tain and Prussia, having for its chief object, the rescuing the Turks from that destruction which hung over them, by restoring peace to that part of Europe. The losses and disgraces which the emperor sustained, and the death of Laudohn, the only general who had effected anything, rendered that prince anxious to terminate the war; and the empress of Russia, through the mediation of the British court, at length acceded to terms of peace, by the conditions of which very important towns and districts were added to her dominions; which, however, her arms had previously obtained.

Bonaparte's campaign in Egypt finally raised the indignation of the porte, which, on the 1st of September, 1798, declared war for the first time against France. By its alliance with Russia, in December, 1798, and with England and Naples, in January, 1799, it now fell under the direction of the cabinets of St. Petersburg and St. James. A Russian fleet sailed through the Dardanelles, and a Turkish squadron, in co-operation with it, conquered the Ionian islands. Paul I. and Selim III., by a treaty at Constantinope, formed the republic of the Seven Islands, which, as well as Ragusa, was to be under the protection of the porte. In the fol lowing year, Britain restored Egypt to the porte; but the Mameluke beys and the Arnaouts filled the land with tumult and bloodshed, until, on the 1st of March, 1811, the new governor, Mehemed Ali Pacha, entirely exterminated the Mamelukes by treachery. Since then he has ruled over Egypt almost independently.

The union with the European powers had, however, made Selim and some of the chiefs of the empire sensible that, if the porte would maintain its power, it must introduce into its armies the modern tactics, and give to the divan a form more suited to the times. The Nizan Dshedid laboured, therefore, to form a Turkish army on the European model, which should supersede the janizaries. But after the peace with France, in 1801, there was in the divan two parties, a Russian and British, and a French. The superiority of Russia pressed upon the porte in the Ionian islands and in Servia; it was accordingly inclined to favour France. When, therefore, Russia, in 1806, occupied Moldavia and Wallachia, the old hostility broke out anew, and (December 30th, 1806) the porte, at the instigation of France, declared war against Russia, which was already engaged with Persia and France. The weakness of the Ottoman empire was now evident. An English fleet forced the passage of the Dardanelles, and, on the 20th of February, 1807, appeared before Constantinople; but the French general Sebastiani directed, with success, the resistance of the divan and of the enraged people. On the other hand, the Russians made rapid advances. The people murmured; and Selim III., on the 29th of May, 1807, was deposed by the mufti, and Mustapha IV. was obliged to put a stop to the hated innovations. But, after the Turkish fleet had been entirely beaten by the Russians at Lemnos, Selim's friend, Mustapha Bairaktar, the brave pacha of Ruschuk, took advantage of the terror of the capital, to seize it. But the unhappy Selim lost his life; and Bairaktar, in the place of the deposed Mustapha IV., raised to the throne the sultan Mahmoud II. As grand vizier of Mahmoud, he restored the new military system, and concluded a truce with Russia; but the fury of the janizaries again broke out, and destroyed him in the latter end of

1808.

Mahmoud now alone supported the throne: for he was, since the death of Mustapha IV., the only prince of the family of Osman, and he soch displayed an extraordinary degree of courage and prudence. One of his first acts was to conclude peace with Great Britain, in 1809; he then con tinued, with redoubled vigour, the war against the Russians, who already threatened the passage of the Balkan. Twice the Russians were obliged to retreat beyond the Danube; nevertheless, their policy conquered the

French party in the divan. In vain did the French emperor, in his treaty with Austria, March 14, 1812, declare he would maintain the integrity o. the Turkish territory. Notwithstanding this, before the French army had passed the Niemen, the sultan bought peace with Russia, at Bucharest, by ceding that part of Moldavia and Bessarabia which lies beyond the Pruth, with the northern fortresses on the Dniester and at the mouths of the Danube, and the southern gates of the Caucasus on the Kur.

