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Title: History of the Moorish Empire in Europe, Vol. 1 (of 3)
Author: S. P. Scott
Release date: March 19, 2024 [eBook #73203]
Language: English
Original publication: Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1904
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE MOORISH EMPIRE IN EUROPE, VOL. 1 (OF 3) ***
HISTORY
OF THE
MOORISH EMPIRE
IN EUROPE
BY
S. P. SCOTT
AUTHOR OF “THROUGH SPAIN”
Corduba famosa locuples de nomine dicta,
Inclyta deliciis, rebus quoque splendida cunctis
HROSWITHA, PASSIO S. PELAGII
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. I.
[Illustration]
PHILADELPHIA & LONDON
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1904
COPYRIGHT, 1904
BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
Published March, 1904
_Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, U. S. A._
PREFACE
[Illustration]
This work has engaged the attention of the author for more than twenty
years. Its object is an attempt to depict the civilization of that
great race whose achievements in science, literature, and the arts have
been the inspiration of the marvellous progress of the present age. The
review of this wide-spread influence, whose ramifications extend to the
limits of both Europe and America, has required the introduction of
some matter apparently extraneous, but which, when considered in its
general relations to the subject, will be found to be not foreign to
the purpose of these volumes.
The list of authorities cited does not, by any means, include all
that have been examined. Many, from which comparatively few facts
have been gleaned, have been omitted. Among the works that have been
made the subject of careful research, and have yielded most valuable
information--in addition to the Arabic and Spanish chronicles--are
those of Al-Makkari, Romey, Rosseuw St. Hilaire, Le Bon, Sédillot,
and Casiri. The utter unreliability of Conde, who compiled the
only detailed history of the Moors of Spain, is well known, and
his statements have not been adopted except when amply verified.
The histories of the late R. Dozy, Professor in the University of
Leyden, which for learning, accuracy, impartiality, and critical
acumen have few rivals in this branch of literature, have been the
principal dependence of the author, who gladly takes this opportunity
to acknowledge his obligations to the labors of one whose genius and
attainments are recognized by every Oriental scholar in Europe.
It may seem a work of supererogation to traverse once more a portion
of the ground covered by Irving and Prescott. The final episode in the
fall of a great empire could not, however, with propriety be omitted.
Moreover, the accounts of these two famous writers swarm with errors,
as any one can readily discover who will consult the chronicles of
Pulgar and Bernaldez, eye-witnesses, and consequently the most reliable
authorities concerning what they relate. The quotations of Irving,
it may be added, indicate a surprising want of familiarity with the
Castilian language.
That writer best fulfils the office of an historian who passes before
the mind of the reader, as in a panorama, not merely the more striking
events of war and diplomacy, but circumstances often regarded as
unimportant, yet which illustrate, as no others can do, the condition
of the masses as well as the policy of the prince; which indicate the
condition of public and private morals; which exhibit the effects
of domestic manners, of ingenious inventions, of literary progress
and artistic development; which reveal the unfolding of national
taste--which present, in short, the portraiture of every material and
intellectual feature necessary to the elucidation of the character,
the aspirations, and the foibles of a people. With this end in view,
sources of information usually regarded as beneath the dignity of an
historical work have been drawn on for material in the following pages.
The author cherishes no feeling of animosity towards the Spanish
people. He remembers with pleasure a long sojourn among them. He can
never forget the dignified courtesy of their men, the incomparable
grace and fascinations of their women. Their faults are those entailed
by a pernicious inheritance and a corrupt religion, which have
perverted their principles, destroyed their power, and tarnished their
glory.
As the greater part of this book was written before 1898, any
unfavorable criticism of Spanish politics or manners which it contains
must be attributed to a desire to adhere to historic truth, and not
to a contemptible prejudice engendered by our unfortunate “War of
Humanity.”
PHILADELPHIA, 1903.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.
CHAPTER I
THE ANCIENT ARABIANS
PAGE
Topography of Arabia--Its History--Influence of Other
Nations--Ancient Civilization--Commerce--Persistence
of Customs and Language--Character of the Bedouin--His
Independence--His Predatory Instincts--Power of Tribal
Connection--War the Normal Condition of Existence in the
Desert--The Virtues and Vices of the Arabs--Blood-Revenge
and its Destructive Consequences--Absence of
Caste--Condition of Woman--Marriage--Religion--Astral
Worship--Idolatry--Phallicism--Human Sacrifices--Importance
and Power of the Jews--Christianity in Arabia--Poetry, its
Subjects and Character--The Moallakat--Popularity of the
Arab Poet--His License--Influence of Arabic Civilization
and Culture on Subsequent Ages 1
CHAPTER II
THE RISE, PROGRESS, AND INFLUENCE OF ISLAM
Comparative Religion, its Interest as a Study--The Benefits
of Islam--Arabia at the Birth of Mohammed--Condition
of Christendom and the Byzantine Empire--Popular
Idea of the Prophet--His Family--His Early Life--The
First Revelation--Persecution of the New Sect--The
Hegira--Growing Prosperity of Islam--Character of
Mohammed--Causes of His Success--Polygamy--The Koran--Its
Arrangement, its Legends, its Sublime Maxims, its
Absurdities--Its Obligations to other Creeds--The
Kiblah--The Pilgrimage and its Ceremonies--Reforms
accomplished by Islam--Universal Worship of
Force--Corruption of the Religion of Mohammed--Its
Wonderful Achievements--Mohammed the Apostle of God 57
CHAPTER III
THE CONQUEST OF AL-MAGHREB
General Disorder following the Death of
Mohammed--Regulations of Islam--Progress of the Moslem
Arms--Northern Africa, the Land of the Evening--Its
Fertility--Its Population--Expedition of Abdallah--Defeat
of the Greeks--Invasion of Okbah--Foundation of
Kairoan--March of Hassan--Ancient Carthage--Its Influence
on Europe--Its Splendid Civilization--Its Maritime Power,
its Colonies, its Resources--Description of the City--Its
Architectural Grandeur--Its Harbors, Temples, and Public
Edifices--Roman Carthage--Its Luxury and Depravity--Its
Destruction by the Moslems--Wars with the Berbers--Musa
appointed General--His Romantic History--His Character--He
subdues Al-Maghreb--Africa incapable of Permanent
Civilization 128
CHAPTER IV.
THE VISIGOTHIC MONARCHY
Origin and Character of the Goths--Their Invasion of
the Peninsula--Power of the Clergy--Ecclesiastical
Councils--The Jews--The Visigothic Code--Profound
Wisdom of Its Enactments--Provisions against
Fraud and Injustice--Severe Penalties--Its
Definition of the Law--Condition of the
Mechanical Arts--Architecture--Byzantine
Influence--Manufactures--Votive
Crowns--Agriculture--Literature--Medicine--Slave
Labor--Imitation of Roman Customs--Parallel between
the Goths and the Arabs--Coincidence of Sentiments and
Habits--Causes of National Decline--Permanent Influence of
the Gothic Polity 165
CHAPTER V.
THE INVASION AND CONQUEST OF SPAIN.
General Condition and Physical Features of the Spanish
Peninsula--Various Classes of the Population--Supremacy of
the Church--Tyranny of the Visigothic Kings--Fatal Policy
of Witiza--Accession of Roderick--Count Julian--Invasion
of Tarik--Battle of the Guadalete--Its Momentous
Results--Progress of the Moslems--Arrival of Musa--His
Success--Immense Booty secured by the Victors--Quarrel of
Tarik and Musa--Interference of the Khalif--Submission of
the Goths--Musa’s Vast Scheme of Conquest--The Two Generals
ordered to Damascus--The Triumphal Procession through
Africa--Fate of Musa--Causes and Effects of the Moslem
Occupation of Spain 204
CHAPTER VI
THE EMIRATE
Abd-al-Aziz--His Wise Administration--His Execution
ordered by the Khalif--Ayub-Ibn-Habib--His
Reforms--Al-Horr--Al-Samh--His Invasion of France--His
Defeat and Death--Abd-al-Rahman--Feud of the Maadites and
Kahtanites--Its Disastrous Effects--Anbasah-Ibn-Sohim--His
Ability--He penetrates to the Rhone and is
killed--Yahya-Ibn-Salmah--Othman-Ibn-Abu-Nesa
--Hodheyfa-Ibn-al-Awass--Al-Haytham-Ibn-Obeyd
--Mohammed-Ibn-Abdallah--Abd-al-Rahman--His
Popularity--Proclaims the Holy War--Treason
of Othman-Ibn-Abu-Nesa--The Emir attempts
the Conquest of France--Character of Charles
Martel--Battle of Poitiers--Death of
Abd-al-Rahman--Abd-al-Melik--Okbah-Ibn-al-Hejaj--His
Wisdom and Capacity--Charles Martel ravages
Provence--Berber Revolt in Africa--Victory of the
Rebels--Abd-al-Melik-Ibn-Kottam--Balj-Ibn-Beschr--Thalaba
--Abu-al-Khattar--Condition of Western Europe--Unstable and
Corrupt Administration of the Emirs--Importance of the
Battle of Poitiers 266
CHAPTER VII
FOUNDATION OF THE SPANISH MONARCHY
The Northern Provinces of Spain--Their Desolate and
Forbidding Character--Climate--Population--Religion
--Peculiarities of the Asturian Peasantry--Pelayus
--His Birth and Antecedents--He collects an Army
--Obscure Origin of the Spanish Kingdom--Extraordinary
Conditions under which it was founded--Battle of
Covadonga--Rout of the Arabs--Increase of the Christian
Power--Favila--Alfonso I.--His Enterprise and Conquests
--His Policy of Colonization--Survival of the Spirit of
Liberty--Religious Abuses--State of Society--Beginning
of the Struggle for Empire 337
CHAPTER VIII
THE OMMEYADES; REIGN OF ABD-AL-RAHMAN I.
The Ommeyade Family--Its Origin--Its Hostility to
Mohammed--The Syrian Princes--Their Profligacy--Splendors
of Damascus--Luxury of the Syrian Capital--Rise of the
Abbasides--Proscription of the Defeated Faction--Escape of
Abd-al-Rahman--His Romantic Career--He enters Spain--His
Success--Defeat and Dethronement of Yusuf--Constant
Insurrections--Enterprise of the Khalif of Bagdad--Its
Disastrous Termination--Invasion of Charlemagne--Slaughter
of Roncesvalles--Death of Abd-al-Rahman--His Character--His
Services to Civilization--Foundation of the Great
Mosque--The Franks reconquer Septimania 367
CHAPTER IX
REIGN OF HISCHEM I.; REIGN OF AL-HAKEM I.
Custom of Royal Succession violated by the Will
of Abd-al-Rahman--Accession of Hischem--Revolt of
Suleyman and Abdallah--They are routed and their
Armies dispersed--Clemency of the Emir--Invasion of
Septimania--Defeat of the Franks--Indecisive Results
of the Campaign--Public Works of Hischem--His Noble
Character--His Partiality for Theologians--The
Southern Suburb of Cordova--Death of Hischem--General
Distrust of Al-Hakem--Suleyman and Abdallah again in
Rebellion--Civil War--The Gothic March--Siege and
Capture of Barcelona--Apathy of the Emir--Importance
of the Conquest--The Edrisite Dynasty--Disturbances
at Toledo--“The Day of the Ditch”--The Royal
Body-Guard--Revolt of the Faquis--Its Results--League of
the Asturian and Frankish Princes--Legend of St. James the
Apostle--Death of Al-Hakem--His Character 421
CHAPTER X
REIGN OF ABD-AL-RAHMAN II.; REIGN OF MOHAMMED
Accession of Abd-al-Rahman II.--Defection of
Abdallah--Invasion of the Gothic March--Embassy from
the Greek Emperor--Revolt of Merida--Sedition at
Toledo--Incursion of the Normans--Persecution of the
Christians--Death of Abd-al-Rahman--His Love of Pomp--His
Virtues--His Patronage of Art and Letters--Ziryab--His
Versatility--Conspiracy of Tarub--Stratagem of
Mohammed--His Bigotry--Toledo again Revolts--Rise of
the Beni-Kasi--War with the Asturias--Rebellion of
Ibn-Merwan--The Serrania de Ronda--Ibn-Hafsun, his Origin
and Exploits--Death and Character of Mohammed--Incipient
Decadence of the Moslem Power 475
CHAPTER XI
REIGN OF AL-MONDHIR; REIGN OF ABDALLAH
Parallel between the Policy of the Moorish and
Asturian Courts--Alfonso III.--His Conquests--Energy
of Al-Mondhir--Siege of Bobastro--Stratagem of
Ibn-Hafsun--The Emir is Poisoned--Abdallah ascends the
Throne--Conditions of Parties and Sects--Prevalence of
Disorder--Insurrection at Elvira--Success of the Arab
Faction--Disturbances at Seville--General Disaffection of
the Provinces--Ibn-Hafsun defeated at Aguilar--Disastrous
and Permanent Effects of the Continuance of Anarchy--Sudden
Death of Abdallah--Important Political Changes wrought by a
Generation of Civil Warfare 529
CHAPTER XII
REIGN OF ABD-AL-RAHMAN III.
Eminent Qualities of the New Ruler--His Firmness--Rapid
Subjection of the Rebel Territory--Dissensions of
the Christians--Defeat of Ibn-Abi-Abda--Death of
Ibn-Hafsun--Impaired Power of the Arab Nobles--War with
the Fatimites of Africa--Rout of Junquera--Abd-al-Rahman
assumes the Title of Khalif--Its Significance--Invasion
of Castile--Reverse of Alhandega--Civil Wars of the
Christians--The Princes of Leon and Navarre visit the
Moslem Court--Abd-al-Rahman dies at the Age of Seventy
Years---His Remarkable Achievements--The Greek and German
Embassies--The Saracens in France and Italy--The Slaves
and their Influence--Plot of Abdallah--Condition of the
Country under Abd-al-Rahman III.--Cordova--Its Wealth and
Magnificence--The Royal Villas--The City and Palace of
Medina-al-Zahrâ--Melancholy Reflections of the Greatest of
the Khalifs 563
CHAPTER XIII
REIGN OF AL-HAKEM II.
Splendid Ceremonial at the Accession of Al-Hakem
II.--His Wise and Prudent Measures--Ordoño seeks an
Audience--His Baseness--Successful Expedition against
the Christians--Disturbances in Africa--Army of the
Khalif Defeated--The Berber Chieftains are corrupted,
and their Forces disband--Importance of Cordova as a
Religious Centre--Description of the Great Mosque--Death
of Al-Hakem--His Literary Attainments--His Patronage of
Letters--The Library--Institutions of Learning--General
Prevalence of Education--Public Improvements--The Khalif
the Exemplar of the Highest Culture of his Age--Prosperity
of the Empire 634
CHAPTER XIV
REIGN OF HISCHEM II.
Origin of Ibn-abi-Amir-Al-Mansur--The Scene in the
Garden--Genius and Attainments of the Youthful
Statesman--His Sudden Rise to Power--Influence of
the Eunuchs--Their Conspiracy Detected--Ibn-abi-Amir
aspires to Supreme Authority--He is appointed
Hajib--Ruin of his Rivals--Reorganization of the
Civil and Military Service--Systematic Degradation of
Hischem --The Palace of Zahira--The Hajib becomes
Master of the Empire--Successful Wars with the
Christians--Disturbances in Africa--Destruction of
Leon--Sack of Santiago--Death of Al-Mansur--His Great
Services to the State--His Unbroken Series of Military
Triumphs--Al-Modhaffer--Abd-al-Rahman--Mohammed--Suleyman
--Disappearance of Hischem--Rapid Disintegration of the
Empire 683
AUTHORITIES CONSULTED IN THE
PREPARATION OF THIS WORK
(To promote facility of reference, the following list has been
classified not only alphabetically by authors, but also by
languages.)
ENGLISH.
AL-HARIRI--Makamat. 8vo. London, 1850.
ALI BEY--Travels. 2 vols. 4to. London, 1816.
AL-MAKKARI--History of the Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain. 2
vols. 4to. London, 1840.
ANDERSON--History of Commerce. 4 vols. 4to. London, 1789.
ARNOLD--Ishmael: The Natural History of Islamism. 8vo. London,
1859.
BEATTIE--Castles and Abbeys of England. 2 vols. 8vo. London.
BERINGTON--Literary History of the Middle Ages. 4to. London,
1814.
BLUNT--A Pilgrimage to Nejd. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1881.
BOSWORTH-SMITH--Mohammed and Mohammedanism. 8vo. London, 1876.
BOWER--History of the Popes. 3 vols. 8vo. Philadelphia, 1844.
BRAND--Popular Antiquities. 8vo. London, 1810.
BURCKHARDT--Notes on the Bedouins and Wahabys. 2 vols. 8vo.
London, 1831.
BURCKHARDT--Travels in Arabia. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1829.
BURCKHARDT--Travels in Nubia. 4to. London, 1822.
BURTON--A Pilgrimage to Medina and Mecca. 12mo. New York, 1856.
---- Chronicle of London--1089–1483. 4to. London, 1827.
COSMO III.--Travels in England. Folio. London, 1821.
CUTTS--Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages. 8vo. London,
1886.
DAVENPORT-ADAMS--Witch, Warlock, and Magician. 8vo. London, 1889.
DAVENPORT--An Apology for Mohammed and the Koran. 8vo. London,
1869.
DAVIS--Carthage and her Remains. 8vo. London, 1861.
DEUTZ--Islam. 8vo. London.
D’ISRAELI--Curiosities of Literature. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1807.
DRAPER--History of the Intellectual Development of Europe. 8vo.
New York, 1875.
EMILLIANNE--History of the Monastic Orders. 12mo. London, 1677.
FERGUSSON--History of Architecture. 2 vols. 8vo. New York, 1885.
FINLAY--History of the Byzantine Empire. 8vo. London, 1856.
FINN--History of the Jews in Spain and Portugal. 8vo. London,
1841.
FORT--Medical Economy during the Middle Ages. 8vo. New York,
1883.
FOSBROOKE--British Monarchism. 8vo. London, 1843.
FRITH--Life of Giordano Bruno. 8vo. London, 1887.
GIBBON--History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 8
vols. 8vo. London, 1855.
HALL--Chronicle of England. 4to. London, 1809.
HALL--Society in the Elizabethan Age. 8vo. London, 1886.
HARDY--Eastern Monarchism. 8vo. London, 1850.
HAZLITT--Popular Antiquities of Great Britain. 3 vols. 8vo.
London, 1870.
HECKER--The Epidemics of the Middle Ages. 8vo. London, 1844.
HIGGINS--An Apology for the Life and Character of Mohammed. 8vo.
London, 1829.
HODGETTS--The English in the Middle Ages. 8vo. London, 1885.
HONE--Ancient Mysteries Described. 8vo. London, 1823.
HONE--Popular Works. 4 vols. 8vo. London.
HOWITT--History of the Supernatural. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1863.
HUEFFER--The Troubadours. 8vo. London, 1878.
IBN-AL-HAKEM--History of the Mohammedan Conquest of Spain. 8vo.
Göttingen, 1858.
IBN-HAUKAL--Oriental Geography. 4to. London, 1800.
IBN-KHALLIKAN--Biographical Dictionary. 4 vols. 4to. London,
1842.
ISAACS--Ceremonies, Customs, etc. of the Jews. 8vo. London.
JACKSON--An Account of the Empire of Morocco. 4to. London, 1809.
JENNINGS--Phallicism. 8vo. London, 1884.
JENNINGS--The Rosicrucians. 8vo. London, 1879.
JESSUP--The Women of the Arabs. 8vo. New York.
JONES--History of the Waldenses. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1816.
JONES--Moallakat. 4to. London, 1783.
JONES--The Alhambra. 2 vols. Folio. London, 1830.
JONES--Works. 7 vols. 4to. London, 1804.
KENRICK--History of Phœnicia. 8vo. London, 1845.
KINGSLEY--Alexandria and Her Schools. 8vo. Cambridge, 1854.
KINGTON--History of Frederick II. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1862.
KNIGHT--Symbolical Language of Ancient Art and Mythology. 8vo.
Boston, 1836.
KNIGHT--The Normans in Sicily. 8vo. London. 1838.
KNIGHT--The Worship of Priapus. 4to. London, 1865.
KOELLER--Mohammed and Mohammedanism. 8vo. London, 1889.
KROEGER--The Minnesingers of Germany. 8vo. New York, 1873.
LACROIX--The Arts of the Middle Ages. Folio. London.
LANE--Arabian Society in the Middle Ages. 8vo. London, 1883.
LANE--Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians. 2 vols. 8vo.
London, 1842.
LANE-POOLE--The Art of the Saracens in Egypt. 8vo. London, 1886.
LANE-POOLE--The Speeches of Mohammed. 12mo. London, 1882.
LEA--History of Sacerdotal Celibacy. 8vo. Philadelphia, 1867.
LEA--Superstition and Force. 8vo. Philadelphia, 1866.
LEWIS--An Essay on the Origin and Formation of the Romance
Languages. 8vo. London, 1839.
LEWIS--Historical Survey of the Astronomy of the Ancients. 8vo.
London, 1862.
LIMBORCH--History of the Inquisition. 4to. London, 1731.
LINDO--History of the Jews in Spain and Portugal. 8vo. London,
1848.
MACAULAY--History of England. 5 vols. 8vo. New York.
MAITLAND--The Albigenses and Waldenses. 8vo. London, 1832.
MAITLAND--The Dark Ages. 8vo. London, 1844.
MALCOLM--Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London. 6 vols.
8vo. London, 1810.
MARKHAM--Irrigation in Eastern Spain. 8vo. London.
MCLENNAN--Studies in Ancient History. 8vo. London, 1876.
MCMURDO--History of Portugal. 8vo. London, 1888.
MEER HASSAN ALI--Observations on the Mussulmans of India. 2
vols. 8vo. London, 1832.
MERRICK--Life and Religion of Mohammed. 8vo. Boston, 1850.
MILMAN--History of Latin Christianity. 8 vols. 8vo. New York,
1859.
MUIR--Annals of the Early Caliphate. 8vo. London, 1883.
MUIR--Life of Mohammed. 8vo. London, 1878.
MURPHY--History of the Mahometan Empire in Spain. 4to. London,
1816.
NEWTON--Principia. 8vo. New York.
OCKLEY--History of the Saracens. 8vo. London. 1848.
OMARAH--Yaman. 8vo. London, 1892.
OSBORN--Islam under the Khalifs of Bagdad. 8vo. London, 1878.
PALGRAVE--A Year’s Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia.
12mo. New York, 1871.
PALGRAVE--Essays on Eastern Subjects. 8vo. London, 1872.
PETTIGREW--Superstitions connected with the Practice of
Medicine. 8vo. London, 1844.
PLUMPTRE--History of Pantheism. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1879.
PRICE--Essay toward the History of Arabia. 4to. London, 1824.
RHOÏDIS--Pope Joan. 8vo. London, 1886.
RUSSELL--The Natural History of Aleppo. 4to. London, 1856.
RUTHERFORD--The Troubadours. 8vo. London, 1873.
SHURRIEF--Customs of the Mussulmans of India. 8vo. London, 1832.
SMITH--Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia. 8vo. Cambridge,
1885.
STIRLING-MAXWELL--Don John of Austria. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1883.
SYED-AHMED--Essays on the Life of Mohammed. 8vo. London, 1870.
THOMSON--History of Chemistry. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1830.
URQUHART--The Pillars of Hercules. 2 vols. 8vo. New York, 1850.
WELLSTED--Travels in Arabia. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1837.
WILLIAMS--On Hinduism. 12mo. London, 1882.
WRIGHT--Early Christianity in Arabia. 8vo. London, 1855.
WRIGHT--Manners and Sentiments of England during the Middle
Ages. 4to. London, 1862.
WRIGHT--Narratives of Sorcery and Magic. 2 vols. 8vo. London,
1851.
WRIGHT--Womankind in Western Europe. 4to. London, 1869.
FRENCH.
ABD-AL-RAHMAN-AL-SUFI--Description des Étoiles Fixes. 4to. St.
Petersbourg, 1874.
ABD-AL-REZZAQ--Traité de Matière Médicale Arabe. 8vo. Paris,
1874.
ABD-EL-HALIM--Roudh-el-Kartas. 8vo. Paris, 1859.
ABUL HASSAN ALI--Lettres. 8vo. Paris.
AL-KALIOUBY--Quelques Chapitres de Médecine Arabe. 8vo. Paris,
1856.
---- Anecdotes Arabes et Musulmanes. 12mo. Paris, 1772.
ARCOLEO--Palerme et la Civilisation en Sicile. 8vo. Paris, 1898.
ARNOULT--Mémoires de la Langue Romane. 3 vols. 8vo. Toulouse,
1842.
ASTRUC--Mémoires pour servir à l’Histoire de la Faculté de
Médecine de Montpellier. 4to. Paris, 1777.
AUBERTIN--Histoire de la Langue et la Littérature Françaises au
Moyen Age. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1876.
BABELON--Du Commerce des Arabes dans le Nord de l’Europe. 8vo.
Paris, 1882.
BAILLY--Histoire de l’Astronomie Ancienne et Moderne. 5 vols.
4to. Paris, 1781.
BAISSAC--Les Grands Jours de la Sorcellerie. 8vo. Paris, 1890.
BARBIER DE MEYNARD--Ibrahim. 8vo. Paris, 1869.
BARET--Espagne et Provence. 8vo. Paris, 1857.
BARET--Les Troubadours. 8vo. Paris, 1857.
BARGÈS--Histoire des Beni-Zeiyan, Rois de Tlemcen. 8vo. Paris,
1887.
BARGÈS--Recherches sur les Colonies Phéniciennes. 8vo. Paris,
1878.
BARGÈS--Tlemcen. 8vo. Paris, 1859.
BARRAU--Monfort et les Albigeois. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1840.
BARTHÉLEMY SAINT-HILAIRE--Du Bouddhisme. 8vo. Paris, 1855.
BARTHÉLEMY SAINT-HILAIRE--Mahomet et le Coran. 8vo. Paris, 1865.
BASSET--La Poësie Arabe Anté-Islamique. 12mo. Paris, 1880.
BATISSIER--Histoire de l’Art Monumental. 8vo. Paris, 1860.
BAUDRILLART--Histoire du Luxe. 4 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1880.
BAYET--L’Art Byzantin. 8vo. Paris.
BAZANCOURT--Histoire de la Sicile sous la Domination des
Normands. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1846.
BEAUDRIMONT--Histoire des Basques. 8vo. Paris, 1867.
BÉDARRIDE--Les Juifs en France, Italie, et Espagne. 8vo. Paris,
1861.
BELIN--Du Régime des Fiefs Militaires dans l’Islamisme. 8vo.
Paris, 1870.
BÉNÉTRIX--Les Femmes Troubadours. 8vo. Paris, 1890.
BERGER--L’Arabie avant Mahomet. 8vo. Paris, 1883.
BERTHELOT--Les Origines de l’Alchimie. 8vo. Paris, 1885.
BERTHÉRAND--Médecine et Hygiène des Arabes. 8vo. Paris.
BIOT--L’Astronomie Indienne et Chinoise. 8vo. Paris, 1862.
BOELL--Histoire de la Corse. 8vo. Marseille, 1878.
BOISGELIN--Malte Ancienne et Moderne. 3 vols. 8vo. 1809.
BORDIER--L’Art Byzantin. 4to. Paris, 1885.
BOUCHER--Deux Poëtes Anté-Islamiques. 8vo. Paris, 1867.
BOURGOIN--Les Arts Arabes. 4to. Paris.
BOUTHARIC--Traité des Droits Seigneureaux. 4to. Toulouse, 1751.
BRUCE-WHYTE--Histoire des Langues Romanes. 3 vols. 8vo. Paris,
1841.
BURNOUF--Essai sur Le Veda. 8vo. Paris, 1863.
CADOZ--Civilité Musulmane. 12mo. Alger, 1889.
CAPEFIGUE--Histoire de France au Moyen Age. 4 vols. 8vo.
Bruxelles, 1843.
CAPEFIGUE--Histoire Philosophique des Juifs. 8vo. Bruxelles,
1839.
CARDONNE--Histoire de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne. 3 vols. 12mo.
Paris, 1765.
CARDONNE--Mélange de la Littérature Orientale. 12mo. Paris, 1786.
CATEL--Histoire de Languedoc. Folio. Tolose, 1633.
CATEL--Histoire des Comtes de Tolose. Folio. Tolose, 1623.
CAUSSIN DE PERCEVAL--Essai sur l’Histoire des Arabes avant
l’Islamisme. 3 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1847.
CHAPO ET BELZUNCE--Histoire des Basques. 3 vols. 8vo. Paris,
1847.
CHAUMEIL DE STELLA--Essai sur l’Histoire de Portugal. 8vo.
Bruxelles.
CHÉNIER--Recherches Historiques sur les Maures. 3 vols. 8vo.
Paris, 1787.
CHERRIER--Histoire de la Lutte des Papes. 4 vols. 8vo. Paris,
1841.
CHIARINI--Le Talmud de Babylone. 8vo. Leipzig. 1831.
CHOISEUL-DALLECOURT--De l’Influence des Croisades. 8vo. Paris,
1809.
CHRISTIANOWITSCH--Esquisse Historique de la Musique Arabe. 4to.
CIRCOURT--Histoire des Mores Mudejares et des Morisques. 3 vols.
8vo. Paris, 1846.
CLOT-BEY--Aperçu Général sur l’Égypte. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1840.
COUPRY--Traité de la Versification Arabe. 8vo. Leipzig, 1875.
COYPEL--Le Judaïsme. 8vo. Paris, 1877.
DAREMBERG--Histoire des Sciences Médicales. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris,
1870.
DAUMAS--La Vie Arabe. 8vo. Paris.
DAVILLIER--Histoire des Faïences Hispano-Moresques. 8vo. Paris,
1861.
DAVILLIER--Les Arts Décoratifs en Espagne. 8vo. Paris, 1879.
DAVILLIER--Notice sur les Cuirs de Cordoue. 8vo. Paris, 1878.
DAVILLIER--Origines de la Porcelaine en Europe. 4to. Paris, 1882.
DELAMBRE--Histoire de l’Astronomie Ancienne. 2 vols. 4to. Paris,
1817.
DELAPORTE--Vie de Mahomet. 8vo. Paris, 1874.
DE L’ISLE--Des Talismans. 12mo. Paris, 1636.
DENIS--Chroniques et Traditions Provençales. 8vo. Toulon, 1831.
DE PARCTELAINE--Histoire de la Guerre contre les Albigeois. 8vo.
Paris, 1833.
DEPPING--Histoire du Commerce entre le Levant et l’Europe. 2
vols. 8vo. 1830.
DEPPING--Les Juifs dans le Moyen Age. 8vo. Paris, 1834.
DE ROCHAT--Les Parias de France et d’Espagne. 8vo. Paris, 1876.
DE SACY--Chrestomatie Arabe. 3 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1826.
DE SACY--Mémoires sur l’Histoire des Arabes avant Mahomet. 4to.
Paris.
DE SAULCY--Histoire de l’Art Judaïque. 8vo. Paris, 1858.
DESVERGERS--Arabie. 8vo. Paris, 1847.
D’HERBELOT--Bibliothèque Orientale. 6 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1773.
DINAUX--Les Trouvères Artésiens. 8vo. Paris, 1843.
DOUAIS--Les Albigeois. 8vo. Paris, 1879.
DOZY--Essai sur l’Histoire de l’Islamisme. 8vo. Leyde, 1879.
DOZY--Glossaire des Mots Espagnols et Portugais dérivés de
l’Arabe. 8vo. Leyde, 1869.
DOZY--Histoire des Musulmans d’Espagne. 4 vols. 8vo. Leyde, 1861.
DOZY--Le Cid. 8vo. Leyde, 1860.
DOZY--Notices sur Quelques Manuscrits. 8vo. Leyde, 1847.
DOZY--Recherches sur l’Histoire et la Littérature de l’Espagne
pendant le Moyen Age. 2 vols. 8vo. Leyde, 1860.
DUBOIS--Histoire de l’Horlogerie. 4to. Paris, 1849.
DUGAT--Histoire des Philosophes Musulmans. 8vo. Paris, 1878.
DUGAT--Traité de Médecine d’Abou Djafar. 8vo. Paris, 1853.
DUPOUY--Le Moyen Age Médical. 12mo. Paris, 1880.
EGGER--L’Hellenisme en France. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1869.
EL-BEKRI--Description de l’Afrique Septentrionale. 8vo. Paris,
1859.
FABRE--Le Troubadour. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1843.
FAURIEL--Histoire de la Gaule Méridionale. 4 vols. 8vo. Paris,
1836.
FAURIEL--Histoire de la Poësie Provençale. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris,
1846.
FERRERAS--Histoire Générale d’Espagne. 10 vols. 4to. Paris, 1744.
FÉTIS--Histoire de la Musique. 5 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1869.
FIGUIER--L’Alchimie et les Alchimistes. 12mo. Paris, 1856.
FLEURY--Histoire Ecclésiastique. 6 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1844.
FLÜCKIGER et HANBURY--Histoire des Drogues Végétales. 2 vols.
8vo. Paris, 1878.
FOURIEL--Conquête de l’Afrique par les Arabes. 2 vols. 4to. 1875.
FOURNEL--Les Berbères. 2 vols. 4to. Paris, 1875.
FRANCK--La Kabbale. 8vo. Paris, 1843.
FRÉGUIER--Les Juifs Algériens. 8vo. Paris, 1865.
FRESNEL--Lettre sur l’Histoire des Arabes avant l’Islamisme.
8vo. Paris, 1836.
GAGNIER--La Vie de Mahomet. 12mo. Amsterdam, 1732.
GARCIN DE TASSY--Mémoire sur les Noms Propres et les Titres
Musulmans. 8vo. Paris, 1878.
GARNIER--Célibat et les Célibataires. 12mo. Paris, 1889.
GARNIER--Histoire de la Verrerie. 8vo. Tours, 1886.
GASTINEAU--Les Femmes et les Mœurs d’Algérie. 12mo. Paris.
GAUFRIDI--Histoire de Provence. 2 vols. Folio. Aix, 1694.
GAUTTIER D’ARC--Histoire des Conquêtes des Normands en Italie,
en Sicile, et en Grèce. 8vo. Paris, 1830.
GHAZZALI--Le Préservatif de l’Erreur. 8vo. Paris, 1878.
GIRAULT DE PRANGEY--Essai sur l’Architecture des Arabes et des
Maures. 4to. Paris, 1842.
GOLDZIEHER--Le Culte des Ancêtres chez les Arabes. 8vo. Paris,
1885.
GRAETZ--Les Juifs d’Espagne. 8vo. Paris, 1872.
GRANGERET DE LAGRANGE--Les Arabes en Espagne. 8vo. Paris, 1824.
GUARDIA--La Médecine à travers les Siècles. 8vo. Paris, 1865.
GUIZOT--Collection des Mémoires relatifs à l’Histoire de la
France. 31 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1824.
GUIZOT--Histoire de la Civilisation en France. 4 vols. 8vo.
Paris, 1846.
GUYARD--La Civilisation Musulmane. 12mo. Paris, 1884.
GUYARD--Théorie de la Métrique Arabe. 8vo. Paris.
---- Histoire des Papes. 10 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1844.
HOEFER--Histoire de la Chimie. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris.
HOEFER--Histoire des Mathématiques. 12mo. Paris, 1874.
HOVELACQUE--L’Avesta. 8vo. Paris, 1880.
HUILLARD-BRÉHOLLES--Histoire Diplomatique de Frédéric II. 4to.
Paris, 1859.
HUILLARD-BRÉHOLLES--La Vie de Pierre de la Vigne. 8vo. Paris,
1865.
IBN-AL-AWAM--Le Livre de l’Agriculture. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1866.
IBN-EL-BEITHAR--Traité des Simples. 3 vols. 4to. Paris, 1877.
IBN-HAUKAL--Description de Palerme au X Siècle. 8vo. Paris, 1845.
IBN-KHALDUN--Histoire des Berbères. 4 vols. 8vo. Alger, 1856.
JACOB--Curiosités de l’Histoire du Moyen Age. 12mo. Paris, 1859.
JACOBI--Histoire de la Corse. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1833.
JAGNAUX--Histoire de la Chimie. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1891.
JAUBERT DE PASSA--Voyage en Espagne. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1891.
JOMARD--Études sur l’Arabie. 8vo. Paris, 1839.
LA BEAUME--Le Coran Analysé. 8vo. Paris, 1878.
LABESSADE--Le Droit du Seigneur. 8vo. Paris, 1878.
LACROIX--Mœurs et Usages au Moyen Age. 8vo. Paris, 1878.
LACROIX--Sciences et Lettres au Moyen Age. Folio. Paris, 1877.
LANGLÉ--Historial du Jongleur. 8vo. Paris, 1829.
LA PRIMAUDAIE--Les Arabes en Sicile et en Italie. 8vo. Paris,
1867.
LA ROQUE--Voyage dans l’Arabie Heureuse. 12mo. Paris, 1725.
LEBEAU--Histoire du Bas Empire. 13 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1820.
LE BON--La Civilisation des Arabes. 8vo. Paris, 1884.
LEBRUN--Histoire Secrète des Couvents. 12mo. Bruxelles.
LECLERC--Abul Casis. 8vo. Paris, 1874.
LECLERC--Histoire de la Médecine Arabe. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1876.
LENIENT--La Satire en France au Moyen Age. 8vo. Paris, 1877.
LENORMANT--La Grande Grèce. 12mo. Paris, 1881.
LENORMANT--La Divination. 8vo. Paris, 1875.
LENORMANT--Les Premières Civilisations. 8vo. Paris, 1874.
LENTHÉRIC--La Grèce et l’Orient en Provence. 12mo. Paris, 1878.
LETOURNEAUX--La Kabylie et les Coutumes Kabyles. 3 vols. 8vo.
Paris, 1872.
LINGUET--Essai Philosophique sur le Monachisme. 12mo. Paris,
1777.
LLORENTE--Histoire de l’Inquisition d’Espagne. 4 vols. 8vo.
Paris, 1817.
LOUIS-LANDE--Basques et Navarrais. 8vo. Paris, 1878.
LUCAS--Documents sur le Cid. 8vo. Paris, 1860.
MAGEN--Les Prêtres et les Moines à travers les Ages. 8vo. Paris,
1857.
MAKRIZI--Histoire des Sultans Mamlouks. 2 vols. 4to. Paris, 1837.
MAKRIZI--Traité des Monnaies Musulmanes. 8vo. Paris.
MANDEL--Histoire de la Langue Romane. 8vo. Paris, 1840.
MARCHAND--Moines et Nonnes. 12mo. Paris, 1881.
MARMOL--L’Afrique. 3 vols. 4to. Paris, 1667.
MARTIN--Les Signes Numéraux chez les Peuples de l’Antiquité et
du Moyen Age. 4to. Rome, 1864.
MARTONNE--La Piété du Moyen Age. 8vo. Paris, 1855.
MAS LATRIE--Histoire de l’Isle de Chypre. 3 vols. 8vo. Paris,
1855.
MAS LATRIE--Traités de Paix des Arabes du Moyen Age. Folio.
Paris, 1866.
MAURY--Croyances et Légendes de l’Antiquité. 8vo. Paris, 1863.
MAURY--Essai sur les Légendes Pieuses du Moyen Age. 8vo. Paris,
1843.
MAURY--Histoire des Religions de la Grèce Antique. 3 vols. 8vo.
Paris, 1857.
MAURY--La Magie et l’Astrologie. 12mo. Paris, 1860.
MÉNANT--Zoroastre. 8vo. Paris, 1857.
MÉRAY--La Vie au Temps des Cours d’Amour. 8vo. Paris, 1876.
MÉRAY--La Vie au Temps des Trouvères. 8vo. Paris.
MÉRIMÉE--Histoire de Don Pedro I. 12mo. Paris, 1865.
MICHAUD--Histoire des Croisades. 4 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1867.
MICHELET--Histoire de France. 19 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1870.
MICHEL--Histoire des Races Maudites de la France et de
l’Espagne. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1847.
MICHEL--Le Pays Basque. 8vo. Paris, 1859.
MIÈGE--Histoire de Malte. 2 vols. 8vo. Bruxelles, 1841.
MILLOT---Histoire Littéraire des Troubadours. 3 vols. 12mo.
Paris, 1774.
MIMAUT--Histoire de Sardaigne. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1825.
MOHAMMED-IBN-DJOBAIR--Voyage en Sicile. 8vo. Paris, 1846.
MOLINE DE SAINT-YON--Histoire des Comtes de Toulouse. 4 vols.
8vo. Paris.
MONTUCLA--Histoire des Mathématiques. 2 vols. 4to. Paris, 1758.
MORLILLARO--Légendes Historiques Siciliennes. 8vo. Palermo, 1890.
NIEBUHR--Description de l’Arabie. 4to. Paris, 1779.
OELSNER--Des Effets de la Religion de Mohammed. 8vo. Paris, 1810.
PARISET--Histoire de la Soie. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1862.
PERRON--Femmes Arabes. 8vo. Paris, 1858.
PERROT--Histoire des Antiquités de la Ville de Nismes. 8vo.
Nismes, 1842.
PEYRAT--Histoire des Albigeois. 3 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1870.
PLEYTE--La Religion des pré-Israélites. 8vo. Utrecht, 1862.
POIRET--Voyage en Barbarie. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1789.
PRISSE D’AVESNES--La Décoration Arabe. Folio. Paris, 1885.
QUERRY--Le Droit Musulman. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1871.
RAMÉE--Histoire Générale de l’Architecture. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris,
1859.
REINAUD--Extraits des Historiens Arabes relatifs aux Croisades.
8vo. Paris, 1829.
REINAUD--L’Art Militaire chez les Arabes au Moyen Age. 8vo.
Paris, 1848.
REINAUD--Les Invasions des Sarrasins en France. 8vo. Paris.
REINAUD--Monumens Arabes, Persans, et Turcs. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris,
1828.
REINAUD--Notice sur Mahomet. 8vo. Paris, 1860.
REINAUD--Relation des Voyages dans l’Inde. 2 vols. 18mo. Paris,
1845.
RENAN--Averroes et l’Averroïsme. 8vo. Paris, 1852.
RENAULDON--Dictionnaire des Fiefs et des Droits Seigneureaux.
4to. Paris, 1765.
RENOUARD--Histoire de la Médecine. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1846.
ROMEY--Histoire d’Espagne. 9 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1839.
RONNA--Les Irrigations. 3 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1888.
ROQUAIRE--La Papauté au Moyen Age. 8vo. Paris, 1881.
ROSSEUW SAINT-HILAIRE--Histoire d’Espagne. 14 vols. 8vo. Paris,
1859.
SABATIER--Notice sur Gerbert. 8vo. Paris, 1850.
SAINTE-PELAIE--Histoire Littéraire des Troubadours. 3 vols.
12mo. Paris, 1774.
SCHMOLDERS--Essai sur les Écoles Philosophiques chez les Arabes.
8vo. Paris, 1842.
SCHOEBEL--Le Bouddhisme et ses Origines. 8vo. Paris, 1874.
SCHOLL--L’Islam et son Fondateur. 8vo. Neuchatel, 1844.
SÉDILLOT--Histoire Générale des Arabes. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1877.
SÉDILLOT--Matériaux pour servir à l’Histoire Complète des
Sciences Mathématiques chez les Orientaux. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris,
1845.
SÉDILLOT--Mémoire sur les Systèmes Géographiques des Arabes.
8vo. Paris, 1842.
SÉDILLOT--Prolégomènes des Tables Astronomiques d’Oloug Beg.
8vo. Paris, 1853.
SÉDILLOT--Traité des Instruments Astronomiques des Arabes. 4to.
Paris, 1833.
SISMONDI--Histoire de la Littérature du Midi de Europe. 4 vols.
8vo. Paris, 1829.
SISMONDI--Républiques Italiennes du Moyen Age. 10 vols. 8vo.
Paris, 1840.
SOLVET--Description du Pays de Magreb. 8vo. Alger, 1839.
TORRES--Histoire des Chérifs. 4to. Paris, 1667.
VACHEROT--Histoire Critique de l’École d’Alexandrie. 3 vols.
8vo. Paris, 1846.
VERTOT--Histoire des Chevaliers Hospitaliers. 5 vols. 8vo.
Amsterdam, 1732.
VIARDOT--Histoire des Arabes et des Mores d’Espagne. 2 vols.
8vo. Paris, 1857.
VIARDOT--Scènes des Mœurs Arabes. 8vo. Paris, 1834.
VILLEMAIN--Histoire de Gregoire VII. 8vo. Paris, 1874.
VILLEMAIN--Tableau de la Littérature au Moyen Age. 8vo. Paris,
1878.
VINCENT--Études sur la Loi Musulmane--Législation Criminelle.
8vo. Paris, 1842.
WOEPCKE--L’Algèbre d’Omar Al-Khayymi. 8vo. Paris, 1857.
WOEPCKE--Mémoire sur la Propagation des Chiffres Indiens. 8vo.
Paris, 1863.
WOEPCKE--Recherches sur l’Histoire des Sciences Mathématiques
chez les Orientaux. 8vo. Paris, 1860.
WOEPCKE--Sur l’Introduction de l’Arithmétique en Occident. 4to.
Paris, 1859.
ZAMAKHSCHARI--Les Colliers d’Or. 8vo. Paris, 1876.
ZELLER--Entretiens sur l’Histoire du Moyen Age. 12mo. Paris,
1865.
ZELLER--Histoire d’Allemagne. 7 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1872.
SPANISH.
ABARCA--Anales de Aragon. 2 vols. Folio. Salamanca, 1684.
ALDRETE--Varias Antigüedades de España. 4to. Amberes, 1614.
ALMAGRO--Inscripciones Arabes de Granada. 4to. Granada, 1877.
ALONSO EL SABIO--Las Siete Partidas. 3 vols. 4to. Madrid, 1807.
ARAQUISTAN--Tradiciones Vasco-Cántabras. 8vo. Tolosa, 1866.
ARGOTE DE MOLINA--Nobleza de Andalucia. Folio. Sevilla, 1581.
ARGOTE--Nuevos Paseos por Granada. 2 vols. 12mo. Granada, 1820.
BAEZA--Ultimos Sucesos del Reino de Granada. 8vo. Madrid, 1868.
BALAGUER--Historia de los Trovadores. 6 vols. 8vo. Madrid, 1878.
BALAGUER--Los Reyes Catolicos. 2 vols. 8vo. Madrid, 1894.
BERNALDEZ--Historia de los Reyes Catolicos. 2 vols. 4to.
Sevilla, 1870.
BLEDA--Coronica de los Moros de España. Folio. Valencia, 1618.
BOIX--Xativa. 8vo. 1857.
CANAS--De la Agricultura Española. 16mo. Valladolid, 1868.
CARO--Antigüedades de Sevilla. Folio. Sevilla, 1634.
CASCALES--Discursos Historicos sobre Murcia. Folio. Murcia, 1775.
CAVEDA--Ensayo Historico sobre los diversos generos de
Architectura en España. 8vo. Madrid, 1848.
CAVEDA--Cronica de Don Alvaro de Luna. Folio. Madrid, 1784.
CEBRIAN--Historia de los Arabes en Murcia. 8vo. Palma, 1845.
CODERA Y ZAIDIN--Tratado de Numismatica Arabigo-Española. 4to.
Madrid, 1879.
COLMENARES--Historia de Segovia. Folio. Madrid, 1640.
CONDE--Historia de la Dominacion de los Arabes en España. 2
vols. 4to. Madrid, 1820.
CONTRERAS--Monumentos Arabes. 4to. Madrid, 1878.
---- Cronicas de los Reyes de Castilla. 3 vols. 8vo. Madrid,
1875.
DAMETO--Historia del Reyno Balearico. 3 vols. 4to. Palma, 1840.
DANVILA Y COLLADO--La Expulsion de los Moriscos. 8vo. Madrid,
1889.
DE LA PENA--Anales de Cataluña. 3 vols. Folio. Barcelona, 1709.
DE LOS RIOS--El Arte Latino-Byzantino. 4to. Madrid, 1861.
DE LOS RIOS--Historia de los Judios de España. 3 vols. 8vo.
Madrid, 1876.
DE LOS RIOS--Inscripciones Arabes de Cordoba y Sevilla. 8vo.
Madrid, 1879.
DE LOS RIOS--Sevilla Pintoresca. 4to. Sevilla, 1844.
DE LOS RIOS--Toledo Pintoresca. 4to. Madrid, 1845.
DEL VALLE--Anales de la Inquisicion. 8vo. Madrid, 1868.
DE SCHACK--Poesía y Arte de los Arabes en España y Sicilia. 3
vols. 12mo. Madrid, 1872.
DIAGO--Historia de los Condes de Barcelona. Folio. Barcelona,
1603.
DURO--Memorias de Zamora. 4 vols. 8vo. Madrid, 1883.
ECHEVARRIA--Paseos por Granada. 2 vols. 8vo. Granada, 1814.
ESCOLANO--Historia de Valencia. 2 vols. Folio. Valencia, 1610.
FLECHIER--Historia del Cardenal Ximenes. 8vo. Lyons, 1712.
FLOREZ--España Sagrada. 51 vols. 4to. Madrid, 1754.
GALIANO--Historia de España. 4 vols. 8vo. Madrid, 1844.
GARIBAY--Compendio Historial de las Chronicas. 2 vols. Folio.
Barcelona, 1628.
GOMEZ-MIEDES--Historia del Rey Don Jayme I. de Aragon. Folio.
Valencia, 1584.
GONGORA--Historia de Navarra. 4to. Pamplona, 1628.
GUADALAJARA Y XAVIERR--Memorable Expulsion de los Moriscos de
España. 4to. Pamplona, 1613.
HURTADO DE MENDOZA--Guerra de Granada contra los Moriscos. 4to.
1776.
IBN-ALJATHIB--Descripcion del Reino de Granada. 8vo. Madrid,
1860.
JANER--Condicion Social de los Moriscos de España. 8vo. Madrid,
1857.
JIMENA--Anales de Jaen y Baeza. 4to. Matriti, 1654.
LAFUENTE-ALCANTARA--El Libro del Viajero en Granada. 16mo.
Granada, 1843.
LAFUENTE-ALCANTARA--Historia de Granada. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris,
1852.
LAFUENTE-ALCANTARA--Inscripciones Arabes de Granada. 8vo.
Madrid, 1859.
LAFUENTE--Historia General de España. 6 vols. 4to. Barcelona,
1882.
LOZANO--Los Reyes Nuevos de Toledo. 4to. Valencia, 1698.
MADRAZO--Cordova. 4to. Madrid, 1855.
MADRAZO--Sevilla y Cadiz. 4to. Madrid, 1856.
MARIANA--Historia General de España. 2 vols. Folio. Madrid, 1650.
MARMOL-CARVAJAL--Historia de la Rebelion y Castigo de los
Moriscos. 4to. Madrid, 1797.
MARTINEZ DE LA ROSA--Obras. 8vo. Paris, 1844.
MASDEU--Historia Critica de España. 20 vols. 4to. Madrid, 1787.
---- Memorial Histórico Español. 21 vols. 4to. Madrid, 1851–1889.
---- Memorias de la Real Academia de Historia. 11 vols. 4to.
Madrid, 1796–1888.
MENANDEZ-VALDEZ--La Monarchia Asturiana. 4to. Madrid.
MESA-GINETE--Historia de Jerez de la Frontera. 2 vols. 4to.
Jerez, 1888.
MILA Y FONTENALS--De los Trovadores en España. 8vo. Barcelona,
1861.
MOLINO--Rodrigo el Campeador. 4to. Madrid, 1857.
MONDEJAR--Memorias del Rei Alonso el Sabio. Folio. Madrid, 1777.
MORALES--Coronica General de España. 15 vols. 4to. Madrid, 1791.
MORETI--Historia de Ronda. 4to. Ronda, 1867.
MUÑOZ Y GAVIRIA--Historia del Alzamiento de los Moriscos. 12mo.
Madrid, 1861.
NEBRIXA--Chronica de los Reyes Catholicos. Folio. Valladolid,
1565.
NUÑEZ DE CASTRO--Coronica de los Reyes de Castilla. Folio.
Madrid, 1665.
OLIVARRIA Y HUARTRE--Tradiciones de Toledo. 12mo. Madrid, 1880.
OLIVER-HURTADO--Granada y sus Monumentos Arabes. 8vo. Malaga,
1875.
ORBANEJA--Almeria Ilustrada. Folio. Almeria, 1699.
PEDRAZA--Historia Eclesiastica de Granada. Folio. Granada, 1638.
PI Y MARGALL--Granada. 4to. Madrid, 1850.
RADA Y DELGADO--Museo Español de Antigüedades. 9 vols. Folio.
Madrid.
RISCO--La Castilla. 4to. Madrid, 1792.
RIVERA--Historia de Ronda. 16mo. Ronda, 1873.
ROBLES--Malaga Musulmana. 4to. Malaga, 1880.
ROJAS--Historia de Toledo. 2 vols. Folio. Madrid, 1659.
SAAVEDRA--Estudio sobre la Invasion de los Arabes en España.
8vo. Madrid, 1892.
SALAZAR DE MENDOZA--Cronica de la Casa de los Ponces de Leon.
4to. 1620.
SALAZAR DE MENDOZA--Cronica del Gran Cardenal de España. Folio.
Toledo, 1725.
SANDOVAL--Chronica de Don Alonso VII. Folio. Madrid, 1600.
SANDOVAL--Historia de los Reyes de Castilla y Leon. Folio.
Pamplona, 1634.
SIMONET--Leyendas Historicas Arabes. 8vo. Madrid, 1858.
TAPIA--Historia de la Civilizacion Española. 4 vols. 12mo.
Madrid, 1840.
TORRES--Historia de las Ordenes Militares. 4to. Madrid. 1629.
VALDES--Monarchia Asturiana. 4to. Madrid.
VELASCO--Los Euskaros. 8vo. Barcelona, 1879.
VIEGAS--Principios del Reyno de Portugal. 4to. Barcelona.
ZUÑIGA--Anales de Sevilla. 5 vols. 4to. Madrid, 1796.
ZURITA--Anales de Aragon. 7 vols. Folio. Zaragoza, 1610.
PORTUGUESE.
BENAVIDES--Rainhas de Portugal. 2 vols. 8vo. Lisboa, 1878.
BRAGA--Historia da Poesia Popular Portuguesa. 12mo. Porto, 1867.
BRITO E BRANDAO--Monarchia Lusitana. 8 vols. Folio. Lisboa,
1690.
---- Cancioneirinho de Trovas Antigas. 12mo. Vienna, 1857.
DA SERRA--Colecçao de Livros Ineditos de Historia Portuguesa. 5
vols. Folio. Lisboa, 1790.
DE SOUSA--Vestigios de la Lingua Arabica em Portugal. 8vo.
Lisboa, 1789.
ENNES--Historia de Portugal. 2 vols. 8vo. Lisboa, 1876.
HERCULANO--Historia da Inquisiçao em Portugal. 3 vols. 12mo.
1874.
HERCULANO--Historia de Portugal. 2 vols. 8vo. Lisboa, 1880.
NUNEZ DO LIAO--Chronicas dos Reis de Portugal. 4 vols. Lisboa,
1774.
ITALIAN.
ABBATE--Italia nel Medio Evo. 8vo. Alba, 1892.
AIROLDI--Codice Diplomatico di Sicilia. 6 vols. 4to. Palermo,
1789.
AMARI--Biblioteca Arabo-Sicula. 3 vols. 8vo. Torino, 1880.
AMARI--I Diplomi Arabi. Folio. Firenze, 1863.
AMARI--Ricordi Arabici. 8vo. Genova, 1873.
AMARI--Solwan el Mota. 12mo. Firenze, 1851.
AMARI--Storia dei Mussulmani di Sicilia. 3 vols. 8vo. Firenze,
1854.
AMARI--Un Periode delle Istoriæ Siciliane. 8vo. Panormo, 1842.
BARDI--Storia della Letteratura Araba sotto il Califato. 2 vols.
8vo. Firenze, 1846.
BENNICI--L’Ultimo dei Trovatori in Sicilia. 12mo. Palermo, 1874.
BERTALOTTI--Gli Arabi in Italia. 8vo. Torino, 1838.
BRUNO--Opere. 2 vols. 8vo. Lipsiæ, 1830.
CAVEDONI--Ricerche sui Trovatori. Folio. Modena, 1844.
CORBETTA--Sardegna e Corsica. 8vo. Milano, 1877.
CUSA--I Diplomi Greci ed Arabi. Folio. Palermo, 1868.
DE RENZI--Collectio Salernitana. 5 vols. 8vo. Napoli, 1852.
FERRARIO--Storia degli Antichi Romanzi di Cavalleria. 4 vols.
8vo. Milano, 1828.
GALILEO--Opere. 16 vols. 8vo. Firenze, 1853.
GIANNONE--Istoria del Regno di Napoli. 8 vols. 8vo. 1882.
GUICCIARDINI--Storia d’ Italia. 6 vols. 8vo. Parigi, 1837.
MANNO--Storia di Sardegna. 8vo. Firenze, 1858.
MARIGNY--Storia degli Arabi. 4 vols. 12mo. Venezia, 1753.
MARTINI--Storia delle Invasioni degli Arabi in Sardegna. 8vo.
Cagliari, 1861.
MORSO--Descrizione di Palermo Antico. 8vo. Palermo, 1827.
MURATORI--Annali d’ Italia. 17 vols. 8vo. Milano, 1820.
NAVAGIERO--Il Viaggio Fatto in Spagna et in Francia. 12mo.
Venegia, 1563.
NAZARI--Della Transmutatione Metallica. 4to. Brescia, 1599.
PITRE--Usi e Costumi del Popolo Siciliano. 4 vols. 8vo. Palermo,
1889.
TETI--Il Regime Feudale. 8vo. Napoli, 1890.
TIRABOSCHI--Storia della Letteratura Italiana. 27 vols. 8vo.
Venezia, 1824.
VETRI--Dei Primordi della Invasione Araba. 8vo. 1882.
GERMAN.
AHLWARDT--Die Alte Arabische Gedichte. 8vo. Greifswald, 1872.
AHLWARDT--Poësie der Araber. 4to. Gotha, 1856.
APPEL--Provenzalische Inedita. 8vo. Leipzig, 1890.
ASCHBACH--Geschichte der Ommaijden in Spanien. 2 vols. 8vo.
Wien, 1860.
ASCHBACH--Geschichte der Westgothen. 8vo. Franc. am Main, 1827.
ASCHBACH--Geschichte Spaniens und Portugals. 2 vols. 8vo. Franc.
am Main, 1833.
ASSMANN--Geschichte des Mittelalters. 4 vols. 8vo. Braunschweig,
1857.
BARTSCH--Grundniss zur Geschichte der Provenzalische Litteratur.
8vo. Elberfeld, 1872.
BAUDISSIN--Studien zur Semitischen Religionsgeschichte. 8vo.
Leipzig, 1876.
BEBEL--Die Mohammedanische-Arabische Kultur Periode. 8vo.
Stuttgart, 1889.
BECKER--Chemische Anekdoten. 8vo. Leipzig, 1788.
BERGEL--Die Medizin der Talmudisten. 8vo. Leipzig, 1885.
BIRCH-HIRSCHFELD--Ueber die den Provenzalischen Troubadours
Epischen Stoffe. 8vo. Leipzig, 1878.
BLAU--Arabien im VI. Jahrhundert. 8vo.
BÖTTICHER--Geschichte der Carthager. 8vo. Berlin, 1827.
BRINCKMAIER--Die Provenzalischen Troubadours. 8vo. Göttingen,
1882.
CHWOLSOHN--Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus. 2 vols. 8vo. St.
Petersburg, 1856.
DIERCKS--Die Araber im Mittelalter. 8vo. Leipzig, 1882.
DIETERICI--Die Philosophie der Araber im X. Jahrhundert. 8 vols.
8vo. Leipzig, 1876.
DIEZ--Die Poësie der Troubadours. 8vo. Zwickau, 1826.
DIEZ--Leben und Werke der Troubadours. 8vo. Leipzig, 1882.
DÖLLINGER--Von der Papstfabeln des Mittelalters. 8vo. Stuttgart,
1890.
DUKES--Moses ben Ezra aus Granada. 8vo. Altona, 1839.
EBERT--Allgemeine Geschichte der Litteratur des Mittelalters. 3
vols. 8vo. Leipzig, 1887.
EWALD--Geschichte des Volkes Israel. 7 vols. 8vo. Göttingen,
1843.
FISCHBACH--Geschichte der Textelkunst. 8vo. Hanau, 1883.
FLÜGEL--Die Schulen von Bosra und Kufa. 8vo. Leipzig, 1862.
FLÜGEL--Geschichte der Araber. 8vo. Leipzig, 1867.
FREYTAG--Darstellung der Arabischen Verskunst. 8vo. Bonn, 1830.
FUNK--Kaiser Friedrich II. 8vo. Wien, 1817.
GEIGER--Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthum aufgenommen. 8vo.
Bonn, 1883.
GOLDHANN--Wanderungen in Sicilien. 8vo. Leipzig, 1855.
GOLDZIEHER--Der Mythos bei den Hebraern. 8vo. Leipzig, 1876.
GOLDZIEHER--Die Zahiriten. 8vo. Halle, 1884.
GOLDZIEHER--Mohammedanische Studien. 2 vols. 8vo. Halle, 1889.
GOSCHE--Die Alhambra. 16mo. Berlin, 1854.
GRAU--Semiten und Indogermanen. 8vo. Stuttgart, 1867.
GUDEMANN--Das Judische Unterrechtswesen wahrend der
Spanische-Arabische Periode. 8vo. Wien, 1873.
HAMMER-PURGSTALL--Gemäldesaal der grossen Mohammedanische
Herrscher. 6 vols. 8vo. Leipzig, 1873.
HAMMER-PURGSTALL--Literaturgeschichte der Araber. 7 vols. 4to.
Wien, 1855.
HANKEL--Geschichte der Mathematik. 8vo. Leipzig, 1874.
HAUSLEUTNER--Geschichte der Araber in Sicilien. 4 vols. 8vo.
Königsberg, 1791.
HIRSCHFELD--Beiträge zur Erklarung des Koran. 8vo. Leipzig, 1886.
HÖFLER--Kaiser Friedrich II. 8vo. Munich, 1844.
IBN-ISHAK--Das Leben Mohammeds. 8vo. Stuttgart, 1864.
JACOBS--Welche Handsartikel bezogen die Araber en Mittelalter
aus den Nordische-Baltischen Ländern. 8vo. Berlin, 1891.
JOST--Geschichte des Judenthums. 8vo. Leipzig, 1857.
KAEMPF--Poësie Andalusischen Dichter. 8vo. Prag, 1858.
KAPP--Die Alchemie. 2 vols. 8vo. Heidelburg, 1886.
KAYSERLING--Die Judischen Frauen. 8vo. Leipzig, 1879.
KAYSERLING--Sephardim. 8vo. Leipzig, 1859.
KESTNER--Der Kreuzzug Friedrichs II. 8vo. Göttingen, 1873.
KIESEWETTER--Die Musik der Araber. 4to. Leipzig, 1842.
KÖPKE--Die Anfänge des Konigthums bei den Gothen. 8vo. Berlin,
1859.
KRAUSE--Die Byzantiner des Mittelalters. 8vo. Halle, 1869.
KREHL--Das Leben des Muhammed. 12mo. Leipzig, 1884.
KREHL--Die Religion der Vorislamischen Araber. 8vo. Leipzig,
1863.
KREMER--Culturgeschichte des Orients. 2 vols. 8vo. Wien, 1875.
KÜGLER--Geschichte der Baukunst. 8vo. Stuttgart, 1859.
LEMBKE--Geschichte von Spanien. 4 vols. 8vo. Hamburg, 1831.
MAHN--Gedichte der Troubadours. 3 vols. 12mo. Berlin, 1856.
MOVERS--Das Phönizische Alterthum. 2 vols. 8vo. Berlin, 1850.
MÜLLER--Die Letzten Zeiten von Granada. 8vo. München, 1863.
MÜLLER--Philosophie und Theologie von Averroes. 4to. München,
1875.
MÜNZ--Ueber die Judische Aerzte im Mittelalter. 8vo. Berlin,
1887.
NESSELMANN--Versuch einer Geschichte des Algebra. 8vo. Berlin,
1842.
NÖLDECKE--Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Poësie der Alten Araber.
8vo. Hannover, 1864.
NÖLDECKE--Das Leben Muhammads. 8vo. Hannover, 1863.
NORDAU--Vom Kreml bis zur Alhambra. 2 vols. 8vo. Leipzig, 1889.
OLDENBERG--Buddha. 8vo. Berlin, 1881.
PARTHEY--Das Alexandrinische Museum. 8vo. Berlin, 1838.
PARTHEY--Wanderungen durch Sicilien. 2 vols. 12mo. Berlin, 1834.
PISCHON--Der Einfluss des Islams. 8vo. Leipzig, 1881.
PRUTZ--Aus Phönizien. 8vo. Leipzig, 1870.
RAUMER--Geschichte der Hohenstaufen. 4 vols. 8vo. Leipzig, 1878.
REBER--Geschichte der Baukunst. 8vo. Leipzig, 1866.
RITTER--Die Arabische Philosophie. 4to. Göttingen, 1844.
RÖHRICHT--Geschichte der Kreuzzuge. 2 vols. 8vo. Berlin, 1874.
SCHAACK--Geschichte der Normannen in Sicilien. 8vo. Stuttgart,
1889.
SCHÄFER--Geschichte von Portugal. 5 vols. 8vo. Hamburg, 1883.
SCHIRRMACHER--Kaiser Friedrich II. 4 vols. 8vo. Göttingen, 1859.
SCHMIDT--Geschichte Aragoniens. 8vo. Leipzig, 1828.
SCHMIEDER--Geschichte der Alchemie. 8vo. Halle, 1832.
SCHULTZ--Das Höflische Leben zur Zeit der Minnesinger. 2 vols.
4to. Leipzig, 1889.
SCHULTZ--Italienische Trobadors. 8vo. Berlin, 1883.
SPANGENBERG--Die Minnehofe des Mittelalters. 8vo. Leipzig, 1821.
SPITTA--Zur Geschichte Abul Hasan Ali Asaris. 8vo. Leipzig, 1876.
SPRENGEL--Geschichte der Arzneikunde. 6 vols. 8vo. Halle, 1821.
SPRENGER--Das Leben und die Lehre des Muhammed. 3 vols. 8vo.
Berlin, 1861.
SPRENGER--Die Alte Geographie Arabiens. 8vo. Bern, 1875.
STIMMING--Bertran de Born. 8vo. Halle, 1879.
STIMMING--Der Troubadour Jaufre Rudel. 8vo. Kiel, 1873.
STÜWE--Die Handelszüge der Araber. 8vo. Berlin, 1836.
SUCHIER--Denkmäler der Provenzalische Litteratur. 8vo. Halle,
1883.
UNGER--Geschichte der Pflanzenwelt. 8vo. Wien, 1852.
VON KREMER--Gebiete des Islams. 8vo. Leipzig, 1873.
VON KREMER--Geschichte der Herrschenden Ideen des Islams. 8vo.
Leipzig, 1868.
VON LEDEBUR--Zeugnisse eines Handels-Verkehrs mit dem Orient.
8vo. Berlin, 1840.
WAHL--Statistik der Araber in Sicilien. 8vo.
WEIL--Die Poetische Literatur der Araber vor Mohammed. 12mo.
Stuttgart, 1837.
WEIL--Einleitung in den Koran. 12mo. Bielefeld, 1844.
WEIL--Geschichte der Chalifen. 3 vols. 8vo. Mannheim, 1846.
WEIL--Geschichte der Islamischen Völker. 8vo. Stuttgart, 1866.
WENIGER--Das Alexandrinische Museum. 8vo. Berlin, 1875.
WILKEN--Geschichte der Kreuzzuge. 8 vols. 8vo. Leipzig, 1830.
WINKELMANN--Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums. 8vo.
Heidelberg, 1882.
WINKELMANN--Kaiser Friedrich II. 2 vols. 8vo. Leipzig, 1889.
WINKLER--Geschichte der Botanik. 8vo. Frankfort, 1854.
WOEPCKE--Ueber Ein Arabisches Astrolabium. 4to. Berlin, 1858.
WÜSTENFELD--Die Academien der Araber. 8vo. Göttingen, 1837.
WÜSTENFELD--Geschichte der Arabischen Aerzte und Naturforscher.
8vo. Göttingen, 1840.
ZERSCHWITZ--Das Kaisertraum des Mittelalters. 8vo. Leipzig, 1877.
ZIMMERMANN--Geschichte der Hohenstaufen. 8vo. Stuttgart, 1865.
DUTCH.
DOZY--De Israelieten te Mekka. 8vo. Haarlem, 1864.
HOUTSMA--De Strijd over het Dogma in den Islam. 8vo. Leiden,
1875.
KEIJZER--De Leerstellingen van de Mohammedaansche Godsdienst.
8vo. Gorinchem, 1854.
KEIJZER--Handboek voor Het Mohammedaansche Regt. 8vo. 's
Gravenhage, 1853.
KERN--Het Buddhisme in Indie. 2 vols. 8vo. Haarlem, 1882.
KIST--De Pausin Johanna. 8vo. Gravenhage, 1845.
KOENEN--Varia, 8vo.
KUENEN--De Baalsdienst onder Israel. 8vo.
KUENEN--De Godsdienst van Israel. 2 vols. 8vo. Haarlem, 1869.
NOMSZ--Mohammed. 12mo. Amstelodami, 1758.
SNOUCK-HURGRONJE--Het Mekkaansche Feest. 8vo. Leiden, 1880.
TIELE--De Godsdienst van Zarathustra. 8vo. Haarlem, 1864.
WEIL--Legenden der Muselmannen. 8vo. Schiedam, 1853.
WEIL--Mohammed de Propheet. 2 vols. 8vo. Amsterdam, 1846.
WUNDERLICH--Geschiedenis der Geneeskunde. 8vo. Tiel, 1861.
DANISH.
FABRICIUS--Forbindelserne mellem Norden og den Spanske Halvo, i
ældre Tider. 8vo. Kjobenhavn, 1882.
MOLBECH--Europa i Middelalderen. 8vo. Kjobenhavn, 1819.
RYDBERG--Middelalderens Magi. 12mo. Kjobenhavn, 1873.
SORENSEN--Araberne og deres Kultur i Middelalderen. 12mo.
Kjobenhavn, 1888.
SWEDISH.
AFZELIUS--Svenska Folket’s Sago-Hafder. 11 vols. 8vo. Stockholm,
1844.
BÖTTIGER--Om den Italienska Kulturens. 8vo. Upsala, 1846.
BRANDEL--Om och ur den arabiska geographen, Idrisi. 8vo. Upsala,
1894.
ENGESTRÖM--Om judarne i Rom under aldere tider. 8vo. Stockholm,
1876.
HELLWALD--Turkiet i vara dagar. 2 vols. 8vo. Stockholm, 1877.
HILDEBRAND--Om det Vatikanska arkivet. 8vo. Stockholm.
JONQUIERE--Osmanika rikets historia. 8vo. Stockholm, 1882.
LINDBERG--Mohammed och Qoranen. 8vo. Göteborg, 1897.
REINACH--Israeliternas historia. 8vo. Stockholm, 1891.
SJÖGREN--Sveriges kulturhistoria. 4to. Stockholm, 1891.
LANGUE D’OC AND LANGUE D’OIL.
BARTSCH--Chrestomatie Provençale. 8vo. Elberfeld, 1868.
BORN, BERTRAND DE--Poësies Complètes. 8vo. Paris.
FAURIEL--Histoire de la Croisade contre les Hérétiques
Albigeois. 4to. Paris, 1837.
MONTAIGLON ET RAYNAUD--Recueil Général des Fabliaux. 6 vols.
8vo. Paris, 1878.
RAYNOUARD--Choix des Poësies des Troubadours. 6 vols. 8vo.
Paris, 1816.
RUTEBŒUF--Œuvres Complètes. 8vo. Paris, 1839.
LIMOUSIN AND CATALAN.
CARBONELL--Chronica de Espanya. Folio. Barcelona, 1546.
DON JAIME DE ARAGON--Libre dels feyts esdevenguts en la vida del
molt alt senyor En Jacme lo Conquerador. Folio. 1557.
MARCH--Les Obres. 4to. Barcelona, 1602.
MUNTANER--Chronica. Folio. Barcelona, 1562.
PUJADES--Coronica universal del Principat de Cathalunya. Folio.
Barcelona, 1609.
ROIG--Libre de Cosells. 12mo. Barcelona, 1561.
TORNICH--Historias e Conquestas dels Excellentissims e Catholics
Reys de Arago. Folio. Barcelona, 1534.
LATIN.
ABD-AL-ALLATIF--Historia Ægypti. 4to. Oxoniæ, 1800.
ABDUL-FEDA--Historia Anteislamica. 4to. Lipsiæ, 1831.
ABUL-PHARAGIUS--Historia Dynastiarum. 4to. Oxoniæ, 1763.
ANSPACH--Historia Califatus Al-Walidi. 8vo. Leyden, 1853.
AVICENNA--Opera. Folio. Venitiis, 1595.
BACON--Opera Inedita. 8vo. London, 1859.
CAPASSO--Historia Diplomatica Regni Siciliæ. 4to. Napoli, 1894.
CARENA--Tractatus de Officio Inquisitionis. Folio. Cremona, 1741.
CASIRI--Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana Escurialensis. 2 vols.
Folio. Matriti, 1760.
---- Fuero Juzgo. Folio. Madrid, 1815.
GERBERT--Œuvres. 4to. Paris, 1867.
GILDERMEISTER--Scriptorum Arabum de Rebus Indicis. 8vo. Bonnæ,
1838.
HADJI-KHALFA--Lexicon Bibliographicum. 7 vols. 4to. Leipzig,
1835.
HILLE--De Medicis Arabibus Oculariis. 8vo. Lipsiæ.
HUILLARD-BRÉHOLLES--Chronicon Placentinum. 4to. Parisiis, 1856.
LONGINO--Trinium Magicum. 18mo. Francofurti, 1614.
MIDDLEDORFF--Commentatio de Institutis Litterariis in Hispania
quæ Arabes auctores habuerunt. 4to. Göttingen.
MURATORI--Antiquitates Italiæ Medii Ævi. 6 vols. Folio.
Mediolani, 1740.
PAULUS DIACONUS--Historia Longobardorum. 8vo. Hannoveræ, 1878.
POCOCKE--Specimen Historiæ Arabum. 4to. Oxoniæ, 1806.
RASMUSSEN--Additamenta. 4to.
REISKE--Opuscula Medica ex Monimentis Arabum. 8vo. 1776.
REISKE--Sail ol Arem. 4to. Lipsiæ.
RENAULDON--Historia Præcipuorum Arabum Regnorum. 4to. Hauniæ,
1817.
RHAZES--De Variolis et Morbillis. 8vo. Londini, 1766.
RUTGERS--Historia Jemanæ. 4to. Lugd. Batavorum, 1838.
SPRENGEL--Historia Rei Herbariæ. 2 vols. 8vo. Amsteldami, 1807.
---- Tractatus Talmudici Erubhin. 4to. Lipsiæ, 1661.
WENRICH--Rerum ab Arabibis in Italia Insulisque Gestarum
Commentarii. 8vo. Lipsiæ, 1845.
GREEK.
APPIANUS--Historia Romana. 2 vols. 8vo. Lipsiæ, 1881.
HERODOTUS--Historiarum Libri IX. 8vo. Lipsiæ, 1890.
PROCOPIUS--Anekdota. 8vo. Paris, 1856.
STRABO--Geographica. 3 vols. 8vo. Lipsiæ, 1877.
HEBREW.
AKMIN-JOSEPH-BEN--Tah-ul-Nufus (Extracts). 8vo. 1873.
ALFASI--Halakhoth-Rab-Alfas. (Exposition of the Talmud.) 4to.
Oxford, 1875.
MAIMONIDES--Selections from the Yad Hachazakah. 8vo. Cambridge,
1832.
SURENHUSINS--Mishna. 6 vols. Folio. Amstelædami, 1698.
---- Talmud Babli. 13 vols. 4to. Amsterdam, 1654.
ARABIC.
ABD-AL-WAHID--History of the Almohades. 8vo. Leyden, 1881.
ABD-EL-REZZAQ--Revelation des Enigmes. 8vo. Paris, 1874.
ABOULFEDA--Annales Muslemici. 5 vols. 4to. Leipzig, 1794.
ABOULFEDA--Description des Pays de Magreb. 4to. Alger, 1839.
ABULFEDA--Joctanidorum Historia. 4to. Hard. Gel. 1786.
---- Ajbar Machmua. 8vo. Madrid, 1867.
AL-BOKHARI--Canonical Traditions. Folio. Bombay, 1856.
AL-ISPAHANI--The Songs of the Arabs. 10 vols. 4to. Cairo.
AU-MAKKARI--Analectes sur l’Histoire et la Littérature des
Arabes en Espagne. 2 vols. 4to. Leyden, 1855.
AMROLKAIS--Le Divan. 4to. Paris, 1837.
ANTARAH--Romance. 6 vols. 8vo. Beirut, 1883.
DE SOUSA--Documentos Arabicos para a Historia Portuguesa. 4to.
Lisboa, 1790.
DOZY--Scriptorum Rerum Arabum de Abbadidis. 4to. Lugd.
Batavorum, 1846.
EDRISI--Description de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne. 8vo. Leyden,
1866.
ELMACIN--Historia Saracenica. 4to. Lugd. Batavorum.
FARIS-AL-SHIDIAC--Voyages. 8vo. Paris, 1855.
FARUKI--Legal Decisions. 2 vols. Folio. Bulak.
GRANGERET DE LAGRANGE--Anthologie Arabe. 8vo. Paris, 1828.
HAMZAE ISPAHANENSIS--Annalium Liber X. 8vo. Petropoli, 1845.
IBN-ADHARI--Histoire de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne. 2 vols. 8vo.
Leyden, 1848.
IBN-AL-WALID--The Lamp of Kings. 4to. Cairo.
IBN-BADROUN--Commentaire Historique. 8vo. Leyde, 1846.
IBN-BATOUTAH--Voyages. 8vo. Cairo.
IBN-HAJAR--Biographical Dictionary. 4 vols. 8vo. Calcutta, 1853.
IBN-JUNIS--Œuvres. 4to. Paris.
IBN-KHALDUN--Introduction to History. 8vo. Beirut, 1886.
---- Lois des Maures en Espagne. Folio. MS. XII. Century.
MACOUDI--Les Prairies d’Or. 9 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1861.
MOHAMMED--Al Koran. 8vo. Leipzig, 1881.
MUHAMMED-ALFERGANI--Elementa Astronomica. 4to.
SHARASTANI--Book of the Religious and Philosophical Sects. 2
vols. 8vo. 1842.
WRIGHT--Opuscula Arabica. 8vo. Leyden, 1859.
WÜSTENFELD--Das Leben Muhammeds. 3 vols. 8vo. Göttingen, 1859.
WÜSTENFELD--Die Chroniken der Stadt Mecca. 4 vols. 8vo. Leipzig,
1858.
HISTORY OF THE MOORISH EMPIRE IN EUROPE
[Illustration]
CHAPTER I
THE ANCIENT ARABIANS
B.C. 2500–A.D. 614
Topography of Arabia--Its History--Influence of Other
Nations--Ancient Civilization---Commerce--Persistence
of Customs and Language--Character of the Bedouin--His
Independence--His Predatory Instincts--Power of Tribal
Connection--War the Normal Condition of Existence in the
Desert--The Virtues and Vices of the Arab--Blood-Revenge
and its Destructive Consequences--Absence of
Caste--Condition of Woman--Marriage--Religion--Astral
Worship--Idolatry--Phallicism--Human Sacrifices--Importance
and Power of the Jews--Christianity in Arabia--Poetry, its
Subjects and Character--The Moallakat---Popularity of the Arab
Poet--His License--Influence of Arabic Civilization and Culture
on Subsequent Ages.
Few countries of the globe present to the eye of the traveller so
desolate, so forbidding an aspect as that vast and arid peninsula
which, embracing an area of more than a million square miles, stretches
away through twenty-four degrees of latitude, from the confines of
the Syrian Desert to the shores of the Indian Ocean. Its surface,
while far from possessing the monotonous character with which popular
fancy is accustomed to invest it, is, for the greater part of its
extent, destitute of those physical advantages which tempt either the
cupidity or the enterprise of man. Its coasts are low and unhealthy.
Its harbors are few and unsafe. Its mineral resources are to this
day unexplored and unknown. Its impenetrable deserts, guarded by
a fierce and martial population, have always set at defiance the
best-matured plans of invasion and conquest. In the principality of
Yemen, appropriately named The Happy, the cultivation of the soil has
flourished from time immemorial, but in almost every other province
the returns of agricultural labor are discouraging and unremunerative.
Illimitable wastes of sand, over which sweeps the deadly blast of
the simoom; mountains, bald, craggy, and volcanic, whose slopes are
destitute of every trace of vegetable life; plains strewn with blocks
of tufa and basalt; valleys dotted here and there with stunted shrubs,
or encrusted with a saline deposit similar to that upon the shores
of the Dead Sea; a soil impregnated with nitre; such are, and have
been from prehistoric times, the physical features of the Arabian
Peninsula. No stream worthy of the name of river, dispensing wealth
and fertility in its winding course to the sea, flows through this
dreary and inhospitable land. Wherever a spring was found, a permanent
settlement arose, and the black tents of the Bedouin gave place to huts
of sun-dried bricks, while the dignity of the sheik, who now aspired to
the title of prince, was satisfied with a dwelling superior to those
of his subjects only in point of size. The oasis, generally suggestive
of shady groves and purling streams, is often, in reality, nothing
more than the dry bed of a mountain torrent, along whose borders a
little withered vegetation furnishes the hardy camel with pasture, and
where a scanty supply of brackish water can, by laborious digging,
be obtained. Overhead glitters a sky of brass, unflecked by a single
cloud, and, morning and evening, the rays of the sun, mellowed and
refracted by the vapors of the earth, clothe every elevation with
scarlet, azure, and violet tints which, blended in exquisite harmony,
rival the splendors of the rainbow; developing, under the effects of
radiation, optical illusions and charming pictures of the mirage,
attributed by superstitious ignorance to the influence of enchantment.
The unbroken stillness of the Desert, the wide expanse of uninhabited
territory, produce a sense of mental depression, accompanied by an
apprehension of danger from the convulsions of nature and the violence
of man, which no experience seems able to remove; affecting even the
sturdy camel-driver, familiar with these solitudes from childhood, who
shudders as he urges his string of panting beasts over the drifted
sand-heaps and through the mountain fastness, the reputed haunt of evil
genii and the vantage ground from whence the murderous banditti oft
beset the caravan. So deeply-rooted and tenacious is this feeling that
the Arab regards a journey successfully performed as just cause for
congratulation, and indeed not inferior to a triumph, as is indicated
by his familiar proverb, “Travel is a victory.”
The modern geographical division of Arabia into The Stony, The Desert,
The Happy is arbitrary, and unknown to the people the boundaries of
whose country it purports to establish. The distinctions between the
various tribes of the Peninsula have always been determined by mode of
life, habits, and tradition rather than by the accident of locality;
have been, in fact, rather personal than territorial. This peculiarity
is the result of an extraordinary persistence of a national type which
neither a new physical environment, nor the change of political and
economic conditions, nor the lapse of centuries has been able to modify
sensibly, still less to eradicate completely. Hence has arisen the
division of the Arabian people into two classes, nomadic and sedentary,
the only one universally recognized by them, and whose line of
demarcation has always been sharply defined.
The primordial story of Arabia is lost in the unfathomable darkness of
antiquity. The annals of no people are involved in more uncertainty
or present greater difficulties in their investigation than those of
the Bedouins, as the popular accounts which we possess of their early
history bear unquestionable indications of recent date and fictitious
origin. Ignorant of the art of writing for centuries before the time of
Mohammed, their traditions were orally transmitted, and, in addition
to being necessarily subject to all the defects of this mode of
communication, were colored by that love of exaggeration and falsehood
which seems to be an integral part of the Oriental character. The
meagre hints which can be gleaned from these unsatisfactory materials
are all that we can rely upon in the almost hopeless attempt to
construct a chronological and historical outline of pre-Islamic events.
The statements of Moslem writers concerning these events must be
subjected to rigid criticism. They suppressed many facts, and condemned
indiscriminately the practices of their heathen ancestors; although
they knew that the Prophet drew his inspiration largely from this
source, and that Islamism could never have been established without
the acceptance of many of these idolatrous ceremonies in all their
integrity. As far as can at present be determined by the aid of the
imperfect and suspicious data at our command, and by a comparison of
the physical and mental characteristics of surrounding nations, Arabia
has long been a base of extensive emigration, chiefly into Central
Asia; while her southern and eastern provinces have, from the days when
some famished Bedouin first discovered the marvellous fertility enjoyed
by the Valley of the Nile, been the prolific source from whence Egypt
recruited her diminishing population.
On the other hand, the influence of neighboring countries upon Arabia
has been attended, in its turn, with consequences of the greatest
importance. It was peculiarly fortunate that her geographical situation
rendered her maritime cities--and in a still greater degree her
interior settlements--entrepôts for the distribution of the luxuries
of the East and West. Of the latter, in ancient times, and indeed
until superseded by the doubtful advantages of Mecca, Petra was the
most remarkable. The latter was a veritable troglodytic city. Its
dwellings, excavated in the solid rock, disclose by their vast extent
that at one time they must have sheltered a population of at least a
hundred and sixty thousand souls. Nor was Petra the only town of this
kind in Northern Arabia. Many others almost rivalled it in size and
opulence, in the splendid architecture of their temples, in the vast
ramifications of their commercial interests, in the sybaritic luxury of
their inhabitants. Under such conditions a high degree of civilization
must necessarily have been reached, which, however, had disappeared
with the decline of Phœnician influence at a period long before the
dawn of the Christian era. From an epoch not improbably coeval with the
establishment of the first Egyptian dynasty there had been an almost
incessant passing and repassing of strangers, attracted by the profits
of the Ethiopian and Indian trade, upon the highways, which in every
direction traversed the Peninsula. This continual intercourse with
foreigners, the curious information of distant lands which the latter
imparted, the mysterious dogmas of unknown faiths which they professed,
their extensive learning and polished manners, insensibly enlarged the
sphere of observation and activity, developed the mental faculties,
and softened the rudeness of the wild tribes of the Desert. Many of
these traders were Phœnicians and Jews whom a common origin, indicated,
among other traits, by a striking similarity of language, brought at
once into familiar and intimate contact. with the Arabs. The commercial
intercourse of Arabia with Egypt is known from inscriptions to have
existed for thirty-five hundred years before Christ, and that with
Phœnicia may, not improbably, have been of equal antiquity.
No greater contrast can be imagined than that presented by the
respective lives of the Arabs and their neighbors and kindred, the
denizens of the Valley of the Nile. The actions of the former, like
those of all pastoral nations, were irregular, uncertain, capricious.
The existence of the latter was controlled by the unvarying phenomena
of the Great River, whose influence was perceptible in every phase
of political, religious, and social life; whose inundations were
symbolical of prosperity, and whose rise was announced by the celestial
messenger Sirius, the most magnificent star in the heavens. The
subjects of the Pharaohs were dependent upon Arabia for the gums
and aromatics so extensively used in embalming; and these precious
substances, which must have been produced far more abundantly then than
now, were also exported to Phœnicia and Palestine, whence considerable
quantities annually found their way into Europe to be consumed in
sacrificial ceremonies, in the service of medicine, and in the
ostentatious pomp of patrician luxury.
The maritime and agricultural advantages possessed by the southern
coast of the Peninsula--designated by the Romans as Arabia the Happy,
and afterwards, by the natives, as Yemen, “The Country on the Right
Hand” (because the speaker was supposed to stand at Mecca)--had enabled
that region to attain to a degree of prosperity and civilization
unknown to the pastoral settlements of the interior. Nothing can
now be ascertained concerning the early history of Yemen, the royal
genealogies of whose sovereigns nevertheless include a period of
twenty-two hundred years. Nor can speculation, with any degree of
probability, assign even an approximate date to the beginning of
its commercial relations with the East. Not only did the bold and
adventurous spirit of the Arabian sailors lead them to the extreme
Orient, but their coasting vessels regularly visited the shores of the
Persian Gulf and the bays and inlets of the African coast; undertakings
far more hazardous, if not more lucrative, than voyages to distant
Hindustan. From the latter country the native and foreign merchants
introduced, with articles of traffic, many idolatrous practices and
dogmas of a corrupt philosophy, destined subsequently to manifest
the powerful hold they had obtained upon the popular mind by their
incorporation into the creed of Islam.
All classic writers who have written upon the subject agree in
attributing great wealth to Southern Arabia, a land familiar to
antiquity as Saba, or Sheba. Herodotus, Strabo, and Pliny frequently
allude to it as the richest country on the globe. Its agricultural
resources, dependent upon a vast and intricate hydraulic system
which embraced hundreds of leagues of productive territory, were the
principal basis of its prosperity. Its streams were confined by massive
walls of masonry of cyclopean dimensions and by great embankments.
One of these reservoirs was eighteen miles in circuit and a hundred
and twenty feet deep. Its stones were laid in bitumen and bolted
together with iron rods. Many others, inferior in dimensions and of
not less solid construction, collected and retained the melted snows
of the mountains. The flow of water was regulated by sluices, and its
apportionment rigidly prescribed by law. This thorough system of
irrigation, applied to a soil of prodigious fertility under a tropical
sun, eventually produced results rivalling those of the vaunted
plantations of Babylonia. An innumerable population, distributed
throughout this favored territory in hundreds of cities and villages,
carried to its highest perfection the cultivation of the soil. The
daily expenses of the royal household were fifteen Babylonian talents,
eighty-five thousand five hundred dollars of our money. It is related
that Mareb, the capital, stood in a vast expanse of perennial verdure,
where the branches of the trees, touching each other, formed a vault
of continuous shade over the highways, of such extent that a horseman
would require a journey of two months’ duration to traverse the
cultivated portion of the realm of the monarchs of Saba. One of the
latter was the famous Queen Balkis, the friend and admirer of Solomon.
In a region so fortunately situated for commerce, mercantile activity
kept pace with agricultural development. The merchants of Saba
enjoyed a reputation for shrewdness, ability, wealth, and enterprise
not inferior to that of the Phœnicians themselves. They engaged in
transactions involving immense pecuniary investments. They despatched
great fleets to China. Their caravans traversed the Syrian and African
deserts. They exported to Persia annually a thousand talents weight
of frankincense. Not only did they purchase directly the commodities
in which they dealt, but they also bought and sold extensively on
commission. Their warehouses were filled with the rich products of a
score of climes; silver vessels; ingots of copper, tin, iron, and lead;
honey and wax; silks, ivory, ebony, coral, agates; civet, musk, myrrh,
camphor, and other aromatics, some of which were worth many times their
weight in gold. Such was their prodigal luxury that only sandal-wood
and cinnamon were used as fuel in the preparation of their food. The
vegetable kingdom contributed no insignificant share to the commercial
wealth of Southern Arabia. Coffee, indigenous to the Peninsula, was
exported as a luxury to the provinces of Asia. In that dry climate,
where flourished every known variety of cereals, grain could be stored
without injury for thirty years. The cotton-plant, the sugar-cane, the
cocoa-palm, yielded enormous revenues to those who engaged in their
culture. The balsam of Mecca, the gum Arabic, the sap of the _Acacia
Vera_, and the famed frankincense were also important articles of
export. The country was reputed to be rich in minerals; inexhaustible
deposits of salt existed in Saba; gold was found in the mountains;
but Arabia produced no iron, which Strabo says in his time was equal
in value to the precious metals. The pearl fisheries of the coast,
opposite to the Isles of Bahrein, were unrivalled for the beauty and
value of their products.
For an unknown period, embracing, however, many centuries, the
prosperity of the kingdom of Saba continued. Then it suddenly
declined; a general emigration took place, and the former paradise was
transformed into an uninhabited desert. The cause of this great and
profound change, involving the desolation of a vast region and the
dispersion of an entire people, is hidden in obscurity. The puerile
fables which attribute it to a threatened inundation from the rupture
of a dike are unworthy of notice. It is probable that this calamity
was mainly due to the diversion of the caravan traffic to the channels
of the Red Sea, to the abandonment of stations, to the cessation of
revenue, and to the consequent dearth of the means of subsistence.
Foreign wars or domestic convulsions, which, aided by increasing luxury
and subsequent weakness, also contributed to drain the resources and
exhaust the population of the kingdom, may have hastened the ultimate
catastrophe that is supposed to have occurred during the first century
of the Christian era.
From this epoch the traditions of the Arabs become more and more
confused. Some tribes seem to have emigrated to Mesopotamia, others to
have settled in the vicinity of Medina, then called Yathreb, where they
intermarried with the Jews already established in that city. We know
nothing further of Arabian annals till the promulgation of the faith of
Islam began a new chapter in the history of nations. Before the Hegira
no date could be fixed with certainty, as there was no chronological
system by which to ascertain the year of an historical occurrence,
and no public or private records existed to preserve it. But a step
beyond the unreliable transmission of past events by tradition were the
inscriptions occasionally made upon the shoulder-blades of animals. Not
only was the material indispensable to the scribe entirely wanting,
but the ability to use it was possessed by only an insignificant
number of the people. Among the nomadic Bedouins contempt for literary
accomplishments, except that of extemporaneous poetical composition,
universally prevailed. Even in the great commercial city of Mecca, at
the time of the publication of the Koran, there was but one man who
could write. It was not without reason that Mohammed designated the
long and obscure period preceding the Hegira, the Age of Ignorance.
Arabia, alone among the countries accessible to the ambition of
the powerful sovereigns of antiquity, escaped the humiliation of
conquest. The genius of Alexander had planned its subjugation, but
death prevented the realization of his vast, perhaps impracticable,
design. The legions of Augustus, trained under the discipline of the
greatest of the Cæsars, proved unequal to the task of triumphing over
a region where the soil, the elements, and the valor of its defenders
formed a combination invincible by human prowess. The Persians, for a
period of insignificant duration, occupied the western and southern
coasts, having previously expelled the Abyssinians, who had invaded
and retained a portion of Yemen during the sixth century. No nation,
however, was ever able to claim supremacy over any considerable
portion of the Arabian Peninsula. For this immunity it was indebted
not only to the natural obstacles which defied the advance and the
maintenance of an invading army, but also to the superstitious fears
with which cunning and credulity had surrounded its name. It was a land
of mysterious portents and prodigies, whose borders were guarded by
malignant demons; whose deserts, all but impenetrable to the boldest
adventurer, were inhabited by cannibal giants and monstrous birds of
prey that watched over treasures placed by evil spirits under the
spell of enchantment. Every caravan that left Phœnicia for Central
Arabia carried quantities of storax, which the Tyrian merchants
declared was burnt in the neighborhood of the frankincense shrubs,
that its offensive fumes might drive away the winged serpents which
were their custodians. The climate was said to be so pestilential that
slaves and criminals alone were employed to gather the precious gum,
their liberty being conditional upon their success. These politic
inventions, implicitly believed by the ignorant, while they insured to
the shrewd traders of Phœnicia a monopoly of the valuable products of
the Peninsula, exercised no inconsiderable influence over the popular
mind of the ancients, and clothed the Desert with terrors which even
the reputation and allurements of its prodigious wealth were unable
entirely to overcome.
As a result of its exemption from foreign dominion, no other country
has preserved the integrity of its customs, its language, and the
personality of its inhabitants to such a degree as Arabia. It alone
still presents a picture of the government and the domestic economy
of patriarchal antiquity. Its manners are those which prevailed
centuries before the time of Abraham. The wonderfully sonorous and
flexible idiom of the Koran was already formed before the Bible or
the Iliad was written. The absolute immobility of the Arabian in his
native haunts, contrasted with his ready adaptation to diametrically
opposite conditions elsewhere, is one of the most striking anomalies
of human character. The influence of Greece and Rome, whose taste in
art and maxims of government have left their traces wherever either
the valor or the enterprise of those nations has been able to obtain a
foothold, is not perceptible in the political or domestic history of
Arabia. No ruins of any majestic structure raised by the master-hand
of the Athenian or Roman architect have ever been discovered in the
great Peninsula, the accounts of whose commercial wealth were matters
of popular faith and wonder throughout the ancient world. And, what
is probably a more conclusive indication of the permanent absence of
foreign influence than any other, however plausible, no name with
a Greek or Latin termination has survived in the dialects of those
Arabian settlements most intimately associated with the trade of Europe
for many centuries.
This inflexibility of national peculiarities becomes invaluable in
tracing the causes of the decay and disruption of the great Moslem
empires which subsequently dominated so large a portion of the globe.
The ethnography of a people who have stamped their characteristics
deeply upon succeeding ages; whose customs, laws, and language have,
to a certain degree, survived their dominion; the analogy between the
religious dogmas which they professed and those which have supplanted
them; the play of passions, destructive or beneficent, exhibited by
those rulers whom hereditary descent or the accident of fortune raised
to supreme authority; the development of the transplanted race, its
precocious maturity, the lasting effects of its intellectual supremacy,
and its slow but inevitable decline, are circumstances well deserving
the attentive scrutiny of the philosophical historian. The absence
of reliable information renders impossible an accurate conception
of the mental and physical traits of the Arab of two thousand years
ago. But, as we know the extreme conservatism of Orientals, their
pronounced aversion to change, the obstinate persistence of their
traditions, and the general outlines of their character, we may with
safety assume that the shepherd who now roams over the desert plateaus
of Nejd and Oman is the intellectual counterpart of the Amalekite
of the Bible, and that the Arab whose features are sculptured upon
the eternal walls of Edfou and Karnak did not differ in any material
respect from the predatory Bedouin of to-day. It is a strange
anomaly in a land, the greater portion of which, either through the
obduracy of Nature or the indolence of its inhabitants, had been for
ages condemned to eternal sterility and isolated by sea and desert
from contemporaneous civilization, to encounter a race whose genius
was capable of at once adapting itself, with equal facility, to
the formation and development of an agricultural system surpassing
that of any other people, ancient or modern; to the invention of
mechanical devices of marvellous ingenuity; to the solution of the most
abstruse mathematical problems; to the perfection of a graceful and
exquisite order of architecture, unique in design, infinite in detail,
remarkable in execution, unrivalled in beauty of ornament; to the
protracted investment of cities and the attainment and exercise of that
proficiency in the intricate system of military tactics indispensable
to success in the art of war; to the foundation and the preservation
of empires. A long and tedious apprenticeship is usually required for
the attainment to perfection in any of these accomplishments; but the
versatile Arab seemed, by intuition, to be able to grasp them all,
without previous experience or instruction. In literature, as well,
was this pre-eminence of genius disclosed. Poetry was the sole form of
literary manifestation appreciated by the Arabic mind; improvisation
the only talent it deemed worthy of applause. Even among the most
intelligent, nothing deserving of the name of history was preserved;
and the genealogies upon which the Arabs prided themselves were merely
interminable lists of barbarians of local or tribal celebrity, and
dreary catalogues of idols. Yet their predatory hordes effected a great
intellectual revolution in every country which submitted to their sway.
In addition to their own memorable achievements, they developed and
expanded, to the utmost, the mental faculties of their subjects and
tributaries. By precept and example, they aroused the emulation and
rewarded the efforts of all who struggled to escape from the fetters of
ignorance which had been riveted by the superstition and prejudice of
ages passed in ignominious servitude. Their conquests in the world of
letters offer a far more noble title to renown than the laurels won on
fields of appalling carnage or the prestige acquired by the subjugation
of vast provinces and kingdoms. To the finest literary productions of
modern times does this subtle intellectual power extend. The impress
of Arabian genius can be detected in the novels of Boccaccio, in
the romances of Cervantes, in the philosophy of Voltaire, in the
“Principia” of Newton, in the tragedies of Shakspeare. Its domain is
coincident with the boundaries of modern civilization, its influence
imperishable in its character.
These far-reaching results are neither derived from spontaneous impulse
nor are they of fortuitous origin. They indicate unmistakably a gradual
and incessant advance through long periods of time. The inexorable
laws which control the destiny of man require a transition through
many connected forms, insensibly merging into each other, eventually
to effect radical changes in the mental and physical characteristics
of individuals and nations. The evolution of a race, like the
development of architectural construction, is slow but progressive.
The union between the foundation and the superstructure is evident,
although the former may not at the first glance be visible. A great
distance separates the barbaric sheik of pre-Islamic Arabia and the
powerful and enlightened khalifs of Bagdad and Cordova. Yet both the
Abbaside and the Ommeyade dynasties traced their lineage directly to
the Bedouin robbers, who, each year, waylaid the Mecca caravan. There
is no apparent resemblance between the rude structures of prehistoric
antiquity and the matchless edifices erected by Athenian genius and
skill. It cannot be disputed, however, that the unhewn and misshapen
shaft of the cyclopean quarry, which had neither fluting nor volute,
base nor capital, was the architectural prototype of the superb columns
which adorned the temples of ancient Greece and Rome. In view of the
rapid advance of the Arabs under Mohammed’s successors, we are forced
to concede to their pagan ancestors not only intellectual powers of the
highest order, apparently inconsistent with the degraded conditions
of savage life, but also an extraordinary capacity for political
organization and for the practical application of the principles of
every art beneficial to mankind; talents unconsciously formed and
dormant through countless generations; a fact which may well excite
the admiration of every scholar, and of which history in previous or
subsequent times affords no example.
The Arabs, despite their apparent barbarism, occupy no contemptible
place in the annals of antiquity. They conquered Egypt, and, under
the dynasty of the Shepherd Kings, governed that country for many
centuries. One of their race, enlisted as a private soldier, was, by a
series of rapid promotions, raised to the throne of the Roman empire.
Their cavalry fought with conspicuous distinction in the imperial
armies. More than once the valor of Bedouin mercenaries determined the
fate of the Persian monarchy. They constituted the greater part of the
forces of Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, in her desperate struggle with
Aurelian. Under whatever banner they served, their courage and tenacity
of purpose were never questioned. It must be admitted, however, that
their fidelity was not beyond suspicion, and that, only too frequently,
the name of Arab was a synonym of treachery.
The most remarkable peculiarity of Arabian life is its restless energy.
The continuance of this condition from primeval times explains many of
the distinctive traits so prominent in the character of the race. The
well-known relation existing between commercial activity and civilized
habits was powerless to change the existence of the nomadic Arab.
His predatory instinct was always stronger than the attractions of
sedentary comfort and opulence. Familiarity with Oriental luxury only
increased his contempt for those who enjoyed it. His vagrant impulse
carried him everywhere. He fearlessly penetrated the mysterious depths
of the Libyan Desert. He served in the armies of Hindustan. He was
enrolled in the Prætorian Guards, where his natural rapacity was
gratified and stimulated by the donatives received for the ignominious
sale of the imperial throne. For a considerable time before the
advent of Mohammed, an increasing spirit of unrest had characterized
the Arabs. With roving and predatory tastes, there could, of course,
be no attachment to the soil,--a condition, indeed, regarded by the
Bedouin as a badge of servitude. It required centuries to correct this
prejudice; but no change of residence, no association with populations
long civilized, or even the adoption of a new polity, the admonitions
of a new religion, and the powerful attractions of affluence and ease,
were ever able to eradicate the spirit of individual independence and
tribal hostility which were the most prominent features of the Arabian
character. These national peculiarities repeatedly threatened the
existence of both the Eastern and Western Khalifates in the days of
their greatest splendor. They intensified the bitterness which marked
the struggles of rival princes for empire. They promoted and sustained
the feuds of the nobility. They lurked under the tattered garments of
the infuriated zealot. In the minds of the populace these feelings
were scarcely ever concealed. They manifested themselves continually
in personal quarrels, in the violence of mobs, in religious tumults,
in insurrections, in the commission of frightful atrocities. They were
potent factors in the destruction of mediæval Moslem civilization
wherever established, and especially is this true of the Hispano-Arab
domination, the most advanced, if not the most despotic, of them all.
The temperament of the Arab, impetuous, fiery, vindictive, though
admirably fitted for conquest, was deficient in those qualities of
broad statesmanship and impartial discrimination vitally essential
to the security and maintenance of government. Those who enjoyed the
highest privileges of individual freedom were the mountaineers, who,
in their inaccessible haunts, inured to privation, skilled in all
manly exercises, and ignorant of luxury, clung with obstinate tenacity
to their idols, and defied all attempts of the Prophet to convert or
subdue them. Nor did Islam enlist her adherents in the purlieus of
crowded cities. In Pagan as in Moslem Arabia, trade and religion were
closely associated. The sympathies of the organized community were with
the ancient religion, which contributed to its wealth, its employment,
its personal profit, and its social distinction. The merchants and
their numerous dependents looked coldly upon a revelation which menaced
their revenues and their importance. The priesthood, recruited from
the noblest families of the Peninsula, fostered this prejudice with
an ardor born of instinctive hatred and professional pride. These two
classes, therefore, contributed little to the propagation of the new
doctrines; it was the wild hordes of the Desert that conquered the
world.
The Himyarite inscriptions, recently deciphered, have established
the fact that, at an unknown epoch, two migratory populations, one
proceeding from the North, the other from the South, came together in
their course, and were so blended by association and intermarriage as
to form, in a short time, a single people. This rapid fusion points to
a common racial derivation, and it is not improbable that the northern
division were the Canaanites expelled by the sword of Joshua.
