As regards the Jews and Christians, many of whom, as we have seen, stood high in honour with his predecessors, his first Enactments against the Jews and Christians. enactment against them was issued early in his reign (A.D. 850), and the second three or four years later. They were thereby compelled to wear “honey-coloured gowns (ṭaylasán),* parti-coloured badges, and caps and girdles of certain ignoble patterns; to ride only on mules and asses, with wooden stirrups and saddles of strange construction; and to have placed over the doors of their houses effigies of devils. Such of their churches and temples as were of recent construction were destroyed, or converted into mosques; their tombs were to be level with the ground; and they were forbidden to gather in the streets or to exhibit the sign of the cross, while their children might not learn to write Arabic or receive instruction from a Muham­madan tutor.

*

Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal († A.D. 855), the founder of the nar­rowest and least spiritual of the four orthodox schools of Sunní Thinkers and writers of this period. doctrine, was now the dominating religious influence, and was able to pay back with interest the harsh treatment which he had suffered at the hands of the Mu'tazilites. These, needless to say, fared but ill under the new régime, which was, indeed, generally un­favourable to men of science and philosophers. Thus the physician Bôkht-Yishú',* the grandson of him who was Director of the Hospital and Medical School at Jundê-Shâpûr in the Caliphate of al-Manṣúr, was deprived of all his possessions and banished to Baḥrayn (A.D. 858) for some trifling cause, and it is not surprising to find how comparatively small is the number of writers and scholars of eminence who flourished in al-Mutawakkil's time. Ibn Khurdádhbih wrote the first edition of his “Book of Itineraries” (Kitábu'l-Masálik wa'l-Mamálik)* about the beginning of this period: 'Abdu'lláh b. Sallám al-Jumahí, the author of a Memoir of the Poets (Ṭabaqátu-sh-Shu'ará); al-Wáqidí's secretary, Ibn Sa'd the historian; the Christian mathematician and man of science, Qusṭá b. Lúqá; and the Syrian Shí'ite and Shu'úbí poet, Díku'l-Jinn, who flourished about the same time or a little earlier, have been already mentioned, as have the unfor­tunate Ibnu's-Sikkít and Bôkht-Yishú', and the now triumphant Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal († A.D. 855). Apart from some other writers of note who flourished at this time, but whose names will be recorded according to the dates of their decease, almost the only men of letters who need be mentioned are the physician and translator from the Greek Yaḥyá b. Másawayh (d. A.D. 856), the historian of Mecca, al-Azraqí († A.D. 858), and the poet Di'bil, who was also a Shí'ite († A.D. 860). To these might be added the Egyptian mystic Dhu'n-Nún and his earlier congener al-Muḥásibí; the ill-fated poet 'Alí b. Jahm as-Sámí, one of whose panegyrics on al-Mutawakkil is still extant; the poetess Faḍl of Yamáma; the musician Isḥáq, son of the celebrated minstrel of Hárún's Court, Ibráhím al-Mawṣilí, and a few others.

At the end of the year A.D. 861 al-Mutawakkil, while overcome with drink, was murdered by his Turkish guards, Al-Mutawakkil's four successors. who were instigated thereto by his son al-Mun-taṣir; but the parricide did not survive his victim a year. He and his three successors, al-Musta'ín, al-Mu'tazz, and al-Muhtadí, reigned in all only about nine years, and the three last were all in turn done to death, generally with circumstances of great brutality, by the Turks, who were now paramount. Al Muhtadí showed the greater spirit. “Earlier,” says Muir (p. 535), “and supported by the Arabs, he might have restored life to the Caliphate. But now, both as regards number and discipline, foreigners had the upper hand.” Yet he made a brave attempt to repress the growing presumption, arrogance, and violence of these blood­thirsty mercenaries, of which attempt his successor at any rate reaped the benefit.