The Servians, left to themselves, again became subjected to Turkey They retained, however, by their treaty with the porte, in November, 1815, the administration of the government. In 1817, Mahmoud was obliged to give up the principal mouth of the Danube to Russia. But the Greek insurrection again disturbed the relations of the two powers, and has produced important changes in the situation of the porte. The porte believed that Russia secretly favoured the insurrection, and therefore seized Moldavia and Wallachia, and restricted its marine commerce. Both were open violations of the peace of Bucharest. After an interchange of notes, the Russian ambassador left Constantinople. The mediation of the English and Austrian courts, together with the emperor Alexander's desire for peace, prevented the outbreak of a war; but the divan, under various pretexts, refused all satisfaction to the Russian cabinet, until, at last, the emperor Nicholas declared the Russian ultimatum; upon which the porte, in 1826, granted all the demands of the Russian court, and promised that in Moldavia and Wallachia (where, in three years, it had raised 37,000,000 of piastres, which were employed in the war against the Greeks) everything should be replaced on its former footing, and sent commissioners to Ackerman. Here a final term was again fixed for the decision of the divan, and on the 6th of October, 1826, eightytwo articles of the Russian ultimatum were accepted. The porte sur rendered to the Russians all the fortresses in Asia which it had hitherto held back, and acknowledged the privileges granted by Russia to Servia, Moldavia, and Wallachia. The treaty was executed in 1827.

In the meanwhile the porte had begun its internal reform, and it was resolved utterly to exterminate the janizaries, who burnt the suburb of Galata, between the 3rd and 5th of January, 1826. An army was formed in June, 1826, and the janizaries destroyed, after a bloody struggle. The violence employed in the execution of this and other measures, caused an insurrection, in which six thousand houses were burnt in Constantinople. Instead of military insubordination, the most rigid military despotism began, which did not spare even the ulema. At the same time, the porte, in June, 1827, firmly refused the mediation of Russia, England, and France, in its war with the Greeks; and the grand seignor called all his subjects (Christians included) to arms, to fight, if necessary against all Europe. Our limits compel us to bring this sketch somewhat abruptly to a close. But for the more recent events connected with the Ottoman empire, in respect to its foreign relations, we refer the reader to the latter nortions of our histories of Greece, Russia, and England

THE RISE, PROGRESS, AND ESTABLISHMENT OF MAHOMETANISM.

A subject so curious and important as the religion established by Ma homet, which has been professed for more than eleven centures by many millions of the human race, and which at present prevails from the Gan ges to Morocco, inclusive of a vast number of very populous islands. and every country where the tribes of Malays settle, in one direction, and from the southern extremity of Arabia to the borders of Hungary, in another, deserves to be particularly noticed in this place.

Mahomet, or more properly Mohammed, the founder of this singular and spreading faith, was born in the year 569 of the Christian era; he

sprung from the tribe of Koraish, and the family of Hashem; his grand father, uncles, and lineal ancestors were princes; his family possessed, by hereditary right, the custody of the Caaba at Mecca, which was a place of worship resorted to by the Arabians long before the time of Mahomet. Notwithstanding the respectability of his descent, being left an orphan when very young, and being in low circumstances, he was recommended to Khadijah, a noble rich widow, for her factor, he having been bred to merchandize; in which capacity he acquitted himself so well that he gained the affections of his mistress, and, by marrying her, became as rich a merchant as any in Mecca; his kindness, attachment, and strict fidelity to his wife, who was much older than himself, are frequently alluded to by writers as proofs of a susceptible heart, and a generous and noble nature. His natural strength of mind, and intrepidity of spirit, prompted him to form great designs when his fortunes improved, although it is said that he was so illiterate as not to be capable of reading or writing. The want of learning was so far from proving an impediment to him in effecting his designs, that it very strongly promoted them; for the crafty Arab, who must unquestionably have merely affected this gross ignorance, insisted that the writings which he produced as revelations from God, were cleared of all imputation of being forgeries, for such elegance of style and excellence of doctrine could not originate from a man incapable alike of reading or writing: for this reason his followers, instead of being ashamed of their master's ignorance, glory in it, as an evident proof of his divine mission, and scruple not to call him, as he is called in the Koran itself, "the illiterate prophet.' Sir William Jones relates a traditional story concerning the celebrated poet Lebid, who was cotemporary with Mahomet, and an avowed enemy to his new doctrine at its first promulgation; who, to express his opposition to it, hung a poem on the gate of the temple, as was then customury to be done, which poem contained a strong implied contempt of the new religion. This piece appeared so sublime that none of the poets chose to attempt an answer to it, till Mahomet, who was likewise a poet, having composed a chapter of the Koran, placed the exordium of it by the side of Lebid's poem; who no sooner read it, than he declared it to be something divine, confessed his own inferiority, tore his verses from the gate, embraced the religion he had stigmatized, and became afterwards essentially serviceable in replying to the satires of Amralkeis, who was unwearied in his attacks upon the doctrine of Mohammed.

