Edward Gibbon, an English historian, published The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in six volumes between 1776 and 1788. This is Chapter 57 of that work. He follows Rome from the prosperous age of Trajan and the Antonines, around the year 100, through the fall of the West and on to the Ottoman capture of Constantinople in 1453.

Chapter 57: The Turks of the House of Seljuk—Their revolt against Mahmud, conqueror of Hindostan—Togrul subdues Persia, and protects the Caliphs—Defeat and captivity of the Emperor Romanus Diogenes by Alp Arslan—Power and magnificence of Malek Shah—Conquest of Asia Minor and Syria—State and oppression of Jerusalem—Pilgrimages to the Holy Sepulchre. The footnotes — Gibbon’s famous asides — are not in this reading. What you have is the narrative, in his own eighteenth-century English.