Histories

"In 1610 a new period of mismanagement began. The aggressive foreign policy of Richelieu... and the extravagance of the court led again to a new and huge floating debt. At this time the term “partisans” was coined: people who had partis, money transactions with the government, and thus became its unconditional adherents."

"While the pledged Spanish gold and silver flowed to , Spain sank to a copper standard of currency. Often money was lacking to supply the king’s table. Revenues were pledged five to ten years in advance. At times it turned out that Crown property had been pledged several times. ...By 1627 nearly everybody in Genoa had an interest in Spanish claims, and the ruin there became general. The big Genoese banks reached the end of their resources. The s who had clung to old Spanish claims dating back to the sixteenth century were now completely ruined. Spain never recovered her international political and financial power."

"Between 1430 and 1480, the at Florence was by far the greatest financial organization in Europe.., with branches throughout Europe, the and North Africa. It was the chief bank for the Curia. Many other Italian banks had large capital and a worldwide business. Venice kept ahead of Genoa and was the first seaport of the Mediterranean."

"The structure of trade and industry changed. Europe now had great capitalists possessed of large and diversified interests. These men were not local merchants; they were no longer dependent on the restrictive regulations of the town burghers. They could move their operations from place to place: to the country or to other towns. ...They began to operate on credit on a large scale and to speculate. They supported royalty and financed wars."

"Another French state bankruptcy in 1648 eliminated the Italian bankers, mostly Florentines. State revenues by that time had been anticipated three years ahead by borrowing from the partisans who charged the Crown ruinous rates. Even the rentes (perpetual loans) were not always serviced in full. From 1639 French rentes enjoyed a market on the new Paris Exchange."

"Spain, recently the most powerful of European states, sank into financial decrepitude in spite of her empire in the New World and in spite of inpouring gold and silver. Spanish state bankruptcies occurred about every twenty years: 1607–1627–1649. ...Spain’s imported gold and silver were pledged in advance to Genoese bankers."

"There are only meager data on interest rates, i.e. the net opportunity cost of holding real capital. For estimates near the 1774 benchmark, see Homer and Sylla..."

"In historical times credit preceded the coining of money by over two thousand years. Coinage is dated from the first millennium B.C., but old ian documents, circa 3000 B.C., reveal a systematic use of credit based on loans of grain by volume and loans of metal by weight. Often these loans carried interest."

"Cattle breeding has supplied us with many financial terms used in later money economies. For example, there is our own word capital and our term pecuniary, from pecus, meaning a “flock” in Latin. Sumerians used the word mas for calves and for interest. The Egyptian term ms, meaning interest, is derived from the verb msj, which means “to give birth.” Early Greeks, in fact, valued their precious metals in terms of cattle."

"There are many references in the Iliad and the Odyssey to the use of the ox as a unit of account. The Homeric Greeks had been nomads in the grassy steppes. ...One of the later reforms of Solon, 594 B.C., was the recomputation of fines and bounties in coined money instead of cattle."

"Solon's reforms were radical and for the most part they endured. ...All those enslaved for debt were freed; those sold abroad for debt were redeemed at state expense. All restrictions were removed from rates of interest and from loan transactions, except that personal slavery for debts was forbidden. Political power was reapportioned according to property. The drachma was devalued by one quarter. Weights and measures were increased in size. Citizenship was granted to immigrants who were skilled artisans. Judging from these reforms and their acceptance, the economic crisis of 594 B.C. must have been severe..."

"In 508 B.C. a democracy was established in Athens. From this time on Athens so rapidly outdistanced other Greek cities in trade and finance that the history of Greek credit and interest rates is largely... a history of Athenian credit and... interest rates."

"Each city struck its own coinage. Every foreign transaction required a money-changing transaction. Many cities engaged in unscrupulous alloying. ...Athens had the advantage of the silver mines of [in south-eastern ]. ...Even in times of tragic national disaster, when the treasury was empty and Attica occupied by an enemy, Athens refused to debase this silver coinage. As a consequence, the Athenian "owl" became current in all markets and an article for export. It remained a most acceptable currency throughout the Mediterranean for 600 years, long after the disastrous defeat of Athens in the ... This tragic event, immortalized by Thucydides and mourned... by lovers of human excellence, was not a turning point in the financial history of Greece."

"Before the Persian wars... the hoarding of coin was general... Cities and temples, especially the Temple of Delphi, accumulated treasure. Temples made loans to states and to individuals. But after 450 B.C., investment in productive capital became common. ...land, ...rental housing, slaves let out for hire, business investments ...Even Socrates... had a friend to whom he entrusted his investments, and loans bearing interest."