The state of the world at that time was highly favourable to the introduction of a new religion it had been the will of Heaven to permit the purity and simplicity of the doctrines of Christ to be contaminated and perverted by the artful wiles of priestcraft, which caused the grossest impositions to be practised upon an ignorant laity; pomp, splendour, and unintelligible worship, were substituted for the devotion of the heart, while the prayers offered up to imaginary and fictitious saints had effaced all just notions of the attributes of the Deity. Mohammed had made two journeys into Syria, where he had informed himself of the principles of Judaism, and the jargon which bore the name of Christianity: it is probable, indeed, that his mind was naturally prone to religious enthusiasm, and that he was a devotee before he became an impostor. His first design seems to have extended no farther than to bring the wild, intractable, and ardent Arabs to acknowledge one God and one king; and it is probable that for a considerable time his ambition extended no farther than to become the spiritual and temporal sovereign of Arabia. He began his rventiul project by accusing both Jews and Christians of corrupting the revelations which had been made to them from heaven, and maintained that both Moses and Jesus Christ had prophetically foretold the coming of a prophet from God, which was accomplished in himself, the last and

greatest of the prophets; thus initiated, he proceeded to deliver detached sentences, as he pretended to receive them from the Almighty, by the hand of the ange. Gabriel. These pretensions to a divine mission drew on him a requisition from the inhabitants of Mecca that he would convince them by working a miracle; but he replied, "God refuses those signs and wonders that would depreciate the merit of faith, and aggravate the guilt of infidelity." The unity of God was the grand and leading articie in the creed he taught, to which was closely joined his own divine mission: Allah il Allah, Muhamed resoul Allah, is their preface to every act of devotion, and the sentence continually in their mouths: which is, "there is but one God, and Mohammed is his prophet."

The Arabian tribes, who occupied the country from Mecca to the Eupirates, were at that time known by the name of Saracens; their religion was chiefly gross idolatry, Sabianism having spread almost over the whole nation, though there were likewise numbers of Christians, Jews, and Magians, interspersed in those parts. The essence of that worship principally consisted in adoring the planets and fixed stars; angels and images they honoured as inferior deities, whose intercessions with the Almighty in their favour they implored: they believed in one God; in the future punishment of the wicked, for a long series of years, though not forever; and constantly prayed three times a day; namely, at sunrise, at its declination, and at sunset; they fasted three times a year; during thirty days, nine days, and seven days; they offered many sacrifices, but ate no part of them, the whole being burnt; they likewise turned their faces, when praying, to a particular part of the horizon; they performed pilgrimages to the city of Harran in Mesopotamia, and had a great respect for the temple of Mecca and the pyramids of Egypt, imagining the latter to be the sepulchres of Seth, also of Enos and Sabi, his two sons, whom they considered as the founders of their religion. Be sides the book of Psalms, they had other books which they esteemed equally sacred, particularly one, in the Chaldee tongue, which they called "the book of Seth." They have been called "Christians of St. Johu the Baptist," whose disciples they also pretend to be, using a kind of bap tism, which is the greatest mark they bear of Christianity: circumcision was practised by the Arabs, although Sale is silent on that practice, when describing the religion of the Sabians; they likewise abstained from swine's flesh. So that in this sect we may trace the essential articles of the creed of Mussulmans.