The very conditions of their existence, in early times, necessarily
precluded the idea of systematic organization or concerted union
among the vagabond tribes of Arabia. Their polity, if it may be
dignified by that name, was essentially patriarchal. Chief’s and
rulers were selected from families renowned for individual merit,
noble descent, and antiquity of origin, and, in accordance with the
paternal custom of the Orient, all retainers of the prince--who, in
fact, were usually related to him--were in time enrolled as members
of his household; and, in this way, fragments of certain tribes,
drawn to a common centre by the ties of real or fancied kindred or
through the fear of annihilation, acquired a great preponderance over
their neighbors. Before the establishment of Mohammedan rule, there
was no government, no code of laws, no superior authority either
delegated to or assumed by the magistrate. Each family was independent;
each member of it recognized no obligation to society except the
protection of his clansmen. The instinct of self-preservation, the
force of public opinion, and the apprehension of the encroachments of
rival tribes were the only motives sufficiently powerful to effect a
temporary union of those whose vital interests were threatened. The
power of the sheik was nominal; his functions advisory rather than
executive. His station was one of more honor than usefulness; of his
own volition he could neither direct military operations, enforce
obedience, reward merit, nor inflict punishment. The affairs of the
tribe were administered by such of its members as were conspicuous
for age, dignity, and wisdom. Even the decision of such a council was
not imperative in cases where the general welfare was concerned; for,
under such circumstances, the judgment of every personage of wealth,
rank, or social distinction was consulted. Absolutism, so prominent
a feature of Asiatic government, and carried to such an extreme by
Mohammed’s successors, was thus unknown in ancient Arabia. Dominated by
the tumultuous freedom of individual caprice, its isolated communities
were not even subject to the ordinary legal restrictions imposed
by the voice of democracy; and their control approached as near to
anarchical license as was compatible with the bare preservation of
society. Natural obstacles, such as the scarcity of water and the
barrenness of the soil, added to long-inherited prejudice, traditional
enmity, and difficulty of intercommunication, have always prevented the
political and intellectual development of the Arabs in their native
land. The persistence of his original institutions after the mighty
revolutions elsewhere wrought by Islam prove conclusively that national
regeneration of the Arab under the sky of the Desert is a practical
impossibility.
The life of the Bedouin was passed in unremitting hostility. War
was the normal condition of his existence; it supplied the sole
incentives he deemed worthy of attention--the gratification of
revenge, the acquisition of glory, the appropriation of the property
of his neighbor. The indulgence of these passions, and especially
of the ignoble propensity to rapine, and his cruelty, were his most
conspicuous and discreditable characteristics. The occupation of
robbery was in the eyes of the Arab rather honorable than otherwise, as
it was intimately associated with the profession of arms. In a society
without the resources of agriculture, manufactures, or commerce,
violent means must be relied on for the sustenance of life. In the
Desert the only available expedients to this end were the plunder of
enemies and the blackmail of travellers. The total absence of organized
government rendered the possession of property doubly precarious.
Nowhere else was the fickleness of fortune so apparent. The attack of
a hostile tribe might render the most opulent individual a pauper in
a single night. No vigilance could prevent such a catastrophe in a
region affording unlimited opportunities for surprise and ambuscade,
where there was no title to the soil, where the wealth of a community
consisted largely of flocks of sheep and herds of camels. Under
circumstances where a man’s importance and position among his fellows
were dependent upon his inclination to encounter danger and his
capacity to elude detection in the pursuit of pillage, poverty became
disgraceful. Constant apprehension bred distrust of strangers, until
it became a predominant national trait. Where two parties of Bedouins,
unknown to each other, met in the Desert, the stronger immediately
attacked the weaker. A daring predatory enterprise conferred the
highest popular distinction upon its hero. A great robber, who united
the qualities of courage and duplicity, and who had amassed wealth
by his exploits, was the idol of his tribe. The memory of the famous
brigand Harami is even now cherished in the Hedjaz with an admiring
veneration scarcely inferior to that conferred upon his countryman
Mohammed.
The mental constitution of the ancient Arab presented many remarkable
inconsistencies, most of which are still apparent in the character of
his descendants. Brave even to temerity, he felt no compunction at
the secret assassination of a foe. Professing reverence for age and
relying for guidance upon the advice of the elders of his tribe, he
did not hesitate to drive the old and infirm from the public feast.
While the greatest renown attended the plunder of an encampment,
the commission of a trifling theft made the perpetrator an object
of universal detestation. He assisted the unfortunate and plundered
the defenceless with equal alacrity. The exercise of a generous and
unselfish hospitality was no bar to the pursuit of a guest after he had
left the inviolable precincts of the camp. In many respects, however,
the character of the Bedouin was eminently worthy of admiration. His
courage was undisputed. He possessed a high sense of personal honor.
The fugitive who solicited his protection, even though he were an
enemy, was safe so long as he remained within the enclosure of his
tent, and he espoused the cause of the unknown suppliant as if it were
his own. After sunset, his blazing watch-fire, like a friendly beacon,
guided the course of the belated wanderer over the desert sea. He
disputed with his neighbors for the honor of entertaining the stranger,
and the deepest reproach he could undergo was the imputation that he
was deficient in the virtue of hospitality. His sense of chivalry,
nurtured amidst the constant perils of an uncertain existence, was
conspicuous in the respect and consideration he afterwards exhibited
in the treatment of woman. His simplicity of manner and gravity of
demeanor imparted an air of dignity to his appearance, which elicited
the respect of those far superior to him in rank, education, and
knowledge. Patient in adversity, he considered the display of grief as
an unpardonable evidence of weakness. His love of liberty dominated
his nature to an extent impossible of appreciation by those subject
to the salutary restraints of civilized communities. The existence
of many noble qualities in the character of the Arab, however, only
rendered its defects the more glaring. His apparent imperturbability
screened from the public gaze many vices and imperfections. Like all
barbarians, his disposition was largely infantile and capricious,
petulant, diverted by trifles, controlled by instinct rather than
by reason, quick to take offence, and relentlessly vindictive. Of
all beings he was pre-eminently the creature of impulse. His pride
was inordinate, his rapacity insatiable. With him the prosecution of
vengeance was a sacred duty, which took precedence of every moral
and social obligation; and such was his enmity, that he regarded
the forgiveness of a serious injury as the badge of a coward. An
incorrigible braggart, he never hesitated to employ treachery when it
would accomplish the purposes of valor. He practised cannibalism, and
like the ferocious Scandinavians drank from the skulls of slaughtered
victims. Participation in these horrid banquets was not confined to
warriors; women also were present at them, and wore, with savage pride,
necklaces and amulets composed of the ears, noses, and bones of the
dead.
Under the pretext of preventing future dishonor, but really with a
view to economy, under conditions of existence involving a perpetual
struggle, he often buried his female children alive. It is said that
Othman was never known to weep except when, at the burial of his little
daughter, she reached up and caressingly wiped the dust of her grave
from his beard. From such unspeakable atrocities as this did Mohammed
deliver his countrymen.
The Arabs practised both polyandry and polygamy to an extent rarely
countenanced by other barbarians. One woman, whose career would seem
to be unique in the history of matrimonial achievement, was celebrated
for having been the wife of forty husbands. In a society where communal
marriage prevailed, the passion of jealousy was necessarily unknown.
The Pagan Arab indulged to the utmost the vice of drunkenness, and
prided himself upon his capacity to absorb great quantities of
liquor--there were some Himyarite princes who obtained an unenviable
immortality by drinking themselves to death. Gambling was so popular in
the Desert that the Bedouin, like the ancient German, often staked his
liberty, his most priceless possession, on the toss of a pebble. Like
the Hebrew patriarchs, he contracted incestuous marriages. He gloried
in the name of brigand, and regarded the capture of a caravan as the
principal object of life. It was not unusual for him, after plundering
the dead, to mutilate them with a brutal malignity that would disgrace
an American Indian. He tested guilt or innocence by ordeals of fire
and water, which he and his kinsman the Jew had inherited from a remote
antiquity. The practice of licentious gallantry, universally prevalent
in the Peninsula, and celebrated in many an amatory stanza of the
Bedouin poet, was temporarily checked by the austere rule of Islam;
but, reviving ere long, under the congenial skies of Spain and Sicily,
spread northward, and, inseparably associated with deeds of chivalry
and romantic adventure, infected, in time, the rude and comparatively
virtuous barbarians of Europe.
An unusual degree of intelligence, a lively imagination, a vivid
curiosity, a retentive memory, a childish love of the marvellous,
distinguished the Arab of the Age of Ignorance from the other
pastoral nations of Africa and Asia. Feuds between tribe and tribe,
nourished by injuries mutually borne and inflicted for a hundred
generations, intensified the ferocity of a nature which became, under
such provocations, incapable of pity. Everything connected with the
daily life of the warrior had a direct tendency to foster an already
too violent inclination to deeds of blood. The war-horse had his
biography; the sword of every famous chieftain had a name and a
history. The sayings of the successful marauder, often uttered with
epigrammatic terseness, passed into proverbs, and were quoted, with
extravagant admiration, by his most remote descendants; his exploits,
immortalized by the stirring verses of the poet, were recounted nightly
by the camp-fires of his tribe. In case of the murder of a kinsman,
no mourning was tolerated until ample vengeance had been taken for
the crime. The execution of the savage law of blood-feud, while it
contributed to stifle every sentiment of humanity where an hereditary
foe was the offender, does not appear to have had any marked effect in
increasing the fierceness of the character of the Arab in his contests
with those against whom he had no special cause of enmity. Where tribal
hostility was, however, a point of honor as well as a religious duty,
the vendetta was prosecuted with implacable severity. No circumstance
of gratitude or chivalric attachment, neither the memory of past favors
nor the hope of future distinction, was permitted to interfere with its
rigid enforcement. The right of revenge, originally descending to the
fifth generation, passed by inheritance, and was, in fact, never lost,
and seldom relinquished. A regular schedule of fines was recognized,
dependent upon the age, rank, and social position of the person
murdered; but no family that entertained a becoming idea of its own
importance and of the dignity of its tribe would condescend to accept
the stated number of camels which ancient prescription and common
consent had established as the equivalent of a homicide. This barbarous
custom applied to every soldier slain in honorable warfare, as fully
as to the victim of the assassin’s dagger; and the wholesome dread of
the consequences of a hard-fought conflict, where a score of lives
might be exacted in return for every fallen enemy, usually rendered the
encounters of the Arab comparatively bloodless. An extraordinary value
therefore attached to human life in the Desert, where the killing of
an individual might entail the extermination of a clan. Considering
the bitter hostility evinced by many tribes towards one another,
the consequences of animosity inherited for ages, and the continual
opportunities for mutual destruction, with their insignificant results,
we may, without hesitation, conclude that the law of blood-revenge,
despite the idea of ferocity it conveys, has, in reality, been
powerfully instrumental in the preservation of the Arab race.
The habits of the Arab were necessarily abstemious. The requirement of
constant exertion to obtain the necessaries of life, the uncertain
tenure of property, the menacing presence of danger, the poverty of the
soil, the national prejudice against industrial occupations, were not
conducive to indulgence in those vices which flourish most vigorously
under the artificial conditions of an established civilization. The
scanty harvests of the South were insufficient to maintain even the
population of those thinly settled provinces. Among the products of the
vegetable kingdom, the date was the principal reliance of the nomadic
people of Arabia. Of this most valuable fruit a hundred varieties
grew in the neighborhood of Medina alone. Its highly nutritious
properties, its easy preservation, the convenience with which it
could be transported for great distances, rendered it an article of
food especially adapted to the denizen of those arid and unproductive
regions in which it flourished, and which, without it, would have been
depopulated. Even its seeds were an object of traffic, and were fed
to horses and camels. With the Arabs, as with other nomadic races, a
vegetable diet was resorted to only in case of necessity. The quantity
of meat served at a repast was an index to the host’s importance as
well as the measure of his hospitality. A brass caldron was considered
as of only ordinary size when it would easily hold a sheep, and some
were so large that a horseman could, without difficulty, eat from
them without dismounting. The morsels served from these seething
receptacles were proportioned to the vessels in which they were cooked
and to the voracious appetites of those who consumed them. The belief,
prevalent among barbarians, that the characteristics of an animal are
transmitted with undiminished vigor to all who feed upon its flesh,
was shared by the Arabs. As their favorite meat was that of the camel,
they attributed to its use their irascible temper, a trait which is
prominently developed in that beast, also noted among quadrupeds
for its dogged obstinacy. In a land where barrenness so discouraged
the labors of the husbandman and the shepherd, no object affording
nutrition could be neglected, and even the insect world was called upon
to contribute its share to the urgent necessities of humanity. Locusts,
dried and salted, have always formed a staple article of diet among the
poorer classes of Arabia, and, an important part of the larder of every
camp, are sold in vast quantities in the markets of the Peninsula.
The differences and the prejudices of caste, the most serious
impediments to progress, were unknown to the proud rovers of the
Desert, where individual merit was the highest title to respect.
The authority of the chief was founded on the consideration he had
obtained among the members of his tribe rather than on the illustrious
circumstances of his birth or the antiquity of his lineage. Age was
an essential requisite to the attainment of official dignity, as
indicative of the wisdom supposed to be the result of long experience.
With the Bedouin, there was none of that greed of power whose
indulgence so often disturbs the peace, and inflames the passions of
societies in an advanced state of civilization. The sheik governed
through the respect entertained for his character, through the
influence of his manners, above all, through his relationship with
his clansmen. The paternal sentiment was paramount among the Arabian
people. They cherished the memory of their forefathers with peculiar
respect. The right of sanctuary attached to their sepulchre; the tribal
organization and domestic traditions of the Bedouin were derived
from this feeling of ancestral veneration. Like other Asiatics, they
considered a numerous family the greatest of distinctions; the father
of ten sons was ennobled by a title of honor; and no nation attached
more importance to the possession of phenomenal virility. In their
treatment of women, a striking contrast exists, in numerous instances,
between the Pagan and the later Arabians. With both, it is true,
woman was generally a slave. Yet sometimes, in the Age of Ignorance,
she was raised to official dignities, even to the throne itself; her
opinion was solicited in momentous affairs of state; and in the rôle
of diviner and sorceress she wielded a power, unlimited for good or
evil, over her superstitious followers. Often gifted with rare poetic
talent, she competed, not without distinction, for the coveted palm
of literary excellence. Tradition has also handed down the names and
achievements of certain intrepid amazons, who fought by the side of
their husbands and brothers; and whose determined courage contributed,
in a marked degree, to change the fortunes of more than one doubtful
battle. But, as a rule, both before and after Mohammed, the advancement
of the sex from a condition of servitude was resolutely discountenanced
by the Arabs. In the Age of Ignorance, it was stigmatized by the
ungallant epithet of “Nets of the Demon.” The sacred ties of blood,
and the fact that with marriage woman did not renounce her hereditary
privileges, could always command the assistance of her kinsmen, seek
refuge among them, and be avenged by their valor in case of grievous
personal injury, gave her a considerable degree of importance in
the social system of Arabia. It is very evident that in early times
polyandry prevailed everywhere in that country, an indication of a
scarcity of females, and a custom always incident to a certain stage
in the formation and development of society. Its prior existence is
demonstrated by the vestiges of communal marriage to be traced to-day
in remote portions of the Peninsula, and in the well authenticated
tradition that female kinship was originally the rule in the Desert,
the child belonging to the tribe and following the fortunes of the
mother. Among the Bedouins, the only recognized methods of obtaining
a wife were those of capture and purchase. The former was thoroughly
congenial with the warlike instincts of a race whose possessions
acquired an especial value as the result of martial prowess; the latter
represented an indemnity for the possible loss of sons who, under other
circumstances, would have become warriors of the maternal tribe. There
was, however, no real difference between the lot of the bride who,
as the prize of victory, was dragged shrieking from the folds of her
tent, and that of the smiling victim whose beauty had been bartered
for a hundred camels. Both were regarded as chattels, and descended
with other personal property to the heir. As the population increased,
and the means of livelihood became more difficult to procure, the
appearance of a female child was looked upon as a calamity; infanticide
grew common; and nothing but the hope of being able, at some future
day, to add to his herd the camels of some prospective suitor, ever
reconciled the mercenary Bedouin to the birth of a daughter.
The attainment to a high degree of civilization with all its
demoralizing influence was not able to destroy the native politeness,
the air of conscious dignity, the noble hospitality, and the courtly
graces of manner which distinguished the fierce and untaught tribesman
of the Desert. His sense of independence was not hampered by invidious
distinctions of rank or inconvenient regulations of property. His
intuitive knowledge of human nature, his rare susceptibility to every
impression which can improve and develop the mind, his capacity to
deal with the most difficult questions of policy, his willingness to
encounter the most appalling dangers, were qualities which insured
his success in the most distant countries and under the most adverse
and discouraging conditions. Despite his readiness to profit by
the superior knowledge of his adversaries, he entertained the most
extravagant ideas of his own importance, and looked down upon all
who were of different manners, religious faith, or nationality. His
inordinate family pride preserved for the astonishment of subsequent
generations the endless nomenclature of his progenitors; and, at the
birth of Mohammed, the most obscure and poverty-stricken individual
could name, with a fluency born of long practice and traditional
inheritance, his ancestors for six hundred years. His language,
wonderfully complex but flexible, offering to the purposes of the poet
and the orator--by reason of its prodigal richness and inexhaustible
variety--every resource of sentiment, pathos, and eloquence, yet so
easily acquired that it was spoken by young children with grammatical
correctness and fluency, he justly boasted as one of the most perfect
idioms ever invented by man. In short, the Arab regarded himself as
the highest exemplar of humanity; his arrogance revolted at the idea
of matrimonial connections with races which he deemed inferior to his
own; and the pre-eminence he claimed for himself and his countrymen was
indicated by the prerogatives which he asserted Allah had vouchsafed to
them alone of all nations; “that their turbans should be their diadems,
their tents their houses, their swords their intrenchments, and their
poems their laws.”
The pre-Islamitic religion of the Arabs was mainly a debasing
idolatry polluted by human sacrifices, and ascending, by ill-defined
gradations, from the lowest forms of fetichism to the adoration of
the stars. Their faith was far from uniform, and almost every tribe
had special objects of veneration and peculiar modes of worship. Some
were absolutely destitute of the idea of a God; some grovelled before
roughly-hewn blocks of stone; others worshipped trees and springs,--the
most grateful gifts of nature in a parched and thirsty land; others,
again, greeted with praise the rising sun as its beams illuminated the
purple mists of the Desert, or bowed reverently at night before the
glittering majesty of the heavens. The members of certain tribes were
materialists; not a few accepted the metempsychosis; many were familiar
with the philosophical creed of the Buddhist, which regarded death as
the irrevocable end of all spiritual activity, the beginning of a state
of absolute quiescence, of eternal and immutable rest. The majority of
the Arab races, however, looked upon their idols as mediators between
the Supreme Being and man. Hence they erected temples in their honor,
named their children for them, made pilgrimages to their shrines, and
solicited their good offices with precious gifts and offerings. The
heavenly bodies were placed in the same category. Their intercession
with the Deity was also invoked by frequent applications; and to their
power, thus indirectly exercised, were attributed the most important
as well as the most trivial occurrences of life, the benefits of
fortune, the infliction of calamities, the mysterious and terrifying
effects of natural phenomena. It is a superstition as old as the human
race to imagine the universe to be peopled with mysterious beings,
and the lives of men to be moulded by the beneficent or malignant
influence of the stars. The worship of the Sun, the genial dispenser
of light, of warmth, of health, in whose train follow the increase of
flocks, the bursting of buds, the welcome sight of refreshing verdure,
the author of all that is useful and attractive in every species of
organic life, a worship which in ages of primeval simplicity has
always most strongly appealed to the gratitude and veneration of
man, was highly popular in Pagan Arabia. Classic historians have
established the fact that it was at one time almost universal in the
Peninsula, where the idol which was the terrestrial manifestation of
that great luminary was designated by the appellation Nur-Allah, “The
Light of God.” His authority was everywhere paramount, whether openly
worshipped, represented by fire the great purifying agent, or exhibited
under various symbols of force and power, which all nations, however
separated, and differing in physical and mental characteristics, have,
with wonderful unanimity, adopted as his peculiar emblems. Temples
were also raised to the Moon, Sirius, Canopus, the Hyades, Mercury,
and Jupiter. But of all the starry bodies none enjoyed greater favor,
or was worshipped with more splendor, than Saturn. His attributes were
often confounded by his votaries with those of his kindred divinities
Mars and the Sun. It has been proved by the learned researches of
Dozy, that the famous Kaaba was originally a shrine dedicated to that
deity. He was the Baal of the Hebrews, and once their tutelary god as
well as that of the Phœnicians--carried by the former during their
sojourn in the wilderness, venerated by the latter in the magnificent
temples of Sidon and Tyre. The extent of his worship in the East was,
it might be said, coincident with the view of the brilliant planet by
which he was represented in the tropical heavens. The giver of all
material blessings, he was, in this capacity, invoked as the creator
and preserver of terrestrial life; but he was also propitiated as the
avenger of sacrilege and crime. Among different peoples he was adored
under innumerable manifestations. The familiar word Israel is a synonym
of Saturn; the Hebrew priests knew him as Sabbathai--whence is derived
our Sabbath; and in Judea, as in Egypt, the first day of the week was
dedicated to and named for him. In Arabia, this popular divinity was
known as Hobal, a word indisputably derived from the Hebrew language.
Occupying the most exalted position in the Arabic Pantheon, while his
image was anthropomorphic, he was, in reality, a representative of the
monotheistic principle. His name and his worship in the Peninsula were
alike of Jewish origin. Antiquarian ingenuity and research have traced
his various migrations from the eastern shore of the Mediterranean to
the province of Hedjaz, and have elucidated certain obscure Scriptural
texts relative to his shrine, his worship, and his festivals. Among the
multitudinous divinities which claimed the reverence of the ancient
Arabians was also the Hebrew Jehovah, adored under the form of a
he-goat, sculptured in gold, as well as the profligate Venus, known
to the Babylonians as Mylitta, and to the Phœnicians as Astarte. As a
tribute to their eminence in the Christian world, the Virgin and the
Child occupied a post of honor among the three hundred and sixty idols
which crowded the sanctuary of Mecca. In the religious system of the
Peninsula there was no mythology, a fact which perhaps contributed not
a little to its speedy overthrow. But, though polytheistic to the last
degree, the Arabs recognized a Supreme Being whose majesty was confined
to no particular locality, to whom no altar was dedicated, and who, too
awful to be directly addressed, could be approached only through his
celestial ministers the stars. This was the great Al-Lah, whose name,
corresponding to the El and the Elohim of the Jews, was pre-eminent
in honor and dignity, both in the Age of Ignorance and in the Age of
Islam. The most superstitious races of men, and those that are the
highest in intelligence among the most civilized, have and require no
shrines. In Arabia the whole Desert was the temple of the Supreme God.
Associated with the most exalted ideas of divine power were to be
found superstitions usually encountered only in the primitive epochs
of society. The wide-spread worship of the generative forces of
nature, whose remaining monuments seem to the uninstructed sense of
our cavilling age mere evidences of a depraved imagination, had its
share of public favor in Arabia, where the male and female principles
were adored under various symbolical forms. Many of these have
survived in the monoliths scattered throughout the Peninsula, whose
towering masses are regarded, even by devout Moslems, with no small
degree of superstitious awe. The stone-circles and menhirs mentioned
by travellers as existing in Oman and Nedjd are evidently of the
same general type as those of Carnac and Stonehenge, and, from the
descriptions given of them, of scarcely inferior dimensions, and
perhaps of still higher antiquity. It is a singular circumstance, that
gigantic structures, bearing such a common resemblance as to suggest
that they were erected by the same race of builders and designed for
similar purposes, should be found in countries so different in physical
features, climate, inhabitants, religious traditions, language, and
history, as Central Arabia and Western Europe.
Like other nations of ancient times, the Arabs invested certain trees
with a sacred character, a custom indicative of the lingering influence
of phallicism; a worship whose original principles, long forgotten in
the Peninsula, survived only in the exhibition of its peculiar emblems
and in the practice of a gross and shameless immorality. Among the
Pagan Arabs, no form of superstition was too debasing to claim its
votaries. They raised altars to fire. They attributed supernatural
powers to the crocodile and the serpent. Each tent had its image;
every hovel of sun-dried bricks was filled with tutelary deities.
Shapeless masses of stone, which tradition had associated with
remarkable events or endowed with celestial origin, were approached
with a reverence not vouchsafed to idols of the most costly materials
and elaborate workmanship. Of these blocks, which partook of the nature
of the fetich, the black were sacred to the Sun, the white to the Moon.
In the Pagan world two of the former were especially famous; over one
was erected a splendid temple on the mountain near Emesa in Syria,
whence the infamous Roman emperor Heliogabalus derived his name; the
other was built into the wall of the Kaaba of Mecca. The latter was the
most remarkable object of the kind known to antiquity. A plain fragment
of basalt, seven inches in diameter, whose composition is apparently
identical with that of a neighboring mountain, it had acquired, in
the eyes of the people of Arabia, a sanctity not shared by any other
emblem of idolatrous worship. It was probably, in its origin, a phallic
symbol, and stood alone in an open square of the city, ages preceding
the building of the Kaaba, an event which tradition has assigned to a
date four hundred years before the foundation of the temple of Solomon.
Thus invested with the sanction of immemorial prescription and the
virtues of a miraculous relic, it has received the reverent homage of
millions upon millions of idolaters and Moslems. It has survived the
accidents of conquest, of iconoclasm, of conflagration. The silver
bands which unite its fragments bear witness to the vicissitudes
and rough usage to which it has been subjected. The healing power
it was supposed to possess attracted the sick and the disabled from
regions far beyond the limits of Arabia. It was the starting-point
of ceremonial and pilgrimage. It imparted its virtues to the Kaaba,
that temple where alone, in all the Peninsula, hereditary feuds were
suspended; where violence was forgotten; where rudeness gave way to
courtesy; where the temporary surrender of individual freedom, and
the voluntary relinquishment of tribal animosity, seemed to announce
the existence of national sentiment and the possibility of national
union. The recognition by Mohammed of the claims of the Black Stone
and the Kaaba--the ancient temple of Saturn--to public veneration, in
a creed otherwise uncompromisingly hostile to idolatry, demonstrated
the high estimation in which they were held by the Arabs. The latter,
with their numerous shrines, their swarms of deities, their elaborate
paraphernalia of worship and imposture, were, however, far from being
a religious people. They evinced a decided aversion to metaphysics.
Their ideas of personal liberty were not consistent with unquestioning
submission to the tyranny of a priesthood. Their native intelligence
rendered them. skeptical; their nomadic habits were unfavorable to
the maintenance of a permanent ecclesiastical establishment. The
multiplicity of deities had, as is invariably the case, weakened the
faith of the masses in any. The genuine piety of a people is always in
an inverse ratio to the number of its gods.
The early Arabians practised magic and divination, had recourse to
oracles, maintained wizards and sorcerers--charlatans whose ascendency
was largely due to the narcotics they made use of to open a pretended
communication with the spirit world. Amulets were universally worn as
a protection against the baneful consequences of the evil eye. Hand
in hand with presages and magical arts, auguries, and incantations,
came the incipient doctrine of the influence of the planets upon
mineral substances, as well as a belief in their power to affect the
destiny and welfare of man; theories which, eventually developing into
the vain pursuits of alchemy and judicial astrology, indicate an
acquaintance with the principles of science only acquired by much study
and repeated experiments. The practice of these rites, so severely
reprobated in the Koran, was associated in the minds of the people
with the ceremonies of public worship during the age of polytheism.
The words altar and talisman are practically synonymous in Arabic, a
fact which discloses the intimate alliance originally existing between
divination, sorcery, and religion in the Peninsula.
Human sacrifices, so repugnant to all our ideas of piety and justice,
but common to nations of Semitic origin, were of frequent occurrence
among the Arabs before Mohammed. The mode of death was by fire, which
removed every earthly impurity; but it was only in the fulfilment of
a solemn vow, on an occasion of national rejoicing, or to avert some
impending calamity, that such a costly expiation was exacted. The
Israelites, allied to the Arabs by the ties of consanguinity, and by
similar religious conceptions, had also long been familiar with these
revolting and cruel rites; instances of whose observance will at once
suggest themselves to all who are familiar with the Pentateuch.
The Hebrew has always exerted a remarkable influence upon the public
sentiment, the religious faith, and the foreign and domestic relations
of the inhabitants of Arabia. A great analogy exists between the
languages of the two nations, and the Hebrew alphabet was used by the
prehistoric Arabs. It is believed by many Oriental scholars that Israel
was not the founder of the people who bear his name; that the twelve
tribes have a mystic relation to certain of the heavenly bodies or to
the months of the year; and it is known that the word Keturah means
simply “frankincense.” No doubt now exists that the Jew and the Arab
are of common ancestry. For a period of twenty-five hundred years
before the Hegira the former had been established in Yemen. The trade
of that kingdom, with all its vast ramifications, was in his hands. His
power enabled him constantly to dictate the policy of its sovereigns.
His worship, equally idolatrous with that of the Bedouin--for he was
the descendant of the Simeonites, against whom, among others, the
anathemas of the Bible were directed--surpassed the latter in the
splendor of its appointments and the insolence of its priests. In
a land where toleration was otherwise universal, he was enabled to
persecute, with implacable enmity, Christian exiles, whom even the
rapacity of the desert freebooter had spared. The rich settlements
of northwestern Arabia were, to all intents and purposes, Jewish
colonies. In the barren and inhospitable region of the Hedjaz, the Jew
founded the towns of Medina and Mecca. In such a congenial atmosphere,
the superstitions of Asia Minor obtained a ready acceptance. He
established the worship of Baal, the most renowned of the Phœnician
divinities. He introduced the rite of circumcision, hitherto unknown in
Arabia. He communicated his idolatrous observances to the population
of the country which had offered him a refuge. He gave a name to
its principal city, for the word Mecca is Hebrew, signifying “Great
Field of Battle;” the Pagan ceremonial of the Hedjaz can be traced to
Palestine, and the Kaaba was originally known as Beth-El, “The House
of God.” Quick to recognize the advantages to be derived by commerce
from religious pilgrimage, he made that city the centre of national
devotion as well as the chief distributing point of the vast trade
of Europe, Asia Minor, Ethiopia, and India. The excellent commercial
situation of Mecca, near the Red Sea and on the great caravan highway
connecting Syria and Yemen, could scarcely compensate, however, for
the serious physical disadvantages which unfriendly nature had imposed
upon it. Its houses were crowded into a narrow valley two miles long
by only nine hundred feet wide. The rays of a vertical sun beat
pitilessly down upon a landscape destitute of verdure. Water, the most
priceless of blessings in the Desert, was scarce and unpalatable. A
salt effervescence covered the neighboring plains. The seasons were
irregular; storms were violent; the coast of the Hedjaz possessed the
unenviable reputation of being one of the most pestilential in the
world. The city was dependent upon trade for the necessaries of life,
and the unexpected delay of the caravan often menaced the population
with famine. Yet, with all these drawbacks, the commerce of Mecca
flourished almost beyond precedent. Caravans of more than two thousand
camels were no uncommon sight in its narrow streets. Each of these
beasts of burden carried a load of four hundred pounds of rare and
costly commodities,--silks, spices, ivory, gold-dust, and perfumes.
The annual exports of the town in the closing days of Pagan ascendency
reached the enormous sum of fifteen million dollars, half of which was
profit. Not the least of the sources of gain to the people of Mecca
were the valuable offerings left by pilgrims and merchants in their
temples. For a distance of leagues the ground was holy, and all who
trod upon it could claim the right of sanctuary. The blood of neither
man nor beast could be shed within these sacred precincts without
incurring the imputation of sacrilege and the punishment of death.
There was no traveller, from whatever country he came, who could not
find, among the innumerable idols of the Kaaba, a familiar divinity
upon whom to bestow the tribute of his devotion or gratitude. Of the
immense profits resulting from the politic combination of traffic and
superstition, the Hebrew exacted the lion’s share. His rulers met each
day at the Kaaba to exchange views on finance and theology. The heathen
legends of Palestine were incorporated into the new system, with the
astral worship of the Sabeans and the polytheism of the aboriginal
inhabitants of the Desert, itself derived from a thousand different
and uncertain sources. The monotheism of Israel was not recognized by
the tribe of Simeon, which had been driven into exile long before the
Pentateuch was written. Ideas thus blended in the popular mind for
centuries might, under favorable conditions, be modified, but never
obliterated. There is no question that Islam is largely Hebrew in
origin, although a considerable number of its ceremonies can be deduced
from the customs of Pagan Arabia. In their migrations, which closed
with the settlement of the Hedjaz, the Jews, while wandering far, had
at last returned to the cradle of their race.
The arbitrary rules of ceremonial cleanliness; the exclusion of blood
from the precincts of the temple; the classification of certain
animals as “holy,” which an error of the translator has transformed
into “unclean;” the penalties for many offences; the adoration
of Phœnician divinities; the nomenclature disclosed by family
genealogies; the correspondence in meaning of many terms used in their
languages--peculiarities common to both the Arab and the Jew--go
farther to prove an intimate relationship between the two races than
the uncertainties of tradition or the association of neighborhood would
tend to establish. The antipathy to the Hebrew, subsequently so bitter
among Mohammedans, did not exist in ancient Arabia. The Jew served with
distinction in the armies of Khaled and Amru. Mutual aversion, however
great in subsequent times, was never sufficient to induce the Israelite
to destroy those whom he regarded as his kinsmen. As his myths had
formed the basis of a new religion, his enterprise and assistance
contributed, in no insignificant degree, to the foundation of a new
and magnificent empire. He guided the councils of the most renowned
Mohammedan princes. Without the dogmas he furnished, the history
of Islam would never have been written. Without the suggestions he
voluntarily offered, and the treasure he poured into the Moslem camps,
the conquest of Spain could never have been achieved. The fairest of
Mussulman writers have rarely failed to acknowledge the obligations of
their countrymen to an unfortunate race which the prejudices of nearly
twenty centuries have subjected to universal proscription.
Christianity made no progress in Arabia until after its political
alliance with Constantine had imparted such a tremendous impulse to the
dissemination of its doctrines. The latter do not seem to be adapted
to the Asiatic mind, and have never been able either to appeal to the
reason or to arouse the enthusiasm of nations of Semitic blood. It
offered little that was congenial with, and much that was abhorrent
to, the lax and tolerant code of the independent and polytheistic
rovers of the Desert. At the birth of Mohammed it had already, for
four centuries, been established in the Peninsula, and still, in the
very shadow of its temples, the mocking Arab bowed before his thousand
gods. The principles of the Ebionite sect, which prevailed in the
Arabian churches, so far from attracting the curiosity or awakening the
reverence of the sarcastic Bedouin, only served to excite his ridicule.
The sublime truths of the religion of the Bible, the eloquence of
its teachers, the piety of its saints, the pomp of its ritual, the
promises and threats of its revelation, were lost upon the reckless
freebooters, devoted to sensual pleasures, to escapades of gallantry,
to the generous rivalry of poesy, to daring feats of arms. The only
mark of attention its adherents received was their classification with
the despised Hebrew as Ahl-al-Kitab, “The People of the Book.” In
its adaptability to the requirements and the mental capacity of the
multitude, it was ill-fitted to cope with the religion that eventually
supplanted it. On one side were the incomprehensible dogmas of a
debased Christianity, indispensable to its acceptance; on the other,
the simplicity of the profession of Islam, which even a child could
understand. For these reasons it made comparatively few proselytes in
the Peninsula, and at no time was acknowledged over any considerable
area, except during the short period which intervened between the
Abyssinian conquest of Yemen and the rise of Mohammedanism.
Many of the rites and customs adopted by the great Lawgiver, or
preserved by his followers and generally regarded as peculiar to Islam,
antedated the Koran by centuries. The Mohammedan attitudes of worship
are the same as those depicted upon the eternal monuments of the
Pharaohs. The heathen pilgrims, clad in the Ihram, or sacred garment,
seven times made the circuit of the Kaaba; embraced the Black Stone;
ran the courses between the holy stations of Al-Safa and Al-Marwa;
cast stones in the valley of Mina; performed the ancient duties of
sacrifice and local pilgrimage, and were systematically plundered by
the greedy and scoffing Meccans, just as all good Moslem pilgrims are
to-day. The primitive Arabs inculcated the duty of personal cleanliness
by frequent ablution. They shaved their heads, and used the depilatory
for the removal of superfluous hair from the body. Like the Egyptians,
they stained their hands and feet with henna, and blackened their
eyelids with antimony. They removed their sandals, as Moses did, when
they stood on holy ground. They scrupulously abstained from certain
kinds of food, and their actions were often governed by regulations
practically identical, in their general character, with those
prescribed by the canons of Jewish and Moslem law.
The spirit of Arabian genius, destined in subsequent ages to effect
such a revolution in the literary and scientific history of the world,
had in the sixth century of the Christian era disclosed no indications
of its gigantic powers. No condition of existence could be less
suggestive of a capacity for intellectual achievement than that whose
main dependence was violence and plunder. The Arab of that epoch had
no written records save a few obscure inscriptions in the Himyarite
dialect, which have been deciphered by the plodding industry of modern
scholars, and are, for the most part, epitaphs. Traditions, modified or
corrupted by the vanity or the prejudice of each successive generation,
were the sole and uncertain reliance of the chronicler. The power of
memory by which these were retained and transmitted from an unknown
antiquity seems absolutely miraculous and incredible.
Although destitute of authentic history, and even unskilled in
the common arts by which a nation’s glory may be perpetuated, the
early Arab excelled in a species of literary composition in which
barbarian races have always exhibited the greatest proficiency. A
talent for poetry, which invariably attains its highest development
among those least exposed to the practical ideas and refined vices of
civilization, was considered by the Bedouin as the most noble of human
accomplishments. His temperament, his situation, his pursuits, rendered
him peculiarly susceptible to the charms of the Muse. His spirit was
impetuous, his invention inexhaustible, his imagination riotous, his
enthusiasm unbounded. From an abnormally sensitive nervous organization
which nature had bestowed upon him, on occasions of prolonged mental
excitement often proceeded an hysterical frenzy, a state declared
by the most renowned of poets to be indispensable for perfection in
his art. The scenery of the Desert; its impressive solitudes; the
enchanting illusions of the mirage; the magnificent constellations of
the tropical heavens; the life of incessant peril; the exploits of
romantic gallantry; the nocturnal excursion,--the surprise, the battle,
the retreat, the rescue,--these all stimulated the imaginative faculty
of the Arab, and urged him to the cultivation of a talent which might
transmit to posterity events whose immortality was at once his personal
title to honor, the pastime of his camp-fire, and the glory of his
tribe. In the means at his disposal the poet enjoyed a rare, almost
a unique advantage. The energy and softness of the Arabian language,
its melodious character, the abundance and variety of its metaphors,
render it peculiarly available as the vehicle of poetic sentiment.
There is perhaps no idiom which lends itself with such facility to the
construction of rhyme; for its very prose is frequently musical. The
researches of modern philology have brought to the notice of Europe the
complexity and perfection of its grammatical construction, the richness
of its vocabulary, its boundless scope and graceful imagery. Most
appropriately did the old philosopher, Mohammed-al-Damiri, referring to
the native eloquence and exuberant diction of his countrymen, exclaim:
“Wisdom hath lighted on three things,--the brain of the Franks, the
hands of the Chinese, and the tongues of the Arabs.”
The poetry of the Arabs is even more obscure in its origin than the
primitive history of their race. Without the assistance of writing,
no literature, however popular, can maintain its integrity for even
a single generation. Even the phenomenal memory of that people--a
gift so universal as not to elicit comment among them, and which was
strengthened by the daily rehearsal of favorite compositions--could
only imperfectly supply the place of permanent and authentic records.
The matter of the Arabian poems was therefore constantly changing,
while the subjects and versification remained the same. Their form
was generally that of the dramatic pastoral; sometimes the elegiac
ode, which offered an opportunity for the enumeration of the virtues
of the deceased and, incidentally, of the achievements of his tribe,
was adopted. The genius of the pre-Islamitic poet never attempted the
epic, which so often profits by the inexhaustible resources of the
fabulous; and, although surrounded by an atmosphere eminently favorable
to the inspiration of such productions, it does not seem to have had
an adequate conception of them. Its representations exhibited to the
enraptured listener the stirring events of his adventurous life,
which his pride taught him to regard as vastly superior, in all that
promotes the dignity of humanity, to the corrupt and inert existence of
civilization. The universal possession of the poetic faculty was one
of the peculiarities of the Arab nation. Old and young alike seemed
gifted with it. The rules of prosody, and even the simplest canons
of metrical composition, were unknown. Yet such was the instinctive
perception of rhythmical correctness, that the versification of the
most humble was characterized by propriety and elegance, qualities
which tended to enhance the fierce enthusiasm, the sublimity of
thought, the touching pathos, the burning passion, which pervade
the noble poems of the Desert. Many of the latter bear a striking
resemblance to the Song of Solomon; some are remarkable for their
rhapsodies; others for their weighty and sententious wisdom; others
again for their sparkling wit and pointed epigrams. The seven poems
called Moallakat, “The Suspended,”--a word of doubtful significance
so far as its relation to these productions is concerned--have always
been considered the masterpieces of the ancient Arabs, and form the
principal source from which our ideas of their attainments in the art
of poetry must be derived. Popular credulity ascribed the name of these
compositions to their presumed suspension in the Kaaba as evidence of
the triumphs of their authors over all competitors; the more rational
conjecture, however, connects the title of Moallakat with a necklace
or pendant, of which each poem formed a jewel, a figurative mode of
designating literary works among Orientals, and one especially affected
by poets and historians. The entire body of tradition, combined with
facts accumulated by subsequent writers of every race and creed, does
not afford such a thorough insight into the public and domestic life,
the prevailing sentiments and prejudices, the habits and customs of
the inhabitants of the Peninsula, as do the Moallakat. They enable us
partially to reconstruct the political and religious systems of the
early Arabians, and to establish, by comparison, their identity with
the conditions of modern existence, in localities where the sword of
Islam has never been able to exterminate the detested practice of
idolatry. They place before us, in all its impressiveness, the silent
majesty of the Desert, its dazzling sky, its waves of quivering vapor,
its interminable waste of sand; they pass in review the indolent
life of the camp, varied only by a nocturnal alarm or by some daring
intrigue; they relate the exciting scenes of the foray; they delineate
with erotic freedom the charms of the lovely Bedouin maid; they
describe the fate of the female prisoner whose captivity was often
the result of artifice or barter; they rehearse the midnight march
under the starry firmament, which in the florid language of the East
“appeared like the folds of a silken sash variously decked with gems.”
Nor is the excellence of the Moallakat confined to mere description.
The proud boast of exploits not unworthy of the Age of Chivalry, which,
in fact, received its inspiration from this source; the sacred duties
of a lavish hospitality; the rare qualities of a favorite horse or
camel; the absorbing passion of love, its perils and its pleasures; the
Herculean feats of virile manhood,--these were the chosen themes of
the Arab poet. His verses abound in moral precepts and philosophical
apothegms, conveying lessons of worldly wisdom which recall, in both
their phraseology and their profound acquaintance with human nature,
the Suras of the Koran and the Proverbs of Solomon. In addition to
maxims of a moral tone, scattered through these productions, they
exhibit, on the other hand, much that is repulsive, cruel, and
barbarous. Epicureanism is, however, the prominent characteristic of
the Moallakat, as, indeed, it is of all primitive Arabic poems which
have descended to us. The charms of wine and women, and an indulgence
in the pleasures of the banquet to the extreme limit of bacchanalian
revelry, are everywhere celebrated with a license worthy of the
grossest couplets of Catullus and Martial. In the relation of scenes of
intrigue and midnight assignation, often laid in the camp of a hostile
tribe, where discovery would have led to instant death, the adventurous
spirit of the lover is deemed worthy to rank with that which
sustains the hero in the front of battle. The most fulsome adulation
characterizes the homage tendered by the ardent lover to the object of
his idolatry. Modern fastidiousness would not tolerate the descriptions
given by the poet of the physical perfections of his lady-love in all
their circumstantial details; though translations exist, they are mere
paraphrases; and the voluptuous images of the poet’s fancy still
remain discreetly hidden in the obscurity of the original idiom.
There is much similarity and repetition in Arab poetry, which the
interpolations and substitutions inevitable among a people dependent
for the preservation of their literature upon oral tradition will
hardly account for.
The existence of the Bedouin was bounded by a narrow horizon, the
Desert was his world. Its familiar objects and localities, which never
changed; the deeds which they recalled; the hopes which they inspired;
the memory of ancestral renown with which they were associated,
suggested the topics of his song. The haughtiness which was one of his
most offensive characteristics, and forbade his permanent alliance
or his intermarriage with other races, strengthened the feelings
of reserve which had been a national peculiarity for countless
generations. His ideas, his aspirations, his joys, his sorrows, evoked
by the monotonous circumstances of his environment, were little subject
to deviation during the course of centuries. While his religion was a
compound of all degrees of fetichism, idolatry, and astral worship,
his poetry was original, pure, artless, and natural. His aptitude for
versification was disclosed by the most trivial occurrences of life. A
rhyming stanza, which set forth an appropriate sentiment, was often the
reply to an ordinary question. Where allusion was made to an historical
incident, the speaker was often challenged to confirm his statement by
the recitation of an original verse, or by an apt poetical quotation,
as the most reliable authority. The quick perception of the Arab was
shown by his ability to finish instantly a couplet corresponding in
sense and measure with a line repeated by a competitor. Its general
similarity to all others renders the assignment of any Arabic poem to a
certain epoch impossible, for the natural taste has never varied, and
a composition that was popular three hundred years before the Hegira
would be equally acceptable to-day to the mountain tribes of Central
Arabia.
In the opening lines of most Arabic poems, and in those of the
Moallakat especially, there is a dearth of individuality, and a common
resemblance which would almost suggest that they had been written
by the same person. The purity of style which characterizes the
latter was, however, universally admitted; they were the recognized
standards of grammatical correctness; they were consulted whenever a
dispute arose concerning the meaning of a word or the construction of
a sentence in later authors was in doubt; and among Mohammedans the
authority of those Pagan compositions was never entirely superseded
even by that of the Koran, whose sublimity of thought and elegance of
diction were reverently ascribed to the direct inspiration of God.
We owe the survival of the Moallakat to the capricious taste of some
self-appointed critic, who selected them from a number of poems
with which he was familiar; and, through his arbitrary choice, we
are deprived of the opportunity of forming an opinion of the others
which his rejection has tacitly pronounced inferior. We know nothing
of his qualifications for such a task, and are even ignorant of his
name; but, from the remaining fragments of these productions, we may
safely conclude that some of them, at least, were as fully entitled to
preservation as the seven more fortunate ones which have descended to
posterity.
It is a remarkable fact that no Arabic poem shows traces of Hebrew
influence or contains ideas borrowed from either the Scriptures
or the Talmud. The wealth and political power of the Jews; their
intimate association with the nomadic tribes of the Peninsula; a
close similarity of traditions, customs, and language, produced no
perceptible effect upon the prehistoric literature of the Arabs. The
Hebrews of Arabia, nevertheless, had their poets, whose productions, on
the other hand, exhibit a marked coincidence of thought and style with
those of their Arab kinsmen. Their sentiments are lofty and admirable,
their language pure, and their merit, while inferior to that of the
Moallakat, is still far from contemptible. The Book of Job, which
has no apparent connection with the rest of the Scriptures, has been
pronounced by competent critics a translation of an Arabic poem.
Improvisation, a talent possessed only by those endowed with unusual
readiness of perception, a lively imagination, and an inexhaustible
command of language, was practised with great success by the itinerant
poets of Arabia. From their auditors, a couplet happily applied, by
the inspiration of the moment, to some well-known event, elicited far
more applause than efforts, however meritorious, which had cost days
of arduous labor. This art of extemporaneous composition, which, when
thoroughly developed, implies the possession of extraordinary mental
ability, carried into Europe by the Moslems, and long employed by the
troubadours, now survives only among the lowest class of the Italian
peasantry. It is, in our day, most difficult to determine what degree
of authenticity may properly be ascribed to the poetry of the ancient
Arabs, none of which ascends to a higher antiquity than two hundred
years before the Hegira. The unreliability of oral tradition, the
variety of dialects, the frequent substitutions of modern phraseology,
the bad faith, interpolations, and mistakes of unscrupulous
commentators, the corruption and suppression of passages through tribal
prejudice--all of these causes have had their share in effecting the
gradual deterioration of the grand and stirring poems of Arabia.
It is impossible for us to appreciate the influence exercised by those
who had attained to eminence in the poetic art over their imaginative
and passionate countrymen. The Arab bard was without exception the
most important personage of his tribe. Wealth, rank, beauty, personal
popularity, military distinction alike paid tribute to his genius.
To his talent for improvisation and versification, he often united
the threefold character of statesman, warrior, and knight-errant, and
thus became the model of his associates, the idol of the fair sex,
and the terror of his enemies, who were as sensitive to the poisoned
shafts of his satire as to the keenness of his sword. The most famous
of these rhyming paladins, and the author of one of the Moallakat,
whose life and achievements have been made the subject of a romance
which approaches more nearly to the nature of an epic than any other
production in the Arabic language, was Antar. By instinct and training
a Bedouin, he was, however, of Arab blood only on his father’s side,
his mother having been an Abyssinian slave. According to the custom of
his country, he shared her lot until his bravery in battle induced his
father to emancipate him. His amatory exploits, as well as his daring
enterprises against the enemy, made him the admiration of the fiery
Arabian youth. It was the regret of Mohammed, often expressed, that
he had never seen this knight-errant of the Desert, who shrank from
no danger, however appalling, who redressed the wrongs of woman, who
restored the property of the plundered, and whose favorite maxim was,
“Bear not malice, for of malice good never came.”
The unbridled license of the Arabian poet offers a curious commentary
on national manners. The most exalted dignity, the sacred attributes
of the gods, the pride of opulence, the delicacy of the sex, were
not exempt from the attacks of his venom and sarcasm. He exposed
with relentless severity the frailties of the wife and daughters of
the sheik. He boasted of his own intrigues with a shameless audacity
which, under more refined social conditions, could only be atoned
for with blood. The immunity he enjoyed was one of the prerogatives
of his calling. A certain sacredness of character was believed to
attach to the latter by reason of the demoniac possession to which was
popularly attributed the inspiration of the poetic faculty. His verses
abounded in chivalrous sentiments, but uniformly ignored the claims
of religion to the veneration of mankind. No beautiful mythology,
like that of ancient Greece, was at hand to prompt the efforts of his
muse. The maxims of the luxurious Epicurean were those that exerted
the greatest power over his imagination and his life. An idea may be
formed of the influence of poetry. on the public mind when we remember
that the Koreish in vain attempted to bribe the pagan bard Ascha to
deliver a panegyric on Mohammed at the commencement of the latter’s
career, and, unable to secure his compliance, succeeded with much
difficulty in purchasing his neutrality and silence at the expense of
a hundred camels. The Prophet was so sensitive to the keen thrusts
of the satirist, that when Mecca was captured and a general amnesty
proclaimed, one of the four unfortunates whom he expressly excluded
from this act of clemency was an obscure poet, Habbar-Ibn-Aswad by
name, who had published a lampoon against him. The Arabian bard, like
his literary descendant the troubadour, was attended by minstrels who
chanted his verses, often to the accompaniment of musical instruments.
The latter vocation, regarded as degrading by the Bedouin, was always
exercised by a slave.
Islamism, while in other directions it zealously promoted the
intellectual development of its adherents, fell like a blight upon the
poetic taste and genius of Arabia. The dreams of the poet disappeared
before the stern fanaticism of the soldier, who had no time for
rhapsodies, and cared for nothing save indulgence in rapine, the
acquisition of empire, and the extension of the Faith.
It is now generally admitted that the literary contests said to have
taken place during the annual fair at Okhad, where, from poems read
before an immense concourse, the one to be suspended in the Kaaba was
selected, are apocryphal. Tribes of vagrant robbers who passed ten
months of the year in plundering their neighbors would hardly consent
to spend the other two in an orderly assembly, composed mainly of
their enemies, in determining by a popular vote the comparative merit
of their respective poets. The settlement of such rival claims for
intellectual precedency by the voice of the people implies a degree
of culture and critical acumen certainly not possessed by the Arabs
of that age. This idle tale has doubtless been suggested by the
literary exhibitions of the Olympian games, and is perhaps indebted
to the imagination of some garrulous and mendacious Greek for its
origin. It is, however, unquestionable that the poet, as well as the
story-teller--that other important personage in the East--was in high
favor at all the fairs and assemblies of Arabia. The mixed multitude
which, impelled by motives partly mercenary, partly religious,
collected on these occasions, and in its hours of leisure listened to
the verses of the poet, constantly promoted his inspiration and refined
his lays by the hope of applause, the fear of censure, the collision
with foreigners, and the powerful influence of tribal emulation.
The later history of the Arabs is decked with all the gorgeous imagery
of the East. The fascinations of romance invest and embellish it. With
the commonplace facts incident to the various stages of national
progress are interwoven narratives of indisputable truth, but which, in
their demands upon human credulity, almost surpass the fabulous legends
of chivalry or the enchanting tales of Scheherezade. The primitive
life of the Arabian people previous to the advent of Mohammed offered
no indication of their extraordinary capability for improvement.
Commercial intercourse with other nations for ages had, however,
enlarged their experience, expanded their faculties, and aroused their
ambition. The caravan winding amidst the lonely sand-hills of the
Desert--the precursor of those great expeditions which subsequently
interchanged the commodities of Asia Minor, Egypt, Andalusia, and
India--was also the more important agent of science, of refinement,
of civilization. It increased the sum of geographical and historical
knowledge. It familiarized the trader and his customers with the
manners, the laws, the social systems, the mechanical skill, the arts,
and the inventions of the most enterprising nations of the globe. These
associations assisted in no small degree to generate the practical
utility which, the most important feature of Arab learning, afterwards
conferred such substantial blessings on mankind. The phenomenal advance
of the race to maturity, impossible without previous preparation, was
stimulated by perpetual wars and excitement. Less than one hundred
and twenty years intervened between the vagabondage and ignorance of
the Desert and the stability and intellectual culture of the great
Abbaside and Ommeyade capitals. The career of the Arab was too rapid to
be permanent. In four generations it had covered the ground ordinarily
traversed in twenty. Its delusive splendor concealed the decay which
was coincident with the era of its greatest prosperity. The same
causes which facilitated the foundation and advancement of his power
and culture were active during their decline, and contributed to their
ultimate destruction.
The statement may appear paradoxical, in view of the acknowledged
influence of mercantile associations upon the faculties of the human
mind; but a certain degree of isolation seems to be necessary, at least
in tropical and semi-tropical regions, for the complete development of
the arts of civilization; and these arts have usually attained their
highest perfection among nations which inhabit peninsulas. Egypt and
China, whose reliance was entirely upon their own resources, were the
most exclusive of nations in the ancient world, as were Mexico and
Peru in the modern. The vast majority of the populations of India,
Japan, and Spain had but little intercourse with those outside their
boundaries, which were defended by stormy and mysterious seas. In
no other countries have the powers of the human intellect, in the
creation of all that is grand and imposing, of all that is beautiful,
of all that is artistic, of all that contributes to the benefit, the
cultivation, and the material improvement of mankind, been manifested
as in Greece and Italy. And Arabia, although denied by Nature the
advantages of soil and climate enjoyed by more favored lands, yet
possessed what, in the crisis of her fate, rendered her superior to all
her adversaries,--a race of bold and hardy warriors inured to hardship
by the privations of an abstemious life, and by habit and inclination
capable of the most arduous and desperate enterprises. Their experience
with the surrounding effeminate nations had taught them not only
the weakness of the latter, but also how their coveted wealth might
be obtained; and at a propitious moment, under the guidance of an
impassioned enthusiast, a horde of outlaws, driven from their homes by
their scandalized neighbors, became the nucleus of victorious armies
the fame of whose gallantry filled the world. And yet, while glorying
in the deeds of martial heroism which insured the establishment
and maintenance of her Prophet’s faith, she was conscious of the
instability of an empire sustained by arms alone, and labored to raise
upon more substantial and enduring foundations the splendid fabric of
her greatness. The same fervid impulse which prompted and carried to
a successful issue the conquest or extermination of those designated
by the comprehensive term of infidel was able to adapt itself with
singular facility to all the conditions of peace, and to enable the
posterity of the half-naked banditti that swarmed around the banner of
Mohammed to accomplish results worthy of the most exalted genius, and
in every department of knowledge to ascend to the highest rank of those
celebrated for their literary and scientific attainments in the most
polished communities of Asia and Europe.
CHAPTER II
THE RISE, PROGRESS, AND INFLUENCE OF ISLAM
614–712
Comparative Religion, its Interest as a Study--The Benefits of
Islam--Arabia at the Birth of Mohammed--Condition of Christendom
and the Byzantine Empire--Popular Idea of the Prophet--His
Family--His Early Life--The First Revelation--Persecution of the
New Sect--The Hegira--Growing Prosperity of Islam--Character
of Mohammed--Causes of His Success--Polygamy--The Koran--Its
Arrangement, its Legends, its Sublime Maxims, its
Absurdities--Its Obligations to other Creeds--The Kiblah--The
Pilgrimage and its Ceremonies--Reforms accomplished by
Islam--Universal Worship of Force--Corruption of the Religion of
Mohammed--Its Wonderful Achievements--Mohammed the Apostle of
God.
The study of Comparative Religion is one of the most fascinating, but
at the same time one of the most unsatisfactory, of human employments.
In historical research, in mathematical calculation, in chemical
analysis, in the investigation of natural phenomena, either absolute
certainty or an approximate degree of accuracy is attainable. This,
however, is obviously impossible in the consideration of questions with
which the eternal happiness or misery of mankind may be concerned. Who
is competent to determine the relative value of the various religious
systems,--always mutually antagonistic, often irreconcilable,--yet all
alleged to have proceeded alike from the fiat of Almighty God? Who is
to judge of the peculiar qualifications of those who have arrogated
to themselves the important office of passing upon their respective
merits? Why should certain doctrines be accepted and others repudiated
by zealous but uncritical sectaries?, Where does this presumed
inspiration begin and end? To use the words of the Koran, “What is the
infallible? And who shall cause thee to understand what the infallible
is?” Who, in short, possesses the touchstone of truth?
The experience of all ages, the history of all nations, have
established the melancholy fact that systems of religion are, like
institutions of human origin, subject to the ordinary incidents of
mortality. They have their age of youthful vigor and enthusiasm; their
stationary epoch, when their principles have lost their expansive
power; their period of degeneracy and decay. Their duration, like that
of created beings, corresponds to the degree of vitality which they
may possess; their vitality is in proportion to the intrinsic merit of
their doctrines, and their adaptability to the moral nature of man. As
omniscience is denied to him, his estimate of the value of a divine
revelation must necessarily be speculative and uncertain, largely
dependent upon his intellectual capacity, and colored by the influences
to which he has been exposed. On the other hand, many learned
metaphysicians have argued with transcendent ability that faith is
not accidental, and merely derived from volition and association, but
is a matter of inexorable necessity, in which the will is absolutely
powerless. As a result of inherited prejudice, the principles of
every religion always appear heterodox, false, and absurd to sincere
believers in other forms of faith. Of all theological dogmas, none have
suffered more from the effects of ignorance and injustice than those
of Islamism. The name of its founder has for thirteen centuries been
a synonym of imposture. His motives have been impugned, his sincerity
denied. His character has been branded with every vice which degrades
or afflicts mankind. The greatest absurdities, the grossest inhumanity,
have been attributed to his teachings. Ecclesiastical malice has
exhausted its resources in efforts to blacken his memory. Even in
our day, comparatively few persons are even superficially conversant
with the doctrines which, in less than a century, were able to usurp
the spiritual and temporal dominion of a considerable portion of the
habitable globe.
The love of novelty which reigns supreme in the human breast is
nowhere more striking in its manifestations than in the facility
with which men adopt a fresh revelation. No new religion ever lacks
proselytes. Imagination, sentiment, hope, fear, interest, combine to
induce its acceptance, notwithstanding the obscurity which may invest
its doctrines or the illiteracy which often is the most prominent
characteristic of its interpreters; and if the conditions which attend
its promulgation are not decidedly unpropitious, it is morally certain
of success.
Some embrace it through curiosity, others from conviction, many from
motives of selfishness. Its power is frequently in a direct proportion
to the awe with which it inspires its votaries. As military glory
is most admired by the populace, great prestige must of necessity
attach to a creed which proselytes by conquest. On the other hand,
apotheosis was considered the highest distinction attainable by the
heroes and sovereigns of Pagan antiquity. Individuals whose genius
had conferred great benefits upon the human race were assigned by
public gratitude to a place among the gods. All the Roman emperors
from Cæsar to Constantine were deified. An atmosphere of peculiar
sanctity invested the eagles grouped in the post of honor in the camp
of the legion. The crucifix and the reliquary were borne in the van of
crusading armies. A more or less intimate association has thus always
existed between the sacerdotal and the military professions. The latter
has repeatedly furthered the projects of the former. The priest has
rarely refused to absolve the offences of the orthodox soldier. Most
religions have, in fact, been established or maintained by force.
When we recall the overthrow of Paganism, the successive attempts to
recover the Holy Sepulchre, the reconquest of Spain, the Inquisition,
the atrocities attending the subjugation of the New World, the utter
devastation of Provence and Languedoc, the religious wars of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we should certainly not subject to
invidious scrutiny the polity of Mohammed, whose history is free from
the reproach of persecution, and whose supremacy was only partially
established by arms.
The examination and criticism of a religion whose canons have been
honored with the implicit and reverent obedience of millions of men;
whose dogmas have been recognized by the devout of many diverse races
as inspirations of the wisdom of Almighty God; a religion which, by the
weapons of argument or by the resistless force of enthusiasm, subverted
the power and absorbed the leading principles of other creeds whose
traditions had hitherto enthralled the world, and which, despite the
degeneracy of its practice, the divisions and consequent antagonism of
its sectaries, the vicissitudes of many centuries, and the inevitable
accidents of war, persecution, and treason, still manifests an
astonishing and, to all appearances, an inexhaustible vitality, is a
great and arduous undertaking. The story of Islam, by whose influence
the natives of the East and West, heretofore hostile, were joined in
a bond of fraternal union and guided through a marvellous career of
prosperity and glory, is the realization of what would have ordinarily
appeared a most extravagant dream of conquest and dominion, and is
without parallel in the annals of humanity. In the moral as in the
material world, the most perfect and durable forms and systems usually
arrive slowly, and by almost imperceptible gradations, at ultimate
maturity. But to this rule Islam was a striking exception. It attained
the summit of its greatness, and raised the Arabians to an exalted rank
in the family of nations, in a shorter period of time than is generally
occupied by a people in passing through the primitive stages of their
intellectual development.
It refuted the familiar maxim of the Romans, whose foreign policy was
based upon the fomenting of dissensions and the subsequent discomfiture
of their enemies, and, assailing its adversaries simultaneously on
every side, won its way by a series of victories surpassing, in
momentous results, the most renowned triumphs of the consuls and the
Cæsars. In the traditions relating to the genealogy and history of its
Prophet there is much that is enigmatical and much that is romantic.
The latter deduced his origin from Ishmael, whom, with his unfortunate
mother, Abraham, the acknowledged head of God’s chosen people, had
inhumanly abandoned in the Desert to starve.
But in the seventy-one generations which separated Mohammed and
Ishmael, a radical change of circumstances had befallen the rival
branches of the house of Abraham. The descendants of Isaac, who had
been promised the earth for an inheritance, now enslaved or exiled,
and proverbial for bad faith, had become reviled and contemned of all
men. On the other hand, from Ishmael the vagabond, deserted by his
father and renounced by his kindred, had sprung a noble, valiant,
and hospitable race, whose destiny was the promotion of civilization
and the extension of empire. And in due time the latter, having
obtained possession of the opulent regions of the East, tolerated the
despised Hebrew only upon payment of tribute, and restricted him to a
distinctive costume as a symbol of his degradation. He was compelled,
in token of respect, to remove his slippers whenever he passed a
mosque, and under penalty of the lash to kneel abjectly in the dust
before the haughty Ishmaelite; while the capital of the land from which
he had been banished, endeared to him by the memory of his sovereigns
and the traditions of his faith, was in the power of his hereditary
enemies, whose sacrilegious hands had raised the gilded dome of one
of their proudest fanes upon the very spot long consecrated by the
most revered associations of his race and his religion. The law of
compensation, which controls the fate of man, was at last fulfilled,
and retribution, if long delayed, was then exacted with relentless
severity.
The benefits wrought by Mohammedans--especially during the Middle
Ages--have, until the end of the last century, been silently ignored
or studiously depreciated by historians; in some instances through
want of information, but, for the most part, because the phenomenal
progress of Islam, when compared with the apathetic condition of other
religions, suggested a formidable rivalry. But in this age, insatiable
of knowledge and equipped with every means of obtaining it, it is
no longer possible for clerical intolerance to obscure the splendid
achievements of Moslem science. The day has long since past when the
labors of astronomers like Ibn-Junis, of historians like Al-Makkari,
of philosophers like Averroes, of physicians like Avicenna, and of
botanists like Ibn-Beithar, can be treated with obloquy because they
were not authorized by the decree of an Ecumenical Council or approved
by a bull of his Holiness the Pope.
The history of a religion, the exposition of a form of faith, is not
infrequently the memoir of an individual and the chronicle of a race.
As a rule, the union of the offices of Prophet and Lawgiver in a single
personage deeply impresses the individuality of that personage upon the
character of his nation. The annals of the Hebrews are indissolubly
bound up with the Holy Scriptures and the precepts of Mosaic law.
The mention of ancient Persia suggests at once the texts of the
Zendavesta and the ordinances of Zoroaster. The Koran is practically
the biography of Mohammed, the tale of his sorrows, his aspirations,
his failures, and his triumphs. And what more noble monument could
Arabia boast than the proud distinction of having been the home of
a prophet and the cradle of a faith for centuries identified with
religious toleration, with princely munificence, with scientific
investigation, with literary merit,--all intimately associated with her
name and with the varying fortunes of her children? The latter, from
the first, devoted themselves to the interests of civilization. They
settled colonies of skilled artisans in the wake of their armies. They
promoted manufactures, encouraged commerce, and in every department of
industrial occupation stimulated the efforts of mechanical ingenuity.
They developed the science of astronomy. To them chemistry and pharmacy
owe their origin. While persevering botanists explored the flora of
many lands, the mathematician, in his secluded retreat, expanded and
perfected the science of algebra. When a new region was subjected
to their rule, all fruits, plants, and herbs, which examination or
experience had found to be either edible or curative, were inscribed
upon the lists of tribute, and their importation and distribution
became compulsory. They branded idleness with contempt; they ennobled
labor; and even royalty did not disdain to follow the example of the
Prophet, who, with his own hands, assisted in the erection of the
mosque of Medina, the first temple of Islam. They translated and
preserved for the pleasure and instruction of posterity the immortal
productions of the sages of Greece and Rome. They fostered learning,
and encouraged its pursuit by maxim, reward, and example, until it
became a matter of popular belief, as firmly grounded as the most
sacred tradition, that the diligent cultivation of the mental faculties
was an imperative religious duty.
In ancient times, to compel the observance of a salutary law, it was
connected with public worship and directly sanctioned by the precepts
of religion. In this way, hallowed by divine authority, it acquired a
force not obtainable by human enactment, and conclusively indicated
the wisdom of the sovereign or lawgiver who promulgated it. It was
thus with circumcision among the Jews, with the cultivation of the
soil in Mesopotamia, and with irrigation in Egypt, where the Nile was
deified as the creator and preserver of the harvests and the source of
the material prosperity of the nation. Mohammed was not blind to the
advantages to be secured by this theocratic supervision of the affairs
of mortals, and, by recourse to it, enforced the adoption and practice
of many healthful customs and profitable employments whose effects upon
the subjects of his successors were of the greatest importance.
The contagion of superstition, the impression produced by the grandeur
of scenery, and the periodical recurrence of mysterious natural
phenomena must always be attentively considered in determining the
philosophical belief and religious tendencies of a people. Intimate
relations with Egypt, sustained for a vast but unknown period of time,
have left ineffaceable traces upon the traditions of Arabia. In the
religious system of the former country there was one Supreme Being. All
other divinities were but manifestations of his majesty and omnipotence
concealed under different names. From him emanated the multifarious
triads, the personification of the Nile, the countless array of gods
to whom the days, the months, and even the very productions of the
earth, were sacred. The great secret that these inferior deities were
mere abstractions proceeding from a common Essence, to be eventually
absorbed into it,--a fate to which even the soul of man, after divers
transmigrations, was subject,--was jealously guarded by the Egyptian
priesthood, and was the chief of its famous mysteries. The Sabeans
of Yemen, instructed through their mercantile relations with the
inhabitants of the Valley of the Nile, had long been familiar with
the idea of a Supreme God and the personified attributes of His power
and dignity. This doctrine had spread from the South, and, at the
date of the advent of Mohammed, underlay the idolatrous worship of
which Mecca was the centre, and whose ramifications extended in every
direction to the borders of the Peninsula. A considerable number of
the more intelligent Arabs who professed adherence to the religion
of Abraham, yet, in fact, knew nothing of that religion except that
it was monotheistic, repudiated all forms of idolatry, and styled
themselves Hanifs--a word variously defined as “Incliners” and
“Heretics.” The Manichean conception of the Spirit of Darkness--or,
in other words, that important and enterprising personage the Persian
devil, without whose presence no modern creed would seem to be
complete--was also unknown to the ancient inhabitants of Arabia. As
the idea was imported,--no branch of the Semitic race having been
originally acquainted with it,--it probably travelled in the train of
Cambyses when he invaded the Desert; although Iblis, the Arabic name
by which this spirit is popularly designated, is evidently of European
derivation and a corruption of the Greek Διάβολος.
Nor have the physical features of the landscape less to do with
the formation of man’s moral impressions, and the direction of his
impulses, than the reciprocal interchange of the ideas of contiguous
nations. This is apparent in even a greater degree than the influence
of soil and climate in the modification of his physical aspect and
temperament. The more imposing those features, the more profound the
emotions they excite; and, partly for this reason, Asia, which Nature
has endowed with the most stupendous manifestations of her energy, has
been prolific of those superstitions which have exercised the most
extensive and lasting dominion over the human mind.
For more than a century before the birth of Mohammed, the most
deplorable ignorance had obscured the face of the Christian world.
The gentleness and beauty of the religion of Jesus had been
supplanted by the direst fanaticism; its altars had been profaned
by heathen sacrifices and the adoration of images; its priesthood
had become inconceivably corrupt and immoral. The countless sects
evoked by the machinations and worldly ambition of the clergy had,
by mutual recrimination, revolting crimes, relentless persecution of
their adversaries, and obstinate refusal to listen to any plan of
reconciliation, almost destroyed the faith of reasonable men in every
religion. Each of these sects had a leader who was regarded by his
followers as endowed, to a greater or less degree, with that mysterious
power conferred by divine inspiration. Disputes, frequently settled
by massacre, were constantly maintained upon abstruse and frivolous
questions in their very nature unanswerable; the precepts of justice
and the laws of morality were contemptuously disregarded; and the
sacerdotal class, instead of setting an example of piety and moderation
to its congregations, was conspicuous in the daily saturnalia of
rapine, lust, and murder. The Church had long since departed from
the simplicity and purity of its original institution. For a century
only after the death of the Saviour it had remained free from the
influence of schismatic doctrines. While in comparative obscurity and
acknowledged weakness, it offered no inducements to the disturbing
spirit of fanatical innovators or to the selfish schemes of political
aggrandizement and ecclesiastical ambition. In the beginning, divided
into a number of federated republics practically independent, yet
bound together by a common interest, governed by their own laws,
relying upon their own resources, guided by the wisdom of their own
ministers, their thoroughly organized polity, their obstinacy, their
claims to superior holiness, naturally excited the odium of the Pagan
populace, and frequently provoked the wrath and the interference
of Imperial authority. From a condition of meekness, humility, and
self-abnegation, the Church had become the prey of hostile factions,
and was already tainted with scandal. Its synods were polluted with
the blood of contending sectaries. Its councils resounded with the
unseemly disputes and mutual recriminations of prelates more ambitious
for the attainment of supreme power than for the discovery of divine
truth. The Trinitarian controversy had nourished prejudices which
centuries of apparent tranquillity had failed to eradicate. The spirit
of persecution, incomprehensible to the polytheists, the essence of
whose creed was universal toleration, and who could not appreciate the
motives impelling the Christian to the employment of force to establish
his doctrines, had early begun to manifest itself. Monasticism,
synonymous with ignorance and intolerance, represented the sentiments
and hopes of the most degraded of the populace in every community
of the Empire. At Alexandria and Nicea it had forced, by weight of
numbers and by turbulent demonstrations of violence, the adoption
of some of the most important articles of Christian faith. In every
ecclesiastical feud it had invariably espoused the cause of bigotry
and imposture. The monk of the sixth century united in his character
the inconsistent attributes of the priest and the politician, the
saint and the demagogue. His retreat in the solitude of the desert was
visited by thousands of weeping penitents, suppliants for the doubtful
but cherished privilege of his blessing. With his companions, armed
with clubs and stones, he fomented disorder in the streets of great
capitals. His voluntary renunciation of the follies of the world was
no bar to his greed of power. He dictated the policy of the Church.
He settled involved points of casuistry. He formulated canons of
ecclesiastical discipline. He enforced the claims of his faction by
intrigues, by corruption, by the commission of the most revolting
crimes. He aspired to and often attained the episcopal dignity. The
superior numbers, the fanatical spirit, the unanimous resolution of
his order, gave him a preponderating influence in the Church not to be
heedlessly resisted. Before the imperial organization of the Papacy,
the monk was the dominant factor in the determination of the laws, the
measures, and the regulations of Christendom.
It must be remembered that at that time there was no established,
centralized, sacerdotal authority. Nevertheless, for more than
a century, imperial officials, designated for that purpose, had
determined the degrees and inflicted the punishment of heresy.
Confiscation, banishment, torture, and death threatened all who refused
to subscribe to the doctrines which, varying with different reigns,
were promulgated as the momentary and uncertain standards of orthodoxy.
The incomprehensibility of a dogma was considered an infallible
indication of its truth. The philosopher was then, as now, stigmatized
as the implacable enemy of religion. A reign of terror overspread the
empire. Every scholar became an object of suspicious aversion. His
neighbors shunned his company. The clergy anathematized him from the
pulpit. Informers dogged his footsteps and intruded upon his privacy.
Indifference to religious duties, or an unguarded statement frequently
distorted by malice, was a sufficient cause for imprisonment. The
discovery of an heretical passage in a volume of his library rarely
failed to provoke a sentence of death. Such measures, equivalent to a
proscription of knowledge, produced the most lamentable consequences.
Literary occupations became to all intents and purposes criminal.
Everywhere valuable collections of books were hastily consigned to the
flames by their owners, apprehensive of being compromised by their
contents. Oratory, except that of the pulpit, could not survive such
restrictions. Public sentiment, controlled by ecclesiastical prejudice,
became inimical to the maintenance of even ordinary institutions of
learning. A blind reverence for the Church, and a disposition to
enforce obedience to its mandates by the merciless employment of the
secular arm, were popularly regarded as the duties of every member of
society. It was the ominous inauguration of that fearful power which
afterwards culminated in the irresponsible despotism of the Vatican.
The Roman Pontiff had not yet stretched forth his mighty hand from the
seat of ancient empire to allay dissension, and to enforce obedience
to the edicts of the greatest hierarchy that has ever arisen to
enchain the intelligence and repress the independent aspirations of
mankind. The final decisions of councils had not been formulated upon
controverted points of doctrine. The Patriarch of Constantinople--first
in ecclesiastical precedence, yet almost rivalled in pomp and
prestige by the great episcopal dignitaries of Antioch, Alexandria,
and Carthage--exacted with difficulty the reverence of the giddy
and scoffing mob of the capital, and could not always maintain the
dignity of his office, even in the presence of his sovereign, who was
sometimes a skeptic and often a tyrant. Nor was the civil power, to
which the ecclesiastical system was still jealously subordinated, in a
less degraded condition. The authority of the Emperor was persistently
defied in the precincts of his own palace, which, with the Cathedral
of Saint Sophia, had become the theatre of the treasonable plots
and licentious intrigues of infamous combinations of every class
and nationality, and where a portentous union of monks, eunuchs,
and women reigned unquestioned and supreme. A cumbrous and pompous
etiquette; a theatrical display of costumes and devices; a court
swarming with buffoons and parasites; an atmosphere of cowardice,
duplicity, effeminacy, and corruption had supplanted the high sense
of national honor, the austere dignity, the proud consciousness of
superior manhood which, in the early days of republican simplicity and
imperial grandeur, marked the exercise of Roman power. The incursions
of pirates, which the diminished naval power of the emperors was
inadequate to check, had driven commerce from the sea.
Intestine broils, and the lawless conduct of the barbarian soldiery
who chafed at the restraints of discipline, and whose incessant
and exorbitant demands upon the imperial treasury had aided not a
little to impoverish the country, rendered agricultural operations
unsafe and unprofitable, and land was no longer tilled except in the
immediate vicinity of large cities. Whole provinces, which, under the
Romans, had flourished like a succession of gardens, now abandoned
and uninhabited, were growing up with forests and relapsing into the
wilderness of primeval times. The dire effects of barbarian warfare
were conspicuous in every province of the Empire. The fruits of
centuries of civilization had disappeared with the conditions which had
been favorable to their maturity and to the political corruption and
moral degeneracy which, more than the fortunes of war, had contributed
to their annihilation. The proud title of Roman citizen, once coveted
alike by foreign princes and aspiring plebeians, had been erased
from the tables whereon were inscribed the most exalted distinctions
of nations. Society no longer wore the alluring aspect which it had
exhibited under the luxurious dominion of the Cæsars. The patrician,
deprived of property and freedom, reluctantly swelled the train of
barbaric pomp in the city which had been the scene of his extravagance,
his tyranny, and his vices. The slave who had fled to the camp of
Alaric or Attila now ruled in the palace which had formerly witnessed
his humiliation, and was served by the children of those who but a few
months before had made him the victim of their cruelty and caprice.
The face of the country, repeatedly overrun by swarms of ruthless
savages, presented a picture of hopeless desolation. The trail of
the Gothic or Lombard marauder could be traced by heaps of whitened
bones, by dismantled cities, by ravaged fields and fire-swept hamlets.
The beautiful temples of antiquity, which had survived the decay of
Paganism and the assaults of Christianity, were defaced or ruined.
The exquisite memorials of classic art, the triumphs of the Grecian
sculptor, were broken and scattered. Vases, whose elegance and symmetry
had called forth the admiration of all who beheld them, had been melted
for the sake of the bronze and silver of which they were composed.
The gardens which had been the pride of the capital had been trampled
under the hoofs of the Gothic cavalry. Here and there, amidst a heap
of blackened ruins, arose a crumbling wall or a group of tottering
columns, which alone remained to mark the site of a once magnificent
shrine of Venus or Apollo. The repression of general intelligence and
individual ambition among the masses had always been a leading maxim
of imperial policy. No system of education was provided. All exertion
was discouraged. The populace was for generations provided with food
and amusement by the government. There was no inducement to mental or
physical activity. The natural march of human destiny, the improvement
of man’s physical and social condition, was arrested. Enjoyment of the
comforts of life rendered labor unnecessary. The paternal supervision
and generosity of the sovereign made the criticism, or even the
discussion, of public affairs irksome, ungrateful, dangerous. There
being no longer any incentive to progress, society, in obedience to
the organic law of its existence, began to rapidly retrograde towards
barbarism; a condition to which the division of the people into
castes--noble, plebeian, mercantile, military, and sacerdotal--greatly
contributed. Through ideas of mistaken piety, and allured by the
prospect of idleness and comparative ease, a multitude of able-bodied
men had withdrawn from the occupations of active life to the seclusion
of the cloister, whence they issued at intervals, when summoned to
raze some Pagan temple; to influence, by the terror of their presence,
the vacillating spirit of an ecclesiastical assembly; or to wreak the
pitiless vengeance of their superiors upon some virtuous philosopher
whose intelligence was not profound enough to grasp the meaning of a
theological mystery. The enterprising general who had raised himself
from a subordinate command in Britain to the imperial throne, and
who, for reasons of state policy, had adopted and made compulsory the
ceremonial of a religion whose benign precepts the base profligacy
of his whole life insulted, possessed at least the stern and rugged
virtues of a soldier. His effeminate descendants, however, both
ignorant and careless of the arts of war and government, and devoted
to the practice of every vice, had abandoned the administration to
the perfidious and venal instincts of their retainers and slaves.
Through the incompetency of the rulers, the insatiable ambition of the
priests, and the unbridled license of the mercenaries who composed
the bulk of the army, all desire of the majority of the people--in
which was, of course, included the useful classes of farmer and
artisan--for the improvement of their circumstances had yielded to
a sluggish indifference to their fate. In a few generations social
isolation became so thorough that the community of thought and
interest indispensable to national prosperity ceased to exist; and
this seclusion of caste, increasing in a direct ratio with rank,
finally fastened upon the most noble families the stigma of exceptional
ignorance. Indeed, in the palace itself, whence ecclesiastical bigotry
had expelled all valuable knowledge, the education of princes was
entrusted to nurses and domestic servants, whose pernicious influence
was speedily exhibited in the superstitious fears and arrogant
behavior of their pupils, the future masters of the Roman Empire. The
fusion of races had produced mongrel types, in whose characters were
developed the most objectionable and vicious traits of their depraved
progenitors. Constant intercourse with barbarians had transformed the
polished language of Homer and Plato into an uncouth dialect, where the
gutturals of the Danube, mingling with the scarcely less discordant
accents of the Nile and the Rhone, had overwhelmed the copious and
elegant idiom of the Greek poets and historians. The fanaticism of an
intolerant sect and the weakness of a succession of impotent sovereigns
had extinguished the spirit of Pagan philosophy and ancient learning.
Since the erection of the famous church of Saint Sophia--the final
effort of the genius of Byzantine architecture--that art had fallen
into desuetude, and such of the famous structures of the ancients as
survived were used as quarries, whence were derived the materials for
the basilica and the palaces of the wealthy and luxurious patriarch and
bishop. But this, unhappily, was not the worst of the prevalent evils
of the time. An organized conspiracy against learning existed, and
was most active in those quarters where education, however imperfect,
should at least have suggested the importance of preserving the
priceless remains of antiquity. The art of making parchment had, with
many other useful inventions, been lost, and, in consequence, writing
materials had become rare and expensive. The monk, too idle to invent,
but ever ready to destroy, soon devised means for supplying this
deficiency. Invading the public libraries, he diligently collected all
the available manuscripts upon which were inscribed the thoughts of
classic writers--of whom many are now only known to us by name--and,
erasing the characters, used their pages to record the legends of his
spurious saints and apocryphal martyrs. It is not beyond the range
of probability that the original books of the New Testament, falling
during these evil days into the hands of persons ignorant of Greek,
may have undergone a similar fate; which hypothesis may also account
for the thirty thousand different readings of which learned divines
admit that the Gospels and Epistles are susceptible. The manifold
and prodigious achievements of Roman civilization--its palaces, its
temples, its amphitheatres, its aqueducts, its triumphal arches;
its majestic forums, with their colonnades of snowy marble adorned
with the statues of the heroes, the philosophers, the legislators of
antiquity; its military roads; its marvels of mechanical engineering;
its magnificent works of art; its eternal monuments of literature; the
graceful legends of its mythology, perpetuated by the genius of the
sculptor in creations of unrivalled excellence; the glowing words of
its orators which stir the blood after the lapse of twenty centuries;
the prestige of its conquests; the wise principles of its civil polity,
generally enlightened, often audacious, always successful--were but
trifles in the eyes of the debased Byzantine when compared with a
fragment of the true cross, or a homily preached by some unclean and
fanatic anchorite upon the metaphysical subtleties of the Trinity or
the theological value of a diphthong.
Such, then, was the condition of the Christian Church and the Byzantine
Empire at the close of the sixth century; to such a deplorable
extent had barbarian encroachment, social corruption, and sectarian
controversy undermined the foundation of both Church and State. In
spite of its degradation, the latter represented the highest embodiment
of mental culture and political organization which had survived the
incessant depredations of barbarian armies and the demoralizing effects
of generations of misrule; where the character of the monarch, both
before and after his elevation to the throne, was dominated by the
passions and infected with the vices of the most wicked and infamous
of mankind. Throughout Europe the state of affairs was even more
deplorable. The Goths were masters of the continent, and the Vandals,
traversing the Spanish Peninsula and planting their victorious
standards upon the northern coast of Africa, had, after the commission
of atrocities which have made their name proverbial, driven the
descendants of Hannibal and Hamilcar into the desert and the sea. The
schools of Athens--that sole remaining seat of philosophical discussion
and free inquiry in the world--had been suppressed, a hundred and fifty
years before, by Justinian. The descendants of the Cæsars, stripped of
their splendid inheritance and reduced to degrading vassalage, cowered
beneath the scowling glances of the skin-clad savages who had issued
in countless numbers from the forests of Germany and the shores of the
Baltic. The effigies of the gods, the masterpieces of the skill of the
Augustan age, had been tumbled from their pedestals, and the fetichism
introduced by the strangers had been superseded by a corrupt form of
Christianity scarcely less contemptible and fully as idolatrous. Rome
had twice been sacked; Milan had been razed to the ground; prosperous
seaports had fallen into decay; the fairest fields of Italy had been
made desolate, her highways were overgrown with grass, her aqueducts
were broken, her fertile Campagna, once the paradise of the capital,
had become a pestilential marsh, whose vapors were freighted with
disease and death. Among the miserable, half-famished, and turbulent
population of the cities, riot and sedition were frequent, but were
hardly noticed by the haughty barbarian ruler, so long as the outbreak
did not seriously menace his life or his dignity. Civil war, relentless
in atrocity, completed the devastation begun by barbaric conquest and
servile tyranny. The army, filled with traitors, offered no warrant
for the stability of government. Informers, that pest of a decadent
state, swarmed in the Byzantine capital. Oppressive taxation, enforced
by torture, impoverished the opulent. Promiscuous massacre, instituted
upon the most frivolous pretexts, intimidated the poor. There was no
loyalty, no sense of national honor, no appreciation of the mutual
obligations of prince and people. The martial spirit which had been
the distinguishing characteristic of ancient Rome was extinct. The
proverbial discipline of the legions had been supplanted by license
and disorder. Immunity from foreign incursion was secured by the
ignominious and obnoxious expedient of tribute. Yet, in the midst of
this accumulation of horrors which threatened the total destruction
of a society already thoroughly disorganized, numbers of resolute men
existed in every community who, while despoiled and oppressed, had not
entirely abandoned themselves to despair, and in the minds of many of
these, imperceptibly to the masses, and, indeed, scarcely discernible
save by the most acute and sagacious observer, a great moral revolution
was passing. The misfortunes which had befallen in succession the Pagan
and the Christian religions had weakened the hold of both upon the
reverence and affections of the multitude. Persons familiar with the
Gospels, and with whom the Apocrypha claimed as much respect as the
remaining portions of the Scriptures, looked forward to the coming of
a reformer, known as the Paraclete, or Comforter, repeatedly promised
in the Bible, whose mission was to restore to mankind, in its pristine
purity, the truth as expounded by Christ. The material advantages
which might accrue from the realization of this prediction were fully
appreciated by the heads of a considerable number of contemporary
sects--among them the Gnostics, the Cerintheans, the Montanists, and
the Manicheans, each of whom confidently asserted that he was the
heavenly messenger referred to and that all others were impostors. The
Gospel of St. Barnabas is said, upon very respectable authority, to
have originally contained the word Περικλῦτὸς, “Illustrious,” instead
of Παράκλητος, “Comforter;” and to have been subsequently altered,
with a view to checking the increasing number of claimants to divine
inspiration, whose pretensions were becoming troublesome and dangerous.
Moslem ingenuity has shrewdly availed itself of this prophecy, which
popular credulity accepted as a direct announcement of the coming
Mohammed, whose name, “The Illustrious,” is the Arabic equivalent of
Περικλῦτὸς. It is also stated in the most ancient chronicles that a
prophet called Ahmed, or Mohammed, had for centuries been expected in
Arabia, where the Gospels were widely distributed; and it is therefore
possible that a word written in an unknown tongue, a thousand miles
from Mecca, may have had no inconsiderable share in determining the
political and religious destinies of a large portion of the human race.
All things considered, perhaps no more auspicious time could have been
selected for the announcement of a system of belief which based its
claims to public attention upon the specious plea that it was not an
innovation, but a reform, the purification of a mode of worship which
had been practised for ages. It is usually far easier, because more
consonant with the prejudices of human nature, to introduce an entirely
new religion than to engraft changes, no matter how beneficial, upon
the old. Mankind regards with eager curiosity a recent communication
from Heaven, yet instinctively shrinks from serious interference with
the time-honored ceremonial and revered traditions of a popular and
long-established faith. But in Arabia, as has already been remarked,
while there were innumerable shrines and temples and a host of idols,
there was in reality no deep-seated religious feeling. The prevalent
worship was maintained through the influence of long association
rather than by any general belief in its truth, its wisdom, or its
benefits. The claims of kindred, the maintenance of tribal honor, and
the inexorable obligation of revenge had far greater weight with the
Bedouin than the respect he owed to the factitious observances of his
creed or the doubtful veneration he professed for the innumerable
deities of his pantheon. The absurdity of their attributes, the
inability of their gods to change or to resist the operations of
nature, had long been tacitly recognized by the Arabs. Their idols
partook of the character of the fetich, whose favor was propitiated
with gifts, whose obstinacy was punished by violence. Long familiarity
had lessened or entirely abrogated the awe with which they had once
been regarded. The system which they represented had fallen behind
the intelligence of the age, limited though that might be amidst the
prejudices and superstitions of the Desert. A wide-spread and silent,
but none the less vehement, protest against polytheism had arisen.
At no time in the history of the Peninsula had been evinced such a
disposition for reconciliation and compromise. In Arabia, therefore,
as well as in the other countries of Asia, the season was eminently
propitious to the promulgation of a new religion.
The ignorance of the natural talents, general characteristics, and
daily habits of the Prophet of Arabia almost universally prevalent,
even among persons of education and of more than ordinary intellectual
attainments, is extraordinary; especially when the abundant facilities
for information upon these points are considered. No name in history
has been subjected to such fierce assaults by sectarian bigotry and
theological rancor as his. The popular idea of Mohammed is that he
was a vulgar impostor, licentious, cunning, brutal, and unscrupulous;
periodically insane from repeated attacks of epilepsy; given to the
practice of fraudulent miracles; a monster, who hesitated at no crime
that would further his ends; who wrote a book called the Koran, which
is full of sensual images, and describes heaven as a place especially
set apart for the unrestricted indulgence of the animal passions.
In former times public credulity went still farther, and Christian
writers of the eleventh century, and even later, were in the habit
of representing the greatest of iconoclasts--who excepted from the
clemency of the victor only the adorers of fire and of idols--as
a false god; a conception which, indicated by the familiar word
“mummery,” has been incorporated into our language. Afterwards he was
considered merely as a propagator of heresy, and, punished as such, he
figures in the immortal work of Dante:
“Poi che l’un pié per girsene sospese,
Maometto;”
and, finally, the absurdity of ignorance having reached its
culmination, he was described as a camel-thief, and an apostate
cardinal who preached a spurious doctrine through envy, because he had
failed to reach the coveted dignity of Pope! Motives of ecclesiastical
jealousy and religious intolerance led also to the suppression of
information and the falsification of truth respecting the Koran. Hardly
one person in ten thousand has read a translation of it; indeed, this
feat has been repeatedly declared an impossibility, on account of the
monotonous and prosaic character of its contents; nor has one foreigner
in a million perused the original, which, it may be added, cannot be
appropriately rendered into another tongue. No complete rendition of
this famous book into a living language was made for eleven hundred
years after the death of Mohammed, and to-day not more than a dozen
versions, all told, exist. It has been, moreover, a rule, subject
to but few exceptions and those of recent date, that translations,
commentaries, and analyses of the Koran, edited by misbelievers, have
been written with the express design of casting odium upon the Prophet
and his followers. Under such unfavorable circumstances, an impartial
examination of the doctrines of Islam was impossible to one not versed
in Arabic, and the public mind, which received its impression of such
subjects largely from the pulpit, obstinately refused to consider any
view which was at variance with its preconceived opinions. To obtain
a competent idea of the principles, the virtues, and the defects of
the religion which he established, it will not be unprofitable to
glance for a moment at the salient points of the career and character
of this wonderful man, the most prominent of his country, and the most
illustrious of his race.
Among the ancient tribes of Arabia, highest in rank, most esteemed
for intelligence and courage in a nation of poets and warriors,
and renowned for a generous hospitality, was that of the Koreish,
the hereditary guardians of the temple of Mecca. Proud of their
distinguished ancestry and of the exalted position they enjoyed by
reason of their office, which its religious functions invested with a
dignity not inferior to that of royalty itself, and superior to all
other employments in a country where the jealous independence of the
people precluded the exercise of kingly power, the influence of the
Koreish over their countrymen was unbounded. The annual pilgrimage to
the Bait-Allah, or “House of God,” when hostilities were suspended,
and devotees and merchants, rhymers and thieves, met upon a common
equality in the enclosure of the temple--an occasion which is said to
have called together the brightest minds of the Peninsula to contend
in friendly rivalry for the prize of literary distinction--was the
most important event of the year to the Arabian, and was particularly
advantageous to the perpetuation of the wealth and authority of
the Koreish. Some of the tribe enjoyed the exclusive privilege of
distributing water and provisions among the pilgrims during their
sojourn in the Holy City--an employment originally gratuitous, but
afterwards a lucrative monopoly; others had charge of the buildings
of the shrine; others, again, were the custodians of the sacred
banner, which was only raised upon the occasion of the annual re-union
of the Kaaba, or when the safety of Mecca was threatened by war
or sedition. The Koreish, moreover, aspired to a state of petty
sovereignty; they despatched embassies to the neighboring tribes, made
treaties, established regulations for the departure and arrival of
caravans, which secured an organized, and consequently a more safe and
profitable, traffic with surrounding nations, and exercised a nominal
jurisdiction in both civil and religious matters over the entire
Peninsula. Elated by their success, and by the homage universally paid
them, they boldly abrogated many of the ancient ceremonies connected
with the national worship, and substituted others better calculated for
the advancement of their pecuniary interests or the gratification of
their political ambition. Some of these new regulations were unjust,
and, as may be easily conjectured, were accepted with great reluctance
by a population so opposed to innovation and impatient of restraint as
that of Arabia; and the fact that they were adopted without serious
disturbance shows conclusively that the attachment of the Arab to the
gods of his country bore no approximate ratio to the awe with which he
regarded their powerful guardians. In time, however, the rivalry of
influential chieftains of the various divisions of the tribe produced
mutual distrust and enmity; dissensions became frequent, and the
national influence of the Koreish, which the hearty co-operation of
their leaders could alone sustain, began to be seriously impaired.
Of one of the haughtiest clans of this distinguished tribe--the
Beni-Hashem--was born, in the year 570 of the Christian era, Mohammed,
known to misbelievers as the False Prophet, and to the Moslems as
the Messenger of God. A strange fatality, which is evidently based
upon something more substantial than the uncertain authority of
tradition, appears to have attended his family both before and after
his birth. The household of his grandfather, Abd-al-Muttalib, although
it contained several daughters, could boast of only one son,--a
circumstance which, to a man of noble birth, in a country like Arabia,
where a chieftain’s consideration was founded upon the number of his
male descendants, where female relatives were classed with camels and
horses as chattels, and were often buried alive to get rid of them,
was looked upon as a disgrace as well as a misfortune. In bitterness
of spirit, the sheik betook himself to the Kaaba, and invoked the aid
of Hobal, the presiding genius of the assembled deities of the nation.
At the conclusion of his supplications he promised that, if ten sons
should be born to him, one of them should be sacrificed upon the
altar of the god. The prayer was answered, and in due time inexorable
religious obligation demanded the fulfilment of the vow. Accompanied by
his sons, Abd-al-Muttalib again approached the shrine of Hobal, and the
customary lots having been cast, the god made choice of Abdallah, who
subsequently became the father of Mohammed. Abdallah was the favorite
of his parents and the idol of his kindred; his manners possessed
a rare fascination; he excelled the most accomplished of his tribe
in the arts of poetry and eloquence, and his manly beauty has been
celebrated by the extravagant praise of his countrymen. Appalled at
the prospect of losing his best-beloved child, Abd-al-Muttalib was in
despair, when the shrewdness of a female diviner proposed an ingenious
solution of the difficulty. The established compensation for homicide,
when the injured family was willing to accept one, was ten camels;
and the prophetess suggested that Abd-al-Muttalib again consult the
deity, in the hope that he might be propitious and consent to receive
the less valuable sacrifice. The mystic arrows were once more shaken
and drawn, and, for the second time, Abdallah was devoted to death.
The father doubled the number of camels with the same result; but,
nothing daunted, persevered until the tenth lot had been drawn, when
the god deigned to accept the costly ransom. Thus upon the cast of a
die depended the regeneration of the Arabian people, the conquest and
subversion of the Byzantine and Persian empires, the impulse of modern
scientific inquiry, and the future hopes of the Moslem world!
Mohammed was a posthumous child. His father died while on a journey
to Medina, and left to his widow Amina little save the memory of his
domestic virtues, and a reputation for manly courage and unblemished
integrity. The boy passed his early years, as was the custom at Mecca,
with one of the tribes of the Desert, where the coarse fare and active
life of the Bedouin developed and strengthened a frame naturally robust
and vigorous. At the age of five he returned to his mother’s home,
where, within a few months, he was left an orphan. His grandfather
Abd-al-Muttalib then took charge of him until the death of the former
two years afterwards, when Mohammed was taken into the family of his
uncle Abu-Talib. The successive bereavements of relatives to whom he
was devotedly attached had no small effect in determining the character
of the future Prophet, already thoughtful and reserved beyond his
years, and imparted a permanent tinge of sadness to his life. When he
grew older he was employed by his uncle as a shepherd, an occupation
considered by the Arabs as degrading, and only proper to be exercised
by slaves and women. In his twenty-sixth year his handsome face and
figure, and his reputation for honesty, which had acquired for him the
flattering title of Al-Amin, “The Faithful,” attracted the attention
of Khadijah, a wealthy widow and a distant relative, who made him a
proposal of marriage, which he accepted. Khadijah was forty years
old, and had already been twice married; yet for twenty-five years
which intervened before her death--and long after she must have lost
her attractiveness--Mohammed never failed in the duties of a constant
and affectionate husband. She bore him six children, four girls and
two boys, of whom the daughters alone survived the period of infancy.
When he reached the age of forty, a great change came over Mohammed,
and there appeared the first positive indication of his aversion to
the established worship of his country. His mother, who seems to have
been a woman of highly excitable temperament, had transmitted to him
a hypersensitive condition of the nervous system, which developed
occasional attacks of muscular hysteria, a disease rarely affecting
the masculine sex. Long accustomed to abstinence, contemplation, and
revery, he contracted the habit of seeking solitude, to muse upon the
moral condition of himself and his countrymen; and as he grew older,
and especially after his fortunate marriage had removed the necessity
for labor, the passion for dreaming grew upon him. He often betook
himself to Mount Hira, where a recluse once had his abode; and for
days at a time, with but little food and depriving himself of sleep,
in tears and mental agony, he strove to solve the problem of divine
truth. As continued fasting, excitement, and solitude inevitably
produce hallucinations, it was not long before Mohammed believed
himself visited by an angel, the bearer of celestial tidings. Doubtful
at first of the significance of these startling visions, and in his
enfeebled condition easily terrified, he fancied he was possessed
by devils, and was almost driven to suicide. Finally, mastering his
emotion, he returned to Mecca, and from that time visitations of the
angel--who declared himself to be Gabriel--were frequent. In the
original revelation, Mohammed was addressed as the “Messenger of
Allah,” and was directed to preach the unity of God to his erring
and misguided countrymen. His converts in the beginning were very
few and composed of the members of his own family, his wife being the
first believer. The new doctrines made slow progress; apprehension
of the summary interference of the ruling powers made the proselytes
cautious, and they rehearsed its texts behind locked doors and in the
most private apartments of their houses. At the expiration of four
years the adherents of Islam had only reached the insignificant number
of thirty-nine souls. But now Mohammed grew bolder; expounded his
doctrines before the Kaaba itself; openly advocated the destruction of
idols, and denounced the unbelieving Arabs as devoted to the horrors
of everlasting fire. The impassioned oratory of the Great Reformer had
at first no appreciable effect. Most of his auditors regarded him as
under the influence of an evil spirit; some ridiculed, others reviled
him; but respect for his family and a wholesome dread of blood-revenge
protected him from serious violence. In vain did he depict in words of
thrilling eloquence the joys of heaven and the tortures of hell; his
exhortations were lost upon the skeptical Arab, whose religion was a
matter of hereditary custom, and who, in common with the other members
of the Semitic race, had no belief in an existence beyond the grave. At
length his denunciations became so furious as to raise apprehensions
among the Koreish that their political supremacy, as well as the
lucrative employments of their offices, might be endangered. A solemn
deputation of the chiefs of the tribe waited upon Abu-Talib, the head
of the family to which Mohammed belonged, and demanded that the daring
apostate should be delivered over to their vengeance. This Abu-Talib,
although himself an idolater, without hesitation, declined to do, and,
in consequence of his refusal, the entire clan of the Beni-Hashem was
placed under an interdict. No one would trade or associate with its
members, and for two years they were imprisoned in a quarter of the
city by themselves, where they endured great hardships. Nothing can
exhibit more prominently the family attachment of the Arab and his high
sense of honor than the self-sacrifice implied by this event, for it
must not be forgotten that the large majority of those who suffered
with Mohammed had no confidence in the truth of his mission, but were
still devoted to the idolatrous and barbarous rites of the ancient
faith.
The cause of Islam had received a severe blow, and the threats and
armed hostility of its adversaries boded ill for its future success.
The Moslems who did not belong to the Koreish sought refuge with the
Christian king of Abyssinia, who peremptorily refused to surrender
them upon the demand of an embassy from Mecca. At length, through very
shame, the interdict was removed; the members of the imprisoned band
came forth once more to mingle with their townsmen, and the exiles
were permitted to return in peace. But persecution had not intimidated
Mohammed, and his condemnation of idolatry and its supporters increased
in violence. His uncle and protector, Abu-Talib, having died, his
position daily became more critical. A fortunate occurrence, however,
soon opened an avenue of escape. Some years before, a handful of
the people of Medina had secretly embraced his doctrines and sworn
fealty to him as their temporal sovereign. Their numbers had greatly
increased, and now, in acceptance of an invitation tendered him by
these zealous proselytes, Mohammed prepared to withdraw from the midst
of his enemies to the proffered asylum at Medina. The inhabitants of
the latter city, who were principally agriculturists, were heartily
despised by the Meccans, who considered every occupation but those of
war, plunder, and the cheating of pilgrims derogatory to the dignity
of an Arab. The irreconcilable rivalry between the two principal
towns of the Hedjaz had much to do with the adoption of Islam by the
Medinese. The influence of the numerous Jews of Medina had materially
affected the religion of that locality, and their predictions of the
speedy coming of the Messiah, and the bestowal of the possessions of
the Gentiles upon his chosen people, had attracted the attention,
and at times aroused the fears, of the idolaters of that city. When,
therefore, the report was circulated that a prophet had arisen at
Mecca, the Medinese naturally concluded that he must be the Messiah
expected by the Hebrews, and they determined to forestall the latter
by being the first to extend to him a welcome, and thereby secure his
favor. It was from these motives that the alliance between Mohammed
and the citizens of Medina was concluded; an alliance whose results
were little anticipated by the parties to its provisions, and whose
importance has been disclosed by the portentous events of many
subsequent centuries. Intelligence of this proceeding having reached
the Koreish, they prepared for decisive measures, and held a meeting,
in which, without apparently taking any precautions to conceal their
design, the assassination of Mohammed was resolved upon. The latter,
having received timely warning, escaped by night, with his friend
Abu-Bekr, and, concealed in a cave in the mountains, eluded the
vigilance of his enemies until a few days afterwards they found means
to reach Medina. This event occurred in the year 622 A.D.,
and, marking the era of the Hegira or “Flight,” is, as is well known,
the starting-point of Moslem chronology. Its usefulness, however,
anticipated its legality for three hundred years, and it was not
publicly authorized by law until the tenth century.
On his arrival, the first care of the Prophet was the erection of a
mosque and the institution and arrangement of the ritual of Islam;
the next, the reconciliation of the two hostile Arab factions whose
tumults kept the city in an uproar; and the third--the only task in
which he was unsuccessful--the conversion of the Jews. Hardly was
he domiciled at Medina before he abandoned the continence which had
hitherto adorned his life and placed his character in such a favorable
light when compared with the excesses of his libidinous countrymen,
and by degrees increased his harem until it numbered, including wives
and concubines, nearly a score of women. And now appeared also other
changes of a religious and political nature, when the humility and
patience of the preacher were eclipsed by the ambitious plans of the
sovereign, eventually realized in the proselytism of entire nations and
the intoxication and glory of foreign conquest. The employment of force
had never been mentioned at Mecca, but the vexations, contempt, and
ill-usage of years had borne bitter fruit, and at Medina was received
the first revelation commanding the propagation of Islam by the sword.
At first desultory attacks were made upon caravans; then followed the
engagement of Bedr, where three hundred believers defeated a thousand
of the Koreish, and the battle of Ohod, which ended with the wounding
of Mohammed and the total rout of the Moslem army. The blockade of
Medina, undertaken three years later by the chiefs of Mecca, ended
disastrously for them, as the fiery Arab could not be brought to endure
the restraint and inactivity incident to the protracted operations of a
siege. Next came the expulsion of the disaffected Jews from the city,
a measure not unattended by acts of injustice and sanguinary violence,
but imperatively demanded by the requirements of political necessity.
