Anal.

COLLECTED EDITION

OF THE

NOVELS AND TALES

BY

THE RIGHT HONORABLE

B. DISRAELI.

VOL. VIII.—ALROY. IXION IN HEAVEN.

THE INFERNAL MARRIAGE.

POPANILLA.

PREFACE

TO

ALROY.

BEING at Jerusalem in the year 1831, and visiting the traditionary tombs of the Kings of Israel, my thoughts recurred to a personage whose marvellous career had, even in boyhood, attracted my attention, as one fraught with the richest materials of poetic fiction. And I then commenced these pages that should commemorate the name of ALROY.

In the twelfth century, when he arose, this was the political condition of the East:

The Caliphate was in a state of rapid decay. The Seljukian Sultans, who had been called to the assistance of the Commanders of the Faithful, had become, like the Mayors of the palace in France, the real sovereigns of the Empire. Out of the dominions of the successors of the Prophet, they had carved four kingdoms, which conferred titles on four Seljukian Princes, to wit, the Sultan of Bagdad, the Sultan of Persia, the Sultan of Syria, and the Sultan of Roum, or Asia Minor.