Mahomet was in the fortieth year of his age when he assumed the character of a prophet; he had been accustomed for several years, during the month of Ramadan, to withdraw from the world, and to secrete himself in a cave, three miles distant from Mecca; "conversation," says Mr. Gibbon, "enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius." During the first three years, he made only fourteen proselytes, among which were his wife Khadijah, his servant, or rather slave, Zeid Ali, who afterward married the prophet's favourite daughter, Fatima, and was surnamed "the Lion of God;" Abubekar, a man distinguished for his merit and his wealth; the rest consisted of respectable citizens of Mecca. The Koreishites, although the tribe from which he sprung, were the most violent opposers of the new religion. In the tenth year of his prophetic office his wife died; and the next year, his enemies having formed a design to cut him off, and he being seasonably apprized, fled by night to Medina, on the 16th of July, 622, from which event the Hegira commenced: he was accompanied only by two or three followers, but he made a public entry into that city, and soon gained many proselytes, on which he assumed the regal and sacerdotal characters. As he increased in power, that moderation and humanity, which had before distinguished his conduct, were gradually erased, and he became fierce and sanguinary; he beg in to

avow a design of propagating his religion by the sword, tc destroy the monuments of idolatry, and, without regarding the sanctity of days or months, to pursue the unbelieving nations of the earth. The Koran inculcates, in the most absolute sense, the tenets of faith and predestination. The first companions of Mahomet advanced to battle with a fearless confidence, their leader having fully possessed their minds with the assurance that paradise awaited those who died fighting for the cause of their prophet, the gratifications of which were held out to be such as best suited the amorous complexions of the Arabians. Houries of black-eyed girls, resplendent in beauty, blooming youth and virgin purity; every moment of pleasure was there to be prolonged to a thousand years, and the powers of the man were to be increased an hundred-fold to render him capable of such felicity to those who survived, rich spoils and the possession of their female captives were to crown their conquests. Mahomet was present at nine battles or sieges; and fifty enterprises of war were achieved in ten years by himself or his lieutenants. Seven years after his flight from Mecca he returned to that city, where he was publicly recognized as a prince and prophet; the idolatrous worship of the Caaba was immediately abolished, and succeeded by the simplicity of the Mahometan establishment. This Arab lawgiver retained both his mental and bodily powers unimpaired till he reached his sixtieth year, when his health began to decline, and he himself suspected that a slow poison had been administered to him by a Jewess, under the effects of which he languished; but his death was caused by a fever, in the sixty-third year of his age, the six hundred and thirty-second of the Christian era, and tenth of the Hegira. There are some particulars told respecting Mahomet, which have gained general belief, although void of all foundation: such is the story of the tame pigeon, which the people were taught to believe imparted religious truths to the ear of the prophet; the epileptic fits, which have been said to cause him to fall down as in a trance, he is not supposed to have been subject to; and the suspension of his iron coffin at Mecca is a most absurd falsehood, it being well known that he was buried at Medina in a stone coffin. Of the chapters of the Koran, which are one hundred and fourteen in number, the Sieur du Ryer makes ninety-four to have been received at Mecca, and twenty at Medina; but, according to Mr. Sale, a much better authority, the commentators on the Koran have not fixed the place where about twenty of these revelations were imparted; so that no inference can be drawn how far the prophet had proceeded in his pretended inspirations when he fled from Mecca; neither does the order in which they were written, for the seventy-fourth chapter is supposed to have been the first revealed, and the sixty-eighth to have immediately followed it.

The most amiable features in the religion which Mahomet established are, profound adoration of one God, whose names, or rather titles, are amazingly diversified in the Koran; (these are collected, to the amount of nine hundred and ninety-nine, and serve as a manual of devotion;) the daily offering up of prayers to him, which consist of short ejaculations; stated fasts, and a constant distribution af a large portion of personal property to the relief of the indigent and distressed; nor is the charity which is enjoined confined to alms-giving, but comprehends, in its fullest extent, general humanity and acts of beneficence to all Mussulmans. A general resurrection of the dead is another article of belief reiterated in the Koran Whatever superstitious practices adhere to it, cannot be imputed to priest craft, for no religion that ever was promulgated to the world, the unadulterated religion of Jesus Christ excepted, so entirely excludes the influence of the priesthood; it may, indeed, be called emphatically "the laical religion," since its founder had the address to obtain the most enthusiastic regard to his dogmas, without giving wealth or consequence to those who were appointed to illustrate and enforce them; indeed, the Koran re.