The power and prestige of Mohammed now grew apace; tribe after
tribe joined his standard; distant princes sent him costly gifts and
voluntarily tendered their allegiance; and in the year 630--the eighth
of the Hegira--he prepared for the invasion of the sacred territory
and the conquest of Mecca. Only a short time before, guarded by two
faithful companions, he had fled from the Holy City with a reward of a
hundred camels and forty ounces of gold upon his head; now he returned
in royal state, at the head of ten thousand warriors, most of whom
would have gladly laid down their lives at his command, and all of
whom acknowledged him to be the Apostle of God. Before this imposing
array, inspired with the fervor of religious enthusiasm, resistance
was hopeless. The people fled to their houses and to the sanctuary
of the temple, and the invading army occupied the city. The rights
and property of the citizens were respected; there was no massacre
and no pillage; no violence was offered, except to the images of the
Kaaba, which were shattered to pieces without delay or opposition,
for the idolaters viewed with but little emotion the destruction of
the tutelary deities of many generations, whose inability to protect
their worshippers had been so signally demonstrated. With a magnanimity
unequalled in the annals of war, a general amnesty was proclaimed, and
but four persons, whose offences were considered unpardonable, suffered
the penalty of death. When the various ceremonies consecrated by the
usage of centuries and destined henceforth to form an integral part of
the Moslem ritual had been accomplished, and the Pagan altars in the
vicinity of Mecca had been swept away, Mohammed set forth to subdue
the remaining tribes that disputed his authority. A single battle
sufficed; Tayif, the sole important stronghold that still held out,
voluntarily submitted after an unsuccessful siege; and the supremacy of
the Prophet was henceforth acknowledged over the Arabian Peninsula.
Three months after the subjugation of Mecca, Mohammed, who already
seemed to have had a presentiment of his approaching end, accompanied
by an immense multitude, performed the pilgrimage which his teachings
enjoined as an indispensable duty upon all his followers. Leaving Mecca
for the last time, he slowly retraced his steps to the home of his
adoption, whose people, more generous than his kinsmen, had received
and protected him when a persecuted fugitive, whose factions he had
reconciled, who were proud of his renown, and who, despite his kindness
and the natural urbanity of his manners, never failed to approach his
presence with all the reverential awe due to the possessor of divine
favor and supernatural powers. His constitution, though originally
fortified by abstinence and a simple diet, had for years given evidence
of debility and decay, for his health had been seriously impaired by
poison administered by a Jewish captive, whom his magnanimous spirit
refused to punish; and, after a short illness, he expired in the arms
of his favorite wife, Ayesha, upon the eighth of June, 632.
There have been few great actors upon the stage of the world the events
of whose lives have been so carefully preserved as those of Mohammed,
although no native contemporaneous writer has recorded his history. And
yet there is no man whose talents raised him to extraordinary eminence
whose deeds and whose character are so unfamiliar to Christian readers
as his. Few know him but as a successful impostor. Many believe him
to have been an idolater. Almost all attribute to him indulgence in
the most degrading of vices,--cruelty, avarice, licentiousness. Even
Christian viceroys who have lived long in Mohammedan countries know
nothing of the doctrines and the career of one of the most renowned of
reformers and legislators. His personal appearance, his occupations,
his tastes, his weaknesses even--a strong proof of the honesty and
credibility of the Mussulman narrators--have been related by the latter
with scrupulous minuteness. His sayings and the opinions attributed to
him, embodied in the Sunnah, are considered by devout Moslems as second
only in sanctity to the verses of the Koran, and have given rise to
the amazing number of six hundred thousand traditions, which laborious
commentators have seen proper, upon doubtful evidence, to reduce to
four thousand that may be relied upon as genuine. The study of the
Koran, however, affords a better insight into the character of the
Prophet than the uncertain and suspicious testimony of the Sunnah. It
is the mirror in which are reflected the sincere convictions, the lofty
aims, the political experiments, the domestic troubles, the hopes and
apprehensions which, through many trials and perplexities, influenced
the mind and directed the movements of the author in his career, from
the position of a simple citizen of Mecca to the exalted dignity of
sole ruler of Arabia. The estimate of Mohammed in the Sunnah, which has
been transmitted by his early associates, who knew him well and daily
observed his conduct in the time of his obscurity, is nevertheless
entitled to far more credit than any opinion that may have been formed
without the assistance of tradition by the most capable scholar
after the lapse of even a single century. But unfortunately, in many
instances, their accounts have been so corrupted by the fabulous
embellishments of subsequent commentators as to detract much from their
undoubted historical value.
The most conspicuous trait of Mohammed was his absolute inflexibility
of purpose. From the hour when he first communicated to Khadijah his
belief in his mission, through the long and weary years of mockery,
persecution, conspiracy, and exile, during the even more trying period
of prosperity and empire, up to the sad final scene in the house of
Ayesha, he persevered unflinchingly in the plan which he had proposed
for his guidance, and which had for its end the abolition of idolatry,
the improvement of his countrymen, and the establishment of the
sublime and philosophical dogma of the unity of God. The only rational
explanation that can be given of this remarkable conduct in the midst
of difficulties and perils which would have shaken the constancy of
a mortal of ordinary mould lies in his evident sincerity. The most
convincing evidence of his honesty of purpose, his self-confidence,
and his earnest devotion, is furnished by the rank and character
of his first disciples, and the reverence with which his teachings
were received. The early proselytes of all other religions of which
history makes mention were ignorant and uneducated, destitute of
worldly possessions, without pride of ancestry or title to public
consideration. Their ungrammatical harangues were often heard with
derision; their credulity excited the contempt of the philosopher and
of the hostile priesthood alike. It was even made a subject of reproach
to the first Christians--an accusation, however, never conclusively
proved--that their numbers were largely recruited from the criminals,
the idlers, and the beggars of the Empire. The origin of modern sects
has invariably been obscure, and their proselytes of humble rank and
servile occupation. Not so, however, with the early followers of
Mohammed. They were members of the proud and exclusive aristocracy of
Arabia. Their lineage could be traced, in an unbroken line, for more
than six hundred years. Their hereditary office of custodians of the
shrine venerated by every tribe of the Peninsula gave them immense
prestige among their countrymen. Their interest in the preservation
of the national worship would naturally prejudice them against
innovations which must inevitably diminish their power and curtail
their emoluments. Their wealth was not inferior to their illustrious
descent and their political and religious influence. Some of them were
included among the most opulent citizens of Mecca. The Jewish apostates
of Medina possessed the proverbial thrift and intelligence of their
race. In that Hebrew colony none stood higher in public estimation than
they. The success of Islam demonstrated beyond dispute the superiority
of its original proselytes in the arts of statesmanship no less than
in the science of war. Great talents were required to encounter
successfully the exigencies which attended its institution, and which
afterwards repeatedly menaced its permanence. The high character of
such disciples is a positive indication of the purity of their motives
and the sincerity of their belief. Men are not liable to be readily
imposed upon by claims to divine inspiration asserted by their intimate
associates. Distance and mystery are far more propitious to the success
of a religious teacher than the familiarity which results from close
acquaintance and diurnal scrutiny. It is a common error to attribute
the spread of Mohammedanism entirely to the agency of force. Military
success was undoubtedly a powerful factor in the accomplishment of its
destiny. The sword was peculiarly esteemed in Arabia. The steel of
which it was composed was, in a country where no iron was produced,
the most valuable of metals. The prodigious nomenclature by which that
weapon was distinguished was an indication of its national importance,
and of the potency of its effects entertained by those by whom it was
wielded. It represented the martial spirit of the Arab,--the ruling
incentive of his life, the inspiration of his predatory exploits,
the glory of a long succession of cherished traditions. A mystic
significance attached to it, which, in time, assumed a religious
character, and rendered its employment, according to popular belief,
acceptable to the omnipotent and invisible Deity of Arabia. These ideas
descended to the Moslems, and promoted, in no small degree, their
energy and their enthusiasm. But force alone could never have enabled
a tumultuous horde of barbarians, unaccustomed to concerted action
and impatient of the restraints of military discipline, to overwhelm
three great empires in less than a century. The policy of Islam was at
first more conciliatory than menacing. It preferred to inculcate its
principles by argument rather than to provoke opposition by invective.
It disclaimed the invention of new dogmas, but labored to reconcile
its tenets with those of its venerated predecessors. It discouraged
proselytism by violence. Whatever it could not abolish or modify, it
adopted; whatever it could not appropriate, it ruthlessly destroyed.
National decrepitude; the universal decay of religious belief; the
dexterous adaptation of alleged prophecy; the hopeless condition of
the devout, terrified by the fierce animosity of contending sects; the
impossibility of ascertaining the correctness of the Gospel amidst the
confusion of doctrines and the multiplicity of versions; the political
disorders resulting from barbarian ascendency; the abrogation of the
offensive distinctions of caste; the mysterious fascination which
attends the unknown; the prospect of wealth, renown, and empire held
out to aspiring genius; the guaranty of independence of thought and
immunity from persecution--grouped under the banner of Mohammed the
disorganized and exhausted nations of the mediæval world. The tenor of
his life until the first revelation was that of a man of unimpeachable
morality. Already in his youth he had been distinguished by the
significant appellation of The Faithful. His marital relations until
after the death of Khadijah were without reproach; a fact conceded by
his most implacable enemies. A profound knowledge of human nature, an
appreciation of the spiritual requirements of his countrymen--upon
whose minds the doctrines of Zoroaster and of Christ had made no
permanent impression--enabled him to fabricate a system demonstrated
by experience to be admirably fitted to the taste, the genius, and
the superstition of the Oriental. Without a supreme conviction of the
genuineness of his mission he could never have impressed his teachings
upon the minds of the satirical and incredulous Arabs, or have secured
proselytes among his kindred, to whom his daily intercourse would
have soon revealed sentiments and conduct wholly inconsistent with
his pretensions as a medium of divine authority. And yet, with all
the sincerity of his convictions, he thoroughly distrusted himself.
He repeatedly affirmed that he was but a man, a preacher, a reformer,
whose mission was the regeneration and the happiness of mankind. In
spite of his realistic descriptions of heaven and hell, he declared
that he was ignorant of what was in store for the soul after death. The
spirit which consolidated a hundred vagrant tribes distracted by the
feuds of centuries, deaf to offers of compromise and peace, so jealous
of every infringement of their personal liberty that they resented
even the benignant and patriarchal rule of their chieftains, into a
powerful empire; which noted the glaring absurdities of contemporaneous
creeds, and offered in their stead an idea of the Deity so simple,
and yet so comprehensive, that no mind, however bigoted, could
conscientiously reject it; which moulded into an harmonious system
the jarring interests of antagonistic races, and, by its maxims of
toleration, conciliated those sectaries who denied the authenticity of
its principles, and refused compliance with its ceremonial; which,
in consonance with ideas of policy far in advance of the time, united
the functions of ruler and priest without apparently giving undue
prominence to either; which founded a religion that has endured for
nearly thirteen centuries, and has claimed the devoted allegiance of
a thousand million men, can hardly with propriety be said to have
been created by the irrational and selfish impulses of insanity or
imposture. Rather may these results be designated the operations of a
master-mind actuated by a lofty ambition; a mind capable of solving the
most perplexing questions of statecraft, and endowed with a degree of
political wisdom not often exhibited by even those few whom the voice
of history has invested with the proud title of artificers of nations.
Much has been written and spoken by persons having important
material interests to subserve, possessing limited knowledge of the
subject, and with little inclination to use even that knowledge with
impartiality, concerning the physical weakness which, at irregular
intervals, affected the Prophet. It has already been alluded to as a
form of muscular hysteria, an affection peculiar to delicate, nervous
organizations, whose attacks are generally evoked by sudden and
intense cerebral excitement, and a physiological phenomenon belonging
to the same class as somnambulism and catalepsy. It is but temporary
in its effects; and while its symptoms are not dissimilar to those
of the “falling sickness” of the Romans, the patient does not lose
consciousness, and neither the origin nor the continuance of the
disease implies even a temporary impairment of the mental faculties. In
view of the thorough investigations of medical scholars, the generally
received opinion, fostered by ignorance and religious prejudice, may be
pronounced erroneous; even if the efforts of enlightened historical
criticism had not already established beyond contradiction that to
the Byzantines, who enjoyed a world-wide reputation for accomplished
mendacity, is to be attributed the popular fable of the epilepsy of
Mohammed.
In personal appearance, Mohammed did not differ from his countrymen of
gentle blood. His head was large, his chest well developed, his limbs
slender but sinewy, and his whole frame capable of the exertion of
enormous strength. A heavy beard reached half-way to his girdle, and
his coal-black locks, slightly curling, fell down upon his shoulders.
He had the purely Semitic cast of features; the dark eyes gleaming
with half-hidden fire, the thin aquiline nose, the brown complexion,
and teeth of dazzling whiteness. While his expressive physiognomy
indicated the possession of a high order of mental power, the sensual,
as is often the case with men of extraordinary genius, was visible to
an abnormal degree side by side with the intellectual. His gait was
rapid and his movements energetic; his manners quiet, but pleasing: his
address affable; while his commanding presence, and his proficiency in
all the winning but superficial arts of the courtier, heightened by his
calm and impressive demeanor, displayed to advantage the graces and
charms of his eloquence. Though habitually grave and taciturn, he was
easy of access to the vilest outcast; and it was said of him that he
always left his hand in that of an acquaintance until the latter had
withdrawn his own. His liberality was boundless, and often subjected
his household to serious inconvenience; his gentle disposition is
shown by his fondness for children, and his humanity by the repeated
injunctions of the Koran relating to the treatment of animals. The
degrading passion of avarice had no part in his nature; with immense
treasures at his command, his establishment was inferior to those of
his followers, and the greater part of his income he bestowed upon
the poor. His tastes were always simple and unpretending; and even
after he had been raised to sovereign power he retained the frugal
habits of patriarchal life; his house was but a hut of sun-dried bricks
and palm branches, to which a leathern curtain served as a door. So
humble was he in everything that did not concern the dignity of his
prophetic office, that he even mended his own sandals, cared for his
goats and camels, and at times aided his wives in the performance of
their domestic duties. Ever constant in friendship, he early secured,
and preserved until. death, the attachment of those who were associated
with him, whether equals or inferiors, both of whom he treated with the
utmost consideration. Such was his self-command and perfect control
of his passions that he never struck an enemy save in the heat of
battle, scolded a servant, or punished a slave. So far from assuming
supernatural powers, he absolutely disclaimed their possession, and no
public teacher has ever displayed less self-assurance and dogmatism.
As a ruler and a politician, his measures were taken with tact and
prudence; as a commander, he displayed in the field considerable
military capacity; and it is undisputed that flagrant disobedience of
his orders was the cause of his early reverses. He had the strictest
ideas of the responsibilities that pertain to the administration of
justice; the poorest suitor, however trifling his cause, never failed
of a hearing; and he threatened with the severest penalties those
who refused the settlement of their pecuniary obligations. While
inculcating the crowning merit of good works, he recommended their
concealment, and resolutely discountenanced all pharisaical display of
pious affectation or pretended virtue. He was slow to resent an injury
and quick to pardon an offender,--a signal mark of cowardice in the
opinion of the Arab; timely submission and an appeal to his generosity
rarely failed to disarm his short-lived hostility; and those who began
by being his most implacable enemies ended by becoming his loyal and
devoted champions. His magnanimity and the profound knowledge of the
human heart which stamped him as a leader of men were evidenced by his
noble conduct and princely liberality to the Koreish after the conquest
of Mecca. In a word, the brighter side of the character of Mohammed
needs no higher eulogy than is revealed by the definition which he has
left us of charity, a virtue which he never ceased to practise: “Every
good act is charity; your smiling in your brother’s face, your putting
a wanderer in the right way, your giving water to the thirsty, your
exhortation to another to do right, is charity. A man’s true wealth
hereafter is the good he hath done in this world to his fellow-men.
When he dies, people will inquire, ‘What property hath he left behind
him?’ But the angels will ask, ‘What good deeds hath he sent before
him?’”
With all the greatness of Mohammed there was mingled not a little
of the frailty incident to human nature,--a considerable portion of
which, however, is to be credited to his want of education and to the
superstitious prejudices of the age in which he lived. He abhorred
darkness, and feared to be left alone without a light; he cried like
a child under the slightest physical suffering; he was an implicit
believer in the virtues of even numbers, and lived in constant
apprehension of sorcery; while the evil-eye was to him, as to the
most ignorant of his countrymen, a calamitous and dreaded reality.
His conduct was frequently regulated by dreams and omens; some of
the latter being not less puerile than those evoked by the arts of
divination which he so resolutely condemned. He was guilty of petty
affectations and exhibitions of weakness scarcely to be expected in
one of his genius and position; he dyed his hair and stained his hands
with henna, and displayed an amusing self-consciousness and vanity
when in the presence of any of the female sex. He was inordinately
jealous, and to this failing, for which history has admitted that at
times he had sufficient cause, is to be attributed the seraglio, the
veil, the escort of eunuchs, and the seclusion of women. His polygamous
connections, which have elicited the censure of European casuists
and theologians, were, in the main, measures adopted for political
effect; for by these matrimonial alliances he cemented his influence
and extended his power. While it would be vain to deny his amorous
susceptibilities,--for we have his own testimony that of all things he
loved women and perfumes,--it must be remembered that he controlled
his passions until after middle life; and it is certainly less worthy
of remark that he should have permitted himself the indulgence of a
harem, than that, with his opportunities, he did not abandon himself
to unbridled and vicious indulgence. The moral aspect of polygamy,
moreover, seems to vary with the locality, and to be after all only a
question of latitude. In the scorching heat of the torrid zone, which
causes no appreciable deterioration in man’s virility and endurance,
woman matures when but a child in years, and is old and wrinkled
long before her partner has reached the prime of life. Again, as is
well known, the passions of Orientals are far stronger than those
of Western nations, bearing to each other a ratio approximating to
that of the warm-blooded mammalia to the sluggish reptilia, the
voluptuous temperament of the Arabs is repeatedly mentioned by classic
writers, and under the tropics the imperious demands of nature may
not be disdained or neglected save in the cavern of the starving
and emaciated anchorite. The civil institutions of the East have
from time immemorial legalized the custom of polygamous marriage,
and the words monogamist and Oriental are antithetical, and imply a
contradiction in terms. Though distinguished ethnologists maintain with
considerable acumen that polyandry is one of the first phases of social
existence, their inferences are for the most part merely speculative;
for history seldom, if ever, has recorded such alliances, and this
apparently anomalous condition of family life is now found only in
Thibet and Hindustan. The sacred books of the dominant religions of
the world, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, and Mohammedan, all of which
are of Asiatic origin, either openly sanction polygamy or sedulously
refrain from denouncing it. Every one knows that it is universal in
China and India; the Zendavesta recognizes it; the student of history
and legend need not be reminded of its prevalence among the Children
of Israel; and the law of Islam permits its practice under certain
wise and equitable restrictions. The Bible, from beginning to end,
has not a single word to offer in condemnation of it; indeed, in the
days of the patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, its utility in the
lands where it prevailed appears to have been unquestioned. Although
our ideas of social and domestic happiness do not tolerate this
custom, which the rigor of our climate renders unnecessary and, in a
measure, revolting; still, we should not attempt to measure by our
arbitrary standard of propriety the habits of nations formed under far
different circumstances, and satisfied with institutions consecrated
by the experience of a hundred and fifty generations; nor can we, with
justice, subject to our rigid canons of theological and political
ethics the sentiments and actions of an illiterate man, bred among
semi-barbarians, and who died nearly thirteen hundred years ago. While
Mohammed shared with his countrymen all their cynical distrust of the
feminine character, he is the only lawgiver claiming divine inspiration
who has ever made any effort to improve the condition of women by
restricting polygamy, and by the imposition of regulations which admit
of no evasion without a forfeiture of legal rights. The beneficial
effects of these ordinances in placing restraints upon divorce, in
securing to widows immunity from destitution, and in preventing female
infanticide, contribute of themselves no inconsiderable addition to the
prestige of his name. Far more serious than superstitious weakness, the
foibles of vanity, or predilection for women, are other accusations
which have been brought against the Prophet. The employment of bravos
and the assassination of prisoners, which, if not ordered, are said to
have been at least connived at and rewarded by him, are ineffaceable
stains upon his character; and it must be confessed that the evidence
tending to establish the commission of these sanguinary deeds is but
too well founded. They only indicate, however, that, while Mohammed
was far in advance of his age, the passion for blood, esteemed the
cardinal virtue of an Arab, had not been eradicated from his breast
after a life devoted to prayer, alms-giving, and benevolence. The
invocation of divine authority in the Koran to justify deeds of which
even the lax morality of the age disapproved, while the exigencies
of the occasion might have to some extent excused them, is also,
under any circumstances, extremely discreditable. The glory of
Mohammed consists in the fact that he fully realized the moral and
political necessities of his people, and opened for them a career
of unprecedented brilliancy; that his efforts for their substantial
improvement, reacting, in turn, upon other nations utterly foreign to
the Arab blood and language, will be felt to the end of time; that
he abolished many cruel and degrading customs; that he elevated and
dignified the character of all who received his teachings, and left
devout worshippers of a single God those whom he had found polytheists
and idolaters.
The Koran is believed by Mussulmans to have been delivered by the
Almighty, through the angel Gabriel, to Mohammed, who communicated it
orally to his companions as it was revealed, whence is derived its
name, “Recitation.” Having thus a divine origin, it is considered
sacrilegious by the Moslem Pharisees to question the authenticity
or propriety of any of its statements, or to criticise its manifold
contradictions, repetitions, and absurdities. As knowledge of writing
was at that time a rare accomplishment in Arabia,--it being asserted by
many scholars that Mohammed himself never acquired it,--only scattered
portions of the revelation were inscribed upon such materials as
fragments of leather, stones, palm-leaves, and the shoulder-blades
of sheep, and the remaining verses and Suras, as they fell from the
lips of the Prophet, were impressed upon the marvellously retentive
memories of his auditors. In the course of events many of the latter
were killed in battle, and the Khalif Abu-Bekr, fearing the loss of
the sacred texts, took measures to collect and preserve them in a
permanent form. When Othman was raised to the Khalifate, many different
readings had already arisen from this manuscript; and innumerable
editions, each claiming superiority and producing endless controversy
and scandal, were distributed throughout his dominions. To secure
uniformity, he caused copies of the first edition to be made, and all
others not agreeing with the latter were destroyed; so that the work
as published under the auspices of Othman is the Koran as we possess
it, the spiritual guide of all true Moslems. It is not voluminous,
containing only a little more than half as much matter as the New
Testament, and is composed of one hundred and fourteen Suras, or
chapters, grouped together apparently without any attention to rational
connection or chronological order, and wherein the same sentiments
are expressed and the same legends are repeated time and again. An
attentive perusal of a translation of this book is an arduous task, and
even in the original it is an undertaking well calculated to exhaust
the patience and application of any one but a Mussulman theologian or
saint. The compiler began with the longest chapters and ended with the
shortest ones, the reverse order in which they were revealed, which
suggests the hypothesis that the Koran may have been at first written
in some language other than Arabic, and in which the characters were
read from left to right. It is also suspected, upon plausible grounds,
that the sacred book has suffered interpolations and omissions made
in the interest of the successful faction to which Othman belonged;
a theory which has gained credence from the well-known corruption of
the Scriptures by the Jews. Be this as it may, no means of comparison
existing, as in the case of the different versions of the Bible, the
conclusions of the critic must necessarily be drawn from the internal
evidence afforded by the text itself; a mode of examination at best
but unreliable and unsatisfactory. Moslems love to cite the Koran as
the one miracle of Mohammed, on account of its purity of language
and perfection of style; leaving out of consideration its chaotic
condition, its anachronisms, and the desultory, monotonous, and
disconnected rhapsodies with which it abounds. Having no diacritical
points to indicate the vowels, its meaning is often ambiguous,
and seven different readings exist, all of which are admitted by
theologians to be correct. Though written in the dialect of Mecca, the
most polished of the Arabic tongue, it contains, nevertheless, many
grammatical errors; probably traceable to the illiterate persons from
whose recollection was obtained much of the first compilation, and
whose words, taken down verbatim, would obviously require correction,
which the scribe naturally hesitated to make through fear of sacrilege.
In view of the suspicion not unjustly attaching to the motives of
those who revised it, and which, to a certain extent, affects its
authenticity as a whole, it is scarcely proper to subject the volume to
searching and invidious criticism. Nor is it creditable to attribute
to the teachings of Mohammed doctrines adopted by subsequent Moslem
theologians which he would probably have been the first to condemn. The
bulk of the Koran is composed of Jewish and Christian legends; rules
for the ceremonial of Islam; excuses for the conduct of the Prophet
when the indignation and suspicious temper of his followers threatened
his ascendency; the foundation of a code of law, and a large number
of moral precepts breathing a spirit of enlightened piety, impartial
justice, and self-abnegation, unsurpassed by any collection of maxims
ever offered for the guidance of mankind. The popular anthropomorphic
idea of the Deity is rejected, all His physical attributes being now
regarded as figurative; triads are classed with idols as manifestations
of polytheism; and the exalted conception of God without equal or rival
is perpetually impressed upon the mind of the reader in phrases glowing
with the fire of religious zeal and impassioned eloquence. The poetic
talent of the untutored Arab appears in all its wonderful perfection
in the Koran, and yet Mohammed did not acknowledge his possession
of this faculty, and persistently discouraged its exercise as a
reminiscence of Paganism. Throughout the entire volume no assumption is
made of divine powers by the Prophet; the ability to work miracles is
especially repudiated by him as unnecessary for religious conviction,
and is mentioned as an unavailing and unprofitable accomplishment of
his inspired predecessors. The prevalent idea that a blind fatalism is
inculcated in the pages of the Koran is a fallacy. The entire substance
of its teachings is contrary to this doctrine, and would be worthless
if belief in it were enjoined; passages constantly occur admitting the
exercise of the utmost freedom of will, and thoroughly inconsistent
with any theory depending upon the foreordained destiny of man. The
fact is that the misapprehension of the meaning of Islam--absolute
resignation to the will of God--is responsible for this perverted
principle, which, like the crescent now universally adopted as a Moslem
religious symbol, is an invention of the Turks, and was absolutely
unknown as such to the early followers of Mohammed.
To the Kaaba, whose deities had received the pious homage of so many
centuries, an additional importance was communicated by its adoption
as the central point of Mussulman worship. In time it became invested
with a mystical character resembling the personification of a female
principle of faith, which, while anomalous in the practice of Islam,
is so familiar to the constitution of almost all religions. A black
covering representing a veil, and renewed each year with impressive
ceremonies, screened the sacred building from the public gaze. A guard
of eunuchs, fifty in number, the dignity and importance of whose
office, as custodians of the shrine, entitled them to the superstitious
reverence of the devout, were in constant attendance. In these singular
regulations, which suggest both the adoration of the Virgin and the
restraints of the harem, can be detected an expression of the innate
and irrepressible desire of mankind for a material representation of
feminine divinity.
The licentious character alleged to belong to the Mohammedan paradise
has provoked much unreasonable vituperation from those who are
unfamiliar with the literary peculiarities and highly imaginative
temperament of the people of the East. The mind of the Oriental has
ever delighted to wander in the mystic realm of parable and allegory.
His sacred books, from the Zendavesta to the Koran, abound with
examples of this method of impressing important truths, and even the
lighter productions destined to beguile his leisure are not free
from it. No educated Mussulman believes, no candid and well-informed
Orientalist thinks, that the famous houris, with their unfading
charms, their graceful presence, their intoxicating embraces, and
their peculiar physical endowments, are anything more than the shadowy
personages of allegorical imagery. Allusion is made to them in terms of
vague and mysterious import susceptible of various construction; and,
even if we should admit the belief in their actual existence, and adopt
a literal interpretation of the verses relative to this recompense of
the blest, the descriptions of their attractions are not comparable
in minuteness of detail and carnal suggestiveness to the voluptuous
inspirations of the Song of Solomon, which no reader, however
credulous, will venture to construe otherwise than as an allegory. In
the romantic and highly embellished visions of the Koran, uncultivated
Moslems, imbued with the imaginative credulity of the East, have been
only too ready to accept metaphor and parable for absolute fact.
The other pleasures to be found in heaven are connected with what would
be most precious and refreshing to the poor and thirsty dwellers in the
Desert,--the domes of pearl; the dust of musk; the pebbles of hyacinth
and emerald; the sumptuous banquets; the robes of satin and gold;
the exhilarating but harmless draughts of generous wine; the forests
of stately palms; the everlasting verdure; the luscious fruits; the
sparkling fountains; the shady gardens watered by cool and limpid
streams. It was not without reason that green became the distinctive
color of the returned pilgrim, a color selected by the Prophet as
emblematic of the fields and groves of Paradise.
Mohammed, having derived his idea of heaven indirectly from the
Chaldean accounts of the Garden of Eden, and that of the devil from
the dualism of Persian mythology, borrowed the name and description of
the place of torment from the Jews, who denominated hell Ge-Hinnom,
literally, the “Vale of Hinnom,” from a fertile and pleasant valley
near Jerusalem, which, however, was rendered execrable in spite of its
attractions, on account of its being the home of the relentless Moloch,
upon whose altar was periodically immolated the flower of the Hebrew
youth. The rabbinical division into seven stages, entered by as many
gates, and each set apart for a different degree of punishment, is
adopted without sensible alteration. If reference to Paradise is seldom
made in the Koran, the details of the tortures of the damned are, on
the other hand, remarkable for their vividness and frequency, and,
conceived by the flights of an unbridled imagination, are delineated
with all the earnestness of a mind convinced of their fearful reality.
The Koran, like the Zendavesta, which enjoins the tilling of the
soil as an indispensable religious duty, recommends the practice of
agricultural pursuits, the extension of commerce, and the foundation
and development of every species of manufacturing industry. The
encouragement of these occupations, by representing them as
praiseworthy and agreeable to God, with a view to their general
adoption by a people who had hitherto considered trade and manual labor
as contemptible, was naturally a task of considerable difficulty.
But expectations of pecuniary advantage, joined to the prospect of
individual distinction and national glory, speedily removed this
prejudice; especially in a society which contained no privileged
classes, and recognized none of the artificial and depressing
obligations of feudalism. In consequence of this wise recommendation,
the restrictions of caste--which had never prevailed in Arabia to the
extent common to the kingdoms of Asia, probably because it possessed
no hierarchy and no organized system of government--were eradicated;
all employments of an honorable character were placed upon an equal
footing; and the merchant and the artisan each enjoyed a degree of
dignity, popular esteem, and social importance proportionate to his
talents and success.
Although the Koran has been made the subject of interminable
commentaries, numbering forty thousand as near as can be estimated,
and isolated precepts have been expanded and distorted for the purpose
of forming an elaborate system of jurisprudence, it was never intended
as a general text-book of law. The few maxims upon this subject which
it contains were borrowed partly from the Hebrews, but chiefly from
the sanguinary code of the early Arabians. Some, in addition to those
above mentioned, grew out of the requirements of particular cases;
the majority of them, however, relate to the domestic difficulties of
the Prophet and to the regulation of the harem. Notwithstanding the
latter preferably adopted the Koran as the basis of his legal decisions
whenever it was practicable, it is a well-known fact that after his
death the collections of the Sunnah furnished a standard of broader
application, and of scarcely less authoritative character, in the
settlement of the principles of Mohammedan law.
The Koran commands relief of the oppressed, protection of the
defenceless, mercy to the orphan, and kindness to animals. It enjoins
the strict performance of engagements, even though entered into with
members of a hostile creed; in humiliating contrast with the policy
of Catholic Rome, whose children were perpetually absolved from the
observance of contracts concluded with infidels. It denounces awful
penalties against the murderer and the suicide. In its pages the
profound deference that usually attaches to aristocratic birth and
distinguished station is ignored; titled insolence is not permitted to
assert superiority over the unpretending worshipper, and the monarch
and the beggar meet as brethren before the throne of Almighty God. The
right of private judgment is repeatedly and authoritatively declared
to be the privilege of every believer; the humblest Moslem may place
his own interpretation on the texts of the alleged revelation; and his
conception of their meaning and application is entirely independent
of the edicts of priests or the suspicious decisions of synods and
councils.
Abstinence from swine’s flesh and from the blood of all animals is
enforced through hygienic considerations arising from experience of
the injurious effects of such food in tropical climates; and the
requirement of personal cleanliness by frequent and regular lustration
has its origin in the same vigilant solicitude for the public welfare.
A marked difference of ideas and phraseology is to be discerned in the
Suras delivered at Mecca and Medina respectively; the former being
more poetic, inspiring, and defiant than the latter. As Mohammed
consolidated his power, the text of the Koran evinced more of the
calmness and dignity of the ruler than of the fire of the enthusiast.
The earnest desire to make converts of the Jews is disclosed by the
appeal to a common ancestry, and by the politic incorporation of
Talmudic legends into the holy book which was to replace the Bible;
while the signal failure to secure this result is foreshadowed by
threats of divine wrath soon to be realized by slavery, exile, and
death. Though Arabia was full of infidels, and even a large proportion
of the idolaters observed the rites of their religion merely as a
matter of form and fashion, and were deeply infected with skepticism,
it is singular that Mohammed, in his denunciations of hypocrisy and
idolatry, did not utter a word in condemnation of atheistical ideas.
The book, moreover, which was to be the guide of a sect whose adherents
improved algebra, discovered chemical analysis, and brought agriculture
to an unprecedented degree of perfection, contains no science, and
only the most rudimentary notions of civil government. According to
the Koran, the sun sets in a morass of black mud; water is the element
whence all life is derived; and the conceptions of natural phenomena
which are gravely set forth in its pages are only worthy of the vagrant
fancies of children and barbarians.
Among Orientals the Koran is invariably published in Arabic, the sacred
language of the Mussulmans, who are instructed in it during childhood,
just as orthodox Jews are early familiarized with the Hebrew tongue. It
is not known through the medium of translation in Mohammedan countries
unless when the latter is interlined with the original; so that the
reader, by comparing the different texts, may have an opportunity to
judge of the qualifications and accuracy of the translator. Great
luxury is usually exhibited in the embellishment of the sacred volume.
Its leaves are blue or purple, odorous with costly perfumes, its
letters of gold. Its covers are often studded with jewels. Amidst its
interwoven arabesques the name of God appears, repeated thousands
of times. No Mussulman handles it without every demonstration of
reverence. It almost always bears upon the side an admonition not to
touch it with unclean hands; an unnecessary precaution for the devout,
whose respect for its contents is indeed not unreasonable, as we may
perceive from a single invocation taken at random, and not conspicuous
among the expressions of sublime piety to be found upon almost every
page: “Architect of the heaven and the earth, thou art my support in
this world and the next. Cause me to die faithful to the law. Introduce
me into the assembly of the just.”
Islam means substantially the Religion of Peace. From this verbal
form are derived the terms Mussulman and Moslem, indicating all who
are submissive to the will of God. The commonly adopted appellation
Mohammedan is not countenanced by followers of the Prophet, and
is of European origin. The Islamitic confession of faith is the
simplest known to any creed; it merely involves the repetition of
the formula, “There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his Apostle.”
By the acceptance and utterance of this phrase, any one may become a
Mussulman; although the observance of the practical duties of prayer,
fasting, alms-giving, and pilgrimage, urged with such eloquence in the
Koran, are regarded as obligatory upon all professing that religion.
Moslems pray five times daily, and before each prayer an ablution must
be performed, as a token that the suppliant has cleansed his heart of
every vestige of insincerity and impure desire. The Pagan Arabs, as
often as they addressed their supplications to their ruling divinity,
turned their faces to the rising sun, and when Mohammed instituted
his form of prayer, he selected as the objective point, or Kiblah,
the temple of Jerusalem, with the design of attracting the Jews; but
after the conversion of the latter was seen to be impracticable, and
no further reason for conciliation existed, the Kaaba was substituted;
and thenceforth the holy shrine of Mecca became the Kiblah of the
Moslem faith. During the month of Ramadhan--set apart because in it was
communicated the first revelation--a fast is enjoined throughout the
domain of Islam, and abstinence from food and drink is required from
sunrise to sunset; an intolerable hardship in torrid lands, where the
month often falls in summer on account of the constantly retrograding
divisions of the lunar year.
The unostentatious bestowal of alms was a duty whose importance
Mohammed constantly impressed upon his followers as a cardinal virtue;
the Moslem is taxed to the tenth of his income for the benefit of
the poor; and if his wealth has been increased through injustice
or dishonesty, the penalty of a double contribution is exacted.
Pilgrimage, the last of the religious obligations of Islamism, whenever
possible, should be performed in person; its observance confers a
life-long distinction, and its neglect implies a deplorable want of
energy in the believer that may compromise his happiness hereafter.
When the pilgrim enters the sacred territory, which extends for several
miles in every direction from Mecca, he lays aside his clothes,
performs complete ablution, and dons the Ihram, or Garment of Holiness,
which is composed of two long, seamless pieces of cotton cloth, one to
be wrapped about the waist, and the other to be adjusted upon the upper
part of the body so as to leave the right shoulder bare. All covering
for the head is prohibited; a severe restriction under the blazing sun
of the Hedjaz. He now approaches the Kaaba, kisses the Black Stone,
and makes the circuit of the edifice seven times, repeating certain
prayers prescribed for the occasion. Next he drinks of the waters of
the holy well Zemzem, which tradition asserts burst forth spontaneously
at the feet of Hagar when she and Ishmael were about to perish of
thirst in the wilderness. Near at hand is the Station of Abraham, a
large stone upon which the Patriarch is supposed to have stood when
he built the Kaaba, whither the pilgrim must now resort and perform
his devotions. Finally, he leaves the precincts of the shrine and runs
seven times between Safa and Merwa, two elevations beyond the walls of
the mosque; a ceremony commemorative of the despair of Hagar in her
search for water to sustain the life of her suffering child before the
fountains of Zemzem were miraculously opened. Upon the eighth day of
the Pilgrimage, a mighty host, amounting not infrequently to the number
of seventy-five thousand souls, with twenty-five thousand camels and
countless other animals for sacrifice, sets out for Mount Arafat, ten
miles distant, from whose summit a sermon is preached by the chief imam
of the Mosque of Mecca. The sermon concluded, all hurry amidst great
confusion to the Valley of Mina, where each pilgrim should cast seven
pebbles at three pillars representing the devil, in commemoration of
an incident in the life of Abraham. The animals, sheep and camels,
are next slaughtered,--a ceremony symbolical of the sacrifice by the
patriarch, whose victim, however, is stated by Arabian tradition to
have been Ishmael instead of Isaac,--and the pilgrims are then at
liberty to resume their ordinary garments, shave their heads, trim
their beards, and pare their nails; acts considered illegal before the
various rites of the Pilgrimage have been performed according to the
prescribed routine.
The visit to the Prophet’s tomb at Medina is not compulsory, but is
indispensable to secure the honorable title of Hadj, which confers the
privilege of wearing a green turban, and excites the perpetual envy
of those unfortunates whose physical incapacity or limited financial
circumstances will not permit a journey to the Holy Cities of Arabia.
“Show me a people’s God,” said Euripides, “and I will tell you that
people’s history.” To the history of Islam is this significant remark
especially appropriate. The Moslem conception of the Deity is one of
unapproachable grandeur and sublimity. While placed immeasurably above
His creatures, their praise and their petitions are always tendered
Him without the officious intervention of a privileged caste, and
wherever the hour of prayer may find the worshipper, whether in the
retirement of his home, in the noisy bazaar, upon the deck of a vessel
in mid-ocean, or amidst the awful stillness and solitude of the Desert.
The practical value and consequent importance of a religion consist not
so much by whom or under what circumstances it is alleged to have been
founded, but in what it has effected for the happiness and permanent
improvement of humanity.
Through the enthusiasm inspired by its exalted ideas of Almighty power,
Islam extirpated idolatry so thoroughly, that in the second generation
after it was promulgated men feared even to mention the names of the
false gods of their fathers. It made cannibalism detestable, and swept
away human sacrifices, with which the Arabs had been familiar for a
period whose commencement was long anterior to the days of Abraham.
It softened the asperities of warfare; extended to the vanquished the
advantages of instant liberty and prospective distinction, upon the
sole condition of conversion; it protected the unfortunate captive from
violence, and abolished the shocking practice of mutilation of the
dead. Its hostility to the spirit of feudalism insured the protection
and freedom of every degree and profession of mankind. It elevated the
position of woman; repressed the unblushing licentiousness prevalent
in the Age of Ignorance; formulated an equitable law of divorce, where
separation had been previously a matter of caprice; and shielded
the wife from the cruelty, avarice, and injustice of the husband. It
stamped out, at once and forever, the horrible crime of infanticide.
It prohibited not merely the abuse of wine and other intoxicants,
but even the slightest indulgence in them. It declared divination
and all games of chance to be devices of Satan, whose practice would
inevitably cause a forfeiture of Paradise. While countenancing slavery,
it ameliorated the condition of the slave, who, under the patriarchal
customs of the Orient, enjoyed the familiar intercourse and shared
the paternal care of the master; declared his manumission to be the
most commendable of acts and the most effective of penances; defined
his rights, regulated the measure of his punishment and the amount of
his ransom, and established the humane provision that, when sold, the
slave-mother should never be separated from her child. It recommended
as indispensable duties of the true believer the practice of humility,
of resignation, of benevolence. By proclaiming the equality of all
men and by the persistent inculcation of the virtues of charity and
forgiveness, it gradually weakened, and ultimately abrogated, the law
of blood-revenge, which the Bedouin had been accustomed to consider
his most cherished privilege; a right whose violation, according to
popular opinion, involved the honor of his tribe and the assertion
of his manhood. It liberated property from the arbitrary impositions
of a horde of petty chieftains, who levied excessive tribute to the
infinite detriment of commerce, and imposed a single tax--the tenth
of the increase--understood and acquiesced in by all. It punished
mercilessly the abuses which arose from the unprincipled exactions of
usury, and, by the enforcement of laws of unexampled rigor, guaranteed
the safety of travellers in regions where successful robbery had been a
mark of personal distinction, and where the outrage of private rights
was still the unquestioned prerogative of every inhabitant whose arm
was more powerful than that of his neighbor. Attaching the highest
importance to habitual cleanliness, it commended its daily observance,
and, to avoid a plausible excuse for neglect, it suggested the use of
sand, as symbolical of water, in localities where the latter could not
be obtained. It admitted into its ceremonial the wise and time-honored
custom of circumcision; a purely sanitary regulation, whose important
physiological significance every surgeon will readily comprehend.
Islam is emphatically a religion of good works, and the believer is
constantly reminded that upon the Day of Judgment his meritorious
acts and deeds of benevolence will speak eloquently in his favor,
although his lips have long been closed in the silence of the grave.
No organized body of ecclesiastics, greedy of gain and notoriety and
utterly unscrupulous as to the means of obtaining them, thronged its
temples; for, in its original purity, it dispensed with a salaried
priesthood, and all who read or expounded the Koran in public were
expressly forbidden to receive for their services any remuneration
whatever. The unseemly contests of sacerdotal ambition, the senseless
privations of asceticism, the bloody and turbulent spirit of monastic
bigotry, were, by the prudence and foresight of its founder, excluded
from its system. Imposing a moderate contribution upon all those in
its dominions who declined to abjure the faith of their ancestors, it,
upon the other hand, refused to the ministers of other religions, its
vassals, the privilege of taxing the members of their congregations
without their consent. It impressed upon youth, of whatever rank or
station, the obligations of polite and courteous behavior and the
unremitting exercise of filial piety. It accorded to every seeker
after truth the inestimable privilege of private interpretation and
individual opinion,--an inherent right of man refused by Christianity
until the time of Luther, who, on account of his advocacy of this
innovation, was himself denounced as a Mohammedan; and in certain
countries of Europe, not asserted until the seventeenth century, except
in secret, and under the threatening shadows of the stake and the
scaffold. Unlike other religions, it did not refuse salvation to those
who rejected its dogmas. In the presence of the allurements of the
seraglio, it still represented continence as the most precious jewel
of a believer; but, perceiving the vices provoked by the unnatural
restraints of monastic life, it prohibited celibacy, and, for two
centuries after the death of the Prophet, the faquir, the santon, and
the dervish were unknown. By adopting to a certain extent the primitive
code of antiquity, eliminating the evil and retaining the good it
contained, it appealed strongly to religious sentiment and national
pride, rendered still more binding the virtues of public faith and
private hospitality, and, by its repudiation of idolatry in all its
forms, concentrated the mind of the devotee upon the compassion, the
justice, the infinite grandeur and majesty of God.
A marked peculiarity of Islam is the absence of the female element
from its ritual. Even now, in the days of its degeneracy, women have
no place in the calendar of its saints; and yet we are aware that
among all former, and many contemporaneous, religions the employment
of priestesses was common, and female deities were favorite objects of
adoration. The Virgin of the Koran--though her immaculate conception
was conceded seven hundred and sixty-one years in advance of the
decision of the Council of Basel--is, in all other respects, an
ordinary mortal, and is far from possessing the dignity and importance
of the famous Isis, that fascinating goddess who, banished from the
banks of the Nile, was exalted, crowned with her starry emblems, in
equal majesty and superior beauty, upon a more gorgeous throne in the
imperial city of Catholic Rome.
Mohammed was not exempt from the prejudices entertained by his
countrymen towards the sex. The sentimental gallantry and respectful
homage tendered its members by Western nations is unknown to the
suspicious and sarcastic Oriental. The Prophet declared that the
majority of persons he saw in hell during his nocturnal journey were
women. But if the power of woman to act directly upon the fortunes
of Islam was disdained, her indirect influence in that direction was
enormous and undeniable. The harems of the polygamous conquerors at
once absorbed the noblest and fairest maidens of the households of the
vanquished. The children of these mothers became, without exception,
Moslems; and, after the lapse of a generation, the lingering traces of
other beliefs disappeared, and nothing but a reconquest and a fresh
immigration, or a miraculous interposition of Providence, could have
restored the land, so recently subjugated, to its pristine faith.
In religion, as in politics, success is the generally recognized
criterion of truth; of the multitude, few have time or inclination for
the solution of abstruse theological questions; but substantial results
are unmistakable, and even the most credulous are subject to the
contagion of example. The successive and dazzling victories of Islam
were, in the eyes of its superstitious adversaries, the most convincing
argument of the divinity of its origin.
The doctrine of compulsion subsequently associated with Islam was,
as already stated, not an original or essential part of its dogma.
Mohammed did not advise recourse to the sword until all means of
peaceable persuasion had been exhausted, and then only during the
continuance of active hostilities. The moral impulse which Islam
received as soon as its first victories were won was remarkable and
suggestive. It was but the manifestation of the reverence for Force, a
feeling which is never eradicated from human nature even in the mostly
highly civilized communities. The Roman empire was founded upon this
principle, of which it subsequently became the practical embodiment and
representative. The successors of the Cæsars, the Khalifs, well aware
of its power over the masses, retained and perpetuated its influence,
and the scimetar and the Koran usurped the place and dignity of the
deposed deities Mars and Hercules. And even in our day we see the
evidence of the survival of this sentiment--as old as man himself--in
the ceremonies relating to marriage by force among barbarous nations;
in the proverbial, yet unconscious, admiration of both sexes--and
especially of women--for the soldier; in the applause that greets the
espada in the bull-ring; and in the homage and hero-worship accorded to
the successful athlete and pugilist.
The mountain region of the Hedjaz, the rocky and barren valleys of
Palestine, are insignificant in extent, destitute of natural resources,
and without political importance in the eyes of the conquerors and
rulers of nations. Yet within their contracted limits were promulgated
the three religions which have exercised a predominant influence over
the destinies of the most diverse and widely separated races of the
globe. The unsocial and repellent character of the institutions of
Moses which discouraged proselytism did not prevent the power of Hebrew
genius from being felt in every country in which the detested sectaries
of Israel established themselves. Christianity and Mohammedanism have
by turns disputed the empire of the civilized world. The Khalifs, the
spiritual heads of Islam, were long the exponents of intellectual
culture, the masters of the fairest regions of Europe and Asia, the
discerning patrons of art and letters. The most renowned of the Cæsars,
the greatest of modern potentates, were alike inferior in rank and
public consideration to the Supreme Pontiffs, who inherited the throne
ennobled by the traditions of Roman glory, and whose dignity was
confirmed by the omnipotent authority of God. No secular government,
worthy of mention in history, has ever been instituted in a region
so dreary and inhospitable as that from whence the most powerful and
practical forms of faith that have ever enthralled humanity deduce
their origin. The changes which all of the latter, in turn, have
undergone, present a suggestive commentary on the perishable character
of religious systems. The influence of the Babylonian captivity upon
Judaism is apparent in every book of the Old Testament and in many
of those of the New. We may safely conjecture that Christianity was
something very different in the time of Tiberius from what it was
in the time of Constantine, and we know what radical changes were
made in its canons and ritual by Gregory the Great and Luther. The
ancient manuscripts of the Gospels--perhaps destroyed for sinister
reasons--have left no data for speculation as to their contents; but
it is not unreasonable to at least surmise that the originals did not
offer the glaring examples of inelegant diction and barbaric idioms
that deform the modern versions. Nor has Islam escaped the fate of
its predecessors, the result of the vicissitudes of time, and of the
prejudices, weaknesses, and ambition of their votaries. Its distinctive
peculiarity was its positive disclaimer of supernatural powers; yet
the miracles attributed to Mohammed compose a considerable portion of
its sacred literature, which is also oppressed and discredited by a
vast mass of preposterous fables, treasured up for centuries in the
voluminous body of Islamitic tradition. The simplicity of its creed
would seem to effectually preclude all attempts at sectarian division;
yet seventy-three sects exist, whose members lose no opportunity to
persecute each other with acrimonious hostility. Mohammed execrated
idolatry and the arts of the diviner, and denied the merit of works
of supererogation; and now relics are suspended in the mosques; omens
are sought in the Koran; intercession of saints is daily implored; the
Persians worship the Imams; and the Omanites, instead of recognizing
the Kaaba, render their obeisance to the Kiblah of their Sabean
ancestors, the pole-star of the heavens.
In the Prophet’s attempts to secure the improvement of public morals,
his attention was particularly drawn to Mecca as the central point of
Islam, whither the believer turns in his daily devotions, and towards
which his sightless eyes are directed when his body is deposited in
the tomb. But the effects of his salutary admonitions died with him;
and the Meccans, relieved from restraint, again became notorious for
the excesses which had formerly made the Holy City a reproach even
to heathen Arabia. It is a deplorable fact, and one which unhappily
affords but too much excuse for the gibes of the profane, that those
seats of piety which public opinion has invested with the sacred
prestige of celestial influence are the very ones whose population is
the most blasphemous, vile, and degraded. The worst Mussulmans of the
world are the Arabs of the Hedjaz, as the Italian populace has ever
been the scoffer at papal infallibility and the relentless enemy of the
Vicar of God. The three cities of the world whose inhabitants early
acquired, and have since maintained, the most unenviable reputation for
depravity and licentiousness are Jerusalem, Mecca, and Rome.
Unlike most theological systems to which men, in all ages, have
rendered their obedient and pious homage, no mystery obscures the
origin and foundation of Islam. The purity and simplicity of its
principles have undergone no change. Its history has been preserved
by the diligence of innumerable writers. The life and characteristics
of its Prophet, even to the smallest detail, are accessible to the
curiosity of every enterprising scholar.
The austere character of a faith which, at its inception, exacts a
rigid compliance with the minutest formalities of its ritual, naturally
becomes relaxed and modified after that system has attained to worldly
importance and imperial authority; or, in the language of one of the
greatest of modern writers, “a dominant religion is never ascetic.” It
is strange that Islam, which, in this respect, as in many others, has
conformed to the general law of humanity, and now acknowledges tenets
and allows practices that would have struck the subjects of Abu-Bekr
and Omar with amazement, has been able to preserve in such perfection
the observance of its ceremonial; especially when it had no organized
sacerdotal power to sustain it. The absence of an ecclesiastical order
which could dictate the policy of the throne, and humble the pride of
the ermine and purple with the dust in the presence of some audacious
zealot, also left untrammelled the way for scientific investigation and
research, and, more than all else, contributed to dispel the darkness
of mediæval times. The doctrine of toleration enunciated by Mohammed
gave no encouragement to that system of repression whose activity
has exhausted every means of checking the growth of philosophical
knowledge, by imposing the most direful spiritual and temporal
penalties upon every teacher who ventures to publicly explain its
principles; and it is a matter of far deeper import to the civilization
of the twentieth century, than is implied by the mere performance
of an act of devotion, when the Temple of Mecca--the seat of a
time-honored faith, from whose shrine emanated the spirit of learning
that redeemed degraded Europe--is saluted five times every day by the
reverent homage of concentric circles of believers, one hundred and
fifty million in number, from Tangier to Pekin, from the borders of
Siberia to the Equinoctial Line.
We may well consider with admiration the rapid progress and enduring
effects of this extraordinary religion which everywhere brought order,
wealth, and happiness in its train; which, in destroying the deities
of the Kaaba, swept away the traditions of thirty centuries; which
adopted those pagan rites that it could not abolish; which seized and
retained the birthplace of Christianity; which dispersed over so wide
a territory alike the theocracy of the Jews and the ritual of Rome;
which drove the Magi from the blazing altars of Persia; which usurped
the throne and sceptre of the Byzantine Church; which supplanted the
fetichism of the African desert; which trampled upon the mysteries of
Isis, Osiris, and Horus, and revealed to the wondering Egyptians the
secret of the Most High God; which invaded the Councils of Catholicism,
and suggested a fundamental article of its belief; which fashioned
the graceful arches of our most famous cathedrals; which placed its
seal upon the earth in the measurement of a degree, and inscribed its
characters in living light amidst the glittering constellations of
the heavens; which has left its traces in the most familiar terms of
the languages of Europe; which affords daily proof of its beneficent
offices in the garments that we wear, in the books that we read, in
the grains of our harvests, in the fruits of our orchards, in the
flowers of our gardens; and which gave rise to successive dynasties
of sovereigns, whose supreme ambition seemed to be to exalt the
character of their subjects, to transmit unimpaired to posterity the
inestimable treasures of knowledge, and to extend and perpetuate the
intellectual empire of man. These signal and unparallelled results were
effected by the inflexible constancy, the lofty genius, the political
sagacity, of an Arabian shepherd, deficient in the very rudiments of
learning, reared among a barbarous people divided into tribes whose
mutual hostility had been intensified by centuries of warfare, who
had no organized system of government, who considered the mechanical
and mercantile arts degrading, who recognized no law but that of
force, and knew no gods but a herd of grotesque and monstrous idols.
Robbery was their profession, murder their pastime. Except within the
precincts of their camp, no friend, unless connected by the sacred
ties of blood, was secure. They devoured the flesh of enemies slain
in battle. Deceit always excepted, cruelty was their most prominent
national characteristic. Their offensive arrogance, relentless
enmity, and obstinate tenacity of purpose were, in a direct ratio to
their ignorance and their brutalizing superstition, confirmed by the
prodigies, the omens, and the legends of ages.
To undertake the radical amelioration of such political and social
conditions was a task of appalling, of apparently insuperable
difficulty. Its fortunate accomplishment may not indicate the active
interposition of Divine authority. The glories which invest the history
of Islam may be entirely derived from the valor, the virtue, the
intelligence, the genius, of man. If this be conceded, the largest
measure of credit is due to him who conceived its plan, promoted its
impulse, and formulated the rules which insured its success. In any
event, if the object of religion be the inculcation of morals, the
diminution of evil, the promotion of human happiness, the expansion
of the human intellect; if the performance of good works will avail in
that great day when mankind shall be summoned to its final reckoning,
it is neither irreverent nor unreasonable to admit that Mohammed was
indeed an Apostle of God.
CHAPTER III
THE CONQUEST OF AL-MAGHREB
647–707
General Disorder following the Death of Mohammed--Regulations of
Islam--Progress of the Moslem Arms--Northern Africa, the Land
of the Evening--Its Fertility--Its Population--Expedition of
Abdallah--Defeat of the Greeks--Invasion of Okbah--Foundation
of Kairoan--March of Hassan--Ancient Carthage--Its Influence
on Europe--Its Splendid Civilization--Its Maritime Power,
its Colonies, its Resources--Description of the City--Its
Architectural Grandeur--Its Harbors, Temples, and Public
Edifices--Roman Carthage--Its Luxury and Depravity--Its
Destruction by the Moslems--Wars with the Berbers--Musa
appointed General--His Romantic History--His Character--He
subdues Al-Maghreb--Africa incapable of Permanent Civilization.
The dissensions excited by the fierce hordes of Arabia, whose
intolerance of authority and aversion to tribute had been with
difficulty controlled by the mysterious influence of Mohammed, at his
death broke forth with redoubled violence, and seriously threatened,
for a time, not only the integrity of the Moslem empire, but even the
existence and perpetuity of the recently established faith. With the
exception of a few tribes which the ties of blood or considerations
of personal interest, joined to their intimate commercial relations
with the inhabitants of the Holy Cities, retained in a precarious
allegiance, the whole population of the Peninsula rose at once in arms.
Each petty chieftain, jealous of the central power, and endowed with
an extravagant opinion of his own abilities as ruler and legislator,
arrogated to himself divine authority, and aspired to the title and
the prerogatives of a prophet of God. The populace, half idolatrous
and half infidel at heart, and which had received the injunctions of
the Koran with apparent enthusiasm and inward contempt, welcomed with
joy each new revelation, as affording a prospective state of war and
discord so thoroughly in consonance with its predatory instincts and
turbulent character.
With this condition of affairs, whose gravity might well have appalled
the mind of an experienced statesman, the executive ability and
diplomatic tact of the first Khalif, a man bred to mercantile pursuits,
yet admirably fitted by nature for the arduous duties of his exalted
position, were found fully competent to deal. The insurgent armies were
annihilated; the false prophets killed, driven into exile, or compelled
to renounce their claims; the rebellious tribes were decimated, and
their property seized as the legal spoils of war. With keen insight
into the character of his countrymen, Abu-Bekr employed their fiery and
indomitable spirit in the extension of Islam and the settlement and
consolidation of its hitherto ill-defined and uncertain jurisdiction.
The policy partially developed under his wise management was finally
established and perfected by the iron will and martial genius of Omar.
The latter realized thoroughly the paramount importance of preserving
unimpaired the unity and prestige of his nation, whose victories,
in brilliancy and political effect, had already surpassed those of
any preceding conqueror, and bade fair to make the dominion of Islam
coextensive with the world. In pursuance of this design, the spoils of
conquest, the tribute of subjugated nations, the enormous rental of the
plains of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, the rich harvests of the Valley
of the Nile, the magnificent gifts of distant sovereigns--hoping to
escape a visitation from the swarthy horsemen of the Desert--were all
placed in a common fund, from which was pensioned every individual
belonging to the Arab race, in regular gradation, the stipend
increasing with years, dignity, and value of military service. No one
was too insignificant to have his name inscribed upon the official
registers at Medina; and even slaves, women, and newly-born infants
were, as well as the most renowned warriors, regularly paid their
stated allowance. In the various countries reduced by the prowess
of the Moslems, the lands, though confiscated to the uses of the
state, remained by special provision inalienable, and, while forming
a part of the public domain, could not be acquired by those who had
conquered them, and continued to be occupied and tilled by their former
proprietors. By these regulations, also, the legal residence of the
Arab was established and made perpetual in the Peninsula. Everywhere
else, no matter what his rank or employment, he was but a sojourner,
liable at any moment, without warning, to be summoned to battle with
the infidel; and even viceroys of the Khalif could not purchase a
foot of ground in the cities which they ruled with all but absolute
power. While in the case of female captives, the most unbounded license
was permitted and encouraged, the believer was particularly enjoined
to select for his wives the daughters of some Arab clan; and his
children, without exception, were early taught to assert their assumed
superiority of birth, and to look down upon all foreigners, however
illustrious they might be by descent, wealth, military distinction, or
literary attainments.
The comprehensive and exacting laws of Omar, which arbitrarily
determined questions of legislation and finance, the marshalling of
armies, the adjustment of territorial disputes, the arrangement of
the household, and the offices of religion, laid the foundation for
the future greatness of Islam. By his edict the date of the Hegira
was fixed. His inflexible sense of justice inflicted the humiliating
punishment of the lash, prescribed by law for drunkenness, upon beggar
and noble alike. The Code which bears his name is remarkable, even in
an age of fanaticism, for the severe restrictions it imposed on the
personal liberty of Jews and Christians, the only sectaries to whom
Moslem clemency permitted the practice of their rites and customs.
The assassination of Omar in the prime of manhood, and before his great
designs had been fully matured, was the signal for feuds, conspiracies,
and every form of domestic convulsion, fomented by tribal jealousy,
ancient prejudice, and disappointed ambition; disturbances which the
weak and vacillating spirit of his successor was unable to repress.
Yet, despite the disadvantages arising from the intellectual impotence
of Othman, the constitution of the Mussulman theocracy possessed
sufficient vitality to retard dissolution for a considerable time.
The glorious traditions of a decade of uninterrupted victory were not
easily forgotten. The trophies wrested from the despised and hated foe
were displayed in every city and village; his banners drooped in the
courts of every mosque; the harem, the street, the bazaar, swarmed with
captives from the most distant climes; while the annual distribution
from the public treasury evidenced at once the wealth and weakness of
the infidel and the paternal generosity of the conqueror. The Persian
monarchy which had successfully withstood the attacks of consul,
dictator, and emperor, supported by the discipline and inexhaustible
resources of Roman power, had fallen, after two great battles, before
the impetuous valor of the Moslem hosts. Palestine, with its hallowed
associations, its memories of all that is most sacred in the annals of
Christianity, its scenes of divine miracle and mystery, of privation,
suffering, and triumphant glory, was in the hands of the Mussulman,
whose sacrilegious footsteps daily defiled the precincts of Gethsemane
and Golgotha, and whose call to prayer arose from a magnificent
shrine erected upon the site of the ruined temple of Solomon. The
Greek Emperor, after a reign of extraordinary vicissitudes which had,
in some degree, retrieved the vanished prestige of the Roman arms
deprived in rapid succession of the choicest realms of his empire,
was now virtually a prisoner, protected only by the Bosphorus and the
impregnable walls of his capital. Egypt, the depository of traditions
of incalculable antiquity, had submitted, after a brief and determined
struggle, to the common fate of nations, and the banners of Islam
floated in triumph from the towers of Alexandria and Memphis. It was
with a feeling of awe and wonder that the fierce, untutored Arab gazed
upon the monuments of this strange and, to him, enchanted land. Before
him were the Pyramids, rising in massive grandeur upon the borders
of the Desert; the stupendous temples; the mural paintings, whose
brilliant coloring was unimpaired after the lapse of fifty centuries;
the groups of ponderous sphinxes, imposing even in their mutilation;
the speaking statues, which, facing the East, with the first ray of
light saluted the coming day; the obelisks, sculptured upon shaft and
pedestal with the eternal records of long extinguished dynasties;
the vast subterranean tombs, whose every sarcophagus was a gigantic
monolith; and the effigies of the old Egyptian kings, personifications
of dignity and power, holding in their hands the symbols of time
and eternity, or grasping, in lieu of the sceptre, that emblematic
staff, which, more potent than the wand of the mightiest magician,
has controlled the destinies of millions of men, and which became in
turn the wand of the Grecian hierophant in the mysteries of Eleusis,
the lituus of the Roman augur, and the crosier of the Catholic
archbishop. At his feet rolled the turbid flood of the mysterious
river, to whose periodical inundation was due the civilization of that
venerable country. The anticipation of this phenomenon had necessitated
the study of astronomy; its overflow had developed a perfect system
of irrigation, and a complicated body of laws, which regulated the
distribution of its fertilizing waters; its subsidence had required a
thorough acquaintance with the rules of geometry and mensuration; and
the noxious vapors arising from its steaming deposits demanded the
speedy disinfection and embalming of all putrescent animal matter, a
precaution which was rigidly enforced by established custom and the
inexorable precepts of religion. The initiations of the priesthood, the
jealously treasured maxims of its occult knowledge, the attributes of
its innumerable deities, all bore an intimate relation to the waters
of the Nile, whose recurring and invariable changes also indicated the
seasons of the Egyptian year, which were measured by the harvests.
The influence produced by the sight of these marvels upon the destiny
of the simple Arab, whose horizon had hitherto been defined by the
shifting sands and quivering vapors of the Desert, by whom the grandeur
and symmetry of architectural design were undreamt of, and whose ideas
of decoration were limited to the barbaric tracery of an earthen jar or
the coarse patterns of the primitive loom, was incalculable. As every
civilization is but an adaptation to new conditions of elements more
or less perceptible in those which have preceded it, so it was with
that of the Arabs. Their architecture, mainly indebted for its beauty
to the selection of designs from the vegetable world and the skilful
combination of geometrical forms, may in this respect justly lay claim
to originality. Nevertheless, in the groundwork of its finest edifices,
the practised eye can easily detect the foreign influence by which the
efforts of its artisans have been inspired; and the characteristics of
Persian, Egyptian, Carthaginian, and Byzantine are prominent in the
solid walls, the graceful curves, and the sparkling mosaics of the
builders’ masterpieces which adorn the widely-separated provinces of
the Mohammedan empire.
It was during the reign of Othman that the attention of the Moslems
was first seriously directed to the northern coast of Africa, a
region which, extending from the Nile to the Atlantic, comprised a
territory of one thousand miles in length by five hundred in breadth
in its largest diameter. In its approaches, which were made over
burning sands, it exhibited the familiar phenomena of the Desert. The
greater portion of its vast area was susceptible of cultivation, and
contiguous plantations and gardens marked, with an unbroken line of
verdure, the possessions of the once magnificent and still important
cities which in the days of her glory acknowledged the authority and
claimed the protection of the imperial metropolis of Carthage. Here the
most abundant harvests, the most luscious fruits, rewarded, with but
trifling exertion, the industry of the husbandman. Luxuriant pastures,
through which meandered sparkling brooks fed by perennial springs,
sustained large numbers of cattle and sheep. The date flourished in
such variety that it was only by its shape and stone that its species
could be determined. The soil was favorable to the olive, and oil
formed an important article of export. It was indeed a land of promise,
renowned in history, celebrated in myth and legend; the Ophir of Holy
Writ; the scene of the sufferings of Marius, Regulus, and Cato; where
originated many of the most charming fictions of classic mythology; the
home of Danaus, Antæus, and Atlas; for centuries the abode of Tyrian
civilization; the seat successively of Punic splendor, Roman luxury,
Vandal license, and Christian faith. In its capital Hamilcar had
prepared for the descent upon Sicily which had secured the mastery of
the Mediterranean, and Hannibal had planned the campaign which humbled
the pride of the Eternal City; the land which had received in its
bosom refugees from Palestine and Arabia, the founders and supporters
of a new and glorious empire; the see of St. Augustine; the enchanted
Garden, where dwelt the beautiful daughters of Erebus and Night; where
the gigantic portal marked by the two famous columns pointed out to the
Phœnician mariner the way to the Cassiterides--
“Abyla atque Calpe.”
Carthaginian enterprise for ages bartered its manufactures for the
tin of Britain and the luxuries of Syria; under the Romans, for four
centuries, its agricultural products maintained in profligate idleness
the degenerate inhabitants of Italy.
The further extremity of this region, which the poetic nomenclature
of the Oriental had designated by the name of Al-Maghreb, “The
Land of the Evening,” was the wealthier and more productive; but
its storm-swept coast had subordinated its trade to the superior
commercial advantages of the eastern half, now Tunis and Tripoli,
which was known as Ifrikiyah. A prefect appointed by the court of
Constantinople administered the government of these colonies, in the
name of the Emperor, but his jurisdiction was confined to a narrow
belt of territory, beyond which roamed at will bands of ferocious
and hardy barbarians, some of whom had no settled habitation; while
a considerable number dwelt in the slopes and defiles of the Atlas
Mountains, eking out a miserable subsistence by a superficial
cultivation of the soil and a precarious traffic with their scarcely
less civilized neighbors. The population of this province was, owing
to repeated immigration and invasion, and the consequent admixture
of races, of the most heterogeneous character. Along the coast, the
elegance of the Grecian type, occasionally modified by the dignified
features and martial bearing of the Roman, whose physical traits had
been partially preserved by the frequent renewal of garrisons and
the importation of colonists from Italy and Constantinople, largely
predominated. Further inland appeared, in the swarthy complexions,
blue eyes, and auburn locks, the cross between Vandal and Mauritanian,
side by side with the unmistakable lineaments of the Syrian and the
Jew. But most numerous of all, the most formidable in war, the most
perfidious in peace, were the Berbers, whose origin tradition has
variously assigned to Europe, Assyria, Arabia, Ethiopia, and Palestine.
Whatever may have been the home of this undoubtedly Semitic race, their
affinity with the Arabs was most conspicuous and remarkable. Generous,
brave, patient of suffering, prodigal of hospitality, reverential to
the aged, loyal to their kindred, impatient of restraint, merciless in
revenge, their character was an epitome of the rugged virtues and cruel
vices of the roving barbarian. The fighting qualities of this people,
joined to the inaccessible nature of their haunts, and, in no small
degree, aided by their poverty, had always secured for them immunity
from conquest. Political reverses had never been able to efface their
national peculiarities. Under persecution, while apparently conforming
to the public faith, they remained, in reality, fetich worshippers. The
long dominations of Phœnician, Roman, Byzantine, Teuton had effected no
alteration in their language--the Arabic alone has been able to engross
about a third of the terms of their guttural idiom. Their polity
resembled a republic, where each village was independent and governed
by a chieftain elected by the people. Time and again they had mustered
for service against the Emperor armies of thirty and forty thousand
men; but the first defeat dissolved their confederacy; and the rival
chiefs returned with increased avidity to the plunder and massacre of
their allies and friends. Their perfidy, which excited the unwilling
admiration of nations long practised in the arts of deceit, and which
was experienced to their cost by the Romans in the war with Jugurtha,
was, without doubt, in a measure responsible for the proverbial
reputation for duplicity--the “Punica fides”--of Carthage. Originally
idolaters, believers in sorcery and divination, and adorers of the Sun
and of Fire, their intercourse with their neighbors, considering its
irregular and transitory character, had been singularly productive
of changes in religious belief. The emissaries of Christianity had,
with but indifferent success, disseminated among them the mysteries
of their faith; but to the doctrines of the Pentateuch and the Talmud
they lent a willing ear, and the tenets of Judaism, although not a
little tinctured with the traditions of Pagan mythology, nominally
received the assent of the entire Berber nation. The peculiar type of
the Hebrew, insensibly diversified elsewhere by the associations of
commercial intercourse, and by the influence of soil, climate, and the
operation of laws more or less favorable to the fusion of races, had,
in the wilds of Northern Africa, found a congenial locality for its
preservation. The exiles who had escaped the persecutions of Titus and
Hadrian had settled there and prospered. Laying aside their proverbial
reserve, they had joined to their hereditary inclination for traffic
an unwonted disposition to acquire proselytes; and their opinions had
infected, to a greater or less extent, the population of the coast as
well as that of the interior, from the Greater Syrtis to the Pillars
of Hercules. Their relations and acquaintance extended not only to the
extreme Orient, but were sustained with the semi-barbarous courts of
Europe; and their sympathies with their brethren of Semitic origin,
assisted by the community of ideas, habits, and mode of life of the
Berber tribes, contributed, in a degree which cannot be overestimated,
to the establishment and preservation of the Western empire of Islam.
In the year 647, the covetous glances of the government at Medina
were turned towards the rich plantations and populous settlements
of Al-Maghreb; and the predatory inroads which had hitherto vexed
its borders were, for the first time, superseded by a systematic
and determined attempt at conquest. The weakness and partiality of
Othman, with whom the aggrandizement of his family was a paramount
consideration, had removed the famous Amru from the viceroyalty of
Egypt, and invested with its administration Abdallah-Ibn-Sa’d, the
foster-brother of the Khalif, a warrior of experience and courage and
the finest horseman of his nation, but a man whose renown had been
sullied by the crime of apostasy, and who had used an employment of
confidence to ridicule and revile the inspired teachings and sacred
character of the Prophet.
Calling into requisition all the resources of his government, this
Moslem general marched into the Desert with twenty thousand soldiers,
among them many of the companions of Mohammed and representatives of
the most noble tribes of Arabia. After a few unimportant skirmishes,
and a short but bloody engagement in which a division of the Greeks was
entirely destroyed, the Arab army advanced to Tripoli, and, investing
its walls, pushed forward the operations of the siege with an energy
hardly to be expected from a people whose experience had been confined
to marauding expeditions and the stratagems of partisan warfare. Under
the dominion of the Byzantine emperors, the office of prefect had been
substituted for that of the ancient proconsul; and this employment was
not only charged with the execution of the laws relating to civil and
military affairs, but also claimed jurisdiction over matters pertaining
to the welfare of the church, the appointment of its ministers, and the
enforcement of the canons of ecclesiastical discipline. The prefect
Gregory, whose talents had been exercised, and whose prowess had been
approved, in many negotiations and conflicts with the Berbers, at
the head of a tumultuous and undisciplined force of one hundred and
twenty thousand men, moved forward to the relief of Tripoli. Abandoning
the siege, the Arabs accepted the challenge, and a series of battles
ensued without decided advantage upon either side, until the prefect,
mortified that the numerical superiority of his troops should be
neutralized by the desperate courage of his adversaries, offered the
hand of his beautiful daughter--who, completely armed, was each day
conspicuous in the ranks of the vanguard--and a purse of one hundred
thousand pieces of gold to any one who would bring him the head of
the Moslem general. The courage of Abdallah, although he had faced
death in a hundred forms, was not proof against this effort of his
wily antagonist, and, remaining idly in his tent, he left the conduct
of operations to the care of his lieutenants. In the mean time there
arrived at the Arab camp a small detachment headed by Ibn-al-Zobeir, a
warrior of distinction, who heard with contempt of the pusillanimous
conduct of the general. Seeking him, he denounced his cowardice,
suggesting that he should retaliate by the offer of a similar sum, and
the prefect’s daughter as a slave, to whoever should cast at his feet
the head of the Greek commander. The advice was taken; the tempting
reward was published throughout the camp; the Arab youth were fired
by emulation to redoubled efforts; and Abdallah himself, shamed into
action, again appeared in the front of battle. But the overwhelming
numbers of the Greeks, inspired by the example of a few legions which
yet retained the traditions of Roman steadiness and discipline, and
supported by the rapid evolutions of the Numidian cavalry, famous
from the days of Jugurtha, still rendered the issue doubtful, and by
repeated engagements the ranks of the Arabs were being constantly
diminished. Again the talents of Ibn-al-Zobeir were called into
requisition; the battle was renewed as usual at daybreak; and when the
blazing sun had exhausted the strength of the combatants, both armies
retired to the shelter of their tents. But the Moslems had not all been
engaged, and a division composed of troops, selected for their bravery
and commanded by the intrepid Ibn-al-Zobeir, burst suddenly like a
thunderbolt upon the hostile camp.
Seized with a panic, as they were reposing after the arduous struggle
of the day, the ranks of the enemy were broken, the prefect was killed,
and the camp given over to pillage. A rich booty and innumerable
captives compensated the victors for their trials; the beauteous
Amazon became the slave of Ibn-al-Zobeir; and, after the capture of
the important city of Sufetela, the entire district acknowledged the
authority of the Khalif. The ravages of disease, the losses resulting
from a series of engagements lasting for months, and the lack of
reinforcements, made it impossible for Abdallah to garrison the towns,
or to retain in subjection the restless tribes of the interior; and he
consented, with alacrity, to accept a bribe of two million five hundred
thousand dinars and abandon the conquest. The spoil was sent to Medina,
and Othman further incurred the charges of injustice and nepotism by
presenting Abdallah with the royal fifth, and by permitting his cousin
Merwan to purchase the remainder at the low valuation of three hundred
talents of gold.
For nearly a quarter of a century, the civil wars provoked by the
conflicting claims of the various aspirants to the throne of the
khalifate and the succeeding political establishments left in security
the Greek possessions of the West. The Byzantine court learned with
amazement of the enormous ransom with which the inhabitants of Africa
had purchased the withdrawal of the invaders; and its avarice was
excited when it considered the resources of a country which could
collect so large a sum after having, for generations, been subject
to the rapacious inquisition of the imperial tax-gatherers. Without
delay, the Emperor demanded a contribution of the same amount as unpaid
tribute; and all the mechanism of extortion was employed, to complete
the ruin of his already impoverished subjects. Oppressed beyond
endurance, the Africans sent an embassy headed by the Patriarch himself
to Damascus, and reciting their grievances, described in glowing terms
to Muavia the wealth of their country and the advantages which must
accrue to the Moslems from its possession. The Khalif, deeply impressed
by their representations, ordered Ibn-Hajij, governor of Egypt, to
undertake the conquest; but the enterprise was not carried out with
the customary vigor of the Saracens, and resulted only in the partial
occupancy of the coast and the subjection of a few unimportant cities.
The permanent establishment of Mussulman rule dates, however, from
this expedition, and henceforth the standard of Islam, although often
furled before the intrepid spirit of the Berbers, was advanced, foot
by foot, to the far distant shores of the Western Ocean. The most
successful commander, and the one who alone, excepting Musa, made the
most enduring impression upon the valiant and treacherous barbarians of
Al-Maghreb, was Okbah-Ibn-Nafi, who was next invested with the command.
Entering the hostile region at the head of ten thousand veteran
cavalry, he made war with the same resolution and uncompromising spirit
which marked the careers of the daring Amru and Khalid, “The Sword of
God.” The Christians who refused, by either submission or conversion,
to acknowledge the divine origin of Islam were ruthlessly slaughtered;
but the orders of the Khalif explicitly prohibited the equipment or use
of naval armaments, and the seaports of the Greeks escaped, for the
time, the fate which was inevitable. The Berbers, beholding with wonder
the apparently invincible character of their enemy, equally fortunate
in plain and mountain fastness, defeating with ease their bravest
squadrons, and scaling, despite all obstacles, the all-but impregnable
defences of their strongholds, clothed him with the attributes of
divinity, and, submitting to his dominion, recognized the power of the
Khalif, while at the same time, abjuring their idolatry, they confessed
the unity and majesty of God. The advance of Okbah was the triumphant
progress of a conqueror. Almost unresisted, he traversed the regions
peopled by hordes of fierce barbarians, until, having penetrated to the
Atlantic, he rode his horse into its seething waters, and, drawing his
sword, cried out, “God is great! Were I not hindered by this sea, I
would go forward to the unknown kingdoms of the West, proclaiming the
greatness of Thy Holy Name and subduing those nations who worship other
gods than Thee!”
The moral effect of the expedition of Okbah, which familiarized the
nations of the north of Africa with the doctrines of Islam, was
of far more importance than the spoil collected by the victorious
army, which was, in itself, not inconsiderable. The wealth of the
Berbers, ignorant as they were of the mechanical arts and the elegant
appliances of luxury, was confined to flocks and herds; but the
beauty and fascinations of their women aroused the passions of the
conquerors, and many of them subsequently commanded in the markets
of Alexandria and Damascus the extraordinary price of a thousand
mithcals of gold. The inconstant character of the tribes of Mauritania
and the Atlas, amenable only to the restraints of military power,
and to whom conversion and apostasy were mere matters of temporary
expediency, suggested to the sagacious mind of Okbah the necessity for
the establishment of a fortified post in the territory of this active
and formidable enemy. An inland position was selected, to avoid the
attacks of the naval forces of Constantinople, and, despite the serious
physical disadvantages of barrenness, drought, and excessive heat, a
city was built, to which was given the name of Kairoan; a metropolis
destined in after times to attain to an important rank in the annals
of the dynasties of Africa. The walls were of brick, with flanking
towers, and embraced six miles in circuit. The foundations of a mosque,
an edifice measuring two hundred and twenty by one hundred and fifty
cubits, were laid; its seventeen naves were adorned with the plundered
marbles of Utica and Carthage; the graceful proportions of its minaret
and the elegance of its mural decorations are still proverbial in the
Mohammedan world. The bazaar of the city lined a street three miles in
length; its schools became the resort of the learned; the authority of
its muftis on points of doctrine was indisputable; and, as the seat of
the viceroy of the Khalif, it long maintained its political importance.
The implacable and perfidious spirit of the Berbers, whom no treaties
could control, now broke out in the prosecution of petty hostilities,
which the scattered forces of the Moslems were powerless to prevent.
Forays were made upon isolated settlements, flocks were driven off,
hamlets given to the flames, and even the security of the rising
colony of Kairoan was threatened. Emboldened by their success, the
Berber chief’s confederated for the total destruction of the Moslems.
Koceila, an influential chieftain, who had been wantonly insulted and
maimed by Okbah and was now kept a close prisoner in the camp, was
the moving spirit of the conspiracy. Learning too late of the plan
of the enemy, Okbah was compelled to weaken his army, and while a
detachment for the relief of Kairoan was on the march, it was suddenly
attacked near Tehuda by an overwhelming force of barbarian cavalry. The
little band of Mussulmans, less than four hundred in number, seeing
the hopelessness of the contest, commended themselves to God, and,
casting away their scabbards, perished to a man, scimetar in hand. The
tombs of these martyrs are still objects of veneration to the devout,
and Zab, where they are situated, enjoys the sanctity, privileges,
and lucrative trade of a place of pilgrimage. The Franks and Berbers
with their usual inconstancy now flocked to the standard of Koceila,
who assumed the title of an independent sovereign and for five years
remained the undisputed ruler of Ifrikiyah. At the expiration of that
period, a fresh army of Arabs under Zoheir defeated the Berbers in
a decisive battle, and, Koceila having been killed, the lieutenant
of the Khalif again asserted his unstable authority. It was not long
before the new governor Zoheir succumbed to the treachery of the
cunning barbarians, and the Khalif Abd-al-Melik imposed upon Hassan,
Viceroy of Egypt, the task which had foiled the skill and energy of so
many of his predecessors. But none of the latter had mustered such a
force, or could have controlled such vast resources, as did the new
commander-in-chief. His office, as Governor of Egypt, placed at his
disposal the enormous wealth of that fertile country, and he marched
out of Alexandria at the head of a thoroughly equipped army of forty
thousand veterans. He was well provided with scaling ladders and the
various engines for the siege of fortified places, while the success
of the Moslems in the East had inspired them with confidence, and
afforded experience in the attack upon fortifications, a branch of
warfare in which they had at first been entirely deficient. Resolving
to reduce the strongholds of the coast, which were still in possession
of the Greeks, Hassan, after traversing the region which had been
desolated, and partially colonized by former commanders, advanced at
once upon Carthage. This famous city, which had preserved, amidst
unparalleled disaster, the prestige and the traditions of its former
greatness, was still the capital of Africa and the seat of the imperial
prefect. The power of Phœnicia, almost omnipotent in the maritime
world of the ancients, founded upon boundless wealth, upon extensive
acquaintance with distant lands and peoples, upon scientific secrets,
whose importance was exaggerated by mystery, and upon the undisputed
dominion of the seas, had been transmitted to Carthage, her favorite
and most important colony. A brief notice of the history of the latter,
so intimately connected with the fortunes of every nation of ancient
and modern Europe, is not foreign to an account of the Mohammedan
conquest of Africa, nor to that of the subsequent occupation of Spain.
For, inspired by her example, from her harbor issued the first naval
expedition of the Moslems in the West, which ravaged the coasts of
Sardinia, threatened the Greek empire, and subdued the Balearic Isles.
The invention of the compass, popularly but erroneously attributed
to the sailors of Amalfi, it has been conjectured, with some degree
of probability, was in reality a legacy of Tyre to Carthage; and it
is certain that the peculiar properties of the magnet, designated the
Stone of Hercules, were familiar to the mariners of those cities, who
employed it in divination and in the secret ceremonies of their temples
upon the shores of every sea. The straight sword of the Spanish Arab,
so different from the curved blade of the Orient, is the sword of the
Carthaginian; a weapon which, subsequently adopted by Rome from Iberia,
conquered the world, including the African warriors who invented it.
The cap of the Basque is a modification of the old Punic, or Phrygian,
head covering, still worn by the Jewesses of Tunis, and which, in our
day, has been adopted as one of the emblems of Liberty. The toga of
Rome and the burnous of the Arab can be traced to the same origin,
being derived by Carthage from Phœnicia, and by the latter from Lydia;
and the names, customs, traditions, and ceremonies of modern Spain
suggest daily, to the intelligent observer, the enduring impressions
produced by the domination of the ancient Queen of the Mediterranean.
Even in her ruin did Carthage contribute to the progress of science and
the well-being of humanity. The cathedral of Pisa, under whose dome
Galileo pursued his experiments and perfected the pendulum-clock, was
constructed of the marbles of her palaces; and the unrivalled mosque
of Cordova, the centre of mediæval learning, in whose precincts was
the finest library of the age, still contains hundreds of columns,
around whose shafts once curled the wreaths of incense that rose from
the altars of the Tyrian Hercules. But far more important than all
else was the influence exerted upon the Arab invaders by the defaced
and shattered memorials of her departed grandeur. Despite the effects
of Roman hate and vengeance, the destructive energy of Genseric, and
the shameless neglect of the Byzantine emperors, Carthage was still a
great and beautiful city. Many of her stately edifices were preserved;
her temples, towering in their pristine majesty, beckoned the anxious
mariner to her prosperous shores; her harbors with their colonnades
were still intact, and it was with no ordinary emotions that the Moslem
looked upon these evidences of the taste and civilization of one of the
most opulent and renowned capitals of antiquity. The Phœnicians, by
their proximity to and regular intercourse with the highly cultivated
races of Assyria and Egypt, had added immeasurably to their stock of
learning, and eagerly disseminated among their colonies the notions
of politics, philosophy, and science, which they had imbibed in their
periodical voyages to the banks of the Euphrates and the Nile. And
as from Asia Minor, plainly disclosed in the myth of Cadmus, first
emanated that knowledge of letters and the arts, which, expanding with
a prodigious development, culminated in the matchless creations of the
Grecian sculptor and the Grecian muse; so to the northern coast of
Africa can be traced the dawn of that inspiration of refinement and
taste which awakened in the minds of the rude and warlike nomads of the
Desert a desire for something better than the subjugation of barbarian
tribes, something more enduring than the costly pageants of military
glory.
Settled almost thirteen centuries before the Christian era, and
inheriting from the parent city of Tyre that spirit of enterprise which
had gained for the latter the carrying trade of the world, at the time
of the foundation of Rome, Carthage was already the wealthiest and most
polished state on the shores of the Mediterranean. Her inhabitants,
rather inclined to peaceful occupations and the luxurious ease
that prosperity confers than to the privations of the camp and the
dangers of the field, usually enlisted mercenaries to prosecute their
conquests. When at the height of her power, her armies, which had
penetrated the mysterious depths of the Libyan and Ethiopian deserts,
and whose prowess had been displayed alike in the defiles of Sicily
and upon the plains of the Bætis, had subjected to her authority a
wide extent of territory, and more than three hundred towns in Africa
alone, many of them places of considerable magnitude. In the Spanish
Peninsula, whence she drew her supplies of the precious metals, she
employed in the silver mines fifty thousand men. The most assiduous
care was paid to agriculture, and the extraordinary fertility of the
soil, yielding with ease one hundred and fifty fold, was assisted by an
equable climate and a scientific and extensive system of irrigation.
The substantial character of the public works of the capital is evinced
by the ruins of the cisterns and the aqueduct, which have defied the
storms and revolutions of two thousand years. But it was chiefly in
commercial affairs that the Carthaginians asserted their immeasurable
superiority over all their contemporaries. Their merchants, whose
enterprise was proverbial, were familiar with some of the ingenious
expedients that, in our day, among civilized nations, so facilitate and
simplify important business transactions. The most remarkable of these
described by Latin writers were certain pieces of leather which, when
folded in a peculiar manner, and sealed to prevent forgery, readily
passed as money, undoubted precursors of our bank-notes and bills of
exchange. They seem to have had also well-defined ideas of the fiscal
and other regulations demanded by the exigencies of foreign trade, such
as banking, insurance, and duties on imports.
Until the conclusion of the second Punic War, no noticeable progress
had been made in the arts at Rome, and the total destruction of
Carthage was, in this respect, as in many others, of incalculable
advantage to her fortunate adversary. Among the treasures procured at
the sack of the city are mentioned, besides paintings and statues, gold
and silver vessels of curious workmanship, and so valuable that the
portion reserved for the triumph of the victor amounted to a sum equal
to eight million dollars. In the spoil were also included beautiful
mosaics, and incredible quantities of precious stones, articles of
luxury especially prized by the Carthaginians, and which they knew how
to engrave with surprising skill. These exquisite models, perfected
by the labors of countless generations, were not without a decided
effect in promoting the education and stimulating the ambition of the
Roman designers and artisans. We learn from Appian that there were many
libraries in the city, which also boasted not a few writers of note,
but none of their productions have been preserved, and the only native
author whose fame has reached posterity is Terence, a liberated slave,
who, at the age of twenty-five, delighted the critical audiences of the
Roman theatres with the flights of his precocious genius. Some estimate
may be formed of the military and naval power of Carthage, when we
recall the fact that during the Sicilian wars, which lasted twenty-four
years, she lost, in a single battle, five hundred ships of the largest
size, together with an army of one hundred and fifty thousand men,
without sensibly impairing her resources or retarding her career of
conquest. Had a similar misfortune befallen any contemporaneous state
it could hardly have survived the shock. The equipage and plate of the
Carthaginian generals were of the most sumptuous description, and they
went into action bearing magnificent bucklers embossed with medallion
portraits of their owners in massy gold.
Occupying the centre of the Southern Mediterranean coast, and
accessible to every port frequented by traders, Carthage was speedily
enabled to profit to the utmost by those advantages of geographical
position that paved the way to her political and maritime ascendency.
At her left hand were the Pillars of Hercules, and the channel
through which passed the trade of Spain and Britain; at her right the
inexhaustible granaries of Egypt; in front of her, the quarries, mines,
and slave-marts of Italy and Greece; in her rear the gold and gems
of Libya. Upon a peninsula, whose isthmus was defended by a triple
wall, lay the city, embracing a circuit of twenty-three miles, and
containing a population of nearly a million. Inside the fortifications,
on the east, was the Kothon, a double harbor, consisting of two
circular basins connected by a canal sixty feet wide, barricaded with
enormous iron chains. The outer and larger basin, six thousand feet
in circumference, was destined for the use of merchantmen; the inner
one was reserved exclusively for galleys and men-of-war. Both were
surrounded by docks, storehouses, quarters for marines, and arsenals,
and were approached by splendid Ionic porticos and colonnades of white
marble. In the centre of an island in the inner harbor, at whose quays
two hundred vessels could ride securely at anchor, rose the castle
of the admiral who directed all manœuvres at the sound of trumpet.
Immediately over the Kothon, on an elevation that commanded it, stood
the famous Byrsa, or citadel. Its wall rose to the height of sixty-five
feet, and was flanked by numerous towers; adjoining the latter were
stables for four thousand horses and three hundred elephants, and
barracks that could accommodate a garrison of twenty-four thousand men.
Eighteen cisterns, seven of which are still intact, each ninety-three
feet long by twenty wide and twenty-eight feet deep, connected by a
tunnel with reservoirs in the suburbs, furnished an abundant supply of
water. The highest point of the Byrsa was occupied by the temple of
Æsculapius, the tutelary deity of the city, and although, in fact, an
almost impregnable fortress, the skill of the engineer had thoroughly
disguised its formidable character. It was situated above a series of
terraces, resembling the hanging gardens of Assyria, and was reached
by superb marble staircases adorned with beautiful statues, urns,
and other works of art. Slabs of porphyry and verd-antique covered
its walls; its arcades were paved and encrusted with mosaics; and
the veneration in which it was held by the people was attested by
the gorgeous appointments of its shrine. But the fane of Æsculapius,
with all its splendor, was not without many rivals in the African
metropolis. The religion of the Carthaginians, originally astronomical
and profoundly symbolic, had centuries before discarded the purer forms
of astral worship for a debased and cruel polytheism. The different
wards of the city were named from the various deities whose altars they
contained. West of the Kothon was the temple of Apollo, and adjoining
it the shrine of Melcareth, or Hercules--whose precincts no woman was
suffered to enter, and whose priests, assuming the vow of chastity,
went barefoot and with shaven crowns--stood side by side with the
fragrant gardens within whose mystic groves were celebrated, amidst
indescribable orgies, the licentious rites of the Phœnician Astarte.
Nearer the sea was the grand temple of the African Baal, the Moloch
of the Hebrews, surrounded by a labyrinth and covered with three
concentric domes, which, open above like that of the Pantheon at Rome,
permitted the rays of the sun at high meridian to descend upon the
brazen image of the god.
The other edifices of the African capital were, in richness and
splendor, eminently worthy of its temples and its citadel. The vast
commerce of Carthage placed at its command the resources of all
antiquity. No labor or expense was spared in architectural decoration.
On the façade of its theatre, which rose for seven stories in tiers of
graceful arches, were sculptured the forms of animals, the effigies of
famous artisans, the figures of military commanders, and symbolical
representations of the elements, the seasons, and the winds. The
circus, inferior in extent only to that of Rome, was supported by
fluted columns of such enormous size that twelve men could sit with
ease upon the edge of one of their capitals towering a hundred feet
above the arena. In the principal square, the reservoir, fed by the
great aqueduct, was surrounded by balustrades and arches. All of
these public works were of white marble, which glittered like crystal
under the rays of a southern sun. The taste which designed them was
the result of three thousand years of civilization. Every nation of
the ancient world had contributed its share to their symmetry, their
value, their magnificence. The beauty of the material was enhanced a
thousand-fold by the incomparable elegance of the sculpture and the
ornamentation.
The Megara, a suburb of Carthage, contained the country-seats and
palaces of the nobility, some of them built, like the houses of Venice,
upon piles and arches in the sea. It was an immense park seamed with
canals and rivulets, whose waters were conveyed by conduits from the
mountains sixty miles away. The reservoirs of the Megara, so extensive
that they now constitute an Arab village, were constructed in the same
substantial manner as the cisterns of the Byrsa. On a promontory above
them was the necropolis, where the ashes of the dead were deposited in
countless niches hewn in the living rock.
Upon the ruins of this rich and powerful city, which had so long and
so obstinately disputed the supremacy of the masters of the world,
had risen another that almost rivalled its predecessor in commercial
importance and architectural splendor. Founded one hundred and one
years after the triumph of Scipio, it yielded in prestige and luxury
only to the great capitals of Italy and Egypt, and was justly regarded
as one of the most valuable possessions of the Roman colonial empire.
Its advantages of location, the agricultural wealth of the country,
the settlement of many noble Italian families--fugitives from imperial
oppression and barbarian violence--and the glorious example of former
ages, soon raised the new metropolis to a position scarcely inferior
to that of the old. Its edifices could vie with even the proudest
monuments of the Eternal City; the wealth, intelligence, polished
manners, and boundless excesses of its inhabitants made its name
proverbial throughout antiquity. In the seventh century it divided
with Alexandria the commerce of the Mediterranean, and was greatly
its superior in rank, population, and power. The head of the civil
magistracy of Africa, and the seat of a large military garrison,
it almost monopolized the taste and refinement, the learning, the
philosophy, and the jurisprudence, of the Western world. Universities
with chairs of the liberal arts, academies which afforded instruction
in every language and every science, flourished within its walls; its
circus and its amphitheatre were crowded daily with the wit and beauty
of the city, whose pleasure-loving society, unspeakably corrupt, had
added to the dissolute habits inherited from Punic times the unnatural
vices imported by patrician refugees and colonists from the orgies of
decadent Rome. For perversity of disposition, for shameless effrontery,
for perfidious disregard of faith and contempt of honor, and for
brazen immodesty, the most debauched communities of the East and
West, by universal consent, conferred upon the population of Carthage
the unenviable distinction of unapproachable infamy. The Vandals had
plundered its treasures and enslaved its people, but had spared its
noble buildings, and exempted its walls from the destruction which had
usually befallen those of other towns conquered by these barbarians.
Such was the city which interposed a formidable and hitherto
insuperable barrier to the enterprise of the Moslems; and whose
transcendent influence has left its stamp upon the habits, the creeds,
and the opinions of every subsequent age; to which ancient commerce was
indebted for its development, and from which modern belief has derived
some of the most popular of its dogmas; among them the doctrines of
St. Augustine and the leading principles of patristic theology, that
even now control ecclesiastical councils and prescribe the rules of
Christian discipline.
His preparations completed, the Moslem general, seconded by the
enthusiasm of his splendid army, and confident of success, prepared at
once for an assault. The ladders were planted, and despite the terrors
of Greek fire, and the valor of the Byzantine garrison which behaved
with unusual spirit, the city was taken. But, in the mean time, news
of the danger of the colony had reached the Bosphorus; the Court was
aroused from its lethargy; a powerful fleet was equipped; and the
Moslems had scarcely rested from. their efforts before the arrival of
this new enemy compelled them to retreat. A few months later, however,
reinforcements having been received by Hassan, Carthage was again
stormed; a decisive victory was gained by the Moslems over the Greeks,
who imprudently risked an engagement in the open field; the city was
plundered and burnt; and the jurisdiction over its territory passed
away forever from the hands of the corrupt and pusillanimous sovereigns
of the Eastern Empire.
But the destruction of the capital, a political measure to secure
supremacy, while producing a decisive moral effect upon the remaining
colonies of the Greeks, was far from intimidating the Berbers, whose
omnipresent squadrons remained the masters of all the region situated
beyond the fortified towers of the frontier. A female impostor of
princely lineage--whose name, Dhabba’, has been abandoned by subsequent
chroniclers for the popular appellation Kahina, or Sorceress--had, by
her mysterious arts, obtained unbounded influence over her countrymen;
and, inspiring them with a certain degree of patriotism, had appeased
their feuds and united the roving tribes of the Atlas in an extensive
and powerful confederacy. Animated by her teachings and allured by her
promise of booty, the Berbers pressed upon the forces of Hassan until
the latter, after great losses, were finally expelled, and repairing to
Barca, remained there in a state of inglorious inactivity for nearly
five years. It is related that as soon as the enemy had passed the
borders, the sorceress-queen ordered the fertile region of the coast,
which, in the days of its prosperity, had furnished the supplies of
the Empire, and whose beauty had been celebrated by every traveller,
to be utterly desolated, as a precaution against future invasion. The
fields were laid waste, the towns depopulated, the harvests burnt,
the orchards cut down, the plantations transformed into a wilderness.
This irrational act of violence was not viewed with complacency by
the land-holders and other civilized inhabitants of the country, and,
from time to time, emissaries were despatched to the Arab Viceroy of
Africa, promising him in return for his interference the assistance and
future allegiance of the persecuted colonists. At length the order to
advance arrived from Damascus, and Hassan, with the most numerous army
that had ever invaded Africa, encountered the priestess at the head of
her adherents near Mount Auras. In the battle that ensued, Kahina was
killed; the Berbers were overwhelmingly defeated; and the whole of the
refractory province again invoked the clemency of the victor. But the
same evil genius which, from first to last, attended the administration
of the Moslem governors of Africa, now began to disturb the fortunes
of Hassan. Abd-al-Aziz, the brother of the Khalif, was appointed to
the viceroyalty of Egypt, upon which the jurisdiction of Africa was
made dependent; and Hassan was summoned to Damascus, to answer serious
accusations of tyrannical conduct which had been lodged against him.
But the sight of the spoil wrested from the Berbers, the present of
female captives of extraordinary beauty, the plausible explanations
of his conduct which his fertile ingenuity suggested, and the glowing
accounts of his successes, soon restored the distinguished commander
to the favor of his sovereign, and Hassan was reinvested with the
government of Africa with increased authority. On the return of the
latter, while passing through Egypt, Abd-al-Aziz demanded the surrender
of his commission under color of the supremacy formerly attached to the
viceroyalty of that country, and by which the rest of Mohammedan Africa
was claimed as a dependency. Enraged by his refusal, the governor
arbitrarily deprived Hassan of his commission, tore it in pieces before
his face, and, in defiance of the royal authority, declared the office
vacant, and appointed at his own instance Musa-Ibn-Nosseyr commander of
the armies of the West.
The history of this famous soldier is tinged with a coloring of
adventure, unusual even in the romantic atmosphere of the Orient.
A hundred miles directly west of Ctesiphon is Ain-Tamar, now an
oasis frequented by wandering banditti, but in the seventh century a
prosperous settlement enriched by the trade of Syria and Persia, and
the seat of a Nestorian church and monastery. Attracted by the reports
of its wealth, an expedition headed by Khalid himself surprised it,
after a long and painful march over the desert. In the cloisters of
the monastery were found a number of youths of high rank, who were
nominally pursuing their studies under the direction of the monks,
but were in reality hostages selected from the most distinguished
families of Asia Minor. When offered the customary alternative of
slavery or apostasy, the majority chose the latter, and two of
them, Sirin and Nosseyr, became the fathers of sons who exerted a
wide-spread influence over the destinies of Islam. From Sirin descended
Mohammed the learned doctor of Bassora, and one of the most famous
authorities of Islamic literature; and Nosseyr was the parent of
Musa, the conqueror of Africa and Spain. Nosseyr was attached to the
family of Abd-al-Melik by the right of capture and Mohammedan custom,
and his son occupied the same relation to Abd-al-Aziz, the heir of
the Khalif, who bestowed upon him marks of distinguished favor, and
shared with him a friendship rare indeed in the families of princes.
Educated in the best schools of Syria, which had already attained a
high and well-deserved reputation, Musa early developed a precocity of
intellect, and a talent for negotiation, which led to his employment
in diplomatic affairs of the greatest importance. Under the reign of
Abd-al-Melik, he was appointed vizier to the governor of Bassora,
but having been convicted of peculation, he only escaped with his
life through the intercession of his protector Abd-al-Aziz, who also
paid for him the fine of one hundred dinars of gold--fifty times the
amount of the theft--which the wrath of the Khalif had imposed upon
the defaulter. Residing afterwards at the court of Egypt, and acting
as the trusted councillor of the viceroy, history is silent as to the
fields in which he acquired the experience in arms that subsequently
gained for him such enduring renown. Of a hardy constitution, inured to
hardship, plain in his attire, frugal and abstemious in his habits, his
form presented an example of robust health, although he had long since
passed the meridian of life; and under his locks, whitened by the snows
of many winters, still smouldered the ardent passions of youth, and the
powerful incentives of ambition and adventure. Sagacious in council,
prompt in execution, fearless in battle, implacable in revenge, his
character was, however, tarnished by cruelty, by suspicion, and by
ingratitude; and he never hesitated to risk the sacrifice of power and
position, in the gratification of the avarice which seemed to dominate
his being, almost to the exclusion of every other passion. Unrivalled
in tact and instinctive knowledge of human nature, by his powers of
persuasion he made even his enemies subservient to his designs; while
the strict observance of the ceremonies of his religion, although he
became liable at times to imputations of inconsistency, yet procured
for him in general the reputation of profound and sincere piety. In
his military operations, he displayed the qualities of a skilful and
wary leader, and his dispositions were made with remarkable prudence;
realizing the demands of successful warfare, he annihilated the power
of his adversaries by massacre or wholesale captivity; and by rapid and
sudden advances after a battle he never failed to secure the uncertain
fruits of victory. Such was the character of the man to whom were now
committed the destinies of the Moslem armies of the West.
The veterans who had served under the banner of Hassan, who had
scaled the walls of Carthage, and dispersed the army of the Berber
sorceress, looked with little favor upon their new commander. Calling
them together, Musa paid them their arrears three times over, and
addressing them in a speech in which the eloquence of the orator, the
humility of the devotee, and the art of the demagogue were shrewdly
blended, said: “I am a soldier, like yourselves; applaud and imitate
my good deeds; censure and reprove my failures, for none of us are
free from weakness and error.” Impressed not only with the politic
generosity of their chief, but gratified as well by the unwonted
condescension he displayed, the soldiers greeted him with applause,
and he became henceforth the idol of his army. Without unnecessary
delay, and with his accustomed vigor, he opened the campaign. At the
very outset an incident occurred which not only secured the gratitude
of his followers, but, in that superstitious age, seemed to invest
their general with supernatural powers. A long-continued drought had
dried up the springs and wells, and the army, now far advanced into
the desert, was threatened with death by thirst. In the midst of the
troops solemnly assembled, Musa prayed long and fervently for relief.
Tradition relates that the supplication was almost immediately granted;
and the identical prayer which evoked this apparent miracle was
repeated for nine centuries afterwards by the Spanish Moors when their
country suffered from a scarcity of rain. The Berbers, elated by their
former successes, ventured upon a pitched battle, and were defeated.
Thousands were killed; the fugitives who took refuge in the mountains,
where the natural obstacles of the locality made their defences the
more formidable, were besieged and forced to surrender. The policy of
Musa, different from that of his predecessors, was marked by unusual
severity. If resistance was offered, the tribe was enslaved, its
property confiscated, and its villages burnt to the ground; but, on
the other hand, a ready submission guaranteed protection and favor,
and the stoutest warriors were at once enrolled in the Moslem ranks.
Twelve times already had the Berbers professed adherence to Islam, and
apostatized; and Musa, conscious of their instability, now provided
his new troops with teachers learned in the Koran, who could give them
daily instruction in their religious duties. Their new associations,
the trust reposed in them, the separation from their kindred, and the
boundless prospect of plunder and glory, soon transformed these unruly
bands into a serviceable force, capable of the greatest exploits.
The seizure of the horses, cattle, and sheep, which constituted the
wealth of the Berbers, compensated the victors, in some degree, for
the absence of the costly booty which had rewarded the courage of
their brethren in Syria and Egypt; while the prodigious number of
slaves, resulting from the depopulation of entire provinces, provided
a source of wealth whose profits were easily realized in the markets
of Alexandria and Damascus. The royal fifth of the latter reserved by
Musa amounted to sixty thousand, a number so vast as to be incredible,
and which caused the Khalif to regard the announcement as false when
he received it. With characteristic munificence, he directed Musa
to reimburse himself for the fine which he had formerly paid as the
penalty for his dishonesty, and, at the same time, he granted to him
and the most distinguished soldiers of the army pensions commensurate
with their services.