"The victories of the Turks and the interruption of the Oriental trade route through the Mediterranean led to the discovery of alternative trade routes. This ultimately deprived the Italians of their central trading position. Nevertheless, in this century Italian prosperity continued..."

"Flam has given us a lucid and compelling study of these two geniuses, explaining what made them so good, and why part of the answer is: each other."

"Timed to coincide roughly with the opening of the blockbuster Matisse-Picasso exhibition's third and final stop, at New York's MoMA... Flam is terrific. Flam locates... productive appropriations and reappropriations between the two painters over the years, so that anyone standing in line for the exhibition in Queens will profit..."

"Matisse's works collectively give very little sense of a life long lived. ...Matisse's works give a vivid sense of a life lived as an artist, but not nearly the sense that Picasso gives of a life lived as a man. ...Matisse gives almost no sense of the political or economic history of the twentieth century, or of the demonic energies it unleashed... no sense that an artist might feel to take revenge upon the world. There is no equivalent of Picasso's Guernica... or to the death-haunted still lifes or harrowing political allegories, such as '. Nonetheless, Matisse's painting does provide a profound engagement with the spiritual uncertainties of the century, and a very personal response... in his inspired balance between observation, analysis, and the pure poetry of painting."

"Jack Flam explores the compelling, competitive, parallel lives of these two artists and their very different attitudes toward the idea of artistic greatness, toward the women they loved, and ultimately toward their confrontations with death."

"[T]heir tumultuous relationship is examined and brilliantly told."

"Matisse's response to Picasso's inventive reorganization of the human figure was concentrated in one of his most sublimely sensuous pictures of Lydia [Delectorskaya], the so-called Pink Nude... which was his variation on the pose of his 1907 Blue Nude. ...Returning to a practice he used with the Barnes murals, he photographed... while it was in progress... As with the murals, he also used pieces of cut paper to make quick modifications to the composition without having to wait for the paint to dry. ...[T]he painting began as a relatively naturalistic rendering... As the picture developed, Matisse radically altered not only the composition but its basic pictorial language... He also tried to augment the forcefulness of the figure by contorting it in a manner similar to Picasso's. ...But in the end, such an approach was not true to his vision, and he reverted..."

"[T]he trauma of the war forged a new solidarity between them. As the two most prominent artists in France, they came to stand for French culture, and even—in the face of barbarous fascism—for the values of civilization itself. (This was an ironic turnabout; before the war they were frequently accused of having introduced barbarism into modern art.) The probity of their personal comportment also stood in clear contrast to the shoddy behavior of a number of their colleagues, such as Vlaminck and Derain, who accepted invitations to go on propaganda trips to Nazi Germany."

"[A]fter Matisse's death... he became fixed on the idea of doing variations on the masters, and these became a subgenre within his work. His variations seem to be animated by a desire both to possess a work of the master and to measure himself against it. ...Picasso is again asking the same question about the greatness of his gifts that he had posed... when he and Matisse first met. ...as if he were again struggling against doubts about whether his election as a great artist was really strong enough to defeat death. (This was something Matisse never visibly questioned, at least in his work.) ...Picasso does seem to have been profoundly concerned about the possible death of his creative gift, and perhaps about its validity early on and the degree to which his work would survive him. For a Spanish artist, the pinnacle of comparison would be with Diego Velázquez ...His variations [see Las Meninas, 1957] on ' were an escape from the present, as well as an attempt to dominate the past and affirm his standing in the future."

"Picasso signed on for his own retrospective exhibition at the same gallery [Galerie Georges Petit], to open... 1932, exactly one year after the Matisse show... Picasso had been referring to Matisse's works for the past several years, playfully and often with more than a hint of mockery, but now he raised the stakes and produced several paintings that are usually characterized as his most "Matissian," with bright colors, sweeping arabesques, intense decorative patterning, and an extravagantly lyrical sensuality. These... are in a sense more "Matissian" than anything Matisse himself had previously done; in a curious way, they anticipate Matisse's late style several years before Matisse had formulated it."

