the prompt zeal and alacrity of my guards for my safety, and now I have fallen by the hand of an assassin! but I perceive that no force or address can resist fate."

SHAH MALEK, third sultan of the Seljukian dynasty, in Persia, and the most powerful prince of his time, born in 1054, was son, heir, and successor of Alp-Arslau. On the death of his father, he found himself placed on a throne which had the rule of Asia, from the banks of the Oxus to the borders of Syria. The caliph of Bagdad conferred upon him the sacred title of commander of the faithful, which had never before been conferred on a subordinate prince. Malek had many enemies to contend with, some of whom were among his nearest relations. In 1075 one of his generals took Damascus, and reduced a great part of Syria. He invaded Egypt the following year, but was compelled to retreat by the inhabitants of Cairo. In 1078 Shah Malek undertook to complete the conquest of Turkestan, which had been commenced by his father. He reduced many cities to obedience, and extended a nominal sovereignty over the Tartar kingdom of Cashgar. And by allowing his generals to conquer districts for themselves, acknowledging his paramount authority, he stretched his authority from the Chinese frontier, to the mountains of Georgia, the vicinity of Constantinople, the Egyptian border, and the coasts of Arabia. His activity was so great, that he is said to have visited all parts of his dominions twelve times during his reign. In these wide and extensive progresses his favourite amusement was hunting, which he pursued with vast pomp, and sometimes with a train of many thousand horsemen. In 1088 he made a pilgrimage to Mecca, in which he displayed more magnificence than any prince had done before on the same occasion. He abolished the tribute usually paid by pilgrims; he furnished them all with provisions, caused a great number of wells and reservoirs to be made in the desert, erected places for rest and refreshment at the different stages, and took every means of

promoting the prosperity of his dominions, by the erection of public buildings, by diminishing the taxes, and by attending to the exact and rigid administration of justice. The reformation of the calendar was one of the acts which distinguished his reign; for which purpose he assembled all the astronomers of the East to rectify the errors that had crept into the computations, and they instituted the Jalalean era, so named from Jalal, the first word of one of the sultan's titles, which era is reckoned to commence from March 15, 1079. Much of the splendour and excellence of this reign was attributed to the illustrious vizir Nizam al Molk, who, towards the close of it, fell into disgrace, though very undeservedly, and who was not only deprived of his employments, but in the ninety-third year of his age fell by the hand of an assassin. The wound, though fatal, did not prevent him, previous to his death, from writing a dignified epistle to his sovereign, asserting his fidelity, and recommending his son to the sultan. Malek, proceeding to Bagdad, with the intention, it is said, of fixing there the seat of his empire, and removing the caliph to some other place, was taken ill of a fever, which put an end to his life in 1092, in the thirty-eighth year of his age, and the twenty-first of his reign. This prince is highly extolled for his mental and bodily qualities, and for many virtues that adorn a throne. The house of Seljuk attained its highest greatness in his person, from which it declined at his death, or rather at the death of his minister Nizam.

IBRAHIM, the son of Massoud, eighth caliph of the dynasty of Gaznevides, succeeded his brother Ferokzad. He acquired great reputation as a just and pious prince, notwithstanding the frequent wars which he made on the borders of Hindostan, in which he gained such advantages as to acquire the name of the conqueror. He reigned forty-two years, and died in 1098. Ibrahim erected a number of cities, mosques, and hospitals, and he was a liberal encourager of arts and letters. ALOADDIN, better known by the appellation of the Old Man of the mountains, was prince of the Arsacides, or Assassins, from whence the word assassin is derived. His residence was a castle between Antioch and Damascus, and he had a number of young men with him who were so devoted to his will, as to engage in any undertaking he chose to send them upon. This made the neighbouring princes very careful not to offend him. He and his subjects were Mahommedans. He obtained several victories over the Servians and Huns. In a second expedition into Asia, he again drove back the Turks, and made himself master of all Armenia. Flushed with success, he entertained the ambitious project of extending the eastern empire to its former limits, and recovering Antioch from the dominion of the Latins. Accompanied by his three eldest sons, he proceeded on this enterprise, when a premature death carried off two of the sons, to the father's extreme grief.

He, however, marched into Syria; and being unable to gain admission into Antioch, turned to Cilicia. There, as he was hunting the wild boar, in the valley of Anazarbus, a poisoned arrow, from his own quiver, gave him a wound in the hand, of which he died in 1143.