The invasion and sack of Medina by the Syrians, bent upon retribution
for the murder of Othman, had caused a great emigration from Arabia,
and thousands of the descendants of the proudest families of the
Holy Cities had established themselves in Africa, and had rendered
great aid to the projects of Musa. Their incorporation into the
armies of Al-Maghreb and Iberia sensibly affected the fortunes of
the latter country, and indirectly led to the restoration of the
dynasty of the Ommeyades. Four sons of Musa had accompanied him in
his campaign, and now deputing his authority to the two eldest, he
despatched them to the South and West, where a few remaining Berber
tribes still asserted their independence. Following the example of
their father they exterminated such tribes as dared to resist, and
in a few months returned to Kairoan, whither Musa had retired with
considerable spoil and a large number of captives. In the mean time,
the latter, recognizing the supreme importance of naval operations, and
treating with contempt the absurd prejudice of his countrymen whose
superstitious dread of the sea amounted at times to absolute terror,
ordered the refitting of the dock-yards and harbors of Carthage, whose
substantial quays had been little impaired by the successive calamities
which had befallen the city. A hundred vessels were built, launched,
and manned; Abdallah was appointed admiral; the fleet cruised along the
coast of the Mediterranean, and crossing to Sicily, sacked the city of
Linosa and returned in triumph with a booty of twenty thousand pieces
of gold. Four years afterwards a descent was made by Abdallah on the
Balearic Isles, and Majorca was, after a short campaign, added to the
dominions of the Khalif.
Their incorrigible duplicity and restlessness, and the absence of a
competent military force, again impelled the tribes of the interior
to revolt. Taking the field at the head of a picked force, Musa, with
trifling difficulty, took Tangier, the last fortified post held by the
Greeks in Al-Maghreb; and sending his son Merwan with five thousand
cavalry against Sus-al-Aska, the head-quarters of the insurgents, soon
had the satisfaction of learning that the rebellion was subdued, and
the recalcitrant Berbers punished with a rigor unexampled even in the
sanguinary wars of Africa. After making two attempts to capture Ceuta,
one of the keys of the strait separating Africa from Europe, both of
which the gallant behavior of the governor, Count Julian, rendered
ineffectual, Musa appointed Tarik-Ibn-Zeyad, a Berber convert, formerly
his slave, and now one of his most trusty officers, to the command of
Tangier, and returned to Kairoan.
With the surrender of Tangier the Byzantine domination in Africa came
to an end. Sixty years of warfare, the destruction of fleets, the
annihilation of armies, the devastation of provinces, the enslavement
of nations, had been required to accomplish this result, never for a
moment lost sight of by the Moslems amidst the imbroglios of courts and
the revolts of pretenders to the Khalifate of Damascus. The abnormally
perfidious and martial character of the Berber placed him outside
the category of ordinary enemies. No reverses, however severe, could
break his spirit. He ignored the obligation of treaties. No resource
remained, therefore, but depopulation. The number of slaves made by the
Mussulmans in Africa excited the amazement of their brethren in the
East. A successful campaign often yielded two hundred thousand of these
unfortunates. Such wholesale captivity was without precedent even in
the annals of Rome. The fortresses, with the exception of Ceuta, which
was nominally a dependency of the Visigothic kings of Spain--though
held by a feeble and uncertain tenure--were now in the possession of
the Saracens.
The Berbers either paid tribute to the Khalif or, serving under
their own commanders, were enrolled in his armies. Already, after the
expiration of only two generations, during which the laws and customs
of Mohammedan life can be said to have been established, the momentous
effects of polygamy were strikingly noticeable. The children of the
pagan slaves who filled the harems of the conquerors were educated in
the doctrines of the Koran, and idolatry had totally disappeared, save,
perhaps, in some sequestered valley of the Atlas Mountains, where the
half-savage devotee bowed before a rude and lonely altar, and with
mystic incantations invoked the aid of some misshapen image. Islam,
which, even by the reluctant testimony of Christian missionaries,
exalts the character of the Negro and invests him with a sense of
personal dignity and self-respect which no other religion has been
able to inspire, soon gained the professed allegiance of the Berbers;
and like the Arab, the more suspicious and clannish they had been
in their Age of Ignorance, the more patriotic and enterprising they
became as Mohammedans--the very isolation and irreconcilable antagonism
of their former condition seemed to insensibly impress them with a
realization of the imperative necessity and paramount value of national
union. The call to prayer of the muezzin everywhere rang out from
the towers of pagan temple and Christian church, whose magnificent
decorations, bestowed by penitent Goth and Vandal, had once glittered
as trophies amidst the splendid pageantry of a Roman triumph. But,
despite community of interest, ethnological resemblance, and identity
of religious belief, the environment of the inhabitants of Africa seems
to be hostile to the permanent improvement of the human species, and
before attaining to the highest degree of development of which the race
is elsewhere susceptible, it begins to retrograde. The natural state
of this great continent, determined largely by climatic and other
physical conditions, is essentially and eternally barbarous. Unlike
Europe, which has reaped something of value even from its misfortunes,
and, by the example of its achievements in art and letters, subdued
its very enemies, the institutions and influence of no polished people
have ever impressed upon the natives of Africa any enduring traces. The
astounding expansion of the Arab intellect--the crowning phenomenon
of the Middle Ages--was as transitory in its effects upon them as
the thrift and refinement of Carthage or the more solid and majestic
influence of Rome. In some respects resembling Asia--whose voluptuous
idleness tends inevitably to physical and mental degeneracy--Africa,
with its vast mineral resources, its unsurpassed facilities for
commercial intercourse, and its inexhaustible agricultural wealth,
has--with the exception of Egypt, whose isolation rendered it
practically a foreign country--been of little use to its inhabitants,
alike incapable of appreciating these manifold advantages and of
systematically employing them for their own benefit or for the general
profit of mankind.
CHAPTER IV
THE VISIGOTHIC MONARCHY
507–712
Origin and Character of the Goths--Their Invasion of
the Peninsula--Power of the Clergy--Ecclesiastical
Councils--The Jews--The Visigothic Code--Profound
Wisdom of Its Enactments--Provisions against
Fraud and Injustice--Severe Penalties--Its
Definition of the Law--Condition of the Mechanical
Arts--Architecture--Byzantine Influence--Manufactures--Votive
Crowns--Agriculture--Literature--Medicine--Slave
Labor--Imitation of Roman Customs--Parallel between the Goths
and the Arabs--Coincidence of Sentiments and Habits--Causes of
National Decline--Permanent Influence of the Gothic Polity.
Among the countless hordes of barbarians who in the third and fourth
centuries overran the provinces of the Roman Empire, and insulted the
majesty of the sovereigns of the East, none were so pre-eminently
distinguished for valor, loyalty, generosity, and chastity as the
Goths. From the third century, when the luxurious tastes of Rome
impelled adventurous traders to penetrate to the shores of the Baltic
in search of amber, to the establishment of an independent monarchy in
Italy by Theodoric in the fifth, their name was familiar to Europe--now
suggestive of a bulwark of the tottering throne of Byzantium, and
again, as a synonym of murder, pillage, and devastation. Of towering
stature and fierce aspect, their forms were cast in the gigantic
proportions which pagan mythology loved to attribute to its gods
and heroes. Their habitations were situated in the depths of gloomy
forests, on the banks of deep and rapid streams, or were surrounded
by marshes, over whose treacherous and yielding surface a winding
pathway usually led to a remote and well defended stronghold. Like all
people whose intellectual development had scarcely begun, they believed
implicitly in omens, auguries, signs, and dreams; their religious
ideas were vague and ill defined; and neither history nor tradition
has preserved for us the appellation or attributes of a single Gothic
divinity. At their banquets, defiled by drunken orgies, and not
infrequently the scenes of violence and even homicide, were celebrated,
in uncouth ballads, the exploits of the famous warriors of the nation.
Their very name, indicative of the superiority which their prowess
never failed to exact, signified The Nobly Born. Without literature,
save a fragmentary translation of the Bible, without government, save
the dominion of some chieftain who, covetous of renown, temporarily
enjoyed the precarious title of sovereign, eager for change, the most
reckless of gamesters, the most pitiless of conquerors, destruction
was with them a passion, and war an amusement. In common with other
barbarians, with whom the ignorance and fears of the age have
confounded them, they claimed and exercised, to the utmost, the
privileges of individual dignity and personal freedom. An arbitrary
classification, dependent upon a fortuitous geographical distribution,
had divided this people into Ostrogoths and Visigoths, according to
their relative location upon the eastern and western banks of the
river Borysthenes. The pressure from the north, which had dispersed
the tribes of the forests of Germany and Pannonia over the European
provinces of the Roman Empire, had induced the Visigoths, by necessity
or choice, to seek a home in Gaul, which country they occupied in
common with the Vandals, the Suevi, the Alani, and other more obscure,
but not less formidable, barbarians; and scarcely had the division of
the empire between Arcadius and Honorius been effected in the first
years of the fifth century, when the inhabitants of Spain, either
through treason or from the negligence of the garrisons stationed in
the passes of the Pyrenees, were overwhelmed by a deluge of savage
marauders.
For four hundred years, the beautiful, the rich, the fertile and
densely populated Peninsula had enjoyed the inestimable blessings
of peace. With the defeat and death of the sons of Pompey, the last
vestige of civil war and intestine discord had disappeared from its
borders. Its fields were cultivated with assiduous care; its seaports
were thronged with the shipping of the Mediterranean; the manufacturing
interests of its inland cities were diversified and important. Its
people, who had inherited from Rome and Carthage that love of pleasure
which was at once their boast and their disgrace, with Epicurean
unconcern, lived only for the present, in the participation of all the
luxury which boundless wealth and national prosperity could bestow.
Upon this earthly paradise--with its splendid cities, its sumptuous
villas, its majestic souvenirs of Roman greatness, its traditions of
heroic achievement and maritime adventure; where Hannibal had gained
his boyhood’s laurels, and Cæsar, moved by the sight of Alexander’s
statue, had first aspired to the dominion of the world--now descended
the brutal and licentious plunderers of the North. The excesses
perpetrated by them in other provinces of the empire were trivial when
compared with the havoc they committed in Iberia. No considerations
of public policy, no sentiments of mercy, interposed to mitigate the
calamities which befell the smiling plains of the Anas, the Iberus,
and the Bætis. Such of the inhabitants as were fortunate enough to
find an asylum behind the walls of fortified cities, soon paid for
their temporary security with the pangs of famine. The growing crops,
delivered to the torch, left to-day a blackened waste where only
yesterday had been every promise of an abundant harvest. A smoky pall,
appropriate symbol of destruction, overhung the sites of prosperous
hamlets and marble villas, where a few smouldering embers alone
indicated the former abode of taste and opulence. Heaps of corpses,
denied the rites of sepulture, covered the land, which was infested
with incredible numbers of wolves and birds of prey, attracted from
every side to their loathsome and inexhaustible repast. A feeling of
utter despair fell upon the survivors; the instincts of humanity and
the feelings of nature were suspended or destroyed; men murdered their
families and then committed suicide; women devoured their offspring;
exposure, want, suffering, and anxiety produced their inevitable
consequences; and the crowning misfortune, the pestilence, daily
claimed its victims by thousands. The savage masters of the country,
satiated with rapine and mutually jealous of power, now began to
quarrel with each other. In the contests which ensued, almost from
the first, the superior organization and martial genius of the Goths
acquired for them the acknowledged supremacy over their adversaries--a
supremacy which soon became coextensive with the Peninsula and laid
the foundations of an extensive kingdom. Early in the fifth century
the extermination, expulsion, or absorption by intermarriage, of the
various tribes, and the emigration of the Vandals, in a body, to
Africa, gave the control of the entire country, with the exception of
a few seaports still tributary to Constantinople, to the Visigoths. In
political organization, in nomenclature, in the construction and in the
application of the maxims of jurisprudence, in the election of their
rulers, in the punishment of criminals, in the regulation of their
amusements, they observed the traditions and honored the observances
of their old homes on the Vistula and the Baltic. The accident of
conversion, a matter of indifference to the majority of the nation,
and one, in this instance, partially dependent upon policy, had made
them Arians, and consequently heretics. The Gothic Church, in its
independence of the See of Rome, while it honored the Supreme Pontiff,
and recognized, to a certain extent, the religious supremacy of the
Papacy, presented an anomaly in the Christian world. The monarch chosen
for his wisdom or his bravery had not as yet assumed the exterior
insignia of royalty, and the laws held him to a strict accountability
for the lives and property of his subjects, but in ecclesiastical
affairs his authority was undisputed and supreme. He convoked at his
pleasure and presided over the national councils--assemblies originally
composed entirely of the clergy, and in which, at all times, the
theocratical element largely preponderated; he published encyclical
letters; he possessed the power of revising the decrees of councils
before their adoption and promulgation; and his wishes and suggestions
were received with a respect surpassing that usually accorded by his
haughty vassals to the majesty of the throne. The clergy were in fact
absolutely dependent upon the sovereign; their immunities were subject
to his will or his caprice; and, far from enjoying the exemption they
obtained in after times by reason of their sacred office and superior
sanctity, they were liable to taxation, and amenable to punishment for
the violation of the laws as strictly as were the laity. Not only were
these restrictions imposed upon them, but the interests of the secular
portion of the community were carefully guarded against the possible
encroachments of ecclesiastical tyranny; the judges were particularly
enjoined to scrutinize the conduct of the priesthood; and instances
were by no means rare where heavy fines were imposed upon them for
acts of injustice and for the oppression of their parishioners.
From the decision of every bishop and metropolitan an appeal lay to
the throne, a privilege conceded. to the meanest peasant; the king
could suspend or abrogate the rules of ecclesiastical discipline; no
canon was valid without his sanction; and he assumed the rights of
nominating, and of translating from one see to another, the greatest
prelates of the Church. But as assemblies of men who possess a monopoly
of the learning and worldly wisdom of a nation, conscious of mental
superiority and incited by motives of ambition, are never satisfied
with acting in a subordinate capacity; the ecclesiastical councils of
Spain almost imperceptibly, but none the less surely, began to encroach
upon the royal prerogative, and, assisted by the weakness or gratitude
of princes whose titles had been assured by their confirmation, aimed
at the seizure of absolute power. By the institution of the rite of
anointing, which imparted a sacred character to the monarch, and
invested in them an implied control over his coronation--a rite first
used in Spain and not adopted in France till the reign of Pepin, in
the eighth century; by the framing of laws favorable to their order,
and whose essential provisions were carefully disguised under the
specious name of enactments for the public welfare; by a command of a
majority of the votes which elected the sovereign; and lastly, by the
conversion of the whole nation to the doctrines of the orthodox faith;
the Gothic clergy advanced unswervingly towards the establishment of
their claim to political supremacy. The Third Council of Toledo was
the first of these important convocations in which questions relating
to the settlement of the constitution of the Gothic monarchy were
debated and settled. From this time until the meeting of the Eighth
Council in 653, the palatines did not participate in the deliberations
of these assemblies, which now began to assume the appearance of
legislative bodies, in which the aims of exclusive ecclesiastical
representation were already clearly disclosed by the partiality and
exemptions which characterized the canons treating of the rights and
privileges of the priesthood. After the middle of the seventh century,
although the nobles were admitted as members of the national councils
and took part in their discussions, the influence of the clergy became
paramount, and the duties of the nobility were confined to a passive
assent to, and registration of, their edicts. A separate tribunal
for the final adjudication of all disputed points of doctrine which
might incidentally arise in the ordinary administration of justice was
granted to ecclesiastics; the latter were prohibited from engaging
in commerce, which the poverty of the Church had formerly rendered
necessary; it became customary to select bishops for the negotiation
of treaties, and for the direction of military embassies which were
invested with the all-important powers of peace and war; the councils
occasionally claimed jurisdiction over secular causes--an unwarranted
assumption of power which the indifference or bigotry of the sovereign
usually failed to resent; and the intolerant character of the canons
treating of heresy indicate, but too plainly, the growing spirit of
persecution--the germ of future inquisitorial atrocities.
But, notwithstanding the acceptance of Catholicism, and the consequent
advance towards the enjoyment of absolute independence, the Church
was hampered by many serious restrictions. Bishops, clerks, and monks
remained subordinate to the secular arm and responsible to the courts
of the realm; they could not, with impunity, disregard their processes,
still less defy their authority; and the commission of crime rendered
them liable to heavy fines and long terms of imprisonment; although,
like the nobility, they could not be subjected to the punishments
inflicted upon the lower orders, such as scourging and branding--the
latter being considered especially infamous. The immunity which
subsequently attached to the character of the clergy as non-combatants
was not known to the founders of the Gothic monarchy. When a city
was besieged or the country threatened with invasion, every subject,
regardless of his profession, was obliged to serve in the army, and
no ecclesiastic could plead his sacred office in bar of military
duty to his sovereign, under penalty of confiscation and exile; the
tonsure was regarded as of peculiar significance and sanctity, and any
one whose locks had once been shorn, or who had assumed the clerical
habit, was henceforth excluded, as a rule, from all military and
civil employments, and consecrated for life to the service of the
cloister; a law which, when abused by fraud or ignorance, was more
than once productive of important results, and even of changes in
the royal succession. Upon the whole, however, the influence of the
Church in those days of intellectual darkness was highly beneficial.
Its monopoly of the scanty wisdom of the time was often employed for
the protection of the oppressed, for the alleviation of suffering, for
the frustration of tyranny, for the consolation of death. The bishop
stood as a guard between the helpless peasant and the unjust judge;
his mediation with the throne, in cases of flagrant injury, was not
optional but mandatory; and his official conduct was subject to the
constant supervision, and was liable to the censure, of the magistrate.
The ambition and political aspirations of the clergy, joined to their
insatiable greed of dominion, which increased with each successive
encroachment upon the civil power, with the daily accumulation of
wealth, and the acquisition of extensive estates by gift, extortion,
bequest, or purchase, disclosed themselves in time in their legitimate
consequence, religious intolerance. The Arian Church in Spain never
disgraced its rule by persecution for differences of opinion. With
the acceptance of the orthodox belief in the sixth century, however,
the spirit of vindictive malevolence,--which has always animated and
directed the genius of Catholicism when in the ascendant, at once
infected the counsels of the ecclesiastical tribunals, and indirectly,
through their influence and example, the decisions of the courts
of law. The coronation oath rendered obligatory the expulsion of
all heretics without consideration of birth, position, or previous
service to the state. The Jews, in whom were vested the most important
offices, and who possessed the bulk of the wealth of the kingdom,
were banished, imprisoned, plundered, or burnt; and while it is true
that the severity of the laws against this sect defeated, erelong,
the object of their enactment, even their partial enforcement was
the cause of great and wide-spread suffering. With the consciousness
of power came the increase of pomp and the desire for prohibited
enjoyments and indulgence in carnal pleasures wholly inconsistent with
the observance of the vows of poverty and chastity as well as contrary
to the rules of ecclesiastical discipline. The canons enacted from
time to time by the councils, and whose provisions were designed to
impose restraints upon the irregular conduct of the clergy, show, more
conclusively than the pages of any chronicle, the lax morality and
deplorable condition of the religious society of that age. Stringent
regulations were adopted against the acceptance of bribes as the price
of exemption from persecution--especially referring to the Jews--a
proof that the zealous protestations of the clerical order could
not withstand the pecuniary arguments of the astute Hebrew; while
the censures fulminated against priests and monks who abused the
privileges of the confessional, or violated nature in the commission
of revolting crimes, indicate the secret and universal corruption
which had already begun to pollute the sacred offices of the Church
and impair the usefulness of its ministers. The Eighteenth Council
of Toledo, at the dictation of King Witiza, whose profligate conduct
and contempt for religion had aroused the horror of Christendom and
provoked the anathemas of the Pope, had, with unexampled servility,
passed laws authorizing the marriage of ecclesiastics, the institution
of polygamy, and the practice of promiscuous concubinage. Under
these conditions of sacerdotal degradation, sanctioned by custom
and established by law, the influence of the Church was everywhere
diminished; the faith of men in the existing religion was weakened; and
the public mind was insensibly prepared for the new revelation which,
appealing to the strongest passions of the human breast, stripped of
metaphysical distinctions, and inculcating moral precepts such as the
most skeptical and dissolute must applaud, was soon to be published to
the discontented and priest-ridden subjects of the Gothic empire. The
ill-defined powers of the Crown and the Mitre, at first reciprocally
dependent, led eventually to a clashing of interests and a struggle
for precedence between the royal and the sacerdotal authority,
in which the clergy, though their aspirations were occasionally
checked by some monarch of stern and decided character, in the end
invariably obtained the advantage. The dependence of the sovereign
upon the priesthood was never lost sight of. No occasion which might
remind him of the obligation he owed to the order whose suffrages
had conferred, and might, with equal facility, resume possession of
his crown, was suffered to pass unimproved. The anointing with holy
oil, which symbolized the right of divine consecration, had already
forged another link in the chain which bound the king to the Church.
The anathemas denounced upon a prince for failure to execute the
laws against heretics, far exceeded in virulence those to which any
subject was liable. At one time, the wishes of the sovereign were
anticipated by the subserviency of the prelates; at another, his
prerogative was invaded and his commands disobeyed with an arrogance
worthy of the imperious spirit of Julius II. or of Gregory the Great.
The populace, through ignorance, prejudice, and habit, blindly devoted
to the sacerdotal order, furnished a formidable body of auxiliaries,
ever ready to hearken to the appeals of their ghostly advisers, a
force which the dignity and assurance of the haughtiest ruler could
not with impunity disregard. The turbulent and illiterate nobility,
although the king was selected from their number by the voices of the
assembled bishops--in which ceremony the concurrence of the palatines
was admitted, in reality, only through courtesy--possessed, in the
practical application of the precepts of the Gothic constitution,
scarcely the shadow, still less the substance, of power. The council
was the embodiment and representative of the intellect and the
collective wisdom of the nation. Its canons were, for the most part,
framed in strict accordance with the principles of equity, and the
deliberations and conclusions of its sessions were often characterized
by a breadth of understanding and a degree of impartiality which
clearly indicated that its members were not deficient in the knowledge
and requirements of enlightened statesmanship. The results of their
labors are contained in the Gothic Code, a body of laws remarkable in
many respects, when we consider the general illiteracy and ignorance
of the age in which it was compiled, and its transcendent importance
as the prototype of the systems of jurisprudence which now regulate
the civil and criminal procedure of the courts of Europe and America.
In the extraordinary minuteness of its details, in its thorough and
comprehensive treatment of the manifold transactions of daily life,
and in its provisions for almost every contingency which could arise
in the administration of the sovereigns under whose auspices it was
framed, this extraordinary work presents the modern legislator with
a subject eminently worthy of his attention and study. The contact
with races which had long enjoyed the blessings of civilization, and
the development of the intellectual faculties consequent upon the
experience obtained in frequent expeditions and protracted campaigns,
imperceptibly modified the ancient laws of the Goths; the very essence
of which was, from the first, and long continued to be, the assertion
of the principle of personal liberty. Rome, whose toleration of the
religious prejudices and customs of the nations subjected to her
dominion--so long as they did not conflict with her interests or
contravene her authority--was one great secret of her power, had, in
accordance with that policy, indulged the Iberians in the use of their
own laws, and only those who enjoyed the privileges of citizenship
could be summoned before the tribunal of the imperial magistrate.
The incursions of the barbarians had abolished every restraint, and
transformed the previous quiet and peaceful condition of the Peninsula
into a state of anarchy. There was then no law but the will of the
chieftain, who was inclined to encourage, rather than to repress, the
excesses of a brutalized soldiery. All records and muniments of title
had disappeared; boundaries had ceased to exist; the tenure of lands
was entirely dependent upon the numerical strength of the claimants;
and when the fields of one district were exhausted, the discontented
settlers sought a new residence in another locality, whose wealth had
excited their avarice, and the inferior military resources of whose
occupants rendered the retention of their possessions uncertain. The
cessation of hostilities was always accompanied with the plunder and
impoverishment of the vanquished; no treaty was valid, because no moral
obligation, or superior power by which it could be enforced, existed;
every vice was committed with impunity; every grudge was satisfied with
all the abuse of unrestricted license; the caprice of the military
commander had supplanted the precedents of the prætor, and the sword
had become the only acknowledged arbiter of every controversy.
During the reign of Euric, in the year 479, was codified and published
the first book of Gothic law, the basis of the subsequent complex
and exhaustive system of jurisprudence which increased in size, and
gathered reverence and authority with the reign of each succeeding
sovereign. It was known as the Forum Judicum, or the Book of Judges,
and consisted mainly of a compilation of the rules applicable to the
various customs and ordeals, which had been approved by time and
experience as beneficial in the administration of the government of
the Gothic nation, combined with such maxims of Roman law as had
gradually been absorbed through frequent association with the courts
and magistrates of the empire. The new rights and duties arising from
the acceptance by the Goths of the orthodox belief in the latter half
of the sixth century, necessitated a revision of the existing laws
and the formulation of another code of far more extensive scope than
the one which already existed. By certain provisions of the former
the constitution of the Iberian church was definitely established and
the predominance of the clergy in secular matters assured; measures
of portentous significance, whose evil effects upon the intelligence
and prosperity of the Spanish people are discernible even in our day.
From the date of its adoption and promulgation, the inhabitants of the
Peninsula were, without exception, declared subject to its statutes.
From this time dates the absolute supremacy of the Church in the
Peninsula. The hold which it then obtained upon temporal affairs it
has never relaxed. The awful consequences of that supremacy upon all
classes and conditions of men owing allegiance to the Spanish crown are
familiar to every reader of history.
The Visigothic Code exhibited, in the restrictions it imposed upon
the royal prerogative, that spirit of jealous independence always
conspicuous in the character of the German warrior, and which had been
preserved through many centuries by the importance that distinguished
the privileged orders under an elective monarchy. The king, who, at
first, had been liable to censure and judgment by his subjects, was
informed, when invested with his office, that even its dignity could
not exempt him from the obligation to observe the law, a principle
of justice and equality which he shared with every resident in his
dominions. The authority of the turbulent and illiterate nobles, who,
with all the arrogance of power, did not hesitate to threaten and
insult the creature of their choice, was curbed in time by the potent
yet gentle influence of the clergy, whose learning and talents at
first swayed, and finally absolutely controlled, the deliberations of
the National Councils. The high rank of the prelates, their superior
accomplishments in an age of universal ignorance, and their claims as
members of an independent hierarchy, which even the Supreme Pontiff
himself scarcely ventured to contradict, in the end communicated
to the Visigothic constitution all the worst characteristics of an
irresponsible and intolerant theocracy.
The Forum Judicum consists of twelve books, which not only define the
rights of the different classes of society, but prescribe at length,
and in copious detail, the mode of procedure to be followed in the
various tribunals. Every precaution which ingenuity could devise was
adopted to insure the fidelity, the honesty, and the impartiality of
the magistrate, whether of the civil or the ecclesiastical order. It
was the duty of the judge to observe and report upon the decisions
of the bishop and the priest, while, on the other hand, the higher
clergy possessed, under certain contingencies, the power of examining
causes and rendering judgment when the proper official had refused or
neglected to exercise his judicial functions, and the interests of
either of the parties litigant were exposed to injury in consequence.
The courts were open from dawn to dark, and the period of vacation
and the hours of rest were strictly regulated by law. The trial of
causes could not be delayed except for valid reasons; the speedy
rendition of judgment was compulsory; the procrastination, injustice,
or corruption of the judge was punished by a fine amounting to
double the loss incurred, and when the circumstances were peculiarly
aggravating his property was confiscated and he was publicly sold as
a slave. No person, however indigent, was debarred, for that reason,
from the benefits of justice, and a fund was set apart in every town
for the support of impecunious litigants, which was disbursed by the
municipal government with the approval of the bishop. An appeal from
the decisions of the inferior tribunals was granted as a matter of
unquestionable right, and the slightest suspicion of interference by
the throne in the proceedings rendered them invalid and worthless. The
ceremonies relating to the administration of the law were characterized
by great simplicity, and the pleadings were divested of unnecessary
verbiage. The highest reverence for the officers of the crown was
inculcated and enforced; and a resort to litigation was persistently
discouraged by public opinion, excepting where it was imperatively
demanded by the interests of justice. In the rules of evidence, as well
as in their application, traces of the deeply rooted superstitions
of the Teutonic barbarians still remained. The ordeals of fire and
water were not infrequently adopted. The wager of battle could not
be refused, without ignominy; and the oaths of compurgators were, at
times, invoked to restore the lustre of some tarnished escutcheon, or
to remove the stain attaching to a suspected violation of female honor.
Torture was allowed, but excessive severity in its application was
prohibited, and, in case of death or permanent injury resulting from
its abuse, the judge was liable to forfeiture both of his possessions
and his liberty. In determining the competency of testimony, an unwise
and unjust discrimination was made against the poor, through the
unwarrantable presumption of temptation to bribery, and this exclusion
also applied to Jews--even though apostates--as well as to their
descendants, and to slaves. The crime of perjury was mentioned with
horror; its commission was deemed worthy of the severest punishment;
and the false witness, visited with public execration, was condemned
to life-long servitude. In general, the criminal code of the Visigoths
was conspicuous for the moderation with which it treated offenders
against the public peace. The penalty of death was rarely inflicted,
and was confined to cases of arson, rape, and murder. A regular
schedule of minor crimes and their punishments existed; the severity
of the latter depending upon the social rank and political importance
of the individual. In flagrant instances of malicious prosecution,
bribery of public officers, or abuse of political power, the culprit
became the slave of the injured party, with the sole limitation to his
resentment, that the life of his former oppressor should be spared.
Rebellion was punished by banishment; infanticide by blinding; and the
counterfeiter, or the forger of a royal edict, suffered the loss of
the right hand. When the atrocious nature of an offence against morals
demanded a penalty of corresponding infamy, the head of the criminal
was shaved and branded, marking him for life as a social outcast, to
be forever an object of public abhorrence. Scourging was the penalty
of most universal application, and even a freeman, however exalted
his station, was not exempt from its infliction, if he ventured to
provoke the vengeance of retributive justice, and was not possessed of
the stated fine which was the legal equivalent of the lash. The right
of asylum, a privilege whose importance as a salutary check upon the
passions of a fierce and tyrannical nobility, in an age of violence,
is with difficulty appreciated in modern times, was recognized by the
Gothic constitution; and no suppliant, who had sought protection at the
foot of the altar, could be removed without the consent of the proper
ecclesiastical authority. In the provisions which define the civil
relations of society, the Forum Judicum recalls to every one conversant
with the Commentaries of Blackstone, the familiar maxims and precedents
of the Common Law of England. The different grades of relationship,
and the rights of inheritance in the ascending and descending lines,
were treated of exhaustively in the books of the Visigothic Code. In
the protection of the interests of children its sections displayed a
paternal and anxious care. No child could be disinherited unless it had
been guilty of some aggravated act of violence towards its parent. In
all questions relating to the descent of property, no preference was
accorded to sex, and the female remained on the same footing as the
male. A minor of ten years could, without restriction, dispose of his
or her possessions by will. Guardians were appointed by the courts, who
were required to observe the conditions of their trust, and to render
accounts of the funds which passed through their hands; and the power
of appointing a guardian _ad litem_ was frequently exercised,
where the affairs of a minor necessitated the institution or the
defence of a suit at law. The boundless control of the father over the
child, which formed so prominent a feature in the domestic regulations
of Rome, was repugnant to the independent spirit of the Goths; the
parental duties and responsibilities were expressly defined; the son
who resided with his father was entitled to two-thirds of his earnings;
and the courts exercised unremitting and vigilant supervision over
the persons and estates of minors and orphans. A reminiscence of the
ancient custom of marriage by purchase survived in the price paid by
the bridegroom to the relatives of the bride; all clandestine alliances
were considered invalid; a woman could sue, and be sued, without
joining with her husband; and no responsibility attached to either for
the illegal acts of the other. Integrity of descent and purity of blood
were preserved by laws of exceptional severity; a free-born female who
abandoned her person to, or even contracted marriage with, a slave was
scourged and burnt with her unfortunate paramour or spouse. A wife
who had incurred the guilt of adultery was delivered over absolutely
to the tender mercies of the injured husband. This offence, which
evoked ordinarily the strongest denunciation from the descendants of
the cold and sluggish barbarians of the Baltic, was, however, in an
ecclesiastic rather reprobated as an amiable weakness than condemned
as a crime; an indulgence to be attributed partly to the predominant
and sympathetic caste of the legislature, and partly to an appreciation
of the opportunities and temptations which beset the father-confessor,
who, after conviction, was immured in some comfortable monastery until
he professed penitence and received absolution.
The conditions of vassalage and serfdom, as understood and practised
elsewhere in Europe, and especially in Germany, were foreign to
the polity of the Visigoths. Feudalism, with its mutual rights and
obligations as subsequently known to Europe, strictly speaking, did not
exist. The relations affecting the status of lord and vassal were, to
some extent, borrowed from the Roman system and modelled upon those of
patron and client. The sections relating to the conditions of servitude
were minute and voluminous. The master had generally unrestricted power
over the life of his slave. He who aided the escape of the latter was
legally responsible for his value. Recognizing the peculiar facilities
for criminal intercourse, and the corresponding difficulty of its
detection, the law sentenced the servile adulterer to the stake. While
the most liberal encouragement was given to the manumission of slaves,
the numbers of this unfortunate class were constantly increasing,
by the capture of prisoners of war, by the degradation of dishonest
officials, by the submission of debtors, and by the conviction of
criminals. Every slave belonged to a certain rank, and castigation
for petty delinquencies, as well as punishment for serious crimes,
was inflicted with more or less rigor, according to the cause of his
servitude, his industrial ability, and the social condition of his
owner, whether he was born, purchased, or condemned; whether he was
a skilful artisan or mechanic, or an ordinary laborer; or whether he
was the property of the Crown, of the Church, or of an individual.
The influence of the Visigoths did much to lighten the burdens of
slavery; the bloody spectacles of the gladiatorial contests possessed
no allurements for a nation not degraded by cowardice and cruelty; the
treatment of bondmen was, in some localities, so softened and modified
that scarcely more than the name of hereditary servitude existed; and
in cases of intolerable oppression, where the slave took refuge in the
sanctuary, the master could be compelled to dispose of him to some one
more actuated by feelings of kindness and pity.
The precepts of the Forum Judicum which relate to bailments, to
strays, to trespass, to accessories before and after the fact, to the
obstruction of highways, to malicious mischief, to the attestation
of documents, and to contracts made under duress, are substantially
the same as those set forth in our law-books of to-day. A statute of
limitations, which recognized a period varying from thirty to fifty
years, beyond which even some criminal prosecutions could not be
instituted, was in force. The legislation pertaining to agriculture,
irrigation, and the boundaries of land was particularly complete and
exhaustive. Security was obtained by bonds and pledges; inventories
were required of guardians; and the culprit who was guilty of slander
was not only responsible in damages for his intemperate language, but
was also often liable to corporeal punishment; as, for instance, if
he called another a “Saracen,” or even insinuated that he had been
circumcised, he might consider himself fortunate if he did not receive
fifty lashes at the hands of the common executioner.
Considering the general condition of society, the antecedents of a
nation whose energies had hitherto been directed to the overthrow of
every institution which secured the perpetuity of peace and order,
the previous slender opportunities of its authors, and the limited
educational facilities at their command, the Code of the Visigoths
presents us with a system of legislation of extraordinary interest
and value. So remarkable is this body of jurisprudence in the wisdom,
foresight, humanity, and knowledge of mankind which characterize its
leading maxims, that they almost seem to have been suggested by divine
inspiration. Its first statutes appeared when the comprehensive
system of Justinian, which had enlisted the talents and exhausted the
erudition of the most accomplished jurists of the Eastern Empire, was
nearly perfected. It borrowed but little, however, from the learning
of Tribonian and the laborious ingenuity of his seventeen coadjutors.
The eternal principles of justice, it is true, are equally the basis
of both of these collections; but their construction and the methods
of their application, under similar conditions, are widely different;
and the superiority, upon the whole, is largely on the side of the
so-called barbarian. In the majority of instances, excepting where
ecclesiastical ambition and monastic prejudice perverted the ends of
legislation, the laws of the Visigoths were uniformly framed for the
protection of the weak, the relief of the oppressed, and the general
welfare of society. Unlike the practice of more civilized nations in
comparatively recent times, the judicature of the former confined
its penalties to the personality of the offender, and imposed no
disabilities, either by forfeiture or attainder, upon his innocent
relatives and descendants. It restrained the tyranny of the monarch;
it defined with conciseness and accuracy the rights of the subject;
it accorded unprecedented concessions to the widow and the orphan;
it respected the unfortunate and helpless condition of the slave. It
prohibited encroachments upon personal liberty, and declared the sale
of a freeman to be equivalent in atrocity to the crime of homicide.
In almost every provision which did not conflict with the claims of
the priesthood, it hearkened to the voice of mercy and humanity. By
the constant menace and certain infliction of civil degradation,
confiscation, and perpetual servitude, it secured the fidelity of
the judges and fiscal officers of the state. It accepted the great
principle of the Salic law, and, with worldly prudence, forbade the
election of a female sovereign. But, when the theocratic influence
which pervaded every branch of the Gothic constitution comes to be
examined, its effect upon contemporaneous legislation is seen to be
pernicious and deplorable. The power of the clergy was irresponsible,
ubiquitous, and thoroughly despotic. It dictated the proceedings of
every assembly. It whispered suggestions of questionable morality
in the ears of the monarch. When thwarted in its unholy aims, its
vengeance was implacable. The abuse of the convenient and formidable
weapon of excommunication had not reached the extreme which it
subsequently attained, yet the all but omnipotent hand of the
priesthood was already able to invade the privacy of domestic life,
to interfere with the sensitive and delicate mechanism of commerce,
to violate the rights of property, to desecrate the sacred precincts
of the grave. Ecclesiastical intolerance dictated the passage of
ex-post-facto laws, a measure whose monstrous injustice is patent
to every unprejudiced mind. The disability imposed upon the Hebrew
race, and the savage spirit of the canons enacted for its oppression,
point significantly to the prospective horrors of the inquisitorial
tribunals. The practice of sorcery and magic--so dreaded in an age
of intellectual inferiority, and especially offensive to the Church,
which tolerated no wonder-workers outside of its own pale--was severely
reprobated, and punished with excessive severity. The ends of the
clergy, when not obtainable by the arts of controversy, were secured
by other means not unfamiliar to the intriguing courtiers of mediæval
Europe; its propositions were advanced with caution and debated with
consummate skill; and its arguments were either insinuated with more
than Jesuitical adroitness, or urged with all the energy of sacerdotal
zeal.
In its respectable antiquity; in the sublime morality inculcated by
its precepts; in the obligations incurred by every nation which has
drawn upon its accumulated stores of wisdom; in its freedom from the
dishonorable expedients of legal chicanery; in the simplicity of its
procedure; in the certainty and celerity required by the practice of
the tribunals where its authority was acknowledged; in the inflexible
impartiality with which it invested the decisions of those tribunals;
in its well-founded title to public confidence; the Visigothic Code
is without parallel in the annals of jurisprudence. But great as are
its claims upon the gratitude and reverence of the jurist and the
legislator, they are scarcely comparable to the indebtedness imposed
upon the historian. The meagre information to be gleaned from the works
of native chroniclers is, in great measure, thoroughly unreliable.
The literature of the age, scanty in itself, consists mainly of the
recital of ecclesiastical fables, the martyrdom of legendary saints,
the discovery of spurious relics, the averting of calamities by
invocation and miracle, and trivial incidents in the lives of holy
men and women, whose preternatural gifts the indulgent credulity of
their biographers has handed down to the contempt and ridicule of
posterity. The pages destined for such records were too precious to be
defiled by the accounts of wars and insurrections and the interesting
descriptions of mediæval society. The diligence of the compilers of
the Forum Judicum has, however, largely supplied the deficiencies
of the monkish annalists. In their various civil and prohibitory
enactments, they have unconsciously delineated the follies, the vices,
the superstitions, and the crimes of the age. The penalties imposed
for the violation of statutes denote infallibly the barbarian origin
of those who formulated them. The law of retaliation--tolerated only
among the lowest races of men--occurs repeatedly among the provisions
of the Visigothic Code. The deterrent effect of criminal legislation
was almost always subordinated to considerations of vengeance. The
magistrate was regarded as the vindicator of wrong, rather than the
calm representative of judicial dignity and the impartial interpreter
of the laws. Scalping, maiming, blinding, scourging, branding,
emasculation, were punishments prescribed without discrimination, for
offences varying widely in the nature and degree of misconduct and
criminality. The period of transition which separated the barbaric
rudeness of Adolphus and the effeminate luxury of Roderick is
traceable, step by step, in the progressive legislation of centuries.
The rise and consolidation of ecclesiastical power; the limitation
of the royal prerogative; the decline of the insolent pretensions of
the nobility; the elevation of the peasant from the position of a
beast of burden to a self-respecting being, who, however steeped in
ignorance he might be, was always sure of an impartial hearing before
the magistrate; are there related with all the fidelity and minuteness
of a chronicle. There too are depicted the sources of that inspiration
which animated and sustained the sinking hopes of the founders of the
Spanish monarchy, from its organization as a little principality in the
Asturias, down through the turbulent era of Moorish domination, until
it attained the summit of greatness as the dictator of Europe and the
arbiter of Christendom. These are the general characteristics of that
incomparable monument of jurisprudence whose noble conceptions of the
ends of legislation are best expressed in its own concise and energetic
language:
“The law is the rival of divinity, the messenger of justice, and the
guide of life. It dominates all classes of the state, and all ages
of humanity, male and female, the young and the old, the wise and
the ignorant, the noble and the peasant. It is not designed for the
promotion of private aims, but to shelter and protect the general
interests of all. It must adjust itself to time and place, according
to the condition of affairs and the customs of the realm, and confine
itself to exact and equitable rules so as not to lay snares for any
citizen.”
Lost in the confusion attending the Conquest, the Forum Judicum was
carefully preserved by the Moors for the benefit of future generations;
and, recovered when the Moslem capital was taken by St. Ferdinand, it
was subsequently translated into Castilian.
Among the nations composing the heterogeneous population of Spain, the
most important in intelligence, wealth, commercial activity, and talent
for administration, in ancient times, were the Jews. Classed with the
first colonists of the Peninsula, the earliest mention of Iberia by
the Greek and Roman historians represents the Jewish population as
already rich and prosperous. If we consider their intimate relations,
kindred interests, alliances by marriage, and common inclination for
traffic, with their Tyrian neighbors, it is not improbable that the
settlement of the Hebrew in Bætica was coincident with that of the
Phœnicians. The first National Council that assembled at Illiberis in
325--the same year in which were determined the principles of orthodox
Christianity as set forth in the Nicene creed--inaugurated the long and
bloody persecution which finally culminated in the wholesale expulsion
of the unfortunate race by Philip V. By the canons of this council,
the blessings of the rabbi, to which the husbandman seemed to attach
a virtue and an importance equal if not superior to those presumed
to attend the benediction of the priest, and which custom from time
immemorial had invoked upon the growing crops, was declared an offence
against religion, punishable by summary expulsion from the Church.
The morose spirit of ecclesiastical bigotry did not hesitate to
violate the rites of hospitality and cast a shadow over the amenities
of social life. With an exquisite refinement of malice, it pronounced
subject to excommunication all who, even in cases of charity or under
circumstances of the most urgent necessity, shared their food with
a Jew. The passive submission of the entire race to the barbarian
invader procured, however, for its members, in many instances, a
degree of consideration not enjoyed by their Christian neighbors. With
their natural talents for business, their capacity for intrigue, and,
above all, their superior knowledge of mankind, they were not long in
securing the confidence of the conquerors. Under the Arian sovereigns,
their religious opinions remained for generations unquestioned, and
their worship unmolested. But hardly had the nation renounced its
ancient communion, before the disturbing spirit of the new hierarchy
began to assert itself. The edict of Sisebut, in 612, published the
decrees of the Third Council of Toledo which had been drawn up for
the pious purpose of “eradicating the perfidy of the Jews,” whose
general prosperity and political power had aroused the apprehensions
of the priesthood. From this era until the accession of Roderick in
709, the legislation of the councils relating to the Jews presents the
extremes of brutal harshness and occasional liberal indulgence. In all
these enactments, however, the offensive qualities of injustice and
malevolence largely preponderated. The aggressiveness of Catholicism
demanded instant and uncompromising submission to its creed. What
was at first attempted by the imposition of civil disabilities was
soon after exacted by degrading insults, by torture, by slavery,
and by death. Such was the unrelenting ferocity of this persecution
that it awakened at times the indignation even of a semi-barbarous
and fanatical age. But despite continuous and systematic repression,
this maligned and down-trodden race prospered; the forbearance of
royal and ecclesiastical inquisitors was purchased, and the clamors
of furious zealots were silenced by opportune contributions to the
monastic orders; for the services of the most capable diplomatists
and financiers of the time could not be dispensed with in a society
where even a large portion of those who devised measures for their
oppression could neither read nor write. The superiority of the Jews
was also indicated by the prices they commanded when their liberty
had been forfeited by law. While slaves of other nationalities ranked
as “bestias de cuatro pies,” and were purchasable upon the same terms
as a horse or an ox, the Jew was worth a thousand crowns. The great
possessions of the Gothic nobles, which the universal illiteracy of
the latter made them incompetent to manage, rendered the shrewd and
accomplished Hebrew a necessary steward. He enjoyed the confidence
of the monarch. He administered the royal revenues, always with
discernment and in most instances with fidelity. His advice was eagerly
solicited in exigencies of national importance, and in the crooked arts
of diplomacy he proved more than a match for the ablest negotiators
of the age. His wealth, his political and social influence, which he
preserved in defiance of civil disabilities and ecclesiastical malice,
his scholastic attainments, the elegance of his manners when contrasted
with Teutonic rudeness; all of these qualities ingratiated him into
the favor of the palatines, by whom he was often treated with the
consideration deserved by a friend, rather than with the abhorrence due
to an outcast.
The political organization and legal privileges which the Jews
possessed in the early days of the Visigothic monarchy magnified
their importance, increased their wealth, and fostered their spirit
of exclusiveness. The latter feeling was also strengthened by the
policy of separation which it was deemed expedient to adopt, during
the Middle Ages, in Christian communities, towards the Hebrew race.
For a considerable period of the Gothic dominion, the Jews were
confined to a certain quarter of every city and village, over which
magistrates of their own blood exercised both civil and criminal
functions, unrestricted, save in questions that affected the national
faith or where personal injury had been inflicted upon a Christian. The
jurisdiction of each provincial assembly was rigidly subordinated to
the supreme authority of the central synagogue. The territory beyond
the limits of the town--which was often entirely Jewish--was subject to
the control of a governor who was responsible only to the sovereign.
At one time the Jews controlled the most important landed interests of
the kingdom. The prejudice attaching to payments for the use of money
did not deter the Hebrew banker from the practice of usury, although
the legal rate of thirty-three per cent. certainly offered sufficient
inducements to abstain from the violation of the law which he either
secretly evaded or openly defied.
The activity displayed by the Jews of the Peninsula in every department
of science, literature, government, commerce, agriculture, and finance
was incessant and indefatigable. No contemporaneous people could boast,
in proportion to their numbers, so many men of genius and erudition.
Their influence was so extensive that it was acknowledged alike in the
hovel of the peasant and in the council chamber of the king. Their
powerful individuality survived the cruel impositions which repressed
their enterprise, but could not damp their ardor; and the patriotism
which attached them to a country in which they were only tolerated as
exiles, was sufficient to induce their descendants to heartily aid,
by every means in their power, the famous princes and warriors whose
capacity and resolution supported, amidst continuous disaster and
defeat, the doubtful fortunes of the struggling monarchy of Castile.
In their application to the mechanical arts, and in their development
of architecture, the Visigoths disclosed rather an imitative faculty
than a spirit of marked originality. What is known to us as the Gothic
style owes nothing to that nation to which popular belief has ascribed
its invention, and, in fact, was not introduced into Spain until
the thirteenth century. The name has been arbitrarily given it to
distinguish the pointed arch--its principal characteristic--from the
rounded one peculiar to the edifices of Rome. The rude and primitive
structures of the German forests, constructed of logs, stained with
mud, and designed solely for purposes of shelter and defence, could
neither suggest nor transmit traditions of architectural elegance and
beauty. The sight of the noble memorials of Roman genius which had
escaped the destructive impulses of the predatory barbarian, erelong
inspired the uncouth conqueror with the spirit of emulation. In the
Iberian Peninsula these vast and splendid structures abounded. The
walls which once encompassed the seats of its proconsul; the fanes
from whence had arisen the incense to its gods; the colonnades which
adorned its capitals; the aqueducts rising to prodigious heights,
and surmounting difficulties which would have perplexed any engineer
save a Roman, were worthy of one of the richest provinces of the
empire. From such models the Visigothic architect, wholly destitute of
experience, yet animated by the desire of imitating an excellence which
had awakened his admiration, designed the palace and the basilica.
The wealth which, from the earliest times, Spain has lavished upon
her children, furnished the means, while the religious spirit which
pervaded every class of society afforded the incentive, for public
display and private munificence. An innumerable body of slaves and
dependents, available at a moment’s notice, facilitated the rapid
construction of edifices of the largest proportions. Churches grand in
dimensions and barbaric in decoration were erected by priests, abbots,
and private individuals, whose generosity was commensurate with their
devotion. Before the shrines of these temples were deposited vases,
reliquaries, diptychs, crosses, of precious materials and curiously
intricate patterns. The religious enthusiasm of the Gothic princes,
mingled perhaps with a certain share of worldly ambition, impelled them
to a generous rivalry, and nourished in the bosom of each the desire
to surpass his predecessor in liberality to the Church. Hence the
various temples were, under each successive reign, enriched with royal
gifts of inestimable value and ostentatious magnificence. Sacramental
tables of gold studded with emeralds, diamonds, and sapphires, whose
wondrous beauty and richness Saracen tradition has transmitted to
posterity, with monstrances and ciboria of ingenious design and
encrusted with jewels, formed a portion of the pious donations of
the sovereigns of the Goths. The influence of the arts and taste
of Byzantium, communicated through the channels of commerce, the
interchange of civilities, and the frequent intercourse between the
courts of Constantinople and Toledo, appears in the mural ornamentation
of the temples and in the vessels of their shrines, as well as in
the habitations, utensils, and trinkets of the people. Geometric
forms and floral designs--afterwards so popular among the Moors, who
unquestionably derived them largely from this source--were almost
exclusively employed by the Gothic goldsmiths and architects. Vines,
leaves, buds, and quatrefoils enter into almost every combination
in great variety and with charming effect. The churches were dimly
lighted by means of marble slabs pierced with intersecting cruciform
apertures, which increased the mystery and awe of the interior, devices
which are visible to-day in places of worship as widely separated and
of as originally diverse character as the chapels of the Asturias
and the Mosque of Cordova. As soon as the rage and hatred inspired
by the resistance of their enemies--and which was wreaked upon the
edifices of the latter with hardly less vindictiveness than upon
the ranks of their legions--had been allayed, a desire to profit by
the skill and experience of their Roman subjects became paramount;
new structures of simple design and enduring materials arose in the
cities; the ancient monuments were spared; and the superior state of
preservation which distinguishes the Roman remains in the Peninsula
affords incontrovertible evidence of the enlightened appreciation of
the Visigoths.
In the encouragement of the useful and elegant arts, the Visigoths
displayed an enterprising spirit considerably in advance of the other
branches of the great Teutonic nation. Manufactures of clothing, glass,
armor, weapons, thread, and jewelry are known to have existed in their
dominions. But it is in the fabrication of church furniture, votive
offerings, and utensils designed for the service of the altar, that
the labors of their artisans are best known to us. In the province
of Guarrazar, a few miles from Toledo, was accidentally discovered,
in the middle of the last century, a deposit of objects which had
evidently been hastily buried by the priests on the approach of the
Saracen invader. It was composed of a number of votive crowns--some
of which were inscribed with the names of the donors--sceptres,
censers, crosses, candlesticks, lamps, chains, girdles. All of these
were of gold enriched with precious stones. The ignorance, fear, and
avarice of the peasants who discovered this treasure resulted in the
dispersion and loss of the most precious portion of it; but the crowns
were saved, and are now in the Hotel de Cluny at Paris, and the Royal
Armory at Madrid. These articles enable us to form an excellent idea
of the condition of the arts at the beginning of the eighth century.
The accounts given by Christian and Arab historians of the Visigothic
kings, and of the enormous booty obtained by the Moors, had, until this
discovery was made, been ridiculed by critics as exaggerations, due
to the national vanity of both conquered and conqueror. From even a
cursory examination of these objects--unique in the world--can readily
be detected the taste and style of the Byzantine, whose influence over
the artistic traditions of the Peninsula, far from disappearing with
the Gothic dynasty, was exhibited in some of the most magnificent
creations of the Moslem domination. The clumsy but massive patterns
of the crowns show that the value of the materials was taken into
consideration, quite as much as the labor that was expended upon them.
From their ornamentation is revealed a not inconsiderable familiarity
with the art of the enameller. Some of the settings are of polished
silicates, inserted, probably by way of contrast, at intervals in lines
of uncut gems. The accuracy with which they are adjusted and their
points united is indicative of long practice and extraordinary skill. A
separate intaglio belonging to the same treasure discloses a hitherto
unsuspected degree of perfection in the glyptic art. The carving of
stones as hard as the jacinth gives us a still further acquaintance
with the skill of the Gothic lapidary, and the delicacy of the filigree
borders is of almost equal excellence with the best work of modern
Italy.
While the manufactures of Gothic Spain were due to the talents and
industry of slaves, its commerce was monopolized by foreigners. The
genius of the barbarian, fearless in adventure upon land but too
indolent for application to mercantile employments, instinctively
shrank from the perils and the hardships incident to protracted
navigation of the seas. In agriculture, however, great progress was
made. Pastoral occupations had been largely superseded by the tillage
of the soil. The character of the various enactments relating to real
property shows the importance with which that branch of the law was
already invested, and the attention its occupancy and its tenures had
received from the legislative power. In literature the Visigoths could
boast of few productions of merit, and what we designate by the name
of science was to them totally unknown. But a single name, that of
San Isidoro of Seville, one, however, famous in every department of
knowledge--historian, polemic, commentator, theologian, and saint--has
emerged from the chaos of literary obscurity which enveloped the life
of Visigothic times. His acquirements were prodigious for the age.
The oracle of ecclesiastical councils, his writings were perhaps more
voluminous than those of any other author that Spain has ever produced,
and they are still regarded by Catholic divines as authoritative in
settling controverted points of doctrine.
The practice of medicine--in addition to being subordinated to the
irresponsible intervention of the priesthood, whose imposture reaped
a profitable harvest by the working of spurious miracles and by
the application of relics--was hampered by the prejudices of the
ignorant, and by the absurd restrictions imposed by the jealousy of
an ecclesiastical legislature. No matter how pressing the necessity,
a physician was not permitted to attend a free woman unless her male
relatives were present. If great weakness resulted from his treatment
he could be heavily fined, and in case death ensued he was abandoned
to the vengeance of the family of his patient. The law, however,
as a partial compensation for the inconveniences to which he was
subjected, exempted him from imprisonment for all crimes save that
of murder. A limited knowledge of anatomy and some, acquaintance
with the fundamental principles of surgery were possessed by these
practitioners, as is disclosed by their successful operations for
cataract. Their compensation was regulated by statute, and was,
besides, subject to special agreement; but, in case the patient was not
cured, no fee could be collected, and the physician was liable, at all
times, to prosecution for flagrant acts of malpractice.
The empire of the Visigoths, during the period of its greatest
prosperity, extended from the valleys of the Loire and the Garonne
to the Mediterranean. The surrender of a portion of this territory
to Clovis consolidated the power of both the kingdoms of France and
Spain, by adopting for their common boundary the natural rampart of the
Pyrenees. The tastes and traditions of the Teutonic nation, heretofore
averse to sedentary occupations, and considering all labor, and
especially the cultivation of the soil, as degrading to the character
of a freeman, caused such employment to be abandoned to the former
subjects of the Roman Empire; nor was it until several centuries had
elapsed, and the advantages resulting from industrious tillage had
been demonstrated, that this prejudice was in some degree removed. At
all times during the sway of the Visigoths, every species of manual
labor was largely performed by slaves. The institution of colleges
of artificers--a custom inherited from the most polished nation of
antiquity--had been adopted by the barbarian conquerors, and the
slaves composing these bodies, where the talents of the father were
transmitted to the son, were naturally ranked among the most valuable
of personal possessions. Large numbers of these artisans were the
property of the Crown and of the Church, being respectively under the
control of the Royal Treasurer and the Bishop, and the unique specimens
of the goldsmith’s skill which the fortunate discovery at Guarrazar has
preserved for us, reveal to what proficiency in the mechanical arts
these accomplished bondmen had attained.
The greatest luxury and pomp were indulged in by the Visigothic nation,
a people which the world still calls barbarian. Their palaces were
encrusted with precious marbles. The furniture of their apartments
was of the most expensive character. The garments of the nobility
were of silken fabrics embroidered with gold. The ladies of the court
used for their ablutions basins of silver, and admired their beauty
in exquisitely chased mirrors set with jewels. The horses of the
royal household were covered with harnesses and trappings blazing
with the precious metals. A hundred wagons laden with baggage and all
the paraphernalia of boundless extravagance followed in the train of
the monarch. Such was the lavish expenditure of even the middle and
lower classes, that it became necessary to enact a law prohibiting
the bestowal of a dowry of more than one-tenth of the property of a
bridegroom upon the bride.
Not only did the Visigoths strive to imitate their Roman subjects in
the style and finish of their edifices, but in every public employment,
in every department of art and labor, was the potent influence of the
subjugated people visible. The organization of the various corps and
divisions of the army was modelled after that of the legion. The most
popular amusements were, with the exception of gladiatorial combats,
identical with those which had excited to frenzied enthusiasm the
vast audiences of Rome and Constantinople in the circus and the
amphitheatre. The dress of the citizen, the armor of the soldier,
were Roman; the ornaments of the ladies, the insignia of royalty, the
decorations of the churches, were Byzantine. The language in common
use was a barbarous and bastard Latin. The fusion of hostile races,
the amalgamation of the conqueror and the conquered, that political
problem which has taxed the skill of the wisest statesmen, was almost
brought to a successful solution by the broad statesmanship of the
Visigothic sovereigns. The adoption and enforcement of a uniform and
well-conceived body of laws did much to accomplish this end. But the
acceptance of orthodox Christianity as the recognized form of national
faith, and the legalizing of intermarriage between the different
peoples of the Peninsula, by their tendency to remove the formidable
barriers raised by caste, which had hitherto isolated the various
classes of society, did far more to promote the union of the discordant
elements of society. The Basques--constant types of the primitive
Iberian--alone, among the multifarious tribes which acknowledged the
supremacy of the court of Toledo, have preserved their nationality,
and have obstinately refused to surrender those distinctive racial
peculiarities that have made them for centuries the subject of the
entertaining speculations of the ethnologist.
In some respects a striking parallel, in others a decided contrast
existed between Goth and Arab, representatives of the Aryan and Semitic
branches of the human family, who crossed swords in Europe for the
first time in history, on the plains of the Spanish Peninsula. Between
these two great ethnographical divisions, a spirit of irreconcilable
enmity has always prevailed. No fusion between them has ever been
effected. Where one has obtained ascendency in any part of the world,
the other has either preserved its special traits or gradually become
extinct. Considerations of political expediency, the claims of divine
revelation, the benefits of trade, the ultimate prospect of national
union and social equality, have not been sufficient to counteract
the influence of an antagonism which anticipates all human records
in its antiquity. The customs of nomadic peoples are proverbially
persistent; their occupation frequently survives the change of
residence, the accidents of migration, and the influence of new and
radically different associations. Both the Goths and the Arabs placed
their principal dependence upon their flocks and herds, but neither
ever hesitated to exchange the crook of the shepherd for the spear
of the robber. The love of war and violence was the predominating
characteristic of both. They had a common admiration for courage as
the greatest of virtues; a common appreciation of the noble qualities
of personal liberty, of private honor, of generous hospitality. Their
habits were slothful, their existence precarious. Their jealousy of
power forbade their acknowledgment of royal authority. They considered
all industrial employments as beneath the dignity of manhood.
Their worship was tainted with the most objectionable features of
idolatry,--the adoration of stones, the practice of fetichism, the
horrors of human sacrifice. Alike were they drunkards and desperate
gamesters, who eagerly placed their liberty at stake, whose revels
resounded with brawling, and whose disputes were settled with the
sword. They recognized no permanent ownership in the soil, possessed
little portable wealth, were ignorant of the arts and without the
knowledge of letters. Like all barbarians, they believed disease
and insanity to be caused by demoniacal possession. With both, love
of poetry was a passion, and the personality of the bard the object
of almost idolatrous reverence. Such were the traits common to two
nations, separated by a distance of eighteen hundred miles, ignorant of
each other’s existence, and living under entirely dissimilar climatic
conditions. The atmosphere of the Baltic was perpetually cold and
damp, that of Arabia dry and torrid almost beyond endurance. Eastern
Europe was covered with dense forests, traversed by noble rivers, and
dotted with impassable swamps. In the Desert nothing was so rare as a
tree or rivulet. The physical conformation of the Goth and the Arab
respectively was controlled by his environment to an even greater
degree than was the mental constitution of either. The former was
of giant stature and strength, and of fair complexion; the latter
slender. nervous, and swarthy. With the Goth, female chastity was held
in the highest esteem; with the Arab, it was the subject of caustic
epigram, of jest, and of satire. The Goth, a monogamist, knew nothing
of the pleasures of gallantry; the polygamous Arab placed indulgence
in them second only to the excitement of battle. The Goths were among
the first and most devout proselytes of Christianity; the Arabs have
ever obstinately refused to acknowledge the divinity of Christ or the
superior authority of the Gospel.
That invincible prowess which, nurtured by poverty and an abstemious
life, was displayed with equal distinction and success amidst the
forests of Europe and on the sandy plains of Africa, was the potent
weapon which obtained for each of these great nations supremacy over
their adversaries; an advantage which, through internal dissension,
sectarian prejudice, and social corruption, was eventually lost; but
not until the moral and physical peculiarities of both had impressed
themselves upon their contemporaries, so deeply as to insure their
transmission, with but little modification, to subsequent ages.
The spirit of the Visigoths was, almost from the first, decidedly
progressive. This general tendency towards improvement, and a desire
for the blessings of civilization, stimulated commercial activity,
increased domestic happiness, and opened a field for the development of
art, the advancement of science, the strict administration of justice,
and the consequent decrease of brutality and crime. The wisdom of
the Gothic polity and the equity of its laws afford a pleasing and
instructive example of the capacity of a people to raise itself unaided
from barbarism--a people which, in addition to the romantic interest
attaching to its history, is entitled to the grateful remembrance
of mankind for the beneficent influence it has exerted upon the
political institutions and the social order of Europe; as well as for
the creation of a judicial system whose merits and whose principles,
confirmed by the experience of centuries, are still acknowledged by the
most august tribunals of the civilized world.
CHAPTER V
THE INVASION AND CONQUEST OF SPAIN
710–713
General Conditions and Physical Features of the Spanish
Peninsula--Various Classes of the Population--Supremacy of
the Church--Tyranny of the Visigothic Kings--Fatal Policy
of Witiza--Accession of Roderick--Count Julian--Invasion of
Tarik--Battle of the Guadalete--Its Momentous Results--Progress
of the Moslems--Arrival of Musa--His Success--Immense Booty
secured by the Victors--Quarrel of Tarik and Musa--Interference
of the Khalif--Submission of the Goths--Musa’s Vast Scheme of
Conquest--The Two Generals ordered to Damascus--The Triumphal
Procession through Africa--Fate of Musa--Causes and Effects of
the Moslem Occupation of Spain.
The encroaching spirit of Islam, dominated by the potent motives
of avarice, ambition, and fanaticism, was not content with its
marvellous achievements and the possession of two continents, it
aspired to universal conquest. The submission of Africa was now
complete. The sovereignty of the Byzantine Empire had vanished forever
from the southern coast of the Mediterranean. The tact and military
skill of Musa had won the confidence, and inspired the respect,
of the treacherous, warlike, and hitherto intractable, tribes of
Mauritania. A large number of the latter had embraced Mohammedanism.
A still greater proportion who, either from association, policy, or
conviction, professed attachment to the law of Moses, maintained an
intimate correspondence with their oppressed brethren of the Spanish
Peninsula. The latter in secret brooded over the accumulated wrongs
of centuries, and, under an appearance of resignation, harbored
designs that boded ill to the temporal and ecclesiastical tyrants of
the Visigothic monarchy. The restless glance of the Arabian general
had long contemplated with envy, mingled with an insatiable desire
for plunder, the rich and splendid cities of ancient Bætica; its
teeming mines; its pastures, with their myriads of cattle; its plains,
traversed by innumerable canals and rivers; where even a careless and
incomplete system of cultivation produced harvests almost rivalling in
luxuriance those of the famous valleys of the Euphrates and the Nile.
A strait, of less than eight miles in width in its narrowest part,
now presented the sole physical impediment to the further progress of
the conqueror. It was defended upon the African side by the fortress
of Ceuta, whose governor was a vassal or tributary of the Visigothic
king, and whose valor had rendered nugatory the efforts of the bravest
Moslem captains, who, fully appreciating the strategic importance
of this stronghold, had made repeated and desperate attempts to
capture it. This promontory, which formed one side of the channel,
familiar for ages to the Phœnicians, and supposed by the ignorant to
be the end of the world, was protected from foreign intrusion by the
portentous fables and prodigies invented by Tyrian artifice. Facing
it, on the Spanish shore, stood the Temple of Hercules, with its dome
of gilded bronze, its columns of electrum, and its mysterious altars
raised to Art, Old Age, and Poverty. Unlike other Pagan shrines--for
it contained no visible representation of a divinity--it was always
approached by the Phœnician mariner with feelings of gratitude and awe.
It was associated with his naval superiority over the other nations
of antiquity. It was intimately connected with the increase of his
wealth; with the continuance of his prosperity; with the discovery of
lands unknown to his contemporaries and rivals; with the preservation
of his stores of occult wisdom, whose sources he explored with such
acuteness and concealed with such success. Every device of fable and
superstition had been employed to clothe this locality with such a
character as might effectually check the efforts of an inquiring or
aggressive commercial spirit. To the accomplishment of this end, the
phenomena of Nature lent their powerful aid. The contracted passage
between two of the greatest bodies of water known to the ancients was
of unfathomable depth. On both sides, despite the agitation of the
waves, its level remained the same. Even during both the ebb and flow
of the tide, the current always ran strongly towards the east. Its
force was steady, constant, invariable; the waxing and waning of the
moon, the most furious tempests, exerted no appreciable influence over
the inflexible regularity of its motion. It was not without reason that
the apparent suspension of the laws of equilibrium and of the forces of
Nature was attributed by the superstitious to the divinity whose temple
guarded the famous portals upon which he had imposed his name. It has
been maintained by scholars that within this shrine was preserved, as
a sacred relic, a fragment of magnetic ore, of great antiquity, known
to the Tyrian navigator as a priceless talisman--the precursor of the
mariner’s compass--which had guided his course to distant Britain, and
assured to his countrymen the empire of the seas. According to popular
belief, through this channel the way led to the realm of Chaos. To
brave its unknown and dreaded perils was sacrilege, and to none, save
those authorized by the priests of Melcareth, was this undertaking
permitted. In subsequent times, invested with little less mystery, this
region had bequeathed not a few of its reminiscences to the Roman,
and awakened the curiosity of the Arab, as he fixed his gaze upon the
white-topped waves sparkling in the sunlight between continent and
continent and sea and sea, like the facets of a precious gem; or, in
the beautiful imagery of the Oriental chronicler, “like a diamond
between two emeralds and two sapphires, the master-stone in the ring of
empire.”
In the beginning of the eighth century the kingdom of the Visigoths
presented every appearance of prosperity and power. Its inherent
weakness was imperfectly disguised by the pomp of its hierarchy and
the luxury of its court, which veiled the defects of its constitution
and the abuses of its government with a false and delusive splendor.
Its licentious sovereign retained none of the primitive virtues of his
ancestors, whose intrepid spirit and resistless valor had sustained
them on a hundred fields of battle, and had borne their arms in a
long succession of triumphs from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. The
successor of Reccared and Wamba had degenerated into a feeble tyrant,
who reigned by a disputed title, and in whose sensual nature neither
the rites of hospitality, the obligations of friendship, the dignity of
the regal office, nor the infirmities of age, interposed any obstacle
to the indulgence of his unbridled passions.
A haughty nobility decimated by the sanguinary feuds promoted by a
contested succession, and divided into factions whose members hated
each other with far greater intensity than that which they bore to
a common enemy; unaccustomed to the exercise of arms; destitute of
faith and honor; concealing treasonable sentiments under the semblance
of enthusiastic loyalty, endeavored to sustain, by vainglorious
boasts and barbaric ostentation, the dignity of their order and the
majesty of the throne. The martial ardor of the legions which had for
centuries upheld the greatness and the renown of the Roman name had
been supplanted by the zeal and avarice of the monastic hordes, who
defended by every expedient of fraud and violence the rising cause
of the church militant. The crosier, in the hands of an arrogant
caste which monopolized the learning of the age, had become far more
potent than the sword or the sceptre, and the origin of all political
measures of national importance was to be sought not in the palace
but in the cathedral. The wise, tolerant, and judicious policy of the
early ecclesiastics, that had animated and directed the councils of the
Church, which by its humanizing influence had softened the prevailing
rudeness of the age, and framed laws whose equitable maxims have
served as models for succeeding legislators, had been abandoned for
the degrading but profitable occupation of hunting down and plundering
heretics. The proud and exclusive hierarchy of the Visigoths refused to
acknowledge the supremacy, or respect the edicts, of the See of Rome.
When the Pope interfered in the spiritual affairs of the Peninsula--an
occurrence, however, that rarely took place--he did so rather in the
capacity of a mediator, or even a suppliant, than as a mighty ruler,
the head of Christendom, and the Vicar of God. His titles were assumed
and his prerogatives usurped by the Spanish prelates; his infallibility
was questioned, not only by the higher clergy, whose ministrations were
declared to be endowed with equal virtue, but even by the sovereign
and the nobles, who openly ridiculed his pretensions and defied his
authority. The evil example of royal profligacy had infected every
grade of the priesthood. The episcopal palace became the scene of daily
turmoil and midnight orgies, which scandalized the populace, itself far
from immaculate; while the excellence of the wines and the beauty of
the female companions of priest and primate were matters of public jest
and infamous notoriety. The relative positions of the great officials
of Church and State had, by reason of the peculiar functions exercised
by the former, who had entirely usurped the legislative power, been
reversed. The prelate, while still retaining the outward insignia of
his sacred profession, had, from the practice of the generous and
self-sacrificing duties of a minister of grace and mercy, descended
to the ignoble arts of an active, scheming, unscrupulous politician.
The nobility, after having virtually surrendered to their spiritual
advisers the complete control of the administration, preserved, to a
pharisaical degree, the outward semblance of devotion. In private life,
the morals of both classes were stained with degrading vices and crimes
which were thinly veiled by a more or less rigid observance of the
prescribed forms of religious worship.
No country in Europe had, from the earliest times of which history
makes mention, constantly offered such inducements to the enterprise
and prowess of an invader as Spain. The Orient and the Occident met
upon her shores. Every material advantage which could attract the
attention of man, which could stimulate his ambition, increase his
wealth, insure his comfort, supply his necessities, and minister to his
happiness, was hers. The balmy air of her southern provinces--whose
skies for months were unobscured by a single cloud--was tempered by the
breezes of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. The varied landscape
of hill and plain, seamed with a net-work of artificial rivulets, was
covered with a mantle of perpetual verdure. Her orchards furnished an
inexhaustible supply of the most delicious fruits. The products of her
mines had made the fortune of every possessor--Phœnician, Carthaginian,
Roman, Vandal, and Goth. Her gold and silver had embellished the
thrones of Babylon, the shrines of Tyre, the palaces of Memphis, the
temple of Jerusalem. Her coasts, easy of access from every point,
offered a succession of safe and commodious harbors. The Visigoths,
despite their barbarian prejudice against manual labor, recognized the
importance of agriculture. The provinces of the realm were apportioned
among the nobility. A stated tribute was required of their vassals
by the great landed proprietors, who rarely had the justice to grant
indulgence for a failure of the harvests or a deficiency resulting
from public or private misfortune. The cultivators were attached to
the glebe, which could not be alienated without them, and, forming an
hereditary caste, were, to all intents and purposes, slaves; although,
under the Gothic polity, their position was nominally superior to that
of the unfortunate who was exposed for sale in the market. From these
two classes, dispirited by generations of arduous toil and constant
oppression, were recruited the rank and file of the army, who were
expected to fight for the preservation of their tyrants’ possessions
and the continuance of their own degradation. The lot of the serf
under later Visigothic rule was, in general, far more grievous than
that of the slave had been under the Roman. The Teutonic custom which
encouraged the imposition of personal service in return for protection
was unknown under the Empire. The rendering of this obligation an
hereditary charge--a cardinal principle of the German constitution,
but which became in a measure obsolete under the later Visigothic
kings--added to the aggravation which attended its performance. The
restrictions upon marriage, the separation of families, the severity
of punishment imposed for even trifling offences, added to the
humiliation and hardships of the servile condition. While the Arian
heresy was predominant, the burdens of serfdom were lightened, and its
state had been gradually improved. The generosity of the bishops was
displayed in every way that kindness and consideration could suggest;
in the diminution of labor; in rewards for fidelity; in attendance
in sickness; in sympathy in misfortune. The unhappy serf, deceived
by these concessions and favors, not unnaturally concluded that they
portended increased liberty and ultimate emancipation. The clergy gave
color to this presumption by frequent declarations from the pulpit
that slavery was contrary to the teachings of the Gospel. In time,
with the increase of influence, the control of royal elections, and
the absolute dictation of the policy of the throne, these spiritual
statesmen found it expedient to forget the benevolent precepts of
government which they had formerly so earnestly inculcated. After the
acceptance of the orthodox faith, the inherent evils of the servile
system were magnified to an unprecedented degree. The high rank, sacred
character, and practically unlimited power of the great prelates of
the Church, offered unusual opportunities for the indulgence of the
passions of tyranny and avarice. The dependents of bishops walked
in the processions, by which were celebrated the great festivals of
the Church, attired in silken liveries embroidered with gold. The
appointments of their palaces and the magnificence of their trains
surpassed even those of the sovereign. The estates of these dignitaries
were the most extensive and important of the kingdom; in many instances
they exceeded in value the royal demesnes. Immense numbers of slaves
were employed upon them, not merely in the cultivation of the soil,
but in the producing and perfecting of every article, then known,
which could contribute to the pleasure of their luxurious lords. For
these unhappy laborers, whose tasks each year became more arduous,
and whose aspirations for liberty, cherished during many generations,
were now destroyed, the prospect of relief from their unsupportable
burdens seemed absolutely hopeless. Inferior in numbers to these two
classes of agricultural serfs, and the individuals condemned by
the accident of birth, or the process of law, to perpetual bondage,
but vastly superior to them in intelligence, in shrewdness, and in
all the arts of deceit, were the Jews. A sweeping decree of the
Seventeenth Council of Toledo had confiscated their possessions and
sentenced them to servitude. A hundred thousand of these sectaries,
in whose breasts rankled a spirit of fierce and sullen hatred, born
of hostility handed down for ages, and aggravated by a system of
repression scarcely justifiable even by the sternest demands of
political necessity, constituted an element of a far more dangerous
character than all of the others whose machinations and discontent had
undermined the fabric of the Visigothic empire. The national sentiment
of superiority--born of theocratic government, of the claims of an
arrogant priesthood, of the alleged favor of the Almighty, and of the
traditions of three thousand years--was then, as now, all-powerful in
the minds of the Jewish people. The defective annals of that age have
failed to furnish us with data by which we can determine with what
degree of strictness the laws against the Hebrews were enforced. It
is probable, however, that in the cities, where a higher condition
of intelligence existed and more correct ideas of justice obtained,
observance of these inhuman edicts was frequently evaded. In the
villages and hamlets the fanaticism and jealousy of the peasantry
undoubtedly inflicted every hardship and indignity upon the Jews. In
vain might the favored steward or counsellor of the noble, who still
retained his residence in the palace, and continued to supply by his
own talents and experience the deficiencies produced by his employer’s
sloth and incapacity, attempt to alleviate the wretchedness of his
countrymen. With the ignorant rabble, the possession of wealth and
the exertion of political power by heretics were always unpardonable
crimes. The clergy, on all occasions, for ends of their own, fomented
the popular discontent, lauded this cruel policy as acceptable to
God, and by every device sought to perpetuate the ancient antagonism
of the Aryan and Semitic races, in which is to be sought one cause of
the irrational and widely-diffused prejudice against the Jew. This
feeling was also intensified by the current tradition that, during the
reign of Leovigild, the Hebrews had, with unconcealed alacrity, aided
the heterodox clergy in persecuting members of the Roman Catholic
communion. Under these circumstances, too much importance cannot
be attached to the part played in the Moorish occupation of Spain
by this numerous and enterprising sect, skilled in all the arts of
dissimulation, and exasperated by centuries of oppression, which the
Visigothic kingdom nourished in its bosom. Without the information
afforded by its members the Arab attack would probably have never been
undertaken. Without its support and co-operation it is certain that
the subjugation of a nation of six million souls could never have
been accomplished in the space of a few months by a mere handful of
undisciplined horsemen.
No nation has ever flourished under the rule of a hierarchy.
The circumstances indispensable for the security and happiness
of the subject are incompatible with the demands of the alleged
representatives of divine inspiration and omnipotent power. The narrow
policy inseparable from protracted ecclesiastical domination is
inevitably productive of national ruin and disgrace. In this instance,
it dispossessed the Spanish people of the richest part of their
inheritance for eight hundred years. Under the monarchs of the Austrian
line--incapable of profiting by the experience of their predecessors
and deaf to the warnings of history--similar acts of imprudence and
folly contributed more than aught else to deprive the Spanish Crown of
the political supremacy of Europe.
The events in the annals of Spain which relate to the close of the
seventh and the commencement of the eighth century are involved in
more than ordinary obscurity. It was a period fraught with political
and social disturbance. Treason and regicide, crimes from which,
heretofore, the Gothic people had been proverbially exempt, were now
considered justifiable expedients by every ambitious noble who aspired
to raise himself to the throne. The degrees of favor and absolution
which the successful traitor could expect from the clergy were directly
proportionate to the value of the gifts which he was able to deposit
in the treasury of the Church. Every offence, no matter how flagrant,
was pardonable after satisfactory pecuniary intercession with the
priest. The fulminations of the Holy Council were denounced against all
who refused allegiance to the royal assassin, whose election had been
ratified by the votes of the assembled prelates. Where the aspirant to
kingly power lacked the courage for deeds of blood, a resort to fraud
was deemed excusable, provided it was attended with success and the
customary liberal contribution for ecclesiastical purposes was not
forgotten. To such a depth of degradation had fallen the descendants of
the loyal, brave, and generous warriors of the Teutonic race!
The greatness of the Visigothic monarchy had departed with the reign
of Wamba, the last of its heroes, and one illustrious for the practice
of every public and every private virtue. Deprived of his crown by an
artifice which reflected more credit on the astuteness than on the
integrity of his successor, he was condemned to pass the latter portion
of his life in a convent. The new king Ervigius, after an uneventful
reign, left his kingdom to his son-in-law Egiza. The character of
the latter monarch, while not destitute of the manly virtues of
courage and resolution, was tarnished by insatiable rapacity. He was
as persevering in his pursuit of wealth as he was unscrupulous in his
methods of obtaining it. He commuted the enforcement of penal laws
for the payment of fines, which varied with the pecuniary ability of
the culprit to discharge them, without regard to the degree or the
circumstances of the crime. Under trivial pretexts, he banished wealthy
citizens and confiscated their property. He imposed excessive taxes.
Emboldened by the impunity of power, he did not hesitate to resort
even to forgery; and, by means of spurious documents, implicated
in offences against the state such wealthy individuals as had the
hardihood to resist his importunate demands. And, worst of all, he
lost no opportunity to appropriate the revenues of the Church, under
whatever pretence his ingenuity or his audacity might suggest. By an
unprincipled and tyrannical hierarchy the former misdemeanors might be
overlooked, but the latter offence was tainted with the double reproach
of oppression and sacrilege. After formal and unavailing remonstrance,
a plot was formed in 692 by Sisebert, Archbishop of Toledo, which had
for its object the assassination of the King and his entire family.
Some of the most powerful nobles were involved in this conspiracy,
which was hatched by the principal ecclesiastics of the capital. Timely
information of the plot having reached the ears of the sovereign, the
most vigorous means were taken to counteract it. The metropolitan
was arrested and deposed. A number of the chief conspirators were
executed or exiled. Scarcely had this conspiracy been suppressed,
before the existence of a still more formidable one was revealed. The
Hebrews, whose condition under this and the preceding reign had been
more favorable than for many years, evincing no gratitude for the
leniency with which they had been treated, and remembering only past
indignities, exulting in their numbers and influence, and assured of
aid from Barbary, made arrangements for a general revolt, with a view
to a complete reorganization of the government and the metamorphosis
of Spain into an absolutely Jewish kingdom. This treasonable design
was discovered, however, almost at the moment when it was ripe for
execution. The authorities took measures to insure their safety with
exemplary severity. A council was convoked and a decree passed, by
which the Jews were condemned to be banished, enslaved, stripped of
their possessions, and deprived of their children. The outrageous
cruelty of the measure, however, caused an almost immediate reaction,
and it was not generally enforced. The discontented sectaries, grieving
under their accumulated wrongs, and exasperated by the miscarriage
of their plans, continued to hope for assistance from abroad, and
embraced every opportunity to send information of the public disorders
to their sympathetic brethren in Africa. The reign of Egiza, agitated
hitherto by almost incessant political convulsions, was now threatened
with the evils of foreign invasion. A Saracen fleet, well manned and
equipped, descended upon the defenceless Spanish coast, ravaged the
fields, plundered the villages, and carried the inhabitants into
captivity. To provide against this new danger a naval expedition was
fitted out, and entrusted to the command of Theodomir, an officer of
approved experience, and a noble of the highest rank. Setting sail,
the Gothic admiral lost no time in encountering the hostile fleet.
A bloody engagement took place; two hundred of the enemy’s vessels
were destroyed or taken; and the embryotic maritime power of the
Moslems was swept from the seas. In the following year a war with the
Franks, the cause of which is unknown, was carried on for several
months with the indecisive results characteristic of the operations
of desultory warfare. Egiza, being advanced in years and conscious of
his infirmities, was desirous of associating his son Witiza with him
in the administration, and of securing to him the succession at his
decease. A council having been convoked for this purpose, his wishes
were realized without opposition, and Witiza was raised to the regal
dignity. The following year the old King died, leaving to his young
and inexperienced successor the sole responsibility of government,
and a series of difficulties and embarrassments such as no other
monarch of his time had hitherto been forced to contend with, and
which involved both the stability of the Visigothic empire and the
preservation of the Christian faith. The accession of Witiza promised
a happy and prosperous future to the country afflicted with so many
calamities. His youth had been distinguished by the practice of the
virtues of temperance, generosity, justice, and filial reverence. As
soon as he attained to absolute power, he evinced a disposition to
win the attachment of the people by making amends for the pecuniary
exactions and oppressive laws which had been imposed by the avarice
and extortions of his family. A general amnesty was proclaimed.
The forged documents by which the wealthy had been plundered were
destroyed. All taxes, except such as were absolutely necessary to the
support of the government, were remitted. Great numbers of exiles
were invited to return, and their possessions were surrendered. The
Jews were restored to partial favor; but, as the popular prejudice
was still bitter and universal, a politic appearance of severity
was maintained, which, however, it was evident would be entirely
removed in time. Under such favorable auspices began the reign of
Witiza, whose magnanimity, tact, and affable demeanor had already
won the hearts of his subjects. The opinion of the latter was at
first confirmed by the mild disposition and virtuous behavior of
their youthful sovereign. But this fair promise of future greatness
was fallacious, for Witiza soon plunged into excesses which awakened
the horror of his subjects, and provoked the censures of the clergy,
ever disposed to be lenient towards such transgressions except when
they threatened their influence or their revenues. The whole court
was soon abandoned to indiscriminate licentiousness. Not only was the
violation of the most sacred traditions of the Church permitted, but
polygamy and concubinage were openly encouraged by sacerdotal authority
and example. The pious instructors of the people were the first to
improve the opportunities afforded by these impolitic enactments, and
the feelings of the devout were outraged by excesses which did not
respect even the sacred precincts of the altar and the confessional.
No scandals, however, aroused such indignation as the indulgence which
was manifested towards the Jews. Every ecclesiastic, especially,
considered any moderation of the condition of this down-trodden race
an affront to his order, and a crime worse than sacrilege. Enraged
by the contempt with which Witiza treated their remonstrances, the
clergy lost no occasion of increasing the prevailing discontent, and,
with a view to strengthening their position by enlisting the aid of
the Holy See, they secretly despatched an embassy to Rome. The ire
of the Pope was excited by the representations of the envoys of the
Spanish Church, whose prelates, though not acknowledging his supreme
jurisdiction, did not disdain to solicit his intervention as an affair
which seemed to involve the interests of Christendom. Elated by the
hope of establishing his authority in the Peninsula, the Holy Father
Constantine, without delay, sent a message to the recalcitrant monarch
threatening him with the loss of his kingdom, unless he at once
revoked the offensive edicts and permitted the unrestricted persecution
of the Jews. To this Witiza retorted with contempt that if the Pope
did not cease intermeddling with what did not concern him, he would
drive him from the Vatican; and he forthwith published an edict that no
attention should be paid to the mandates of the Papacy under penalty
of death. These proceedings further embittered the prejudices of both
the clergy and the people, and the popular clamor became so loud that
Witiza began to tremble for both his crown and his life. Agitated by
his fears, and resolved to afford as little encouragement as possible
to any treasonable undertaking, he dismantled the principal fortresses,
and razed the walls of every city in the kingdom, excepting those of
Toledo, Astorga, and Lugo; an act of folly which not only failed of
its object, but in the end directly contributed to the overthrow of
the monarchy. The Jews, on the other hand, now placed in positions of
profit and responsibility, far from appreciating the honors with which
they were invested and the confidence which was reposed in them, with
characteristic treachery and ingratitude, availed themselves of their
power for the destruction of their royal benefactor. Aided by their
intrigues, a formidable conspiracy broke out. The majority of the
clergy and a considerable body of the nobles joined the insurgents; a
rival king was elected; and, after a short conflict, Witiza was deposed
and probably murdered, for history has preserved no record of his fate.
The new monarch, Roderick, although he had reached the great age of
eighty-two years, retained, in an unusual degree, the strength and
activity of early manhood. His life had been passed amidst the athletic
pastimes which exercised the leisure of the Gothic youth, and, in
occasional expeditions undertaken against the hardy mountaineers
of Galicia and Biscay, he had earned a well-merited reputation for
courage and military skill. Although not of royal blood, his natural
endowments, the dignity of his carriage, the apparent but deceptive
austerity of his manners, and the mildness of his temper, gained for
him the respect of all who were admitted to his presence. In the
elegant luxury of his palace, in the splendor of his retinue, in the
majestic pomp which distinguished every public ceremony over which
he presided, he far surpassed his predecessors, and emulated, with
no little success, the magnificence of the Roman court in the age of
imperial decadence.
The intriguing spirit which animated the subjects of a monarchy
essentially elective, but one where courtesy and real or apparent
merit occasionally made an exception in favor of hereditary descent,
had established, among the Visigoths, the custom of retaining near
the throne the children of powerful families; nominally for purposes
of education, but in fact to insure the fidelity of their relatives
often entrusted with the custody of frontier strongholds or important
military commands. The sons, until they attained to manhood, served
as pages in the royal household, and were trained in all the manly
and martial exercises of the time. The attendants of the queens were
recruited from the noble maidens, whom this prudent custom placed
and retained in the precincts of the court, and who were carefully
instructed in the few but graceful accomplishments indispensable to the
position of ladies of distinguished lineage. Among the latter, at the
court of Roderick, was the daughter of Count Julian, formerly a vassal
of the Byzantine Empire, and the commandant of the fortress of Ceuta;
whom political necessity, the isolation consequent upon the subjugation
of every Greek settlement in Africa, and the rapidly increasing power
of the Moors, had compelled to appeal to the nearest Christian monarch
for protection, and to transfer his allegiance to the court of Toledo.
This girl, who was of great beauty, excited the licentious desires of
the King, who, failing to accomplish his object by fair means, in an
evil hour resorted to force. Informed of the injury which had been
inflicted upon his family, Count Julian, braving without hesitation
the storms of winter, hastened to the capital. Dissembling, with
true Greek astuteness, his outraged feelings, he asked permission to
remove his daughter to the bedside of her mother whom he represented
as being dangerously ill. Without any misgivings Roderick granted the
request, and, manifesting every appearance of respect and loyalty, the
veteran officer left the court and retraced his steps. No sooner had he
arrived at his post, than he began to carry out the plan of vengeance
which he had already fully matured. The castle of Ceuta was the key
of Europe. Impregnable to all the resources of military engineering
in an age when gunpowder was unknown, its value as an obstacle to
foreign invasion was not understood by the Visigoths. The immunity of
centuries; the contempt for barbarians; the ignorance of the mighty
and unexampled power of Islam; the inertia produced partly by the
influence of climate, but principally by an abuse of all the pleasures
of unbridled luxury, had disposed the sovereigns of Toledo to consider
their kingdom inaccessible to attack, and their empire eternal. As has
already been mentioned, this haughty and corrupt nation was constantly
agitated and its integrity menaced by a score of discordant factions.
Its recent monarchs had bent all their energies to the abrogation
of the statesmanlike measures inaugurated by their forefathers. The
nobles and the clergy, inflamed with mutual animosity, suspicious of
their partisans, and arrayed against each other, were engaged in a
mortal struggle for superiority. The Jews, indulged and persecuted
by turns, lived in a continual state of apprehension and despair.
All the salutary restraints of religion were apparently removed; the
Church was regarded as a convenient instrument for the attainment
of political power; the priesthood were devoted to the practice of
nameless vices; the people to indiscriminate libertinage. A large body
of slaves, who, under the lash of brutal masters, still preserved the
traditions of liberty, were ripe for revolt, and longed for the day of
their deliverance. A disastrous famine, followed by its usual successor
the pestilence, and whose effects were still apparent in untilled
fields and deserted hamlets, had contributed to increase the popular
suffering and discontent. Fortified on one side against the incursions
of the Franks by the natural rampart of the Pyrenees, and isolated
on the others by the Mediterranean and the ocean, the inhabitants of
the Peninsula, in the enjoyment of a salubrious climate and fruitful
soil, rested in fancied security, and had long since laid aside the
armor whose weight had become oppressive, and abandoned those warlike
exercises whose preservation was their only safeguard.
Incited by a spirit of desperation which considered neither the
consequences of his acts nor the means by which they were to be
accomplished, Count Julian sought the presence of Musa. He found the
Moslem general at Kairoan, which had been selected as the seat of the
viceregal government of Western Africa. The intrepid character of
his visitor was not unknown to the great Arab soldier whose designs
upon Ceuta had been twice frustrated, by the valiant Greek, after the
employment of all the resources at the command of the Khalif, and Count
Julian was received with every token of honor and respect. Unfolding
his project, he descanted long and earnestly upon the riches of the
Gothic monarchy and the facility of its conquest. He explained the
feuds and bitter feelings engendered by disappointed ambition, by
religious persecution, by the seizure of hereditary estates, by the
sufferings of wounded pride. He expatiated on the sense of injury
experienced by the advocates of hereditary descent, who considered
the reigning monarch of foreign lineage and inferior rank that had
justly incurred the odium of usurpation. He portrayed in glowing
terms the innumerable attractions of the country, its productive
valleys, its crystal streams, the medicinal value of its herbs and
plants to which magical virtues were attributed by popular report,
its mines, its fisheries, the precious spoil which awaited the hand
of the invader, the transcendent beauty of its women. He described
the effeminate character of the inhabitants, enervated by idleness,
luxury, and sensual indulgence. Much of this information was already
familiar to Musa, but hitherto the impassable barrier of the fortress
defended by the stubborn courage of the governor of Ceuta had checked
the aspirations of the Moslem commander; nor had it been possible to
even confirm the accuracy of the wonderful tales which had been related
concerning Ghezirah-al-Andalus, or the Vandal Peninsula, as Spain was
known to the Arabs.
Thoroughly appreciating the importance of the proposal, the magnitude
of the interests involved, and the uncertainty which would attend
the issue of the expedition, and, at the same time, distrusting the
good faith of the Goth, Musa determined to obtain the consent of the
Khalif before returning a definite answer. Despatches, with complete
information, were accordingly sent to Damascus. The reply of Al-Walid,
who then occupied the throne of the khalifate, was favorable; but he
strongly advised the exercise of caution, a recommendation entirely
superfluous in the case of a man of Musa’s suspicious and crafty
disposition. Sending for Count Julian, Musa informed him that he would
be required to prove his fidelity by heading a reconnaissance into
the enemy’s country. The count accepted the condition with alacrity;
crossed the strait with a small detachment of soldiers belonging to
his garrison; ravaged the coast in the neighborhood of Medina Sidonia;
burned several churches; destroyed the growing harvests, and returned
with considerable booty. Knowing his ally to be now compromised beyond
all hope of pardon, and the trifling resistance encountered having
apparently demonstrated the feasibility of the enterprise, Musa
announced his willingness to negotiate. The conditions of the compact
which disposed of one of the richest kingdoms of Europe have escaped
the notice of history. There is reason to believe, however, that Count
Julian was promised substantial pecuniary remuneration in addition
to the gratification of revenge; and that their hereditary estates
were to be restored to the family of Witiza, whose sons were present
at the conference, and whose brother Oppas was not only privy to the
conspiracy but was one of its principal promoters. The keys of Ceuta
were surrendered, and Count Julian, having sworn allegiance to the
Khalif, was invested with a command in the Moslem army.
The wary old veteran Musa was not yet satisfied, and determined to
send a second expedition, under one of his own captains, to explore
the Spanish coast. He selected for this purpose one of his trusty
freed-men, Abu-Zarah-Tarif by name, who, embarking with one hundred
cavalry and three hundred infantry, landed at Ghezirah-al-Khadra, now
Algeziras, in July, 710. The incursion of Tarif differed little in its
results from that of his predecessor, but confirmed the representations
of the latter, and proved beyond doubt the defenceless condition of the
Visigothic kingdom. Preparations for war were now made upon a larger
scale, but one which still could not contemplate the overthrow of the
monarchy in the incredibly short period required to accomplish it,
and which, indeed, was designed only as a predatory expedition. The
command of the troops was given to Tarik-Ibn-Zeyad, a Berber, whose red
hair and light complexion disclosed his descent from the Vandals. The
similar names of these two officers, both of whom were freed-men of
Musa, have led to a confusion and mistaken identity, which has greatly
embarrassed the narratives of both ancient chroniclers and modern
historians. Tarik was a soldier of approved experience, extraordinary
enterprise, and unflinching courage. His army was one of the most
motley forces which had ever been assembled under the Moslem standard.
The number was comparatively insignificant, amounting to only seven
thousand, of whom but few were cavalry. The bulk of the troops was
composed of Berbers--fierce savages of the Atlas Mountains, proselytes
reclaimed from fetichism by the policy and eloquence of Musa--among
them being representatives of the tribes of Ghomarah, Masmoudah, and
Zenetah, names destined to a cruel celebrity in the subsequent history
of Spain. Every nation whose types chance, misfortune, the love of
plunder, or the spirit of adventure had impelled upon the African
coast, was represented in the ranks of the invaders; descendants of
the Vandals and the Goths; Bedouins from the Hedjaz; political exiles
from the far Orient; conspirators from Syria; apostate Byzantines
who had renounced allegiance to the Emperor of Constantinople; and a
considerable body of Jews, whose relations with their Spanish brethren
rendered them valuable auxiliaries, swelled the command of Tarik.
In the latter were adherents of every form of religion,--the adorer
of fire, the worshipper of the stars, the Pagan votary of the gods
of Olympus, the orthodox and the heretic Christian. Each tribe was
marshalled under its respective banner, and the varied nationality of
the rank and file was equally displayed in the widely diverse origin
of the subordinate officers--Count Julian the renegade Greek, Tarik
the Berber, Mugayth-al-Rumi the Goth, and Kaula-al-Yahudi the Jew.
Vessels for the passage of the strait were furnished by Count Julian,
who impressed such merchantmen as lay at anchor in the ports under his
jurisdiction, the only ones obtainable; the number of these, however,
was so insufficient that the transportation of the army consumed
several days. The Moslems finally disembarked at the foot of an immense
promontory known to the ancient world as Calpe, but which, rechristened
by the Arabs Gebal-al-Tarik, the Mountain of Tarik, has transmitted
its new appellation, almost unchanged, to future ages as the famous
Gibraltar. Scarcely had the invaders landed, when they were attacked
by the Goths under Theodomir, that chieftain whose successful conduct
of the naval expedition during the reign of Egiza had induced Roderick
to invest him with the command of the forces at his disposal. The
ill-equipped and undisciplined troops of the Gothic general at once
disclosed their inability to withstand the onset of the fiery horsemen
of the Desert, and Theodomir was compelled to retreat. He sent, without
delay, the alarming news of the invasion to the King, revealing the
universal dismay with which this strange enemy was regarded, in the
following language: “Our land has been invaded by people whose name,
country, and origin are unknown to me. I cannot even tell thee whence
they came, whether they fell from the skies or sprang from the earth.”
This ominous despatch reached Roderick before the walls of Pampeluna,
which had recently revolted against his authority. Whatever were his
faults, the Gothic monarch was certainly not deficient in courage and
resolution. Raising the siege, he hastened to Cordova, and devoted
all his energies to the assembling of an immense army for the defence
of the kingdom. Every resource was employed,--promises of amnesty,
threats, bounties, and conscription, until a hundred thousand men
had been mustered under the royal standard. But this great host was
formidable only in appearance. The levies of which it was composed
were wholly wanting in discipline and unaccustomed to the perils of
warfare. Their weapons were mainly implements whose use was familiar
in the practice of the peaceful arts of husbandry. The rank and file,
a tumultuous rabble of slaves and hirelings, marched on foot. Horses
were few and expensive in the Peninsula; only the nobles were mounted;
and to the deficiency of cavalry among the Goths the Arab historians
have largely attributed the crushing reverses sustained by their arms.
To the unwieldy and disorderly character of the Gothic army was added
the secret and fatal influence of treason. Thousands had been enrolled
to defend the imperilled crown of Roderick, whose chief desire was
the transfer of that crown to a rival dynasty. Others, high in rank,
had tendered their services with the hope that, amidst the general
confusion, they might push their political fortunes and gratify an
inordinate ambition. The imperative necessity of the occasion had
compelled the enlistment of the leaders of the hostile faction who
had been injured beyond reparation, and whom it was equally dangerous
to trust or further to offend. At the head of these were the sons
and brothers of Witiza, who, while they repulsed the conciliatory
overtures of Roderick, eagerly accepted a command which might promote
their schemes of vengeance. Scores of those belonging to the noble and
ecclesiastical orders, and the Jews to a man, inflamed with revenge
and hatred, were in daily communication with the head-quarters of the
enemy. The jealousy of rival commanders tended still further to impair
the efficiency of the Christians, whose feuds and discontent being well
known to their adversaries had a tendency to inspire the latter with a
well-grounded hope of victory.
In the mean time, Tarik had seized and occupied the ancient town of
Carteja, and, fortifying himself securely, sent foraging expeditions
far and wide throughout the surrounding country. These were, without
exception, successful, and the rapid movements of the Arab cavalry,
their seemingly invincible character, and the valuable booty they
secured, not only struck terror into the astonished natives, but
greatly encouraged the main body of the invading army, encamped
under the shadow of Gibraltar. The emissaries and secret allies of
Tarik, who swarmed in the court and camp of Roderick, lost no time
in apprising him of the preparations being made for his destruction.
Alarmed by the accounts he received, he despatched a messenger to Musa
for reinforcements. A detachment of five thousand Berber cavalry was
sent to his aid, which with the remainder of his troops amounted to
twelve thousand veterans; a mere handful when compared with the army
of the Goths, but composed of warriors inured to privation, accustomed
to conquer, inflamed with religious zeal, and bearing a devoted and
unswerving attachment to their commander.
On the morning of a beautiful July day, in the year 711, the beginning
of an era most notable in the annals of Spain, the hostile armies
faced each other near Lake La Janda, upon the rolling plains of
Medina-Sidonia. The Moors, flushed with the uniform success which had
hitherto attended their arms, relying upon the dissensions of the enemy
as much as upon their own valor, and impatient for the conflict,
appeared in glittering mail, wearing snowy turbans, and equipped with
sword and lance; while over their shoulders was suspended the Arabian
bow, whose shafts, like those of the Parthian, made the archer all
the more formidable in retreat. The Moorish general, after performing
the rites of his faith, addressed his soldiers in a few stirring and
well-chosen words. With consummate skill, he availed himself of the
strongest passions which control humanity,--avarice, military glory,
the love of woman, the priceless rewards of religious constancy. He
revealed to them a dream, in which the Prophet had announced that the
issue of the conflict would be favorable to the adherents of Islam,
and which portended the confusion of the infidel. He placed before
them their desperate position, where defeat implied annihilation, and
victory was the only hope. He exhorted them to banish all thought of
fear, and to rely upon their courage tested upon many fields of battle.
He pictured in burning language the attractions of the country and the
matchless charms of the Gothic houris who inhabited it. He repeated the
passages of the Koran which promised that all the martyrs who fell in
battle would at once receive the reward of their devotion amidst the
ineffable delights of Paradise.
Upon the other hand, the bribes, the appeals, and the threats of
Roderick had brought together the entire available military power of
the Gothic monarchy. The King, surrounded by his nobles and escorted
by his guards, displayed all the pomp and splendor of the Orient. He
was borne to the front by white mules, upon a litter of ivory richly
inlaid with silver, and sheltered by a canopy of many-colored silk;
a purple cloak covered his shoulders, upon his head was the royal
diadem, and his robes of cloth of gold were enriched with priceless
jewels. The devices of the nobles marked the order of the various
divisions, and in the rear was led a train of many thousand beasts of
burden whose only loads were ropes with which to bind the prisoners.
The details of the battle which changed the destiny of Western Europe
are unusually meagre, even for the unlettered and credulous age in
which it occurred. It seems to have consisted of a series of indecisive
skirmishes which lasted eight days, during which time the two armies
traversed a distance of twenty miles, to the neighborhood of the
modern city of Jerez de la Frontera. Here, with amazing ignorance,
or with fatal disregard of the elementary rules of military tactics,
the Goths took up their position with the river Guadalete in their
rear. Upon the final charge of the Arabs, the treason of the former
partisans of Witiza became apparent. A large body of nobles with
their retainers openly deserted; a panic ensued; and the vast array
took to headlong flight. Pressing forward with the shrill war-cry of
the Moslem, which struck terror into the defeated Goths, the Moorish
squadrons drove the enemy into the rapid waters of the Guadalete. The
carnage was terrible. Exasperated by days of fighting, and haunted by
the constant jeopardy of servitude and death, the soldiers of Tarik
gave no quarter. The ground was heaped with corpses. The channel of the
river was choked with the dead and dying, with horses, and chariots,
and camp equipage, with treasures which the fugitives vainly tried to
save. Of the invaders, three thousand are said to have fallen, but no
computation was made of the loss of the Goths. The remnants of the
army which escaped the swords of the Arabs were pursued to the very
gates of the neighboring cities. Many were cut to pieces before they
could reach a place of safety; and finally, satiated with blood, the
conquerors found upon their hands a great number of prisoners whom
the ropes which they themselves had provided now served to secure.
The war-horse of Roderick covered with trappings of great value was
taken, but no trace remained of the King. One of his sandals, encrusted
with rubies and emeralds, was found on the bank of the river, which
would seem to indicate that he perished by drowning; but his body
was never recovered, and his fate is a mystery; notwithstanding that
Spanish romance and monkish credulity have invested his disappearance
with many extravagant legends, attested by a formidable array of
ecclesiastical evidence. The booty which fell into the hands of the
Moslems was incalculable. The number of horses taken was so large that
the entire army was mounted, thereby adding greatly to its efficiency.
The housings of these animals--whose possession among the Goths implied
the enjoyment of rank and fortune--were of the costliest description;
many of the finest chargers were shod with silver or gold. The Gothic
nobles, rather accustomed to vie with each other in the service of
their tables, the size of their retinues, and the magnificence of their
equipages than in valor and military knowledge, and little dreaming of
the result, had brought with them their most valuable possessions in
plate and jewels. Their love of ostentation caused them to surround
themselves with multitudes of slaves, whose daily broils kept the camp
in a continuous uproar, and between whom and the enemy existed a secret
understanding, whose effects were fearfully manifested in the hour of
disaster. All of this wealth, together with the ornaments and insignia
of the royal household, became the spoil of the conqueror. The fifth,
which according to the law of Islam belonged to the Khalif, having
been set aside, the remainder was divided on the field, amidst the
tumultuous acclamations of the exultant soldiery.
The battle of the Guadalete is justly ranked with the great and
decisive victories of the world. Indeed, if we consider the relative
number of the combatants, the duration of the action, and the
importance of its results, it has no parallel in the annals of warfare.
