four Sultanies, and these were bound for a season. The progress of the Turkish conquests was stayed, after they first entered the glorious land, by the consequent concussion between Europe and Asia; and their own power did not remain unbroken. But the race of Othman arose to replace that of Seljuk; and their former career of conquest was renewed and extended till their union of many countries into one kingdom was established and consolidated. But although the king of the north was to stretch forth his hand over the countries, as before he had come like a whirlwind, and had overflowed and passed over, yet even as the kings of Europe could not keep possession of Judea, a small portion, little, compared to his dominions, like Naboth's vineyard in the royal gardens of the king of Israel, was to be free from his dominion, and to escape out of the hand that should be stretched over the countries.

But (and) these shall escape out of his hand, even Edom and Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon. This thing that is noted has to be tried with the same precision as the rest, although the very statement of it implies the greatest definiteness and precision.

There was a point, which, though surrounded by subjugated states, he did not touch, or stretch his hand over it, to grasp it as his own. And as a mark

on the forehead of a man, it serves to identify the Turk as the king of the north as much as all the countries which he conquered. Yet it is but one mark out of many.

But these shall escape out of his hand, even Edom and Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon. These are names or regions that are not unknown to any man who reads the Bible or has studied the

*See below on Rev. ix. 14.

pro

phecies. And we need not here define their wellknown situation and respective boundaries. And, turning from Gibbon to Volney, we find as express a definition of the territory in the history of the times when the Mameluke yielded to the Turkish power, as in the words of the prophet which foretold their escape. In the early history of the Mameluke domination, over Egypt and Syria, these regions pertained to the government of Gaza. But before that city fell, as it did, into the hands of the Turks, Karak had become the seat of a separate government under two chiefs and two judges, with an Arab prince who commanded all the tribes of the district. The province of Gaza (as an Arabic manuscript, of which a translation is given by Volney, records) was then situated in a fertile plain. The district of Karak, also called Moab, was DETACHED from it, and stretched beyond Oula in Arabia Petrea, even to the river Zizale, which falls into the Jordan. It comprehended a space of twenty journeys of a camel, at the rate of six leagues to each journey (three hundred and sixty miles. The country had then many villages; but there was a scarcity of water along the routes, and a great number of defiles among the rocks where one man could arrest a hundred cavaliers. Conjoined with this description, it is said of Karak, at a date posterior to the subjugation of Egypt by the Ottoman arms, that it was one of the few strong citadels known which had never been taken by force.+

Volney's Trav. vol. i. p. 269, French edition, Paris, 1806. Documentary evidence respecting the actual territorial definition of Edom and Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon, is to be found in the National Library of Paris. The fact is stated, as above, in an Arabic manuscript, which was discovered in Egypt, and brought from thence, by Venture, the interpreter of Oriental Languages, who accompanied Bonaparte to

The region thus described and defined includes the whole of Edom and of Moab, and a part-but the chief part, including the site of the ancient capital-of Ammon. The river Arnon, which subdivided Moab, flows into the Dead Sea; but the ancient Jabbok, which divided the district of Tabarias from that of Karak, and included the Harvan, which lies to the north of that river, without the intervention of any other, falls into the Jordan, between the lake Gennesareth and the Dead Sea, and intersects the ancient land of Ammon, leaving the site of Rabba and the town of Szalt inhabited to this day by independent Arabs, on the southern regions of Ammon immediately contiguous to Moab. Every region

around owned the Turks as masters; and more than Alexander or the Cæsars could have done, the sultans of Constantinople claimed Mecca and Medina a their own. Yet their subjects could not freely pass from one part of their own dominions to another,not even to their holy city, to which, as a religious rite, annual pilgrimages were made from all parts of

that country. It was composed by a lawyer, Chaik Merei, about the year 1620. Venture was the personal friend of Volney, to whom he communicated a translation of it, which he affixed to his Travels in Egypt, deeming the insertion of it a thing agreeable to literature and to friendship. Being omitted in the English translation, it may, from still better motives, be agreeable to the reader to peruse, in the words of Volney, the statement of the fact that Edom, Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon, formed a detached and defined district,-the whole of both of the former and part of the latter being included.