TANGROLIPIX, sultan of the Turks, a barbarous but not ungenerous conqueror, and the first of the Turks who made inroads upon the eastern empire. He and his nephew, CuttuMoses, ravaged Iberia. Tangrolipix also conquered Persia, and founded a new dynasty of Turkish sultans, who reigned there for a century.

CRUSADERS.

[We have thought proper to place the principal characters that engaged in the expeditions against the infidels, for the recovery of Palestine, in a class to themselves. For some information respecting these crusaders, the reader is referred to page 2 of this volume.]

CARD

ROBERT GUISCARD, first Norman duke of Apulia and Calabria, was the seventh son of Tancred, of Hauteville, a gentleman of Lower Normandy. He was distinguished amidst a family of warriors by his bodily strength and vigour, his martial port, and enterprising spirit. He made great progress in the conquest of Calabria, and reduced most of the cities which held for the Greeks in these parts. About the same time the counts of Capua were expelled from their territory; and the abbot Desiderius mentions his having seen the children of Landulphus V., the last count, begging. The pope alarmed by these conquests excommunicated the Normans in a body, pretending that they had seized some of the territories belonging to the church; but, by the submission of Robert, he not only was persuaded to take off the sentence of excommunication, but to invest him with the provinces of Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily. After this he continued the war against the Greeks with great success. In 1071, in conjunction with his brother, Roger, he conquered Sicily, and gave the investiture of the island to him, with the title of count, reserving to himself only the half of Palermo, Messina, and the valley of Demona. The like success attended his arms against Salerno, in 1074; and in 1080 he received a second time the investiture of all his dominions. In 1081 he undertook an expedition against the Greeks; and though the emperor was assisted by a Venetian fleet, Robert made himself master of Corfu, reduced Durazzo, and great part of Romania; insomuch, that by the success of his arms, and his near approach to Constantinople, he struck an universal terror among the Greeks. But while Robert was thus extending his conquests, he was alarmed by the news of a formidable rebellion in Italy, and that the empe

ror Fleury had taken Rome, and shut up the pope in the castle of St. Angelo. Robert, therefore, leaving the command of the army to his son Bohemond, returned to Italy, where he dispersed the rebels, and released the pope, while his son gained a considerable victory over the Greeks. After this Robert made great preparations for another expedition into Greece, to second his son Bohemond. Alexius Comnenus, who was declared emperor by the Greek army, being assisted by the Venetian fleet, endeavoured to oppose his passage, but was defeated, with the loss of many galleys. But a final stop was now put to his enterprises by his death, which happened in July, 1085, when in the sixtieth or seventieth year of his age. He was succeeded in Calabria by his second son, Roger; but that Norman branch was distinguished in the second generation. Robert Guiscard was a person of great civil and military talents, not only brave but politic; so that he derived his surname of Guiscard from a word, signifying craft or prudence, in the Norman dialect. His ambition was little tempered either with humanity or a sense of justice, and he pursued his aggrandizement with steady steps. He was affable and courteous to his companions in arms, plain in his dress and manners, frugal and rapacious in acquiring wealth, and liberal in bestowing it. He was an able and successful soldier of fortune, rather than a great prince.

BOHEMOND, the first prince of Antioch, was son of Robert Guiscard, duke of Apulia, and accompanied his father in his expedition to invade the eastern empire in 1081. He commanded the fleet, and on its defeat by the Venetians escaped with great difficulty. On Robert's return to Italy, he was left with the command of the army, and distinguished himself by various military exploits, defeating the emperor Alexius in two pitched battles, and penetrating to Larissa in Thessaly. After his father's death he became prince of Tarentum; and in the first crusade under Godfrey of Bouillon in 1096, Bohemond was one of the principal leaders. "It is in the person of this Norman chief," says Gibbon, "that we may seek for the coolest policy and ambition, with a small alloy of religious fanaticism." With the rest of the crusaders he proceeded to Antioch, which capital, after a long siege, was taken in 1098. The sovereignty of Antioch was the reward conferred upon Bohemond for his services. After his acquisition, he made war upon the emperor Alexius, who had required him to deliver up Antioch as belonging to the Greek empire; and in his turn laid claim to Laodicea, which he took by force, though Alexius afterwards recovered it. Bohemond was afterwards taken prisoner, and obliged to pay a large ransom, and finding himself inferior in strength to the emperor, he secretly passed over into Italy, went to France, where, in 1106 he married Constance, daughter to king Philip I., and assembling a large