"Artists of the previous generation, such as Cézanne and van Gogh, had employed systematic "distortions" in their works, but... as part of a... direct way of communicating the "truth" of his own personal vision. Picasso's contemporaries, including Matisse, followed in that tradition. Matisse's varied styles between 1905 and 1918 had grown out of his direct visual responses... and were not calculated to be artificial or arbitrary. Picasso, by contrast, insisted that there were many possible ways of arriving at the truth, and that all of them were equally artificial. ...the artist could choose among many different visual languages ...Each of these modes or styles ...being inherently expressive of attitudes that were implicitly contained within the style itself."

"Marie-Thérèse was... a natural or "primitive" version of the uninhibited and all-accepting woman the Surrealists were trying so hard to construct. ...Their relationship was rooted in a complex game of hiding and revealing, which soon spilled over into his art. Picasso's earliest representations of her were not paintings but geometric line drawings of musical instruments, done in pencil, in which he encodes cryptograms that use her initials: M-T. There is something charmingly adolescent about the gesture... The linear style of these works [line and charcoal drawings, plus The Dress Designer's Workshop and The Painter and His Model] is directly related to the notational systems Picasso was using in the studies for his illustrations for Balzac's Unknown Masterpiece—a story in which a seventeenth-century painter named Frenhof spends years working on what is supposed to be his masterpiece, and overworks it to such a degree that he finally produces an incomprehensible muddle."

"If Matisse's triumph was... to transcend death by bravely ignoring it, Picasso's triumph was to look death and decay straight in the face and not flinch. Though it was not possible to report back from that "undiscover'd country from whose bourn no traveler returns," at least he would send back images from the most distant frontiers that adjoined it."

"Although ' was the most unnerving painting Picasso had done, Three Women... was more directly challenging to Matisse. ...The early version... that Matisse saw... encroached on territory Matisse had thought was his. The subject and style... owed much to Cézanne... The underlying subject... was also one that Matisse had been working with... in which process—the coming into being of things—was emphasized over stability. ...[I]ts outward-spiraling composition of three figures that seem to emerge from the bowels of the earth ...was a more resonant evocation of primal beginnings than had been Matisse's... Le Bonheur de vivre or Le Luxe... Three Women... contained a bold imbrication of the figures within their background—a motif Matisse had employed in his Fauve paintings, such as Woman in a Japanese Robe Beside the Sea... But whereas Matisse's merging... was based on... optical sensations, Picasso was developing a... symbolic language. ...also something Matisse had been involved with... especially in his... treatment of mythological themes. Picasso's Three Women seemed to combine references to a standard mythological theme... the Three Graces [previously classically painted by Botticelli, Raphael and Rubens], with a more generalized "birth of the world" imagery that went to the heart of the that had haunted both... along with... Derain, Vlaminck, and Braque... In response to Three Women, Matisse painted '..."

"In "Ma Jolie,"... the most concrete information about the woman comes largely through the two words "MA JOLIE," which refer to the refrain from a popular song. ...It is commonly said that a picture is worth a thousand words. But in this picture two words are reveal more than the entire image. ...In its hesitation at the limits of abstraction, the painting casts doubt on the whole enterprise of visual representation."

"Picasso was deeply impressed by Matisse's Goldfish and Pallete, and its emotional force and resonant use of black seem to have influenced his 1915 Harlequin... Harlequin is one of Picasso's first clear images of a divided personality. ...This evocation of multiple identities is given an added dimension by the rendering of... an unfinished canvas. ...Because this rectangle is rendered in a painterly way, it also suggests... the process of painting... a reminder of the impossibility of completeness, either in painting or in life. ...[W]hen Matisse saw Harlequin... he told the dealer that his goldfish had led to it, for in this painting Picasso had picked up precisely those aspects that Matisse had taken from him, such as the conflation of the figure with its surroundings, the suggestion of different psychological viewpoints, the fractured planarity, and... the situating of the picture in a space... somewhere between the thought and the seen, the internal and the external. In Harlequin, Picasso responds with his own version of multiple realities... the strong sense of process and... use of black... to evoke both light and darkness... as lessons from Matisse's painting."

"The elephants were carried off, some by force, some were driven, and some went without any compulsion towards Mahmud, upon whom God bestows, out of his great kindness, not only ordinary plunder, but drives elephants towards him. Therefore they were called “God-brought,”38 in gratitude to the Almighty for sending elephants to the Sultan, which are only driven by iron goads, and are not usually captured [p. 45] without stratagem and deceit, whereas, in this instance, they came of their own accord, leaving idols, preferring the service of the religion of Islam."