While the intrigues of unscrupulous factions contributed largely to
the success of the Arabs, the fact must not be lost sight of, that the
numbers of the latter were scarcely appreciable when compared with
the vast masses of their antagonists, and that they labored under the
additional disadvantage of fighting in the enemy’s country. As to
generalship, none could have been displayed on either side. The Moslems
were little better than banditti, commanded by barbarians and renegades
whose sole military experience had been acquired by predatory raids in
the African Desert. The Goths, idle and effeminate in life, debilitated
in body, cowardly, debased, and wholly unused to arms, were dominated
by inordinate vanity and filled with contempt for their opponents.
The tyranny, excesses, and arbitrary acts of Witiza having caused the
exclusion of his posterity from the throne, the partisans of the latter
were willing to sacrifice their country and their religion to insure
the overthrow of the usurper and to satisfy their insatiable cravings
for revenge.
Thus fell the enfeebled and tottering monarchy of the Goths. It had
long survived its glory and its prestige. The severe political maxims
of its founders, suited to the frigid regions of the Baltic, had been
found incompatible with the physical and moral conditions imposed by
the voluptuous climate of Bætica and Lusitania. Undermined by the
vices of the nobility, by the turbulent ambition of the priesthood,
by the treasonable machinations of the Jews, and by the supine
indifference of the masses to any fate--provided only that it involved
a change of masters-- the first shock of a determined enemy swept
it from the face of the earth. In its stead arose a new empire and a
strange dynasty of exotic origin, foreign alike in dress, in laws, in
customs, in constitution, in religion. Far from being uncongenial, the
meteorological conditions of the semi-tropical Peninsula, which have
insensibly determined the manners, the policy, and the fate of so many
races, were eminently favorable to the highest intellectual development
of its people. Through the wise and noble ambition of its rulers was
established that universal culture which made Cordova the intellectual
centre from whence diverged those rays of light which illumined the
darkness of the mediæval world. From the genius of its statesmen,
the skill of its generals, and the prowess of its armies arose that
constant apprehension of impending disaster, a portentous shadow,
which, hanging over Europe like the imperfectly defined outlines of a
gigantic spectre, threatened for centuries the overthrow of the Seat of
St. Peter, and the destruction of that system of faith which had risen
upon the ruins of Pagan idolatry and superstition.
Great and wide-spread was the consternation which seized the Goths
after the rout of the Guadalete. The entire resources of the kingdom
had been staked and lost. The sovereign had mysteriously disappeared.
In the carnage of the field, and in that which had accompanied the
still more disastrous retreat, the nobility had suffered so greatly
that few, if any, of its members who were eligible to the throne
had survived or remained at liberty. The sacred profession of the
priesthood, which had encouraged by its presence and exhortations the
flagging spirits of the soldiery, had not been able to protect them
from the edge of the Moorish scimetar. The hatred and fanaticism of
the invaders were aroused to frenzy by the sight of the vestments
and insignia of the Church, and even the most venerable prelates were
massacred; for the ferocious Moslem gave no quarter to the ministers
of Christianity, and disdained even the menial services of those who
had denounced to eternal perdition the followers of the Prophet. The
accumulated wealth of generations, which the vanity and ostentation
of the palatines had exhibited at the court, on the march, and in the
camp, had been swept into the coffers of the victor. The fugitives who
were so fortunate as to escape took refuge in the neighboring cities;
whither they were soon followed by the peasantry, who beheld with
dismay the sight of their burning homes and desolated fields. In one
engagement, and virtually in a single day, one of the most populous
and opulent countries of Europe had succumbed to the impetuous but
desultory attack of an unknown foe. For the space of two centuries, and
under far less favorable circumstances, the Carthaginian and Iberian
provinces of the Peninsula had successfully defied the resources
and the prestige of the Roman arms. For three centuries longer, the
Visigoths, relying upon the traditions and military fame of their
ancestors, had protected, without difficulty, their possessions wrested
from the feeble hands of the Cæsars, and had repeatedly rolled back the
tide of Frankish invasion from the slopes of the Pyrenees.
With the advent of overwhelming national misfortune, there fell
upon the terror-stricken people the apathy of despair. The public
wretchedness was augmented by the censures of the clergy, who, with
characteristic effrontery, declared the invasion to be a divine
punishment for the crimes of the wicked; crimes in which they
themselves had not only participated, but by their shameless conduct
had obtained an infamous pre-eminence in an age of unprecedented
corruption.
The Moslems under the lead of the enterprising Tarik, who displayed
the talents of a skilful general in his ability to profit by every
advantage, lost no time in securing the fruits of victory. From the
army--now a compact and active body of cavalry--were sent in all
directions detachments to cut off straggling parties of the enemy,
and to capture supplies destined for the overcrowded cities already
threatened with the horrors of starvation.
Tidings of the wonderful success upon the plains of Jerez soon spread
far and wide through the towns and provinces of Africa. Animated by
the hope of plunder and glory, the Moslems, many of them abandoning
their homes and making use of every available craft to cross the
strait, flocked by thousands to the standard of Tarik. The latter,
after thoroughly reorganizing his new recruits, and appointing to the
command officers of tried fidelity and experience, took Sidonia. The
strongly fortified city of Carmona next claimed his attention. As
its reduction by the slow process of a siege was out of the question
with the resources at his command, resort was had to stratagem. A
squadron of the retainers of Count Julian, headed by that worthy in
person, and apparently pursued by a body of the enemy, appeared before
the walls. Shelter was at once given the fugitives, who in the dead
of night killed the sentinels and opened the gates to the enemy.
Thence Tarik advanced upon Ecija, where the greater portion of the
survivors of the battle of the Guadalete had taken refuge. The Goths,
disdaining the protection of their defences, and nerved to despair by
their situation, which involved the alternative of slavery or famine,
boldly encountered the Moslems in the field. The action was hotly
contested, and although the loss sustained by the invaders was greater,
in proportion to the number of combatants engaged, than any suffered
during the Conquest, the Goths were in the end defeated, and the city
taken. Ecija swarmed with members of the monastic orders, and the nuns,
who largely predominated, were famous for their beauty. The prospect
of the infidel harem filled these pious virgins with horror; and they
adopted the heroic expedient of mutilating their features, hoping by
the sacrifice of their charms to preserve both their honor and their
lives. The compassion of the Moslem freebooter, infuriated by this
attempt to deprive him of his prey, was not moved by the evidences of
saintly devotion; the sight of a conventual habit became the signal for
outrage; death followed fast upon violence; and many hundreds of the
self-mutilated spouses of Christ received the crown of martyrdom.
In the mean time, Musa had forwarded despatches to Damascus announcing
the victory, but, actuated by the petty jealousy which formed such
a prominent feature of his character, he carefully concealed from
the Khalif the name of the successful commander. Having formed the
determination to cross over to Spain and conduct the campaign in
person, he sent peremptory orders to Tarik not to advance farther
until he arrived. But the hero of the Guadalete, fully alive to
the importance of affording the enemy no opportunity for rest and
reorganization, and advised by Count Julian to march at once on Toledo,
was of the opinion that the interests of his sovereign, as well as his
own fortunes, would be promoted by disobedience of the commands of his
superior. He therefore paraded his troops, and after enjoining them to
make war only upon those actually in arms, to leave all non-combatants
unmolested, and scrupulously to respect the religious prejudices of the
people, set out for Cordova at the head of a numerous army. The latter
city was strong and well defended, and Tarik, after nine days, seeing
that the siege would probably be of long duration, left its conduct to
his lieutenant, Mugayth-al-Rumi, and moved without delay upon Toledo.
The governor of Cordova, who was of the royal blood of the Goths, and a
brave and determined officer, inspirited by the departure of the main
body of the enemy, made no question of his ability to defend the city
against a force not greatly exceeding his own in numbers. But the good
fortune which seemed to attend the Moslems upon every occasion did not
desert them in the present emergency. Information was soon brought to
Mugayth-al-Rumi of a weak point in the fortifications which might be
scaled. Aided by a dark night and the noise made by a storm of hail,
a detachment crossed the river under the guidance of a shepherd, and
reached the place which had been indicated. A fig-tree which stood near
the wall was mounted by an active soldier, who, unrolling his turban,
drew up several of his comrades, who occupied the battlements without
resistance; for the severity of the tempest had driven the sentries
from their posts. Proceeding quietly and rapidly through the streets,
the guard at the gates was surprised and cut to pieces, the army was
admitted, and by daybreak the city was in the hands of the Moslems. The
governor, with four hundred of the garrison, fled to the church of St.
George, which stood outside the western wall, and being surrounded by
a moat and supplied with water by a subterranean conduit from a spring
in the neighboring mountains, offered all the obstacles of a fortress
whose towers and barbicans could bid defiance to an enemy destitute
of military engines and ignorant of the mode of conducting a siege.
For a considerable time the Goths repulsed the attacks of the band
of Mugayth-al-Rumi, until at last, after diligent search, the source
of the water-supply having been discovered and the aqueduct cut, the
besieged, reduced to extremity, were compelled to surrender. The
majority of the garrison were permitted to join their countrymen in the
North, but the officers and the governor--who was a personage of too
great importance to be set at liberty--were retained in the camp of the
victor.
Before leaving Ecija, Tarik had sent one of his officers,
Zeyd-Ibn-Kesade, at the head of a considerable force, to overrun the
southern portion of Andalusia. In this region, as elsewhere, the
mysterious terror which attended the exploits of the invaders had
preceded them. Baja, Antequera, Elvira, and the adjoining districts
yielded almost without resistance, but Granada, relying upon its
fortifications, refused to accept the proffered terms and was carried
by storm. The small number of the Moslems rendered it impossible for
them to leave garrisons in the captured towns, and the most important
of the latter were placed in charge of Arab governors, with whom the
Jews, who seemed to have thriven under persecution, engaged themselves
to co-operate. So numerous was the Hebrew element in Granada that
it was practically a Jewish community, and, with its aid, a single
company was sufficient to hold in subjection a city of nearly a hundred
thousand souls. Having accomplished the object of his expedition with
trifling loss, loaded with rich booty, and accompanied by innumerable
slaves of both sexes, Zeyd, sacking Jaen on his way, hastened to join
Tarik at Toledo.
Eight months had elapsed since the battle of the Guadalete before
the Moslem army appeared before the gates of the Visigothic capital.
Perched upon a lofty eminence, and almost surrounded by the Tagus,
whose current ran swiftly through a deep channel worn in the living
rock, art had combined with nature to render its position impregnable.
Walls built of stones of almost cyclopean dimensions environed
it, and rose to a great height even on the side towards the river,
where the precipitous cliffs themselves discouraged all attempts at
escalade. The approach from the north had been protected by barbicans
and outworks of double strength. These defences had been designed
and perfected by Wamba, the last of the Gothic kings whose martial
genius had, for a brief period, revived the glorious traditions and
long forgotten exploits of the ancient dynasty. The imperial capital,
a citadel in itself, where all the resources of a vast monarchy had
been lavished and all the knowledge of military engineering of the
age had been employed to insure the safety of the court, now trembled
in the presence of a few thousand roving barbarians. The dread which
was associated with the unknown enemy was augmented by the rapidity
of his movements, which to the superstitious fears of the Visigoths
made him appear ubiquitous. A sufficient military force had been
available to defend this fortress, but the sentiments of patriotism,
loyalty, and courage, so essential to the preservation of obedience
and discipline, had disappeared. Instead of preparing for resistance,
each individual thought only of his own preservation, when news arrived
that the foe was approaching. The majority of the citizens, leaving
their possessions, fled to Galicia and the Asturias. The lawless
soldiers of the garrison pillaged the deserted houses, and stripped
without hindrance the defenceless fugitives. The clergy, considering
the evil as only temporary, walled up the treasures of chapel and
convent in crypts, where to-day the greater portion of them still
remain undiscovered. The primate, laden with the most precious effects
of the churches, and leaving his ecclesiastical inferiors to contend
for the prize of martyrdom offered by the infidel, accompanied his
terrified parishioners in their flight, nor did he arrest his steps
until safe within the walls of Rome. A disorderly rabble of priests
and monks, actuated either by faith or indolence, remaining at their
posts, endeavored to avert the impending calamity by fasting, prayer,
and pilgrimage to the innumerable shrines situated both within and
without the city. Unfortunately, however, no divine response was
vouchsafed to these last frantic efforts of a despairing hierarchy.
The waving pennons and sparkling lances of the Arab cavalry appeared
in the distance, and their light and active squadrons swept around
the walls. The fields were laid waste. The convents and the villas
which embellished the suburbs were razed to the ground or burnt. Every
unlucky straggler was compelled, at the point of the sword, to renounce
the religion of his fathers or submit to the fate of a slave. In a
town deserted by its garrison, half depopulated, without provisions,
deprived of every prospect of relief, and principally occupied by
non-combatants and Jews who were in sympathy with the enemy, no idea
of resistance could be entertained. The usual conditions offered by
the Moslems were eagerly accepted. All had permission to retire who
desired to do so, with the understanding that such abandonment of their
homes involved a forfeiture of every description of property. Those
who preferred to remain were assured of protection, under payment
of a reasonable tribute. Both Jews and Christians were indulged in
the practice of their religious rites; but half of the churches were
confiscated for the use of Islam, and no new houses of worship could be
constructed without permission of the government. The tributaries were
left subject to their own laws, enforced by their own tribunals, as
long as these did not conflict with the policy of the dominant power.
No impediments to proselytism were tolerated, and severe punishment
was denounced against such as should offer intimidation or insult to
Christian renegades. Such were the terms imposed upon the inhabitants
of the Peninsula by the generous policy of the conqueror; a pleasing
contrast to the brutality of the barbarians, the duplicity of Carthage,
and the avarice and selfishness of Rome.
Notwithstanding the most valuable treasures of the imperial capital had
been carried away by the fleeing population, the plunder secured by the
Moslems was immense, and even their rapacity, ordinarily insatiable,
was for once appeased. The variety and number of the precious objects
which met their bewildered gaze was so great, that the rude warriors of
the Atlas not infrequently turned aside from the splendid vestments and
jewel-studded furniture destined for the service of the Church, to more
portable and gorgeous baubles which caught their momentary fancy. It is
related by the most accurate of the Christian and Moorish chroniclers,
that two Berbers, having found an altar-cloth of gold brocade enriched
with rows of hyacinths and emeralds which was too heavy for them to
carry, cut out that portion containing the jewels and rejected the
balance as worthless. Another, who had secured a golden vase filled
with pearls, kept the precious receptacle, but, ignorant of their
value, cast away its contents. In the cathedral were found many votive
crowns of gold, each inscribed with the name of a Gothic king. The
confusion incident to a hasty flight had left in the religious houses
of every description a vast amount of wealth, which fell into the hands
of the conqueror. An apartment was discovered in the palace occupied by
Tarik which was literally filled with the treasures and royal insignia
of the various dynasties which had for ages swayed the fortunes of
the Visigothic monarchy. Chains and diadems, urns and uncut jewels,
sceptres, richly decorated weapons, costly armor, robes of cloth of
gold, have been enumerated among the spoil by the historians of the
time; by the Christian, with regret and shame, by the Mohammedan, with
all the exultation of victory.
After the surrender of the capital, Tarik, leaving the city in charge
of his faithful adherents, the Jews, at once advanced northward
in pursuit of the retreating Goths. The latter, in every instance
when it was possible, upon the appearance of the cloud of turbaned
horsemen, abandoned their burdens and took refuge in the mountain
fastnesses. Overtaking a body of fugitives a short distance beyond
Toledo, Tarik captured a magnificent table, or lectern--used to support
the Gospels--which had belonged to the cathedral; whose origin the
romantic credulity of that age attributed to Solomon, and supposed to
be a portion of the booty brought by Titus from the sack of Jerusalem;
but which more reliable accounts have demonstrated to have been the
handiwork of Visigothic artisans. The body and framework of this
precious jewel were of the purest gold. Into it were inserted alternate
rows of hyacinths, rubies, pearls, and emeralds, and, as it was the
custom of each monarch to contribute something to its embellishment,
royal emulation had exhausted itself to surpass the efforts of
preceding reigns in the decoration of an object whose sanctity made
it more priceless in the eyes of the superstitious than even the
inestimable value of its materials and ornamentation. It stood upon
four feet, the latter being so encrusted with emeralds as to convey the
impression that each was formed of a single stone. This table, whose
estimated value was five hundred thousand crowns, and which has been
described with such exaggeration as to have even aroused the doubts of
historical critics concerning its existence, was set aside with the
portion of the spoil destined for the Khalif.
The capture of Toledo was the last important exploit of the Berber
general, whose success could not atone for the gross insubordination of
which he was guilty. A few other cities had been taken, a large area of
territory had been ravaged, when the news of the approach of Musa, and
the anticipation of his commander’s wrath, suddenly checked the career
of Tarik in the full flush of conquest and glory.
The fame and popularity of the latter as well as the report of the
vast riches amassed by him had excited, to the full measure of their
malignity, the envy and the hatred of Musa. The adventurers who had
hastened to Iberia to serve under the standard of Tarik had depleted
the garrisons of Africa, and it was fourteen months after the main
expedition had sailed before Musa was able to muster a sufficient force
to take the field in person. Crossing the strait with a numerous body
of troops--which included representatives of the most distinguished
families of Arabia, many of whom had enjoyed the rare distinction of
being friends of the Companions of the Prophet, as well as the flower
of the African soldiery--he disembarked at Ghezirah-al-Khadra. His
jealousy of the success of Tarik, and the certainty that the Berbers
had left no city or hamlet unplundered in their march, led Musa to
desire to proceed to Toledo by a different route. Informed of his
wish, his guides promised to gratify him, and place within his power
cities of far greater extent and magnificence than those which had
submitted to his rebellious lieutenant. They conducted him first to
Carmona, which, like most of the other towns of Andalusia, had cast
off the Moslem yoke as soon as the departure of the army of Tarik had
inspired its inhabitants with confidence; and this well-fortified
place, despite its strength, seems to have at once yielded to the
summons of the invader. Seville, then as now one of the largest,
wealthiest, and most beautiful cities of Spain, was next besieged. One
month sufficed to reduce it, but not without many bloody engagements,
in which the Moslems sustained considerable loss. A garrison was left
in the citadel, and Musa marched upon Merida, famous from the days of
the Romans for its massive fortifications, its imposing public works,
and the architectural grandeur and richness of its temples. Founded
by the veterans of Augustus, and honored with his name, Merida still
retained, in the eighth century, a few of the stupendous memorials of
her pristine splendor, which nearly three hundred years before had so
impressed the astonished barbarians of Germany, and now exerted their
awe-inspiring influence upon the simple and superstitious tribesmen of
Africa and Arabia. The partiality of the Roman emperors had lavished
upon this provincial capital treasures that had enabled its citizens
to raise structures rivalling those of Rome itself. Bridges, of such
extraordinary length and huge proportions as to almost defy the
efforts of modern science to demolish them, crossed the sandy bed of
the sluggish Guadiana. Aqueducts, suspended upon tiers of graceful
arches, traversed, high in air, the populous and highly cultivated
plain. Monuments of the reigns of Hadrian and Trajan spanned the
streets and towered in the forum. In the suburbs stood the theatre,
the circus, and the naumachia; buildings worthy of the taste and
grandeur of any city of the empire. The population was one of the
most prosperous and opulent in the kingdom. The archiepiscopal see of
Merida vied in dignity and influence with the primacy of Toledo. It had
not been many years since the vassals and slaves of the metropolitan,
to the number of nearly a thousand, glittering with jewels and cloth
of gold, had dazzled the eyes of the populace, and excited the envy
of the nobles, while participating in the ceremonial pageantry of
the Church--exhibitions so well adapted to impress the beholder with
the greatness, the pomp, and the resources of ecclesiastical power.
Well might the enthusiasm of the predatory Arab be excited by the
architectural magnificence and historic souvenirs of the far-famed
capital of Lusitania! While the gigantic proportions of its edifices
called forth his admiration, and led him to attribute their erection
to giants and demons, his avarice was, at the same time, stimulated by
the thought of the booty to be obtained by the pillage of a place of
such extent and importance. But the inhabitants, worthy of the renown
of their ancestors, and undismayed by the sudden appearance of an
unknown foe, did not hesitate to engage him on equal terms. A series
of combats followed, in which the valor of the besieged acquired for
them a temporary advantage. In the face of such determined resistance,
and wholly unacquainted with the methods of carrying on a siege, the
Moslems began to falter. But their veteran commander, confident in his
skill, now brought to bear the experience which he had acquired in many
hard-fought campaigns in Syria and Africa. The city was completely
blockaded. Every foraging party which issued from the gates was
intercepted and captured or cut to pieces. The stratagems of Berber
warfare were adopted to the confusion of an intrepid but unwary enemy.
Detachments which sallied forth to attack the besieging lines were
lured into ambush and annihilated. Military engines familiar to that
age were constructed, but the activity and courage of the Visigoths
were such that, although breaches were made, no forlorn hope could
effect a lodgment within the fortifications; and one which succeeded
in penetrating them--a circumstance which gave to the place where
it occurred the suggestive name of the Tower of the Martyrs-- was
destroyed to a man. Each day, with the rising of the sun, the battle
was renewed, and Musa saw with rage and apprehension his well-tried
veterans and the bravest of his officers perish before his eyes. The
fortifications appeared impregnable; and had it not been for the
opportune arrival of Abd-al-Aziz, the son of the Arab general, with a
reinforcement of seven thousand cavalry and five thousand crossbow-men,
the Moslems would have been compelled to abandon the undertaking.
Disheartened by this change in their fortunes, and beginning to suffer
from a scarcity of provisions, the inhabitants of Merida now made
overtures for a surrender. Although in the position of suppliants, the
envoys provoked the resentment of Musa by their demeanor, and several
conferences were necessary before the citizens would condescend to
accept the usual terms of capitulation. When all had been arranged and
hostages delivered, the Moslem army took possession of the city. Great
wealth fell into the hands of the grasping Musa, who appropriated as
his slave Egilona, the captive widow of Roderick, a princess whose
subsequent marriage to his son Abd-al-Aziz was the source of many
calamities to his family and nation.
The heroic defence of Merida had inspired with the hope of freedom the
cities of the South, upon whom the Moslem yoke but recently imposed sat
lightly, and Seville, Malaga, Granada, and Jaen rose simultaneously in
revolt. The attention of Musa was first directed to Seville, the latest
and most valuable of his recent acquisitions. The rebels of that city
had massacred thirty men of the garrison and put the rest to flight,
while the Jews, true to the instincts of a people long degraded by
servitude, not only refused to assist their allies, but hastened with
cringing servility to make peace once more with their old oppressors.
For this defection, a terrible retribution was exacted. Abd-al-Aziz
carried the place by storm, and put to death without mercy every
Christian and Hebrew male who was found within its walls. The Moslems,
taught by experience the imperative necessity of colonization, and
being now in sufficient numbers to justify a division of their forces,
placed a strong garrison in Seville; while the confiscated lands were
partitioned among the natives of Arabia the Happy present with the
invading army, who hastened to take possession of the luxurious estates
of the Gothic merchants and nobility. This was the first instance of
the settlement of conquered territory by the natives of a particular
country, afterwards so common under Mohammedan rule; a stroke of policy
whose effects are to this day apparent in the traditions, the dialects,
the customs, and the popular superstitions of the different provinces
of Spain. Abd-al-Aziz easily reduced to obedience the remaining
rebellious cities of Andalusia, which, colonized in like manner,
remained ever faithful to their allegiance. A portion of Murcia was
also occupied; and unusually advantageous terms were, at the surrender
of Orihuela, accorded to the Christians through the address of the
Gothic general Theodomir, whom, after the death of Roderick, a faction
of the Goths had invested with the supreme command.
The authorities are so contradictory that it is impossible to ascertain
how far into the enemy’s country Tarik penetrated after the capture of
Toledo. It is probable, however, that his operations were mere inroads,
destitute of historical importance. The spirit of the nation was
broken; its armies were scattered; its leaders killed or enslaved; its
capital in the hands of the enemy. The subjugation of the Peninsula was
virtually ended, and the successful general could well afford to rest
upon his laurels and devise means to avert the just indignation of his
superior, provoked by flagrant disobedience to his orders, an offence
which under the strict regulations of military law was punishable with
death.
The two captains met at Talavera, whither Tarik in his anxiety had
advanced, attended by his officers and loaded with costly presents,
the choicest spoil of the Visigothic capital. The envious spirit of
Musa, however, was not to be appeased by gifts whose splendor only
served to suggest the greater value of the plunder which he had lost.
He assailed his insubordinate lieutenant with bitter reproaches, and,
forgetting the magnitude of his recent services, even went so far
as to remind him of his former servile condition by striking him in
the presence of the entire army. Then placing him under arrest, he
hurried to Toledo, and ordered him instantly to collect and deliver
all the booty which had fallen into his hands at the surrender of
the city. Of the latter, the so-called table of Solomon, whose fame
had long before reached Musa, was by far the most valuable. Tarik,
thoroughly cognizant of the baseness and injustice of his commander,
and suspecting that he would appropriate as his own the credit of this
important prize, with an astuteness worthy of his Berber origin, had
secretly removed one of its emerald-studded feet. In this condition it
was delivered to Musa, who, being assured that it was thus mutilated
when found, had the missing foot replaced with one of gold; no jewels
of corresponding size being obtainable, although the collections of
individuals and the coffers of the Gothic treasury were diligently
ransacked for that purpose. Musa, having secured the coveted booty,
now deprived Tarik of his command, and threw him into a dungeon. The
keen foresight of the Berber chieftain, who knew that such a step was
only the prelude to assassination, did not abandon him in this trying
emergency. Having, through the mediation of his friends, succeeded
in bribing a messenger whom Musa despatched to Damascus, a special
envoy was sent by the Khalif ordering the immediate release of the
illustrious captain and his restoration to authority. With unconcealed
reluctance Musa complied with the orders of his sovereign, and Tarik,
relieved of his chains, resumed his duties amidst the acclamations
of the troops. A temporary and apparent reconciliation was effected
between the antagonistic leaders, who in public treated each other with
courtesy, but in whose hearts smouldered the inextinguishable fires of
mutual hatred, kindled by unpardonable wrong and baffled enmity. With
united forces, eager for glory, they invaded Aragon. Each horseman was
provided with a small copper pot, a leathern bag for provisions, and a
bottle for water; the infantry carried nothing but their arms. The camp
equipage was loaded on trains of pack-mules. Military and political
considerations required and enforced the observance of the strictest
discipline. Non-combatants were unmolested. Pillage was forbidden
under pain of death, save in actual battle and during the storming of
cities. The religious prejudices of the people were respected, and no
property was destroyed except when resistance or violence was offered
the troops. The province was overrun, and its capital, Saragossa, taken
and settled by adventurers from Africa. Upon the inhabitants of this
city Musa imposed a fine new in the annals of Islam, denominated the
Contribution of Blood, which was exacted before the army entered the
gates and exempted the conquered from annoyance. The Valley of the
Ebro pleased the colonists, who intermarried with the people, and the
governor, Hanash-Ibn-Ali, signalized his administration by the erection
of a splendid mosque, vestiges of which still remain. Catalonia and
Valencia next submitted to the common fate, and then the two generals,
reversing their course, marched to the wild region of the West where,
among the mist-enshrouded sierras of Galicia and the Asturias, the
remnant of the Visigothic nation, led by its honored prelates and
indomitable chieftains, had borne its venerated relics and its
household gods; to lay under such unpromising auspices the foundations
of a far grander and more powerful empire, destined in after years to
command the admiration and the terror of the world.
The reports of Musa to the Khalif show that the Arabs fully appreciated
the value and importance of their conquest. “In the clearness of the
sky and the beauty of its landscape it resembles Syria; in softness of
climate even Yemen is not its superior; in profusion of flowers and
delicacy of perfumes it suggests the luxury of India; it rivals Egypt
in the fertility of its soil, and China in the variety and excellence
of its minerals,” wrote the experienced veteran to whom the wealth
and resources of both Asia and Africa were familiar. The multitude
of captives acquired by the Moslems struck the old general with
surprise. “It is like the assembly of nations on the Day of Judgment,”
he exclaimed; although he doubtless remembered that Mauritania had
yielded its prisoners by the hundred thousand, and human chattels were
so cheap that it was not an unusual occurrence for an able-bodied
man to be sold in the bazaar of Kairoan for a handful of pepper. A
female merchant, who dealt in trinkets and perfumes, left Toledo after
its surrender with five hundred slaves in her train. Thirty thousand
Christian maidens, selected for their beauty, were destined for the
markets of the East. The Jews especially reaped a rich harvest from
the misfortunes of their former oppressors. Profiting by the ignorance
of the soldiers, they purchased for trifling sums the sacred utensils
of the altar, the jewels which had graced the beauties of the court,
and all the rich and costly appliances of Gothic luxury. From the
Saracen conquest, with the enormous wealth it afforded them, dates the
prominence subsequently attained by the Hebrews in the political and
financial affairs of Europe.
The strange fatality which preserved for future greatness and renown
the broken fragments of the Visigothic monarchy, even now at the very
outset, when it seemed inevitable that the entire Peninsula should
become Mohammedan, asserted its mysterious power. Tarik had reached
Astorga and Musa was still at Lugo, when a message was delivered from
the Khalif Al-Walid ordering both generals to return to Damascus.
This step had been resolved upon, not so much on account of the
mutual hostility of the two leaders which, manifested even in their
despatches, seriously impaired the prestige of the Moslem arms and
menaced the stability of the Moslem conquests, as from fear lest the
ambition of Musa might lead him to usurp the sovereignty of the newly
acquired possessions. Prudential considerations also prevented the
appointment of Tarik as governor of the Peninsula. His popularity
was even greater than that of Musa, and the remote situation of the
conquered territory was but too favorable for the establishment of
an independent monarchy, whose subjection in case of rebellion would
be difficult, if not impossible. The aspiring genius of the veteran
commander had formed a vast scheme of conquest, a project so grand
as at first sight to appear extravagant, yet which, after careful
examination, might be considered far from impracticable. It was his
wish to emulate the example and surpass the achievement of Hannibal
by traversing Europe, and to meet before the walls of Constantinople
an army which could co-operate with him in the siege and capture
of the Byzantine capital. Had this gigantic design been realized,
the domain of the Khalifate of Damascus would have far exceeded the
limits of the Roman Empire. He had seen with what ease the Visigothic
kingdom, possessed of incalculable wealth, and animated by the
military traditions of three centuries, had been subverted in a day.
The unprecedented success of their recent military operations had
induced the fanatical and credulous soldiery to regard themselves as
the special favorites of Allah. It was moreover a matter of common
notoriety that the able chieftain who had crushed, and then converted,
the hitherto independent tribes of the Libyan Desert and the Atlas
Mountains, and swept resistlessly over the plains of the Peninsula,
had, in campaigns which extended over an entire generation, never
failed in an enterprise or lost a battle. The very mention of a crusade
against the infidel roused the wildest passions in the Moslem’s
heart. Unlimited treasure was available for any undertaking, however
extensive; a consideration of but little moment, however, with a force
accustomed to be paid in booty, and whose subsistence was wrested from
the enemy. The barbarian monarchy of France, perpetually vexed by
internal dissensions, was not likely to offer more serious impediments
to invasion than those which had vanished before the tempest of the
Guadalete. Was it then chimerical for Musa to hope that, with the
combined aid of his own genius and the invincible prowess of his
veterans, he might add to the domains of the successor of Mohammed the
fairest regions of Europe, in the very seat of the Papacy proclaim
from the towers of the Eternal City the doctrines of Islam, and,
passing eastward, exchange greetings upon the shores of the Bosphorus
with his friends and brethren of Syria? This plan of conquest,
doubtless suggested by the invasion of the Carthaginian general, but
which promised far more important results, owing to the thoroughly
disorganized condition of the provinces once constituting the Roman
Empire, an enterprise worthy of the ambition and daring of any military
leader, was unhesitatingly condemned by the suspicious Khalif, who saw
in its successful execution the portentous menace of a rival monarchy.
With inexpressible grief and vexation, yet, to some degree, sustained
by the hope that a personal interview might accomplish what written
explanation had failed to do, Musa prepared to obey the mandate of
his sovereign. In furtherance of this resolution, and to gratify a
not unreasonable vanity, he determined to parade before the court and
populace of Damascus the trophies of Africa and Spain with a pomp
proportionate to the splendor of those conquests.
A general rendezvous was appointed at Seville, now designated as the
capital of the kingdom, by reason of its proximity to the sea, and
its ease of access to the Moslem settlements of Africa. There were
assembled the spoil of palaces, the sacrilegious plunder of churches,
the booty of many a battle-field, the throngs of noble captives, the
insignia of fallen royalty. Ponderous vehicles were constructed for
the conveyance of this treasure, whose value for once exceeded the
wildest estimates of Oriental exaggeration. When all was ready, Musa,
having appointed his son Abd-al-Aziz viceroy during his absence,
crossed over to Ceuta. In obedience to orders issued previously to his
arrival, every town of Al-Maghreb in the line of march contributed its
contingent to increase the magnificence of the triumph. The fierce
chieftains of Mauritania trooped after the victor in the character of
warriors, proselytes, or slaves. Heaped in picturesque confusion upon
endless strings of camels were the primitive spoils of the Desert--rude
weapons, defensive armor, wearing apparel, and coarse trappings upon
which had been lavished all the resources of barbaric decoration.
Hundreds of the wild and beautiful Kabyle maidens, selected for their
superior charms and fettered with chains of gold, toiled wearily along
the dusty roads which ultimately led to the distant harems of Syria.
Four hundred Gothic nobles, in whose veins coursed the royal blood,
clothed in gorgeous robes secured by golden girdles, and crowned
with diadems, represented the departed fortunes of the dynasties
of Iberia. Thirty wagons hardly sufficed to convey the enormous
quantities of gold, silver, and precious stones--objects of public
ostentation, private luxury, and personal adornment--the gem-encrusted
receptacles of the Host, the costly vessels of the mass, besides other
and innumerable mementos of the most finished efforts of Visigothic
opulence and Byzantine art. Among the guards of Musa, splendidly
equipped, rode descendants of the proudest families of the Koreish,
and the most distinguished officers of the Moslem army. In the rear of
this brilliant cavalcade followed, to the number of more than a hundred
thousand, the less important captives taken in the campaigns of Africa
and Spain.
Arrived at Kairoan, Musa divided the government of Africa among his
three sons Abdallah, Abd-al-Melik, and Abd-al-Ala, in the hope of
perpetuating in his family the authority which he realized that he now
held by an uncertain tenure, and then resumed his journey.
Tidings of his approach having preceded him, the wanderers of the
Desert and the inhabitants of the cities of the coast alike poured
forth in countless multitudes to do him honor. It was a strange
and impressive spectacle, one which had not been seen since the
laurel-crowned victor, preceded by his trophies and his captives, had
traversed the streets of Rome amid the acclamations of the populace,
to deposit his offerings upon the shrine of the Capitoline Jupiter.
With the progress of the triumphal procession the number of curious
spectators increased, reaching its culmination at Cairo, where the way
was blocked by the teeming myriads from the banks of the Nile. During
the course of the journey, Musa, elated beyond measure by the adulation
heaped upon him, was prompted to the commission of an act of tyranny
which seriously prejudiced his fortunes. Desirous of neglecting no
opportunity of magnifying his importance, and utterly unscrupulous in
appropriating the credit due to others, he demanded of Mugayth-al-Rumi
the captive governor of Cordova, whom the latter held as his slave, and
designed as a present to the Khalif. Upon the refusal of that officer
to comply with his demand, Musa ordered the immediate execution of the
Gothic prince, and by this deed of violence and injustice increased the
enmity of Mugayth-al-Rumi, whose sympathies had already been enlisted
on the side of Tarik, his friend and former comrade in arms.
Hardly had Musa passed the borders of Syria, when there was placed
in his hands a secret message from Suleyman, heir presumptive of the
Khalifate, announcing the fatal illness of his brother Al-Walid,
and desiring him not to advance further until he received authentic
information of the death of his sovereign. Suleyman was induced to
make this request, not only on account of the prestige which his
accession to the throne would derive by the public exhibition of the
vast plunder of the nations of the West, but also because the personal
gifts presented to the family of the Khalif, presumably of immense
value, would be lost to his successor. Musa, however, whose native tact
and shrewdness seem to have been diminished by age and disappointment,
paid no attention to the representations of Suleyman; and without an
hour’s delay marched on to Damascus. He entered the city on Friday,
and proceeding to the great mosque, where Al-Walid was at prayer,
entered at the head of the captive nobles and chieftains, all of
whom were clothed in the costumes of their respective countries and
adorned with the insignia of their rank. After the service the Khalif
embraced Musa, clothed him with his own robe, and presented him with
fifty thousand dinars, in addition to pensioning his sons and the most
worthy of his subordinates. The inferior captives and the royal fifth
were then placed in the custody of the officers of the Treasury. The
wonderful table was, as Tarik had conjectured it would be, claimed by
Musa, who, on being interrogated concerning the golden foot, declared
it was in that condition when he found it. Thereupon, Tarik, who was
present, advanced, claimed the honor of the capture, and after relating
the stratagem he had practised, produced the missing portion in
corroboration of his testimony, to the speechless rage and confusion of
his rival. Al-Walid, who estimated this work of art solely by the value
of its materials, caused the jewels to be removed, and then sent the
frame of the table as an offering to the temple of Mecca.
Forty days after Musa’s arrival at Damascus Al-Walid died, and Suleyman
ascended the throne. The latter, notorious for the ferocity of his
disposition and the vulgarity and gluttony of his tastes, lost no
time in imposing upon Musa the full weight of his displeasure. The
first judicial act of his administration was the arraignment of the
veteran general, now more than eighty years of age. The evidence of
corruption, extortion, and tyranny, to which Musa could make but a
feeble defence, having been presented, he was found guilty, sentenced
to be stripped of his property, and required to pay a fine of two
hundred thousand pieces of gold. In addition to this severe penalty,
he was also forced to remain chained to a post under a blazing sun,
as a punishment for having publicly reproached the Khalif for his
ingratitude. Through the intercession of friends he was released
after many hours of torture, and permitted to retire from the court,
accompanied by a single faithful slave. His remaining years were passed
in poverty; dependent upon alms, he begged his bread from the Bedouin
tribes, putting aside every dirhem he could obtain to be applied to
the payment of his fine, until he died in abject wretchedness at
Wada-al-Kora, a remote settlement of Arabia. Such was the miserable
end of one of the greatest military leaders Islam ever produced. His
courage was dauntless, his sagacity almost amounted to inspiration,
his resources were inexhaustible. His zeal, which bordered upon
fanaticism, assured him of the favor of Allah, and infused into his
troops the most unbounded confidence in his genius. The bursts of his
oratory rivalled in eloquence and enthusiasm the rhetorical efforts
of the greatest preachers of the age. He observed the ceremonial of
his faith with scrupulous diligence. His prudence and the accuracy of
his perceptions were proverbial. In all his experience, where he held
command in person, no enemy ever prevailed over him. His suspicious
nature and intuitive knowledge of mankind made him more than a match
for statesmen whose lives had been passed in the atmosphere of courts.
Increasing his wealth by the most questionable methods, he excluded
his companions from all participation in his prosperity, and under his
incessant peculation the royal revenues were sensibly diminished, an
offence which more than all others insured his ruin. Thus, in spite of
his extraordinary talents, his avarice--whose gratification no bond
of friendship, no obligation of loyalty, no precept of religion, and
no fear of punishment could restrain--proved his destruction, and the
famous commander who had acquired kingdoms, and accumulated wealth
which excited the envy of princes, died poor and despised; an outcast
in the centre of a barren and lonely region far from the scenes of
his glory, and an object of curiosity and compassion to the barbarian
shepherds and brigands of the Desert. History is silent as to the fate
of Tarik after the settlement of his controversy with Musa. Had he been
prominent thereafter in either good or evil fortune, it is certain that
the Arabian chroniclers would have mentioned the fact. It is probable
that he was permitted to pass the remainder of his life in obscurity
and comfort, if not in luxury; and it is beyond question that he was
not intrusted with any important employment; for the jealous court
of Damascus feared the ambition and the ability of the distinguished
general who had achieved the most splendid conquest of his time. And
thus disappeared from the stage of the world the second of those
noted characters to whom was due the acquisition of the beautiful
land of Iberia by the crown of the Khalifate. Of Count Julian, the
third and last of them, whom the undiscerning prejudice of monkish
writers and the animosity of churchman and Spaniard, intensified by
baffled ambition and injured pride, have for thirty-six generations
branded with the name of traitor, we have accounts but little less
unsatisfactory. His nationality, his antecedents, his relations to the
Goths, the origin of his appointment as governor of Ceuta, the scope
of his authority, his obligations to the court of Toledo, are, for the
most part, matters of conjecture. Even the story of the outrage to his
family, the immediate cause of his defection, though supported by the
testimony of almost every Arab chronicler, has been disputed. There are
excellent reasons for presuming that he occupied the position of a mere
tributary of the King of the Visigoths, and had voluntarily surrendered
his daughter as a pledge of his fidelity. Under these circumstances
his allegiance could not have been deeply grounded; and his conduct
appears under a less odious aspect than the treason of an hereditary
vassal would have done, especially when it is remembered that he
was not the aggressor. The general and unqualified abhorrence with
which his name is associated can be traced to ecclesiastical writers,
who have neglected no opportunity to blacken the character of every
political adversary, heretic, and apostate in the eyes of posterity.
After the Conquest, Count Julian retired to Ceuta, which city, with a
portion of the contiguous territory, was erected into a principality
and bestowed upon him as a reward for his services. Notwithstanding
his intimate Mohammedan associations, he and his immediate descendants
remained steadfast in the Christian faith. The preponderating
influence of Islam was, however, shown in the second generation of his
descendants; and his great-grandson Abu-Suleyman-Ayub, who lived in
the tenth century, and had studied under the greatest doctors of the
time, became famous as one of the most acute and learned expounders of
Moslem jurisprudence. The posterity of Tarik was known and esteemed for
several centuries in Spain, until his identity and remembrance were
finally lost in the civil wars and proscriptions which accompanied the
establishment of the dynasty of the Almohades.
The engagements entered into with their allies were performed by
the Moslems with scrupulous fidelity. Oppas was rewarded with the
government of Toledo. The royal demesnes, amounting to three thousand
of the richest estates of the kingdom, were restored to the House of
Witiza. Many benefits at once resulted to the masses from the Arab
conquest. The condition of the serfs was greatly improved. Tribute
was regulated by law, and ceased to be dependent upon the capricious
demands of avarice. The burdens of taxation were, however, still
excessive; the cultivator paid four-fifths of the products of the land
to the owner; from those who tilled the public domain--which comprised
a fifth part of the conquered territory--one-third of the results of
all manual industry was exacted. The tax of the landed proprietor was
approximately twenty per cent. of his income, that of the tributary
Christian varied from twelve to forty-eight dirhems--sixteen to
sixty-four dollars--a year. A treaty, whose provisions determined the
obligations of lord and serf, of subject and sovereign, and signed by
Tarik and the representatives of the Gothic nobility before the arrival
of Musa, was subsequently ratified by the government of Damascus. Upon
this treaty were based all the laws which governed the tributaries in
the Peninsula during the long period of Moslem dominion.
Less than fourteen months sufficed for the complete and irrevocable
overthrow of the Visigothic empire. Within two years, the authority
of the Moslem was firmly established from the Mediterranean to the
Pyrenees. History presents no similar instance of the celerity, the
completeness, the permanence of conquest. Political discord, social
disintegration, the uncertainty of government, the insubordination of
the noble, the rapacity of the priest, the despair of the slave, were
among the most important aids to Mohammedan success. The aspirations
of all not included in the privileged orders were repressed by the
inexorable tyranny of caste. The middle class, from whose exertion and
industry is necessarily derived the prosperity of a nation, had long
been absorbed by the vast body of serfs whose labors contributed to the
wealth, and whose numbers swelled the retinues, of the palatine and the
bishop. The same conditions prevailed which had three centuries before
heralded the fall of the Roman Empire. Force dominated everything.
The spirit of individual freedom, the most prominent feature of the
Teutonic constitution, had become extinct. The royal prerogative
was subordinated to the claims of the nobility, the latter--not,
however, without protest--had fallen under the dominion of the
priesthood. The prospect of affluence, the enjoyment of power, the
indulgence of luxury, were most easily obtained through the avenues
of ecclesiastical preferment. A long peace, attributable largely to
geographical isolation, had removed alike the necessity for martial
exercises and the incentives to military distinction. Concentration
of power, in spite of apparent anarchy, in the end tending to the
exercise of absolute despotism, had become the controlling principle
of government. Yet all of these evidences of national decadence are
scarcely adequate to explain the sudden collapse of a great monarchy.
Disappointed ambition, organized treason, the wholesale defection of
the Jews, contributed their weighty influence to hasten and complete
the catastrophe. Among the Visigoths, patriotism, a quality necessarily
dependent upon individual attachment to one’s country, was unknown.
Public spirit had been supplanted by a thirst for authority, in the
gratification of which all moral considerations were ignored. The
facility with which the Peninsula was won offers a suggestive contrast
to the enormous difficulties which attended its reconquest. The fate
of the Visigothic domination was determined in a week. After two short
years, nothing remained of its greatness but the melancholy souvenirs
of an enslaved people. The conquerors, in their turn, underwent the
same experience. The irreconcilable elements of which they were
composed, from the very beginning disclosed the defects of their polity
which portended inevitable destruction. These elements were far more
active and dangerous than those that had undermined the strength of
the Gothic state. Nevertheless, it required many centuries of conflict
to expel from Western Europe the race whose light-armed horsemen had,
almost without resistance, swept the country from Bætica to Provence,
from the mountains to the sea.
Thus passed into the hands of another branch of the Semitic race a
country which, in former ages, had long flourished under the rule of
Tyre and Carthage. Its attractions had been for centuries the theme of
every poet, its wealth the aim of every conqueror. Despite repeated
changes of government, invasions, conspiracies, revolutions, in its
inaccessible fastnesses, its autochthons, the Basques, had preserved
unimpaired their liberty and their national characteristics, a fate
which distinguished them from all the other nations of Europe. On
the fields of the Peninsula the most renowned soldiers of Rome had
learned the art of war. The highest civilization of the Teutonic race
had been attained in its cities. In its tribunals the most complete
system of jurisprudence the world had until then known was perfected.
The dignity of its ecclesiastical councils had maintained their
independence, and enabled the Spanish hierarchy to withstand alike the
insidious plots and the aggressive usurpations of the Papacy. But, of
the many races of strangers which had established themselves within
its borders, none had been of such a pronounced and original type as
that which now occupied all but a small corner of its ample domain.
The causes which led to, and the results which proceeded from, this
national catastrophe present one of the most curious phases of civil
organization and mental development. That an exotic people should at
one blow overturn a monarchy of three centuries’ duration is certainly
extraordinary. But that this same people, who possessed nothing in
common with the vanquished, no acquaintance with the arts, no knowledge
of civilization, should, in a few years, found an empire whose
inhabitants had already become eminent in every accomplishment which
renders nations learned, illustrious, and powerful, and be able to take
precedence of all their contemporaries, is far more extraordinary.
For an extended period, the affairs of the Peninsula had been ripe
for a domestic upheaval. Little respect remained among the masses for
the traditions of a monarchy once elective, now nominally hereditary,
but whose crown was always obtainable by purchase, assassination,
or intrigue. The piety of the priesthood had been supplanted by an
insatiable thirst for temporal power. In every part of the body politic
flourished antagonistic religious doctrines, racial prejudices,
factious opinions, and discordant social interests. The military
spirit had disappeared. The authority of the civil magistrate was
despised. The enforcement of the laws was regulated according to the
rank and influence of the offender rather than by the measure of his
guilt. Rival candidates for the throne contended for the glittering
prize with all the infamous arts of the conspirator and the demagogue.
Organized bands of robbers preyed upon the defenceless; and their
chieftains, disdaining disguise, stalked insolently through the streets
of the great cities. Boundless luxury and misgovernment had brought
in their train a degree of corruption which equalled that caused by
the worst excesses of the Cæsars. The labors of the husbandman for two
successive seasons had been fruitless, and hunger and disease in their
most fearful form contributed in no small degree to the accumulated
misery of the nation. In every community the members of a united and
isolated sect under the ban of sanguinary laws, yet still powerful in
intellect, in wealth, and in political craft, labored as one man for
the humiliation of their enemies and their own emancipation. At first
the invasion was considered as a mere inroad, and no one supposed that
the occupation of the country would be permanent. With the settlement
of colonies, the opening of seaports to the commerce of the East, the
partition of lands, and the erection of mosques, however, the Visigoths
recognized the full extent of the calamity which had befallen them. But
the moderation of their new rulers tempered the bitterness of defeat.
The payment of tribute, proportioned to the degree of resistance or
obedience to the laws, insured protection to the humblest peasant.
The orthodox zealot was allowed to perform the ceremonies of his
ritual without interference; the heretic could offer his petitions
without apprehension from the furious efforts of sectarian hatred.
Ecclesiastical dignitaries exercised in peace the functions of their
calling, and the monkish chronicler penned fierce anathemas against
his indulgent masters within hearing of the call to prayer from a
hundred minarets. The accounts of Catholic writers, in which the most
flagrant outrages are attributed to the Saracens, are manifestly
exaggerations or falsehoods. Still, there can be no doubt that the
inevitable accidents of warfare were productive of much suffering. An
inconsiderable number of monks, whose clamors and insulting demeanor
made them conspicuously offensive, were martyred. A few hundred nuns
exchanged the orthodox companionship of canons and bishops for the
delights of the seraglio. Fields of grain were given to the torch.
Magnificent villas were levelled with the ground. Altars were despoiled
of their treasures and sacred relics trodden under foot. But no pledge
of security was violated; and absolute immunity in person, property,
and religion was afforded by timely submission--a privilege appreciated
by the majority of the people, and contemned only by intemperate
fanatics who cursed the generous enemy whose prosperity they shared and
whose indulgence they abused.
The ancient judicature was respected, and its regulations, subordinated
to the legal procedure of the ruling power, were permitted to prevail
among the vanquished, so far as they did not directly conflict with
those of the Code of Islam. By its example of equity, toleration,
and mercy, the new government rapidly gained the attachment of its
subjects; the Jew prospered, the Christian forgot his bigotry, and the
slave eagerly repeated the formula which released him from bondage and
placed him on an equality with kings.
In the dark recesses of the cloister, without knowledge of the outer
world, without gratitude for the clemency which permitted him to live,
without appreciation of the increasing benefits of civilization, the
surly friar, alone in his malice and his ignorance, nourished a spirit
of sullen animosity, and with scourge and haircloth performed his
frequent penance; listening, with a vague foreboding of even greater
evil to his Church and order, to the muezzin’s daily repetition of that
ominous monotheistic maxim--ever before the eyes of the fanatic Moslem,
whether it appeared carved amidst the marble foliage of his temples,
or, emblazoned upon his banners in letters of gold, it glittered in
the van of his victorious armies--“There is no God but the Immortal,
the Eternal, who neither begets nor was begotten, and who hath neither
companion nor equal.”
CHAPTER VI
THE EMIRATE
713–755
Abd-al-Aziz--His Wise Administration--His Execution
ordered by the Khalif--Ayub-Ibn-Habib--His
Reforms--Al-Horr--Al-Samh--His Invasion of France--His
Defeat and Death--Abd-al-Rahman--Feud of the Maadites and
Kahtanites--Its Disastrous Effects--Anbasah-Ibn-Sohim--His
Ability--He penetrates to the Rhone and is
killed--Yahya-Ibn-Salmah--Othman-Ibn-Abu-Nesa--Hodheyfa-Ibn
-al-Awass--Al-Haytham-Ibn-Obeyd--Mohammed-Ibn-Abdallah
--Abd-al-Rahman--His Popularity--Proclaims the Holy War--Treason of
Othman-Ibn-Abu-Nesa--The Emir attempts the Conquest of
France--Character of Charles Martel--Battle of Poitiers--Death
of Abd-al-Rahman--Abd-al-Melik--Okbah-Ibn-al-Hejaj--His
Wisdom and Capacity--Charles Martel ravages
Provence--Berber Revolt in Africa--Victory of the
Rebels--Abd-al-Melik-Ibn-Kottam--Balj-Ibn-Beschr--Thalaba
--Abu-al-Khattar--Condition of Western Europe--Unstable and Corrupt
Administration of the Emirs--Importance of the Battle of Poitiers.
The principle of hereditary right, although it occupied no place in the
polity of Mohammed, was denounced by the Koran, and repudiated by the
Arabs of ancient times, had been, since the dynasty of the Ommeyades
attained to power, to a certain extent tacitly recognized by the
subjects of the khalifs. Although the latter dignity was among orthodox
Mussulmans still elective, like the office of an Arab sheik, the
Persian schismatics had, for some generations, accustomed themselves
to consider the descendants of Ali as the only legal Successors of the
Prophet, to whom had been transmitted the inalienable prerogatives of
regal power and even the sacred attributes of divinity. The ambition
of the sovereigns of Damascus had been occasionally gratified by the
accession of their sons to the throne, a result not unfrequently
accomplished by means of questionable character. When the loyalty
of the nobles and the obsequious devotion of the multitude were not
sufficient to enable him to attain the desired end, the Khalif did
not hesitate to use bribery, threats, and even assassination, to
perpetuate the coveted dignity in his family. From the monarch this
natural principle--a species of hero-worship, so common as to be almost
universal, and exhibiting its tendencies even in the administration of
the greatest of modern republics--descended to the prominent officials
of the empire and to their subordinates the walis, the governors of
provinces and cities. For these reasons, the appointment by Musa of
his three sons to be respectively emirs of East and West Africa and
Spain was regarded by the Moslem population of those countries and
by the army as the exercise of a prescriptive right which scarcely
required the formal confirmation of the sovereign. Notwithstanding
the ferocious and jealous temper of Suleyman, and the fact that he
had heaped upon Musa injuries which were unpardonable, he, for some
time, permitted the sons of the conqueror of Al-Maghreb and Andaluz to
exercise without molestation the functions of their several emirates.
Abd-al-Aziz, to whom had been assigned the difficult task of the
political reorganization of the Peninsula,--a task which involved the
erection of one system of government upon the ruins of another which
had nothing in common with, and much that was hostile to, it,--entered
upon his duties with all the energy and tact of an accomplished soldier
and statesman. Some cities removed from the immediate influence of the
conquerors had renounced their allegiance and refused the customary
tribute. These were speedily reduced to submission. The convention
of Musa with Theodomir, the Gothic tributary of Murcia, was solemnly
ratified. Detachments under different commanders were despatched to the
North and West, who carried the Moslem arms to the shores of Lusitania
and the mountains of Biscay and Navarre. Castles were built for the
protection of the frontiers, and garrisons of important towns placed
under the command of experienced officers of tried fidelity. A Divan
or Council was established. Receivers of taxes and magistrates were
appointed to conduct the civil departments of the administration.
Secure in the protection of their own laws and the enjoyment of their
ancient religious privileges, the Mohammedan yoke was hardly felt
by the Christian population, whose restrictions were confined to a
show of outward respect for the institutions of their masters and the
regular payment of tribute. All acts of violence and oppression were
punished, and public confidence was restored. The peasants rebuilt
their cottages; the labors of the agriculturist, interrupted by civil
commotion and foreign encroachment, were resumed; the grass-grown
thoroughfares of the cities once more echoed with the welcome sounds
of traffic, and the sad traces of many successive years of warfare and
devastation began to gradually disappear from the face of the Peninsula.
But, however equitable was the civil administration of Abd-al-Aziz,
its beneficent effects in the eyes of both Moslems and Christians
were more than neutralized by the excesses and licentious violence of
his private life. In the gratification of passions strong even for an
Oriental, his conduct surpassed the ordinary limits of brutal tyranny.
The fairest maids and matrons of the Gothic population crowded his
seraglio; and even the homes of noble Arabians were not secure from
the visitations of his eunuchs. Egilona, the queen of Roderick, having
fallen into his hands, became first his concubine and afterwards his
wife. She was indulged in the practice of her religion, an unusual
privilege for one in her position; and, by the unbounded influence she
soon acquired over her husband, succeeded in sensibly alleviating the
miseries of her countrymen. Her beauty, her vast wealth, which she
had secured by a timely submission and the payment of tribute, and
her talents, which appear to have been of no mean order, added to the
ambition once more to sit upon a throne, soon made themselves felt
in the affairs of government. She began to direct the policy of the
Emir, to the disgust and apprehension of the members of the Divan and
the officers of the army. She imprudently attempted to introduce the
ceremonial of the Visigothic court, which required the prostration of
all who approached the throne of the monarch; a custom repugnant as
yet both to the equality and independence recommended by the precepts
of the Koran and to the proud spirit of the Arab. By her advice the
treaty was concluded with Theodomir, who thereby acquired for life the
sovereignty of the beautiful province of Murcia. The exercise of such
authority was considered by pious Moslems as boding ill to the empire
of Islam when enjoyed by a woman and an infidel. The rumor spread that
Abd-al-Aziz, helpless under the fatal spell of this sorceress, was
meditating apostasy and aspiring to independent power. These reports,
which derived some color of probability from the universal belief of
the multitude, the personal popularity and well-known ambition of the
Emir, and his presumed desire to avenge the wrongs of his father,
were communicated to the Khalif, who determined to at once remove all
danger from any designs of the sons of Musa. Orders were accordingly
despatched to five of the principal officers of the army of occupation
in Spain to put Abd-al-Aziz to death. The first who opened and read
the commands of the Khalif was Habib-Ibn-Obeidah, an old and valued
friend of the family of Musa. His distress may be imagined; but the
order was peremptory, and the ties of friendship, the sentiments
of gratitude, the reminiscences of social intimacy, were not to be
considered by the devout Moslem when was interposed the imperious
mandate of the Successor of the Prophet of God. Having consulted with
each other, the executioners, who feared the vengeance of the army,
devoted as it was to its chief, determined to kill Abd-al-Aziz while
at his devotions. It was the custom of the Emir to pass much of his
time at a summer palace in the suburbs of Seville, attached to which
was a private mosque. Here, while upon his knees reciting the morning
prayer, he was attacked and despatched without resistance. His body was
buried in the court of the palace, and his head--a sanguinary proof of
the obedience of his assassins--was sent in a box filled with camphor
to Suleyman at Damascus. Thus perished one of the most distinguished
captains of the age, whose talents and dexterity promised a rapid
solution of the difficult questions of policy which confronted the new
rulers of Spain, and whose gentle and considerate treatment of the
vanquished--conspicuous amidst the repulsive asperity of barbarian
manners--proved his destruction. A few weeks elapsed, and his brethren,
the emirs of Africa, followed him by the hand of the executioner. The
fate of his unfortunate consort, Egilona, is unknown. In common with
King Roderick and his conqueror Tarik, with Count Julian and the sons
of Witiza, her future, after a remarkable career, passes into oblivion.
It is not a little singular that so many of the most conspicuous
personages of their time should all, one after another, without any
apparent reason, have been thus abruptly dismissed by the chroniclers
of the age.
The Khalif, in his haste to destroy the family of Musa, had neglected
to designate a successor to Abd-al-Aziz, and Spain remained for a
short time without a governor. Realizing the dangers of a protracted
interregnum among the heterogeneous elements of which the inhabitants
of the Peninsula were composed, a number of the Moslems most eminent
in rank and influence assembled, and, in accordance with the ancient
custom of the Desert, elected Ayub-Ibn-Habib provisional Emir. Ayub
was a captain of age and experience and the cousin of Abd-al-Aziz. His
first act was to remove the seat of government from Seville to Cordova,
on account of the more advantageous location of the latter city,
destined to remain during the domination of the conquerors the Mecca
of the Occident, the literary centre of the Middle Ages, the school of
polite manners, the home of science and the arts; to be regarded with
awe by every Moslem, with affectionate veneration by every scholar,
and with mingled feelings of wonder and apprehension by the turbulent
barbarians of Western Europe. For greater convenience in collecting
the revenue and restraining the indigenous population, the country
had been divided into numerous districts, governed by walis, inferior
officials responsible to the Emir. The lives of these magistrates,
passed amidst the turmoil of revolution, the sack of cities, and the
slaughter of infidels, rendered them but ill qualified to administer
the affairs of a nation in time of peace. The acts of cruelty and
extortion perpetrated by these petty tyrants, far removed from the eye
of the court, had become an intolerable grievance. It devolved on Ayub
to investigate their official conduct, and many of them were deposed
and punished. The new Emir travelled through his dominions, correcting
abuses, building fortresses, repairing the decaying walls of cities,
encouraging the development and cultivation of fields long since
abandoned by the farmer, redressing grievances without distinction of
creed or nationality, and by every means promoting the welfare of his
grateful subjects. In those provinces which had been depopulated, he
established colonies of immigrants and adventurers from Africa and
the East. In others, where the Christians preponderated, he settled
numbers of Jews and Moslems, whose presence might curb the enthusiasm
and check the aspirations of the implacable enemies of the Mohammedan
faith. The watch-towers which crowned the summits of the Pyrenees
and defended the passes leading to Narbonnese Gaul--that region of
mystery which the imperfect geography of the Arab had designated the
Great Land, and the imagination of the Oriental had peopled with
giants and fabulous monsters--were strengthened and garrisoned with
troops whose activity and vigilance had been tested in many a scene of
toil and danger. Scarcely had the administration of Ayub been fairly
established, before the vindictive spirit of the Khalif demanded his
removal. Mohammed-Ibn-Yezid, Emir of Africa, was ordered to deprive of
office all members of the tribe of Lakhm, to which Musa had belonged,
and Al-Horr-Ibn-Abd-al-Rahman was invested with the precarious dignity
of Viceroy of the Peninsula. Four hundred representatives of the
proudest of the Arabian nobility, whom zeal for the faith, the love of
adventure, or the hope of renown had attracted to the shores of Africa,
accompanied him; warriors, many of whose descendants were destined to
attain to distinction in every rank of civil and military life--even to
the royal dignity itself--and to become the most prominent members of
the Moslem aristocracy of Spain.
From the beginning, the arbitrary measures of the Emir carried distress
and anxiety into every town and hamlet of the country. His rapacity
knew no bounds. Under pretext of a deficiency in the collection of
tribute, the officials charged with that duty were imprisoned and
put to the torture. In the infliction of punishment no distinction
of religious belief was recognized; Moslem and Christian alike felt
the heavy hand of the tyrant; and even the oldest and most renowned
officers of the army, veterans who had served in Syria and Africa, the
companions of Tarik and Musa, were not exempt from the exactions of
his insatiable avarice. So intolerable did these oppressions become,
that the cause of Islam was seriously endangered; proselytism ceased;
no official, however high in rank, was secure in the possession of
liberty, property, and life; and the unfortunate Jews and Christians
were exposed to all the evils of the most cruel persecution. As the
Emir of Africa evinced a remarkable apathy when the removal of Al-Horr
was demanded by the outraged people of Spain, application was made to
the Khalif Omar in person, who at once deposed the offensive governor,
and appointed as his successor Al-Samh, the general commanding the
army of the northern frontier. This appointment did credit to the
discernment of the Khalif, for it proved eminently wise and judicious.
The first efforts of Al-Samh were directed to the correction of
irregularities in the administration of the revenue. Formerly the
large cities, where was naturally collected the most of the wealth of
the kingdom and hence the bulk of property liable to taxation, had
been required to contribute only one-tenth of their income towards the
expenses of government, while the villages and the cultivated lands
had been assessed at one-fifth. This inequality was due originally to
a desire to favor the Jews, whose love of traffic had induced them to
establish themselves in the principal towns, offering, as the latter
did, better facilities for the encouragement of commerce and the rapid
accumulation of property. In addition to this much-needed reform,
the able viceroy collected the bands of Moors and Berbers,--whose
nomadic habits and predatory instincts, inherited from a long line of
ancestors, had resisted former attempts at colonization,--settled them
upon unoccupied lands, and, by every possible inducement, tried to
impress upon the minds of these savage warriors the importance and the
superior advantages of civilization. He caused a census to be taken
of all the inhabitants of the Peninsula, and with it sent to Damascus
elaborate tables of statistics, in which were carefully described
the various towns, the topography of the coast, the situation of the
harbors, the wealth of the country, the nature of its products, the
volume of its commerce, and the extent of its mineral and agricultural
resources. The restoration of the magnificent bridge of Cordova,
constructed in the reign of Augustus, is of itself an enduring monument
to his fame. But the energies of Al-Samh were not expended solely in
the monotonous but beneficial avocations of peace. As the friend and
associate of Tarik he had seen service on many a stoutly contested
field, and now, when his dominions were tranquil and prosperous, he
received, with the exultation of an ardent believer, the order of the
Khalif to carry the Holy War beyond the Pyrenees.
The province of Narbonnese Gaul, once a part of the Visigothic empire,
and hitherto protected from the incursions of its dangerous neighbors
by the lofty mountain rampart which formed its southern boundary,
continued to cherish the traditions and to observe the customs of its
ancient rulers. It embraced the greater portion of modern Languedoc,
that smiling region which, watered by the Rhone, the Garonne, and
their numerous tributaries, had, through the fertility of its soil
and the advantages of its semi-tropical climate, early attracted the
attention of the adventurous colonists of Greece and Italy. The high
state of civilization to which this region attained, and its progress
in the arts, are manifested by the architectural remains which still
adorn its cities,--remains which, in elegance of design and imposing
magnificence, are unequalled by even the far-famed ruins of the
Eternal City. No structures in any country illustrate so thoroughly
the taste and genius of classic times as the arch of Orange, the Pont
du Gard, the temples and the amphitheatre of Nîmes, whose graceful
proportions and wonderful state of preservation never fail to elicit
the enthusiastic admiration of the traveller. The inhabitants also have
retained, through the vicissitudes of centuries of warfare and foreign
domination, the traits and features of their classic ancestry. In the
vainglorious pride of the Provençal and his neighbor the Gascon are
traceable the haughty demeanor of the Roman patrician; while the women
of Arles, in their symmetry of form, their faultless profiles, and
their statuesque grace, recall the beauties of the age of Pericles.
This territory was known to the Goths by the name of Septimania, from
the seven principal cities, Narbonne, Nîmes, Agde, Lodève, Maguelonne,
Béziers, and Carcassonne, included within its borders, and was still
governed by the maxims of the Gothic polity which formerly prevailed in
the Peninsula. Although divided into a number of little principalities,
whose chieftains promiscuously indulged their propensities to rapine
without fear of the intervention of any superior power, it had for
years preserved the appearance of a disunited but independent state.
In the North, the anarchy accompanying the bloody struggles of the
princes of the Merovingian dynasty, which preceded the foundation of
the empire of Pepin and Charlemagne, removed, for the time, all danger
of encroachment from that quarter. But the Gothic nobles, since the
battle of the Guadalete, had cast glances of anxiety and dismay upon
the distant summits of the Pyrenees. Innumerable refugees from Spain
had sought safety among their Gallic kinsmen, and the tales which
they related of the excesses of the invaders lost nothing in their
recital by these terror-stricken fugitives. Too feeble of themselves
to entertain hopes of successful resistance, the Goths suspended for
a time their hereditary quarrels, and, to avoid the impending ruin,
acknowledged the sovereignty of Eudes, the powerful Duke of Aquitaine.
Al-Samh, having completed his preparations, emerged from the mountain
passes at the head of a formidable army. After a siege of a month,
Narbonne, the capital of Septimania, surrendered to the Moslems, who
obtained from the churches and convents an immense booty, most of which
had been deposited by fugitive Spanish prelates in those sanctuaries as
places of inviolable security. Almost without a blow, the fortresses of
Béziers, Maguelonne, and Carcassonne accepted the liberal conditions of
Mohammedan vassalage. The flying squadrons of Arab cavalry now spread
ruin and alarm over the beautiful valley of the Garonne. So attractive
was the country and so lax the discipline, that it was with some
difficulty the Emir succeeded in collecting the scattering detachments
of his army, which had wandered far in search of plunder; and, resuming
his march, he at length invested the important city of Toulouse,
the capital of Aquitaine. The siege was pushed with vigor, and the
inhabitants, reduced to extremity, were already meditating a surrender,
when the Duke approached with a force greatly superior to that of the
Moslems. The latter, disheartened at the sight of such an overwhelming
multitude, were disposed to retreat, when the Emir, actuated by a
spirit worthy of the ancient heroes of Islam, roused their flagging
courage by an eloquent harangue, in which he artfully suggested both
the prizes of victory and the promises of the Faith. As the two hosts
ranged themselves in martial array, the priests distributed among the
Franks small pieces of sponge which had received the blessing of the
Pope; amulets more serviceable, it appeared, than the thickest armor,
for we are assured by the veracious chroniclers of the age that not a
Christian soldier who carried one of these valuable relics lost his
life in the battle. The contest was long and obstinate; the Moslems
performed prodigies of valor; but they had lost the religious fervor
which had so often rendered their arms invincible; and anxiety for
the safety of their spoils had greater influence upon them than the
security of their conquest or the propagation of their religion. The
issue long remained doubtful; but the Emir having exposed himself
too rashly fell pierced by a lance; and his army, completely routed,
retired from the field with the loss of two-thirds of its number.
Abd-al-Rahman-al-Ghafeki, an officer of high rank and distinguished
reputation, was invested with the temporary command by his associates,
and conducted the shattered remnant of the Moslems to Narbonne. Intent
on plundering the treasures of the enemy’s camp, which contained
the bulk of the portable wealth of Septimania, the Franks could not
be induced to reap the full advantages of victory. The retreat was
conducted with consummate skill, for the peasantry, aroused by the news
of the disaster, swarmed in vast numbers around the retreating Moslems,
who were often compelled to cut their way through the dense and ever
increasing masses, which immediately closed in and harassed their rear.
This was the first serious reverse which had befallen the hitherto
invincible arms of Islam. The tide had begun to turn, and the
implacable enmity cultivated for centuries between the two contending
nations of Arabia--which neither the precepts of a congenial form
of faith, nor military fame, nor uninterrupted conquest, nor the
possession of fabulous wealth, nor the enjoyment of the fairest
portions of the globe could eradicate--was now to exhibit to the
world the splendid weakness of the Successors of Mohammed. A glance
at the origin and progress of this barbarian feud, which survived
the impetuous ardor of proselytism, and had nourished for ages its
hereditary vindictiveness, and, arising in distant Asia, was destined
to be revived with undiminished violence upon the plains of Aragon and
Andalusia, is essential to a proper understanding of the causes to
which are to be attributed the downfall of the Moslem Empire of the
West.
As already mentioned, irreconcilable hostility had existed from time
immemorial between the inhabitants of Northern and Southern Arabia.
Due to a difference of origin, and probably based upon invasion and
conquest in a prehistoric age, this race-prejudice had been aggravated
by a feeling of mutual hatred and contempt, derived from the different
avocations of the people of Yemen and those of the Hedjaz, the peaceful
merchants and the lawless rovers of the Desert. The Maadites, to
whom the Meccans belonged, were shepherds and brigands. They prided
themselves upon being the aristocracy of Arabia; and the thrifty and
industrious dwellers of the South, the Kahtanites, who saw nothing
degrading in the tillage of their fields, in the care of their valuable
date plantations, and in the profits of commerce, could, in the
consciousness of superior wealth and culture, readily endure the scorn
of their neighbors, whose gains were obtained by overreaching their
guests, by extortions from pilgrims to the Kaaba, and by sharing in
the plunder of caravans. The Medinese, whose origin was partly Jewish,
whose pursuits were sedentary, and whose affiliations connected them
with the trading communities of Yemen, were classed with the Kahtanites
by the children of Maad. From this mutual antagonism the religion of
Mohammed received its greatest impulse and the power which enabled it
to overturn all its adversaries; and from it, also, are to be traced
the misfortunes which befell the empire of Islam even before it was
firmly established; which made every country and province in its wide
dominions the scene of civil strife and bloodshed; which profaned
with insult and violence the shrines of the most holy temples; which
annihilated whole dynasties by the hand of the assassin; and which,
far more potent than the iron hand of Charles Martel and the valor
of the Franks, lost by a single stroke the sceptre of Europe. Hence
arose the disputes which terminated in the murder of Othman and its
terrible retribution, the sack of the Holy Cities; the intrigues and
controversies which resulted from the election of Ali; the death
of Hosein; the insurrections of the fanatical reformers of Persia;
the proscription of the Ommeyades; the perpetual disorders which
distracted the Emirate of Africa. In Spain also, whither had resorted
so many of the fugitives of Medina and their Syrian conquerors, the
smouldering embers of national prejudice and religious discord were
rekindled. The most sacred ties of nationality, of religion, or of
kindred were powerless to counteract this deep-rooted antipathy, which
seems inherent in the two divisions of the Arab race. The most noble
incentives to patriotism, the pride of victory, the alluring prospects
of commercial greatness, of literary distinction, of boundless
dominion, were ignored in the hope of humiliating a rival faction and
of gratifying a ruthless spirit of revenge. At different times--such
is the strange inconsistency of human nature--the Maadites became
voluntary dependents of the kings of Yemen and Hira. In an age of
remote antiquity, the Himyarite dialect spoken in the South had been
supplanted by the more polished idiom of the Hedjaz.
The intensity and duration of the hatred existing between Maadite and
Yemenite are inconceivable by the mind of one of Caucasian blood, and
are without precedent, even in the East. It affected the policy of
nations; it determined the fate of empires; it menaced the stability of
long-established articles of faith; it invaded the family, corrupting
the instincts of filial reverence, and betraying the sacred confidences
of domestic life. Upon pretexts so frivolous as hardly to justify
a quarrel between individuals, nations were plunged into all the
calamities of civil war. A difference affecting the construction of a
point of religious discipline was sufficient to assemble a horde of
fanatics, and devote whole provinces to devastation and massacre. A
petty act of trespass--the detaching of a vine-leaf, the theft of a
melon--provoked the most cruel retaliation upon the community to which
the culprit belonged. The Maadite, inheriting the haughty spirit of
the Bedouin marauder, despised his ancestors if there was in their
veins a single drop of the blood of Kahtan; and, on the other hand,
under corresponding conditions of relationship, the Yemenite refused
to pray even for his mother if she was allied to the Maadites, whom
he stigmatized as a race of barbarians and slaves. And yet these
were divisions of the same people; with similar tastes and manners;
identical in dress and personal aspect; speaking the same tongue;
worshipping at the same altars; fighting under the same banners;
frequently united by intermarriage; actuated by the same ambitions;
zealous for the attainment of the same ends. The investigation of this
anomaly, an ethnical peculiarity so remarkable in its tenacity of
prejudice, and which, enduring for more than twenty-five hundred years,
the most powerful motives and aspirations of the mind have failed to
abrogate, presents one of the most interesting problems in the history
of humanity.
In the train of Musa had followed hundreds of the former inhabitants
of Medina, who carried with them bitter memories of ruined homes
and slaughtered kinsmen. The impression made by these enthusiastic
devotees--defenders of the sepulchre of the Prophet, and eloquent
with the traditions of the Holy City--upon the savage tribes of
Africa was far more deep and permanent than that of the homilies of
Musa delivered under the shadow of the scimetar. Their bearing was
more affable, their treatment of the conquered more lenient, their
popularity far more decided, than that of the haughty descendants of
the Koreish. With the memory of inexpiable wrong was cherished an
implacable spirit of vengeance. The name of Syrian, associated with
infidelity, sacrilege, lust, and massacre, was odious to the pious
believer of the Hedjaz. His soul revolted at the tales of ungodly
revels which disgraced the polished and voluptuous court of Damascus.
The riotous banquets, the lascivious dances, the silken vestments,
the midnight orgies, and above all the blasphemous jests of satirical
poets, struck with horror the abstemious and scrupulous precisians of
Medina and Aden. The Ommeyade noble was looked upon by them as worse
than an apostate; a being whose status was inferior to that of either
Pagan, Jew, or Christian. The feelings of the descendants of the proud
aristocracy of Mecca towards their adversaries were scarcely less
bitter. They remembered with contempt the obscure origin and plebeian
avocations of the first adherents of the Prophet. Their minds were
inflamed with rage when they recalled the murder of the inoffensive
Othman, whose blood-stained garments, mute but potent witnesses of his
sufferings, had hung for many months in the Great Mosque of Damascus.
With indignation was repeated the story of the cowardly attempt against
the life of Muavia, and of the poisoned thrust which brought him to
an untimely end. With but few exceptions, the Emirs of Spain were
stanch adherents of the line of the Ommeyades, and never failed to
discriminate against the obnoxious Medinese and their posterity. The
latter retaliated by secret treachery; by open rebellion; by defeating
vast schemes of policy before they were matured; by encouraging the
dangerous encroachments of the Asturian mountaineers. This sectional
strife early disclosed itself in the face of the enemy by fomenting
the quarrel between Tarik and Musa. It thwarted the plans of the great
Arab general, whose enterprising genius and towering ambition aimed
at the subjugation and conversion of Europe. It armed the hands which
struck down in the sanctuary the wise and capable Abd-al-Aziz. It
retarded the progress of Abd-al-Rahman, filled his camp with brawls
and confusion, increased the insubordination of his troops, and gave
time for the recall of the barbarian hosts of Charles Martel from the
confines of Gaul and Germany. In the Arabian population the Yemenite
faction largely preponderated, especially in Eastern and Western Spain,
which were almost exclusively settled by its adherents. In consequence
of their numerical superiority and political importance, they claimed,
certainly with some appearance of justice, the right to be governed
by an emir whose views and sympathies were in accordance with their
own. The court of Damascus, thoroughly cognizant of the uncertain hold
it maintained upon a distant and wealthy province, inhabited by a
turbulent rabble whose animosity towards the family of the Ommeyades
was thinly disguised by lukewarm professions of loyalty and occasional
remittances of tribute, had the sagacity to humor its prejudices, and
to appoint to the Spanish Emirate governors of the dominant party. In
the course of forty years, but three of the rulers of Spain out of
twenty traced their origin to the detested posterity of Maad. This
politic course preserved in its allegiance the wealthy provinces of
the Peninsula, until the influence of the Yemenites and the Berbers
was hopelessly weakened by the civil wars preceding the foundation
of the Western Khalifate. The effects of the latter, by the serious
disturbances they promoted and the consequent injury inflicted upon the
integrity of the Mohammedan empire, had awakened the hopes and revived
the faltering courage of the terrified nations of Christendom.
There is perhaps no recorded instance of a feud so obscure in
its origin, so anomalous in its conditions, so momentous in its
consequences, as this rancorous antagonism of the two divisions of the
Arabian people. It illustrates more clearly than an entire commentary
could do, the inflexibility of purpose, a trait conspicuous in the
Bedouin, which could sacrifice all the advantages and pleasures of
life, all the hopes of eternity, to the destruction of an hereditary
foe. For centuries, in an isolated and arid country of Asia, certain
hordes of barbarians, ignorant of the arts, careless of luxury, proud,
intrepid, and independent, had pursued each other with unrelenting
hostility. With the advent of a Prophet bringing a new revelation, the
most potent influences which can affect humanity are brought to bear
upon the nation. A whole people emigrates; is in time united with many
conquered races; appreciates and accepts the priceless benefits of
civilization; becomes pre-eminent in science, in letters, in all the
arts of war and government, in all the happy and beneficent pursuits
of peace. But amidst this prosperity and grandeur the hereditary feuds
of the Desert remained unreconciled. Neither the denunciations of
the Koran nor the fear of future punishment were able to more than
temporarily arrest this fatal enmity. Islam was in a few generations
filled with dangerous schismatics, whose tribal prejudice was, more
than devotion to any dogma, the secret of their menacing attitude
towards the khalifate. The mockery and sacrilege of the princes
of Damascus, scions of the ancient persecutors of Mohammed, were
caused by equally base, selfish, and unpatriotic motives. And the
people of Medina, without whose timely aid--induced, it is not to be
forgotten, by this perpetual feud between Kahtanite and Maadite---Islam
could never have survived, were doomed henceforth to a career of
uninterrupted misfortune. Their city, which had sheltered the Prophet
in his adversity, and had received his blessing, was sacked and laid
waste; and in the sacred mosque which covered his remains were stabled
the horses of the Syrian cavalry. The unhappy exiles, pursued in every
land by the impositions and cruelty of the tyrants of Syria, were,
despite their frequent efforts to throw off the yoke, finally cowed
into submission. In the long series of rulers, from Sad-Ibn-Obada,
surnamed The Perfect, the champion of Medina, whose election as the
first of the Khalifs the overbearing insolence of the Koreish was
scarcely able to prevent, to the effeminate Boabdil, his lineal
descendant, the conduct of the Defenders of the Prophet is marked
by errors of judgment, by want of tact, by defiance of law, and by
ill-timed enterprises prolific of disaster. No city, however, has
placed a deeper impress upon the history of nations and the cause
of civilization, since the immortal age of Athens, than Medina. Its
influence, although often of a negative character, while it was the
support of Islam in its period of weakness, was a serious impediment
in its day of power. The benefits it conferred upon a handful of
struggling proselytes were more than counterbalanced by the discord it
promoted in the camps and councils of Irac, Syria, Africa, and Spain.
The census taken by Al-Samh had disclosed the vast preponderance of
Christians who still adhered to their ancient faith, and the fears
of the Khalif Yezid were aroused by the presence of so many hostile
sectaries in the heart of his empire. To obviate this evil, and to
assure the future permanence of Moslem supremacy, he devised a scheme
which indicates a degree of worldly wisdom and political acuteness
rare in the councils of that age. He proposed that the Christian
population of Spain and Septimania be deported and settled in the
provinces of Africa and Syria, and the territory thus vacated be
colonized with faithful Mussulmans. Thus Spain would have become
thoroughly Mohammedan, and the establishment of armed garrisons in
Gaul would have been supplemented by the aid of a brave and active
peasantry, affording an invaluable initial point for the extension
of the Moslem arms in the north and east of Europe. But this was by
no means the greatest advantage of this bold and original stroke of
statesmanship. The penetrating eye of Yezid had already discerned
the dangerous character of the mountaineers of the Asturias, who had
preserved the traditions and inherited the valor of the founders of
the Gothic monarchy. The removal of this threatening element was
equivalent to its extirpation, and would probably have preserved for
an indefinite period the Moslem empire of Spain in its original
integrity. The province of Septimania, supported by the powerful
armies of a united and homogeneous nation, could then have defied the
desultory assaults of the Franks. The exiles, scattered in distant
lands, must by force, or through inducements of material advantage,
have gradually become amalgamated with their masters; their children
would have professed the prevailing faith; and the progenitors of
that dynasty whose policy controlled the destinies of Europe during
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries would have disappeared from
the knowledge of man. The severity of this project, dictated partly
by religious zeal, but principally by political acumen, would have
been excessive, yet its beneficial effects upon the fortunes of Islam
must have been incalculable. But the mind of Al-Samh, incapable of
appreciating the paramount importance of the enterprise, despising
the Goths of the sierras as savages, and, like the majority of his
countrymen, underestimating their resolution and capacity for warfare,
induced him to discourage the plan of the Khalif, by representing that
it was unnecessary, on account of the daily increasing numbers of
converts to the doctrines of the Koran. The successful inauguration of
a similar policy by Cromwell in Ireland nine hundred years afterwards,
whose completion, fortunately for the rebellious natives, was defeated
by his death, demonstrates the extraordinary sagacity of the sovereign
of Damascus in devising a measure of statecraft whose execution
portended such important consequences to modern society, and which
has, for the most part, escaped the notice of the historians of the
Moorish empire. Before departing upon his unfortunate expedition,
Al-Samh had left Anbasah-Ibn-Sohim, one of his most trusty lieutenants,
in charge of the affairs of the Peninsula. The latter, learning of
the rout of Toulouse, without delay sent a large body of troops to
the North to cover the retreat of the defeated army; a precaution
rendered unnecessary by the generalship of Abd-al-Rahman, who was now
recognized as emir, the choice of his comrades being soon afterwards
confirmed by the Viceroy of Africa. The Christians of Gothic Gaul and
the Asturias, greatly elated by the disaster which had befallen their
enemies, soon manifested greater hostility than ever, and it required
all the firmness and prudence of Abd-al-Rahman to restrain them. The
insurrection which began to threaten the power of the Moslems in
the trans-Pyrenean province was, however, crushed before it became
formidable; the mountaineers were driven back into their strongholds;
the suspended tribute was collected, and an increased contribution was
levied upon such communities as had distinguished themselves by an
obstinate resistance.
Although the idol of his soldiers, Abd-al-Rahman was not a favorite
with the great officials of the government. They admired his prowess,
and were not disposed to depreciate his talents, but they hated him
on account of his popularity, for which he was mainly indebted to
his lavish donations to the troops. It was his custom, as soon as
the royal fifth had been set apart, to abandon the remainder of the
spoil to the army, a course so unusual as to provoke the remonstrances
of his friends, while it elicited the applause and secured the
undying attachment of the soldiery. Application was made by the
malcontents to the Viceroy of Africa, Baschar-Ibn-Hantala, for the
removal of Abd-al-Rahman, under the pretext that the Moslem cause
was becoming endangered through the prevalence of luxury introduced
by his unprecedented munificence. The charges were pressed with such
vigor that they prevailed, and Anbasah-Ibn-Sohim was raised to the
emirate. Abd-al-Rahman--such was the confidence of his opponents in
his integrity and patriotism--was reinstated in the government of
Eastern Spain, which he had held previous to the battle of Toulouse.
With the submission and piety of a faithful Moslem, he congratulated
his successor, swore fealty to him, and retired without a murmur to
reassume a subordinate position in a kingdom which he had ruled with
absolute power. Anbasah soon displayed by active and salutary measures
his fitness for his high office. The administration had become to
some extent demoralized by the easy temper and prodigal liberality
of Abd-al-Rahman, and Anbasah’s first care was to remodel the fiscal
department and adopt a new and more exact apportionment of taxation.
Carefully avoiding any appearance of injustice to the tributary
Christians, he divided among the immigrants--who now, in larger numbers
than ever before, poured into Spain from Africa and the East--the lands
which were unoccupied, and had hitherto served as pastures to the
nomadic Berbers, whose traditions and habits discouraged the selection
of any permanent habitation. While inflexibly just to the loyal and
obedient, Anbasah punished all attempts at insurrection with a rigor
akin to ferocity. Some districts in the province of Tarragona having
revolted on account of real or fancied grievances, the Emir razed their
fortifications, crucified the leaders, and imposed upon the inhabitants
a double tax, both as a punishment and a warning. In order to keep
alive the respect for the Moslem name, he sent frequent expeditions
into Gaul, whose operations, conducted upon a limited scale, were
mainly confined to the destruction of property and the seizure of
captives.
The Jewish population of the Peninsula, relieved from the vexatious
laws of the Goths and greatly increased in wealth and numbers by
foreign accessions, had already risen to exalted rank in the social
and political scale under the favorable auspices of Mohammedan rule.
It enjoyed the highest consideration with the Arabs, whose success
had been so largely due to its friendly co-operation. This community,
endowed with the hereditary thrift of the race, rich beyond all former
experience, still ardently devoted to a religion endeared by centuries
of persecution, and by the deeply grounded hope of future spiritual and
temporal sovereignty, was now startled by the report that the Messiah,
whose advent they had so long and so patiently awaited, had appeared
in the East. The highly imaginative temperament of the Oriental, and
the phenomenal success of the founders of religious systems in that
quarter of the world, had been productive of the rise of many designing
fanatics, all claiming the gifts of prophecy and miracle, and all
secure of a numerous following in an age fertile in impostors. In this
instance, the Hebrew prophet, whose name was Zonaria, had established
his abode in Syria; and thither in multitudes the Spanish Jews,
abandoning their homes and carrying only their valuables, journeyed,
without questioning the genuineness of their information or reflecting
upon the results of their blind credulity. No sooner were the pilgrims
across the strait, than the crafty Emir, declaring their estates
forfeited by abandonment, confiscated the latter, which included some
of the finest mansions and most productive lands in the Peninsula. This
fanatical contagion extended even into Gaul, and the Jewish colonists
of that region hastened to join their Spanish brethren in their
pilgrimage of folly, only to realize, when too late, that they had
lost their worldly possessions without the compensating advantage of a
celestial inheritance.
Having regulated the civil affairs of his government to his
satisfaction, the eyes of Anbasah now turned towards the North, where
lay the tempting prize of France, coveted by every emir since the
time of Musa. The prestige of the Arabs had been materially impaired
by the serious reverse they had sustained before Toulouse. The first
encounter with the fiery warriors of the South whom fear had pictured
as incarnate demons, and whose prowess was said to be invincible,
had divested the foes of Christianity of many of the terrors which
exaggerated rumor had imparted to them. Of the numerous fortified
places in Septimania which had once seemed to be pledges of a
permanent Mohammedan settlement, the city of Narbonne alone remained.
Its massive walls had easily resisted the ill-directed efforts of a
barbarian enemy, unprovided with military engines, and unaccustomed to
the protracted and monotonous service implied by a siege, while its
vicinity to the sea rendered a reduction by blockade impracticable.
Thus, protected by the natural advantages of its location and by
the courage of its garrison, Narbonne presented the anomaly of an
isolated stronghold in the midst of the enemy’s country. Traversing
the mountainous passes without difficulty the Emir took Carcassonne, a
city which had hitherto enjoyed immunity from capture; and by this bold
stroke so intimidated the inhabitants, that the whole of Septimania at
once, and without further resistance, returned to its allegiance to
the Khalif. No retribution was exacted for past disloyalty, as Anbasah
was too politic not to appreciate the value of clemency in a province
held by such a precarious tenure; the people were left as before to
the untrammelled exercise of their worship; but the unpaid tribute was
rigorously collected, and a large number of hostages, chosen from the
noblest families of the Goths, were sent to Spain.
The Moslem army, proceeding along the coast as far as the Rhone,
turned towards the interior, and ascended the valley of the river,
ravaging its settlements with fire and sword. Advancing to Lyons,
it took that city, and thence directing its course into Burgundy, it
stormed and pillaged the town of Autun. Hitherto the invaders had
encountered no organized opposition, but a hastily collected militia
now began to harass their march, encumbered as they were with a
prodigious booty; and, in a skirmish in which the peasantry displayed
an unusual amount of daring, Anbasah, having rashly exposed himself,
was mortally wounded. The dying Emir bequeathed his authority to
Odrah-Ibn-Abdallah, an appointment distasteful to the members of
the Divan; and, in accordance with their demands, the Viceroy of
Africa designated Yahya-Ibn-Salmah as the successor of Anbasah. The
austere and inflexible spirit of this commander, his keen sense of
justice, and his determination to enforce the strictest discipline
among the soldiery, made him everywhere unpopular. The pliant Viceroy
of Africa was once more appealed to, and such was his subserviency
to the clamors of the discontented chieftains that not only was
Yahya-Ibn-Salmah removed, but within a few months his two successors,
Othman-Ibn-Abu-Nesa and Hodheyfa-Ibn-al-Ahwass, were appointed and
deposed. Finally the Khalif himself sent to Al-Haytham-Ibn-Obeyd the
royal commission as his representative. This official was a Syrian
by birth, and inherited all the bitter prejudices of his faction
which had been fostered by the pride and insolence of the triumphant
Ommeyades. Merciless by nature, fierce and rapacious, Al-Haytham spared
neither Moslem nor Christian. Especially was his animosity directed
towards the descendants of the Companions of Mohammed, and their
proselytes and adherents, the Berbers. The complaints now lodged with
the Viceroy of Africa were unheeded, as the offensive governor had
received his appointment directly from the hands of the Commander of
the Faithful. In their extremity, the victims of Al-Haytham preferred
charges before the Divan of Damascus; and the Khalif Hischem, convinced
that the Emir was exceeding his authority, appointed one of the most
distinguished personages of his court, Mohammed-Ibn-Abdallah, as
special envoy to investigate the administration of Al-Haytham, and to
depose and punish him if, in his judgment, the well-being of Islam
and the interests of good government demanded it. Arriving incognito
at Cordova, the plenipotentiary of the Khalif, without difficulty or
delay, obtained the necessary evidence of the guilt of the unworthy
official. Then, exhibiting his commission, he publicly stripped the
latter of the insignia of his rank, and, having shaved his head,
had him paraded through the city upon an ass, amidst the jeers and
insults of the people he had robbed and persecuted. All his property
was confiscated, and Mohammed made amends as far as possible by
bestowing upon the surviving victims of the disgraced Emir the immense
treasures he had amassed during a reign of indiscriminate extortion.
Then placing Al-Haytham in irons he sent him under guard to Africa.
Two months sufficed to redress the grievances which had threatened a
revolution--to recompense the plundered, to liberate the imprisoned, to
console the tortured, to expel from their places the cruel subordinates
of the oppressor; and, having elicited the approbation and received
the blessings of all classes, including the hereditary enemies of his
tribe, Mohammed departed for Syria, after conferring the viceregal
authority upon the renowned captain Abd-al-Rahman, who thus a second
time ascended the throne of the Emirate of the West.
Of noble birth and distinguished reputation, Abd-al-Rahman united
to the eminent qualities of a successful ruler and general all the
insufferable arrogance of the Arab race. Connected by ties of the
closest friendship with one of the sons of the Khalif, Omar-al-Khattah,
he had received from him many particulars regarding the life and habits
of Mohammed, and this intimacy contributed to increase the feeling of
superiority, not unmingled with contempt, with which he regarded the
horde of barbarian proselytes attracted to his banner rather by thirst
for plunder than from religious zeal. His generosity endeared him to
the soldiery, but his inflexible sense of right alienated the powerful
officials of the Divan enriched by years of unmolested peculation.
The knowledge of his Syrian origin, constantly evinced by a marked
partiality for his countrymen, at once aroused the secret hostility of
the crowd of turbulent adventurers who, collected from every district
of Africa and Asia, composed his subjects, and who, destitute of
loyalty, religion, principle, or gratitude, regarded an Arab as their
natural enemy, an heterogeneous assemblage wherein the Berber element,
dominated by the rankling prejudices of the Yemenites, their spiritual
guides, greatly preponderated.
Visiting, in turn, the different provinces subject to his rule,
Abd-al-Rahman confirmed the good dispositions of his predecessor, the
plenipotentiary Mohammed-Ibn-Abdallah, and corrected such abuses as had
escaped the attention of the latter. In some instances, the injustice
of the walis had wantonly deprived the Christians of their houses of
worship, in defiance of the agreement permitting them to celebrate
their rites without molestation; in others, their rapacity had connived
at the erection of new churches, prohibited by the provisions of former
treaties, and in absolute contravention of Mohammedan law. This evil
of late years had become so general that scarcely a community in the
Peninsula was exempt from it. Through the care and firmness of the Emir
the confiscated churches were restored to their congregations; the
new edifices were razed to the ground; the bribes which had purchased
the indulgence of the walis were surrendered to the public treasury;
and the corrupt officials paid the penalty of their malfeasance with
scourging and imprisonment.
His reforms completed, and secure in the apparent submission and
attachment of his subjects, Abd-al-Rahman now turned his attention
to the prosecution of a design which, in spite of fearful reverses
in the past and of unknown dangers impending in the future, had long
been the cherished object of his ambition--the conquest of France. As
the representative of the Khalif, and consequently vested with both
spiritual and temporal power, he had caused to be proclaimed from the
pulpit of every mosque visited by him in his progress, the obligation
of all faithful Moslems to avenge the deaths of the martyrs fallen
in former invasions, and to add to the empire of Islam the rich and
productive territory of Europe.
Fully aware of the vast difficulties which would necessarily attend
such an undertaking, and enlightened by his former experience,
Abd-al-Rahman resolved to provide, as far as possible, against any
contingency that might arise from too hasty preparation, or an
inferiority in numbers, sent messengers to almost every country
acknowledging the authority of the Khalif, to proclaim the Djihad, or
Holy War, and to solicit the pecuniary aid of all devout and liberal
believers. The call was promptly answered. The riches of the East and
West poured in a constant stream into the treasury of Cordova. Wealthy
merchants sent their gold; female devotees their jewels; even the
beggar was anxious to contribute his pittance for the advancement of
the Faith and the confusion of the infidel. From neighboring lands, and
from the remotest confines of the Mohammedan world alike, from Syria,
Egypt, Arabia, Palestine, Al-Maghreb, and Persia, military adventurers,
soldiers of fortune, desperate fanatics, half-naked savages from
Mauritania, the proud and ferocious tribesmen of the Desert, astonished
the inhabitants of the cities of Andalusia with their multitudes, their
tumultuous and unintelligible cries, and their fierce enthusiasm. The
entire force of the Hispano-Arab army, disciplined by many a scene
of foreign and internecine conflict, was marshalled for the coming
crusade, which, unlike those expeditions which had preceded it, aimed
not merely at the spoliation of cities and the enslavement of their
inhabitants, but at the permanent occupation and settlement of the
country from the Pyrenees to the frontier of Germany, from the Rhætian
Alps to the ocean.
The several walis had been ordered to assemble with their forces at
a designated rendezvous on the northern border of the Peninsula.
This district, which included the mountain passes and the fortresses
defending them, was then under the command of Othman-Ibn-Abu-Nesa, a
native of Africa, who had, for a few months, enjoyed and abused the
power of the emirate, and whom the generous policy of Abd-al-Rahman
had retained in this important post, bestowed upon the African
chieftain after his deposition. A man of violent passions and without
principle, Othman was, however, not deficient in those talents which
confer distinction upon soldiers of fortune. Of obscure birth and
low associations, he had, by sheer force of character and daring,
won the confidence of the Viceroy of Africa, who had conferred upon
him the government of Spain; a position from which he was barred by
the unwritten law of the Conquest, which discouraged the aspirations
of individuals of his nationality. Deeply chagrined that he had
not been reinstated in the office whose delights he had scarcely
tasted, and devoured by envy, whose bitterness was increased by the
antipathies of a party of which he was the acknowledged head, Othman
determined to revenge his fancied wrongs, and to secure for himself
the advantages of independent sovereignty. His influence extended even
to the Ebro, to the north and east of which stream the Berbers, who
were devoted to him, had established themselves in great numbers. At
that time the condition of the redoubtable Eudes, Duke of Aquitaine,
had become desperate. He had long waged a doubtful war with the
Franks, whose superior strength rendered his ultimate subjection
certain. Upon the south, he was menaced by the encroachments of the
marauding Arabs, whose expeditions kept his dominions in perpetual
turmoil. Thus placed between two fires, he readily hearkened to the
overtures of Othman, who proposed an alliance to be cemented by the
marriage of the wali with the daughter of the Gothic noble. A treaty
was made and ratified; the damsel--who was not compelled to renounce
her faith--was delivered to her father’s new ally; and the latter
returned to his government, resolving to baffle by diplomacy the design
of his master, and, if that were found impossible, confident that
the strength of his mountain defences was sufficient to defy all the
power of the emirate. To the orders of Abd-al-Rahman to attend him
with his troops he returned evasive replies, pleading the engagement
he had entered into, and his obligation to observe it. His repeated
commands being ignored, and the patience of the army to advance growing
uncontrollable, Abd-al-Rahman secretly despatched a squadron of light
horsemen, under Gedhi-Ibn-Zeyan, a Syrian officer, with directions to
bring in the refractory wali dead or alive. Pressing forward with the
utmost diligence, the troopers came suddenly upon Othman, at Castrum
Liviæ, before he was even aware of the intentions of the Emir. He had
barely time to take refuge with a few attendants and his bride in
the neighboring mountains, before his enemies entered the town and,
without halting, spurred on through the rugged defiles in hot pursuit.
Overtaken near a brook where the party had stopped from fatigue, the
rebel escort was killed or put to flight; the Gothic princess was
taken; and Othman paid the forfeit of his treason with his life. The
enterprising Gedhi cast at the feet of Abd-al-Rahman the head of the
traitor as the proof of his success; and the captive, whose wondrous
beauty charmed the eyes of all who saw her, was sent to grace the royal
harem at Damascus.
And now, the gateways of the Pyrenees being open, the mighty host of
Moslems poured through, like an inundation, upon the sunny fields of
France. No reliable basis is available by which we can even approach to
an accurate estimate of its numbers. Considering the publicity given
to the crusade, the different sources whence the foreign recruits
were drawn, the regular army of the Emir, and the bodies of cavalry
furnished by the Viceroys of Africa and Egypt, it would seem that the
invading army must have amounted to at least a hundred thousand men.
Assembled without order, and wholly intolerant of discipline, the
mutual jealousy and haughty independence of its unruly elements greatly
impaired its efficiency. The members of each tribe mustered around
their chieftain, who enjoyed but a precarious authority; while the
obedience which all professed to the representative of the majesty of
the Khalif was observed only so long as his commands did not clash with
their wishes or run counter to the indulgence of their passions and
inherited prejudices.
Meanwhile, the rumor of the approaching peril, exaggerated by
distance, had spread consternation through every Christian community.
It recalled the disastrous times of barbarian conquest, when the
ferocious hordes of Goths and Huns swept with ruin and death the
fairest provinces of the Roman Empire. Throughout the Orient, in the
lands which acknowledged the supremacy of the Successor of Mohammed,
the pious Moslem awaited, with confidence not unmingled with a feeling
of exultation, tidings of the anticipated triumph of his brethren.
The eyes of the entire world were turned in expectancy to the spot
where must speedily be tested the respective prowess of the North and
South; to the struggle which would forever determine the future of
Europe, and decide without appeal the fate of Christianity. Onward,
resistlessly, pitilessly, rolled the devastating flood of invasion.
The Duke of Aquitaine had bravely met his enemies on the very slopes
of the mountain barrier, but all his efforts were powerless to stay
their progress. Cities were reduced to ashes and their inhabitants
driven into slavery. The pastures were swept clean of their flocks; the
blooming hill-sides and fertile valleys of the Garonne were transformed
into scenes of desolation. Bordeaux, the populous and wealthy emporium
of Aquitaine, paid for a short and ineffectual resistance with the
plunder of its treasures, the massacre of its citizens, and its total
destruction by fire. The Moorish army, encumbered with thousands of
captives and the booty of an entire province, crossed the Garonne
with difficulty, and resumed its slow and straggling march towards
the interior. Upon the banks of the Dordogne Eudes had marshalled
his followers to contest its passage. A fierce battle ensued; the
Christians, overwhelmed by numbers, were surrounded and cut to
pieces; and the carnage was so horrible as to excite the pity of the
rude historians of an age prolific in violence and bloodshed. The
conquest of Aquitaine achieved, the Emir moved on to Poitiers, and
after ravaging the suburbs of that city, where stood the famous
Church of St. Hilary, which was utterly destroyed, planted the white
standard of the Ommeyades before its walls. That country, whose
hostile factions were subsequently reconciled and consolidated by the
genius of Charlemagne, and which is known to us as France, was, during
the seventh century, in a state of frightful anarchy. In the South,
the important province of Septimania had formerly acknowledged the
supremacy of the Visigoths, and after the overthrow of their empire had
enjoyed a nominal independence. Aquitaine was subject to its dukes, who
maintained an unequal contest with the growing powers of the North and
the insatiable ambition of the Saracens. Towards the East, the petty
lord of Austrasia was involved in perpetual intrigues and hostilities
with his turbulent neighbors, the princes of Neustria and Burgundy. In
the year 638, with the death of the renowned Dagobert, whose dominions
extended to the Danube, disappeared the last vestige of independence
and authority possessed by the monarchs of the Merovingian dynasty.
Henceforth the regal power was vested in, and practically exercised
by, the bold and able mayors of the palace, the prime ministers of
the _rois fainéants_, who, through indifference or compulsion,
were apparently contented with the titles and glittering baubles of
royalty. The superior talents of the priest were industriously employed
in enriching his church or his abbey, and the zeal and fears of the
devout co-operating with the avarice of the clergy, the sacred edifices
became depositories of treasures which dazzled the eyes of the greedy
freebooters of Abd-al-Rahman with their magnificence and value. No
sovereign in Europe could boast of such wealth as had been accumulated
through the lavish generosity of pilgrims and penitents by the shrines
of St. Hilary of Poitiers and St. Martin of Tours. The ecclesiastics
habitually represented themselves as the treasurers of heaven, the
chosen intermediaries with the saints; and the most costly gift was
scarcely considered an equivalent for a hasty blessing or a relic of
more than doubtful authenticity, graciously bestowed upon the humble
and delighted contributor to clerical rapacity and monkish imposture.
The manly vigor inherited from a barbarian ancestry, developed and
strengthened by military exercises, had formed of the Franks a nation
of heroes. Their gigantic forms, encased in mail, enabled them to
resist assaults which must have overwhelmed mortals of less ponderous
build. A phlegmatic temperament, joined to a devotion to their lords
which never questioned the justice of their commands, imparted to them
steadiness and inflexible constancy in the field. Their naturally
ferocious aspect was increased by grotesque helmets of towering height,
and by the skins of wild beasts which draped their massive shoulders,
while their weapons were of a size and weight that the demigods of
old alone might wield. Such were the warriors to whose valor were now
committed the destinies of the Christian world. The throne of the
Franks was then occupied by Thierry IV., one of a series of royal
phantoms, who had been exalted to this nominal dignity by a certain
mayor of the palace named Charles, the natural son of Pepin d’Heristal,
Duke of Austrasia. It was the policy of these officials, necessarily
men of talent, whose abilities had raised them to prominence, and
who controlled the empire of the state, to bestow the crown upon
princely youths purposely familiarized with vice, that every noble
aspiration might be stifled and every patriotic impulse repressed in
the indulgence of the most wanton and effeminate luxury. The profligate
habits of these sovereigns, which shortened their reigns, account for
their number and rapid succession in the annals of France.
