text:  Under various pretexts he destroyed or drove into exile within a few years all the princes of the blood and others whose influence or station might have endangered the success of his projects and concentrated in his own hands all the powers of the state; while the khalif secluded from public view within his palace was as completely a puppet in the hands of his all-powerful minister as the khalifs of Bagdad at the same period in those of the _Emirs-al-Omrah_