text:  The writers from whom Al-Makkari has drawn his materials exhaust their powers of language in panegyrics on the unrivaled magnificence of the court of Abdurrahman; which was thronged both by men of letters whom the distracted state of the East had driven thither for refuge and by ambassadors not only from the princes of Islam but from "Hoto the king of the Alaman " (Otho the Great of Germany ) the king of France and numerous other Christian potentates