The chroniclers of the eighth and ninth centuries, garrulous upon
the martyrdom of saints and the performance of miracles, have
scarcely mentioned the achievements of the most remarkable personage
of his time. Their well-known enmity to his name, associated with
the appropriation of church property, although employed for the
preservation of Christendom, has had, no doubt, much to do with this
contemptuous silence. Pepin, using the privilege sanctioned by the
depraved manners of the age, lived in concubinage with Alpäide, the
mother of Charles, whose social position was yet so little inferior
to that of a matrimonial alliance that she is often spoken of as a
second wife. An austere prelate, Lambert by name, who occupied the See
of Maestricht, with a boldness and zeal unusual in the complaisant
churchmen of the eighth century, saw fit to publicly rebuke Pepin
for this unlawful connection, and, with studied insult, rejected the
hospitality which the kindness of the Mayor of the Palace had tendered
him. Offended by this exhibition of ill-breeding and independence,
the brother of the lady procured the murder of the bishop, who was
forthwith canonized, and is still prominent among the most efficient
intercessors of the Roman Catholic calendar. The murderers, careless
alike of the anathemas of the Church and of the process of the law,
remained unpunished; while the populace of Liege, where the bishop
was a favorite, erected a chapel to the memory of the fearless
ecclesiastic. The whole occurrence affords a curious and striking
commentary on the immorality, lawlessness, and peculiar domestic habits
of the Middle Ages in France.
Tradition has ascribed to Charles the assassination of his brother
Grimwald, with whom he was to have shared his paternal inheritance;
and the absence of any other known motive, the avowed hostility of his
father, who imprisoned him, as well as the significant silence of the
historians--evidently trembling under the stern rule of the Mayor of
the Palace--give considerable probability to this hypothesis. Although
disinherited, the attachment of the people was such that he was,
immediately after the death of Pepin, rescued from a dungeon and raised
to the dukedom. Succeeding events justified the wisdom of this measure.
The address of Charles allayed the civil dissensions of the Franks; his
valor and military genius awed and restrained the restless barbarians
of Germany. Although unquestionably the preserver of Christianity, he
is more than suspected of having been an idolater, his title, Martel,
having been traced by antiquaries to the hammer of Thor, the emblem
of the war-god of Scandinavia. He had no reverence for the Church,
no belief in its doctrines, no consideration for its possessions, no
regard for its ministers. He seized reliquaries and sacred vessels
destined for communion with God, and coined them into money to pay the
expenses of his campaigns. He despoiled the clergy of their lands and
partitioned them among his followers. The most eminent of his captains
he invested with the offices of bishops, after expelling the rightful
incumbents in order to the better retain control of their confiscated
estates. This sacrilegious policy, while it exasperated the priesthood,
endeared him to his soldiers who were the recipients of his bounty;
but the wrath of the ecclesiastical order was not appeased even by his
inestimable services to its cause. Anathematized by popes and councils,
legends inspired by monkish credulity and hatred have solemnly asserted
that his soul had been repeatedly seen by holy men surrounded by demons
in the depths of hell.
Of the personal characteristics, habits, and domestic life of Charles
Martel we know absolutely nothing. Equally silent is history as to
the regulations of his capital, the constitution of his court, the
rules of his military tactics, the principles of his government, the
names of his councillors. The bitterness of ecclesiastical prejudice
while it has cursed his memory has not been able to tarnish his renown.
Historical justice has given him the full measure of credit due to his
exploits, whose importance was not appreciated by his contemporaries,
and has accorded him a high rank among the great military commanders
of the world. Accustomed to arms from childhood, Charles had passed
the greater portion of his life in camps. He had conquered Neustria,
intimidated Burgundy, and had, in many successful expeditions against
the formidable barbarians of the Rhine, left bloody evidences of
his prowess as far as the banks of the Elbe and the Danube. He had
laid claim to the suzerainty of Aquitaine in the name of the royal
figure-head under whose authority he prosecuted his conquests; and
Eudes had hitherto regarded his demonstrations with even greater fear
and aversion than the periodical forays of the Saracens. Now, however,
the crestfallen Duke of Aquitaine sought the presence of his ancient
foe, did homage to him, and implored his aid. The practised eye and
keen intellect of Charles discerned at once the serious nature of the
impending danger, and with characteristic promptitude sought to avert
it. His soldiers, living only in camps and always under arms, were
ready to march at a moment’s notice. Soon a great army was assembled,
and, amidst the deafening shouts of the soldiery, the general of the
Franks, confident of the superiority of his followers in endurance
and discipline, advanced to meet the enemy. The latter, discouraged
by the bold front presented by the inhabitants of Poitiers, who had
been nerved to desperation by the memorable example of Bordeaux, had,
in the mean time, raised the siege, and were marching towards Tours,
attracted by the fame of the vast wealth of the Church and Abbey of
St. Martin. Upon an immense plain between the two cities the rival
hosts confronted each other. This same region, the centre of France,
still cherished the remembrance of a former contest in which, centuries
before, the Goths and Burgundians under command of Ætius had avenged
the wrongs of Europe upon the innumerable hordes of Attila. Of good
augury and a harbinger of success was this former victory regarded
by the stalwart warriors of the North, now summoned a second time
to check the progress of the barbarian flood of the Orient. Widely
different in race, in language, in personal appearance, in religion, in
military evolutions and in arms, each secretly dreading the result of
the inevitable conflict and each unwilling to retire, for seven days
the two armies remained without engaging, but constantly drawn up in
battle array. Finally, unable to longer restrain the impetuosity of
the Arabs, Abd-al-Rahman gave orders for the attack. With loud cries
the light squadrons of Moorish cavalry, followed pell-mell by the vast
mob of foot soldiers, hurled themselves upon the solid, steel-clad
files of the Franks. But the latter stood firm--like a “wall of ice,”
in the quaint language of the ancient chronicler--the darts and arrows
of the Saracens struck harmlessly upon helmet and cuirass, while the
heavy swords and maces of the men-at-arms of Charles made frightful
havoc among the half-naked bodies of their assailants. Night put an end
to the battle, and the Franks, for the moment relieved from an ordeal
which they had sustained with a courage worthy of their reputation,
invoking the aid of their saints, yet not without misgivings for the
morrow, slept upon their arms. At dawn the conflict was renewed with
equal ardor and varying success until the afternoon, when a division
of cavalry under the Duke of Aquitaine succeeded in turning the flank
of the enemy, and began to pillage his camp. As the tidings of this
misfortune spread through the ranks of the Moslems, large numbers
deserted their standards and turned back to recover their booty, far
more valuable in their estimation than even their own safety or the
triumph of their cause. Great confusion resulted; the retreat became
general; the Franks redoubled their efforts; and Abd-al-Rahman,
endeavoring to rally his disheartened followers, fell pierced with
a hundred wounds. That night, aided by the darkness, the Saracens
silently withdrew, leaving their tents and heavy baggage behind.
Charles, fearful of ambuscades, and having acquired great respect for
the prowess of his adversaries, whose overwhelming numbers, enabling
them to attack him in both front and rear, had seriously thinned his
ranks, declined the pursuit, and with the spoils abandoned by the
Saracens returned to his capital.
The Arabs have left us no account of the losses sustained in this
battle. The mendacious monks, however, to whom by reason of their
knowledge of letters was necessarily entrusted the task of recording
the events of the time, have computed the loss of the invaders at
three hundred and seventy-five thousand, probably thrice the number
of all the combatants engaged; while that of the Franks is regarded
as too insignificant to be mentioned. The very fact that Charles was
disinclined to take advantage of the condition of his enemies loaded
with plunder, deprived of their commander, and dejected by defeat,
shows of itself that his army must have greatly suffered. The principal
accounts that we possess of this battle, whose transcendent importance
is recognized by every student of history, bear unmistakable evidence
of the ecclesiastical partiality under whose influence they were
composed. Monkish writers have exhausted their prolific imagination in
recounting the miraculous intervention of the saints and the prowess
of the champions of the Cross, which insured the preservation of
Christianity. The Arabs, however, usually accurate and minute even
in the relation of their misfortunes, have not paid the attention to
this great event which its effect upon their fortunes would seem to
warrant. Many ignore it altogether. Others pass it by with a few words.
Some refer to it, not as a stubbornly contested engagement, but as a
rout provoked by the disorders of an unwieldy multitude, inflamed with
fanaticism, divided by faction, impatient of discipline. From such
meagre and discordant materials must be constructed the narrative of
one of the most momentous occurrences in the history of the world.
An account of the crushing defeat of Poitiers having been communicated
to the Viceroy of Africa, he appointed Abd-al-Melik-Ibn-Kattan, an
officer of the African army, Emir of Spain, and, presenting him with
his commission, urgently exhorted him to avenge the reverse which had
befallen the Moslem arms. The martial spirit of this commander, in
whom the lapse of fourscore and ten years had not sensibly impaired
the vigor of his mind or the activity of his body, was roused to
enthusiasm by the prospect of an encounter with the idolaters of the
North. Detained for a time in Cordova by the disturbances resulting
from the disorganization of all branches of the government, he
attempted, at the head of the remains of the defeated army and a
reinforcement which had accompanied him from Africa, to thread the
dangerous passes of the Pyrenees. But the time was ill-chosen; the
rainy season was at hand; and the Saracens, hemmed in by impassable
torrents, fell an easy prey to the missiles of an enterprising enemy.
The march became a series of harassing skirmishes; and it was with
the greatest difficulty that the Emir was enabled to extricate the
remainder of his troops from the snare into which his want of caution
had conducted them. Disgusted with the miscarriage of the expedition
from whose results so much had been expected, Obeydallah, Viceroy of
Africa, promptly deposed Abd-al-Melik, and nominated his own brother,
Okbah-Ibn-al-Hejaj, to the vacant position. A martinet in severity and
routine, Okbah enjoyed also a well-founded reputation for justice and
integrity. He soon became the terror of the corrupt and tyrannical
officials who infested the administration. He removed such as had been
prominent for cruelty, fraud, or incompetency. To all who were guilty
of peculation, or of even indirectly reflecting upon the honor and
dignity of the Khalif, he was inexorable. With a view to insuring the
safety of the highways, he formed a mounted police, the Kaschefs, in
which may be traced the germ of the Hermandad of the fifteenth century
and the modern Gendarmes and Civil Guards of France and Spain. From
this institution, extended to the frontiers of Moslem territory as far
as the Rhone, was derived the military organization of the Ribat--the
prototype of the knightly orders of Calatrava, Alcantara, and Santiago,
which played so conspicuous a part in the Reconquest. Okbah established
a court in every village, so that all honest citizens might enjoy the
protection of the law. His fostering care also provided each community
with a school sustained by a special tax levied for that purpose.
Devout to an almost fanatical degree, he erected a mosque whenever the
necessities of the people seemed to demand it, and, thoroughly alive to
the advantages of a religious education, he attached to every place of
worship a minister who might instruct the ignorant in the doctrines of
the Koran and the duties of a faithful Mussulman. He repressed with
an iron hand the ferocious spirit of the vagrant tribes of Berbers,
whose kinsmen in Africa had, in many battles, formerly experienced
the effects of his valor and discipline. By equalizing the taxation
borne by different communities, he secured the gratitude of districts
which had hitherto been oppressed by grievous impositions, rendered
still more intolerable by the rapacity of unprincipled governors.
No period in the history of the emirate was distinguished by such
important and radical reforms as that included in the administration of
Okbah-Ibn-al-Hejaj.
The Berbers, having engaged in one of their periodical revolts in
Africa, Obeydallah, unable to make headway against them, sent a
despatch requiring the immediate attendance of Okbah. The latter,
at the head of a body of cavalry, crossed the strait, and, after a
decisive battle, put the rebels to flight. His services were found so
indispensable by the Viceroy that he kept him near his person in the
capacity of councillor for four years, while he still enjoyed the title
and emoluments of governor of Spain. In the meantime, the greatest
disorders prevailed in the Peninsula. The salutary reforms which
had employed the leisure and exercised the abilities of the prudent
Viceroy were swept away; the old order of things was renewed; and the
provinces of the emirate were disgraced by the revival of feuds, by the
oppression of the weak, by the neglect of agriculture, by unchecked
indulgence in peculation, and by the universal prevalence of anarchy
and bloodshed.
The dread of Charles Martel and the ruthless barbarians under his
command was wide-spread throughout the provinces of Southern France.
Their excesses appeared the more horrible when contrasted with the
tolerant and equitable rule of the Saracens who garrisoned the towns of
Septimania. The Provençal, whose voluptuous habits led him to avoid the
hardships of the camp, and whose religious ideas, little infected with
bigotry, saw nothing repulsive in the law of Islam, determined to seek
the aid of his swarthy neighbors of the South. As Charles had already
ravaged the estates of Maurontius, Duke of Marseilles, only desisting
when recalled by a revolt of the Saxons, that powerful noble, whose
authority extended over the greater part of Provence, in anticipation
of his return, entered into negotiations with Yusuf-Ibn-Abd-al-Rahman,
wali of Narbonne; a treaty was concluded, by the terms of which the
Arabs were invited to assume the suzerainty of Provence, many towns
were ceded to them, and the counts rendered homage to the Moslem
governor, who, in order to discharge his portion of the obligation
and afford protection to his new subjects, assembled his forces upon
the line of the northern frontier. It was at this time that Okbah was
summoned to quell the rebellion of the Berbers just as he was upon
the point of advancing to secure, by a powerful reinforcement, this
valuable addition to his dominions.
Early in the year 737, Charles, having intimidated his enemies and
secured a temporary peace, made preparations for an active campaign
in Provence. Driving the Arabs out of Lyons, he advanced to the city
of Avignon, whose natural position was recognized by both Franks and
Saracens not only as a place of extraordinary strength but as the key
of the valley of the Rhone. Experience and contact with their more
civilized neighbors, the Italians, had instructed the Franks in the use
of military engines; and, notwithstanding the desperate resistance of
the Arab garrison, ably seconded by the inhabitants, Avignon was taken
by storm. The population was butchered without mercy, and Charles,
having completely glutted his vengeance by burning the city, left it a
heap of smoking ruins.
Having been delayed by the stubborn opposition of Avignon, and urged
by the clamors of his followers who thirsted for the rich spoils of
Septimania, the Frankish general, leaving the fortified town of Arles
in his rear, marched directly upon Narbonne. Thoroughly appreciating
the political and military importance of this stronghold, the capital
of their possessions in France, the Arabs had spared neither labor
nor expense to render it impregnable. The city was invested and the
siege pressed with vigor, but the fortifications defied the efforts
of the besiegers and little progress was made towards its reduction.
An expedition sent to reinforce it, making the approach by sea and
attempting to ascend the river Aude, was foiled by the vigilance
of Charles; the boats were stopped by palisades planted in the bed
of the stream; the Saracens, harassed by the enemy’s archers, were
despatched with arrows or drowned in the swamps; and, of a considerable
force, a small detachment alone succeeded in cutting its way through
the lines of the besiegers and entering the city. The temper of the
Franks was not proof, however, against the undaunted resolution of
the Arab garrison. Unable to restrain the growing impatience of
his undisciplined levies, Charles reluctantly abandoned the siege
and endeavored to indemnify himself for his disappointment by the
infliction of all the unspeakable atrocities of barbarian warfare
upon the territory accessible to his arms. Over the beautiful plains
of Provence and Languedoc, adorned with structures which recalled the
palmiest days of Athenian and Roman genius, and whose population was
the most polished of Western Europe, swept the fierce cavalry of the
Alps and the Rhine. Agde, Maguelonne, and Béziers were sacked. The
city of Nîmes, whose marvellous relics of antiquity are still the
delight of the student and the antiquary, provoked the indignation
of the invader by these marks of her intellectual superiority and
former greatness. Her walls were razed; her churches plundered; her
most eminent citizens carried away as hostages; her most splendid
architectural monuments delivered to the flames. The massive arches of
the Roman amphitheatre defied, however, the puny efforts of the enraged
barbarian; but their blackened stones still exhibit the traces of fire,
an enduring seal of the impotent malice of Charles Martel impressed in
the middle of the eighth century.
In this memorable invasion the Arab colonists do not seem to have
suffered so much as the indigenous population, which had long before
incurred the enmity of the Franks. The ecclesiastical order met with
scant courtesy at the hands of the idolaters. Despising the terrors of
anathema and excommunication, Charles did not hesitate to appropriate
the wealth of the Church wherever he could find it. Having inflicted
all the damage possible upon the subjects and allies of the Khalif in
Provence, the Franks, loaded with booty and driving before them a vast
multitude of captives chained together in couples, returned in triumph
to their homes.
This occupation of the Franks proved to be but temporary. The garrisons
left in the towns whose walls were intact were insufficient to overawe
the populace exasperated by the outrages it had just sustained. The
Duke of Marseilles, seconded by the wali of Arles, easily regained
control of the country around Avignon. But the return of Charles during
the following year with his ally Liutprand, King of the Lombards, and
a large army, not only recovered the lost territory but took Arles,
hitherto exempt from capture, and drove the Saracens beyond the Rhone,
which river for the future became their eastern boundary, a limit they
were destined never again to pass.
The absence of Okbah encouraged the spirit of rebellion, ever rife in
the Peninsula. He had hardly returned before the arts of intrigue and
the discontent of the populace raised up a formidable rival to his
authority. Abd-al-Melik-Ibn-Kattan, who had formerly been Emir, now
usurped that office. In the civil war which followed, the fortunes
of Abd-al-Melik soon received a powerful impulse by the death of his
competitor at Carcassonne.
We now turn to the coast of Africa, a region which from first to
last has exerted an extraordinary and always sinister influence over
the destinies of the Mohammedan empire in Europe. The intractable
character of the Berbers, and their aversion to the restraints of law
and the habits of civilized life, had defied the efforts of the ablest
soldiers and negotiators to control them. In consequence, the dominant
Arab element was not disposed to conciliate savages who recognized no
authority but that of force, and imposed upon them the most oppressive
exactions, prompted partly by avarice and partly by tribal hatred.
The impetus of Berber insurrection was communicated by contact and
sympathy to the settlements of their kindred in Spain, where the spirit
of insubordination under a less severe government made its outbreaks
more secure, and, at the same time, more formidable. Obeydallah, the
present Viceroy, was influenced by these feelings of scorn even more
than a majority of his countrymen. A true Arab, educated in the best
schools of Syria, of energetic character and bigoted impulses, he
regarded the untamable tribesmen of Africa as below the rank of slaves.
While collector of the revenue in Egypt he had provoked a rebellion
of the Copts on account of an arbitrary increase of taxes, levied
solely because the tributaries were infidels. Under his rule the lot of
the Berbers became harder than ever. Their flocks, which constituted
their principal wealth, were wantonly slaughtered to provide wool for
the couches of the luxurious nobility of Damascus. Their women were
seized, to be exposed in the slave-markets of Cairo and Antioch. Their
tributes were doubled at the caprice of the governor, in whose eyes the
life of a misbeliever was of no more consideration than that of a wild
beast, for, being enjoyed under protest, it could be forfeited at the
will of his superior. Day by day the grievances of the Berbers became
more unendurable, and the thirst for liberty and vengeance kept pace
with the ever-increasing abuses which had provoked it. At first the
tribes, while professedly Mussulman, in reality remained idolaters,
fetich-worshippers, the pliant tools of conjurers and charlatans. Over
the whole nation a priesthood--by snake-charming, by the interpretation
of omens, by spurious miracles, by the arts of sorcery--had acquired
unbounded influence; and the names of these impostors, canonized
after death, were believed to have more power to avert misfortune
than the invocation of the Almighty. In time, however, the zealous
labors of exiled Medinese and Persian non-conformists had supplanted
the grosser forms of this superstition by a religion whose fervor was
hardly equalled by that displayed by the most fanatical Companion
of Mohammed. The scoffing and polished Arabs of Syria, of whom the
Viceroy was a prominent example, Pagan by birth and infidel in belief
and practice, were sedulously represented as the enemies of Heaven and
the hereditary revilers of the Prophet, whom it was a duty to destroy.
These revolutionary sentiments, received in Africa with applause, were
diffused through Spain by the tide of immigration, in which country,
as elsewhere, they were destined soon to produce the most important
political results. The Berbers, wrought up to a pitch of ungovernable
fury, now only awaited a suitable opportunity to inaugurate the most
formidable revolt which had ever menaced the Mohammedan government
of Africa. In the year 740 an increased contribution was demanded of
the inhabitants of Tangier, whose relations with the savages of the
neighboring mountains had prevented the conversion of the former to
Islam. A division of the army was absent in Sicily, and the Berbers,
perceiving their advantage, rose everywhere against their oppressors.
They stormed Tangier, expelled the garrisons of the sea-coast cities,
elected a sovereign, and defeated in rapid succession every force sent
against them. The pride and resentment of the Khalif Hischem at last
impelled him to despatch a great army against his rebellious subjects.
It numbered seventy thousand, and was commanded by a distinguished
Syrian officer, Balj-Ibn-Beshr, who was ordered to put to death without
mercy every rebel who might fall into his hands and to indulge the
troops in all the license of indiscriminate pillage. Marching towards
the west, the Syrian general encountered the Berbers on the plain of
Mulwiyah. The naked bodies and inferior weapons of the insurgents
provoked the contempt of the soldiers of the Khalif, who expected an
easy victory; but the resistless impulse of the barbarians supplied
the want of arms and discipline, and the Syrians were routed with the
loss of two-thirds of their number. Some ten thousand horsemen, under
command of Balj, cut their way through the enemy and took refuge in
Ceuta. The Berbers, aware of the impossibility of reducing that place,
ravaged the neighborhood for miles around, and, having blockaded
the town on all sides, the Syrians, unable to escape or to obtain
provisions, were threatened with a lingering death by famine.
Abd-al-Melik, Emir of Spain, was a native of Medina. Half a century
before he had been prominent in the Arab army at the battle of Harra,
the bloody prelude to the sack of the Holy City and the enslavement and
exile of its citizens. To him, in vain, did the Syrian general apply
for vessels in which to cross the strait. The Arab chieftain, bearing
upon his body many scars inflicted by the spears of Yezid’s troopers
and who had seen his family and his neighbors massacred before his
face, now exulted in the prospect of an unhoped-for revenge; and, for
the complete accomplishment of his purpose, he issued stringent orders
against supplying the unfortunate Syrians with supplies. The sympathy
of Zeyad-Ibn-Amru, a wealthy resident of Cordova, was aroused by the
account of their sufferings, and he imprudently fitted out two vessels
for their relief; which act of insubordination having been communicated
to the Emir, he ordered Zeyad to be imprisoned, and, having put out his
eyes, impaled him, in company with a dog, a mark of ignominy inflicted
only on the worst of criminals.
The news of the decisive victory obtained by the Berbers over the army
of the Khalif was received with pride and rejoicing by all of their
countrymen in Spain. The efforts of the missionaries, aided by the
fiery zeal of their proselytes, had infused into the population of the
North, composed largely of African colonists, a spirit of fanaticism
which threatened to carry everything before it. In a moment the Berbers
of Aragon, Galicia, and Estremadura sprang to arms. Uniting their
forces they elected officers; then, organized in three divisions, they
prepared to dispute the authority of the Emir in the strongholds of
his power. One body marched upon Cordova, another invested Toledo, and
the third directed its course towards Algeziras, with designs upon the
fleet, by whose aid they expected to massacre the Syrians in Ceuta and
to collect a body of colonists sufficient to destroy the haughty Arab
aristocracy of the Peninsula and found an independent kingdom, Berber
in nationality, schismatic and precisian in religion.
And now were again exhibited the singular inconsistencies and
remarkable effects of the fatal antagonism of race. The critical
condition of Abd-al-Melik compelled him to implore the support of his
Syrian foes, whom he hated with far more bitterness than he did his
rebellious subjects, and who were also thoroughly cognizant of his
feelings towards them as well as of the political necessity which
prompted his advances. A treaty was executed, by whose terms the
Syrians were to be transported into Spain and pledged their assistance
to crush the rebellion, and, after this had been accomplished, the
Emir agreed to land them in Africa upon a territory which acknowledged
the jurisdiction of the Khalif. Hostages selected from their principal
officers were delivered by the half-famished refugees, and they
embarked for Andalusia, where the policy of the government and the
sympathy of the people supplied them with food, clothing, and arms, and
their drooping spirits soon revived. These experienced soldiers, united
with the forces of Abd-al-Melik, attacked and routed with ease, one
after another, the three Berber armies. All of the plunder which the
latter had collected fell into their hands, in addition to that secured
by expeditions into the now undefended country of their enemies. His
apprehensions concerning the Berbers having been removed, Abd-al-Melik
now became anxious to relieve his dominions of the presence of allies
whose success rendered them formidable. But the allurements of soil
and climate had made the Syrians reluctant to abandon the beautiful
land of Andaluz,--the region where they had accumulated so much
wealth, the scene where their efforts had been crowned with so much
glory. Disputes arose between their leader and the Emir concerning the
interpretation of the treaty; the Syrian general, conscious of his
power, lost no opportunity to provoke the fiery temper of Abd-al-Melik;
and, at last, taking advantage of a favorable occasion, he expelled
the latter from his capital. Balj, elected to the viceroyalty by his
command, proceeded at once to extend and confirm his newly acquired
authority. The hostages confined near Algeziras were released, and
their accounts of harsh treatment enraged their companions, who
recalled their own sufferings and the inhumanity of Abd-al-Melik during
their blockade in Ceuta. With loud cries they demanded the death of the
Emir. The efforts of their officers to stem the torrent were futile; a
mob dragged the venerable prince from his palace, and, taking him to
the bridge outside the city of Cordova, crucified him between a dog and
a hog, animals whose contact is suggestive of horrible impurity to a
Mussulman and whose very names are epithets of vileness and contempt.
Thus perished ignominiously this stout old soldier, who could boast
of the purest blood of the Koreish; who had witnessed the wonderful
changes of three eventful generations; who had seen service under the
standard of Islam in Arabia, Egypt, Al-Maghreb, France, and Spain;
who had bravely defended the tomb of the Prophet at Medina, and had
confronted with equal resolution the mail-clad squadrons of Charles
upon the banks of the Rhone; who had twice administered in troublous
times the affairs of the Peninsula; and who now, long past that age
when men seek retirement from the cares of public life, still active
and vigorous, was sacrificed, through his own imprudence, to the
irreconcilable hatred of tribal antagonism. An act of such atrocity,
without considering the prominence of the victim, the nationality of
the participants, or the degree of provocation, was, independent of its
moral aspect, highly impolitic and most prejudicial to the interests
of the revolutionists. The Syrians became practically isolated in a
foreign country. The sons of Abd-al-Melik, who held important commands
in the North, assembled a great army. Reinforcements were furnished by
the governor of Narbonne, and the fickle Berbers joined in considerable
numbers the ranks of their former adversaries.
At a little village called Aqua-Portera, not far from Cordova, the
Arabs and Berbers attacked the foreigners, who had enlisted as their
auxiliaries a number of criminals and outlaws. In the battle which
followed the latter were victorious, but lost their general Balj, who
fell in a single combat with the governor of Narbonne. The Syrians,
whose choice was immediately confirmed by the Khalif, elected as his
successor, Thalaba-Ibn-Salamah, a monster whose name was afterwards
stained with acts of incredible infamy. His inhumanity was proverbial.
His troops gave no quarter. The wives and children of his opponents,
whose liberty even the most violent of his party had respected, were
enslaved. Other victims he had previously exposed at auction before
the gates of Cordova, under circumstances of the grossest cruelty
and humiliation. The most illustrious of these were nobles of the
party of Medina. By an exquisite refinement of insult he caused them
to be disposed of to the lowest, instead of the highest, bidder, and
even bartered publicly for impure and filthy animals the descendants
of the friends of Mohammed, members of the proudest families of the
aristocracy of Arabia. But the atrocities of Thalaba had already
alienated many of the adherents of his own party as well as terrified
those of the opposite faction, who had no mercy to expect at the hands
of a leader who neither observed the laws of war nor respected the
faith of treaties. Upon the application of these citizens, most of
them men of high rank and influential character, the Viceroy of Africa
sent Abu-al-Khattar to supersede the sanguinary Thalaba. He arrived
just in time to rescue the unhappy Berbers, many of them Moslems, who
were already ranged in order for systematic massacre. His power was
soon felt; and by banishing the leaders of the insurgents; by granting
a general amnesty; by an ample distribution of unsettled territory;
and by conferring upon the truculent strangers a portion of the public
revenues, an unusual degree of peace and security was soon assured to
the entire Peninsula. In accordance with a policy adopted many years
before, the various colonists were assigned to districts which bore
some resemblance, in their general features, to the land of their
nativity, a plan which offered the additional advantage of separating
these turbulent spirits from each other, thus rendering mutual
co-operation difficult, if not impossible, in any enterprise affecting
the safety or permanence of the central power.
The first months of the administration of Abu-al-Khattar were
distinguished by a degree of forbearance and charity unusual amidst
the disorder which now prevailed in every province of the Moslem
empire. But his partisans had wrongs to avenge, and the Emir had not
the moral courage to resist the importunate demands of his kindred. An
unjust judicial decision provoked reproach; insult led to bloodshed;
the fiery Maadites rushed to arms; and once more the Peninsula assumed
its ordinary aspect of political convulsion and civil war. Al-Samil
and Thalaba, two captains of distinction, obtained the supremacy; the
Emir was imprisoned, then rescued, and, after several ineffectual
attempts to regain his authority, put to death. Having overpowered its
adversary, the triumphant Maadite faction gratified its revengeful
impulses to the utmost by plunder, torture, and assassination. At
length the condition of affairs becoming intolerable, and no prospect
existing of relief from the East, where the candidates of rival tribes
contended for the tempting prize of the khalifate, a council of
officers was convoked, and Yusuf-Abd-al-Rahman-al-Fehri was unanimously
chosen governor of Spain.
This commander had, by many years of faithful service in France, by
strict impartiality in his decisions, and by a bravery remarkable among
a people with whom the slightest sign of cowardice was an indelible
disgrace, won the respect and admiration of his contemporaries. His
lineage was high, his person attractive, his manners dignified and
courteous. He had defended Narbonne against the power of Charles
Martel, whose army, flushed with victory and animated by the presence
of the great Mayor of the Palace himself, had been unable to shake his
confidence or disturb his equanimity. But his eminent qualifications
for the position to which he was now called did not depend upon his
former services and his personal merit so much as upon the absence
which had kept him from all the entanglements and intrigues of faction.
Thus it was that the fiercest partisans hailed his election as a
harbinger of peace and concord; a wise stroke of policy that might
reconcile the antagonistic pretensions of the nobles of Damascus and
Medina; curb the lawlessness of the Berbers; and restore the Emirate of
the West to that tranquillity and prosperity it had at long intervals
enjoyed, and of which the memory, like a half-forgotten tradition,
alone remained. This illegal act of the officers was without hesitation
sanctioned by the Khalif Merwan, who prudently overlooked the spirit of
independence implied by its exercise on account of its evident wisdom
and the imperative necessity which had dictated it.
The disorders of the unhappy Peninsula had, however, become incurable
under the present conditions of government. All the skill and
experience of Yusuf were exhausted in fruitless attempts at the
adjustment of territorial disputes and the pacification of feuds which
a generation of internecine conflict had engendered. An insurrection
broke out in Septimania, a province hitherto exempt from similar
disturbances. Ahmed-Ibn-Amru, wali of Seville, whom Yusuf had removed
from the command of the fleet, a chief of the Koreish, whose vast
estates enabled him to surpass the magnificence of the Emir himself,
and an aspirant for supreme power, organized and headed a formidable
conspiracy. His name was associated with the early triumphs of Islam,
for he was the great-grandson of the ensign who had borne the standard
of Mohammed at the battle of Bedr. Prompted by unusual audacity,
which was confirmed by the possession of wealth, ability, and power,
he asserted that he had received the commission of the Abbasides as
Viceroy of Spain. The Asturians, emboldened by the quarrels of their
foes, leaving their mountain fastnesses, began to push their incursions
far to the southward. The entire country was engaged in hostilities.
Every occupation but that of warfare was suspended. The herdsman
was robbed of his flocks. The fertile fields were transformed into
a barren waste. On all sides were the mournful tokens of misery and
want; from palace and hut rose the moan of the famishing or the wail
for the dead. Intercourse between the neighboring cities, alienated
by hostility or fearful of marauders, ceased. The doubtful tenure of
authority, dependent upon the incessant changes of administration,
made it impossible for the Christians to ascertain to whom tribute
was rightfully due. and this confusion of interests often subjected
them to the injustice of double, and even treble, taxation. At no time
in the history of Spain, since the irruption of the Goths, had such
a condition of anarchy and social wretchedness prevailed; when the
inspiration of a few Syrian chieftains brought the existing chaos to an
end, by the introduction of a new ruler and the re-establishment of a
dynasty whose princes, the tyrants of Damascus, had hitherto reflected
little more than odium and derision on the Moslem name.
The history of Spain under the emirs presents a melancholy succession
of tragic events arising from antipathy of race, political ambition,
religious zeal, and private enmity. An extraordinary degree of
instability, misrule, distrust, and avarice characterized their
administration. The revolutions which constantly afflicted the
Khalifate of Damascus exercised no inconsiderable influence over
the viceregal capitals of Kairoan and Cordova. The Ommeyade princes
of Syria lived in constant apprehension of death by violence. The
methods by which they had arisen in many instances contributed to
their overthrow. The assassin of yesterday often became the victim of
to-day. The perpetration of every crime, the indulgence in every vice,
by the Successors of the Prophet, diminished the faith and loyalty of
their subjects and seriously affected the prestige and divine character
believed to attach to their office. The subordinates necessarily shared
the odium and ignominy of their superiors. The Emir of Spain labored
under a twofold disadvantage. He held under the Viceroy of Africa,
while the latter was appointed directly by the Khalif. This division
of authority and responsibility was not conducive to the interests of
good government, social order, or domestic tranquillity. The people of
the Peninsula, subject to the caprices of a double tyranny, could not
be expected to feel much reverence for the supreme potentate of their
government and religion thirteen hundred miles away. With the accession
of each ruler arose fresh pretexts for the exercise of every resource
of extortion. The rapacity of these officials rivalled in the ingenuity
of its devices and the value of its returns the exactions of the Roman
proconsuls. The methods by which the majority of them maintained their
power provoked universal execration. Under such political conditions,
loyalty, union, and commercial prosperity were impossible. The ancient
course of affairs--an order which had existed for three hundred
years--had been rudely interrupted. Even under favorable auspices the
foundation of a government and the reorganization of society would have
been tasks fraught with many perplexities and dangers. The Visigothic
empire had, it is true, been subdued, but its national spirit, its
religion, and its traditions remained. The changes of Moslem governors
were sudden and frequent. The average duration of an emir’s official
life was exactly twenty-seven months. It required the exertion of the
greatest wisdom, of the most enlightened statesmanship, to avert the
calamities which must necessarily result from the collision between a
heterogeneous populace subjected suddenly to the will of a still more
heterogeneous mass of foreigners; to reconcile the interests of adverse
factions; to appease the demands of wild barbarians unaccustomed to
be denied; to decide alike profound questions of policy and frivolous
disputes connected with the various gradations of ecclesiastical
dignity, of hereditary rank, of military distinction, and of social
precedence. The inflexibility of the Arab character, the assumed
superiority of the Arab race, the unquenchable fires of tribal hatred,
the necessity of maintaining the rights accorded under solemn treaties
to the vanquished, enhanced a hundred-fold the difficulties which
confronted the sovereign. As an inevitable consequence a chronic state
of disorder prevailed. The authority of the Khalifs of Damascus was in
fact but nominal, and was never invoked except to countenance revolt
or to assure the obedience of those who faltered in their loyalty to
the emirs, the actual rulers of Spain. But, despite these serious
impediments, the genius of the Arabian people advanced rapidly in the
path of civilization, while the dense and sluggish intellect of the
northern barbarians, who, in their origin, were not less ignorant,
remained stationary. It took Spain, under the Moslems, less than half
a century to reach a point in human progress which was not attained by
Italy under the popes in a thousand years. The capacity of the Arab
mind to absorb, to appropriate, to invent, to develop, to improve,
has no parallel in the annals of any race. The empire of the khalifs
included an even greater diversity of climate and nations than that
of Rome. The ties of universal brotherhood proclaimed by the Koran;
the connections demanded by the requirements of an extended commerce;
the intimate associations encouraged by the pilgrimage to Mecca,
awakened the curiosity and enlarged, in an equal degree, the minds
of the Moslems of Asia, Africa, and Europe. Yet more important than
all was the effect of the almost incessant hostilities waged against
the infidel. By its constantly varying events, its fascinations,
its thrilling excitements, its dangers, its victories, defeats, and
triumphs, war has a remarkable tendency to expand the intellectual
faculties, and thereby to advance the cause of truth and promote the
improvement of every branch of useful knowledge. The advantages derived
from travel, experience, and conquest the Moslems brought with them
into the Spanish Peninsula. Under the emirate, however, these were
constantly counteracted by the ferocious and indomitable character of
the Berbers. The latter did not forget the part they had taken in the
Conquest. It was one of their countrymen who had led the victorious
army. It was the irresistible onset of their cavalry which had pierced
the Gothic lines on the Guadalete. The rapidity of their movements,
the impetuosity of their attacks, had awed and subdued, in a few short
months, the populous states of a mighty empire. Scarcely had they begun
to enjoy the pleasures of victory before the greed of an hereditary
enemy of their race snatched from their hands the well-earned fruits of
their valor. Their commander was imprisoned, insulted, and disgraced.
Their plunder was seized. Those who evinced a desire for a sedentary
life were assigned to the bleak and sterile plains of La Mancha,
Aragon, and Galicia, while the Arabs of Syria and the Hedjaz divided
among themselves the glorious regions of the South, which tradition
had designated as the Elysian Fields of the ancients. The arrogant
disposition of these lords heaped upon their Berber vassals every
outrage which malice could devise or tyranny execute. The accident of
African extraction was sufficient to exclude the most accomplished and
capable soldier from an office of responsibility under the Khalifate of
Damascus. In Spain, as in Al-Maghreb, the fairest virgins of the Berber
camps were torn from the arms of their parents to replenish the harems
of the Orient. Under such circumstances, it is not strange that the
acute sensibilities of a proud and independent people should have been
deeply wounded by the infliction of every fresh indignity, and their
disaffection endanger the stability of the new government and imperil
the institutions of religion itself by fostering the violent spirit of
tribal animosity, that ominous spectre which constantly haunted with
its fearful presence the society of city and hamlet, and stalked grimly
and in menacing silence in the very shadow of the throne.
The moral and political aspect of the Western world coincided in many
particulars with that of Spain during the age of transition which
preceded the establishment of the Khalifate of Cordova. Of all the
states which had composed the vast fabric of the Roman Empire scarcely
one was at peace with its neighbors or exempt from the calamities
incident to religious discord and civil war. The scanty remains of art
and learning which had escaped the fury of the barbarians had taken
refuge in Constantinople, now the intellectual centre of Europe. The
noble productions of the ancients had, however, been cast aside with
contempt for the homilies of the Fathers, and arguments concerning
the miraculous virtues of images, together with daily riots and
chariot-races, engaged the attention and amused the leisure of the weak
and pusillanimous Byzantine, whose character, deformed by abject vices,
had long since forfeited all right to the honored name of Roman. The
turbulent populace of that great city, which virtually dictated the
edicts of its rulers, protected by its impregnable walls, had seen,
with craven indifference, its environs plundered and its sovereignty
defied by the powers of Persian, Goth, and Saracen. The genius and
energy of its founder had been supplanted by the superstitions and
cruelties of a succession of feeble tyrants, whose manifold crimes
were now, for a short interval, redeemed by the martial talents and
political virtues of Leo the Isaurian.
In Italy, the peace of society was disturbed by the iconoclastic heresy
and the disorders which accompanied the foundation of a republic,
commotions destined soon to provoke the interference of the Lombards
and the subsequent impolitic alliance with those perfidious barbarians.
The stern and uncompromising character of Gregory the Great had
established the Church upon a basis so solid that the efforts of all
its enemies have to this day been unable to prevail against it; and
the sagacity of this distinguished pontiff had vindicated the policy
of a system prompted by the inspiration of almost superhuman wisdom,
sanctified by the precepts of antiquity, strengthened by the enthusiasm
of its saints and martyrs, and confirmed by the prescription of
centuries.
No country in Europe during the eighth century exhibited such a
picture of unredeemed barbarism as Britain. The Romans had never been
able to more than temporarily establish their institutions in that
island. The legions with difficulty held in subjection a people whom
neither force nor the arts of persuasion could make amenable to the
benefits of civilized life. The cruel rites which characterized the
worship of the Druids had been abolished, but the elegant mythology
of Italy obtained no hold upon the minds of the degraded aborigines,
who welcomed with delight the savage ceremonies which were performed
around the altars of the Scandinavian Woden. Upon this uncongenial
soil the refining genius of Rome left no permanent traces of its
occupancy, no splendid memorials of its art and culture. The nature of
the transitory impressions emanating from the possession of Britain
by the masters of the world was disclosed by the crushing misfortunes
which befell the empire in the fifth century. Unable to sustain the
cares of government, hostile chieftains abandoned the island to all
the woes of anarchy, and partisan jealousy invoked the perilous aid of
the pirates of Germany, whose dominion was finally established only by
a war of extermination involving both ally and foe. The obscurity of
the British annals concerning the period under consideration, dense of
itself, is increased by the popular acceptance of myth and legend as
historic truth. The chroniclers of Western Europe, however, have made
us acquainted with the national character of the Saxons. We know that
in Britain the customs of the aborigines and the laws of the empire
were alike abrogated; that no worship prevailed but the basest form
of idolatry; that every vestige of Roman institutions was swept away;
that the religion whose maxims had been proclaimed by the eloquence
of Augustin was extirpated; and that the voice of faction which had
evoked this barbarian tempest was silenced in the convulsions which
preceded the foundation of the Saxon Heptarchy. The island, whose name
is now the most familiar one known to mankind, became more mysterious
than it had been in the remotest ages of antiquity; the country whose
constitution is now inseparably associated with the enjoyment of the
largest measure of freedom was then noted as the most advantageous
market for the purchase of slaves. In the cultivated society of
Constantinople, learned men believed that Britain was a region of
pestilence and horrors, whither, as to a place of eternal punishment,
the spirits of the Franks were ferried at midnight by a tribe of
weird fishermen, who, by reason of this service, were exempted from
certain burdens and enjoyed peculiar privileges. Among the luxurious
ecclesiastics of Gaul, the slaves imported from Britain were greatly
esteemed as being both cheap and serviceable; and the sacred office of
priest or abbot was not degraded by the ownership of hapless beings in
whose unnatural parents the feelings of humanity and the instincts of
affection had been subordinated to the debasing passion of avarice.
The general complexion of affairs in Gaul offered a striking analogy
to that prevailing in Spain at the time of the subversion of the
kingdom of the Visigoths. In one respect, however, a difference more
apparent than real existed; no monarch was deluded by the professed
allegiance, and was at the same time constantly threatened by
the treasonable plots of his subjects. A dynasty of puppet kings,
restricted to a limited territory, displayed amidst every temptation
to sensual indulgence the idle pomp of sovereignty. A race of hardy
warriors and statesmen, ignorant of letters, experienced in arms,
controlled, by the power of military enthusiasm and the superior
influence of diplomatic ability, the destinies of the Frankish nation.
With the exception of the clergy, whose attainments were at the best
but superficial, the people were plunged into the deepest ignorance.
In the regions of the North and East the influence of the idolatrous
Germans and Scandinavians had retarded the progress of Christianity.
Elsewhere, however, a mongrel religion, in which were incorporated the
mummeries of polytheistic worship, the degrading superstitions and
sanguinary rites of the Saxons, and the worst features of the Arian
heresy, prevailed. This debased form of faith, which recognized neither
the tolerance of Paganism nor the charity of the Gospel, satisfied
the spiritual requirements of a barbarian populace. In one province
idolatry was practised. In another, the principles of Christianity were
in the ascendant. Not infrequently these forms of worship existed side
by side; and within the sound of the cathedral bell the incense of
sacrifice rose from the altars of the Teutonic deities, or the haruspex
exercised his mysterious office, and, grovelling in the steaming vitals
of the newly slaughtered victim, read, in the shape of the liver or the
folds of the entrails, the signs of the future and the unerring decrees
of fate.
Wherever the authority of the Roman Pontiff prevailed, the inclination
to a monastic life predominated among all classes of society.
Virgins of the wealthiest families, warriors of the greatest renown,
alike voluntarily sought the retirement of the cloister, amidst
the congratulations of their relatives and the applause of their
companions. When the attractions of the world were too powerful to be
resisted, the proudest chieftains compromised with conscience either by
the donation of their serfs to the abodes consecrated to the service
of God, or by the ransom and purchase of slaves to increase the lordly
abbot’s imposing retinue. In the foundation of religious houses in
France there existed an emulation unknown to any other country embraced
in the spiritual domain of the Papacy. The fame and piety of the
patron of one of these establishments was in a direct proportion to
the number of recluses whom his riches or his influence was able to
assemble within its walls. As a consequence, no inconsiderable portion
of the population of France was devoted to a conventual life, and the
number of monks congregated in a single monastery was prodigious, in
many instances amounting to as many as eight hundred. The generosity
and devotion of the founder of a religious community were certain
to be rewarded with the coveted honor of canonization, and records
of the Gallic Church during the first half of the eighth century
include the names of more saints than any corresponding period in the
history of Latin Christianity. Liberality to these holy institutions
was esteemed not only a virtue of supreme excellence but a certain
proof of orthodoxy, and their vaults enclosed treasures whose value
was sedulously exaggerated by the vanity of the clergy and the
credulity of the rabble. The accounts of the enormous wealth of these
establishments, disseminated far and wide through the garrulity of
pilgrims and travellers, by stimulating the cupidity of the Arabs and
inciting them to crusade and colonization, produced a decided effect
upon the political fortunes and social organization of France, and
through France indirectly upon those of all Europe.
Rudeness, brutality, coarse licentiousness, affected sanctity, and
barbaric splendor were the prominent characteristics of the society
constituted by the nominal sovereigns and their courts, the mayors of
the palace and their retainers, and the lazy ecclesiastics who swarmed
in every portion of the dominions of the Merovingian princes. The will
of the most powerful noble was the law of the land. Apprehension of
intestine warfare and the mutual jealousy and unscrupulous ambition
of the feudal lords perpetually discouraged the industry of the
husbandman. A feeling of indifference pervaded the ranks of the
ignorant populace, stupidly content with the pleasures of a mere animal
existence. The priesthood, assiduous in the exactions of tithes,
evinced a marked repugnance to contribute pecuniary aid in times of
national emergency when even their own existence was imperilled.
Unnatural crimes, fratricide, incest, and nameless offences against
public decency were common. Concubinage was universally prevalent among
the wealthy. In a practice so fatal to the purity of domestic life
the clergy obtained a disgraceful pre-eminence, and in the cloistered
seclusion of convents and monasteries, those apparent seats of
austerity and devotion, were enacted with impunity scenes which shrank
from the publicity of cities and indicated the alarming and hopeless
extent of ecclesiastical depravity.
In the provinces of the South, formerly subject to the jurisdiction of
the Visigoths, a greater degree of intelligence and a more polished
intercourse existed, the inheritance of the ancient colonists who
had bequeathed to their posterity the traditions of Roman luxury
and Grecian culture. Here, upon the shores of the Mediterranean and
in the valley of the Rhone, the gifts of nature were better adapted
to progress in the arts; the climate was more propitious to the
intellectual development of the masses. While social equality was yet
strictly observed in the assemblies of the Teutons and the Franks,
the pride of aristocracy here first asserted its superior claims to
consideration. It was from this region, favored by its geographical
position, its commercial relations, and its sympathy with the
philosophical ideas and literary aspirations of the inhabitants of
Moslem Spain, that was to spread the refining influence of chivalry
and letters afterwards so prominently displayed in the courts of the
Albigensian princes.
The unsatisfactory nature of the information afforded by the defective
chronicles of the eighth century is a serious impediment to the
satisfactory elucidation of events whose paramount importance has been
recognized by every historian. A lamentable want of detail, and an
utter absence of philosophical discrimination, are the characteristic
traits of these illiterate annalists. Of the gradual unfolding of
national character; of the secret motives which actuated the rude
but dexterous statesmen of that epoch; of the incessant mutations of
public policy; of the silent but powerful revolutions effected by the
inexorable laws of nature and the failings of humanity, they tell us
next to nothing. And yet no period mentioned in history has been more
prolific of great events. No achievement of ancient or modern times
was perfected with such rapidity or produced such decided effects upon
the intellectual progress of the human race as the Mohammedan Conquest
of Spain. The valor of the idolater, Charles Martel, prepared the way
for the vast empire and boundless authority of Charlemagne. The zeal
of his orthodox successor assured the permanence and supremacy of the
Holy See. Upon the success or failure of the Moslem crusade hung, as in
a balance, the political fortunes of Europe and the religious destiny
of the world. The battle of Poitiers was not, as is generally asserted,
a contest between the champions of two hostile forms of faith, for the
army of the Franks was largely composed of Pagans, and the ranks of the
invaders were filled with Berbers, Jews, and infidels. Moslem zealots,
like those who had shared the bitter privations of the Prophet, who had
upheld his falling banner at Ohod, who had prevailed over fearful odds
commanded by the bravest generals of the Roman and Persian empires,
who had witnessed the capture of Damascus and Jerusalem, were rare
in that motley host of adventurers whose religion was frequently a
disguise assumed for the ignoble purpose of rapine. The fierce ardor
and invincible spirit of the original Mussulmans had departed. A
tithe of the fiery enthusiasm which had evoked the astonishment and
consternation of their early antagonists must have changed the fortunes
of that eventful day.
Upon the other hand, the Franks were not inspired with zeal for the
maintenance of any religious principle. Their fickle homage was paid to
Zernbock and Woden, the sanguinary gods of the German forests, or to
that weird priesthood which delivered its oracles from the cromlechs of
Brittany. The pressing requirements of the emergency, the prospect of
plunder and glory, had summoned the warriors of a hundred tribes from
the banks of the Danube to the limits of Scandinavia. So little were
these wild barbarians entitled to the appellation of Christians that
they were, even then, under the ban of ecclesiastical displeasure, and
had been loaded with anathemas for the sacrilegious use of the property
of the Church to avert the danger impending over Christendom. But
leaving out of consideration the motives which actuated the combatants,
there can be no question as to the decisive results of the battle of
Poitiers. It was one of the few great victories which, like conspicuous
landmarks in the pathway of human affairs, indicate the advancement
or the retardation of nations. The prospect of Mohammedan conquest had
long been the terror of Europe. The Pope trembled in the Vatican. The
pious devotee, as he prostrated himself before the image of his patron
saint, vowed an additional penance to ward off the calamity which
every day was expected to bring forth. Imagination and fear painted
the Saracens as a race of incarnate fiends, whose aspect was far more
frightful, whose atrocities were far more ruthless, than those of the
Huns who had been routed by Ætius four hundred years before on the
plains of Chalons. The lapse of twelve centuries has not sufficed to
dispel this superstitious dread, and the Saracen, as a monster and
a bugbear, still figures in the nursery tales and rhymes of Central
France.
The Spanish Emirate includes the most obscure epoch of Moslem annals.
Its events have been, for the most part, preserved only by tradition.
Its chronicles are chaotic, defective, and contradictory. Its dates are
confused. It abounds in anachronisms; in the confusion of localities;
in the multiplication of individuals under a variety of names. The
credulity and prejudice of annalists, few of whom were contemporaneous
with the occurrences they profess to describe, render their statements
suspicious or absolutely unworthy of belief. With such drawbacks
attainment to accuracy is manifestly impracticable, and a reasonable
degree of probability can alone be hoped for from the baffled and
perplexed historian.
Exactly a hundred and ten years had elapsed since Mohammed fled from
Mecca like a common malefactor, under sentence of execution by the
leaders of his tribe, with a reward of a thousand pieces of gold upon
his head, and Islam was regarded as the dream of a half-demented
enthusiast. Now the name of the Prophet was revered from the Indies to
the Atlantic. The new sect numbered its adherents by millions. Its
arms had invariably been victorious. Its energy had surmounted every
obstacle. The most venerated shrines of Christianity and the cradle of
that religion,--Antioch, Alexandria, Carthage, and Jerusalem,--places
associated with all that is dear to the followers of our Saviour, and
made sacred by miracle, legend, and tradition, were in its hands.
Rome and Constantinople, the remaining great centres of Christian
faith--the one destined to be attacked by the Moslems of Sicily, the
other now menaced by the Moslems of Spain--trembled for their safety.
Saracen fleets were already cruising in the eastern Mediterranean.
The Mussulman standard had been planted on the Loire, thirty-six
hundred miles distant from Mecca. In every country into which Islam
had penetrated, it had found faithful allies and adherents. Religious
indifference, public oppression, the burdens of feudalism, and the
evils of slavery paved the way for its acceptance. The Jews opened
the gates of cities. The leaders of depressed factions contributed to
the ruin of their countrymen with purse and sword. Vassals and slaves
apostatized by thousands. Most ominous of all, the test of spiritual
truth and inspiration invariably dependent, in the estimation of the
credulous, upon superiority in arms, was steadily on the side of the
infidel. It is not strange, therefore, that Christian Europe looked
with undisguised dismay upon the portentous advance of the Mussulman
power. It is a matter of some doubt whether the doctrines of Mohammed
could have obtained a permanent foothold in the frozen regions of
the North. The geographical distribution of religions is largely
determined by climate. Islam is essentially exotic. It has survived,
but never flourished, beyond the tropics. A learned historian has
advanced the hypothesis that it cannot exist in a latitude where the
olive does not grow, a statement which seems to be justified by the
experience of history. It is highly improbable that the dogmas and
customs of the Orient would have found, under a leaden sky and amidst
the chilling blasts of Holland and Germany, conditions propitious
to their propagation. Important modifications must have resulted,
and, with these modifications, religious and social revolution. The
steadiness and prowess of the Teutonic soldiery had forever assured
the safety of Europe from serious molestation by the princes of the
Hispano-Arab empire. The irregular and ill-concerted attacks, which
subsequently followed at long intervals, were easily repulsed. Whether
the world at large was profited by the victory of Charles Martel may,
in the light afforded by the brilliant results of Moslem civilization,
well be questioned. It is hardly possible to conjecture what effect
would have been produced upon the creeds and habits of the present age
by the triumph of the Saracen power, but, in the words of an eminent
writer, “the least of our evils had now been that we should have worn
turbans; combed our beards instead of shaving them; have beheld a more
magnificent architecture than the Grecian, while the public mind had
been bounded by the arts and literature of the Moorish University of
Cordova.”
CHAPTER VII
FOUNDATION OF THE SPANISH MONARCHY
718–757
The Northern Provinces of Spain--Their Desolate and Forbidding
Character--Climate--Population--Religion--Peculiarities
of the Asturian Peasantry--Pelayus--His Birth and
Antecedents--He collects an Army--Obscure Origin of the
Spanish Kingdom--Extraordinary Conditions under which it was
founded--Battle of Covadonga--Rout of the Arabs--Increase of
the Christian Power--Favila--Alfonso I.--His Enterprise and
Conquests--His Policy of Colonization--Survival of the Spirit of
Liberty--Religious Abuses--State of Society--Beginning of the
Struggle for Empire.
The general topography of the Spanish Peninsula exhibits a gradual and
continuous increase in altitude, beginning at the tropical plains of
Andalusia and terminating in the mountain range which traverses its
northern extremity from the eastern boundary of France to the Bay of
Biscay. This rugged chain of mountains, some of whose peaks attain an
elevation of almost ten thousand feet, throws out innumerable spurs
to the north and south, which are separated by impassable gorges and
gloomy ravines, occasionally relieved by valleys of limited extent but
remarkable fertility. Its proximity to the ocean, whose vapors are
condensed and precipitated by contact with the summit of the sierra,
renders the climate of this region one of exceptional moisture, but
its foggy atmosphere is not unfavorable either to the health or the
longevity of man. In certain localities, rains are almost incessant,
and the depths of many of its defiles are never gladdened by the genial
and vivifying rays of the sun. The most untiring industry is requisite
to procure the means of a meagre subsistence, and the laborious efforts
of the cultivator of the soil are supplemented by the vigilance of the
shepherd, whose fleeces, generally preferred to the coarse products
of the loom, furnish the male population with clothing. Upon the
coast entire communities obtain their livelihood by fishing; and the
increased opportunities for intercourse with the world have produced
noticeable modifications in the character of these people, who, while
deficient in none of the manly qualities of the denizens of hill and
fastness, seem less uncouth, and are possessed of a greater degree
of intelligence than their brethren of the interior. The customs of
these famous mountaineers, variously known as Basques, Asturians,
Cantabrians, and Galicians, according to the respective localities
they inhabit, have varied but little in the course of many centuries.
They have ever been distinguished by simplicity of manners, sturdy
honesty, unselfish hospitality, and a spirit of independence which has
seldom failed to successfully assert itself against the most persistent
attempts at conquest. A mysterious and unknown origin attaches to the
Basques, whose strange tongue and weird traditions are supposed to
connect them with the original inhabitants of the Peninsula, and who,
in this isolated wilderness, have preserved the memory of one of the
aboriginal races of Europe. The rugged districts lying to the westward
of what is now called Biscay, the home of the Basques, were formerly
inhabited by the Iberians, a branch of the Celts, which, by force of
circumstances and through the necessities of self-preservation, has
become fused with colonists from the southern provinces until its
distinguishing features have disappeared. The well-known bravery of
the defenders of this bleak and forbidding country, its poverty--which
offers no allurements to either the avarice or the vanity of royal
power--its ravines swept by piercing winds, and its mountains draped
with perpetual clouds, long secured for it freedom from invasion. The
Carthaginians never passed its borders. The Romans, under Augustus,
succeeded, after infinite difficulties, in establishing over its
territory a precarious authority, disputed at intervals by fierce
and stubborn insurrections. It yielded a reluctant obedience to the
Visigothic kings, whose notions of liberty, coarse tastes, barbaric
customs, and frank demeanor were more congenial with the nature of the
wild Iberian than the luxurious habits and crafty maxims of Punic and
Latin civilization.
The most barren and inaccessible part of this secluded region at
the time of the Moslem conquest was that embraced by the modern
principality of the Asturias. A formidable barrier of lofty peaks,
whose passes readily eluded the eye of the stranger, blocked the way of
a hostile army. Within this wall a diversified landscape of mountain
and valley presented itself, with an occasional village, whose huts,
clustered upon a hill-side or straggling along some narrow ravine,
indicated the presence of a settlement of shepherds or husbandmen.
These dwellings, whose counterparts are to be seen to-day in the
wildest districts of the Asturias and Galicia, were rude hovels
constructed of stones and unhewn timbers, thatched with straw, floored
with rushes, and provided with a hole in the roof to enable the smoke
to escape. Their walls and ceilings were smeared with soot and grease,
and every corner reeked with filth and swarmed with vermin. The owners
of these habitations were, in appearance and intelligence, scarcely
removed from the condition of savages. They dressed in sheepskins and
the hides of wild beasts, which, unchanged, remained in one family for
many generations. The salutary habit of ablution was never practised
by them. Their garments were never cleansed, and were worn as long
as their tattered fragments held together. Their food was composed of
nutritious roots and herbs and of the products of the chase, a diet
sometimes varied by vegetables, whose seeds had been imported from
the south, and by a coarse bread made from the meal of chestnuts and
acorns. Total ignorance of the courtesies and amenities of social
life prevailed; privacy was unknown; and the peasant entered the hut
of his neighbor without fear or ceremony. An independent political
organization existed in each of these communities, whose isolated
situation, extreme poverty, and primitive manners dispensed with the
necessity for the complicated and expensive machinery of government.
Old age, as among many nations in the infancy of their existence, was
a title to authority and respect, and the elevation of an individual
to a certain degree of power was not unusual when he had distinguished
himself among his fellows for skill in hunting or valor in warfare.
Christian missionaries had, centuries before, carried the precepts of
the Gospel into the depths of this wilderness, and chapels and altars,
where the idolatrous practices of Druidical superstition were strangely
mingled with the ceremonies of the Roman Catholic ritual, attested the
persistence of a faith which had existed for ages. Many of the personal
habits and social customs of the Iberians, while well deserving the
attention of the antiquary, were of such a nature as to preclude
description. Under these manifold disadvantages were now to be laid
the foundations of an empire destined to embrace the richest portions
of two great continents; to extend its language, its ideas, its
policy, its religion, its authority, to the extreme limits of a world
as yet unknown; to humble the pride of the most renowned sovereigns
of Europe; to perfect the most formidable engine for the suppression
of free thought and individual liberty which the malignity of
superstition has ever devised; to perform achievements and accomplish
results unparalleled in the most fantastic creations of romance; and
to devote to extermination entire races whose sole offence was that
they had never heard of the God of their persecutors,--a people whose
civilization was far inferior to their own.
The terror inspired by the approach of the Saracens, after the battle
of the Guadalete, had driven great masses of fugitives to the north.
Such of these as escaped the hardships of flight and the swords of
their pursuers sought refuge in the most secret recesses of the
Asturian mountains. They carried with them their portable property,
their household gods, all the relics of the saints, all the sacred
furniture of the altars, which they had been able to rescue from the
sacrilegious grasp of the infidel. The refugees had forgotten alike,
in the presence of universal misfortune, the long-cherished prejudices
of race and the artificial distinctions of rank; and Goth, Roman,
Iberian, and Basque, master and slave, mingled together upon a friendly
equality. Received by the frank and hospitable mountaineers with a
sympathy which was strengthened by the bond of a common religion, the
unhappy fugitives became reconciled to the privations of a life which
secured to them immunity from infidel oppression; and, by intimate
association and intermarriage with their benefactors, formed in time a
new nation, in which, however, mixture of blood and altered physical
surroundings produced their inevitable effects, causing the traits
of the Iberian to predominate, in a conspicuous degree, over those
of the Latin and the Goth. As the rest of the Peninsula submitted
to the domination of the Moors, the population of this province was
largely augmented. Persecution, arising during the civil wars, still
further increased immigration; deposed prelates, ruined artisans,
and discontented slaves sought the companionship and aid of their
fellow-sectaries; many, in apprehension of future evil, voluntarily
abandoned their possessions; and the Asturias became the common refuge
of all who had suffered as well as of all who were willing to renounce
a life of comparative ease and dependence for the toils and privations
which accompanied the enjoyment of political and religious liberty.
With the advantages of freedom were also blended associations of a more
sacred character. The greater number of the most celebrated shrines of
a country remarkable for the virtues of its relics and the splendor of
its temples had been desecrated by the invader. He had destroyed many
churches. Others he had appropriated for the uses of his own religion.
The piety of their ministers had, however, secreted, and borne away in
safety, the most precious of those tokens of divine interposition whose
efficacy had been established by the performance of countless miracles
supported by the unquestionable testimony of the Fathers of the Church.
Transported by reverent hands from every part of the kingdom, these
consecrated objects were now collected in fastnesses impregnable to
the enemies of Christ. Where, therefore, could the devout believer
better hope for security and happiness than under the protection of
holy souvenirs which had received the oblations and the prayers of
successive generations of his ancestors? The wars and revolutions of
more than a thousand years have not diminished the feeling of popular
veneration attaching to these mementos of the martyrs, which, enshrined
in quaint and costly reliquaries of crystal and gold, are still
exhibited in the Cathedral of Oviedo.
Engrossed with the cares which necessarily attended the establishment
of a new religion and the organization of a new government, the first
viceroys of Spain took no notice of the embryotic state which was
gradually forming in the northwestern corner of the Peninsula. Their
scouting parties, which had penetrated to the borders of the Asturias,
had long since acquainted them with the severity of the climate and the
general sterility of the soil. No booty, save, perhaps, some sacred
vessels and a few flocks of sheep, was there to tempt the avarice of
the marauder. Domiciled in the genial regions of the South, whose
natural advantages continually recalled the voluptuous countries of the
Orient, the Moor instinctively shrank from contact with the piercing
winds and blinding tempests of the mountains far more than from an
encounter with the uncouth and warlike savages who defended this
inhospitable land. Musa had already entered Galicia at the head of his
troops when he was recalled to Damascus by the peremptory mandate of
the Khalif; and foraging parties had, on different occasions, ravaged
many of the settlements of the Basques; but as yet the Moslem banners
had never waved along the narrow pathways leading into the Asturian
solitudes, nor had the echoes of the Moorish atabal resounded from
the stupendous walls which protected the surviving remnant of the
Visigothic monarchy and the last hope of Christian faith and Iberian
independence.
At an early period, whose exact date the uncertainty of the accounts
transmitted to us renders it impossible to determine, the settlements
of the coast fell into the hands of the Saracens, who fortified the
town of Gijon, a place whose size might not improperly assert for it
the claims of metropolitan importance. The government of this city was
entrusted to one of the most distinguished officers who had served in
the army of Tarik, the former Emir, Othman-Ibn-Abu-Nesa, who, as we
have already seen, having contracted a treasonable alliance with the
Duke of Aquitaine, had been pursued and put to death by the soldiers of
Abdal-Rahman immediately before the latter’s invasion of France.
Their communications with the sea-coast having been thus interrupted,
the Asturians, impatient of confinement, determined to secure an
outlet by extending the limits of their territory upon the southern
slopes of the mountains. The adventurous spirit of the mountaineers
welcomed with ardor a proposal which must necessarily be attended
with every circumstance of excitement and glory. Among the refugees
who constituted the bulk of the population were many who had seen
service in the Visigothic army, and some who were not unfamiliar with
the tactics and military evolutions of the Saracens. One of the most
eminent of these was Pelayus, a name associated with the most glorious
traditions interwoven with the origin of the monarchy of Spain. The
imagination of subsequent ecclesiastical chroniclers has exhausted
itself in attempts to exalt the character and magnify the exploits of
this hero. The Moorish authorities, however, while they afford but
scanty details concerning him, are entitled to far more credit, as
their material interests were not to be subserved by the fabrication of
spurious miracles and preposterous legends. From the best accounts now
attainable,--which, it must be confessed, are far from reliable,--it
appears that Pelayus was of the mixed race of Goth and Latin. The
Arabs invariably called him the “Roman,” an appellation they were not
in the habit of conferring upon such as were of the pure blood of the
Visigoths. He was of noble birth, had held an important command in the
army of Roderick, and was not less esteemed for bravery and experience
than for hatred of the infidel, and for the reverent humility with
which he regarded everything connected with the ceremonies and the
ministers of the Church. To this chieftain, with the unanimous
concurrence of both refugees and natives, was now entrusted the
perilous and doubtful enterprise of openly defying the Saracen power.
With the caution of a veteran, and an enthusiasm worthy of a champion
of the Faith, Pelayus began to assemble his forces. The peasantry, ever
alive to the attractions of a military expedition, and the fugitives,
whose present distress recalled the more vividly their former
prosperity, their pecuniary losses, and their personal bereavements,
incident to the catastrophe which had befallen the nation, answered
the call to arms with equal alacrity. The army which placed itself at
the disposal of the new general did not probably number two thousand
men. The majority were clad in skins. But few wore armor,--antiquated
suits of mail which had rusted under the pacific rule of the successors
of Wamba and had survived the disasters of Merida and the Guadalete.
The Iberian javelin, the sling, and the short and heavy knife of the
Cantabrian peasant composed their offensive weapons. Not one in ten had
ever seen a battle. Not one in a hundred could understand or appreciate
the necessity for the uncomplaining patience and implicit obedience
indispensable to the soldier. Yet the soaring ambition, the patriotic
pride, the belief in the special protection of heaven--feelings equal
to the conquest of a world--rose high in the bosoms of these savage
mountaineers. Their courage was unquestionable. Their native endurance,
strengthened by simple food and habitual exposure to the tempests of
a severe climate and the incessant exertions of a pastoral life, was
far greater than that of their enemies. To invest the cause with a
religious character, and to rouse to the highest pitch the fanaticism
of the soldiery, a number of priests attended, with censer and
crucifix and all the sacred emblems of ecclesiastical dignity. Of such
materials was composed the army whose posterity was led to victory by
such captains as Gonzalvo, Cortes, and Alva, and whose penniless and
exiled commander was destined to be the progenitor of a long line of
illustrious sovereigns.
The original realm of Pelayus afforded no indication of the enormous
dimensions to which it was destined to expand. It embraced a territory
five miles long by three miles wide. Its population could not have
exceeded fifteen hundred souls. Its fighting men were not more than
five hundred in number. The bulk of the army was composed of Basques
and Galicians, attracted by the hope of spoil, held together for the
moment only by the sense of common danger; impatient of restraint;
scarcely recognizing the authority of popular assemblies of their own
creation; valiant in action; brutal in victory; selfish and cowardly
in defeat. They were without organization, officers, suitable arms, or
commissariat. Of the art of war, as practised by even semi-barbarians,
they knew nothing. Their military operations were controlled by the
usual stratagems of savages, the nocturnal attack, the sudden surprise,
the ambuscade.
The civil system of the infant monarchy was no further advanced. The
exiled subjects of Roderick still retained, in some measure, the
maxims and traditions of government. The people, among whom their
lot was cast and who greatly outnumbered them, had, however, little
knowledge of, and no reverence for, the Visigothic Code. The duchy
of Cantabria, to which the latter mainly belonged, was never more
than a nominal fief of the kingdom of Toledo. The fueros, or laws, by
which they had been governed through successive foreign dominations
of the Peninsula were of immemorial antiquity. Their long-preserved
independence had nourished in their minds sentiments of arrogance and
assumed superiority which were often carried to a ridiculous extreme.
These influences had no small share in the subsequent formation of the
Spanish constitution.
Thus, in a desolate and barren region; insignificant in numbers;
destitute of resources; ignorant of the arts of civilization; without
military system or civil polity; with neither court, hierarchy, nor
capital; animated by the incentives of religious zeal and inherited
love of freedom, a handful of barbarians laid the foundations of the
renowned empire of Spain and the Indies.
The bustle which necessarily attended the warlike preparations of
Pelayus was not long in attracting the attention of the government
of Cordova. Information was conveyed to Anbasah-Ibn-Sohim, the
representative of the Khalif, concerning the league that had been
formed between the fugitive Goths and the denizens of the Asturias, as
well as of the objects of the expedition which was organizing in the
northern wilderness. The Emir, whose contempt for his enemies, added to
a profound ignorance of the character of the country they inhabited,
induced him to underestimate the difficulties to be encountered in
their subjection, did not deem it worth his while to attack them
in person. He naturally thought little was to be apprehended from
the irregular hostilities of a few refugees who had retired with
precipitation at the approach of the Moorish cavalry, united with a
horde of vagabond shepherds and hunters unaccustomed to discipline and
inexperienced in warfare. In his blind depreciation of the prowess
of his adversaries, Anbasah-Ibn-Sohim left out of consideration many
circumstances which influenced, in a marked degree, the subsequent
fortunes of the Moslem domination in Spain. Their numerical inferiority
was of trifling moment in a country thoroughly familiar to its
inhabitants, but hitherto unexplored by the Saracens, and whose steep
and tortuous pathways afforded such facilities for resisting an
intruder that points might readily be selected where a score of men
could, with little effort, successfully withstand a thousand. The Emir
took no account of the mists which always enshrouding the sierra often
entirely obscured the landscape; of the dense forests which might so
effectually conceal the ambuscade; of the sudden and destructive rise
of the mountain torrents; of the dangers attendant upon the landslide
and the avalanche. Nor did he appreciate the feelings which must have
been inspired by the desperate situation in which the Christians were
placed. They were at bay in their last stronghold. Once driven from
the shelter of their friendly mountains nothing remained for them
but death or slavery. Their retreat into France was cut off by the
Arab column now advancing into Septimania. Their brethren throughout
the Peninsula had bowed before the sceptre of the Khalif, and no
assistance could be expected from them. Their patriotic ardor was
excited by the proud consciousness of independence and by apprehensions
of the degradation of servitude; their pious frenzy was aroused by
the destruction which menaced the religion of their fathers. In their
camp were the sole memorials of a monarchy whose princes had dictated
terms to the Mistress of the World. Around them on every side were
sacred relics which had been visited from far and wide by pilgrims,
whose miraculous power in the healing of disease it was sacrilege to
doubt, and which had not only brought relief to the suffering but also
comfort and salvation in the hour of death. God had made them the
custodians of these treasures rescued from His desecrated altars; truly
He would not abandon them in time of peril. By every artifice peculiar
to their craft; by all the fervid appeals of eloquence; by every
promise of present and prospective advantage; and by every threat of
future retribution, the prelates inflamed the zeal of their fanatical
hearers. They, more than any other class, understood the gravity of
the situation. While not anticipating the power which the sacerdotal
order was to attain over the temporal affairs of the Peninsula in
coming centuries, they were not ignorant that the result of the
impending conflict involved its supremacy or their own annihilation.
Thus, at the very birth of the Spanish monarchy, appears predominant
the ecclesiastical power which contributed more than all other causes
to its eventual decay. Taking these facts into consideration, it is
evident that the conquest of the Asturias would have required an ample
force conducted by an experienced commander, whose talents, however
respectable, could hardly have accomplished the task in a single
campaign. But the Emir, who was on the point of invading France and
did not deign to delay his expedition for the purpose of chastising a
band of vagrant barbarians, detached a division, under an officer named
Alkamah, to reduce the Asturias to subjection and exact the payment of
tribute.
The Arab general, aside from the natural impediments which obstructed
the march of an army through one of the most rugged localities
of Europe, experienced but little trouble in his advance. The
scattered collections of hovels which he encountered were deserted.
No flocks were feeding on the hill-sides. All signs of cultivation
were obliterated, and everything which could afford subsistence to
an enemy had been removed or destroyed. The features of the entire
landscape were those of a primeval waste. Through the defiles, without
resistance, and almost without the sight of a human being except his
own soldiers, Alkamah penetrated to the very heart of the Asturias,
lured on by the wily mountaineers to a point where his superior
numbers, so far from availing him, would be a positive disadvantage,
and from whence retreat would be impossible.
Upon the eastern border of the wilderness, amidst a chaos of rocks,
forests, ravines, and streamlets, rises the imposing peak of Auseba.
The northern side of this mountain for a hundred feet from its base
presents a steep and frowning precipice closing one end of a narrow
valley, and whose almost perpendicular sides are only accessible to the
trained and venturesome native. A cave, in whose depths three hundred
men could readily be sheltered, exists in the face of the cliff, and
through the gorge beneath run the troubled waters forming the source of
the river Deva. A path, completely commanded by the heights upon either
side, winds through the undergrowth and gives access to the cave and
its environs, in former times the resort of benighted goatherds. In
this spot, admirably adapted to purposes of defence, Pelayus determined
to make his final stand. All non-combatants were secreted in the
forest. Ambushes were posted along the only path by which an approach
was practicable. In the cavern, whose name, Covadonga, is still revered
by every Asturian noble and peasant, Pelayus concealed himself with a
body of men selected for their courage and the superiority of their
arms. Skirmishers now appeared in the front of the Moslem army, which,
with a confidence born of former success, without hesitation followed
its treacherous guides into the fatal valley. No sooner was the
command of Alkamah within arrow-shot of the cave than the mountaineers
sprang from their hiding-places. Wild cries of defiance and expectant
triumph echoed from the rocky slopes of the ravine. From every hand
the projectiles of the Christians poured down upon the heads of their
astonished foes. When the ammunition of the bows and slings was
exhausted, the sturdy peasants rolled down great stones and trunks of
trees, which crushed a score of men at a single blow. Massed together,
and thrown into confusion by the unexpected attack, the Saracens could
not use their weapons to advantage. Their arrows rebounded harmlessly
from the rocks. The agility of their enemies and the character of the
ground prevented a hand-to-hand engagement, which the inferior strength
of the Christians naturally prompted them to avoid. Unable to endure
the storm of missiles which was rapidly depleting their ranks, the
Saracens attempted to retrace their steps. The first intimation of a
desire to retreat was the signal for redoubled activity on the part
of the Asturians. Pelayus and his band, issuing from the cave, fell
upon the rear of the enemy. The detachments upon the flanks closed in,
and the unfortunate Moslems, surrounded and almost helpless, resigned
themselves to their fate. The battle became a massacre. To add to the
discomfiture of the invaders, a fearful tempest, which, in a latitude
whose air is always charged with moisture, often comes without warning,
burst upon the valley. In a few moments the little brook had swollen
into a roaring torrent. A section of the mountain-side, undermined and
already tottering and crowded with terror-stricken Saracens, gave way,
carrying with it hundreds of victims to be engulfed in the rushing
waters. A trifling number of fugitives, aided by the darkness and the
storm, succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the mountaineers, but the
great majority of those composing the detachment, including all of its
officers, perished. The estimated loss of the Moslems varies, according
to the nationality of the annalist, from three thousand to one hundred
and twenty-four thousand. In this, as in all other instances where the
statements of the Arab and Christian writers of that age conflict,
the preference should be given to the assertions of the former. The
valley of Covadonga is so restricted in extent, especially where the
battle took place, that it would with difficulty afford standing room
for twenty thousand combatants. The vainglorious character of the
northern Spaniard, who possesses not a little of the braggadocio
of his cousin, the Gascon, has incited him to grossly magnify the
importance of an exploit which requires no exaggeration; and his
fabulous accounts have been recorded, with extravagant additions, by
the ecclesiastical historians of the Dark Ages, with whom mendacity
was the rule and accuracy the exception. Absolutely controlled by
the prejudices of their profession, they studiously embellished
every tale which could have a tendency to promote its interests and
as carefully suppressed all hostile testimony. The monkish writers,
whose credulity kept pace with their love of the marvellous, conceived
that the glory of the Church was in a direct ratio to the number of
infidels exterminated by her champions. To this motive are to be
attributed the absurd statements concerning the losses of the enemy
in every victory won by the Christian arms, a pernicious habit which
was confirmed by the improbability of subsequent detection arising
from the universal illiteracy of the age. The thorough unreliability
of these old chroniclers in this and other particulars which might
directly or indirectly affect the prestige of their order is calculated
to cast suspicion over their entire narratives. When we add to these
gross misrepresentations their meagre and confused accounts of the most
important events, their profound ignorance of the hidden motives of
human actions, their superstitious prejudices, and their incapacity of
appreciating, or even of understanding, the principles of historical
criticism, it may readily be perceived how arduous is the task of those
who attempt to bring order out of this literary chaos. To the Arab
writers, however, we can turn with a much greater degree of confidence.
They make no attempts to disguise the magnitude of their reverses or to
diminish the glory of their enemies. No contemporaneous account of the
battle of Covadonga has descended to us. It was not for a century that
its paramount importance became manifest. The attention of the clergy
during that turbulent period was engrossed by the doubtful fortunes of
the Church, and the exactions consequent upon the changes produced by
a constant succession of rulers. The affairs of the entire Mohammedan
empire were in a turmoil. In the East the chiefs of desperate factions
were struggling for the throne of the khalifate. Africa was the scene
of perpetual insurrection, provoked and maintained by the indomitable
spirit of the Berbers. The Emirs of Spain, between the intervals of
civil discord, were nursing extravagant dreams of ambition,--visions of
the propagation of their faith, of the acquisition of new territories,
of the subjugation of infidels, of the extension of empire. The glance
of the viceroys was directed beyond the bleak Asturias towards the
fertile plains of Southern France. The execution of the gigantic
enterprise projected by the genius of Musa occupied their thoughts,
and they were ignorant or careless of the aspirations of a handful of
peasants, upon the issue of whose prowess and constancy were, even now,
impending the existence of their dominion and the destinies of the
Peninsula.
The meagre notices of the battle of Covadonga transmitted by Moorish
chroniclers indicate that it was not considered a great disaster,
and that its effects upon the posterity of both Christian and Moslem
could not have been dreamed of. Yet from this eventful day practically
dates the beginning of the overthrow of the Arab domination, not yet
firmly established in its seat of power. Then was inaugurated the
consolidation of mountain tribes, soon to be followed by the union
of great provinces and kingdoms under the protection of the Spanish
Crown. At that time was first thoroughly demonstrated the value of
harmonious co-operation among factions long arrayed against each
other in mutual hostility. Thence was derived the germ of freedom,
which successfully asserted its rights under the frown of royalty,
and, incorporated into the constitution of Aragon, long interposed a
formidable obstacle to the encroachments of arbitrary and despotic
sovereigns. During that epoch, by the fusion of races, were laid the
foundations of that noble and sonorous idiom, unsurpassed in simplicity
of construction, in conciseness and elegance of diction, in clear
and harmonious resonance. Then was manifested for the first time the
adventurous and daring spirit which carried the banners of Spain beyond
the Mississippi, the Andes, and the Pacific. Then was instituted the
scheme of ecclesiastical policy which, perfected by a succession of
able and aspiring churchmen, placed the throne of Europe’s greatest
monarchy under the tutelage of the primacy of Toledo. Then originated
that fierce and interminable contest--first for self-preservation, then
for plunder, lastly for empire--which for a thousand years engrossed
the attention of the world.
The renown acquired by Pelayus through the victory of Covadonga raised
him at once from the position of general to the dignity of king. In
his election the traditions of the ancient Gothic constitution were
observed. The sentiments of freedom innate in the mountaineer of every
land are reluctant to admit the superiority implied by the laws of
hereditary descent or by the exercise of unlimited authority. The rude
ceremonies by which regal prerogatives were conceded to this guerilla
chieftain could not suggest to the wildest visionary the possibility
of the gorgeous ceremonial of the Spanish court or of the absolute
power exercised by Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second. It is not
improbable that the commands of Pelayus were frequently disputed by
his half-savage retainers. But it may well be doubted if among all the
nations which composed the vast dominions of the House of Austria
could have been found an equal number of adherents more faithful in
misfortune, more intrepid in danger, than those who formed the little
band of the exiled hero. The immunity granted the Christians after
their triumph would seem to rather imply contempt by the princes of
Cordova than their discouragement or any apprehension of further
misfortune. The moral effect of the victory, if imperceptible on
the Arabs, produced at once most significant results in the regions
bordering on the Asturias. The threatening attitude of the fishermen
necessitated the evacuation of the coast, and Othman-Ibn-Abu-Nesa,
Governor of Gijon, abandoned his charge, and, by a forced march, joined
his countrymen beyond the mountains. The warlike spirit spread fast
through Cantabria and Galicia, and was even felt upon the borders of
what is now Leon and Castile; the Saracen colonists who had established
themselves in the most fertile districts were exterminated; and the
religious aspect of the struggle, which seemed to identify the cause of
the insurgents with that of the Almighty, crowded the squalid hovels
of the hospitable Asturians with thousands of fugitives who sought
protection and liberty in the society of their friends and kinsmen.
Neither history nor tradition has ascribed to Pelayus any other
military achievements than the famous one which signalized his
accession to supreme power. In the retirement of his little kingdom,
for the remainder of his days, he employed the security, for which
he was indebted to the contempt of his enemies, in consolidating his
authority; in the formation of a plan of government; in the erection
of churches, shrines, and monasteries; and in encouraging among his
subjects the pursuit of agriculture. His extreme devotion to the
interests of the Church has obtained for his memory the grateful
acknowledgment of the priesthood; while the little cross borne by him,
in lieu of a standard, at Covadonga, and still preserved at Oviedo,
is regarded with sentiments of peculiar reverence by the peasantry
as a symbol whose miraculous powers were confirmed by the hand of
God, and whose virtues were transmitted to the magnificent emblems of
the Catholic hierarchy, which, the successors of the Roman eagles,
sanctified in distant lands the explorations and the conquests of the
Christian monarchs of the Peninsula.
The reign of Pelayus lasted thirteen years. Such were the benefits
resulting from its munificence to the clergy and his justice to the
people that, at his death, the sentiments of loyalty and gratitude
overcame the traditions of centuries and the prejudice against
hereditary descent, and Favila, his son, was permitted to succeed him
by the tacitly admitted right of inheritance.
Little is known of the life of Favila excepting that it was passed in
peace. Without aspirations to enlarge the circuit of his dominions,
and destitute of all desire for military renown, he preferred the rude
society of his companions and the excitements of the chase to the
perilous and doubtful honors of warfare. Two years after his accession
he was torn to pieces by a wild boar, whose fury he had rashly provoked
under circumstances which admitted of no escape. He was buried by the
side of his father in the church of Cangas de Onis, an insignificant
hamlet not far from the battle-field of Covadonga, which was already
dignified by the title of capital of the Asturias, and whose church was
for many generations afterwards the pantheon of its princes.
Favila left no sons of sufficient age to assume the responsibilities
of government, while the exigencies of the time demanded the services
of a ruler possessed of talents and experience. The right of election
was, as of old, once more asserted to the exclusion of the claims
of primogeniture; and Alfonso I., son of the Duke of Cantabria and
son-in-law of Pelayus, was, by common consent of the principal men of
the infant nation, invested with the regal authority. The new king
was a noted warrior, who had been the comrade-in-arms of Pelayus. His
martial tastes and unflinching resolution were only surpassed by his
zeal for the Christian faith, which acquired for him the appellation of
“Catholic,” so highly prized by his descendants, and which is still the
most revered title of the head of the Spanish monarchy. The duchy of
Cantabria, whose ancient limits had, however, been greatly curtailed by
the encroachments of the Moors and the annexations of Pelayus, became,
through the exaltation of its lord, an integral part of the Asturian
kingdom.
The unquenchable fires of crusade and conquest burned fiercely in the
breast of Alfonso. With all the impetuosity of his nature he announced
his intention of waging ceaseless war against the infidel. The
condition of the provinces subject to his jurisdiction had undergone
radical changes since the election of Pelayus twenty years before.
The population had enormously increased, partly from natural causes,
but principally through immigration promoted by the love of liberty
and by the destructive revolutions instigated by the vengeance or
ambition of the conquerors. Villages, whose rude but comparatively
comfortable dwellings replaced the filthy cabins of former times,
occupied the picturesque valleys. Chapels and monasteries dotted the
mountain-sides. Public affairs were administered according to a system,
crude indeed, but framed upon the model of the Visigothic constitution,
whose principles were not inconsistent with both the assertion of the
prerogatives of royalty and the enjoyment, in large measure, of the
blessings of individual freedom. The kingly authority was, in fact, as
yet merely nominal. It had been conferred by the votes of the people,
and was understood to be conditional upon the observance of the laws
and the maintenance of order. The power of the Asturian sovereign was
at this time not greater than that of many a petty feudal chieftain of
Germany, and was far inferior to that possessed by the French Mayors of
the Palace.
The occasion was propitious to the realization of the ambitious designs
of Alfonso. The emirate was temporarily vacant through the absence of
Okbah, its head, in Africa. Anarchy, with all its nameless horrors,
prevailed in every portion of the Peninsula. The territory acquired
in France, whose occupation had shed so much lustre on the Moslems
and whose possession was designed as the preliminary step to the
subjugation of Europe, had, through the valor of the Franks and the
incapacity and jealousies of the emirs, with the solitary exception of
the city of Narbonne, been wrested from the conqueror. The prestige
of the heretofore invincible Saracens had been lost by repeated
reverses, crowned by the terrible misfortune of Poitiers. In Galicia
and the Basque provinces the peasantry had delivered the greater
portion of their country from the enemy and were in full sympathy with
the plans and aspirations of their Asturian neighbors, although they
resolutely kept aloof from political union with them and declined to
acknowledge the authority of their king. The operations of Alfonso
were characterized by the activity and judgment of an experienced
partisan. Passing suddenly into Galicia he surprised Lugo, which had
remained in the hands of the Arabs since its capture by Musa, and soon
afterwards occupied the strongly fortified city of Tuy, appropriating
the territory north of the river Minho by the right of conquest. Thence
he penetrated into Lusitania, taking some of the principal towns of
that province and extending his march to the eastward until he had
overrun all of the region lying to the north of the range of mountains
now known as the Sierra Guadarrama.
The annalists who have mentioned the expeditions undertaken by Alfonso
I. have neglected to regulate their order of occurrence, and attribute
to the movements of the King a celerity which is almost incredible.
In fact, these much-vaunted conquests were nothing more than mere
forays. No permanent occupation of the country was possible. The
uninterrupted succession of calamities which had descended upon it
had transformed a region, never renowned for great productiveness,
into a desert. In the few fertile spots where the industry of the Moor
had obtained a foothold the fierce squadrons of Alfonso blackened the
smiling landscape with the fires of destruction and carnage. Such
towns and villages as lay in their path were destroyed; the Moors were
condemned to slavery; and the Christians, despite their remonstrances,
were compelled to follow in the train of the invader, to accept from
him homes in the mountains, and to swear fidelity to the Crown. This
policy of increasing the population of his dominions by compulsory
immigration possessed at least the merit of originality, and was in
the end eminently successful. The reluctant colonists, whose cities
had been razed and whose lands had been devastated, were deprived of
all incentives to return to a region that could no longer afford them
subsistence. The ties of race and the precepts of religion already
united them to those whom, despite the violence they had displayed,
they could not consider as enemies. Distributed judiciously in the
districts most deficient in inhabitants, whose soil, in many instances,
was not more sterile than that which they had formerly tilled, the new
subjects of Alfonso soon became reconciled to their altered condition
of life. Their numbers greatly contributed to the strength of the
growing kingdom. Their traditions, prejudices, and aspirations were
identical with those of the Asturians. Complete amalgamation was soon
accomplished by intermarriage and by the intimacies of commercial and
social intercourse.
The operations of Alfonso are, for the most part, described with even
more confusion of dates and localities than that which ordinarily
characterizes the historical accounts of his age. Both the love of
the marvellous and the bias of superstition have combined to magnify
his achievements. Nevertheless, the account of no great victory
breaks the monotony of an endless recital of murder, pillage, and
conflagration. In the mountains, where every ravine favored an
ambuscade, the Christians were invincible, but upon the plain, even
when aided by the advantage of superior numbers, they were no match for
the Moorish cavalry. The vulnerable condition of the country, which
suffered from the inroads of the Asturian prince, impressed him with
the necessity of erecting suitable defensive works along the borders
of his own dominions. He therefore established a line of castles upon
the southern slope of the sierra, dividing the present provinces of Old
and New Castile, which were then known under the common designation of
Bardulia, and from these fortified posts the two famous provinces have
derived their modern name.
The reign of Alfonso does not seem to have known the blessings of
tranquillity. His expeditions were incessant, and their results almost
invariably successful. The Moors universally regarded him with a fear
which, far more than the profuse adulation of his monkish biographers,
confirms the prevailing idea of his prowess and indicates the respect
in which he was held by his enemies, whose historians conferred upon
him the honorable and significant appellation of Ibnal-Saif, “The
Son of the Sword.” At the time of his death he had extended the
limits of his kingdom until it embraced nearly a fourth part of the
entire Peninsula, reaching from upper Aragon to the Atlantic, and
from the Sierra Guadarrama to the Bay of Biscay. Far to the south of
the territory which acknowledged his jurisdiction, a vast region had
been swept by his inroads, and remained depopulated through the very
terror of his name. While his resources did not enable him to retain
possession of this neutral ground, its accessibility to attack rendered
it useless to the Saracens. His death, in 756, was coincident with the
accession to power of the renowned House of Ommeyah, whose genius held
in check for half a century the patriotic impulses of the state which
public disorder and universal contempt had permitted to form under the
eye of the haughty emirs, an error of policy whose fatal consequences
were not even suspected until the evil was beyond all remedy.
Thus, within a few years, from an affrighted band of homeless fugitives
had arisen a nation whose power had already become formidable. In the
independent spirit of its assemblies, convoked to elect a sovereign,
were plainly discernible traces of that constitutional liberty which
subsequently acquired such importance and produced such enduring
political effects in the history of Spain. The basis of the new
ecclesiastical system, on the other hand, consisted in a servile
obedience to Rome, and was marked by none of the conscious dignity
and self-reliance peculiar to the ancient Visigothic priesthood. A
series of misfortunes had broken the pride of the Church; in the
desecration of its relics, in the plunder of its altars, in the
confiscation of its treasures, in the insults to its prelates, the
multitude saw the fearful vengeance of an offended God. The wealth
of the ecclesiastical order had disappeared, and with it much of its
power. Its congregations were scattered. Whenever the poverty of the
devout was so great that the regular tribute could not be raised all
worship was proscribed. In those localities where the indulgence of the
conqueror permitted the Christian rites, there was small inducement to
proselytism, as no new churches could be erected, and the conversion of
a Mohammedan was a capital crime, of which both tempter and apostate
were equally guilty. In the face of the overwhelming catastrophe which
had overtaken the Church, it is but natural that the eyes of its
ministers should be turned towards the throne of the Holy Father, whose
admonitions they had unheeded and whose commands they had defied. In a
crowd of ignorant and superstitious peasants the prestige attaching to
ancient ecclesiastical dignity and the reverence exacted by its sacred
office soon raised the clergy to an unusual degree of prominence. It
was their influence which actually founded the infant state; which
dictated its policy; which directed its career; which profited by
its success; which tendered sympathy in the hour of adversity; which
shared its glory in the hour of triumph. And, as in the beginning it
was predominant, so through the long course of ages its grasp never
slackened, and to its suggestions, sometimes prompted by wisdom, but
often darkened by bigotry, are to be attributed the measures emanating
from both the civil and ecclesiastical polity of the dynasties of Spain.
The mingling of various nationalities in the Asturias produced its
inevitable ethnical result, the evolution of a race superior to each
of its constituents. But with physical improvement and mental culture
came many deplorable evils, merciless hatred, superstitious credulity,
military insubordination, and the vices of a society indulgent to
the maxims and practice of a lax morality. The remorseless butchery
of infidels was encouraged as highly meritorious, and only a proper
return for the calamities produced by invasion. The ferocious
soldiery, whose license during the continuance of hostilities was
never restrained by their commanders, were, as might be expected,
not amenable to discipline or obedient to the necessary regulations
of their profession in time of peace. The orders of the King were
sometimes openly disobeyed; and such was the precarious nature of
his authority that he not infrequently considered it more expedient
to dissemble than to punish. The licentious habits of the Visigothic
prelates and nobles had been carried, along with the traditions of
their ancient grandeur and the mementos of their former wealth, into
the rude, but hitherto comparatively pure, society of the mountains.
The severity of the climate, the incessant and violent exercise
demanded by their avocations, and the uncertainty of subsistence had
preserved the chastity of the Asturian peasantry, who, in many other
respects, were remarkable for degradation and brutality. Polygamous
unions, practised with more or less concealment by the privileged
classes during the reign of Pelayus, upon the accession of Alfonso
became open and notorious. The innumerable captives secured by
marauding expeditions afforded excellent facilities for supplying or
replenishing the harems of the nobles and the clergy. The holy fathers,
like their predecessors under Witiza and Roderick, were noted for
their taste and appreciation of the charms of female loveliness; and
the owner of a beautiful slave whose price was too high for the count
was rarely dismissed, for this cause, by the bishop. A well-appointed
seraglio was an indispensable appendage to the household of every
secular and ecclesiastical dignitary. The example of their ancestors,
and the temptations offered by the fascinations of the beautiful
Moorish captives, were too powerful to be withstood. To the allurements
of passion was also added the gratification resulting from the
consciousness of inflicted and well-deserved retribution. The fairest
of the Gothic and Roman maidens had been torn from weeping parents to
fill the harems of Cordova, Cairo, and Damascus. Alfonso I., whose
title, The Catholic, has been confirmed by the profuse and fulsome
eulogies of the Church, was behind none of his ghostly counsellors in
his polygamous inclinations; and the offspring of a connection with an
infidel concubine, who received the name of Mauregato, was destined
to play an important part in the annals of the Reconquest. In every
form and manifestation of social life the influence of the surviving
elements of the Visigothic monarchy produced important and permanent
results. To anarchy succeeded political organization, imperfect it is
true, but the wisdom of whose principles was repeatedly confirmed by
their adaptability to the requirements of an extensive empire. The
physical condition of the people was improved, and their strength,
hitherto employed against each other, was now directed to the injury
of a common enemy. With new aspirations and altered manners were
introduced changes in the Asturian dialect, which was originally
derived from the Euskarian, the idiom of the Basques. The intercourse
of the various classes of society grew more refined. Law gradually
supplanted government by force. Religion again exerted its beneficent
and powerful sway. The ceremonial of the Visigothic court--a mixture of
barbarian insolence, Roman dignity, and Byzantine pomp--was revived,
and a faint image of ancient greatness was exhibited by the pride and
prowess of representatives of noble families who, mindful of former
ascendency and confident of future distinction, gallantly rallied round
the throne.
The spirit of hero-worship, as may readily be inferred from the
superstitious credulity of the mountaineers, was strong in the
Asturias. Every action of the early princes is distorted by the
atmosphere of mystery and exaggeration which envelops it. The idea
pervading classic mythology that those whom tradition declares to have
been the benefactors of mankind, who have contributed to civilization
the greatest practical benefits, and from whose efforts have been
derived the true enjoyments of life, are entitled, if not to absolute
apotheosis, at least to exaltation as demigods, perverted by sacerdotal
influence, had been bequeathed, with other Pagan beliefs and practices,
by the priests of Hercules and Æsculapius to the servants of the
Pope. When canonization was deemed impolitic, the life of an eminent
personage was embellished with a mass of fiction, of prodigy, of
fable. Some historians have not mentioned the name of Pelayus; others,
on account of the untrustworthy character of the authorities, have
assigned all the exploits of his reign to the domain of the mythical. A
miraculous appearance of the Virgin in the cave of Covadonga inspired
the Christians with hope, and announced the coming victory. A choir
of angels, whose voices were distinctly heard by the attendants,
soothed the dying moments of Alfonso. Such legends, invented by
priestly artifice and propagated by universal approbation in an age of
ignorance, have no small influence in developing the character of a
nation.
Thus, in a secluded corner of the Peninsula, neglected by their friends
and despised by their enemies, the founders of an empire whose states
and principalities were to be lighted by the rising as well as by the
setting sun erected in obscurity and distress the humble fabric of
their political fortunes. The almost hopeless prospect of the struggle
at its inception nerved them to despair. Aided by the obstacles
interposed by nature for their defence, encouraged by the suicidal
conflicts which constantly harassed the emirate, and inspired with an
unshaken confidence in the protection of heaven, an insignificant band
of exiles, in the short space of a quarter of a century, insensibly
expanded into a people whose existence, hitherto ignored, began, when
too late, to arouse the serious apprehensions of the court of Cordova.
The Asturian element, as jealous of liberty as the Basques but far less
intolerant, infused into the public deliberations those principles
of freedom subsequently so prominent in the laws of the northern
provinces; and even now, after centuries of despotism, not entirely
eradicated from the Spanish constitution. It is one of the strangest
of political phenomena that from such a source should have proceeded
institutions that made the Inquisition possible. The imperceptible but
lasting influence of the Asturians did not pass away with the prestige
of the great princes of the Houses of Austria and Bourbon. The religion
of the national hierarchy, organized within its borders and promulgated
by its armies, still affords consolation to the devout of many lands,
and the musical language, formed by a fusion of barbarous dialects, is
the idiom of one-sixth of the geographical area of the habitable globe.
CHAPTER VIII
THE OMMEYADES; REIGN OF ABD-AL-RAHMAN I.
756–788
The Ommeyade Family--Its Origin--Its Hostility to
Mohammed--The Syrian Princes--Their Profligacy--Splendors
of Damascus--Luxury of the Syrian Capital--Rise of the
Abbasides--Proscription of the Defeated Faction--Escape of
Abd-al-Rahman--His Romantic Career--He enters Spain--His
Success--Defeat and Dethronement of Yusuf--Constant
Insurrections--Enterprise of the Khalif of Bagdad--Its
Disastrous Termination--Invasion of Charlemagne--Slaughter
of Roncesvalles--Death of Abd-al-Rahman--His Character--His
Services to Civilization--Foundation of the Great Mosque--The
Franks reconquer Septimania.
I now turn to that splendid period wherein was displayed the glory
of the line of the Ommeyades, an epoch forever memorable for its
achievements in science and practical philosophy; forever illustrious
in the history of intellectual progress as well as for the development
of those useful arts which diminish the toil and increase the happiness
of every individual, irrespective of rank, whose influence and
avocations insensibly contribute their share to the amelioration or
degradation of humanity.
Prominent among the nobles of Mecca, equal in pride of lineage and
superior in real power to the Hashemites, to which tribe the Prophet
belonged, was the family of the Ommeyades. Although not exempt from
a well-grounded suspicion of atheism, they were, from motives of
policy, devoted champions of the worship of the Kaaba. Their idolatrous
predilections were disclosed by the significant names of their
chieftains, and especially by that of their founder, Abd-al-Shams,
“The Slave of the Sun.” While the sheiks of the Hashemites, the
hereditary guardians of the Kaaba, enjoyed the nominal authority of
heads of the Koreish, the military talents and intellectual endowments
of the Ommeyades secured for their chiefs the command of the army,
an advantage by no means counterbalanced by the spiritual influence
possessed by their rivals over the worldly and skeptical population of
Mecca. The commerce of the Holy City, which reaped such substantial
benefits from its position as the centre of Arabian superstition, was
largely in the hands of the Ommeyades. The great caravans, which, at
regular periods, carried on a lucrative traffic with Egypt and Syria,
were placed under the charge of their most distinguished leaders. The
riches amassed by the principal members of the family were prodigious,
and their insolence and cruelty were, in nearly every instance, in
a direct ratio to their wealth and power. Quick to perceive that
their political influence as well as their pecuniary interests would
be seriously imperilled by the spread of Islam, the Ommeyades early
displayed the most unrelenting hostility towards their countryman
Mohammed. They reviled his doctrines. They scoffed at his pretensions
to divine inspiration. His proselytes were followed by the taunts and
insults of the mob of Mecca, instigated by the dissolute young nobles
of the Koreish aristocracy. Long before he had secured a respectable
following, the Prophet, on several occasions, narrowly escaped the
violence of his insidious enemies; and the Hegira itself, the era
from which the magnificent dynasties of Syria and Spain were to date
the acts of their sovereigns, was necessitated by the discovery of a
murderous plot against him hatched and matured by the chiefs of the
Ommeyades.
In the defeat of Ohod, where the Prophet was wounded and nearly lost
his life; at the siege of Medina, which menaced with destruction the
existence of the new religion, the hostile armies were commanded by
Abu-Sofian, the principal sheik of this powerful family. His wife, the
termagant Hind, prompted by the impulses of a savage and a cannibal,
had torn out and partly devoured the liver of Hamza, Mohammed’s uncle,
and had worn a necklace and bracelets of the ears of Moslems who had
fallen bravely in battle. After the surrender of Mecca, Abu-Sofian and
his partisans were induced to show a pretended conformity with the
observances of the detested faith, but only under the threat of instant
death.
The Syrian princes, despite their services to literature and art, were,
almost without exception, profligates and infidels. Ever famous for
voluptuousness and frivolity, they had inherited and improved upon the
seductive dissipations of the Roman Empire. In the ingenious invention
and development of depraved tastes and acts of unspeakable infamy,
Antioch and Damascus stood unrivalled. The use of wine, prohibited by
the Koran, was universal; the debauchery of the court, which rivalled
that of the worst period of imperial degradation, excited the wonder
and disgust of foreigners. The ministers of the most revolting vices,
unmolested, defiled with their presence alike the halls of the palace
and the precincts of the mosque. The drunkenness of the Khalif not
infrequently required the constant attendance of slaves, even in the
audience chamber. Vast sums were lavished upon singing and dancing
boys painted and attired like women, an abomination in the eyes of
every conscientious Mussulman. Female musicians and performers, whose
attractions often obtained over the susceptible monarch a dangerous
and permanent ascendency, were imported at great expense from Mecca,
the focus of the religion and the vice of Asia. A spirit of boundless
extravagance was cultivated as a necessary attribute of regal splendor,
and a timely jest or a ribald song often procured for an unworthy
favorite a reward equal to the revenue of a province.
Damascus, under the rule of the Ommeyades, presented a picture of
licentiousness and luxury unequalled, before or since, by that or any
other community of the Moslem world. The importance of its commerce,
the opulence of its citizens, the beauty of its suburbs, the sanctity
of its traditions, and the prestige of its name gained for the most
venerable city of antiquity the admiration and the reverence of every
traveller. Its temples were embellished with all the magnificent
creations of Oriental art. Its palaces were encrusted with porphyry,
verde-antique, lapis lazuli, and alabaster. Through its gardens, over
whose mosaic walks waved in stately majesty the palm, and where the
air was perfumed with the fragrance of a thousand flowers and aromatic
shrubs, flowed rivulets of the purest water. In every court-yard were
fountains, and in the harems of the wealthy they were often fed with
costly wines. The most gaudy attire was affected even by the populace,
and no material but silk was considered worthy of the dignity of a
Syrian noble. In the shops of the bazaar, divided as are those of the
East to-day into sections appropriated to different wares, were to be
found objects of commerce of every country from Hindustan to Britain.
The various nationalities which composed the population of the city
were each distinguished by a peculiar costume, and the brilliant and
picturesque aspect of the living streams which poured unceasingly
through the streets was enhanced by the multitudes of visitors whom
business or curiosity had attracted to the capital of the khalifate.
With the occupation of the city by the Moslems, its physical aspect,
the character of its population, and the nature of its political
institutions had changed with its religion. From Græco-Syrian, affected
to some extent by Persian influence, it became thoroughly Arab. The
apparently ineradicable ideas of personal liberty entertained by the
Bedouin, inconsistent even with the salutary restraints necessary for
the maintenance of government and the preservation of society, were
carried from the boundless Desert into the circumscribed area of the
Syrian metropolis. Every tribe had its own municipal district or ward,
separated from the others by walls fortified by towers, and closed
at sunset by massive gates. So perfect was this isolation that each
quarter exhibited the picture of a miniature town, independent of the
others, with its markets, caravansaries, mosques, and cemeteries. The
rule of separation was carried still farther in these communities by
assigning different wards to Jews and Christians, a practice still to
be observed in the cities of the Orient. Unobstructed communication
with the surrounding country was obtained by means of gateways in
the principal wall, of which each quarter always possessed one and
sometimes more. This singular arrangement, a constant protest against
the centralized despotism which, despite its professions, is the
governing principle of Islam, greatly facilitated the political
disturbances and insurrections whose prevalence is so marked a feature
in the history of Damascus.