"We possess a brief account of the Indian expeditions of Sultan Mahmud by Al-’Utbi, his Secretary, who “enjoyed excellent opportunities of becoming fully acquainted with the operations of that conqueror ”' He very frankly says that “Islam or death was the alternative that Mahmud placed before the people,” and his detailed account gives many practical illustrations of it. The usual consequence of Mahmud’s victory is thus described by "Utbi: “The victors slew the vanquished wherever they were found, in jungles, passes, plains and hills.” Elsewhere he says: “The blood of the infidels flowed so copiously, that the stream was discoloured, notwithstanding its purity, and people were unable to drink it.”' The word ‘infidel’ in the above extract is significant,—for the only way to escape this cruel massacre was to embrace Islam. It was thus that Hardat, the ruler of Baran, and his ten thousand followers, as well as the Shah of Qurat and its people saved their lives. There must have been many other mass conversions of this type.' Utbi’s account is full of stories of indiscriminate massacre of all those Hindus who fell into the hands of Mahmud after the capture of a town or fort and disdained to save their lives by change of religion. We also hear of a large number of such unfortunate Hindus being carried away as slaves. Referring to Mahmud’s victory over Nidar Bhim, ’Utbi remarks that “slaves were so plentiful that they became very cheap.”'’© His detailed account clearly shows that these slaves were converted to Muslim faith."

"The Sultan summoned the most religiously disposed of his followers, and ordered them to attack the enemy immediately. Many infidels were consequently slain or taken prisoners in this sudden attack, and the Musulmans paid no regard to the booty till they had satiated themselves with the slaughter of the infidels and worshippers of the sun and fire. The friends of Allah searched the bodies of the slain for three whole days, in order to obtain booty... The booty amounted in gold and silver, rubies and pearls, nearly to three thousand thousand dirhams, and the number of prisoners may be conceived from the fact, that each was sold for from two to ten dirhams. These were afterwards taken to Ghazna, and merchants came from distant cities to purchase them, so that the countries of Mawarau-n nahr, Irak and Khurasan were filled with them, and the fair and the dark, the rich and the poor, were commingled in one common slavery."

"The Sultan advanced to the fortifications of Kanauj, which consisted of seven distinct forts, washed by the Ganges which flowed under them like the ocean. In Kanauj there were nearly ten thousand temples, which the idolaters falsely and absurdly represented to have been founded by their ancestors two or three hundred thousand years ago. They worshipped and offered their vows and supplications to them in consequence of their great antiquity. Many of the inhabitants of the place fled and were scattered abroad like so many wretched widows and orphans, from the fear which oppressed them, in consequence of witnessing the fate of their deaf and dumb idols. Many of them thus effected their escape, and those who did not fly were put to death. The Sultan took all seven forts in one day, and gave his soldiers leave to plunder them and take prisoners."

"He then went to Munj, known as the fort of Brahmans, the inhabitants of which were independent as headstrong camels. They prepared to offer opposition, like evil demons and obstinate Satans, and when they found they could not withstand the Musulmans, and that their blood would be shed, they took to flight, throwing themselves down from the apertures and the lofty and broad battlements, but most of them were killed in this attempt.[p. 42]"

"The Sultan invested and captured the fort, notwithstanding its strength and height. Here he got plenty of supplies and booty, but he did not obtain the real object of his desire, which was to seize Chand Rai, and which he now determined to effect by proceeding in pursuit of him. Accordingly, after marching fifteen parasangs through the forest, which was so thorny that the faces of his men were scarified and bloody, and through stony tracts which battered and injured the horses’ shoes, he at last came up to his enemy, shortly before midnight on the 25th of Sha’ban (6th January, 1019 A.D.). They had traveled over high and low ground without any marked road, not like merchants of Hazramaut travelling at ease with their mantles around them."

"In the middle of the city there was a temple larger and firmer than the rest, which can neither be described nor painted. The Sultan thus wrote respecting it: “If any should wish to construct a building equal to this, he would not be able to do it without expending an hundred thousand thousand red dinars, and it would occupy two hundred years, even though the most experienced and able workmen were [p. 40] employed.” Among the idols there were five made of red gold, each five yards high, fixed in the air without support. In the eyes of one of these idols there were two rubies, of such value, that if anyone were to sell such as are like them, he would obtain fifty thousand dinars. On another, there was a sapphire purer than water, and more sparkling than crystal; the weight was four hundred and fifty miskals. The two feet of another idol weighed four thousand four hundred miskals, and the entire quantity of gold yielded by the bodies of these idols was ninety-eight thousand three hundred miskals. The idols of silver amounted to two hundred, but they could not be weighed without breaking them to pieces and putting them into scales. The Sultan gave orders that all the temples should be burnt with naphtha and fire, and leveled with the ground."

