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growth of its manufactures and the immense trade attracted from all parts of the world by the presence of a brilliant and prodigal court, early resulted in making the great body of its population well-to-do and contented. It was one of the most orderly and well-governed cities in the world of its day, and such was the comparative quiet and security for life and property that reigned within its walls, (thanks to the astute administration of the Barmecide Viziers, who anticipated Fourier’s doctrine of the “passionel” treatment of criminal inclinations, carrying out the theory of “set a thief to catch a thief” with the greatest success and effectually keeping under roguery and crime by employing certain selected rascals of high capacity, such as Ahmed ed Denef, Hassan Shouman and Ali Zibec, mentioned in the Thousand and One Nights, as subordinate prefects of police to coerce and checkmate their former comrades,) that the city was generally known by the sobriquet of Dar es Selam[1] or Abode of Peace.
It was, indeed, to the great statesmen of the house of Bermek that the reigns of the early Abbaside Khalifs owed almost the whole of the prosperity and brilliancy that distinguished them. Of an ancient and noble
- ↑ Opinion, however, differs as to the origin of this name, which is said by some authorities to refer to the sacred character of the city, as the seat of the Imam or spiritual head of the Faith, and by others to have been given to the capital as a sort of talisman in memory of one of the seven “gardens” of the Muslim Paradise. It may also have been a mystic or hieratic name, as Valeria was that of ancient Rome.