The Great Mosque, inferior in sanctity only to the temples of Mecca,
Medina, and Jerusalem, stood in the very centre of the city. The plan
and decorations of the structure were Byzantine, and still bear no
inconsiderable resemblance to those of the Cathedral of St. Mark at
Venice. In such profusion were mosaics lavished upon its walls that
even the exterior blazed with the intolerable brilliancy of this
elegant ornamentation. Its imposing dome and slender minarets, rising
above a maze of houses and gardens, were the first objects which met
the expectant glance of the camel-driver as he urged his weary beast
over the drifting sands of the Desert. At the fountain of its spacious
court the pilgrim from Yemen and the merchant from Irac, side by side,
performed the lustrations enjoined upon the true believer. Before
its gorgeous Kiblah the curious of every clime, the devout of every
rank, the prince and the beggar, the noble and the dervish, the master
and the slave, in fraternal concord implored the protection and the
blessing of God.
The splendors of the Orient were reflected by the court and the
palace of the khalifate. The quarries of Europe, Africa, and Asia
were ransacked for the rarest marbles. Temples of Pagan deities were
stripped of frieze and capital carved by the hands of famous sculptors
of antiquity. Byzantine mosaics glittered upon the floors and walls
with a sheen that resembled folds of satin drapery and cloth of gold.
The tapestries of Persia, whose designs ignored the injunction of the
Koran prohibiting the representation of forms of animal life, were
suspended, in gorgeous magnificence, from portals of verde-antique and
arcades of Numidian marble and polished jasper. The gilded ceilings
were of odoriferous woods curiously inlaid in bewildering arabesques
with ivory, mother-of-pearl, ebony, and tortoise-shell. The profusion
of water recalled the partiality of the Arab for the precious fluid
associated with the toilsome march of the caravan, with the repose of
the camp, with the refreshing coolness of the verdant oasis, with the
triumph of the foray, with many a happy memory and sacred tradition of
the Desert. In every court-yard sparkled jets of spray drawn from the
sources of the famous rivers Abana and Pharpar. Channels cut in the
marble floors conducted the overflow through the summer apartments of
the palace into the little canals which traversed, in every direction,
the fragrant gardens. The baths, designed to subserve the threefold
purpose of religion, health, and pleasure, were fitted up with almost
incredible luxury. Upon their walls the artists of Constantinople had
exhausted their utmost ingenuity and skill. The basins were of porphyry
and alabaster; the silver pipes were finished with the heads of animals
carved in solid gold. The air that came from the furnace through the
hypocaust was laden with the sweetness of a hundred intoxicating
odors. The divans upon which the bathers reclined were covered with
damask, embroidered with many colored silk in a maze of graceful and
capricious patterns. Through windows of stained glass, high up in the
vaulted ceiling, the brilliant rays of a Syrian sun fell, tempered and
refracted in iridescent hues upon the scene of luxurious repose and
sensuality below.
With the terrible retribution that followed the death of Othman, the
tribal supremacy--and with it the control of the Moslem government--was
transferred to the heads of the Meccan aristocracy of the clan of
Abu-Sofian. The sincerity of their professions had long been doubted.
The unwise appointments of Othman, a member of that family, was the
principal cause of the popular discontent that culminated in his
assassination. Weak and vacillating, his movements were directed by
his uncle Hakem, who had betrayed the confidence of Mohammed, and
had been ignominiously driven from the Hedjaz. Another Ommeyade, the
father of Walid, Governor of Kufa, spat in the face of the Prophet,
and had been executed as a felon, while the sacrilegious conduct of
his worthy son had provoked a dangerous riot in the very mosque of his
capital. Still another, Abdallah-Ibn-Sad, Governor of Egypt, raised
to the coveted dignity of secretary of Mohammed, had perverted the
texts of the Koran, and had fled and apostatized, thereby incurring the
penalty of death. Under Muavia, the first Syrian Khalif, the outward
ceremonies of religion were practised and the precepts of the Koran
obeyed with apparent fidelity. But this conformity, palpably insincere,
was largely the effect of policy. The orthodoxy of a people whose
ancestors were for centuries the ministers of idolatrous worship, who
resisted with every resource of contumely and violence the apostle
of a new religion in his weakness, and assented reluctantly to his
dogmas in his power, and whose political importance was directly
dependent upon the maintenance of that religion, may, with propriety,
be questioned. The Pagan traditions of his ancestors were predominant
in the breast of Muavia. A decent reverence for the Koran, an apparent
assent to its tenets, together with a politic and strict performance of
the ceremonies of its ritual, concealed from his subjects all of the
skepticism of his family, all of the abject superstition of his race.
His palace swarmed with soothsayers and charlatans. Before engaging
in any important undertaking, in the presence of public calamity,
under the weight of domestic misfortune, he appealed for counsel to
the arts of divination, denounced by Mohammed as a relic of idolatry
and offensive to God. In his adherence to these heathen rites he was
encouraged by the influence and example of his favorite consort, the
mother of Yezid, a Bedouin of the tribe of the Beni-Kalb, who, amidst
the luxurious pomp of the Syrian court, still pined for the coarse fare
and untrammelled freedom of the Desert.
The Ommeyade Khalifs grudged no treasure and spared no toil in the
adornment of their capital, the centre of their religion, the seat of
their empire. To their political sagacity are to be attributed the
massive fortifications which preserved the city from the encroachments
of Persia and the plots of daring aspirants to imperial power. Their
paternal beneficence was manifested by aqueducts and countless
subterranean conduits which conveyed an unfailing supply of water into
even the humblest dwellings of the poor. Their enlightened generosity
relieved the suffering, encouraged the learned, promoted commerce,
repressed fanaticism, dispelled the mists of ignorance. The white
banner of their dynasty floated in triumph over the mosque of Medina,
the towers of Bassora, the walls of Kairoan, the citadel of Toledo.
In scientific acumen and literary renown the reputation of the court
of Damascus was far inferior to that subsequently attained by the
Khalifate of Bagdad. The genius of the Syrian seemed less adapted to
the slow and plodding researches of the laboratory than to the noisy
wrangles of theological controversy. But in the material enjoyments
of life, in the pomp which invested the dignity of sovereign, in the
riotous exhibition of sensual extravagance, Damascus was supreme. On
occasions of ceremony the attire of the Khalif was of gold brocade,
and only when he exercised the religious functions of his holy office
incumbent on him as the head of Islam did he condescend to don the
plain white vestments of his order. The menials of his household,
even to the cooks, when they appeared before the Divan, were clad in
damask. The devotees of pleasure were the favorite companions of the
Successor of the Prophet. His days were passed at cock-fights and
horse-races. The number of coursers which contended in these trials
of speed was immense, sometimes amounting to the incredible figure of
one thousand. His nights were amused by the tales of story-tellers,
by the improvisations of poets, by the antics of buffoons, by the
lascivious contortions of professional dancers. The barbaric orgies of
the Bedouin tents were transferred to the palace of the khalifate,
and supplemented with the polished vices of Egypt and the nameless
iniquities of Rome and Constantinople. In the depth and frequency
of his potations, the royal expounder of the Koran might well
challenge the admiration of the seasoned revellers of Scandinavia. His
drinking-horns were of enormous size. The wine used in the banquets was
of the choice vintage of Tayif, a town in the vicinity of Mecca. Potent
of itself, the effect of its draughts was heightened by the addition of
musk and other aphrodisiacs. When the surfeited stomach could endure
no more, emetics were employed to prolong the debauch and obviate its
unpleasant consequences.
What a contrast does all this splendor and profligacy present to the
frugal habits, patriarchal simplicity, and homely virtues of the early
khalifs! What a change from the humble domestic offices performed by
the Arabian Prophet, who often himself prepared his frugal meal and
mended his tattered sandals! How different from the dignified reserve
and earnest piety of Abu-Bekr; how strange when compared with the
stoical demeanor and abstemious life of Omar, who entered Jerusalem
at the head of his victorious army in a garb inferior to that of the
meanest soldier, and whom an ambassador of the King of Persia found
asleep, surrounded by beggars, upon the steps of the Great Mosque of
Medina! And yet a century had not elapsed from the Hegira to the period
when the Ommeyades of Syria reached the meridian of their greatness and
their power.
The liberty enjoyed by women at this period was much greater than
that subsequently conceded them by Mohammedan law. The lax manners of
the Desert had not yet been completely subjected to the restrictions
demanded by new social conditions. During the reigns of the first
khalifs, the barbarous practice which countenanced the traffic in and
service of eunuchs was unknown. Later, however, the close intercourse
with the Byzantine and Persian courts suggested and encouraged the
custom. But it would seem from accounts transmitted by the writers of
the time that the institution of these guardians produced no marked
effect upon the prevailing immorality; and the fidelity of even the
modern eunuch is, as every adventurous Oriental traveller knows, far
from incorruptible. Princes visited clandestinely the harems of their
subjects, and celebrated in licentious verse, without concealment of
name or opportunity, the charms of their mistresses. Ladies of the
royal household intrigued openly with the poets and singers of the
court. With such examples before them, the inferior orders of the
people could hardly be expected to preserve even the appearance of
virtue. As a matter of fact, in no country was society more corrupt,
and the name of Syrian was everywhere a synonym of effeminacy,
infidelity, and vice.
But the excesses of the Khalifs of Damascus, scandalous as they
were, became trifling faults in the eyes of the pious Moslem when he
considered the horrible acts of sacrilege of which these sovereigns
were guilty. The generals of Yezid, after the battle of Harra
which avenged the murder of Othman and decided the fate of Arabia,
delivered up the city of Medina to pillage. A massacre, so cruel as
to provoke the indignation of an age accustomed to scenes of butchery
and violence, was perpetrated by the infuriated soldiery. A thousand
infants were born of the outrages of that fatal day to be branded for
life with the epithet of the “Children of Harra.” The troopers of the
Syrian army, encumbered with their horses, fastened them amidst gibes
and curses in the mosque; the mosque founded by Mohammed upon the
spot of propitious augury, where his favorite camel had halted at
the termination of the flight from Mecca. There, tethered between the
pulpit, whence the texts of the Koran had fallen from the lips of the
Prophet upon the attentive ears of multitudes of believers, and the
tomb where his remains had been reverently laid by the hands of his
companions, the restless horses defiled the place holiest on earth to
the Mussulman save the Kaaba alone. The survivors of Bedr, whom the
favor of Mohammed and the veneration of the populace had exalted to the
rank of an ecclesiastical nobility, perished to a man. At the siege of
Mecca, which soon followed, the privileges that, from time immemorial,
had protected the sacred territory from insult were violated, and the
mosque, set on fire by order of the commander of the army, was, with
the Kaaba, entirely consumed.
Under the administration of the succeeding khalifs of the House of
Ommeyah, the mad freaks of these unworthy chiefs of Islam attained
the climax of extravagance and sacrilege. Exhausted by debauchery and
careless of public opinion, they sent their boon companions and their
concubines, muffled in the royal robes, to repeat the morning prayer
from the pulpit of the mosque. They degraded their sacred office by
the assumption of mean disguises, the better to penetrate the interior
of the houses of their neighbors, inviolable in the sight of every
sincere Mussulman. They maintained and publicly caressed animals whose
contact the law of Islam declared unclean. Their lives were sullied
with incests and every physical abomination. The reverent Moslem will
not tread upon a piece of paper, for fear it may be inscribed with
a sentence from the Koran; but so little regard did the scoffing
Ommeyade princes entertain for its sacred texts that they used it as a
target for their arrows. Each was noted for his predilection for some
favorite vice. Al-Walid I. was seldom sober, and suffered no day to
pass without a drunken orgy. Yezid II. starved himself on account of
the death of a female slave. The conduct of Al-Walid II. was a strange
compound of the tricks of a buffoon and the vagaries of a lunatic.
In absolute defiance of the prejudices of his fellow-Mussulmans, he
insisted that his dogs should accompany his retinue on the Pilgrimage
to Mecca. Although, by virtue of his office, the leader of the great
Pilgrim caravan, who was expected to afford an edifying example of
piety to his followers and direct the customary devotional exercises,
so little did he appreciate the duties of the occasion that he
delegated his spiritual authority to one of his friends, and was with
difficulty dissuaded from erecting a tent on the very summit of the
Kaaba, wherein he might the more publicly outrage the feelings of
the inhabitants of the Holy City by scenes of drunkenness and riot.
A pet monkey, which had been christened Abu-Kais, was an inseparable
companion of his revels. He quaffed the strong wine of Tayif from
the same cup as his royal master, and with him shared alike the
pleasures of intoxication and the depression consequent upon prolonged
indulgence. The Khalif presented his strange associate to grave
ambassadors as a venerable and learned Jew whom the justice of the
Almighty had overtaken, and who, under the spell of enchantment, was
now expiating, in the form of an unclean animal, a life of hypocrisy
and sin. When the Khalif rode abroad, Abu-Kais accompanied him, clad
in silk, and mounted on a donkey magnificently caparisoned. But it
happened one day that Abu-Kais, having imbibed too freely of his
master’s liquor, was thrown from his steed and broke his neck. The
grief of Al-Walid for the loss of the monkey was for weeks the jest
of the capital. Abu-Kais was, to the great scandal of the faithful,
honored with the rites of Moslem burial, and the Khalif, whose poetic
talent was far above mediocrity, composed some plaintive verses as a
well-merited tribute to his conviviality and wisdom.
I have dwelt at some length upon the description of Damascus because
of the close and significant resemblance of the political, social,
religious, and military institutions of Syria to those of Mohammedan
Spain. In the population of the latter country the Syrian element
greatly preponderated in influence, if not in numbers. The first Khalif
of Andaluz was the last scion of the race of the Ommeyades. The feuds,
the prejudices, the traditions, of both nations were identical. The
Syrian exile ever retained in affectionate remembrance the scenes and
events of his childhood. His armies were marshalled in the same order
as were those which went forth to victory under the white banner of
Muavia and Al-Walid. His cities were laid out in imitation of the
irregular lines and labyrinthine streets of the Syrian capital. His
palaces were constructed by architects familiar with the splendid
edifices which were the crowning ornament of the Eastern Khalifate.
The mosaics that sparkled around the Kiblah of the Great Temple of the
West were the handiwork of the same school of Byzantine artists whose
creations had adorned the stately dome which rose over the site of the
ancient Church of St. John the Baptist. The Koran, whose leaves dyed
with the life-blood of Othman were long exhibited with the garments of
the martyred Khalif in the Djalma of Damascus, was for more than two
centuries the object of a veneration approaching to idolatry, rendered
by countless myriads of worshippers, attracted from every quarter of
the globe by the marvels and the sanctity of the Mosque of Cordova.
The gross and offensive ridicule of everything connected with religion
and with a life passed in strict accordance with the principles of
moral rectitude, so popular at the court of Damascus, would have been
considered impolitic and ill-bred by the polished society whose cities
lined the shores of the Tagus and the Guadalquivir. But education and
skepticism were almost equally diffused throughout the Peninsula, and
there was, in fact, but little difference in the opinions concerning
the divine origin and authenticity of the Koran entertained by the
Moslem of Syria and the Moslem of Spain. Nor was the influence of the
occult sciences less prominent in the West than in the East. Superior
intelligence, which brought emancipation from many of the vices of
superstition, did not seem to perceptibly diminish the confidence
inspired by the mummeries and impostures of the wizard and the
astrologer.
The Spanish Arabs, following the example of their Syrian brethren,
raised woman to a position equally removed from the one she so
ignominiously occupied in earlier and in later times, as the giddy toy
of man or the abject slave of religious credulity. The voice of the
princesses of Syria not infrequently decided the policy of the Divan.
The ladies of Cordova were the chosen advisers of the monarch; the
friends of philosophers; the learned associates of great physicians,
astronomers, generals, and diplomatists. Free from the excessive
prodigality, the defiant blasphemy, the extravagant follies of the
Syrian dynasty, the sovereigns of the Western Khalifate suffered no
opportunity to escape which would, even indirectly, secure for their
subjects the substantial benefits of commerce, the manifold advantages
of science, the pleasures of art, the consolations of literature; while
they at the same time, actuated by a lofty ambition not confined by the
limits of their own dominions, fostered those noble aspirations and
incentives to progress which promote the generous emulation of nations.
A society whose religious teachers are atheists and hypocrites, the
contempt of whose rulers is constantly manifested towards a faith to
which they are solely indebted for their authority and whose wickedness
has become proverbial, can hardly survive the first resolute attempt
at its overthrow. And so it happened with the Ommeyades at Damascus.
Not only in Syria, but to the uttermost bounds of the khalifate, the
stories of the vices and skepticism of the Commander of the Faithful
were heard with disgust and horror. The law-abiding were scandalized
by the orgies of the court. The descendants of those who had perished
at Harra and Mecca, the remnant of the recalcitrant non-conformists
of Persia, the seditious populace which had felt the iron hand of
the governors of Irac, were inflamed with the desire and the hope of
vengeance. The devout Mussulman, who conscientiously observed the
injunctions of the Koran and to whom the traditions of Islam were
sacred as connected with the life and sayings of the Prophet, was
shocked at the blasphemy which the Successor of Mohammed did not
hesitate to utter, even within the precincts of the mosque and before
the very altar of God. From time to time the popular indignation was
displayed in insurrections, which, being spontaneous and deficient
in organization and leadership, were crushed without difficulty. But
under the reign of Merwan II., the fourteenth khalif of the dynasty,
a formidable rebellion broke out in Persia. The descendants of Abbas,
the uncle of Mohammed and the grandfather of Ali, openly laid claim
to the throne of the Orient. Their party was supported by Abu-Muslim,
the greatest military commander of the age. Attached for generations
to the memory of Ali, the Persians flocked by thousands to the camp of
the insurgents, and the pretender, Abul-Abbas, having established his
authority over the eastern provinces, moved westward to the conquest of
Syria. Aware, when too late, of the magnitude of the impending danger,
which at first had been despised, the Khalif brought into requisition
the entire resources of his empire to repel the invasion. In the plains
of the Zab, a tributary of the Tigris, and not far from the site of
ancient Nineveh, the two armies met in a conflict upon whose result
were staked the destinies of the two great factions of Islam. The valor
of the Abbasides, aided by the treason which pervaded the ranks of the
enemy, prevailed; the forces of Merwan were routed; and the foundations
of a new empire were laid which was destined to eclipse, by the glories
of Bagdad, the dazzling and meretricious splendor of the court of
Damascus. And now a frightful proscription was inaugurated. Even the
schismatics, whose lukewarm support had incurred the suspicions of the
Ommeyades, were unable to escape the sword of the conqueror. It soon
became evident that the fury of the Abbasides would be satisfied only
with the absolute extermination of the hostile faction. The deposed
Khalif, Merwan, who had fled to Egypt, was defeated in a skirmish and
killed. Every member of his house whose rank was sufficiently exalted
to inspire the usurper with apprehensions was ruthlessly murdered.
Where open violence did not avail, the basest treachery was employed.
Abdallah, the uncle of Abul-Abbas, by affording some of the exiles
assistance, had succeeded in gaining the confidence of the proscribed
faction. He solemnly promised an asylum to all who would resort to
Damascus and invoke his protection. Deluded by his professions, many
left their hiding-places, where they had been in comparative security,
to expose themselves to the designs of a perfidious enemy. When all had
arrived who could be induced to confide in him, Abdallah gave a banquet
in honor of his distinguished protegés, which more than seventy of the
Ommeyades attended. In the midst of the festivities, at a given signal,
a band of soldiers burst in upon the assembly, and the unhappy guests
were massacred. Rugs and curtains were thrown over their prostrate
bodies; the revelry was renewed; and the partisans of the Abbasides
toasted the monster whose ferocious cunning had cut off his most
dangerous adversaries by the sacrifice of the rites of hospitality.
Within the tent of the Bedouin the life of his most deadly enemy is
sacred. But to the Arab of Syria or Persia no promise was binding, no
engagement was inviolable, where his interests or his ambition were
concerned. Thus had the fatal influence of Roman and Byzantine manners
vitiated the nature of a people whose sense of manly dignity and
personal honor had for ages been conspicuous amidst the wide-spread
depravity of Asia.
Every member of the detested race whom the blood-thirsty diligence
of their foes could discover was hunted like a wild beast and put
to death. Children were butchered in the presence of their parents.
Women who refused to disclose the hiding-places of their kindred,
or the whereabouts of their jewels, were stabbed without ceremony.
Abu-Ibn-Muavia, one of the noblest cavaliers of Damascus, was deprived
of a hand and foot, and paraded through the cities of Syria upon an ass
until pain and exhaustion relieved him of his misery. The ferocious
Abbasides were not content with outrages upon the living; they even
violated the tombs of the khalifs and scattered to the winds the
remains of those princes whose glory and whose crimes had adorned or
defiled the throne of the East.
Amidst the universal ruin of his family, one prince alone of the
Ommeyades, Abd-al-Rahman-Ibn-Muavia, had survived. Of rare promise and
endowed with many virtues, he had long been the ornament of the court
of Syria. He had received the best education obtainable in the schools
of the capital. His mind had been enlarged by travel. The fortuitous
advantages of wealth and royal lineage added but little to the
prestige attaching to his name. The conversation of learned men, daily
attendance upon the proceedings of the Divan, intimate association with
the highest dignitaries of the state, all had aided to familiarize
him with the complex machinery of government. The turbulence of the
times necessarily enlisted the military services of the various
members of the royal house, and Abd-al-Rahman was not deficient in the
knowledge of those duties required by the stirring life of the camp
and the battle-field. In proficiency in manly exercises, in the daring
adventures of the chase, in skill in the use of arms, he surpassed all
competitors.
An accidental and timely absence from the court had preserved the
young prince from the fate of his kindred. As soon as intelligence
of the massacre reached him, he fled to an estate which he possessed
near the Euphrates, and there he was soon joined by his household.
But the horsemen of Abul-Abbas, whose implacable cruelty had acquired
for him the appropriate title of Al-Saffah, The Sanguinary, were
already upon his track; his villa was surrounded, and by swimming the
river he barely escaped with his life. By dint of perseverance and
courage, after many perils, he succeeded in reaching Palestine, where
he was found by Bedr, a freedman of his father, who brought him his
sister’s jewels, generously donated to relieve his necessities. From
Palestine he passed in disguise into Africa, a province which had not
yet renounced allegiance to the Ommeyades, and whose governor had been
one of the most ardent supporters of the proscribed faction. Here
he was hospitably welcomed, and at once found himself surrounded by
friends and refugees who had eluded the vigilance of the Abbasides.
The spirits of the exile rose with the present assurance of security
in the companionship of adherents whose sympathies were aroused, and
whose passions were excited by the story of his wrongs. Years before,
the downfall of the race of Ommeyah had been foretold by an astrologer,
who had, at the same time, predicted the future greatness of the
illustrious fugitive. The intellect of Abd-al-Rahman, though strong,
was not proof against the oracles of superstition which flattered his
vanity while they inspired him with awe, and he had listened, with all
the credulity of an Oriental, to the mysterious hints of the charlatan.
The first portion of the prediction had been verified. With the single
exception of himself, the princes of his house had been exterminated.
His conscious mental superiority, his political experience, his keen
insight into human nature, his public and domestic virtues, persuaded
him and suggested to his partisans that no one of his family was so
worthy of a throne. Actuated by these ambitious feelings, and rashly
permitting his aspirations to prevail over his gratitude, Abd-al-Rahman
began to entertain hopes of securing the sovereignty of Africa. His
imprudent speeches came to the ears of the Viceroy, Ibn-Habib, a stern
old soldier, who was a relative of Yusuf and had once held high command
in the army of Spain. He also was acquainted with the astrologer’s
prediction, and was not disposed to contribute to its accomplishment
by the loss of his own life and the sacrifice of his power. Despising
the guests whose base conduct had so ill requited his hospitality, he
tendered his allegiance to the Abbaside Khalifate. All members of the
obnoxious faction were at once expelled from the country. Abd-al-Rahman
was forced to seek in disguise the most secluded regions of the Desert.
His condition became more and more precarious. A reward of a thousand
pieces of gold was offered for his head. He sought concealment among
the Bedouins, but their generous hospitality was not able to protect
him from the tireless emissaries of the Viceroy, who pursued him from
camp to camp and from tribe to tribe. On one occasion, he escaped from
a tent just as the Berbers rushed into it. On another, the wife of a
sheik concealed him in a corner under a pile of her garments. His means
long since exhausted, he became dependent upon charity. His food was
coarse and scanty, his clothes old and tattered. Although his youth
had been pampered with the choicest delicacies of a royal table, he
ate the barley bread and drank the camel’s milk of the douars without
a murmur. The nobility of his birth, the suavity of his manners, his
skill and daring in the chase, and the patience with which he submitted
to the trials of adverse fortune, gained for him the respect and esteem
of his wild associates. Even in his destitution he never ceased to
aspire to the throne of Africa, and, while his efforts were futile, the
activity of the indignant Viceroy kept him in continual apprehension.
At length, after five years of vagabondage and perilous adventure, he
became the guest of the Berber tribe of the Beni-Nafsa, a branch of the
Zenetah, from which his mother derived her origin and whose members
inhabited the mountainous region to the south of Ceuta. Here, under the
guardianship of his fellow-tribesmen, an alluring prospect was erelong
opened to his ambition, and the penniless wanderer, without country or
kindred, was suddenly called by the voice of a distant nation to found
a new empire and fulfil a grand and magnificent destiny.
In the mean time, the civil war in Spain between Yusuf and Ahmar, ruler
of Saragossa, had been proceeding with increasing atrocity but with
various and doubtful fortune. Owing to the close relations maintained
by Africa and the Spanish Peninsula with each other, the armies of the
latter country being constantly recruited from the martial population
of the former, and the governors themselves being connected by the
ties of blood, an abiding interest in the political fortunes of their
brethren beyond the strait was naturally manifested by the Arab and
Berber tribes, and intelligence of every important movement in Spain
was transmitted to the cities and camps of Al-Maghreb with unfailing
regularity. The vigilance and ability of the Viceroy of Africa had
at length convinced Abd-al-Rahman of the hopelessness of any attempt
to usurp his power. Ease of access to Andalusia and the distracted
condition of that country, with whose troubles he was thoroughly
familiar, caused him to abandon the scheme which had for so long been
the cherished object of his life for another which promised to be less
impracticable. A seasonable supply of money had lately reached the
impoverished prince from his friends in Syria. With this he despatched
the faithful Bedr, who had without complaint shared the privations
of his exile, to Spain; after entrusting him with a letter, in which
he laid claim to the throne by right of inheritance, directed to
the partisans of his family who, to the number of several hundred,
inhabited the eastern portion of Andalusia. The letter was in due
time delivered to the chiefs of the Syrians, who secretly convoked an
assembly of their tribesmen to determine what course should be pursued.
The hereditary loyalty of the adherents of the Ommeyades; the apparent
justice of the title of Abd-al-Rahman; the anarchy that everywhere
prevailed, and whose effects were at that time painfully manifest
in the threefold scourge of massacre, famine, and disease; and the
prospect of official promotion, assisted by a judicious distribution
of the gold brought by Bedr, decided the suffrages of the council in
favor of the prince. Scarcely had this opinion been adopted when a new
difficulty was added to those which had already rendered the issue
of the enterprise doubtful as well as hazardous. The Syrians were
ordered by the Emir to attend him in an expedition to the North. But,
by plausible excuses, the chieftains were enabled to defer the time of
departure, and a gift of a thousand pieces of gold was even obtained
from Yusuf under pretext of relieving the pressing necessities of
their dependents, but, in fact, to further a conspiracy having for its
end his own dethronement. A ship was at once equipped; Abd-al-Rahman
was conveyed with a small escort of Berbers to the coast of the
Peninsula, and, landing at the port of Almuñecar, was received with the
acclamations of a great multitude attracted to the spot by the combined
motives of curiosity and loyal enthusiasm. After being duly proclaimed
Emir, Abd-al-Rahman was conducted to a castle not far from Loja as the
guest of the owner Obeydallah, one of his most zealous adherents.
While these events were transpiring in the South, the expedition of
Yusuf against the rebellious Berbers of Saragossa had been singularly
fortunate. Overawed by superior numbers, the insurgents had purchased
immunity by the craven surrender of their leaders, Amir, Wahab, and
Hobab. With these redoubtable chieftains in his custody, the Emir was
moving leisurely southward when he was informed of the defeat of a
body of his troops by the Basques, and in a fit of ungovernable rage
he ordered the immediate execution of his prisoners. By this cruel
and impolitic act,--for the culprits were of the purest blood of the
Koreish, and were not responsible for the disaster to his arms,--he
alienated many of his stanchest supporters and materially increased
the following and resources of his rival. A few hours afterwards a
courier brought tidings of the landing of Abd-al-Rahman and of the new
and formidable danger that menaced his crown. Thirsting for revenge,
the dependents of the massacred captives deserted his standard by
hundreds. The forces of the Ommeyade prince increased daily; the
Yemenites, who regarded his family with a hatred intensified by
generations of injury and oppression, but whose detestation of Yusuf
was even deeper than that entertained towards the Syrian dynasty, were
easily induced to embrace the cause of the former; and, by a strange
revolution of fortune, the fugitive, who but a few weeks before had
been in hourly peril of his life, now found himself invested with
imperial authority and the commander of a veteran army of several
thousand men. Fully appreciating the dangerous character of the revolt,
as well as the uncertain consequences of a prolonged conflict, Yusuf
attempted negotiation. Envoys bearing valuable presents were despatched
to the camp of Abd-al-Rahman, who were authorized to promise him the
daughter of the Emir in marriage and an estate commensurate with his
dignity if he would renounce all claims to the throne. The advisers
of the prince, whose enthusiasm had somewhat abated since they had
taken time to reflect upon the possible results of their temerity,
recommended that the proposals be accepted. A bitter taunt, however,
provoked by the awkwardness of one of Abd-al-Rahman’s retinue,
abruptly terminated the negotiation; the sarcastic envoy was cast into
a dungeon; and the embassy of the Emir, dismissed without ceremony,
narrowly escaped being plundered before it reached the gates of Cordova.
No further course was now possible except an appeal to arms. The
prevalence of anarchy, the frequent change of rulers, the pernicious
immigration of barbarians from Africa, had thoroughly disorganized
society. The allegiance of every subject was regarded as a mere matter
of policy or choice. The armies were little better than banditti.
Even the ties of tribal union had been relaxed, save when the spirit
of vengeance required to be satisfied in accordance with the bloody
traditions of the Desert. Treachery was so rife that no man was certain
of the sincerity of his neighbor or could trust the loyalty of his
friend. It was no uncommon occurrence for troops at the critical moment
of a battle to publicly desert to the enemy, and immediately turn their
weapons against their late companions-in-arms. The grave uncertainties
of a contest, carried on under such circumstances, are apparent to
every reader. The forces of Abd-al-Rahman had recently received an
important accession by the arrival of a considerable number of African
cavalry, warriors of the clan of the Zenetah, whose tribal connections,
as well as their inexperience in the political intrigues of the
emirate, rendered their allegiance less precarious than that of the
veterans to whom all masters were alike and whose principal incentive
was plunder.
Early in the spring the army of Abd-al-Rahman took up its march with a
view to the capture of Cordova. Its course, however, was not directly
towards the capital, but farther to the south, where the Syrian and
Egyptian tribes--whose sentiments were known to be favorable to the
cause of the Ommeyades--had been distributed. Everywhere the insurgents
were welcomed with enthusiasm; the bravest warriors joined their ranks;
and the towns, one after another, including Seville, the most important
city of Andalusia in point of population, opened their gates to the
pretender. Abd-al-Rahman had scarcely received the homage of his new
subjects before he learned that Yusuf, who, aided by his counsellor
Al-Samil, had collected a formidable army in the provinces of Toledo
and Murcia, had marched from Cordova to intercept him. Leaving the
city, the prince proceeded northward with the expectation of seizing
the capital during the absence of the Emir. But the crafty old soldier
was not to be taken unawares. The movement of the insurgents was at
once detected; Yusuf retraced his steps; and for several hours the
two armies raced on together with the river between them. Arriving
at a village called Mosara, situated about a league from Cordova,
Abd-al-Rahman halted. The clamors of his soldiers, who had been on
short rations and were greatly fatigued by the rapid march they had
been compelled to undertake, now rose ominously on his ears. A council
of war was called, and it was decided to attack the enemy on the
following morning. By means of a ruse, which reflected little credit
upon his character, Abd-al-Rahman was enabled to cross the river
without molestation. He sent word to Yusuf that he was willing to renew
the negotiations which had been broken off before the commencement
of hostilities; that the terms were entirely acceptable; and that
there was so fair a prospect of peace that the treaty could be more
conveniently arranged if the two camps were more accessible to each
other. Duped by these plausible representations, the Emir suffered his
enemies to pass the Guadalquivir, and, learning of their half-famished
condition, even sent provisions to their camp. At dawn the troops of
Abd-al-Rahman prepared for action. The day was propitious. It was the
anniversary of the conflict of the Prairie, where an ancestor of the
young prince had signally defeated an adversary whose title was the
same as that of Yusuf. The coincidence was carried still further, for
it was not forgotten by the superstitious Arabs that the vizier of the
Emir and his royal tribesman both belonged to the race of Kais. These
prognostics of success were diligently circulated through the ranks of
the Ommeyades, already elated by the prospect of victory. The unwelcome
omens did not have a less powerful influence upon the imagination
of their opponents, for, disheartened and faltering, they regarded
themselves as having incurred the displeasure of heaven. The battle was
half lost before it fairly began.
So little confidence had the Yemenites in their commander, whose life
and fortunes were staked on the issue, that the prince was compelled
to exchange his war-horse for an old and crippled mule to avoid the
suspicion of intending to abandon his followers in the event of
disaster. The royal standard was a white turban attached to a lance;
an ensign of equally humble origin, and destined to no less celebrity
than the leathern apron of the Persian dynasty, for many generations
the symbol of conquest, empire, and glory. The cavalry of Abd-al-Rahman
routed that of the enemy, driving it back upon the infantry and
throwing the latter into confusion. The right wing and centre soon gave
way; the left wing maintained its position for some hours, when it also
was broken. The plain was covered with fugitives, who were speared
without mercy and trampled to death by the savage Zenetes. Yusuf and
Al-Samil succeeded in escaping by the fleetness of their horses; the
former fled to Merida, the latter took refuge in Jaen. Such was the
battle of Mosara, upon whose result hinged the destinies of Spain.
The contest was hardly over before the characteristic perfidy of the
Yemenite chieftains began to manifest itself. To the latter the lineage
of Abd-al-Rahman was peculiarly offensive. Aside from the general and
deep-seated prejudice they entertained against his family, many of
them were descendants of the martyrs and exiles of Medina and Harra.
Having satiated their revenge by the rout of the Maadites, and being
restrained from indiscriminate pillage by the command of Abd-al-Rahman,
Abu-Sabbah, one of the leaders, proposed to assassinate him. The
suggestion was listened to calmly by his associates, who discussed
it without regard to its moral aspect but solely with a view to its
present expediency and political consequences, and the more readily
as tribal interest was ever the controlling motive of their conduct.
Notified of their treasonable deliberations, Abd-al-Rahman lost no
time in surrounding himself with a guard. Thus foiled, the leader of
the conspirators dissembled his chagrin and endeavored by extravagant
demonstrations of loyalty to atone for his crime, but the penetration
of Abd-al-Rahman was not to be deceived, and, some months afterwards,
the treacherous Abu-Sabbah was summarily executed.
Although attended with success at the outset, the task of Abd-al-Rahman
was far more difficult than he had anticipated. The chiefs of the
opposite faction soon repaired their fortunes and appeared at the
head of fresh troops. While Abd-al-Rahman was on the march to attack
Yusuf, who had joined Al-Samil in the province of Jaen, the Emir sent
his son, Abu-Zaid, by unfrequented roads, to seize and recover the
capital. The city was surprised and the garrison made prisoners, but
the hasty return of the Ommeyades rendered an immediate evacuation
necessary. Resuming his march, Abd-al-Rahman proceeded rapidly towards
the mountains of Jaen. Yusuf and Al-Samil, conscious of their present
weakness, made overtures for peace; and a treaty was concluded by
whose terms Abd-al-Rahman was to allow the Emir and his vizier the
unmolested possession of their estates, and they, on the other hand,
were to surrender the strongholds held by their partisans. It was also
stipulated that Yusuf should reside permanently at Cordova, where two
of his sons, Abu-Zaid and Abu-al-Aswad, were detained as hostages.
The renunciation of authority by Yusuf left Abd-al-Rahman the nominal
master of the Peninsula. But the elements of discord, which had so
long harassed the country, were too powerful to be restrained by the
influence of a youth who was a comparative stranger to the majority
of his subjects. Anarchy, sustained and promoted by the avarice of
lawless bands and the ambition of unscrupulous chieftains, had become
the normal condition of a society whose constituents were accustomed
to be arrayed against each other, and the services of whose soldiers
were notoriously at the disposal of whoever was willing to pay the
most liberally for them. At first the deposed Emir and his faithful
councillor seemed resigned to the reverses which had imposed upon them
the conditions of vassalage. They lived in apparent harmony with the
new sovereign. Their advice was frequently solicited and adopted in
matters of importance. Their vanity was flattered and their dignity
sustained by the pomp of establishments not inferior in splendor to
those which they had possessed in their days of independence. Not so,
however, with the subordinate officers and ministers of the emirate.
Under the new administration all employments of responsibility and
power had been vested in the friends and adherents of Abd-al-Rahman.
The opportunities for peculation and official corruption, once so
abundant and lucrative, had disappeared, or were enjoyed by aliens
and hereditary enemies. From positions of trust and circumstances of
opulence many distinguished nobles had been degraded to a life of
insignificance and poverty. These malcontents, whose tribal relations
with Yusuf gave them ready access to his presence, took advantage of
every occasion to influence his hatred and stimulate his ambition with
tales of oppression and hopes of independence. The constitutional
weakness of the Emir was not proof against these specious
representations, incessantly urged by his partisans. Having secretly
made his preparations he fled to Merida. Pursuit was fruitless, and
the sole consolation left to Abd-al-Rahman was the knowledge that
Al-Samil and the sons of Yusuf were still in his power. Mortified
beyond expression, and apprehensive that they also might escape, he
ordered them to be cast into prison.
The reputation of Yusuf, and the habitual discontent of the masses,
naturally inclined to disorder, soon provided him with a well-appointed
force of twenty thousand men. With this he laid siege to Seville, whose
governor at that time was Abd-al-Melik, an Ommeyade refugee. Scarcely
had the Emir invested the city when he abandoned the undertaking, and
attempted, by a rapid march, to seize Cordova before its garrison could
be reinforced. He was too late; the army of Abd-al-Rahman was already
in motion, and Yusuf retired only to meet the forces of Abd-al-Melik,
whose son had come to his aid with a large detachment, enabling him
to approach the enemy from the rear. A battle was fought, and Yusuf
sustained a crushing defeat. With great difficulty the discomfited
prince escaped the swords of the victors, and he had almost reached
Toledo when he was intercepted and cut down by a party of Yemenites,
who hoped by this important service to obtain favor for themselves and
peace for their distracted country. Thus perished miserably the most
formidable adversary of Abd-al-Rahman. His distinguished connexions;
the military experience of half a century; the responsible commands
which he had administered; the prestige that attached to him as the
successful opponent of Charles Martel; the consideration resulting from
the exercise and enjoyment of royal dignity; the numerous following
which had shared his favor and hoped for the re-establishment of
his power, had acquired for him a reputation and an influence far
beyond his merits. His character was a strange compound of noble and
vicious qualities. Courageous on the field of battle, in his tent he
became the timorous dupe of every conjuror, the obsequious slave
of every charlatan. While not destitute of resolution in moments of
danger, he accepted, without question, the pernicious advice of evil
counsellors. So absolute was this dependence that, during the latter
years of his life, his vizier, Al-Samil, was recognized as the actual
master of Spain. But, despite his failings, Yusuf was not deficient in
generosity, nor in those qualifications which raise men to political
eminence and military fame; and it was not without reason, when the
events of his extraordinary career are considered, that popular rumor
and personal esteem conferred upon him the flattering distinction of
being one of the most accomplished rulers of his time.
As soon as he was informed of the death of his rival, Abd-al-Rahman,
instructed by experience of the danger attending temporizing measures,
proceeded to dispose permanently of those members of Yusuf’s party from
whom he had reason to apprehend future annoyance. The vizier, Al-Samil,
whose talents had long exercised a controlling influence in the state,
and whose moroseness of temper had been aggravated by punishment,
in all probability unmerited, was quietly strangled in prison.
Abu-Zaid, the elder of the Emir’s sons, whose lives, as hostages,
had been forfeited by their father’s rebellion, was beheaded. The
extreme penalty was commuted, in the case of the younger, to perpetual
imprisonment, and Abu-al-Aswad, who was indebted for this clemency
to his tender age, was immured in one of the strongest towers of the
citadel of Cordova.
These violent and decisive measures were productive of only temporary
security. The sight of the grisly heads of the Fihrites nailed over the
gates of the capital awakened resentment and horror rather than fear.
The country still remained in a turmoil. Bands of marauding Berbers
roamed far and wide, molesting the peasantry, threatening the cities,
closing the avenues of trade, discouraging all the avocations of peace.
The universal agitation at length developed into open rebellion.
Hischem-Ibn-Ozra, a Fihrite chieftain, whose relationship to Yusuf,
joined to an enterprising spirit, gave him considerable political
influence, organized an insurrection in the North, and occupied
Toledo. Strongly garrisoned by the insurgents, it had held out against
the army sent to reduce it for more than a year, when tidings were
received by the court of Cordova of the landing of a more dangerous
enemy than had yet menaced the stability of the newly established
kingdom. The Abbasides, whose capital had been removed from Damascus
to Bagdad, had, under a succession of able princes, reached the summit
of intellectual greatness and military renown. They had seen, with
envy and indignation, the accomplishment of the ambitious designs of
the most implacable enemy of their house. He had almost miraculously
escaped the manifold snares which their ingenuity had laid for him.
The magnificent reward which had been offered for his head had failed
to corrupt the fidelity of the indigent and grasping Berbers, whose
cupidity was seldom proof against the most insignificant bauble. If of
sufficient importance to excite apprehension when a fugitive, how much
more was to be feared from his ambition and revenge as a rival; the
sovereign of a mighty kingdom, the claimant of the honors and dignity
of the khalifate! Resolved to crush, if possible, the growing power of
the Ommeyades before it became too strong to be successfully assailed,
the Abbaside Khalif, Abu-Giafar-al-Mansur, ordered Ala-Ibn-Mugayth wali
of Kairoan, to attempt the subjection of Spain. In order to inspire
deeper confidence in the powers delegated to his lieutenant, a black
silken banner, whose color was the emblem of his party, accompanied
that officer’s commission. The details of this undertaking--the more
ominous because it presented an opportunity for the reconciliation of
factions; appealed strongly to the turbulent and rapacious spirit of
the populace; and asserted a prescriptive claim of authority based
upon conquest and dominion hitherto tacitly accorded to the monarch of
the East--had been carefully pre-arranged. An understanding had been
established between the malcontents of the Peninsula and the court
of Bagdad. The rebels besieged in Toledo maintained, through their
friends, frequent and uninterrupted communication with the Viceroy of
Africa. When Ala-Ibn-Mugayth landed in the province of Beja, he was
received with even more enthusiasm than had been manifested on the
arrival of Abd-al-Rahman. The Khalif of Bagdad was proclaimed. The
prince of the Ommeyades was not only declared a rebel and an usurper,
but an effort was made to inflame the passions of the combatants, in
a struggle already sufficiently malevolent, by investing it with a
religious character, and Abd-al-Rahman was declared a schismatic and
an infidel. A price was set upon his head, and the revered name and
authority of the Successor of the Prophet was invoked to effect his
assassination, which was to be rewarded with the distinguished favor
of the sovereign, a treasure of gold and jewels, and, by what was of
far more value to the devoted fanatic, eternal happiness in the life to
come.
It soon became evident that this outbreak was no ordinary insurrection.
The Yemenites, whose loyalty to the cause of Abd-al-Rahman had always
been suspected; the Fihrites, who had recent grudges to satisfy;
the Berbers, ever ready for bloodshed and rapine; the zealots of
every faction, who regarded the title of the Ommeyades as a flagrant
usurpation of divine authority, enrolled themselves in the ranks of
the Abbasides. The constant defection of large bodies of troops made it
necessary to draw on the army investing Toledo, and, in consequence,
the rebel garrison of that city was soon united with the already
immense host of the wali of Kairoan. Many of the towns of Andalusia
were occupied. The fertile environs of the capital were swept by the
Berber cavalry. Abd-al-Rahman was besieged in Carmona, whose garrison
was soon reduced to extremity through lack of provisions. The siege had
lasted two months when the Abbasides, confiding in their overwhelming
numbers, began to grow careless. The officers neglected their duties.
The sentinels relaxed their vigilance. With the proverbial inconstancy
of the Oriental, discontented with delay and impatient of hardship,
hundreds deserted their standards. Aware of these circumstances,
Abd-al-Rahman, at the head of a picked band of warriors, made a sudden
attack by night. The enemy was surprised; a panic seized the camp; all
thought of resistance was abandoned, and at dawn the chieftains of the
hostile army and seven thousand of their men lay dead on the field of
battle. The commander and his principal officers were decapitated; and
their heads, after having been thoroughly cleansed, were packed in
camphor and salt, with a label fastened to an ear of each to designate
the name and rank of the owner. These ghastly trophies were then
placed in sealed bags, together with the commission of the wali and
the standard of the Abbasides, and conveyed by a merchant to Kairoan,
where they were secretly deposited at night in the market-place. When
Abu-Giafar-Al-Mansur received intelligence of the catastrophe that
had befallen his enterprise, and of the fearful manner in which that
intelligence had been communicated, he exclaimed, “It is the act of a
demon; God be praised who has placed the sea between me and such an
enemy.”
The fate of the rebels before Carmona struck terror into the garrison
of Toledo, again blockaded by a great army. Negotiations were opened
with the besiegers, and favorable terms obtained, conditional upon the
surrender of the most prominent leaders to the vengeance of the Emir.
Orders were then received to conduct the prisoners to Cordova. At some
distance from its destination the escort was met by a tailor, a barber,
and a basket-maker, each provided with the implements of his calling.
The soldiers halted, and the barber removed the hair and beards of the
rebels. The tailor enveloped their bodies in strait-jackets of coarse
cloth, and the basket-maker wove for each one a pannier, which, closely
encircling his waist, rendered all movement of his lower extremities
impossible. These grotesque figures were then slung on donkeys, and,
after having been paraded through the streets of the city, accompanied
by the taunts and missiles of a howling mob, were dragged to the place
of public execution and crucified.
The Berbers, whose predatory habits kept the first emirs in a state
of constant apprehension and whose savage instincts were the ultimate
cause of the ruin of the Moslem empire in Spain, now once more took
up arms in defiance of the sovereign authority. A shrewd adventurer,
Chakya by name, of the tribe of Miknesa, had, by a spurious claim of
descent from the Prophet, through Fatima his daughter, and by the
assumption of miraculous gifts, succeeded in gaining the confidence
of these superstitious barbarians. His profession of school-master
acquired for him a reputation for extensive learning in an age of
ignorance; and the assiduous study of the Koran invested his person
with a sanctity whose advantages he did not underrate in the selection
of means to be employed for the realization of his schemes of ambition.
The extravagant veneration of the Berbers for individuals supposed
to be possessed of supernatural endowments, a sentiment which, in
this instance, perfectly coincided with their inclinations for war
and rapine, caused them to hasten from all directions to support the
claims of the impostor. The latter displayed no little political tact
and generalship. His active emissaries tempted the fealty of every
chieftain accessible to their insinuating arts. His armies, inspired
with the ardor of fanaticism, and directed with an ability not to be
expected from a leader hitherto without experience in the conduct of
military operations, repeatedly defeated the forces of Abd-al-Rahman;
ravaged his dominions to the very environs of the capital; and, secure
in the mountains of the West, defied the entire power of the government
for nearly ten years. The political situation was further complicated
by the defection of the Yemenites, who, on the eve of a decisive
battle, assailed the Emir in the rear. The remarkable prominence
attained by Chakya was eventually fatal to the continuance of his
power. A Berber chieftain of great influence was approached by the
agents of Abd-al-Rahman and persuaded to betray his party. In the midst
of a fiercely contested engagement the Berbers gave way; their lines
were broken; and a frightful butchery ensued, in which the impostor
lost thirty thousand of his followers. His control over the minds of
his dupes was, however, not shaken by this disaster, and he maintained
the struggle for four years longer, when he was murdered by his
comrades in a private quarrel. The great mound enclosing the remains of
these victims of treason and carnage was, more than two hundred years
afterwards, a prominent feature of the landscape, and a significant
memorial of the suicidal wars which consumed the resources and retarded
the progress of the Moslems of Spain.
Notwithstanding the bloody retribution provoked by every attempt to
overturn the throne of Abd-alRahman, conspiracy continued to follow
conspiracy without interruption. Abu-al-Aswad, the surviving son
of Yusuf, imprisoned at Cordova, had, under pretence of blindness,
deceived his keepers and escaped by swimming the Guadalquivir.
Incredulous at first, the guards subjected him to every test they could
devise, all of which he endured with remarkable patience and without a
murmur. The imposture was carried on for months, and in consequence of
his supposed affliction he was less carefully watched, and was indulged
with many unusual privileges. One morning, while bathing with other
prisoners in the river, he took advantage of a favorable opportunity,
and swam to the opposite shore without having been observed. His
friends met him, provided him with clothes and a horse, and a few days
found him safe in Toledo. In this city, the seat of Berber and Yemenite
intrigue, an enterprise of great moment was then maturing. The chief
parties to it were Ibn-Habib, the son-in-law of Yusuf, and Al-Arabi,
the wali of Barcelona. These malcontents had for some time maintained
a correspondence with Charlemagne. The escape of Abu-al-Aswad was part
of the preconcerted design, his noble descent and his sufferings as
a captive from childhood exciting the sympathies of the populace and
rendering him an important ally. A treaty had already been executed,
and presents and compliments had been exchanged between the Khalif
of Bagdad and the Emperor. It was said that a secret understanding
existed between these two potentates, and that the standard of the
Abbasides was to be displayed by the insurgents, indirectly in aid of
the Christians and with the tacit assent of the Moslem sovereign of
the East. The principal conspirators sought the King of the Franks at
Paderborn, where he was celebrating his triumph over the Saxons by
the compulsory baptism of thousands of these Pagan barbarians. The
ambition, the zeal, and the adventurous spirit of the Frankish monarch
were aroused by consideration of the project, and he agreed to invade
the Peninsula with a large force, which was to be supported by an
uprising in the North. The plan having been minutely arranged, and the
rôle of each conspirator assigned to him, the insurgent chieftains took
their departure.
Implacable, indeed, must have been the resentment of the Commander
of the Faithful, which could thus liberally contribute to surrender
a territory, acquired by such an expenditure of Moslem blood, to the
most relentless foe of Islam. The chances of success were largely in
favor of the coalition. The martial superiority of the Franks had been
signally displayed on the field of Poitiers over troops more warlike
and formidable than those which Abd-al-Rahman could now bring into
action. The country was exhausted by half a century of internecine
conflict. Frequent insurrections had effaced alike the sentiment of
loyalty and the reproach of treason. An undercurrent of disaffection
pervaded even the society of the court; and the inconstancy of the
Berbers, dangerous in itself, was even less to be feared than the
deadly malice of tribal hatred, the confirmed habit of resistance, and
the ruthless vengeance of disappointed ambition.
The motives which induced Charlemagne to undertake this expedition were
of a religious as well as of a political nature; but he was impelled
less by an ambition to rid the country of infidels and to exert the
powers of compulsory proselytism than by an insatiable craving for
territorial aggrandizement and military glory. The project was not an
original one. It had been formed ten years previously by his father,
and its prosecution had only been prevented by his death. The great
sovereign so lauded as the champion of Catholicism was anything but a
zealot. His orthodoxy was strongly suspected by the churchmen of his
time; in fact, it was whispered that he was more than half a Pagan.
His public conduct and private habits exhibited little evidence of the
beneficent influence of the Christian virtues. His life was stained
with deeds of perfidy and violence. The morals of his court were
proverbial for their laxity, a condition to which the monarch himself
afforded an unworthy example by the practice of extensive concubinage.
The most intimate political connections were maintained between the
courts of Aix-la-Chapelle and Bagdad, associations regarded by the
devout of the age with pious horror. It is therefore absurd to suppose,
as is repeatedly stated by ecclesiastical chroniclers, that the
invasion of Spain by Charlemagne was mainly undertaken as a crusade,
for the Franks were actuated by no prejudice against the Saracens as
Mohammedans, and the relations of their king with the Khalifate of the
East were more friendly than those he entertained towards any European
power.
In the early months of the ensuing spring, the forces of Charlemagne
were in motion. No important event of the Middle Ages has been more
neglected by contemporaneous as well as subsequent historians than
this expedition. The accounts of Christian writers are so defective
and so overloaded with fable as to render them, as usual, thoroughly
unreliable. The numbers of the invaders were so great that they were
compelled to separate into two divisions and pass the Pyrenees by
different routes. Converging towards Saragossa, the armies were united
before its walls. The city was in the hands of their allies, but at the
last moment the hearts of the latter failed them, when they considered
the sacrifice of religion and the violation of every principle of
honor and loyalty which a surrender implied. Other causes combined to
shake their resolution. The results attending the preliminary steps
of the conspiracy had proved disastrous. The leaders, suspicious
of each other, were constantly apprehensive of treachery, while
tribal prejudice and the irreconcilable spirit of discord prevented
sincere co-operation in any measure. Ibn-Habib, the originator of
the enterprise, convinced of the perfidy of Al-Arabi, and hoping to
anticipate its results, rashly attacked his ally, was defeated, and
soon after perished by the hand of an assassin. Long imprisonment had
unfitted Abu-al-Aswad for decisive action, and he failed to meet the
requirements of his position. Conscious of the miscarriage of their
plans, discouraged, and apprehensive of the future, the garrison of
Saragossa refused to open the gates of the city. Charlemagne, enraged
by this breach of faith, made vigorous preparations for a siege. But
the walls had hardly been invested when a despatch arrived announcing
that the Saxons were again in rebellion, and had already advanced
as far as the Rhine. The siege was raised, and the Franks retired,
after an abortive and inglorious campaign, to once more defend
their homes against the barbarians of Germany. The fortifications
of Pampeluna--which city had surrendered at their approach--were
dismantled, and the mighty host then defiled, with slow and painful
steps, through the valley of Roncesvalles.
The pass grew more and more difficult and obscure, encompassed as it
was by dense forests and precipitous mountains. The advance guard
pursued its way without molestation, and had already reached the
northern slope of the Pyrenees, when the rear, in whose custody was
the baggage of the army, became engulfed in gloomy ravines, whose
shadows concealed thousands of Basques lying in ambush. Suddenly
the long and tortuous line was attacked by swarms of mountaineers.
Hemmed in on all sides, the retreat of the Franks was cut off. Every
advantage of surprise, of position, of familiarity with the ground, of
experience in ambuscade and partisan warfare, was with the assailants.
Resistance was vain. Bravery profited nothing where neither missile nor
hand-to-hand weapons were available against an active and invisible
enemy. The rear guard was absolutely annihilated. The baggage-train
fell into the hands of the victors, who, after plundering the dead,
quietly dispersed and sought their homes in the inaccessible recesses
of the mountains. By this catastrophe Charlemagne lost nearly half of
his army and many distinguished officers, among them the famous Roland,
Prefect of the March of Brittany, whose career the poetic genius of
bard and troubadour has adorned with many a romantic tale and fabulous
legend.
No one reaped any advantage from the Frankish invasion except
Abd-al-Rahman, whose destruction was its avowed object. While the
enemy was in retreat, he advanced upon Saragossa; the city surrendered
after a short resistance, and Al-Arabi, the insurgent chieftain, was
assassinated while at prayer in the mosque. Before returning, the
Emir marched into the country of the Basques, where he conquered the
domain of the Count of Cerdagne, who became a tributary of the court
of Cordova. Soon afterwards, Abu-al-Aswad once more tempted the evil
fortune of his family by promoting another insurrection, which resulted
in the defeat of Guadalimar, where he, with four thousand of his
followers, lost their lives.
The last years of Abd-al-Rahman were embittered by disaffection among
his kindred, whose political fortunes he had repaired, and who had been
raised to wealth and influence by his boundless generosity. His nearest
relatives conspired against him. Princes of the blood and nobles of the
highest rank forgot the sacred ties of family and tribe in repeated
attempts to overturn his power. But the wary monarch, equally proof
against the schemes of both open and concealed hostility, easily
triumphed over all his adversaries. His armies returned victorious from
every campaign. The conspirators who plotted in the imaginary security
of the palace were, sooner or later, betrayed by their accomplices, and
punished with exemplary severity. His rebellious and ungrateful nephew,
Ibn-Aban, was strangled. His brother, Walid, was exiled. Koreishite
chieftains, convicted of treason, after having had their hands and feet
cut off, were beaten to death with clubs. The remonstrances and threats
of trusty councillors were repressed by banishment and studied neglect.
Even the services of the faithful Bedr were not sufficient to atone for
subsequent insolence; his property was confiscated, and he was confined
in a dungeon where he ended his days in penury and disgrace.
Warned by the vicissitudes of a life of peril of the necessity of
providing for the succession, and feeling the weight of physical
infirmities induced by anxiety and exposure, the Emir, a short time
before his death, summoned the officers of state and the nobles of
the kingdom to swear allegiance to his third son, Hischem, whom he
had chosen to succeed him. This ceremony performed, and the elder
brothers of Hischem, Suleyman and Abdallah, having formally renounced
their claims to the throne, Abd-al-Rahman withdrew to Merida, where he
died a few months afterwards, at the age of fifty-eight, and in the
thirty-third year of his reign.
The character of this great prince, gifted as he was by nature with
the noblest qualities of mind and heart, was still materially affected
by the circumstances of an adventurous career and the sentiments and
habits of a turbulent age. His tastes inclined to literature and art,
but necessity developed in him the talents of a cautious negotiator
and skilful general. Of a generous and benevolent disposition, the
proscription of his family, the perpetual hostility of his enemies, the
treachery of his kindred, and the ingratitude of his friends embittered
his spirit, and led to acts of cruelty, which, though justified by
political expediency, have greatly tarnished the lustre of his fame.
Reared amidst the splendors of the most polished and luxurious of
courts, he bore with singular equanimity the reverses of fortune and
the evils of abject poverty, trials which, by inculcating the virtue
of philosophical resignation and acquainting him with the failings
and inconsistencies of humanity, the better prepared him for the high
and responsible position he was destined subsequently to occupy. Even
before his power had been firmly established, he sent messengers to
the remote regions of the East to search for the scattered members and
dependents of the Ommeyades, who were conducted to Spain at the public
expense, granted estates, and not infrequently appointed councillors
or governors of cities and provinces. The versatility of his genius
provoked the envy and elicited the admiration of his most determined
foes. While his attention was still occupied by resisting the
encroachments of the mountaineers of the Asturias and the suppression
of formidable insurrections, he successfully repelled the invasions of
two powerful and warlike sovereigns in whose jurisdiction were included
the most opulent and productive regions of the globe. Charlemagne,
the greater of these, offered him the hand of his daughter and urged
the alliance, which was declined on account of his failing health.
Fertile in resources, the privations and sorrows of youth had taught
him to bear adversity in silence if not with complacency. Thorough
familiarity with the character of Berber and Arab convinced him that
the pretensions of the children of the Desert were incompatible with
the submission requisite to the exercise of royal authority, and he
did not hesitate to crush, with a relentless hand, the insolence or
the presumptuous freedom of a tribesman or a friend. Popular at first,
this unusual severity in time alienated the warmest supporters of
his throne. Inexorable necessity, the principles of self-protection
and self-preservation, dependent upon conditions not unusual after a
protracted period of revolution and anarchy, rendered the establishment
of a despotism imperative. Once founded, it was maintained by an army
of forty thousand mercenaries, chiefly recruited from the barbarians
of Africa, enlisted with multitudes of enfranchised slaves, who were
bound to the interests of the monarchy by the double tie of dependence
and gratitude. The romantic spirit of adventure often impelled
Abd-al-Rahman, in the early years of his reign, to wander in disguise
through the streets of his capital; but the animosity engendered by
frequent revolutions soon rendered this diversion too hazardous, and he
was compelled to adopt the seclusion and the military precautions which
provide for the security of royalty in the kingdoms of the Orient.
The gradations of official rank, the territorial divisions of the
empire, the duties of the magistracy, the regulations of police, were
also, with slight modifications, framed after the pattern of similar
institutions in the East. In these details of political organization
the number twelve and its factors, so popular among nations of Semitic
origin, were especially prominent. The Peninsula was divided into
six provinces, each of which was subject to the jurisdiction of a
military governor. Under the control of this dignitary were two walis
and six viziers, who administered affairs of minor importance in their
respective districts. These officials were assisted in their labors by
a host of kadis and secretaries, who sent, at stated periods, regular
reports of their proceedings to the Council, or Divan, at Cordova.
The available moments of leisure, during a life of almost incessant
conflict, were employed by Abd-al-Rahman in works intended for the
improvement of the masses; in the perfection of regulations which
encouraged the accumulation and permitted the unrestricted enjoyment of
property; and in the promotion of educational and literary facilities,
as well as in the institution of measures upon whose enforcement
absolutely depended the continuance of his power. He repaired the
Roman highways that traversed the Peninsula. He established a system
of couriers, with relays of post-horses, for the rapid transmission of
important despatches. He ruled the fierce outlaws of the Peninsula,
whose trade was rapine, and who considered mercy an indication of
cowardice, by the only means they respected, the government of the
sword. They hated and cursed him, they plotted against his life,
they rejected his gifts and spurned his honors, but they obeyed his
commands, for they stood in wholesome dread of his resentment, and had
been taught, by many a bloody lesson, the consequences of disputing his
authority. During his reign, for the first time since the Conquest, the
nomadic propensity of the Berbers, the source of incessant disturbance
and universal insecurity, was restrained, and these barbarians were
compelled to conform to the laws and to choose a settled habitation.
A code of judicature, adapted to the circumstances of a population
composed of so many diverse and often hostile constituents, was framed,
in whose statutes the useful institutions of the Visigoths were
recognized under the general predominance of Moslem law.
Abd-al-Rahman made frequent excursions through his dominions, the
better to familiarize himself with the conduct of his officers and
the necessities of his subjects. His course was marked by charity
to the needy; by munificent donations for public improvements; by
institutions for the encouragement of the arts; by the erection of
magnificent palaces and temples. But his generosity, ample elsewhere,
was displayed with unprecedented lavishness in his capital, the object
of his pride and of his peculiar affection. Its plan, its buildings,
its fortifications, its suburbs, were modelled after those of beautiful
Damascus. A palm-tree, the first ever seen in Spain, was brought from
Syria, and planted in the court-yard of the royal palace as a memorial
of the scenes of his childhood. In the environs of the city he laid
out a garden, called Rusafah, after one formerly possessed by his
grandfather, Hischem, and of which it was the counterpart. A mint was
founded in Cordova, whose coins were identical in design, weight, and
inscription with the pieces issued by the Ommeyade princes of Syria.
The fame of the court and the reputation of the sovereign attracted
to the Moslem capital of the West the learned and the polite of every
clime. The spirit of literary emulation and philosophical inquiry,
which attained such a remarkable development under succeeding khalifs,
began to be awakened. The sovereign himself composed with facility
and correctness verses of considerable merit. His sons were provided
with the best instruction that the age afforded; were compelled to be
present during the transactions of the Divan and the business of the
courts; and were frequently entrusted with the negotiation of treaties
and the administration of government. The public taste was cultivated
by periodical literary contests, in which the most accomplished
scholars and poets of the day participated; where splendid rewards for
proficiency were distributed; and whose proceedings were invested with
additional prestige by the presence and supervision of royalty.
Neither the brutal skepticism of the court of Damascus nor the
prevalent idolatry and blasphemy of Spain seem to have affected
the piety of Abd-al-Rahman. Whether induced by motives of interest
or by sincere belief, it is certain that he ever observed with
scrupulous exactness the ceremonial of his faith. Fully alive to the
advantages--social, political, commercial, and religious--connected
with a splendid temple, which, by reason of its magnificence and its
sanctity, might become a place of pilgrimage, he had long meditated
the construction of such an edifice, an aspiration whose fulfilment
was deferred for many years by continuous reverses of fortune. The
possession of the cities of Mecca and Jerusalem by a hostile dynasty
had vastly increased the difficulties imposed upon such Mussulmans of
the Peninsula as desired to make the arduous journey to the venerated
shrines of the East. Moreover, the subjects of the Ommeyade ruler were
regarded with suspicion and dislike by the sovereigns of Bagdad; and
Abd-al-Rahman had, from every pulpit in the realm of the Abbasides,
been proclaimed a usurper, a rebel, and an impostor. The success that
finally attended his arms, and insured the permanent establishment of
his authority, also rendered possible the realization of a project
dictated by a more noble and lofty ambition. His political sagacity
detected at a glance the influence such a temple would exert over the
minds of a highly imaginative and superstitious people. Its erection
would gratify their national pride. Its presence in the midst of the
capital would consolidate and confirm the power of the state. The
sentiment of loyalty still entertained by the descendants of Arabian
exiles for the home of their fathers would be transferred to another
land, whose shrine, if it did not equal that of Mecca in wealth, would
certainly surpass it in grandeur and beauty. “My mosque,” said the
great statesman, “will soon demand a khalif; my sons will assume that
title; and the dispute between the East and West will be terminated
forever. Our constitution is based entirely upon a religious principle,
and my subjects will soon accustom themselves to see nothing beyond my
children but the eye of Allah and the sword of the Prophet.”
In the turbulent times of the Conquest every place of worship
possessed by the Christians in Cordova, save one, was destroyed. In
the cathedral alone, whose ownership was insured by treaty, were the
infidels permitted to perform the rites enjoined by their creed. In
accordance with a custom prevalent in the East, where, however, it
must be acknowledged, it was unusual, under ordinary circumstances,
to violate engagements entered into with Christians, half of the
cathedral had been forcibly appropriated and consecrated to the service
of Islam. It was not many years, however, before its limited area was
found inadequate to the requirements of the crowds of immigrants and
proselytes that were daily added to the population of the growing
capital. The location being the most desirable in the city, a
proposition was made by Abd-al-Rahman for the purchase of the remaining
half of the edifice. The bishop refused, on the reasonable ground that
no other building would then be available for the celebration of the
rites of the Christian faith. But the importunity of the Emir prevailed
in the end; and the Christians obtained for their concessions the sum
of a hundred thousand dinars, and, in addition, the extraordinary
privilege of erecting a certain number of churches to replace those
of which they had been deprived by the rage of fanaticism and the
calamities of war.
The plan of the mosque was traced by Abd-al-Rahman himself, and the
first stone of the foundation was laid by his own hands. Oppressed with
age and physical infirmities, and haunted by a presentiment that he
would not live to see his work completed, he exhausted every effort
to accelerate its progress. A vast number of laborers were employed.
The assistance of the governors of distant provinces was invoked for
the collection and transportation of materials. The emulation of the
artisans was excited by the example of the enfeebled sovereign, who,
for one hour every day, personally shared the toil of his humble
companions. The vaults of the public treasury were opened without
restriction for the benefit of an undertaking which appealed alike
to the patriotic impulses and the religious sentiment of the nation.
The work progressed with astonishing rapidity, but not fast enough
to satisfy the feverish impatience of the illustrious architect. It
was his desire while he yet had strength to perform in those sacred
precincts, as the representative of the Prophet, the simple ceremonial
of the faith so dear to the heart of every Mussulman. A space was
cleared within the enclosure. An awning was raised, and the unfinished
walls were hung with tapestry from the palace. There, surrounded with
heaps of materials, with half-chiselled capitals and naked columns, the
Emir, in his snowy robes of office, ascended the temporary pulpit, led
the prayers, and directed the devotions of a vast concourse assembled
from every quarter of the Moslem capital. It was the last important act
of his life. A few weeks later the multitudes who had listened with
silent reverence to his discourse in the Djalma followed his remains to
the tomb.
Thus, his destiny accomplished and his task performed, died the
founder of one of the greatest dynasties that Europe has ever known.
He possessed, in ample measure, the attributes of a wise, a politic,
an enlightened sovereign. His spirit had been chastened and his
courage tried by many years of persecution and misfortune. The cruelty
with which he has been reproached was a necessary consequence of
the turbulent condition of the society he was called upon to govern.
The solution of the political problem which confronted him was not a
mere question of supremacy; it involved the integrity of the Saracen
domination in the Peninsula and his own existence as a ruler and as an
individual. Force was the only argument used by his adversaries, and
the only one they respected. The influence of the Koran was scarcely
felt. The great majority of the inhabitants of Spain were Pagans
and infidels. The Berbers, who largely preponderated, were fetich
worshippers and believers in witchcraft and sorcery. Years of impunity
and unrestricted license had rendered these wild barbarians more
ferocious in disposition, more impatient of control. Public hostility
and private feuds, the acrimonious disputes between contending sects,
the alternate proscriptions of successful factions, the hope of future
revenge, made permanent reconciliation impossible. In every community
existed a large and compact body of enemies, different in nationality,
antagonistic in faith, firmly united by the evils of common misfortune,
who entertained, under a delusive aspect of submission, dangerous
aspirations for political and religious liberty. Those nearest in blood
to the monarch sought, with unnatural vindictiveness, the life of their
kinsman and benefactor. In the Asturian mountains the power of a rising
kingdom, established by a band of intrepid exiles, had begun seriously
to encroach upon the Moslem possessions of the North. The arms of the
most powerful sovereigns of Europe and Asia were directed, from the
Mediterranean and from the Pyrenees, against a prince whose dominions
were agitated and whose resources impaired by anarchy and sedition.
Exasperated by the interference of the Abbasides, he long contemplated
an expedition to the coast of Syria, a project which the obstinacy of
his domestic enemies made impossible. Under such conditions government
by the scimetar was certainly not inexcusable. These considerations
demanded also the employment of foreign mercenaries. They stimulated
the vigilance and justified the severity of the judicial tribunals.
They prompted the cultivation of religious sentiments as an auxiliary
of royal power by the erection of superb houses of worship. They
suggested the statesmanlike expedient of diverting the attention of
the populace from scenes of disorder, by the endowment of public
institutions, by the cultivation of the arts, by the diffusion of
knowledge.
Abd-al-Rahman was not, by nature, tyrannical. He was ever ready to
listen to the complaints and redress the wrongs of the unfortunate.
The most bitter partisanship never refused him the attribute of strict
and impartial justice. If his severity was sometimes not tempered
by compassion, it was never aggravated by deliberate cruelty. In
his privacy he was affable; in his public conduct dignified; in his
intercourse with his inferiors the embodiment of gentle courtesy.
Temperate in his pleasures, the court of Cordova never exhibited the
disgraceful scenes that offended religion and decency in the palaces
and gardens of Damascus. Without him the Ommeyade dynasty of the West
would never have existed; and without that dynasty a large portion of
the treasures of ancient learning would have been forever lost; the
spirit of scientific inquiry would have been crushed by ecclesiastical
intolerance; the hopes of intellectual freedom suppressed; and the
civilization of Europe retarded for many centuries.
From the accession of Abd-al-Rahman I. dates the autonomy of Moorish
Spain under the Khalifate of the West. Its rulers, however, while
enjoying all the power and attributes of independent sovereigns,
and, as such, requiring the implicit obedience of their subjects
and the recognition of foreign nations, did not, until the reign of
Abd-al-Rahman III., publicly assume the title of Successors of the
Prophet, but exercised their despotism under the less conspicuous
appellation of Emirs, or Governors. Many inducements led to the
adoption of this policy. Moslems still generally regarded the regions
of the East as the source of orthodox belief and the seat of legitimate
empire. The survivors of the House of Ommeyah were under the ban of
the dynasty of Damascus and Bagdad. The conditions of society in
the Peninsula were unsettled. Everywhere the slightest pretext for
rebellion was welcomed with rejoicing by multitudes of desperate
outlaws and fanatics. Ambitious enthusiasts lost no opportunity
of inflaming the public mind, only too susceptible to agitation,
whenever a revolt could increase their gains or contribute to their
notoriety. The union of Church and State under the constitution of
Islam made interference with the established order of affairs doubly
perilous. The premature appropriation of the venerated title of Khalif
by the exiled Ommeyade princes would have entailed the reproach of
sacrilege, and might have overturned their empire, neither founded on
prescriptive right, supported by popular affection, nor maintained
by adequate military force. The assertion of pretensions far less
obnoxious to religious prejudice had frequently produced serious
disorders. By such a claim the dignity of the greatest of Mohammedan
dynasties could receive no accession commensurate with the risk it
involved. Its princes might well, for a time, forego the titles while
in full possession of the substance of power. Such were some of the
politic considerations which long retained, in a nominally subordinate
capacity, the most despotic and irresponsible monarchs of Europe.
The awakening of the national spirit consequent upon the civil wars
of Spain not only permitted the organization of the kingdom of the
Asturias, but it was also productive of a disaster scarcely less
serious,--the loss of the Moslem possessions in France. From the day
of his accession, the energies of Pepin were devoted to the conquest
and expulsion of the Moorish colonists of Provence and Languedoc. The
treason of a Gothic chieftain delivered into his hands the principal
cities of Septimania, except Narbonne. That capital sustained a
siege of more than six years’ duration, an intense prejudice against
the Franks inducing the Roman and Gothic inhabitants to support the
efforts of the Arab garrison; but in the end, the popular discontent
and the hopeless prospect of assistance from Cordova impelled the
prominent citizens to propose terms of accommodation with the enemy.
A capitulation was arranged by which the besieged were to be conceded
the privilege of government by their own laws, but at the last moment
the Saracens refused their assent; hostilities were resumed, and the
garrison, greatly outnumbered by the Christian mob, was annihilated.
For forty-one years the laws, the customs, and the religion of
the Moslems had prevailed in Southern France. The traces of their
domination, as disclosed by the physical and mental characteristics
of the peasantry, have not been effaced by the vicissitudes of more
than a thousand years. This temporary occupation, as will be seen
hereafter, was also productive of a marked effect upon the manners and
the polite literature of Europe, through the diffusion of Hispano-Arab
culture, the influence of the lays of the troubadours, and the adoption
of the laws of chivalry. The intercourse with the Khalifate of Spain,
suspended for a period, was renewed; relations of even closer intimacy
were established; a community of ideas, tastes, and sympathies
developed sentiments of mutual esteem; and the characteristics of
the brilliant and intellectual society of Cordova were reflected
in the refined voluptuousness, the extensive learning, and the
polished skepticism that subsequently distinguished the courts of the
Albigensian princes.
CHAPTER IX
REIGN OF HISCHEM I.; REIGN OF AL-HAKEM I.
788–822
Custom of Royal Succession violated by the Will of
Abd-al-Rahman--Accession of Hischem--Revolt of Suleyman and
Abdallah--They are routed and their Armies dispersed--Clemency
of the Emir--Invasion of Septimania--Defeat of the
Franks--Indecisive Results of the Campaign--Public Works
of Hischem---His Noble Character--His Partiality for
Theologians--The Southern Suburb of Cordova--Death of
Hischem--General Distrust of Al-Hakem--Suleyman and Abdallah
again in Rebellion--Civil War--The Gothic March--Siege and
Capture of Barcelona--Apathy of the Emir--Importance of the
Conquest--The Edrisite Dynasty--Disturbances at Toledo--“The Day
of the Ditch”--The Royal Body-Guard--Revolt of the Faquis--Its
Results--League of the Asturians and Frankish Princes--Legend of
St. James the Apostle--Death of Al-Hakem--His Character.
In designating his favorite son, Hischem, as his successor,
Abd-al-Rahman unconsciously laid the foundation of endless and
irreconcilable domestic feuds, in addition to the manifold causes of
political discord already existing between the antagonistic elements
which composed the population of the Peninsula. The hand of despotism
had suppressed the manifestations of popular discontent, but it was
evident that this suppression was only temporary. The normal condition
of Arab and Berber, by tradition, by inheritance, by practice, was one
of haughty independence, of open defiance of established authority.
The dictates of political wisdom, as well as the experience of the
civilized nations of ancient times, had demonstrated beyond dispute
the advantages of the law of primogeniture. That law, while not
recognized by the Moslem constitution, had been adopted for the sake
of expediency, and in time was confirmed by custom and precedent. The
choice of his heir was tacitly left to the sovereign, to be ratified
by the homage of the great officers of the kingdom; a mere formality
whereby a concession was made to the prejudices of the tribesmen, but
which was, in fact, devoid of political significance. The omission of
this ceremony would not have affected the investiture of the heir,
nor have impaired the validity of his title; it would only have
afforded a plausible pretext for some ambitious chieftain to foment
an insurrection. Several reasons combined to induce Abd-al-Rahman
to prefer Hischem to his elder brethren. His mother, the beautiful
Holal, was his favorite concubine. She had been presented to him, in
an interval of peace, by his old adversary Yusuf, and had from that
hour acquired a great influence over him. Hischem was born in Spain,
while his brothers Suleyman and Abdallah were natives of Syria, a
fact which it might be presumed would the more readily secure to
the former the attachment of his subjects. But the principal reason
that determined the choice of Abd-al-Rahman was his knowledge of the
mental and moral superiority evinced by the character of Hischem.
His life was in strong and favorable contrast with those of his
brothers. They were idle, dissipated, and frivolous. While their
houses were constantly filled with a mob of buffoons and dancers,
his hours were passed in the society of the learned and the wise. He
had enjoyed the best educational advantages to be obtained, and had
diligently profited by them. He had repeatedly displayed his capacity
for government under trying circumstances, and his presence of mind
and courage in more than one bloody field. His precocious sagacity
and wisdom, the affability of his manners, the piety of his life,
the gentleness of his disposition, were the delight of the court and
the envy of his companions. The arbitrary selection of Abd-al-Rahman,
dictated by affection and policy and sanctioned by Mohammedan custom,
was justified by the prosperous reign of Hischem; yet, by establishing
a dangerous precedent in the polity of the Western Khalifate, it was,
in no trifling degree, responsible for its ultimate overthrow. In this
respect, however, its history is but the counterpart of that of every
other Moslem power. The ideas dominating the various constituents
of the society of Islam were incompatible with either the just
subordination of classes or the permanence of empire.
The exigencies of the time demanded the talents of an active and
resolute sovereign. The fiery passions of the people, hitherto
restrained by fear, awaited only a favorable occasion to break out
into rebellion. On every side were indications of future trouble,--the
agitation of the populace, the ambition of pretenders, the rivalry of
sects, were plainly visible to the discerning eye under a deceptive
appearance of order and tranquillity. The allegiance of the walis
of the eastern frontier, always precarious, was becoming daily more
unreliable. Their distance from the seat of government, their proximity
to the land of the Franks, their aspirations for independence, and
their control of the passes of the Pyrenees, all considerations of
vital political importance, while they increased their arrogance at the
same time weakened their fidelity. The disasters which had heretofore
attended the active interference of the Abbasides in the affairs of the
Peninsula had inculcated a salutary lesson; but the court of Bagdad was
not intimidated by the checks it had sustained, and the resources of
intrigue and the influence of gold were constantly employed to enlist
the services of the Christians and to corrupt the integrity of the
officers entrusted with the defence of strongholds, whose possession
would facilitate the destruction of the rival dynasty which had wrested
from the Commander of the Faithful one of the richest portions of his
inheritance. To add to the difficulties of the situation, the kingdom
of the Asturias, whose existence was due to the internecine strife of
its enemies rather than to the talents of its rulers or the valor of
its people, now began to disclose nascent evidences of that power which
subsequently attained such a prodigious development.
Hischem, who was governor of Merida, was proclaimed Emir of Spain at
that city as soon as the obsequies of his father had been performed.
Already well known to and beloved by his subjects, the public prayer,
repeated from the mimbar of every mosque, seemed the announcement of an
era of national prosperity and happiness. But these anticipations were
sadly delusive. As soon as information of Abd-al-Rahman’s death reached
Cordova, Suleyman, who happened to be in that city, left his lodgings,
took possession of the palace, and endeavored to obtain the support of
the mob of the capital. Failing in this, he quietly retired and joined
his brother Abdallah at Toledo, where they concerted measures for
the deposition of Hischem and the partition of his dominions between
them. The vizier of Toledo, Ghalib-Ibn-Zeman-al-Tafeki, having been
approached by the conspirators, not only proved faithful to his trust
but menaced the princes with the vengeance of the Emir, an act which
cost him his office and his liberty. A messenger having been sent by
Hischem to ask the cause of this harsh treatment of an old and faithful
servant, Suleyman, by way of response, caused the vizier to be brought
from his dungeon and impaled in the presence of the envoy. Justly
interpreting this outrage as a mortal defiance, Hischem proclaimed his
brothers rebels; denounced the penalties of treason against all who
should countenance them; and having summoned the walis of the various
provinces to his aid, took the field at the head of an army of twenty
thousand men. The rebels had succeeded in raising a force almost equal
in numbers, which, commanded by Suleyman, already had advanced some
distance towards the South. A battle was fought near the Castle of
Boulk; the insurgents were beaten, and the Emir invested Toledo, whose
garrison, defended by strong fortifications and encouraged by the
intrepid spirit of Abdallah, offered the prospect of a long and tedious
siege.
Collecting the remnants of his defeated army, Suleyman descended upon
the plains of Andalusia, ravaging its settlements with fire and sword.
Abd-al-Melik, Governor of Cordova, having encountered him near Sufenda,
the rebels were again routed and dispersed; and Suleyman, apprised
that the entire resources of the kingdom were being employed for his
destruction, escaped with difficulty through the mountain-passes into
the province of Murcia. In the meantime, the condition of the besieged
in Toledo had become desperate. The successive defeats of their
companions had disheartened the garrison; the supply of provisions was
diminishing; the assaults upon the fortifications were incessant; and,
Suleyman being a fugitive, no hope of relief could now be entertained.
Abdallah, in his extremity, determined to throw himself upon the mercy
of the brother he had wronged, and to solicit in person the pardon he
so little deserved. Leaving Toledo, he passed through the lines of
the enemy under the protection of a safe-conduct of an envoy, whose
character he had assumed for the occasion, and proceeded to Cordova,
whither Hischem had gone a short time before, the better to observe
the movements of Suleyman. The amiable disposition of Hischem was not
proof against the appeal of his penitent brother; he received him with
open arms; and both returning to Toledo, the gates were opened by the
order of Abdallah, whose followers were granted a general amnesty,
while he himself received a princely estate in the vicinity of the city
as a pledge of complete reconciliation and oblivion of the past. The
fierce and intractable spirit of Suleyman, however, prompted him to
once more try the doubtful chances of war. Among the dense population
of Murcia were thousands of adventurers, whose predatory instincts had
never been mitigated by the influences of civilization. These, allured
by the promises of Suleyman, enlisted with alacrity under his standard.
A considerable force was already assembled upon the fields of Lorca
when, in the absence of their general, the advance guard of the Emir’s
army, under Al-Hakem, his son, a boy in years but, as it soon became
evident, a man in courage and military ability, appeared before the
rebel camp. Although his command was greatly inferior in numbers, the
young prince charged the insurgents with such impetuosity that they
gave way after a short and bloody struggle; and when Hischem arrived
with the main body, the field was clear of all except the dead and
dying. Suleyman, now thoroughly discouraged, made overtures for pardon,
which was granted, conditional upon his perpetual exile. His estates
were purchased by Hischem for the sum of seventy thousand mithcals of
gold; and the rebellious prince retired to Tangier, where, safe from
molestation, he regularly maintained a treasonable correspondence
with his old companions in arms, watching anxiously for a favorable
opportunity to assert his claim to the throne of the emirate.
While these events were transpiring in the West and the attention of
Hischem was engrossed with the conspiracy of his brothers, serious
disturbances had arisen elsewhere. Said-Ibn-Husein, the wali of
Tortosa, refused to recognize, or even to admit within the city,
an officer whom the Emir had appointed to succeed him. The wali of
Valencia was ordered to seize and punish the rebellious governor, but
the cunning of the latter led his adversary into an ambuscade, where
he was killed and his followers were put to flight. Encouraged by the
success of Ibn-Husein, the walis of Barcelona, Saragossa, Huesca, and
Tarragona proclaimed their independence, and entered into an offensive
and defensive alliance against the Emir. The new wali of Valencia,
Abu-Othman, more skilful, or more fortunate, than his predecessor,
experienced but little difficulty in suppressing an insurrection which
at first promised to be formidable. The armies of the rebels were
defeated; the heads of all who were captured by Abu-Othman were sent
to Cordova, and the successful general, after receiving the thanks and
congratulations of his sovereign, was ordered to the Pyrenees, there to
await reinforcements and make preparations for an invasion of France.
The fortunate results which had hitherto attended his measures, and
the knowledge that the unruly temperament of his subjects constantly
demanded the excitement of arms, determined Hischem to divert to the
annoyance of his enemies that active and menacing spirit which had
recently been exerted to his own prejudice and to the imminent peril of
his crown. And, in addition to these considerations, inducements were
not wanting which might afford a powerful stimulus to his political
ambition. The pecuniary resources of his kingdom were far greater than
those which his father had controlled. Increasing commerce and the
sense of public security derived from a centralized government had
rendered the burden of taxation more endurable. Long and unintermitting
service in the field had created a body of soldiers, patient of
discipline, devoted to the interests of their sovereign, and accustomed
to conquer. To each succeeding ruler of the Peninsula, from the time
of Musa, had been bequeathed as imperative religious obligations, the
extension of territory subject to tribute, and perpetual war with the
infidel. A thirst for revenge was now added to the original incentives
of ambition and proselytism,--a desire to wipe out, by a series of
fresh triumphs, the memory of past reverses, and to inflict a long
deferred retaliation for frightful misfortunes endured by the routed
armies of Islam. The Djihad, or Holy War, was proclaimed simultaneously
from the pulpit of every mosque in the Emir’s dominions. To the
promotion of the crusade, every Moslem was bound by the law of the
Koran to contribute in proportion to his means, by donations of money,
military supplies, provisions, or personal service. The martial tribes
of the Peninsula, to whom war was a diversion, flocked eagerly to the
standard of the empire. One army, forty thousand strong, desolated the
settlements of Galicia, defeated Bermudo, King of the Asturias, and
returned laden with booty and accompanied by thousands of captives.
Another penetrated the depths of the Pyrenees, seized the passes,
and, either by force or negotiation, secured the temporary neutrality
of the Basques. During the ensuing year, diligent preparations were
made for the reconquest of Septimania, whose capital, Narbonne, long
the seat of Moslem power in the south of France, had now, for almost
thirty years, been held by the infidel. The city of Gerona, recently
taken by the Franks, was stormed, pillaged, and its inhabitants
remorselessly butchered. This stronghold--a place of great strategic
importance, whose possession by the enemy might seriously interfere
with the movements of either a successful or a defeated army--having
been recovered, the way was open to the Valley of the Rhone. The
time was most favorable for the prosecution of such an enterprise.
The attention of Charlemagne was engaged by the seditions of the
discontented barbarians of Germany. Louis, King of Aquitaine, was in
Italy, where he had gone to assist his brother, Pepin, hard pressed by
the Lombards. The country was in a practically defenceless condition;
drained of its troops; deprived of its sovereign; with a population
which, for the space of almost a generation, had not been accustomed
to the use of arms, or had experienced the calamities of invasion.
The Saracens met with few impediments. No organized resistance was
attempted. The atrocities inseparable from savage warfare marked every
step of their progress. Flushed with success, the victorious army
advanced on Narbonne. The defences of that city defied the efforts of
the besiegers, but the suburbs were taken and laid waste.
The Moslems now moved forward on the road to Carcassonne. At the river
Orbieu, near Narbonne, they encountered a force of peasants and militia
which William, Duke of Toulouse, had collected in the desperate hope of
checking their advance. The valor of this hero, who has been canonized
by the Church, and whose achievements are, like those of Roland, the
theme of mediæval ballad and legend, was unavailing against the furious
onset of the Berber cavalry. The half-armed mob was put to flight; but
the victors, intimidated by this unexpected appearance of an army, and
fearful of losing their plunder, decamped without attempting further
hostilities. It would appear from the most probable accounts to be
derived from the confused and obscure chronicles of the age that a
considerable portion of the territory of the Franks remained for some
years in the hands of the Saracens.
About this time another army, commanded by Abd-al-Kerim, invaded
Galicia and the Asturias. Little resistance being offered, the Moslems
penetrated the country in every direction. The harvests were destroyed,
and the peasantry massacred or driven into captivity. The churches were
burned to the ground. Encumbered with booty, the invaders on their
return fell into an ambush and sustained a crushing defeat. The plunder
was retaken, and their principal officers were left on the field of
battle. This reverse more than counterbalanced the advantages derived
from the expedition into France, and it effected much towards the
consolidation of the power of the Christian kingdom.
An incredible amount of booty in gold, silver, and precious merchandise
was obtained in Septimania, not a little of which was found in the
churches and other ecclesiastical establishments which abounded
everywhere. The royal fifth alone, acquired by this foray, amounted
to forty-five thousand pieces of gold, all of which was set apart to
be expended in the completion of the Great Mosque. The pride of the
Moorish commander, Abd-al-Melik, exacted of the innumerable captives
who followed in the train of his army an arduous and extraordinary
service. They were forced to carry upon their shoulders, or drag in
wagons, the stones which had formed the walls encircling the suburbs of
Narbonne. From these blocks, thus painfully transported from a country
distant many hundred miles, through the steep passes of the mountains,
was constructed the foundation of the eastern part of the Great Mosque
of Cordova. In the exertion of this seemingly useless and tyrannical
act of authority, Abd-al-Melik was not impelled by a feeling of mere
bravado, nor by a desire to inflict suffering upon the unfortunate.
It was a proceeding in perfect accord with the genius of the Moslem
character. Those stones, squared perhaps by Roman masons in the days
of Augustus, were tangible and enduring trophies of conquest. The
boundaries of contiguous kingdoms have expanded or shrunk; language,
religion, and manners have changed; populous cities of the Peninsula
have disappeared; important settlements have arisen in the midst of
marsh and desert; the mementos of ancient warfare are represented
only by a few battered and broken weapons; but the massive stones of
Narbonne, rendered doubly sacred from the touching legend of their
conveyance by the unwilling hands of Christian captives, still, after
the expiration of more than eleven centuries, support the walls of the
proudest temple ever dedicated to the God of Islam.
To the completion of this magnificent edifice the energies of Hischem
were now directed. Following the pious example of his father, he
labored daily upon its walls. He lived to see it finished, after
the expenditure of one hundred and sixty thousand dinars, and,
although sumptuous in itself, the building of Abd-al-Rahman and his
son was greatly inferior in splendor and beauty to the additions
and improvements subsequently made to it by their successors. The
public spirit of Hischem did not, however, confine his efforts to
the completion of the Djalma. He rebuilt the bridge across the
Guadalquivir, which had again fallen into decay. He erected many
structures to embellish his growing capital and to promote the
convenience of its inhabitants,--luxurious palaces, baths, mosques,
and fountains. He encouraged the planting of orchards and the
cultivation of gardens in the suburbs, and this rational and healthful
employment formed one of his favorite recreations. In his character
the religious sentiment preponderated, not a little tinctured, in
common with the most ignorant of his subjects, with the folly and
weakness of superstition. Early in his reign he consulted a famous
astrologer, who announced, as the result of his horoscope, a life
of but few years’ duration, but prosperous and full of glory. The
communication of this prediction had unquestionably much to do with
its fulfilment. The manners of Hischem, already grave and dignified,
became, for a Mohammedan prince, strangely ascetic. He discarded the
splendid vestments of royalty, and invariably appeared clad in simple
white, the distinctive color of his family. His leisure was devoted to
the investigation of grievances, to the aid of the oppressed, to the
consolation of the afflicted, to the support of the indigent. Neither
the inclemency of the season nor the inconvenience of darkness was
suffered to interfere with his errands of mercy. He visited holy men
at midnight in the midst of torrents of rain. In person he distributed
alms to the homeless, whom want had impelled to seek shelter under
the arcades of the mosque. He walked unattended through the streets,
and did not disdain to enter the hovels of the poor and bestow words
of comfort upon such as seemed abandoned by the world. He was the
first of his line to establish a system of municipal police to insure
the safety of the capital. The fines collected for breaches of the
peace he disbursed in charity. In the imposition of taxes he earned
the gratitude of his subjects by only exacting the tithe prescribed
by Mohammedan law. Under his paternal administration the widows and
children of soldiers killed in battle were pensioned. He ransomed from
his private purse all Mussulmans held in captivity, and so thorough
was his search and so successful his efforts in this direction, that
during his reign a wealthy citizen having left by will a large sum for
the liberation of slaves held by the Christians, the bequest reverted
to the heirs, as no such slaves could be found. The inflexible justice
of Hischem was a prominent trait of his character. He refused to
purchase a house for which he had been negotiating when he learned
that one of his neighbors desired it; and, aware that respect for the
dignity of the sovereign would induce his competitor to withdraw, he
abandoned without hesitation the coveted property to the latter. In
the conduct of complex and doubtful affairs of government Hischem
justified the discernment of his father, which had selected him to the
prejudice of his elder brethren. His courage and firmness inspired the
fear and respect of his enemies. He frequently despatched emissaries
to the courts of the walis, empowered to examine into their official
conduct and to hear the complaints of their subjects. By the liberality
he displayed in the construction of public edifices, he awakened the
emulation of the rich, who vied with each other in the luxurious
adornment of their palaces and the picturesque beauty of their gardens.
He inherited from his father a predilection for science combined with
a taste for the cultivation of letters; and, in his opinion, the
permanent benefits to be derived from literature and the arts were far
preferable to the transitory pleasures of sensual gratification. The
prediction of the astrologer, which to eight years had prescribed the
duration of his reign, developed in a mental constitution naturally
inclined to morality a sentiment of deep reverence for everything
connected with religion. Partly with a view to the fusion of races
and the reconciliation of hereditary enmities, but chiefly in the
hope of their eventual conversion, he made the use of the Arabic
tongue obligatory in the schools of Jews and Christians; thus, in his
zeal for proselytism, violating the wise tolerance which the Koran
accords to tributary infidels. By this act of profound statesmanship
he unconsciously effected in a few years a political and social
revolution, which, under ordinary conditions, many generations would
not have sufficed to accomplish. No isolation is so thorough as that
which is caused by the preservation and use of an unfamiliar idiom.
Even the social alienation induced and maintained by the observance of
religious practices regarded as heretical is not so deep or persistent.
By the compulsory adoption of the language of the conquerors, the
tributary sects became daily better acquainted with the creed, the
characteristics, and the opinions of their masters. Their prejudices
contracted through ignorance were gradually dispelled amidst the
requirements of business and the courtesies and recreations of familiar
intercourse. The Christian learned to esteem the Moslem; the Moslem, by
degrees, entertained less contempt for the Christian. An appreciation
of each other’s virtues, mutual concessions, and hopes of prospective
advantage soon produced closer relations in trade, intermarriages, and
the formation of intimate and durable friendships. Proselytism to the
faith of Islam--once an occurrence as rare as it was abhorrent--at last
became so common as scarcely to excite remark. The Gothic costume was
superseded by the turbans and flowing robes of the Orient. The harems
of the rich and powerful were ruled by favorites born in Teutonic and
Roman households. The customs of the latter were those of the Desert.
Their surroundings had nothing in common with the traditions of their
ancestry or the memories of their youth. Their children knew no other
tongue but Arabic. The lasting consequences of this law of Hischem, in
the partial amalgamation of three races and the seal it impressed upon
their product, are to-day manifested in the swarthy complexions, the
guttural accents, the grace and dignity of bearing which distinguish
the peasantry of Northern Andalusia, who, living near the capital of
the khalifate, the more readily obeyed the mandates of its court, and
were the more susceptible to the influence of its manners.
Unfortunately for the future tranquillity of the Peninsula, Hischem
was a fast friend of the theologians. His most intimate associates
were chosen from the faquis,--half-priests, half-lawyers,--whose
studies were divided between the elucidation of sacred traditions and
the interpretation of the principles of jurisprudence. Discouraged
by the firm policy of Abd-al-Rahman, this order had assumed a sudden
and ominous importance under the favorable auspices of his successor.
It was an era of unprecedented religious excitement in the domain of
Islam. New sects, with whose organization and maintenance politics had
often quite as much to do as theology, were forming everywhere. One
which had obtained great popularity and was destined eventually to
be included in the four recognized by true believers as orthodox had
been recently founded at Medina by the famous doctor, Malik-Ibn-Anas.
A bond of union, based on antipathy to a common enemy, was soon
established between the Oracle of Medina and the monarch of Spain.
Notwithstanding his claims to pious consideration as the founder of
a new theological school, Ibn-Anas had been suspected of encouraging
the pretensions of a descendant of Ali--of the detested sect of the
Schiites--to the throne of the Abbasides. Either from insufficiency of
evidence, or through fear of insurrection, the Khalif of Bagdad had
not imposed sentence of death upon the offender, but he had ordered
him to be scourged, which punishment had been inflicted with every
accompaniment of brutality and insult by the zealous officials of the
Hedjaz. Conscious of his influence, and consumed with rage and hatred,
the venerable fanatic bore his injuries like a martyr, concealing
under an appearance of resignation the fury of his implacable
resentment. Abhorrence of his oppressors led him to turn for sympathy
to the Ommeyades, whose princes, like himself, had experienced the
relentless persecution and insatiable vengeance of the tyrants of
Damascus and Bagdad. The noble character of Hischem was not unknown
to the inhabitants of the Holy Cities. The admiration of the Medinese
doctor for the Emir, perhaps increased somewhat by a desire to profit
by past humiliation, and to indirectly disparage his enemies, became
extravagant. He lost no occasion of praising him as a pattern of the
kingly virtues, and went so far as to declare publicly that he, of
all the princes of Islam, was the only one worthy of the undivided
honors of the khalifate. On the other hand, Hischem entertained the
greatest respect for the theologian, whose doctrines he adopted and
sedulously endeavored to propagate throughout his dominions by every
inducement to which the human mind is susceptible. The Malikites were
among those highest in his confidence. They administered the most
responsible employments of Church and State. They were entrusted with
important commands in the army. The Emir afforded every facility to
such as desired to pursue their studies under the eye of the great
interpreter of the law, and these, at their return, were received
with every mark of respect and consideration. In consequence of this
impolitic favoritism, the Malikites soon obtained a preponderating
and dangerous influence in public affairs. The sect was dominated
by a limited number of shrewd and ambitious faquis, whose opinions,
received by the ignorant as infallible, were supposed to be prompted
by divine inspiration, and whose wild fanaticism was justly regarded
by themselves as the most efficient means for the attainment to
supreme power. Neither the Berbers, nor the Arabs of pure blood,
seem to have embraced the new doctrine with any great degree of
enthusiasm. Its most ardent champions were the renegades, apostates
from Christianity, or the descendants of converted tributaries and
slaves. The obligations of no particular creed were recognized as
paramount by these careless proselytes, born and bred in an atmosphere
of turmoil and revolution, and to whose impulsive and fickle natures
the heat of controversy incident to the promulgation of a new belief
and the excitement of a foray were equally acceptable. Mutual sympathy
and the ambitious designs of their leaders suggested the association
and residence of these sectaries in quarters where their power could
be most advantageously employed in times of sedition. One of these
localities was the southern suburb of Cordova, separated from the city
by the Guadalquivir. It was one of the most attractive and beautiful
portions of the capital. Its population exceeded twenty thousand
souls. Its markets were filled with all the evidences of a widely
extended and profitable traffic. Through its gates were conveyed the
larger proportion of the provisions consumed by the inhabitants of the
metropolis and no inconsiderable part of its merchandise obtained from
the rich provinces of the East. These were transported from the suburb
to the bazaars by means of the stupendous bridge constructed by the
Cæsars and remodelled by Al-Samh and Hischem. The level surface bounded
by the left bank of the Guadalquivir was more favorable for building
than the inequalities of the ground on the north and west. The streets
were wider than those elsewhere; the markets more commodious; the
mosques and villas not less sumptuous and elegant. A belt of beautiful
gardens--traversed by walks of pebbles laid in mosaic and cooled by
the spray of countless fountains, amidst whose verdure nestled the
pleasure-houses of the wealthy--encircled the entire suburb. Here
was the stronghold of the Malikite sect, the increasing power and
insolence of whose spiritual guides were preparing for their wretched
dupes a day of unspeakable calamity.
Eight years from the date of the horoscope had been declared by the
astrologer to be the limit of the life of Hischem. The strength of
his intellect was not sufficient to reject a prediction which was
universally accepted by a credulous and superstitious race with the
same reverence that, in ancient times, attached to the mysterious
response of an oracle. A pattern of religious virtue, he had long
disciplined his mind to obey, without repining, the inevitable decrees
of fate, and the prospect of an early death, while it seriously
disconcerted his plans, could not disturb his equanimity. As the
time set for the accomplishment of the prophecy approached, the Emir
assembled the Great Council of the realm to swear fealty to his
son, Al-Hakem, who was to succeed him. This ceremony concluded, he
addressed the young prince in the following words, which are far better
calculated than any eulogy to describe his own character: “Dispense
justice without distinction to the poor and to the rich, be kind and
gentle to those dependent upon thee, for all are alike the creatures
of God. Entrust the keeping of thy cities and provinces to loyal and
experienced chieftains; chastise without pity ministers who oppress thy
subjects; govern thy soldiers with moderation and firmness; remember
that arms are given them to defend, not to devastate, their country;
and be careful always that they are regularly paid, and that they may
ever rely upon thy promises. Strive to make thyself beloved by thy
people, for in their affection is the security of the state, in their
fear its danger, in their hatred its certain ruin. Protect those who
cultivate the fields and furnish the bread that sustains us; do not
permit their harvests to be injured, or their forests to be destroyed.
Act in all respects so that thy subjects may bless thee and live in
happiness under thy protection, and thus, and in no other way, wilt
thou obtain the renown of the most glorious of princes.”
Early in the following spring Hischem expired, after a short illness,
in the fortieth year of his age. His reign had not been distinguished
by great military enterprises, nor by measures that indicated the
possession of more than ordinary talents for the requirements of
politics or the art of government. But although his administration was
not brilliant it was eminently successful. He had checked the impetuous
ardor of the Asturians. He had invaded and ravaged with impunity the
provinces of the most illustrious and powerful monarch in Europe. He
had thwarted the repeated attempts of desperate adventurers to overturn
his throne. He had gained the applause of his enemies by his clemency,
and won the admiration of his friends by his generous treatment of his
rebellious kinsmen. No unfortunate was so degraded as to be unworthy
of his notice, no sufferer too obscure to be the recipient of his
bounty. By the enforcement of judicious regulations he had accomplished
much towards the removal of those social and political barriers which
separated the races and menaced the prosperity of his kingdom. By his
influence and example he gave fresh impulse to the cultivation of
letters. The universal sorrow manifested by all classes at the news of
his death announced the depth of the esteem and affection everywhere
entertained for his character.
It was with ill-concealed anxiety that the subjects of the emirate
expected the first act of the administration of Al-Hakem. It is true
no one doubted his ability. His military prowess had already been
demonstrated, for, while yet a boy, he had at the head of an inferior
force annihilated the army of his uncle on the plains of Lorca. The
prophetic sagacity of his father, in accordance with the custom of his
princely line, had early familiarized him with the functions of a ruler
by his employment in offices of grave responsibility. His education had
been entrusted to the best scholars of the time, and he had proved an
apt and intelligent pupil. The fortuitous but important advantages of
personal beauty and a distinguished presence were not wanting to this
heir to the glory and the misfortunes of the Ommeyades. Yet, though
reared in the publicity of a court and habituated to the transaction of
official business, little was known of the disposition and the private
opinions of Al-Hakem. A stolid apathy and an impenetrable reserve
effectually concealed his emotions. His feelings never relaxed even
in the presence of his most intimate associates, upon whom, moreover,
his confidence was grudgingly bestowed. But the veil which enveloped
his character could not hide the fact that he was irascible, arrogant,
vainglorious, and cruel. The event proved that the apprehensions of the
shrewd observers who regarded his accession with manifest uneasiness
and distrust were not entirely without foundation.
It was the practice of the Ommeyades with the advent of a new sovereign
to change the hajib, or high chamberlain, whose duties and authority
coincided with those of a prime minister, or chief dignitary of state.
For this responsible employment, Al-Hakem selected Abd-al-Kerim, son of
Abd-al-Walid, who had filled the position under his father. Eminent for
bravery and learning, and versed in all the accomplishments of the age,
Abd-al-Kerim had, from childhood, enjoyed the friendship and shared
the amusements of his master. This choice was accepted as a happy
augury of the future conduct of the new ruler, and contributed greatly
to allay the fears of those who had questioned his intention and his
ability to control the fiery passions of youth, which the possession of
irresponsible power offered no inducements, save those enjoined by the
precepts of morality, to restrain. His qualities as a politician and
a general were destined to be soon put to the test in the suppression
of an extensive insurrection, the prelude of an unquiet and sanguinary
reign. His uncle, Suleyman, had long meditated, in the security of
exile, designs against the crown, which he considered his birthright.