"After this, the Sultan went on with the intention of proceeding to Kanauj, and he derived a favourable omen, when he opened the Kuran, from finding the resemblance of “Kanauj” to “victories.”30 He left the greater part of his army behind, and took only a small body of troops with him against Rai Jaipal, who had also but a few men with him, and was preparing to fly for safety to some of his dependent vassals."

"The Sultan leveled to the ground every fort which he had in this country, and the inhabitants of them either accepted Islam, or took up arms against him. He collected so much booty, prisoners and wealth, that the fingers of those who counted them would have been tired."

"The Sultan then departed from the environs of the city, in which was a temple of the Hindus. The name of this place was Maharatu-l Hind. He saw there a building of exquisite structure, which the inhabitants said had been built, not by men, but by Genii, and there he witnessed practices contrary to the nature of man, and which could not be believed but from evidence of actual sight. The wall of the city was constructed of hard stone, and two gates opened upon the river flowing under the city, which were erected upon strong and lofty foundations to protect them against the floods of the river and rains. On both sides of the city there were a thousand houses, to which idol temples were attached, all strengthened from top to bottom by rivets of iron, and all made of masonry work; and opposite to them were other buildings, supported on broad wooden pillars, to give them strength."

"He arrived on the 8th, of Sha’ban at Kanauj, which was deserted by Jaipal on hearing of his approach, for he fled [p. 41] across the Ganges, which the Hindus regard as of exceeding sanctity, and consider that its source is in the paradise of heaven. When they burn their dead, they throw the ashes into this river, as they consider that the waters purify them from sins. Devotees come to it from a distance, and drown themselves in its stream, in the hope of obtaining eternal salvation, but in the end it will only carry them to hell, so that it will neither kill them nor make them alive."

"The blood of the infidels flowed so copiously, that the stream was discoloured, notwithstanding its purity, and people were unable to drink it. Had not night come on and concealed the traces of their flight, many more of the enemy would have been slain. The victory was gained by God’s grace, who has established Islam for ever as the best of religions, notwithstanding that idolaters revolt against it. The Sultan returned with plunder which it is impossible to recount. Praise be to God (Allah), the protector of the world, for the honour he bestows upon Islam and Musulmans!"

"The Sultan appointed one of his most confidential servants to the charge of the fort and the property in it. After this he returned to Ghazna in triumph, and, on his arrival there, he ordered the court-yard of his palace to be covered with a carpet, on which he displayed jewels and unbored pearls and rubies, shining like sparks, or like wine congealed with ice, and emeralds like fresh sprigs of myrtle, and diamonds in size and weight like pomegranates. Then ambassadors from foreign countries, including the envoy from Taghan Khan, king of Turkistan, assembled to see the wealth which they had never yet even read of in books of the ancients, and which had never been accumulated by kings of Persia or of Rum, or even by Karun, who had only to express a wish and God granted it."

"The Sultan again resolved on an expedition to Hind, and marched towards Narain, urging his horses and moving over ground, hard and soft, until he came to the middle of Hind, where he reduced chiefs, who, up to that time obeyed no master, overturned their idols, put to the sword the vagabonds of that country, and with delay and circumspection proceeded to accomplish his design. He fought a battle with the chiefs of the infidels, in which God bestowed upon him much booty in property, horses, and elephants, and the friends of God committed slaughter in every hill and valley. The Sultan returned to Ghazna with all the plunder he had obtained."

"Conquest of Nardin After the Sultan had purified Hind from idolatry, and raised mosques therein, he determined to invade the capital of Hind, to punish those who kept idols and would not acknowledge the unity of God. He collected his warriors and distributed money amongst them. He marched with a large army in the year 404 H., A.D. 1013 during a dark night, and at the close of autumn, on account of the purity of the southern breezes at that season. When the Sultan had arrived near the frontier of Hind, snow fell, such as had never been seen before, insomuch that the passes of the hills were closed, and mountains and valleys became of one level. The feet of the horses and camels were affected by the cold, so it may be conceived what the faces, hands, and feet of men suffered. The well-known roads were concealed, and the right could not be distinguished from the left, or what was behind from that which was before, and they were unable to return until God should give the order. The Sultan employed himself, in the meantime, in collecting supplies, and sent for his generals from the different provinces. After having thus accumulated the means of warfare, and having been joined by his soldiers, who had come from different directions, in number equal to the drops [p. 33] of an autumnal rain, he left these winter quarters in the spring, and, had the earth been endowed with feeling, it would have groaned under the weight of the iron, the warriors, the horses, and the beasts of burden. The guides marched on in front over hill and dale, before the sun arose, and even before the light of the stars was extinguished. He urged on his horses20 for two months, among broad and deep rivers, and among jungles in which wild cattle even might lose their way."

