HARUN AL RASCHID, the famous Caliph of Bagdad, holds in oriental history very much the same place that his contemporary, Charlemagne, holds in the history of Europe. His love of peace and justice, of literature and the arts, was only equalled by his skill and success in war. His reign is the golden age of the Mohammedan dominion, and furnished the materials for some of the best stories in the Arabian Nights. He died in 808, after a reign of twenty-two years. See BAGDAD.