340 THE DECLINE AND FALL impatient of the yoke, addicted to rapine, and tenacious of the government of their national chiefs. The resemblance of name, situation, and manners seem to identify them vvith the Car- duchians of the Greeks ; ^^ and they still defend against the Ottoman Porte the antique freedom which they asserted against the successoi's of Cyrus. Poverty and ambition prompted them to embrace the profession of mercenary soldiers : the service of his father and uncle prepared the reign of the great Saladin ; ^■' and the son of Job or Ayub, a simple Curd, magnanimously smiled at his pedigree, which flattery deduced from the Arabian [before 3rd caliphs.^^ So unconscious was Noureddin of the impending ruin of his house that he constrained the reluctant youth to follow his uncle Shiracouh into Egypt ; his military character [2nd exped.] was established by tlie defence of Alexandria ; and, if we may believe the Latins, he solicited and obtained from the Christian general the profane honours of knighthood.^" On the death of Shiracouh, the office of grand vizir was bestowed on Saladin, as the youngest and least powerful of the emirs ; but with the advice of his father, whom he invited to Cairo, his genius ob- tained the ascendant over his equals, and attached the army to his person and interest. While Noureddin lived, these am- bitious Curds were the most humble of his slaves ; and the in- discreet murmurs of the divan were silenced by the prudent Ayub, who loudly protested that at the command of the sultan he himself would lead his son in chains to the foot of the throne. " Such language," he added in private, " was prudent and proper in an assembly of your rivals ; but we are now above one of the noblest ; but, as they were infected with the heresy of the Metempsychosis, the orthodox sultans insinuated that their descent was only on the mother's side, and that their ancestor was a stranger who settled among the Curds. 5* See the ivth boot of the Anabasis of Xenophon. The ten thousand suffered more from the arrows of the free Carduchians than from the splendid weakness of the Great King. 55 We are indebted to the Professor Schultens (Lugd. Bat. 1755, 1732, in folio) for the richest and most authentic materials, a life of Saladin [Salah ad-Din] , by his friend and minister the cadhi Bohadin [Baha ad-DIn], and copious extracts from the history of his kinsman, the Prince Abulfeda of Hamah. To these we may add, the article of Salahcddin in the Bibliotheque Orientale, and all that may be gleaned from the dynasties of .A.bulpharagius. [Also the articles in the Biographical dic- tionary of Ibn Khallikan, transl. by the Baron de Slane. Marin's Histoire de Saladin, publ. in 1758, is scholarly and well written. A new life from the original sources has just been written by Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole.] ^ Since Abulfeda was himself an Ayoubite, he may share the praise, for imitat- ing, at least tacitly, the modesty of the founder. 5 Hist. Hierosol. in the Gesta Dei per Francos, p. 1152. [Itin. Reg. Ricard., i. 0. 3 ; and cp. the romance L'ordene de chevalerie, in App. to Marin's Hist, de Saladin.] A similar example may be found in Joinville (p. 42, edition du Louvre) ; but the pious St. Louis refused to dignify infidels with the order of Christian knighthood (Ducange, Obseryations, p. 70).