"The Sultan brought his forces under the fort and surrounded it, and prepared to attack the garrison vigorously, boldly and wisely. When the defenders saw the hills covered with the armies of plunderers, and the arrows ascending towards them like flaming sparks of fire, great fear came upon them, and, calling out for mercy, they opened the gates, and fell on the earth, like sparrows before a hawk, or rain before lightning. Thus did God grant an easy conquest of this fort to the Sultan, and bestowed on him as plunder the products of mines and seas, the ornaments of heads and breasts, to his heart’s content. The Sultan entered the fort, with Abu Nasr Ahmad bin Muhammad Farighuni, the ruler of Juzjan, and all his own private attendants, and appointed his two chief chamberlains, Altuntash and Asightigin,16 to take charge of the treasures of gold and silver and all the valuable property, while he himself took charge of the jewels. The treasures were laden on the backs of as many camels as they could procure, and the officers carried away the rest. The stamped coin amounted to seventy thousand thousand royal dirhams, and the gold and silver ingots amounted to seven hundred thousand four hundred mans in weight, besides wearing apparel and fine cloths of Sus, respecting which old men said they never remembered to have seen any so fine, soft, and embroidered. Among the booty was a house of white silver, like to the houses of rich men, the length of which was thirty yards and the breadth fifteen.17 It could be taken to pieces and put together again. And there was a canopy, made of the fine linen of Rum, forty yards long and twenty [p. 31] broad, supported on two golden and two silver poles, which had been cast in moulds."

"The Sultan, contrary to the disposition of man, which induces him to prefer a soft to a hard couch, and the splendour of the cheeks of pomegranate-bosomed girls to well-tempered sword blades, was so offended at the standard which Satan had raised in Hind, that he determined on another holy expedition to that land."

"On the last day of Rabi’u-l-akhir of the same year,13 the Sultan prayed God for the accomplishment of his wishes. When he had reached as far as the river of Waihind, he was met by Brahmanpal, the son of Andpal, at the head of a valiant army, with white swords, blue spears, yellow coats of mail, and ash-coloured elephants. Fight opened its crooked teeth, attacks were frequent like flaming meteors, arrows fell like rain from bows, and the grinding-stone of slaughter revolved, crushing the bold and the powerful. The battle lasted from morning till evening, and the infidels were near gaining the victory, had not God aided by sending the slaves of the household to attack the enemy in rear, and put them to flight. The victors obtained thirty large elephants, and slew the vanquished wherever they were found in jungles, passes, plains, and hills."

"The Sultan himself joined in the pursuit, and went after them as far as the fort called Bhimnagar [Nagarkot, modern Kangra], which is very strong, situated on the promontory of a lofty hill, in the midst of impassable waters. The kings of Hind, the chiefs of that country, and rich devotees, used to amass their treasures and precious jewels, and send them time after time to be presented to the large idol that they might receive a reward for their good deeds and draw near to their God. So the Sultan advanced near to this crow's fruit,^ and this accumulation of years, which had attained such an amount that the backs of camels would not carry it, nor vessels contain it, nor writers hands record it, nor the imagination of an arithmetician conceive it."

"The conflict continued as before until God blew the gale of victory on his friends, and the enemy were slain on the tops of the hills, and in the valleys, ravines, and beds of torrents. A large number of elephants, which the enemy had looked upon as strongholds to protect them, fell into the hands of the victors, as well as much other booty. So God granted the Sultan the victory of Nardin, such as added to the decoration of the mantle of Islam, which had not before that period extended to that place. A stone was found there in the temple of the great Budda,21 on which an inscription was written purporting that the temple had been founded fifty thousand years ago. The Sultan was surprised at the ignorance of these people, because those who believe in the true faith represent that only seven thousand years have elapsed since the creation of the world, and the signs of resurrection are even now approaching. The Sultan asked his wise men the meaning [p. 35] of this inscription, and they all concurred in saying that it was false, and, that no faith was to be put in the evidence of a stone."