La première (province de la Syrie) s'appelle province de Gaza, ville située en un plaine fertile. Le district de Karak, dit aussi Moab, en se dêtaché, et s'étend depuis Oula, dans l'Arabie pétrée, jusqu'au ruissean Zizale, qui tombe dans le Jourdan: c'est un espace de vinct journées de chameau (a six lieues la journée.) La pays a beaucoup de villages: mais il y a disette d' eau sur les routes, et une grand quantité de defiles entre des rocks où un seul homme peut arrêter cent cavaliers.-Karak est une des plus fortes citadelles connues; on ne l'a jamais prise de force. Tome i. p. 285. (Translated as above.)

their dominions. Wherever the land of Edom, and of Moab, and the chief of the children (or chief city) of Ammon lay along the road of the pilgrims, the lordly Porte was constrained to pay tribute to the Arab of the desert. The defiles of Petra became the haunt of robbers, instead of the emporium of commerce. A more notorious illustration of the fact of their escape could not be adduced, than that, instead of being enslaved, the wandering tenants of these regions are feared, and that, instead of paying a regular tribute, a stipulation has been made with them, generation after generation, for a free passage through their country. Edom and Moab are disowned and unknown at Constantinople, as forming any part of the Grand Seignior's dominions. And along the southern banks of the river which subdivides Ammon and falls into the Jordan, "the inhabitants," as recent travellers agree in confirming, "live in a state of complete independence of the Porte," while the northern portion of Ammon, the most remote from the ancient capital, is not distinguished from the other territories of the Pachalic of Damascus. These shall escape out of his hand, even Edom and Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon.

He shall stretch forth his hand also upon the countries. A race of monarchs,—each, as before, throughout all the prophecy, retaining the generic name of his order, and designated the king of the north,arose to grace or tarnish the Turkish annals of destruction and conquest, according to the various judgments that may be formed of kings, as they regard either the glory of God or their own, as scarcely any other nation, but that of the Turks, could either boast of or blush for. Each king was a conqueror. To stretch their hand farther and farther over the countries was the aim and work of them all. The cast was long unbroken; and they followed successively

the occupation of their fathers. Othman, Orchan, Amurath, Bajazet, Mahomet, or Mahmoud, are names of fearful import and terrible recollections, at which Europe and Asia trembled. And these are the kings who, after the Turks under Togrul Beg and Alp Arsan, the descendants of Seljuk, had first come against the church and Roman empire in Asia like a whirlwind, and had overflowed and passed over countries,—and after the crusades had spent their fury and the overthrow of many from that cause had ceased,-conquering nation after nation from the borders of the Oxus Jaxartes, and Euphrates to the banks of the Danube, and from Persia to Poland, finally fixed the seat of their empire in the chosen city of Constantine; held Babylon, Syria, Armenia, all the countries of Asia Minor, Romania, Wallachia, Moldavia, Macedon, Epirus, and Greece, as provinces of Turkey; and stretched their hands over the countries from the Caspian to the Mediterranean, and from the Persian Gulph to the Adriatic Sea. It is needless to trace or define the order of these conquests which are comprehended in one general expression, including them all; and the task besides would be superfluous, for the extent to which the Turkish empire reached may best be seen in a map of the world, over which the reader may stretch his hand,-as the king of the north stretched his over the countries.

And the land of Egypt shall not escape. But he shall have power over the treasures of gold and of sil

ver,

and over all the precious things of Egypt. And the Lybians and Ethiopians shall be at his steps. ver. 42, 43. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, hordes of shepherds descended from Turkomania into the plains of Persia, and the sceptre of Irak passed from the Persian to the Turkish nation. The fate of Armenia was decided in a day; and that of all the Asiatic provinces in another. The king entered in