DAMASCUS BLADES 653 tures. It subsequently came under the rule Of Babylonia and Persia. After the battle of Issus (333 B. 0.) it fell into the hands of Alexander the Great, and soon afterward be- came a part of the dominions of the Seleucidse. Pompey attached it to the Koman empire in 64 B. C. At the time of Paul's visit to the city and conversion there, it was tempora- rily in possession of Aretas, king of Arabia Petrsea and father-in-law of Herod the Great. Many Jews had settled in Damascus after its conquest by Alexander ; and Christianity being early preached here, it became the seat of a bishop. Under the emperors, Damascus was one of the principal Roman arsenals in Asia, and it was denominated by Julian "the eye of the whole East." The Saracens took it shortly after the death of Mohammed, and made it the seat of the caliphate and the capi- tal of the Mohammedan world. The Ommi- yades reigned at Damascus more than 90 years. On their fall the Abbassides, their suc- cessors, made Bagdad their capital. When the family of the Fatimites obtained the suprem- acy, Damascus fell under the sway of these Egyptian caliphs ; but it was wrested from them by the Seljuk Turks, under whom it was in vain besieged by Louis VII. of France and Conrad III. of Germany, in 1148. Just at the beginning of the 15th century it was taken by Tamerlane, after a protracted resistance, which so enraged the conqueror that he put its in- habitants to the sword without mercy. The Mamelukes repaired it when they gained pos- session of Syria ; but the Turks, under Selim I., took it from them in 1516, and it thus be- came part of the Turkish empire. In 1832 Ibrahim Pasha took it and added it to the pa- shalic of Egypt ; but in 1840 it was restored to Turkey. In 1860 a massacre of the Chris- tians in the Lebanon by the Druses took place, and many of the Christians hi the villages round Damascus fled for refuge into the city. Shortly afterward the Mohammedans there, at a given signal^ rose in a body and commenced a general massacre of them. Hundreds who fled out of the city were overtaken and killed. The exact number of the victims of this mas- sacre has never been ascertained, but it is esti- mated that about 3,000 adult male Christians were murdered, and many of the women and girls were reduced to slavery. Abd-el-Kader, the exiled chieftain of Algiers, then living in retirement at Damascus, distinguished himself by protecting several hundred Christians who had taken refuge in his mansion. After the massacre numbers of Christian merchants and artisans removed to Bey rout. The building of a macadamized road between Damascus and Beyrout was commenced in 1859 by a French company, and diligences now run daily be- tween the two cities. DAMASCUS BLADES. These famous weapons, though in use among nations little skilled in the metallurgic arts long before the Christian era, and made familiar to the European nations from the time of the crusades, have until a re- cent period defied all attempts to reproduce their remarkable qualities. It appears that the wootz of India was in those ancient times carried from the region of Golconda in Hin- dostan (where, as well as in Persia, it still con- tinues to be manufactured by the original rude process), and being delivered at Damascus, was there converted into swords, sabres, and scymi- tars. The articles were particularly distinguished for their keen edge, their great hardness, tough- ness, and elasticity, and the splendid play of prismatic color upon their surfaces, especially when viewed in an oblique light. Their pol- ished surfaces were also covered with delicate lines appearing as black, white, and silvery veins, parallel to each other or interlaced and arranged in bundles of fibres, crossing each other at various angles, or in knots and bunch- es. Although probably fabricated by simple methods, the highest skill of modern science was long taxed in vain to imitate this varie- gated or watered appearance, and the rare qualities associated with it. Methods of great ingenuity and complexity were contrived, by which some very good imitations were made; but it was not till after the investigations of M. Bryant and of the Russian general Anosoff, an account of which was published in the " Russian Mining Annual " about 20 years ago, that the subject was fully comprehended. Karsten remarks that the true Damascus (leav- ing aside the false, which is merely engraving upon a coating of some substance laid upon the steel) is a certain proof of a want of homo- geneousness in the metal. All steel, even after melting, and malleable iron also, shows this texture, if polished, plunged in acid, and ex- amined with a microscope ; and the softer the metal the more decided this is. The Damas- cus appearance may be given to iron by weld- ing together bars of different degrees of hard- ness, drawing them down, and repeating the process several times. Karsten suggests that by using bars of good steel the best oriental blades may have been fashioned in this way. Such was the " torsion " process of Clouet and Hatchette, the bars being well twisted between each welding. The "mosaic" process, also practised by them, differed from the other by cutting the bar into short lengths and fagoting these pieces, the cut surfaces always being placed so as to face outward. Blades of great excellence were thus produced, but still infe- rior to the genuine Damascus. Faraday in 1819 detected aluminum in wootz by two anal- yses, and was inclined to refer the peculiarities of the steel to this alloy ; but Karsten failed to find any appreciable quantity of this metal, and other chemists have sought in vain for this or any other ingredient to which its excellence could possibly be attributed. Eisner entertained the opinion, which is generally received at Sheffield, that it is the remelting and working over of the steel that imparts to it such valu- able properties. M. Bryant appears to have