It was during this turbulent epoch that Persian indepen­dence may be said to have been revived by the remarkable Beginnings of Persian indepen­dence. achievements of Ya'qúb the son of Layth “the Coppersmith” (aṣ-Ṣaffár), who, notwithstanding his humble origin, succeeded in founding a dynasty which, though short-lived, made its power felt not merely in Sístán, the place of its origin, but throughout the greater part of Persia and almost to the walls of Baghdad. The Ṭáhirids are, it is true, generally reckoned an earlier Persian dynasty, and in a certain sense they were so. Their ancestor, Ṭáhir “the Ambidexter” (Dhu'l-Yamínayn), was rewarded by al-Ma'mún for his signal services in the field with the govern­ment of Khurásán (A.D. 820), and the continuance of this dignity to his heirs unto the third generation gave to the family a local authority and position which previous governors, appointed only for a term of years and removable at the Caliph's pleasure, had never enjoyed. It is a matter of common observation that settlers in a country, often after a comparatively brief residence, outdo those native to the soil in patriotic feeling, a fact of which the history of Ireland in particular affords plentiful examples; for what proportion of the foremost leaders of Irish struggles against English authority —the Fitzgeralds, Emmetts, Wolfe Tones, and Napper Tandys of the '98—could claim to be of purely Irish ex­traction? And so it would not be a surprising phenomenon if the Ṭáhirids, notwithstanding their Arab extraction, had become wholly Persianised. But though the earliest Persian poet, whose verses have been preserved to us—Ḥandhala of Bádghís—appears to have lived more or less under their patronage, it is doubtful whether they really sought, as did their successors, the Ṣaffárids and Sámánids, to foster the renaissance of the Persian language and literature. Dawlatsháh,* discussing the origins of Persian poetry, relates that on one occasion a man came to the Court of 'Abdu'lláh b. Ṭáhir (A.D. 828-844) at Níshápúr and offered him an ancient Persian book. To his inquiry as to its nature the man replied, “It is the Romance of Wámiq and 'Adhrá, a pleasing tale which was compiled by wise men and dedicated to King Núshírwán.” The Amír replied, “We are men who read the Qur'án, and need not such books, but only the Scripture and Tradition. This book, moreover, was composed by Magians, and is accursed in our eyes.” He then ordered the volume to be cast into the water, and issued instructions that wherever in his territories any Persian book of Magian authorship might be discovered it should be destroyed. Without attaching too much historical importance to this story, we may yet take it as representing more or less correctly the attitude of the Ṭáhirids to things Persian; and an anecdote related by Dawlatsháh immediately after this, in which the little son of Ya'qúb the Coppersmith is represented as spontaneously producing, in an access of childish glee, the first rude Persian verse of Muhammadan times, may at least be taken as indicating a general conviction that to the Ṣaffárids Persia owed in no small measure the recovery of her national life.

It was in the very year of al-Mutawakkil's death that this Ya'qúb first appears on the scene, emerging from his native Sístán and advancing on Herát.* Some eight years later (A.D. 869) we find him in possession of Kirmán, and sending gifts to the Caliph al-Mu'tazz. From this time onwards until his death (A.D. 876) we find him steadily enlarging his domains, to which Balkh, Ṭukháristán, Sind, Níshápúr, part of Ṭabaristán, Párs, Rám-Hurmuz, and Ahwáz were successively added. A full account of his career, based on the best authorities, has been given by Professor Nöldeke of Strassburg in his admirable Sketches from Eastern History (J. Sutherland Black's translation, pp. 176-206), to which the reader is referred for fuller particulars. The dynasty founded by Ya'qúb practically ceased with the defeat of his brother and successor 'Amr at Balkh by Ismá'íl b. Aḥmad the Sámánid in A.D. 900, but it had at least succeeded in reviving the national life of Persia, and in detaching its history definitely from that of the 'Abbásid metropolis.

About the same time (A.D. 865) another province of Persia, Ṭabaristán, the strip of fen and forest land lying The 'Alid dynasty of Ṭabaristán. between the Elburz Mountains and the southern shore of the Caspian Sea, gained a precarious independence under a scion of the House of 'Alí named Ḥasan b. Zayd, called “the Stone-lifter” (Jálibu'l-ḥijára ) because of his great strength. He was succeeded by several other Sayyids of his house, whose virtues, princely generosity, charities and encouragement of learning, form a favourite theme of Ibn Isfandiyár* (who wrote early in the thirteenth century) and other historians of this province. Needless to say that they were all ardent supporters of the Shí'ite doctrine and cause. Some of them were not only patrons of letters and founders of colleges, but poets as well, and Ibn Isfandiyár cites in his work a number of Arabic verses composed by them, including a polemic in verse against the Sunní Ibn Sukkara by Sayyid Abu'l-Ḥusayn al-Mu'ayyad bi'lláh. It is not unlikely that verses in the dialect of Ṭabaristán (from which are descended the modern Mázan-darání and Gílakí idioms) may also have been composed at this epoch, though the earliest which I have met date from the Seljúq period only, or at most (e.g., Pindár of Ray, who flourished early in the eleventh century) from a slightly earlier epoch.