His royal lineage, great wealth, and affable demeanor had gained
for him a host of adherents among the adventurers and banditti who
inhabited the city of Tangier and infested its environs. Their ambition
was excited by magnificent promises, and their cupidity stimulated by
the prospect of a contest whose prizes were the acquisition of untold
wealth and the exercise of boundless license. The gold of Suleyman had
corrupted many dissatisfied officials and a majority of the Berber
chieftains. The moment so long awaited by the conspirators had now
arrived. Abdallah, secretly leaving his estate at Toledo, joined his
brother at Tangier. The details of an uprising were arranged, and every
resource was employed to insure the success of the enterprise. Abdallah
made a rapid journey from Tangier to Aix-la-Chapelle. The object of
this embassy has never been disclosed, but from the result it is easy
to conjecture its import. The aid of Charlemagne was solicited and
obtained, and the co-operation of the walis of Barcelona and Huesca
assured. The King of Aquitaine, with every mark of honor, escorted the
Moslem prince to the base of the Pyrenees, and the latter in a few days
was once more in the midst of the seditious populace of the ancient
Visigothic capital. The measures of the rebel leaders were well taken.
Simultaneously with the delivery of the citadel of Toledo to Abdallah,
through the treasonable connivance of its governor, Suleyman landed at
Valencia with a powerful army, and, founding his pretensions on the
right of primogeniture, proclaimed himself. Emir of Spain. Al-Hakem,
hearing of the revolt of Abdallah, had hastened to Toledo with the
flower of the Andalusian cavalry and invested its walls. The lines had
hardly been formed, however, when intelligence was received that Louis,
King of Aquitaine, the son of the great emperor, had retaken Gerona,
the key of the Pyrenees, and, aided by the defection of the walis of
Lerida and Huesca, had already overrun a large part of the provinces
of the Northwest. Charlemagne, eager to avenge the slaughter of
Roncesvalles, as well as to extend the limits of his empire, had placed
under the command of his son the picked troops of his army, veterans
of a score of campaigns on the Danube and the Rhine. Recognizing the
peril of the situation, and aware of the importance of preventing the
union of this new enemy with those who were throwing his kingdom into
confusion, Al-Hakem promptly abandoned the siege and advanced by forced
marches to the valley of the Ebro. But the Franks had already retired.
The details of their operations, scarcely mentioned in the annals of
the time, throw no light upon their motives; but it is clear that the
results of the expedition did not correspond with the magnificence
and completeness of its preparations or with the hopes entertained
of its success. An extreme caution, akin to timidity, seemed to take
possession of the conquerors of the Saxons, the descendants of the
heroes of Poitiers and Narbonne, as soon as the frowning barrier of the
Pyrenees was left in their rear.
The presence of Al-Hakem revived the dormant enthusiasm of his
subjects. Gerona, Huesca, Lerida, were recovered. Barcelona, whose
perfidious governor, Zaid, after soliciting the protection of
Charlemagne and paying homage to his son, had refused to admit the
Franks into the city, now, with every demonstration of loyalty, threw
open its gates at the appearance of his lawful sovereign.
The energy of Al-Hakem, seconded by the activity of his squadrons, in
a short time reduced to obedience the entire territory which had been
overrun by the Franks. Carried irresistibly on by his martial ardor he
crossed the Pyrenees, and, by an unexpected stroke of good fortune,
seized Narbonne, whose garrison he massacred and whose inhabitants he
led into captivity. Elated by victory and laden with spoil, he left
his trusty lieutenants, Abd-al-Kerim and Ibn-Suleyman, in charge of
the frontier, and, with a force largely increased by the fame of his
successes and the hope of rapine, once more directed his march towards
Toledo. In the meantime, Suleyman had effected a junction with Abdallah
on the banks of the Tagus. Indecision and a spirit of indolence seem to
have prevailed in their councils, for, instead of making a diversion
which might have still further embarrassed the movements of Al-Hakem
and have perhaps changed the result of the conflict, they remained
inactive, expecting the conclusion of the campaign with the Franks,
until the approach of the Emir roused them from their lethargy. Fearful
lest their hastily assembled and undisciplined levies of barbarians and
malcontents might not be able to withstand the attack of the veterans
of the regular army fighting under the eye of their sovereign, the
insurgents left in Toledo as commander Obeidah-Ibn-Hamza, one of the
most able officers in their service, who had surrendered the city and
was continued in power as the reward of his infamy, and withdrew,
after some desultory and indecisive engagements, into the province of
Murcia. Here the veneration attaching to the name of Abd-alRahman,
and the personal popularity of Abdallah, secured for the rebellious
brothers a great accession of strength and a corresponding increase
of confidence. Entrusting Amru, one of his officers, to prosecute the
siege of Toledo, Al-Hakem pressed forward in quest of the rebels, and
resolved, if possible, to bring the contest to a speedy termination.
But again the courage of the insurgents failed them, and they sought
the protection of the mountain fastnesses, where the Andalusian
horsemen could not follow. For months the struggle was protracted,
and the force of the Emir, impatient under inaction, began to be
diminished by desertions. At length the rebels, whose supplies of
provisions had been intercepted, ventured forth from their stronghold.
In the plains of Murcia, not far from the field where Al-Hakem had won
his first laurels in a victory over one of his present antagonists,
a bloody battle was fought. The issue at first was doubtful, as the
insurgents contested the ground with all the energy of desperation;
but, at a decisive moment, the throat of Suleyman was pierced with
an arrow, and, by his death, the spirit of his followers was broken.
The slaughter that followed was long remembered as remarkable even
amidst the butchery that disgraced the civil wars of Spain. The
survivors were dispersed beyond all possibility of reorganization; and
Abdallah, by an early withdrawal from the field, succeeded in reaching
Valencia, where, disheartened and thoroughly penitent, he implored
the forgiveness of his injured sovereign. With a magnanimity that did
credit alike to his sagacity and his sentiments of affection, Al-Hakem
accepted the submission of his uncle, but insisted upon his permanent
retirement to Tangier and the surrender of his two sons, Esbah and
Kasem, as hostages. The latter were treated with kindness and with the
distinction due to their rank; a regular pension was assigned to them;
and during the second year of their residence the younger was raised to
an honorable employment, and the elder, having received the daughter of
the Emir in marriage, was appointed governor of the important city of
Merida.
While the operations of the war were languidly pursued in the South,
the energy and resolution of Amru began to tell severely upon the
besieged in Toledo. The inconstant populace, weary of perpetual alarms
and threatened with famine, made their peace with the representative
of the Emir by the surrender of the city and the sacrifice of their
general. The treacherous Ibn-Hamza was promptly executed, and his head
sent by a courier to Al-Hakem; the affairs of the city were regulated
with all possible expedition; and Amru, leaving his son Yusuf in
command of the garrison, departed with all his available battalions to
reinforce the army of his sovereign, then at Chinchilla.
The serious disturbances which had for three years employed the
resources and monopolized the attention of the Emir of Cordova
presented to the hereditary and natural enemies of Islam an
opportunity too favorable to be neglected. In 798 an alliance was
concluded between Alfonso the Chaste and Charlemagne, but whether
on equal terms or contingent on the vassalage of the Asturian king
is uncertain. The Moslem governors of the frontier cities again
renounced their allegiance to Al-Hakem, and, under an assurance of
support and independence, rendered homage to Louis as their suzerain.
The enterprising genius of Charlemagne, instructed by the costly
lesson taught nearly a quarter of a century before in the pass of
Roncesvalles, had abandoned, so far as the Peninsula was concerned,
all ideas of permanent conquest and occupation. Experience had
conclusively demonstrated that the contentions of factions, as well as
the antipathies of race, became temporarily but effectually reconciled
in the presence of a foreign enemy. But while his armies had not been
able to obtain a foothold south of the Pyrenees, or even to traverse
the defiles of that mountain chain in safety, no such difficulties
seemed to attend the movements of the Moslems, whose flying squadrons
plundered and ravaged without resistance the distant provinces of his
empire. These important considerations, and the apprehension that some
skilful Arab captain might recover and retain the fertile valleys of
the South, the traditions of whose people recalled with pleasure the
dominion of their ancient Mohammedan masters, impelled the Emperor
to found and maintain a bulwark which would be available to harass
the enemy as well as to break the force and retard the advance of an
invading army. With this object in view a principality was founded
on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees, which was given the name of
the Gothic March, and its first lord, a Frankish noble named Borel,
received his investiture from, and did homage to, the King of Aquitaine.
Insignificant at first, this embryo state speedily increased in power
and consequence. The domain included within its boundaries had for
years been the scene of bloody insurrections, of incessant anarchy,
of partisan warfare. Its lands were untilled. Its inhabitants feared
to venture beyond the walls of their cities. Its communications with
the central government, always precarious, were often completely
interrupted for months at a time. But as soon as comparative protection
and safety were assured by the occupancy of the Franks a striking
change became apparent in the condition of the country. The ruined
fortifications were repaired. The habitual perfidy of the walis,
tempted by the prospect of greater freedom, induced them once more
to transfer their allegiance to the enemies of their faith. By
the donation of extensive grants of territory, and the promise of
unusual franchises and privileges, a host of colonists was attracted
to the settlements of the new principality. The fields reclaimed
from desolation again assumed the attractive prospect of cultivation
and prosperity. The Gothic March became the refuge not only of such
Christians as were discontented under Moslem rule, but of all those
whose grievances led them to renounce allegiance to the King of the
Asturias or to the chieftains of Biscay. Not a few were allured by the
hope that here might arise a monarchy which, founded by the descendants
of its ancient masters, would restore the laws, the prestige, and the
glory of the Visigothic empire. Such was the origin of the state soon
to be known as the County of Barcelona, a name of profound import in
the subsequent history of the Peninsula. Its foundation was the second
step towards the weakening of the Moslem power, and one scarcely
inferior in political results to the establishment of the kingdom of
the Asturias.
The chief towns of the new principality were Ausona, Cardona,
Manresa, and Gerona. None of these were seaports, and the sagacity
of Charlemagne perceived and appreciated the necessity of securing
maritime communication with his dominions to obviate the possible
isolation of the Gothic March, either through the inclemency of the
seasons or the vigilance of his enemies. He therefore projected an
expedition against Barcelona, which possessed an indifferent but
available harbor, and whose commercial rank already afforded many
indications of the importance to which it afterwards attained. Its
situation and the intrigues of its walis had previously acquired
for it a nominal independence. The present governor, Zaid, had
constantly alternated between protestations of loyalty to Al-Hakem
and solicitations of protection from Charlemagne. The King of
Aquitaine having appeared before the walls with a numerous army,
Zaid, with plausible excuses, protracted the negotiations looking
to the delivery of the city until the approach of winter rendered a
siege impracticable. Hassan, the wali of Huesca, also declined to
admit the Franks, although he was the sworn vassal of Louis; and that
disappointed prince, who had pictured to himself an easy and profitable
termination of the campaign, was forced to retire with ignominy, amidst
the murmurs of his dissatisfied soldiers, to the security of his own
dominions.
The Grand Council of the empire, held according to the custom of
the Franks every spring, met in the beginning of the year 801 at
Toulouse. The object of these national assemblies was the discussion
and settlement of future military operations, as determined by the
arguments and the experience of the veteran warriors whose influence
decided their deliberations. The abortive results of preceding
enterprises had provoked the impatience rather than damped the ardor
of the Frankish chieftains, and the unanimous voice of the Council
tumultuously demanded the capture of Barcelona. Before the close of the
year an immense army, which is designated by vainglorious chroniclers
as composed of many distinct nations, emerged from the defiles of
the Pyrenees. The vanity of Louis, which had suffered through the
unprofitable issues of former campaigns, or possibly the entreaties
of his lieutenants who knew his incapacity, induced him to remain
at Rousillon until the event of the expedition could no longer be
doubtful. The invading force was marshalled in two divisions,--one,
under the Count of Gerona, pressed the siege of the city, and the
other, commanded by William, Count of Toulouse, was stationed as
a corps of observation between Lerida and Tarragona to prevent any
attempt at relief by the Moslems of Cordova. The fortifications were
fearlessly attacked and obstinately defended. Zaid, the wali of the
city, abandoning the vacillating and treasonable conduct which had so
long obscured his character, conducted the defence with an intrepidity
and a resolution worthy of the greatest military heroes. Animated by
his example, the garrison repulsed the storming parties, one after
another, with great slaughter, although these were directed by the
Frankish general in person. The losses sustained in these assaults
impelled the besiegers to resort to the tedious but more certain
measure of a blockade. The lines were drawn so tightly that the
inhabitants soon began to experience the pressure of hunger. While
the port does not seem to have been closed, still no supplies were
sent to the suffering garrison by the government of Cordova. Many of
the inhabitants perished; the remainder were reduced to contend with
each other for the vilest and most revolting means to sustain their
failing strength. They devoured the refuse of the streets. They fought
desperately for fragments of the leathern curtains which hung before
the doorways of their houses. Some in despair threw themselves from
the walls. Others rushed headlong upon the weapons of the enemy. But
despite the harrowing scenes of universal misery, there was no whisper
of surrender. Even the Christians, who were numerous, took their turns
upon the battlements and crossed swords with their co-religionists in
the breach. No one believed that the Emir would abandon, without an
attempt at relief, a city whose commercial advantages and geographical
position rendered it one of the keys of his empire. At length a new
army, commanded by King Louis himself, reinforced the besiegers. The
distress of the garrison was increasing daily, and, his resources
exhausted, Zaid determined to endeavor to reach Cordova and by a
personal appeal to Al-Hakem obtain means to relieve the city. The
intrepid governor, issuing unattended from a secret postern by night,
had almost succeeded in penetrating the enemy’s lines when the neighing
of his horse gave the alarm and he was captured. These depressing
events exerted their influence on the besieged, but their constancy
and courage still sustained them. At length, after several breaches
had been made in the walls, and the Moslems, decimated in numbers, had
been reduced to despair, negotiations were opened with the Franks. The
most favorable terms obtainable involved the loss of property and the
hardships of exile. The gates were finally thrown open, and a long
and melancholy procession of unfortunates, tottering with weakness
and emaciated by famine, upon whose faces were stamped the signs of
protracted suffering, filed painfully through the camp of the enemy;
and the Frankish chieftains, preceded by the ministers of the Christian
faith arrayed in all the pomp and splendor of their order, entered the
city, to celebrate before the altar of its principal temple the triumph
by which the most important province of Eastern Spain had passed
forever from beneath the Moslem sceptre.
The Christian population welcomed its change of masters with no
manifestations of joy or enthusiasm. A gloomy silence pervaded the
crowds lining the streets, as the prelates in gorgeous vestments and
the men-at-arms in glittering steel swept by in majestic procession,
to solemnize, with every circumstance of ecclesiastical ceremony and
military ostentation, the fortunate termination of their enterprise.
In the early ages of Islam the beneficent and tolerant rule of
the Moor seems to have universally won the respect and inspired
the confidence of conquered nations and hostile sectaries alike.
For the happy conditions promoted by the exercise of the generous
principles of equity and religious freedom, the ignorance, tyranny, and
intolerance of a foreign hierarchy offered no adequate compensation.
From the hamlets of Provence to the plains of Andalusia, the tributary
Christians, save only such as were invested with the dignity of the
sacerdotal order, appear to have always beheld, with unconcealed
regret, the discomfiture and displacement of their infidel lords.
Well apprized of the uncertainty and difficulty of retaining his
conquest, Louis repaired--as well as circumstances would permit--the
walls of Barcelona, which had sustained considerable damage from the
mines and military engines of his soldiery. A governor of Gothic race
was left in command of a well-appointed garrison, and, his object
finally attained, the King of Aquitaine retired from the scene of such
devotion, self-sacrifice, and valor. The heroic Zaid, after receiving
the reproaches and vituperation of his conqueror, who, actuated by
some unknown motive, condescended to spare his life, was condemned to
perpetual banishment, and henceforth disappears from history.
The introduction of the Feudal System into Spain practically dates from
the capture of Barcelona by the army of Louis. That system had long
before been instituted in France. Its germs, as yet undeveloped, had
appeared in many of the regulations of the Visigothic constitution. But
the minutely defined and mutual obligations of vassal and lord, and
the exact nature of the allegiance due from the noble to his prince as
suzerain, had been neither established by prescription nor formulated
by law. Nor did its rules ever acquire among the independent races of
the Peninsula the force and extent accorded to them elsewhere. The
humiliating seigniorial rights claimed and exercised by the dissolute
barons of England, France, and Germany were never imposed upon the
brave and self-respecting peasantry of Spain. It was long before the
hereditary transmission of fiefs was fully recognized in that country.
North of the Pyrenees the duties of feudalism, once assumed, could
never be relinquished. In Castile and Aragon the vassal could renounce
the service of one protector for that of another, if he had previously
surrendered all property received from the former or its pecuniary
equivalent. This establishment of feudal institutions in the Gothic
March not only assured the permanence of its conquest, but gave the
Franks an influence in the affairs of the Peninsula as advantageous
to the promotion of Christian success as it was prejudicial to the
continuance of Moslem power.
The loss of Barcelona was, as soon became evident. a catastrophe
of signal importance, whose consequences seriously affected the
prestige and diminished the strength of the Moorish empire in Spain.
No explanation has ever been adduced to account for the surprising
indifference or culpable neglect of Al-Hakem in allowing the enemies of
his faith and his dynasty to wrest from its brave defenders one of the
most considerable and prosperous cities in his dominions. A mysterious
silence pervades the ancient chronicles in regard to the reasons for
his conduct,--so extraordinary; so at variance with the energy of
his character; so detrimental to the interests of his kingdom; so
destructive to his hopes of future greatness. Experience had proved
him to be endowed with many of the qualities of a daring and active
leader. From his very youth, the excitement of war had been to his
fiery spirit a favorite and exhilarating pastime. His resources were
unlimited, his army well equipped and numerous. So far as we have any
information, the remainder of his kingdom was at peace. In case the
Christian host was too powerful to encounter in battle, the sea offered
a broad and unobstructed highway for the transportation of supplies
and reinforcements. Time was not wanting, for the siege lasted seven
months. Whether the menacing attitude of the King of the Asturias,
or some obscure domestic sedition, which, obscured by the crowning
exploit of the Frankish crusade, has escaped the notice of historians,
is responsible for this apparently unaccountable and suicidal apathy,
must remain forever a matter of conjecture. But whatever was the cause,
the misfortune was irreparable. The iron grasp of the Frank never
slackened its hold. The colony became a principality, the principality
a kingdom, which, in time, consolidated with other provinces into the
monarchy of Aragon, led the van of the Christian armies in the War of
the Reconquest.
All authorities agree, however, that the Emir was on the point of
marching to the relief of Barcelona when information reached him of its
surrender. Unwilling to disband his army without an attempt to at least
partially regain his lost prestige, he proceeded to Saragossa, and
then, following the course of the Ebro, succeeded in retaking Huesca,
Tarragona, and some other places of inferior importance. The rebel
chieftains, Hassan and Bahlul, to whose treasonable artifices is mainly
to be credited the loss of Eastern Spain, were captured and beheaded.
No demonstration was made before Barcelona, a fact that would seem to
suggest either the inferiority of the troops in numbers and equipment
or the prudence or fears of their commander.
The religious enthusiasts of the capital had seen, with alarm and
disgust, the accession of Al-Hakem. While not eminent for piety like
his father, he, on the other hand, had manifested no particular
hostility to the theological faction. Its members, however, were not
his favorites. He was devoted to amusements and practices abhorrent to
the principles openly preached and secretly neglected by these rigid
precisians. His frequent intoxication, a vice which outraged public
opinion and provoked the contempt of the conscientious Moslem, made the
palace the scene of orgies that were the reproach and the scandal of
the capital. From childhood he had been immoderately devoted to sensual
indulgence. The pastime of the chase, which involved the employment
of animals declared unclean by the Koran, occupied no small part of
his leisure. A ferocious temper, an exaggerated idea of his authority,
an implacable spirit, and a merciless severity in the infliction of
punishment for even trifling offences increased the terror with which
he was regarded by noble, peasant, and theologian. But these sins were
venial when compared with the indifference with which he treated the
saints and the doctors upon whom Hischem had bestowed distinguished
honors and unbounded confidence. Those who had formerly been entrusted
with important secrets of state, which they were able to use for their
personal advantage, were now excluded from the Divan. Instead of
entering the royal presence without ceremony, they were compelled to
wait the pleasure of their master in the antechambers. The donations
from the public treasury, which had been bestowed with unstinted hand
upon every specious pretext, were now withheld. Degraded in the popular
estimation, humbled in pride, diminished in wealth, derided by the
court, but still retaining the sympathy of the masses, the fanatics
of rival sects began to overlook their mutual animosity in the hope
of restoring the vanished importance of their order, and to entertain
designs against the life as well as the government of Al-Hakem.
The scheming and disappointed Malikite faquis, whose ecclesiastical
character, assisted by a talent for imposture, had caused the multitude
to attribute to them supernatural powers, were the chief promoters of
the conspiracy. The prestige of a royal name being considered essential
to their success, they approached Ibn-Shammas, son of Abdallah, and
a cousin of the Emir, and, finding him apparently favorable to their
designs, openly tendered him the crown. The ambition of that chieftain,
however, was not sufficiently strong to induce him to compromise his
loyalty. Dissembling his indignation at the presumption of those who
could think him capable of such flagrant ingratitude and treason, he
demanded a list of the principal conspirators as an indispensable
condition of his compliance. The deputation, headed by a faqui named
Yahya, readily agreed to this, and a night was designated when the
information would be given. Meanwhile, Ibn-Shammas informed the Emir of
what had happened, and when Yahya and his companions were introduced
into his apartments, Ibn-al-Khada, the private secretary of Al-Hakem,
was already there concealed behind a curtain, and ready to write down
the names as fast as they were communicated. The list included many
of the most considerable nobles and citizens of Cordova, and the
secretary, fearing lest the conspirators, to magnify their importance,
might include his own name among the number, an act which would insure
his destruction, designedly allowed the reed with which he was writing
to scratch upon the paper. The traitors instantly took the alarm; the
house of Ibn-Shammas was deserted in a moment; all implicated who had
time to escape fled precipitately from the city, and the others, to the
number of seventy-two, were crucified.
The year 805 witnessed the institution of an alliance between the
Emirate of the West and the newly founded kingdom of the Edrisites
in Africa, destined to exercise a marked influence upon the fortunes
of the former power, and whose close relations in peace and war were
not finally sundered until the kingdom of Granada was incorporated
into the Spanish monarchy. Several years previously a noble Syrian
named Edris, a fugitive like Abd-al-Rahman from the persecution of
the Abbasides, had sought a refuge in the mountain defiles and desert
wastes of Western Africa. Without friends, money, or influence, he
nevertheless received a hearty welcome from the tribes of the Atlas.
His manly traits and chivalrous bearing soon secured for him the esteem
of his protectors, and, from a penniless refugee, he rose by degrees
to be the chieftain of a clan, the founder of a nation, and the head
of a dynasty. It was to his son and successor Edris that Al-Hakem now
sent an embassy to felicitate him upon his accession, and to propose
an alliance which might be employed to contract the dominions and
weaken the power of the detested tyrants of the East. The importance
of the occasion was disclosed by an escort of five hundred Andalusian
nobles, and the interchange of magnificent presents. The embassy was
splendidly entertained by the African monarch, and a treaty concluded
which, by its provisions for mutual support and constant hostility
against the common enemy, accomplished much towards the consolidation
and perpetuity of the Moslem power in the West. Two years afterwards
the city of Fez was founded. Its population, composed largely of
Christians, Jews, fire-worshippers, and idolaters, excited the wonder
and contempt of the pious Mussulmans who visited it; and the incessant
strife promoted by the political adventurers and zealots of the various
forms of faith, who had established their abode within its walls,
augured ill for the future peace or prosperity of the Edrisite capital.
While absent on the expedition to Eastern Spain, the mind of Al-Hakem
had been disturbed by tidings of another outbreak at Toledo. Yusuf,
the son of Amru, who, through paternal fondness and the partiality
of the Emir, had been exalted to a position to the discharge of
whose responsibilities his experience and qualifications were wholly
inadequate, had signalized his promotion by flagrant and repeated
acts of tyranny and insolence. The Toledan populace, seditious by
inheritance and practice, and which, from time immemorial, had been
ready to assert, on the slightest provocation, the dangerous privilege
of resistance, at the perpetration of some outrage of unusual atrocity
ran to arms, attacked the palace, and overpowered a detachment of
the guard. The principal citizens, dreading the consequences of an
insurrection, interposed their good offices between the governor and
the mob, and, with great difficulty, prevented the sack of the palace
and the death of its master. But the latter, far from appreciating
either the efforts of his benefactors or the peril which he had just
escaped, meditated and planned, without concealment or precaution, a
bloody and merciless revenge. Informed of his intentions, the nobles
deprived him of his office without ceremony, and threw him into prison.
A messenger was sent to Al-Hakem to acquaint him with the facts, and
to explain the danger which justified the adoption of such extreme
and arbitrary measures. The Emir, with every appearance of kindness,
excused the violence of his subjects; gave orders for the removal of
the obnoxious Yusuf; and reinstated, at his own solicitation, Amru as
wali; the grateful inhabitants returned to their avocations, and the
city once more assumed the appearance of its former tranquillity.
But the habitual defiance of his authority by the Toledans rankled
in the breast of Al-Hakem. The city had long been the focus of
insurrection, the rallying-point of the discontented, the head-quarters
of every turbulent and ambitious chieftain. Not even the metropolis
itself surpassed it in its influence on the politics of the kingdom.
The audacity of its citizens and the pride of its clergy concurred in
supporting its extravagant pretensions to supremacy. The limited area
enclosed by its walls had always been occupied by a dense population,
among whose members the Christians largely preponderated, and over
whose minds the traditions of the Visigothic monarchy exerted a
power constantly distrusted and feared by every Moslem ruler who
exercised jurisdiction over its territory. The Arab historians have
repeatedly asserted, with every appearance of truth, that no other
body of subjects within the dominions of Islam were so infected with
the spirit of mutiny and disorder as the populace of Toledo. Even
the descendants of renegades who had renounced their creed and their
nationality--a class whose religious zeal and uncompromising fidelity
are proverbial--were not insensible to the time-honored legends and
historical souvenirs that recalled, on every side, the glorious events
and vanished grandeur of the ancient capital of the Visigoths. The
Moslems, who had settled principally in the environs, were overawed
by the insolence of their neighbors, who, although their tributaries,
maintained all the haughtiness that ordinarily attaches to superior
birth and exalted station. Once more installed as governor, Amru
exerted all his tact to allay the apprehensions of the people, who
feared that his paternal pride might impose upon them a heavy penalty
for their former disobedience. By every expression of solicitude, by
every show of partiality and consideration, he sought to regain their
confidence. He privately assured their leaders of his approval of, and
sympathy with, their efforts to obtain their independence and resist
the imposition of tyrannous exactions and unjust laws. He even went so
far as to denounce the Emir, and to promise his own co-operation in
case of future unwarrantable encroachment upon the lives and liberty
of the Toledans by the despotic court of Cordova. Thoroughly imposed
upon by his duplicity, the masses, as well as the nobles and the
priesthood, regarded him as their benefactor, and bestowed upon their
crafty governor every mark of honor and esteem. Then, instructed by
Al-Hakem, Amru represented that, as the ordinary practice of billeting
soldiers upon the families of the citizens was a serious grievance
and productive of much disorder, this inconvenience could be obviated
by the erection of a strongly fortified citadel, which he suggested
would also be of incalculable value in the assertion of popular rights
in future insurrections. Public approval was readily obtained; the
fortress rose on the most commanding point of the city; the wealthy
contributed of their means, the poor donated their labor, to aid in
its construction; the advantages of location and the resources of
engineering skill conspired to make its defences almost impregnable. A
powerful garrison was introduced, and Al-Hakem was notified that the
time had finally arrived for the gratification of his long-meditated
vengeance.
A despatch was now sent to the frontier directing one of the officers
who commanded in that quarter to petition for reinforcements, in view
of a pretended demonstration of the Franks. This was accordingly done;
and a force of several thousand troops, commanded by the young prince,
Abd-al-Rahman, heir to the throne, who was assisted by the counsels of
three viziers of age and experience, marched out of Cordova, apparently
destined for service in the Pyrenees. When the army reached Toledo,
it was informed that the anticipated danger had been exaggerated;
that the enemy had withdrawn from the vicinity of the frontier,
and consequently that all prospect of hostilities had disappeared.
While encamped in the vicinity, the officers received a visit from
the governor, who was accompanied by a number of the most prominent
citizens. The deputation was received and entertained with distinction
and hospitality, and the guests were delighted with the politeness,
the condescension, and the precocious talents of their prospective
sovereign, who had not yet attained the age of fifteen years. Then,
at the suggestion of Amru, an invitation was extended to the prince
to make the city his home until his departure, a proposal which was
accepted with well-feigned reluctance. Preparations were made for a
sumptuous banquet. In the long list of guests appeared the names of the
most distinguished nobles, the most opulent citizens, the most eminent
leaders, who were either suspected of disaffection or had openly
signalized their zeal for the popular cause, either by open resistance
or by instigation to rebellion. When the hour designated for the
festivities approached, the guests were introduced, one by one, through
a postern, where they successively fell by the hands of the soldiers.
As each party arrived, the equipages and attendants were sent to the
opposite gate of the fortress, there to await the reappearance of their
masters. An immense crowd, attracted by the novelty of the occasion and
the presence of royalty, surrounded the citadel. Among the spectators,
a physician, shrewder or more suspicious than his companions, had
remarked the ominous stillness that reigned within the walls, and
the fact that of all the guests who had been known to enter none had
been seen to leave, although the sun was now far past the meridian.
A bystander directed his attention to a cloud of vapor faintly
discernible above the ramparts as an evidence that the festivities had
not ceased. The experience of the practitioner at once detected the
cause, and raising his hands in horror, he exclaimed: “Wretch! that is
not the smoke which proceeds from the preparation of a banquet; it is
the vapor from the blood of your murdered brethren!”
The number of victims of this awful crime is variously stated at from
seven hundred to five thousand. As the bodies were decapitated, they
were cast into a trench which had been dug during the construction of
the castle; and from this fact the deed which violated the rites of
hospitality so sacred in the eye of the Arab became known in the annals
of the Peninsula as the “Day of the Ditch.”
The next morning the heads of those who, by an act of unparalleled
treachery, had so severely expiated their past offences and the faults
of their kindred, were ranged in bloody array upon the battlements.
There was scarcely a household among those of the most distinguished
residents of the city which was not filled with mourning. A feeling of
deep but smothered exasperation pervaded the community. But the object
of the tyrant was attained; a lesson of terror had been inculcated; the
leaders were gone; the spirit of insurrection was effectually crushed;
and many years elapsed before Toledo was again vexed by the tumults and
the violence of a seditious demonstration.
About this time a serious difficulty arose at Merida. Esbah, the wali
of that city, was, as will be remembered, at once the cousin and the
brother-in-law of the Emir. For some cause he dismissed his vizier,
and the latter, by false statements concerning the ambitious designs
of his superior, induced Al-Hakem to deprive him of his office and
confer it upon himself. The wali, indignant at being thus unjustly
accused, defied the royal edict; the people, by whom he was greatly
beloved, espoused his cause; and a formidable rebellion seemed
imminent, when the beautiful Kinza, the sister of Al-Hakem, succeeded
by her entreaties in averting the impending calamity. Explanations were
tendered, the incensed and alienated kinsmen were reconciled, and Esbah
was reinstated in his authority amidst the congratulations of his wife
and the acclamations of the people.
The habitual distrust of Al-Hakem, his love of military pomp, and the
knowledge of the turbulence and duplicity of a large proportion of
his subjects, had led him to increase his body-guard to the number of
six thousand. The impatience of the Arab under restraint, as well as
his suspicious fidelity, excluded him from the select corps entrusted
with the protection of the life of the sovereign. The lessons of
experience, and the well-recognized principle of despotism which
discourages all sympathy between the people and the army, suggested
the enlistment of foreigners and infidels. Three thousand of the guard
were Spanish Christians, the rest were slaves--Ethiopian and Asiatic
captives purchased in the marts of the eastern Mediterranean, who
were popularly designated mutes on account of their ignorance of the
Arabic language. Their arms and equipment were of the finest and most
expensive description. Their discipline was as thorough as the tactics
of the age could inculcate. Two thousand were quartered in extensive
barracks erected on the southern side of the Guadalquivir, whose
banks were constantly patrolled by their sentinels. The others, whose
numbers were swelled by hundreds of eunuchs and retainers of the Emir’s
household, were stationed in the palace, whose defences were more
characteristic of an impregnable fortress than of the ordinary abode of
a sovereign. The great mass of the people, and especially the severely
orthodox, viewed the establishment of this large military force--whose
existence was a silent reproach to their loyalty and whose opinions
were considered idolatrous--with mingled feelings of hatred, jealousy,
and contempt. The fierce zealots and ecclesiastical demagogues, whose
arts had acquired for them a dangerous pre-eminence and whose influence
had been of late years a perpetual menace to the government, regarded
the royal guards with sentiments of peculiar aversion. The maintenance
of this splendid body of soldiers, whose expenses far exceeded those of
an ordinary division equal to it in numbers, was a heavy charge upon
the treasury. To meet the increasing expenditure, a new duty was levied
upon all merchandise imported into the capital. The burdens arising
from the imposition of this tax, and the inconvenience attending its
collection, were the most keenly felt by the southern suburb. Of this
densely populated quarter, fully one-fifth of the inhabitants were
teachers and students of theology. Not only over these, but over the
various guilds of merchants, tradesmen, and laborers, the authority of
a few faquis, who united the qualifications of religious instructors
with the privileged attributes of saints, was despotic. A soldier who
ventured alone into the stronghold of these desperate fanatics did so
at the risk of his life. No opportunity was suffered to pass whereby
indignity could be heaped upon the guards of the Emir. The monarch
himself was not less unpopular. The theological faction constantly
made unfavorable comparisons between his skepticism and luxury and
the austere virtues of his father, Hischem, whose partiality for
their sect had formerly obtained for its dogmas the highest respect
and consideration. The failings and vices of royalty received scant
indulgence at the hands of the Malikites. When, from the summit of the
minaret, the muezzin proclaimed the hour of public devotion, a hundred
voices responded in derision from street, bazaar, and garden: “Come to
prayer, O Drunkard, come to prayer!” Aided by the encouragement and
sympathy of their companions, the culprits foiled without difficulty
every attempt at detection. Neither the sacred associations of the
mosque, nor the moments consecrated to divine communion, when the
assembly of the faithful bowed reverently before the Kiblah, nor the
prospect of condign punishment, were sufficient to deter fanatical
agitators, who prided themselves on their piety and orthodoxy, from the
perpetration of outrage and insult. They vilified the monarch while
in the exercise of his sacred duties as the officiating minister of
Islam. They ridiculed his actions and mocked his resentment in the
streets. Exasperated beyond all endurance, Al-Hakem ordered that ten
of the leaders should be arrested and delivered to the executioner
to be crucified. This summary proceeding, far from allaying the
excitement, only intensified it. The desire to wreak their vengeance
on the persecutor of their martyred brethren was now the paramount
consideration, compared with which the prevalence of vice, the evils
of taxation, and the tolerance of heretics were matters of trifling
importance. It soon became evident that a serious disturbance was
impending.
The most influential and dangerous instigator of the populace
was another Yahya, part knave and part zealot, whose learning
and effrontery had procured for him great renown both as a saint
and a politician. He had been a pupil and disciple of the famous
Malik-Ibn-Anas at Medina, and had been distinguished by the favor of
that oracle of Islam. The fame of his sanctity, and an extravagant
idea of his attainments and his virtues entertained by the members of
his sect, had increased his reputation and inflated his pride. His
intriguing genius was now exerted to precipitate the explosion.
It was the month of Ramadhan, the Mohammedan Lent, and the outbreak had
been planned for the last Wednesday, a day of ill omen in the Moslem
calendar. The efforts of Yahya and his coadjutors were being constantly
exerted to inflame the passions of the populace by private exhortations
and public discourses under the pretext of religious instruction, when
a quarrel arose between a soldier and an armorer which resulted in the
death of the latter. In an instant the southern suburb was in arms.
The contagion of rebellion and vengeance spread fast through the other
disaffected quarters of the capital. A raging mob rolled down upon the
citadel, driving before it the scattered eunuchs and dependents of
the palace and the soldiers of the outposts. In vain was the cavalry
ordered to clear the streets; the veteran troopers of the Emir were
overwhelmed and driven back in confusion. The gates of the castle were
closed and barred, and the multitude, wild with baffled rage, at once
prepared, with the aid of fire and heavy timbers, to force an entrance.
The serious aspect of the situation was fully appreciated by the
inmates of the palace, who knew that in case the fanatics succeeded in
penetrating the walls not a soldier or servant of the royal household
would be left alive. As conscious of his peril as the rest, not a sign
of emotion clouded the placid visage of Al-Hakem. While the shouts of
the mob were resounding through the courts and gardens, he ordered
his favorite page to bring him a bottle of civet. The lad in wonder
obeyed, and the monarch carefully and deliberately poured the perfume
upon his hair and beard. The curiosity of the page prevailing over his
discretion, he inquired the cause of this singular proceeding at a time
of such imminent danger. “O son of an unbeliever,” responded the Emir,
“how can he who will cut off my head distinguish my rank unless by the
sweet odor that exhales from my beard!”
His toilet completed, Al-Hakem directed the captain of the guard to
expose at once upon the battlements the heads of certain faquis who had
been imprisoned since the former insurrection. Then, clothing himself
in complete armor, he summoned his cousin, Obeydallah, and ordered him,
at the head of a picked body of cavalry, to cut his way through the
streets and set fire to the southern suburb, shrewdly judging that the
attention of the insurgents would be distracted when they perceived
that their homes were in flames. The event justified his expectations.
The sudden sally of Obeydallah disconcerted the rabble; the river was
reached and forded; and in a few moments, the smoke rising in twenty
different places beyond the Guadalquivir announced the success of the
stratagem. The insurgents, forgetting the animosity to their sovereign
in their solicitude for their families and their property, rushed in
confusion over the bridge. Then Al-Hakem fell upon their rear with his
guards, and Obeydallah, reinforced by detachments from the neighborhood
which had been attracted by news of the revolt, assailed them in front.
Overcome with terror and incapable of resistance, the unhappy fanatics
were massacred by thousands. Three hundred of those conspicuous for
their rank, or for the part they had taken in fomenting disorder, were
nailed, head downward, to posts on the bank of the river. A council
was then held to determine the fate of the survivors. Some of the
viziers advocated extermination, but milder opinions prevailed, and
it was decreed that the suburb should be razed and the inhabitants
banished, within three days, under penalty of crucifixion. This
sentence was ruthlessly executed; the condemned quarter was delivered
to pillage and the houses destroyed. The exiles, driven from their
country, variously experienced the effects of both good and adverse
fortune. Many parties were plundered by brigands before they reached
the border. Eight thousand families were invited by Edris to form
a part of the population of the new city of Fez, where neither the
hospitality of their reception nor their subsequent prosperity was
able to prevent them from indulgence in perpetual strife with their
neighbors, the Arabs. A great body, which included fifteen thousand
fighting-men, was transported by sea to Egypt at a time when the
country was in arms against the Khalif of Bagdad. Forming an alliance
with the malcontents, they stormed Alexandria; and then, declaring
their independence, retained possession of that great entrepôt of the
Mediterranean against all the power of the Abbasides for more than
twelve years. Finally, reduced by the forces of Al-Mansur, they were
removed to Crete, a part of which still acknowledged the authority
of the Emperor of Constantinople. This island they conquered, and
they then founded a state whose piratical expeditions for more than a
century were the scourge of the Mediterranean until Crete once more,
in the year 961, was added to the dominions of the Byzantine Empire. A
reminiscence of the Moslem occupation of the island is suggested by its
present name, which, a corruption of the Arabic khandik, a “trench” or
“fortification,” survives in the name of Candia.
But while the offences of the populace were thus punished with
inexorable rigor, the principal offenders, the promoters of sedition,
were the recipients of extraordinary clemency. The explanation of this
partiality is to be found in the fact that the mass of the insurgents
was of a foreign and, despite their bigoted adherence to the orthodox
faith, of a detested caste. The religious teachers of the Malikites,
on the other hand, were largely descended from the Koreish, and the
ties of blood and the antipathies of race were considerations of
greater moment in the mind of Al-Hakem than the insult to his person
or the danger to his crown. Some of the leaders who had been prominent
in the late troubles were permitted to escape; others underwent short
terms of imprisonment; many received the benefit of a general amnesty.
The arch-conspirator, Yahya, was of this number, and his talents or his
audacity soon restored him once more to a certain degree of royal favor.
The military operations maintained for years in Eastern Spain by the
ambition of the Franks, the treachery of the walis, and the weak
and faltering policy of Al-Hakem, were not productive of decisive
action or enduring results. The city of Tortosa was twice invested,
and twice abandoned in disgrace, by the armies of Charlemagne. The
first siege was raised after a disastrous defeat sustained by the
Franks, of which the Arabs neglected to take advantage; the second
was undertaken without adequate preparation, and relinquished under
circumstances suggestive of irresolution and cowardice. The hostilities
gradually assumed the character of predatory expeditions rather than
the systematic efforts of organized warfare. The crusading ardor of
the new colonists of the Gothic March soon abated under the tyranny
of their feudal masters, who appropriated their lands, oppressed them
with taxes, and violated the rights which had been solemnly guaranteed
to them conditional upon their allegiance. The justice of Charlemagne
was invoked to suppress these increasing disorders, but the distance
from his court and the arrogance of the nobles enabled the latter to
practically nullify his edicts. The præcepta, or fueros, addressed to
the Counts of the Gothic March, and issued from time to time by the
Emperor, exhorting these lords to equity, and defining minutely the
privileges of their dependents, constitute some of the most interesting
and remarkable documents of mediæval jurisprudence. The last three
years of the reign of Al-Hakem were passed in peace with the Franks,
under a truce concluded between the courts of Aix-la-Chapelle and
Cordova.
The hostilities between the Asturian and Moorish kingdoms were, during
the reign of Hischem and Al-Hakem, prosecuted with energy, but with
constantly varying success. The Christians had not become sufficiently
strong to provoke with impunity the power of the Moslem sovereigns.
The attention of the latter was so occupied with the suppression of
intestine turmoil and ineffectual attempts to counteract the ambitious
projects of the Franks that they suffered many of the incursions of
their infidel neighbors to pass unnoticed. Some expeditions that
entered the Asturias returned in triumph, others were annihilated.
The forays of the Christian princes spread dismay through the Moorish
settlements of Galicia and Lusitania. Occasionally they met with
serious reverses, but these were generally retrieved in the next
campaign; and when the results of the year were compared, the advantage
was always with the Christians. They enlarged their influence and
cemented their power, by alliances with the Basques, with the lord of
the Gothic March, with the renowned Charlemagne. The limits of their
little monarchy, once so insignificant, began to extend south of the
mountains, those natural barriers beyond whose protecting peaks and
ravines they at first had feared to venture. Constant practice in
warfare formed a race of warriors whose prestige increased with their
success, and whose experience taught them the importance of loyalty,
obedience, and discipline. Their monarchs were, for the most part,
eminently fitted for the arduous duties imposed upon them by the
accidents of birth and fortune. Of these princes none attained to such
eminence in the pursuits of peace or the art of war as Alfonso II.,
surnamed The Chaste, whose singular title has been variously attributed
by historians to mistaken piety and constitutional impotence. His
life was one long crusade against the infidel. By every resource of
diplomacy, by every exertion of courage, by every sacrifice of comfort
and even of independence, he endeavored to promote the interest of that
cause which was identified with the honor of the Christian name. He
sent gifts and did homage to Charlemagne to secure his aid; and thus,
within less than a century of its foundation, the Asturian monarchy
twice became the fief of a foreign power; under Alfonso II., whose
allegiance was rendered to a Christian king in contradistinction to the
conduct of his predecessor Mauregato, the natural son of Alfonso I.
and a Berber captive, who had acknowledged the Emir of Cordova as his
suzerain, and whose dependence was, in addition to the customary acts
of fealty, manifested by the humiliating annual tribute of a hundred
virgins. The arms of Alfonso were carried repeatedly beyond the Douro
and the Tagus. He took and plundered Lisbon, already a flourishing
city, but its distance from his dominions and the small force at his
command compelled him soon afterwards to relinquish his prize. His
desperate valor and his superiority in partisan warfare frustrated
every attempt of the Moslems to effect a permanent lodgement in his
dominions. Amidst the excitement of his campaigns, he found time to
erect churches, to endow convents, to enlarge and embellish Oviedo,
the capital of his little monarchy. The clergy derived liberal support
and patronage from his devotion. It was during this period that the
invention of an absurd legend produced effects upon the political and
religious destinies of Spain little anticipated by the unscrupulous
ecclesiastics who promulgated it. In an unfrequented portion of the
wilderness of Galicia a mysterious light of celestial radiance, watched
by an angel, revealed the burial spot and the body of St. James the
Apostle. The Bishop of Iria, to whom posterity is indebted for the
discovery of this priceless treasure, communicated without delay
the intelligence of the miracle to his sovereign; and a chapel was
erected upon the hallowed spot, which, in time, became a magnificent
temple and a place of pilgrimage for thousands of the faithful and
the curious from every country of Europe. A city sprang up around the
church, which, by the translation of the Bishopric of Iria, at once
rose to the greatest importance, and its inhabitants were benefited
by the trade of the pilgrims, as the shrine was enriched with the
contributions prompted by their piety and their gratitude. The simple
Asturians never questioned the truth or even the probability of the
legend; the priesthood, who sustained the credit of the fiction by
every expedient of intimidation and imposture, advanced steadily in
consideration and wealth, while the miracles daily wrought by the
precious relic confirmed its holy character,--a relic which surpassed
in the efficacy of its miraculous virtues the wonderful mementos of
the martyrs which had been rescued from obscurity and decay in the
catacombs of Rome. Such was the origin of the city and cathedral of
Santiago de Compostella, whose foundation contributed so materially
to the extension of the Castilian empire and the triumph of the
Christian religion. Here first appeared the germ of that enthusiastic
spirit--partly military, partly monastic--which prompted the foundation
of the numerous orders of knighthood and culminated in the disastrous
expeditions for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre. The retired
situation and primitive surroundings of the shrine, corresponding with
the humble origin of the Saint and his mission, increased the popular
faith in its genuineness and sanctity. The fact that the relics were
spurious and their discovery a fable was wholly indifferent so long
as the reverent credulity of the masses remained unshaken. The hope
of salvation, the religious aspirations of the devout, the increase
in prestige of the hierarchy, were all centred in the pretended tomb
of the Apostle. The apparition of the Saint upon his white charger in
the critical moments of battle roused the faltering courage of the
champions of the Cross on many a doubtful field, and it may safely
be asserted that neither the policy of the wisest statesmen nor the
victories of the most accomplished generals of any reign effected
more for the glory of the Spanish arms than did the fabrication of a
preposterous legend by an obscure prelate in the savage and almost
unknown region of Galicia.
The uniform success of the piratical excursions of the Saracens,
originated under the rule of the emirs and continued by the Ommeyades,
promised the adventurous aspirant for glory and wealth a more certain
and less hazardous career than the military profession. The Moorish
corsairs spread terror through the harbors and along the coasts of the
Mediterranean. They reduced to final subjection the Balearic Isles.
They plundered Corsica, established a temporary settlement in Sardinia,
and threatened the environs of the most opulent seaports of Italy. But
the fascinations attaching to the reckless profession of the pirate
were more congenial with the spirit of the Arab than the slower and
less brilliant results which must have proceeded from the maintenance
of an organized maritime power, and the Moslem princes seem never to
have seriously considered the construction of a navy which might, with
comparatively little exertion or expense, have acquired for them the
undisputed dominion of the seas.
The closing years of Al-Hakem were passed in the seclusion of the
harem, where, diverted by the companionship of the beauties of his
seraglio, amidst the excitements of intemperance and of every species
of debauchery, he endeavored to forget the sinister events of his
checkered career and the manifold acts of cruelty which had avenged
the crimes and errors of those who were unfortunate enough to incur
his resentment. The controlling maxim of his policy had always been
that mildness was synonymous with cowardice, and that the people
must be governed by the sword alone. To the adoption and enforcement
of this principle are to be attributed the frequent massacres and
executions of his reign. He was the first Moorish sovereign of Spain
who established a standing army, that menace to popular liberty and
indispensable support of despotism. The safety and health of his
soldiers were secured by the erection of commodious barracks; by the
collection of provisions and military stores in extensive magazines
and arsenals; by the enforcement of a system of perfect and rigorous
discipline. His guards, composed of slaves alien to the people and
devoted to their master, were the prototypes of the Janizaries and
the Mamelukes, whose pride and insubordination were long subsequently
productive of such disasters to the monarchies of Turkey and Egypt. The
mental constitution of Al-Hakem was disfigured by a vice not common
in the natures of men whose courage was never known to falter,--an
insatiable thirst for blood. Not a day elapsed when an order did not
issue from the tyrant, long invisible to his subjects, delivering some
unhappy wretch to the executioner. At length the effects of remorse
and prolonged intemperance reduced the Emir to a condition bordering
upon insanity. Oppressed with the memory of his crimes, haunted by the
groans and imprecations of his expiring victims, he became the prey
of frightful hallucinations, the offspring of a disordered brain. In
the middle of the night he startled the palace with his shrieks of
anguish. The slightest delay or opposition provoked him to fury. He
summoned his drowsy councillors in haste from their beds as if for the
discussion of affairs of the greatest moment, and, as soon as they were
assembled, dismissed them without ceremony. He reviewed his guards at
midnight. The hours of darkness were usually whiled away by the women
of the harem, who strove to amuse their capricious master with music,
songs, and lascivious dances. For four years Al-Hakem continued in
this deplorable condition, until relieved by a painful and lingering
death. His character was not deficient in many of the attributes of
greatness. He was brave, generous, sagacious, constant in friendship,
the implacable foe of hypocrisy, the welcome companion of philosophers
and poets. Prompt in action and resolute in battle, his indecision
at times of emergency nevertheless cost him an important part of his
dominions. His reign of twenty-six years was filled with stirring
events,--events which too plainly indicate the declining tendency of
the Saracen empire, which, deficient in all that constitutes the unity
and permanence of a state and a prey to constant disorder, was only
saved from precipitate destruction by the statesmanship and military
talents of its sovereigns.
CHAPTER X
REIGN OF ABD-AL-RAHMAN II.; REIGN OF MOHAMMED
822–886
Accession of Abd-al-Rahman II.--Defection of
Abdallah--Invasion of the Gothic March--Embassy from the Greek
Emperor--Revolt of Merida--Sedition at Toledo--Incursion
of the Normans--Persecution of the Christians--Death of
Abd-al-Rahman--His Love of Pomp--His Virtues--His Patronage
of Art and Letters--Ziryab--His Versatility---Conspiracy
of Tarub--Stratagem of Mohammed--His Bigotry--Toledo again
Revolts--Rise of the Beni-Kasi--War with the Asturias--Rebellion
of Ibn-Merwan--The Serrania de Ronda--Ibn-Hafsun, his Origin and
Exploits--Death and Character of Mohammed--Incipient Decadence
of the Moslem Power.
At the mature age of thirty-one, endowed with every talent which
contributes to political success and intellectual eminence, accustomed
for many years to the arduous details of civil affairs as well as
to the direction of important military operations and the command
of armies, Abd-al-Rahman II. ascended the throne of the emirate. A
handsome person and an engaging address aided not a little to increase
the general esteem which had been evoked by his capacity for business
and his great services to the state. An index to his popularity may be
discovered in the honorable titles bestowed upon him by the admiration
and love of his subjects. While a youth he was known as Al-Modhaffer,
The Victorious, and his benevolence and generosity had, long before his
accession, acquired for him the suggestive appellation of the “Father
of the Poor.” The physical and mental infirmities of Al-Hakem had,
for years before his death, induced him to relinquish the cares of
government, and to practically abandon to his son and successor all the
power, the duties, and the responsibilities of sovereignty.
Domestic discord, which seemed to be a necessary incident of the
inauguration of every prince of the Ommeyades, was not wanting to that
of Abd-al-Rahman. His great-uncle, Abdallah, in whose breast the fires
of ambition still burned fiercely in spite of his advanced age, leaving
his home at Tangier accompanied by a considerable band of friends and
retainers, landed in Andalusia and proclaimed himself Emir by virtue of
his relationship to the founder of the dynasty. His prospect of success
he regarded as the more certain on account of the positions occupied by
his three sons, who had enjoyed the confidence and shared the favor of
Al-Hakem, and who now exercised the most important commands in the gift
of the monarch.
The sanguine hopes of the venerable Abdallah were soon shown to be
fallacious. No sooner had he landed when, attacked by the cavalry of
Abd-al-Rahman, his forces were put to flight, and, driven from point to
point, he was finally compelled to take refuge in Valencia. His sons,
so far from sympathizing with his aspirations, did all in their power
to thwart them, and by personal appeals to his interest and affection
urged him to abandon his treasonable enterprise. Persuaded by their
entreaties, which were materially promoted by the timely occurrence of
an unfavorable omen,--a portent never unheeded by the superstitious
Oriental,--he reluctantly consented to forego his pretensions to the
crown and to swear fealty to his nephew. An interview was arranged;
Abdallah was escorted by his sons into the presence of the Emir, and
the latter, embracing him, not only pardoned his offence, but conferred
upon him the government of Murcia, where he remained in peace until his
death.
The embarrassment of Abd-al-Rahman, who, at the moment of his
accession, found himself confronted with an insurrection whose
consequences threatened to be serious, was not lost upon his
enterprising neighbors of the Gothic March. They raised a numerous
army, ravaged the Moorish territory at the North as far as the left
bank of the Segre, returning without having encountered any opposition
and laden with the spoils of war. This expedition was commanded by
Bernhart, Count of Barcelona, son of the renowned William of Toulouse,
upon whom Louis had conferred the fief; the former suzerain, Bera,
having been accused of treason and convicted by wager of battle,
according to the martial customs of the age. The substitution of a
foreigner for a native Goth whose aspirations for independence were
a title to favor rather than a reproach with his subjects, who, for
the most part of Spanish extraction, cherished the traditions and
indulged the pleasing but delusive hope of the ultimate restoration
of the organization and power of the ancient Visigothic empire, was a
stroke of policy which augured ill for the success or perpetuity of the
Frankish domination.
Abd-al-Rahman, aware of the political necessity of making a
demonstration to counteract the effects of the inroads that his
helpless situation had invited, and not unwilling to inaugurate his
reign with a brilliant military exploit, prepared to invade the Gothic
March with the army already collected for the suppression of the
insurrection fomented by Abdallah. The advance guard, commanded by the
wali Abd-al-Kerim, approaching from Valencia met the Christians not
far from Barcelona, and, after a short but hotly contested engagement,
drove them inside the gates. The Emir having arrived soon after with
the main body, the city was besieged. A number of determined attempts
to carry it by escalade having failed, and the force of Abd-al-Rahman
not being sufficient to maintain a thorough blockade, the intrenchments
were finally abandoned; and the Moslem army, pouring over the country,
in a few months succeeded in occupying the entire territory subject to
the Count of Barcelona. The Christians, repulsed in every encounter,
sought, in dismay and confusion, the most inaccessible heights and
defiles of the mountains. The castles were stormed and their garrisons
massacred. A feeling of terror seized the population, which included
many of the most experienced warriors of the Frankish empire, who,
allured by the princely grants held out to colonists and the prospect
of a life of excitement and adventure, had established themselves in
the Gothic March. But the expedition of the Moslems, although attended
with such successful results, did not rise above the dignity of a
foray. No attempt at a permanent occupation was made. The capital,
which alone maintained its independence and which, deprived of all
prospect of relief, could not have resisted a second attack, was not
compelled to again endure the horrors of siege. Satisfied with the
advantages he had gained and with the vengeance he had inflicted,
Abd-al-Rahman returned in triumph to Cordova, which he entered amidst
the plaudits and congratulations of the people.
The declining fortunes of the Byzantine Empire, whose sovereign,
Michael the Stammerer, found himself unequal to the task of coping
with his redoubtable adversary, Al-Mamun, Khalif of Bagdad, induced
him, during the second year of the reign of Abd-al-Rahman, to despatch
an embassy to Cordova to conclude an alliance with the Sultan of the
Ommeyades, the fame of whose dynasty had already reached the extreme
limits of the Orient. The envoys of the Emperor of Constantinople
were received with every evidence of distinction. A vast multitude
attended their entrance into the capital. They were lodged in the
royal palace, and all the pomp of the most splendid and luxurious court
in Europe was exhibited upon the occasion of their reception by the
Emir. The magnificence of the gifts which they brought--among which are
mentioned a number of beautiful horses caparisoned with cloth-of-gold
and silver--excited the wonder of the multitude, for no such treasures
had ever before been seen in Spain. An alluring prospect of conquest
was held out by the subtle Greeks, accompanied by the tender of troops
and munitions of war for the recovery of the lost inheritance of the
Ommeyades in Syria; but the precarious condition of the Emir, barely
able to maintain his authority against the plots of his disaffected
subjects, forbade, for the present, the formation of an offensive
league with the monarch of the East, and the ambassadors were dismissed
with a profusion of compliments and indefinite and conditional
assurances of support in the future. A special envoy of the Emir,
Yahya-al-Ghazzali, so named for his extraordinary charms of person and
manner, and equally famous as a poet and a diplomatist, accompanied
them, charged with the thanks of Abd-al-Rahman, and commissioned to
present to the Emperor some scimetars and trinkets of the finest
workmanship which the skill of the artisans of the Peninsula had been
able to produce.
During the same year an ambassador of a far different character,
and representing a power numerically inferior to the smallest city
acknowledging the sovereignty of the Emperor of the East, but whose
geographical position imparted to its advances a peculiar and weighty
significance, visited Cordova upon a similar errand. The recently
organized duchy of Navarre, an appanage of the Frankish empire, had
grown restive under the extortions of its suzerain. Accustomed to
the largest individual liberty, the mountaineers could ill endure
the exactions of irresponsible tyranny which the example of their
neighbors and a delusive pretence of public advantage had insensibly
imposed upon them. The bond of a common religious belief which united
them with the Franks was but weak when compared with the deeply rooted
national prejudice which the assumption of superiority by the vassals
of Charlemagne and Louis did much to promote, and which caused the
latter to be regarded with a far greater degree of execration than
was entertained against the Mohammedans, the natural enemies of their
country and their faith.
The Navarrese envoy, whose uncouth manners exhibited a striking
contrast to the courtly graces of the Byzantine nobles, was received
by the Moorish sovereign, if not with distinguished ceremony, yet with
courtesy and royal hospitality. A treaty was negotiated, which assured
the mountaineers of the aid of the government of Cordova, and a free
passage was granted to the Moslems for any expedition whose destination
lay beyond the Pyrenees. The effects of the judicious policy which
dictated this alliance soon became manifest. A few months afterwards
a great army, under the Counts Eblus and Asenarius, dependents of the
King of Aquitaine, traversed the sierra and invaded Spain. The city
of Pampeluna was taken, and, after some desultory operations yielding
little profit or glory, the Franks retired in imaginary security.
The defile of Roncesvalles once more became the scene of a fearful
disaster; the invaders, surrounded by a host of mountaineers and Arabs,
were cut to pieces, and the prisoners divided among the allies, the two
counts being among those who survived the disgrace of incompetency and
defeat. This military success was contemporaneous with the assertion
of the independence and political organization of the principality of
Navarre, which were maintained thereafter with the exception of a few
years of nominal subordination to the Crown of the Asturias until its
final incorporation into the dominions of France and Spain.
The catastrophe of Roncesvalles encouraged the Moors to prosecute
with greater activity the operations against the Christians, whom the
unsettled condition of affairs in the east and south of the Peninsula
had long permitted to rest in peace. Three successive expeditions,
all commanded by Obeydallah-Ibn-Abdallah, were sent to invade the
enemy’s country, but the campaigns were not distinguished by any
important action, and the determination and well-known ferocity of the
mountaineers appear to have succeeded in preventing the Moslems from
inflicting any serious damage upon the hostile territory.
The vast system of public works inaugurated by Abd-al-Rahman, the
splendor of his court, and the prodigal munificence with which
he rewarded his favorites, entailed an immense expense upon the
administration, and necessitated a new and oppressive burden of
taxation to meet the constantly increasing demands on the treasury. The
authorities, regardless of the experience of former reigns, augmented
the public discontent by levying the bulk of the taxes on indispensable
articles of daily consumption. The Jewish and Christian tributaries,
by whom these exactions were most severely felt, were loud in their
clamors, and it was not long before the Moslem population of the
different cities joined in the increasing remonstrances against the
arbitrary measures resulting from the unprecedented extravagance of
the court. The dissatisfaction was most pronounced at Merida, and this
fact having been communicated, either orally or by correspondence, by
the clergy of that city to their brethren at the court of Louis, the
Frankish monarch determined to avail himself of the information in
furtherance of his own designs and for the confusion of his infidel
neighbors. He therefore addressed a letter to the people of Merida,
professing great sympathy with them on account of the impositions of
the government, exhorting them to exert their rights and regain their
liberties, and promising that, in case they made an open demonstration
to redress their grievances, he would march to their support across
the Pyrenees. The sincerity of Louis in making this offer may well
be questioned. Whether or not his tender was made in good faith is
of little consequence, as his attention was immediately distracted
from foreign intrigue by serious disturbances in his own dominions. A
Gothic officer of rank named Aizon, having incurred the displeasure of
his sovereign, fled from the court of Aix-la-Chapelle, and, betaking
himself to the Gothic March, declared his enmity to the Franks, and
especially to the Count of Barcelona. Through the influence of his name
and nationality, aided by the habitual inconstancy of the restless
adventurers who composed the frontier population and the general
prejudice existing against the domination of the Franks, he soon found
himself at the head of a powerful faction. Having seized the fortress
of Ausona by treachery, and destroyed the town of Rosas which attempted
to resist him, he sent his brother to Cordova with a request for aid,
accompanied with an assurance that the disaffection was such as to
warrant the hope of an easy recovery of the country by the Moslems. The
appeal of Aizon was not suffered to pass unheeded. A considerable body
of troops was assembled under the command of the veteran Obeydallah;
the party of the malcontents increased daily in numbers and influence,
and it was not long before the Count of Barcelona found himself
deprived of authority over all his domain except Gerona and the city
from which he derived his title.
Louis, who was then in Germany engaged in the settlement of a quarrel
between two chieftains whose untamed spirits menaced the peace of
the empire, had neither time nor available resources to suppress by
arms an insurrection, however dangerous, in the other extremity of
his dominions. But what he could not accomplish by military force he
determined to attempt by negotiation, and three commissioners were
accordingly appointed to persuade the colonists of the Gothic March to
return to their allegiance.
The embassy, composed of a priest and two nobles, received, as might
have been expected, small consideration in an age where the arts
of peace were held in disrepute and the palm of popular esteem was
accorded to deeds of martial heroism, and the envoys accomplished
nothing. They managed, however, to widely disseminate the report that
an army of Franks was about to invade the country, a rumor which
so alarmed Aizon and his followers that a second appeal was sent
to Cordova, and a portion of the Emir’s body-guard was ordered to
reinforce the allies of the Moslems without delay. The army of the
Franks arrived; but the enemy had retired to Saragossa, either dreading
the result of an encounter with the hardy warriors of the North,
or unwilling to incur the hazard of being compelled to relinquish
the valuable booty which he had so easily secured. The suspicious
conduct of the generals of the Frankish army in permitting the Moslems
to retreat without molestation brought upon them the reproach of
treachery, an accusation which was so far sustained the following year
in the National Council as to subject the culprits to the deprivation
of their commands.
Abd-al-Rahman had projected an invasion of France, and the preparations
were completed; the advance guard under Abd-al-Ruf--who had filled
the position of vizier under Al-Hakem--was already on the way to the
Pyrenees, and the Emir himself was about to depart with the main body
of the army, when the unwelcome news reached him that Merida was in
rebellion.
The unpopular system of taxation, already referred to, aggravated by
the brutal conduct of the officials charged with its enforcement,
had almost assumed the character of a persecution, while the public
mind was agitated by the plausible representatives of demagogues
and deluded with the hope of protection and encouragement from the
powerful vassals of the Emperor. A certain Mohammed Ibn-Abd-al-Jebir,
formerly a collector of the revenue, was the originator of the
conspiracy. The governor, Ibn-Masfeth, saved himself by a hasty
flight. The houses of the viziers were sacked, and their owners put
to death or driven from the city. Mohammed appointed himself wali,
seized the magazines and arsenals, and, having divided their contents
among the inhabitants without distinction of creed, as a return for
this act of generosity appealed to the populace to confirm him in
his usurped authority. The resolution of the insurgents, sustained
by the knowledge of their resources and the impregnable character of
their defences, was encouraged by the arrival of fierce adventurers,
who were attracted in multitudes by the prospect of rebellion and
pillage. The garrison increased until it reached the number of forty
thousand. No insurrection of a local character had ever presented so
menacing a front to the power of the emirate. The occasion demanded
the exertion of the most prompt and energetic measures. The command
of Abd-al-Ruf was hastily recalled, and that officer was entrusted
with the conduct of the siege. The hardened veteran carried on his
operations as he would have done in an enemy’s country. The beautiful
villas and gardens that surrounded the city were burned and laid waste.
The growing crops were cut down. Preparations were made to carry the
place by storm, which would necessarily have entailed the destruction
of an immense amount of property and a massacre in which the innocent
must have suffered equally with the guilty. Abd-al-Rahman, averse to
an exercise of severity which threatened to weaken one of the greatest
cities of the kingdom, and knowing that the unequal contest could not
be long maintained, ordered Abd-al-Ruf to reduce the place by famine.
A strict blockade was accordingly established. The ruffian soldiery
of the garrison, cooped up within the walls, condemned to inaction
and suffering for provisions, indulged their predatory inclinations
by robbing and maltreating the citizens. The better class of the
inhabitants, which had been induced to favor the insurrection by the
expectation of compelling the withdrawal of oppressive edicts, saw,
when too late, that it had exchanged a condition of comparative safety
and prosperity for one of anarchy and the irresponsible despotism
of armed banditti. A movement for the surrender of the city to the
besiegers was quietly inaugurated by some loyal subjects of the
Emir who had been forced to enlist under the banner of the rebels.
Communication was opened with Abd-al-Ruf. Favored by the darkness of
the night, a strong detachment was admitted; the walls were occupied,
the armed mob was put to flight, the leaders escaped in the general
confusion, and daybreak found the authority of Abd-al-Rahman once more
established over the city of Merida. Resistance had been slight owing
to the surprise, and but seven hundred rebels paid the penalty of
treason. The fears of the people were soon allayed by the publication
of a general amnesty, for the gentle disposition of Abd-al-Rahman
revolted at the prospect of exemplary punishment for a rebellion which
subsequent events demonstrated would have justified the most sanguinary
retribution.
Order had scarcely been restored at Merida when it became known
that the contagion of insurrection had again spread to Toledo. A
renegade named Hashim, who had long in secret meditated vengeance for
persecution suffered by his family under Al-Hakem, taking advantage
of some trifling cause of popular discontent, raised the standard of
revolt. The wali being absent, the mob, who welcomed with eagerness
every occasion of opposing the authorities, found little trouble in
expelling the garrison and the adherents of the Emir. Hashim, whose
success had surpassed all expectations, as soon as his partisans were
organized, extended his operations to the surrounding country. His
following received accessions daily from the brigands who infested
the mountain districts, and the floating population, always on the
alert for plunder, that swarmed in the purlieus of the great cities.
Mohammed-Ibn-Wasim, the wali of the frontier, having attacked the
rebels, was beaten in several engagements; exulting in the promises of
its citizens, Toledo maintained a successful resistance against the
entire resources of the emirate, and Ommeyah, the son of Abd-al-Rahman,
was forced to retire in disgrace from before its walls. At length
the army of Hashim fell into an ambuscade planned by an officer who
commanded a force stationed at Calatrava, the Toledans were defeated
with great loss, and, soon afterwards, the city was taken by storm.
Accounts vary as to the fate of Hashim, but it appears from the most
reliable sources that he fell into the hands of the troops of the Emir
and was beheaded without ceremony. The incapacity of the government
of Cordova to deal with its domestic foes may be inferred from the
duration of this outbreak, whose importance must have called forth
the most vigorous attempts to suppress it, for during a period of
eight years Toledo enjoyed absolute independence in the heart of a
hostile monarchy. This immunity was, in some degree, due to a second
insurrection which broke out in Merida while the prestige of the
victorious Toledans was at its height. Mohammed, who had fled to
Lisbon when the city had been taken, returned unexpectedly; having
again summoned the populace to arms, he divided the contents of the
magazines as before, and, calling together his outlaws, renewed the
scenes of license and disorder which had formerly led to his expulsion.
Abd-al-Rahman, apprized of this new disaster, raised an army of forty
thousand men, of which he assumed command in person, and, arriving at
the city, made several ineffectual attempts to carry it by storm. The
walls, however, were too strong and too well defended to be scaled,
and the besiegers were reduced to employ the more difficult operation
of mining to open a breach. When all was ready, the Emir harangued
the troops, reminded them that their adversaries were Moslems like
themselves, and exhorted them to avoid all violence except against such
as offered resistance. As a last resort, to prevent bloodshed and the
lamentable consequences of an assault, Abd-al-Rahman ordered arrows to
which scrolls were attached to be shot over the walls. These scrolls
conveyed the information that the walls were undermined, that an attack
was impending, and that an amnesty would be granted the inhabitants
upon the surrender of their leaders. Some of these proclamations
fell into the hands of the chiefs of the rebellion; their fears were
aroused, and they lost no time in making good their escape, which they
readily effected either through the negligence or the connivance of the
besiegers. The damages resulting from the siege were repaired; the
fortifications strengthened; the wants of the poor, who were suffering
from hunger, supplied; and Merida, having for a second time experienced
the extraordinary clemency of her sovereign, returned to her doubtful
allegiance.
Fortunately for the Saracens, the commotion excited throughout the
Frankish empire by the rebellion of the sons of Louis prevented the
Christians from profiting by the misfortunes of their enemies, harassed
as they themselves were by the revolt of great capitals and the growing
disaffection of the people.
The disturbances once quelled and the country apparently at peace,
the pious and ambitious spirit of Abd-al-Rahman, actuated by motives
entertained since the day of his accession, induced him to pursue the
traditional policy of Islam and inaugurate a campaign against the
infidel. Expeditions were despatched into Galicia and the Gothic March,
which were generally successful, but which exhibited only the grievous
and transitory effects of predatory warfare, despite the accounts of
monkish chroniclers, whose love of the marvellous has embellished
their pages with accounts of great victories and miraculous events
recorded with all the circumstantial minuteness which not infrequently
characterizes these narratives. The fleet of the emirate, which had no
rival on the Mediterranean, co-operated with its armies, and, landing
a detachment on the coast of France, overran the country and plundered
the suburbs of Marseilles.
The martial enterprise and increasing arrogance of the Khalifate of
Bagdad, which had stripped the Byzantine Empire of its possessions
in Asia Minor and had frequently threatened Constantinople itself,
led the Emperor Theophilus to imitate the example of his predecessor
and solicit the aid of the Emirate of Spain, whose power had attained
a greater reputation in the East than was warranted either by the
character of its population, the stability of its civil institutions,
or the extent of its military resources. The result of this embassy
corresponded with that of the one sent by Michael the Stammerer. The
envoys were received and dismissed with honor; costly gifts were
exchanged between the two sovereigns; and the most flattering promises
of assistance were given by Abd-al-Rahman contingent on the security
of his own dominions, whose fulfilment was prevented, however, by the
incessant agitation of domestic foes and the apprehension of foreign
invasion. The measures of the Byzantine court were counteracted by the
political intrigues of the Abbasides, who maintained a close alliance
with the Franks; lavished upon the semi-barbaric monarchs of the Rhine
the curiosities and luxuries of the Orient; and, in the treaties with
their Christian auxiliaries, stigmatized the Ommeyades as schismatics,
blasphemers, and traitors, objects of abhorrence to orthodox Moslems
and entitled to no consideration from an adversary.
The hopes of relief entertained by the Greeks, sufficiently unpromising
before, were now rendered entirely vain by the appearance of a strange
and terrible enemy, who descended like a destructive tempest upon the
coast of Lusitania. The Normans, a branch of the Germanic race, whose
origin was identical with that of the Franks, but who cherished the
most uncompromising hostility towards the latter on account of their
conversion to Christianity, had, for half a century, been the terror
of the maritime countries of Northern Europe. Inhabiting the bleak and
inhospitable coasts of Scandinavia, instinct and necessity had early
taught them the science of navigation, and experience had shown the
facility by which the richest spoils might be wrested from the less
warlike nations of the South. Their boats were of the rudest type, of
small dimensions, constructed of osier and hides, propelled by oars
and sails of skins, yet such was the daring of these sailors that
they did not hesitate to encounter in their frail vessels, during the
most inclement seasons, the storms of the English Channel and the Bay
of Biscay. They had already carried their terrible inroads far into
the most accessible provinces of England and France. The swiftness of
their movements, their frightful aspect, and the ferocity of their
manners imparted to their incursions the character of a visitation of
incarnate demons. The votaries of the savage Woden, the Teutonic God of
War, they seemed totally deficient in the attributes of humanity and
mercy. More ruthless than other barbarians, the infirmities of age,
the helplessness of sex, received no indulgence at their hands. Women,
children, and old men were butchered with the same relentless animosity
as the warrior disabled in the field of battle. They took no prisoners.
All animals that they encountered were killed. Their brutal natures
were displayed even in their amusements; and, amidst the drunken
orgies of their festivals, their gods were pledged in draughts of mead
quaffed from the skulls of slaughtered enemies. Their lofty stature
and gigantic strength; their adventurous spirit, which carried them
across seas where experienced mariners scarcely dared to venture; their
courage, which inspired them to contend with tenfold odds, combined to
increase the terror derived from their sudden appearance and mysterious
origin. They had infested the shores of England during the last years
of the preceding century. Encouraged by success and tempted by the
prospect of booty, their expeditions had alarmed the provinces of
Western France during the reign of Charlemagne, and had desolated a
region where their descendants were destined to found a principality to
which they gave their name, and with whose fortunes, in after times,
were associated, in no small degree, the social organization, the laws,
the glories, and the misfortunes of the people of Great Britain. They
had at first effected a landing on the coast of the Asturias, whence
they soon retired, prompted to this step rather by the poverty of the
country, which held out no inducements to their avarice, than through
any apprehension from the well-known prowess of its defenders. Not long
after this, a fleet of fifty-four Norman vessels swept down upon the
shores of Lusitania. The environs of the city of Lisbon experienced the
full effects of the destructive instincts of these enemies of mankind.
Expelled by the uprising of the population of the neighborhood, they
sailed around the Peninsula; extended their depredations to the coast
of Africa; plundered Cadiz, and finally entered the Guadalquivir.
Ascending that stream, they occupied and sacked the suburbs of Seville,
whose inhabitants had fled at the first intelligence of their approach.
In their encounters with the troops of Abd-al-Rahman, the pirates had
in almost every instance a decided advantage; but news having reached
them that a fleet of fifteen vessels, supported by a powerful army,
was preparing to intercept their retreat, they hastily set sail and
effected their escape with insignificant loss. The facility with which
these ferocious adventurers had penetrated into his dominions, and the
damage inflicted by their pitiless hostility, convinced the Emir of the
necessity of increasing his naval power, the only effectual means of
protecting the vulnerable points of his kingdom and of preventing the
recurrence of such a calamity. Vessels were accordingly constructed
in the dock-yards of the Mediterranean; watch-towers were erected at
frequent intervals; a system of signals and posts was established; and
the coast defences in each military district were placed in charge
of an experienced officer, with whose command the naval forces were
directed to co-operate. The wisdom of these precautions was soon
demonstrated, and the Normans, warned by the formidable preparations
everywhere in readiness to oppose their landing, ceased to seriously
molest the shores of the Peninsula.
In the division of the vast and unwieldy empire of Charlemagne, which
scarcely preserved its original boundaries until the second generation,
France and the Gothic March fell to the share of Charles the Bald, the
eldest son of the weak and amiable Louis. The discord which had arisen
between Frankish and Gothic aspirants to power in the fief that the
foresight of the Emperor had founded beyond the Pyrenees, grew more
bitter with the progress of time and the infliction of mutual injury.
The intrigues of Count Bernhart, formerly chamberlain at the court
of Aix-la-Chapelle, who represented the national party against the
Frankish usurpation, were principally responsible for the manifestation
of the independent spirit which not infrequently ignored the rights of
the foreign suzerain, and even maintained amicable relations with the
infidels of Cordova. Charles, aware of the intrepid character of his
secret enemy whose popularity made him still more dangerous, inveigled
him into his power by flattering promises of favor and promotion; and,
as the unsuspecting victim bent the knee before his master, the latter
stabbed him with his own hand. The enormity of the deed was aggravated
by the horrible suspicion of parricide, as popular opinion, based upon
his former intimacy with the Empress Judith, had long ascribed to Count
Bernhart the paternity of the Frankish sovereign.
This act of perfidy, so far from appeasing the discontent that pervaded
the turbulent society of the Gothic March, contributed greatly to its
encouragement. The populace, as well as the nobles, whose opinions
had changed, and who now regarded Bernhart as the champion of their
liberties instead of an intruder, were thoroughly exasperated. The
country became a prey to anarchy, where the rule of the strongest
prevailed. This favorable opportunity, aided perhaps by suggestions
of sympathizers with the government of Cordova and individuals who
had suffered from the rapacity of the feudal lords, invited another
invasion by the Saracens. The land was again devastated. Barcelona was
delivered to the troops of the Emir through the connivance of the Jews,
whose trade was seriously affected by the interminable disputes and
broils which had interrupted foreign communications and shaken public
confidence. The Moslem occupation of the Gothic March, like others that
had preceded it, was, however, but temporary. The walis of the border
cities, to all intents and purposes paramount, were often united by the
closest ties of interest with the Counts of Barcelona, and therefore
thwarted every attempt at the recovery of the Gothic territory by the
emirs as having a tendency to ultimately curtail their privileges and
diminish their power. The existence of a foreign nation within the
borders of the emirate, which could be at once appealed to for support
in case of an attempt by the court of Cordova to enforce its authority,
was a practical guarantee of independence.
The closing years of the reign of Abd-al-Rahman were clouded by a
persecution of the Christians provoked by the obstinacy and presumption
of aggressive fanatics who violated the laws, profaned the mosques, and
insulted the memory of Mohammed through an insane desire for notoriety
and martyrdom. The most severe punishments as well as the most noble
clemency failed alike to suppress this new and increasing disorder. The
nature of the Emir, always averse to cruelty, hesitated to inflict the
penalties imperatively demanded by the outraged feelings of all true
believers. Deeply affected by the troubles which oppressed his kingdom
and cast a shadow over his domestic life, his health became impaired,
and he died suddenly of apoplexy in the year 822, at the age of sixty
years.
The luxurious tastes and the love of pomp, which were prominent traits
in the character of Abd-al-Rahman, produced greater changes in the
social and political aspect of the court of Cordova than had been
known under his predecessors. He was the first of the Moslem rulers
of Spain in whose robes were interwoven the royal cipher and the
device selected by the monarch at his accession. He assumed a dignity
and a mystery in his demeanor that had heretofore been the peculiar
attributes of the despotisms of the Orient. Habitually secluded from
the eyes of his subjects, he never went abroad without a veil, which
effectually concealed his features from the public gaze. He increased
the body-guard, formed by his father, and spared no expense in securing
its devotion and perfecting its equipment. He established a mint in
Cordova, and greatly improved the coinage, both in the purity of the
metal and the elegance of the inscriptions. Under his supervision
two sides of the court-yard of the Mosque were enclosed with
beautiful peristyles, corresponding with the finish and decorations
of the interior. He added to the magnificence of the capital by the
construction of public baths and fountains, fed by leaden pipes,
through which were conducted into every quarter of the city the crystal
waters of the Sierra Morena. The demands of religion and piety were
gratified by the foundation and endowment of innumerable mosques,
whose materials were composed of costly woods, variegated jasper, and
exquisite marbles, and to each of these houses of worship was attached
either a school or a hospital. Upon the banks of the Guadalquivir
stretched an endless series of gardens devoted to the recreation of the
people, and within whose delightful precincts were displayed all the
resources of the picturesque horticulture of the Orient. Abd-al-Rahman
rivalled the most enlightened khalifs of the East in his zeal for the
encouragement of learning; in his patronage of science and the arts; in
his admiration for the works of the Greek philosophers, which, during
his reign, were introduced into the Peninsula. One of his greatest
pleasures was to listen to the reading of the productions of the great
scholars of antiquity. In every town schools sufficient to meet the
requirements of the population, and provided with the best available
facilities for the imparting of instruction, arose. All children whom
misfortune had left destitute were cared for in charitable institutions
maintained by the government.
The system of highways, a precious heritage of the Cæsars, was
diligently inspected; the roads which had fallen into decay were
repaired; new ones were projected and completed; and the means of
intercommunication with the most remote provinces of the emirate
brought to a degree of perfection unknown even in the most flourishing
days of the Roman Empire. Many of these great works were undertaken
to relieve the universal distress induced by national calamities. A
withering drought had destroyed the crops and swept away the flocks
and herds in Andalusia. Swarms of locusts then settled over the
land, and turned the once smiling landscape into a desert. Unable
to sustain life, multitudes of the starving peasantry emigrated to
Africa, where they found an hospitable welcome and abundance of food
to supply their necessities. To the poor who remained, the customary
taxes were remitted and regular employment given, the expense being
met by disbursements from the private purse of the Emir. The public
granaries and magazines were opened, and supplies distributed to the
helpless and unfortunate. Thus, by the encouragement of industry, the
promotion of important public improvements throughout the country, and
the embellishment of the city of Cordova and its environs, the mournful
consequences incident to inevitable public disasters were largely
averted, and the very events which, at first sight, seemed to threaten
the life of the nation were, through the beneficence and wisdom of a
great monarch, made to contribute to its profit and permanent advantage.
The kindness and generosity of Abd-al-Rahman at times degenerated
into weakness, which made him the facile victim of the occupants of
his household and his harem. Constitutionally averse to any display
of severity, acts of insubordination and dishonesty were suffered, in
his very presence, to pass without a reprimand. A passion for music,
which dominated his very being, made him the munificent patron of
every minstrel, whose influence at court was usually proportionate
to his talents as a singer or as a performer on the lute. A famous
musician named Ziryab, whom Al-Hakem had invited from Bagdad but who
arrived too late to enjoy the favor of his royal host, was received by
his successor with honors worthy of the ambassadors of the greatest
princes. The walis of the cities through which he was to pass on his
way to Cordova were directed to extend to him every courtesy; he was
furnished with an escort, and his retinue was increased by a number of
eunuchs with whom the Emir had presented him. A magnificent residence
was assigned to him in the capital. His pension amounted to the annual
sum of forty thousand pieces of gold, derived from one of the most
valuable estates of the kingdom. Ziryab, while distinguished for his
musical talents, was also one of the most profound scholars of his
time. His wonderful memory retained without difficulty the words and
airs of ten thousand different songs. The pupil of the most eminent
doctors of the East, he was equally well versed in the sciences of
history, geography, philosophy, and medicine. So versatile were his
talents and so varied his accomplishments, that not only the populace,
but even learned writers, gravely attributed the achievements of his
extraordinary intellectual powers to communion with the genii. His
extensive acquirements made him the chosen companion of Abd-al-Rahman,
who delighted in his conversation; and, while the power of the favorite
over his master was unbounded, it must be said to his credit that it
was never abused or exerted for any base or mercenary purposes. His
exquisite taste and dignified courtesy were not long in producing an
impression upon the society of Andalusia. The manners of the people
insensibly grew refined and elegant. Customs savoring of the barbaric
life of the Desert, which the stubborn persistence of the Arab and
Berber natures had retained through many generations, were by degrees
abandoned. The prolific genius of this wonderfully gifted personage
prescribed different modes of dress, adapted to the changing seasons;
improved regulations in the diplomatic service; innovations in the
methods of private entertainments; dignified and urbane laws for
formal and social intercourse. It revealed the valuable character of
plants and vegetables whose names were familiar to the Spanish Arabs,
but whose uses as food, or whose medicinal virtues, had hitherto
remained unknown. It added a fifth string to the lute, thereby greatly
increasing the compass and harmony of that instrument. It bestowed
upon the toilets of the harem harmless and refreshing perfumes and
cosmetics. It supplied the banquets of the rich with savory dishes,
worthy of the most fastidious epicure, some of which bear to this
day the name of their inventor. It devised means for increasing the
comfort and cleanliness of the poor. It suggested sanitary arrangements
which might promote the healthfulness of great cities by an improved
system of drainage. The wit of Ziryab which delighted the court was
not inferior to his learning, nor to the wonderful ingenuity which
applied to the various concerns of life the valuable principles of
practical philosophy. His epigrams are still repeated as proverbs by
the Mohammedans of Africa. His skill in the art of improvisation was
phenomenal. A couplet appropriate to every occasion, a witticism in
rhyme which enlivened the most ordinary discourse, were never wanting
to his ready and active intellect. His mental powers were unconsciously
employed while those of others slumbered, and he not infrequently
aroused his female slaves in the middle of the night in order to seize
and memorize the harmonious creations of his tireless brain. The
creed of the Moslem peremptorily forbids the adoration of its heroes,
but the justice of humanity has immortalized the name of Ziryab by
transmitting it to after-ages in the same category with those of its
most illustrious philosophers, and has thus indemnified itself for the
privation of a useful custom which would elsewhere have honored the
object of its admiration and gratitude with splendid statues of bronze
and marble, and with an eternal abiding-place in both the visible and
invisible heavens.
The intercession of Ziryab with his royal master, whose mind was
absolutely dominated by the brilliant talents and courtly graces of his
favorite, was often invoked by applicants for pecuniary emoluments and
official distinction, but generally in vain. The hazardous game of
politics offered no allurements to the polished and dainty epicurean.
Secure in the possession of wealth and fame, he cheerfully abandoned
the intrigues, the vexations, and the dangers of political life to
another personage whose abilities, in their peculiar sphere, not
inferior to his own, bore the stamp of a dark and sinister character.
The ambition of the faqui Yahya-Ibn-Yahya, the leader of the revolt
of the southern suburb of Cordova, which caused the depopulation
of one-fifth of the area of the capital and the expatriation of
twenty thousand industrious subjects of the emirate, has already
been mentioned in these pages. The nationality of this fanatic,
and the address which he displayed in excusing his crimes, had,
strangely enough, exempted him from the punishment he merited. Having
regained, to a certain extent, the favor of the proud and arbitrary
Al-Hakem, whose inclinations were never to the side of mercy, he
had obtained a singular ascendant over the mind of the more pliable
Abd-al-Rahman. Instructed by experience that open opposition to the
constituted authority was not the surest method of attaining to
distinction, he changed his tactics; courted the approbation of the
monarch by subservience and flattery, varied at times by fits of
insolence, which were overlooked as eccentricities or manifestations
of righteous indignation provoked by the depravity of mankind; and,
while he appeared to figure only as an occasional adviser of the Emir,
he in reality engrossed the entire political and judicial power of
the State. His ostentatious humility procured for him the reverent
esteem of the populace. The superiority of his intellect and his vast
attainments were tacitly acknowledged by the learned. The prestige he
had acquired as the founder of the Malikites in Spain made him the
oracle of every student and doctor of theology. It was by means of
this latter distinction that he was enabled to immeasurably extend
and confirm his influence. Ambitious men soon perceived that the great
civil dignitaries of the realm--the chief kadis and the subordinate
officials of the courts of judicature--were invariably selected from
the fashionable sect, and were individuals who stood highest in Yahya’s
favor. As a natural consequence, the popularity of the doctrines of
Malik-Ibn-Anas increased daily, and the adherents of the Medinese sage,
in a few years, outnumbered all other sectaries combined. The policy of
Yahya led him to decline the exercise of all official employments, an
example of self-denial which, while it served to disguise his ambition,
greatly strengthened his authority. In the exalted sphere in which he
moved his power was autocratic. He imposed degrading penances upon his
sovereign, who performed them with patience and humility. He exacted
from the people those outward signs of reverence which superstition
is accustomed to accord to the favorites of heaven and which are but
one degree below idolatry. The ecclesiastical affairs of the Peninsula
were absolutely subject to his control. He dictated the most important
decisions emanating from the courts of justice; and, when a magistrate
ventured to assert his independence by the promulgation of an opinion
which had not been approved by the arrogant faqui, he at once received
a slip of paper on which was written the single word, “Resign!”
The plastic nature of Abd-al-Rahman, utilized for the profit of a
musician and a religious impostor, also exposed him to the artifices
of a petulant and selfish woman. An ardent temperament rendered him
peculiarly susceptible to the attractions of the sex. Among the
numerous beauties of his harem was one named Tarub, who was equally
dominated by the absorbing passions of ambition and avarice. Infatuated
with her charms and beguiled by her caresses, the Emir became her
slave. His prodigal generosity towards this unworthy favorite, which
threatened to deplete the treasury, frequently, but in vain, elicited
the remonstrances of his councillors. On one occasion her blandishments
induced him to present her with a necklace valued at a hundred thousand
dinars. On another, she refused to open her door until it had been
entirely concealed by bags of money heaped up against it. Utterly
destitute of affection or gratitude, she endeavored to perpetuate her
influence by a crime which reveals the incredible cruelty and infamy
of her character. Of the forty-five sons of Abd-al-Rahman, the eldest,
Mohammed, had been selected by his father to succeed him. Tarub, who
had employed all her arts, but without success, to obtain the crown
for her own son, Abdallah, now determined to secure by murder what her
powers of persuasion had failed to accomplish. The services of the
eunuch Nassir, who exercised the office of chamberlain, was devoted to
the interests of his mistress, and bore no good-will to the Emir, were
employed in this emergency. Nassir was of Spanish origin, hated the
sect of his ancestors with peculiar animosity, and had been the willing
instrument of the recent persecution which the mistaken policy of the
government had deemed it necessary to inflict upon the Christians.
Under the direction of Tarub, the eunuch paid a visit to Harrani, a
distinguished Syrian physician, who had recently begun the practice of
his profession at Cordova. Nassir, having assured Harrani of his esteem
and hinted that the conferring of the favor he was about to ask would
enure to his future advantage, presented him with a purse containing a
thousand pieces of gold, and requested him to have ready by a certain
day a quantity of one of the most deadly poisons known to science.
The natural acuteness of the physician, increased by long experience
in the sinister transactions of courts, was at no loss to detect the
object for which these preparations were intended. The character of
the perfidious Tarub and her inordinate ambition were, moreover,
no secret in Cordova; but, while the politic Harrani had no desire
to, even by implication, connive at the death of the Emir, he was
equally averse to compromise his prospects and imperil his own safety
by openly denouncing the eunuch, whose friends would not fail to
avenge the betrayal of his treason. He therefore caused a warning to
be secretly conveyed to Abd-al-Rahman not to taste anything offered
him by the chamberlain. The declining health of the monarch favored
the designs of the conspirators, and the eunuch seized the first
opportunity to recommend, with every expression of solicitude, the
poison to his master as a potent remedy which he had procured from a
famous practitioner. The Emir, upon whom the warning of Harrani had not
been lost, and who seemed to the attendants to be merely adopting a
salutary and not unusual precaution, directed the eunuch to drink some
of the potion himself. Unable to refuse, Nassir swallowed a part of
the contents of the phial. Then, withdrawing from the royal presence,
he sought in terror the aid of the physician. An antidote was promptly
administered, but the poison had done its work, and, the victim of his
own perfidiousness, Nassir expired in horrible agony.
The enfeebled constitution of Abd-al-Rahman was unable to sustain
the revelation of the malice and dishonor of those whom he loved and
trusted; and the amiable monarch who had not, by many years, reached
the allotted term of human life, a few weeks after the exposure of the
conspiracy followed his chamberlain to the grave.
The jealousy of the Ommeyades, following the example of the Khalifs
of Damascus, early introduced into their dominions the employment of
eunuchs, and these creatures almost immediately assumed and exercised a
secret, but none the less dangerous, power in the administration of the
government as well as in the intrigues and plots of the harem. Their
mutilation, which, according to common belief, was presumed to insure
absolute fidelity to their masters’ interests, made them the enemies of
the human race. An insatiable thirst for gold, a vindictiveness only to
be appeased by the destruction of the objects of their displeasure, had
supplanted in their breasts those sentiments of natural affection which
had been forever eradicated by the barbarity of man. The confidants and
constant associates of the sultanas, they became the tools of every
conspiracy, and not infrequently the originators of measures involving
the most important political consequences.
The support of these vile instruments, indispensable to the designs
of criminal ambition, had been already secured by the Princess
Tarub, whose rapacity had, for once, yielded to her greed for power.
Undismayed by the fate of Nassir, and ignoring the suspicions aroused
by his sudden death, she, by every artifice at her command, by promises
of future favors and concessions and by a prodigal liberality, had
enrolled among her partisans the potent and unscrupulous guardians of
the harem.
The careless Abd-al-Rahman, whose condition had not warranted any
expectation of his untimely end, had neglected to officially designate
his successor to the throne. His choice, however, was well known
to have been fixed upon his eldest son, Mohammed, a cold, sordid,
narrow-minded, but able prince; penurious to a degree unprecedented
among youths of royal lineage, but of large experience in the arts
of war and government, and of unquestioned orthodoxy. Abdallah, on
the other hand, was a devotee of pleasure. His palace was nightly the
scene of boisterous revels, that were protracted until long after
sunrise. He shunned all serious occupations. His intimate friends
were debauchees and parasites, whose conversation was seasoned with
licentious jests which did not spare either the officials of state
or the ministers of religion. Rarely was he seen to enter the door
of the mosque, or to assist at the ceremonies of public worship.
Despised by the populace and abhorred by the devout, his pre-eminent
unfitness for the responsibilities of empire was also recognized by
the eunuchs, whom nothing but the prodigality of his mother could ever
have induced to espouse his cause. Abu-al-Mofrih, one of the former,
who possessed great influence among his fellows, determined, with the
proverbial inconstancy of his kind, to gratify his malice and provide
for the future by the commission of a double treason. The heterodox
opinions of Abdallah afforded a plausible excuse for the perfecting
of his scheme. By constant insinuations of the dangers to which the
emirate would be exposed if he were raised to power, and by descanting
with pious horror upon the sacrilegious life of that profligate
prince, he excited apprehensions in the minds of the eunuchs that
their own interests might be seriously endangered by a ruler whose
previous career had been directed by unbelievers and by persons who
had frequently evinced marked contempt for their order. The harshness
and notorious parsimony of Mohammed were at first declared by the
eunuchs to render him ineligible; serious impediments to success,
indeed, in a court governed to a great extent by the soft influences
of the seraglio and by the unsparing use of gold. The objections
were soon answered by the wily Abu-al-Mofrih, whose experience and
reputation gave him a right to take the lead in a project demanding
courage and tact, and it was quietly understood that Mohammed was the
candidate for whom the empire was reserved. The death of Abd-al-Rahman
occurred after midnight. According to Oriental custom, the gates of the
palace--which was walled and moated like a castle--were closed, and no
one was permitted to leave or enter without satisfactory explanation
of his errand and proof of his identity. By a time-honored practice
that prescriptive usage had confirmed as legal, the prince who first
after the monarch’s death obtained possession of the royal residence
was considered to have the presumptive right to the crown. Sadun, a
eunuch, who had reluctantly assented to the rejection of Abdallah, but
who had lately become a firm partisan of his brother, was selected to
inform Mohammed of his good fortune. The villa of the latter was on the
opposite bank of the Guadalquivir, and the eunuch, providing himself
with the keys of the city gate, which opened upon the bridge, traversed
the silent streets until he reached the palace of Abdallah, in front
of which he was forced to pass. The halls were aglow with light and
the noise of drunken revelry rang upon the air, as the muffled figure
of the eunuch glided stealthily by the portals on its mysterious
errand. Mohammed, summoned from the bath, received the message with
surprise and incredulity. Even the production of his father’s signet,
which Sadun exhibited as a token of good faith, was not sufficient to
convince him. Regarding the eunuch as an executioner sent by Abdallah
to take away his life, he abjectly implored the mercy of the messenger,
who, so far from intending injury, had been deputed to tender him a
crown. The protestations of Sadun finally prevailed, and the steward
of Mohammed’s household was called to assist in devising means to
enter the royal palace, an indispensable preliminary to success. His
suggestion to apply to the governor of the city was adopted, but that
cautious functionary declined to compromise himself by countenancing
an enterprise whose issue was so hazardous. The night was fast passing
away, and it was evident that something must be done quickly, as dawn
would bring discovery, and perhaps death, to all concerned. Again the
fertile invention of the steward, Ibn-Musa, came to the aid of his
master in his deep perplexity. “Thou knowest, O my Lord,” said he,
“that I have often conducted thy daughter to the royal palace. Disguise
thyself at once in her garments, and God willing we shall pass the
guards.” The advice being approved, Mohammed was speedily enveloped in
the veil and flowing robes of the inmates of the harem and mounted upon
an ass. The animal was led by the steward, Sadun marching in front; the
sentinels were passed without difficulty; but the wary eunuch, fearful
of being followed, directed Ibn-Musa to remain near Abdallah’s mansion,
while he conducted the prince alone. Arriving at the palace, the knock
of Sadun was answered by the porter, an old man who had long served
the emirs in that responsible capacity. Peering cautiously through the
postern and recognizing the eunuch, he exclaimed, “Whom have you there,
O Sadun?” The latter responded, “The daughter of our prince Mohammed;
make haste and admit us!” Smiling, as he suspiciously examined the
lofty stature and ample proportions of the supposed damsel, the porter
rejoined, “Verily, O Sadun, the lady has grown to almost twice her
size since she was here a few days since; let her raise her veil that
I may see her face.” The eunuch demurred; but the porter threatening
to withdraw, Mohammed himself lifted the veil, and disclosed to the
astonished gaze of the porter the well-known features of the eldest
son of Abd-al-Rahman. “My father is dead,” said the prince, “and I
have come to take possession of the palace.” “I do not doubt thy word,”
replied the porter, “but mine own eyes must convince me of the truth of
thy statement before I can admit thee.” “Then come at once,” exclaimed
Sadun, and, leaving Mohammed in the street, the eunuch led the way to
the death-chamber of the Emir. “I am satisfied,” said the faithful
servitor, bursting into tears, and returning, he opened the gate and
kissed the hand of the prince with every protestation of loyalty and
obedience. The household was aroused; the officials of state were
summoned in haste to the palace, and required to swear allegiance
to the new sovereign; and thus, through the address of a handful of
eunuchs, who dispensed with equal alacrity the penalties of hatred and
the offices of friendship, a serious revolution was averted, and a turn
given to national affairs that permanently influenced the future of the
Saracen empire.
The first acts of Mohammed after his accession gave undoubted proof of
his zeal, and elicited the enthusiastic applause of the theologians,
who henceforth became his most devoted subjects. Every official and
every public servant who was even suspected of a leaning towards
Christianity was discharged without ceremony, and their places were
filled with Mussulmans of the most pronounced orthodoxy. The law which
forbade the erection or the enlargement of churches--a fundamental
article of the convention of Musa--had been to a great extent ignored
by the emirs, even under the aggravation of treason and conspiracy;
and, as a consequence of this indulgence, new places of worship had
arisen in those localities where an increasing Christian population
required greater facilities for the services of its religion. By a
sweeping edict, Mohammed directed every church and chapel built since
the invasion of Tarik to be razed to the ground. The officers who were
charged with the execution of this order, more zealous for their faith
than solicitous for the honor of their sovereign, waged indiscriminate
destruction against all edifices set apart by the Christians for sacred
uses, regardless of the sanctity of their traditions or the date of
their foundation. A persecution, encouraged by the faquis, was also
inaugurated against the obstinate sectaries, who continued to solicit
with so much ardor the crown of martyrdom, in comparison with which
the severity of Abd-al-Rahman assumed the appearance of moderation.
The evidence of the Fathers of the Church, so suspicious in regard
to all that reflects upon the credit of their profession or decries
the triumphs of their enemies, may perhaps be received to confirm the
statement of the Arabs that an immense number of Christians, alarmed
by the tortures inflicted upon their fellow communicants, yielded to
temptation and apostatized.
But it was not among the infidels alone that it was found necessary
to invoke the intervention of the sovereign authority. In the bosom
of Islam, a serious dispute had arisen concerning the interpretation
of the Koran and the settlement of certain controverted points of
doctrine that, in their theological importance and general relation
to the Faith, bore no proportion whatever to the virulent animosity
exhibited by their several advocates. As the Ommeyades of Spain had
early arrogated to themselves, without exception, the functions and
privileges of the exalted office of khalif, in which were united
the most despotic powers of Church and State, Mohammed, whose
discrimination showed him the necessity of deciding this religious
controversy before its champions appealed to arms, asserted his
prerogative by ordering the rival doctors to respectively plead their
cause in his presence. The arguments were heard, and the Malikites,
whose prosperity under the former reign had greatly increased their
pride and insolence, sustained a signal defeat in their attempt to
refute the doctrines of the Hanbalites, their adversaries. With a
liberality not to be expected in a ruler whom posterity, perhaps
not without injustice, has agreed to stigmatize with the name of
bigot, Mohammed decided that the objections urged against the
creed of the Hanbalites as preached by Al-Baki, the leader of that
sect, were frivolous, and that its tenets were neither based upon
misinterpretation of the texts of the Koran nor antagonistic to the
generally received tradition.
With the double object of diverting the minds of his subjects from
theological disputes and projects of sedition and to repress the
encroaching spirit of the Christian princes of the North, whose
conquests were making serious inroads on the Moslem territory, Mohammed
proclaimed the Holy War, the forces destined for this purpose being
placed under the command of the walis of Merida and Saragossa. The
Gothic March once more underwent the frightful evils of invasion, and
the Saracen army again penetrated the enemy’s country to the very
walls of Narbonne. The wali of Saragossa, Musa-Ibn-Zeyad, entrusted
with the conduct of the campaign against the King of the Asturias,
after some unimportant successes in Galicia, was defeated with great
loss at Albeyda, which town, having been taken by King Ordoño, and the
Arab garrison massacred, was abandoned to the tender mercies of the
barbarous soldiery.
The populace of Toledo, whose implacable hatred of its Saracen masters
no exhibition of clemency could diminish and no example of severity
intimidate, having learned of the persecution of their Christian
brethren at Cordova, and apprehensive lest the zealous efforts of
the faquis--whose influence at that time dominated the policy of the
government--might be extended to their own city, organized a revolt,
seized the Arab governor, and demanded of the Emir in exchange for
that official the hostages whom they had given to Abd-al-Rahman II.
as security for their loyalty and good behavior. With a weakness that
formed no part of his character, and for which no historical account
affords an explanation, Mohammed acquiesced. The fierce Toledans then
began to carry on war in earnest. Accustomed from childhood to the use
of arms and the exposure of a military life, they repeatedly proved
more than a match for the disciplined veterans of the emirate. They
drove out the garrison of Calatrava and demolished its walls. Then,
suddenly traversing the passes of the Sierra Morena, they surprised at
Andujar a detachment of the royal forces sent to attack them, captured
its baggage, and plundered its camp. Never before in the history of
Toledan rebellions had the insurgents ventured so near the capital. The
Emir keenly felt the insult to his dignity, and, at the head of all
the troops he could collect in such an emergency, advanced to punish
the rebels. The latter retired, and their leader, Sindola, whose name
indicates his Gothic descent, sent an envoy to the King of the Asturias
for aid. The Christian prince, perceiving at a glance the extraordinary
benefits which would result from an alliance with a powerful faction in
the heart of the Moslem dominions, responded at once to the appeal with
a strong body of veterans, who succeeded in entering the city before
the arrival of Mohammed.
The strength of the walls and the prowess of the garrison forbade the
hope of a successful assault, and induced Mohammed to have recourse
to a stratagem worthy of the cunning and astuteness of an Arab.
Concealing his troops in the ravine traversed by the Guadacelete, he
appeared before Toledo with a squadron of cavalry and made preparations
to encamp. The rebels, seeing what was apparently an excellent
opportunity to cut off this vanguard before the arrival of the main
body, made a sally, and, before they were aware of their danger, were
drawn into the trap laid for them and surrounded. Dreadful carnage
followed; but few escaped, and a ghastly heap of eight thousand heads,
collected in the field of battle, attested the animosity of the
victors and the misfortune of the vanquished. These sinister trophies,
ranged along the battlements of Cordova and other Andalusian cities,
were long an admonition to traitors of the terrible lesson that the
Toledans and their infidel allies had received on the banks of the
Guadacelete. The great loss sustained by the insurgents,--amounting to
twenty thousand, for only the Christians and such Mussulman leaders
as were killed or taken prisoners were decapitated,--so far from
crushing the obstinate spirit of the inhabitants of the imperial city
of the Visigoths, only served to increase their fury and confirm their
resolution. Their offensive operations were, however, effectually
checked. The garrison, reduced to less than one-third of its number,
was forced to remain inactive behind the fortifications. It was with
mingled feelings of rage and despair that the industrious as well as
the wealthy part of the population, whose possessions had hitherto been
respected in the hope of timely submission, beheld the desolation of
their gardens, the uprooting of their vineyards, the burning of their
villas,--those evidences of prosperity and luxury that embellished
for many a mile the banks of the famous Tagus. Their thoughts were
further embittered by the consciousness that these ravages were not
inflicted through any fault of theirs, but through the turbulence
and ill-directed ambition of Jews and renegades, whose numbers were
swelled by a crowd of vagabonds and criminals attracted by the evil
reputation of the city, the worst elements of a lawless population,
the refuse of a score of great communities. An additional advantage
gained by the troops of Mohammed served to still further depress the
spirits of the Toledans, although no disaster seemed sufficient to
impel them to a voluntary return to their allegiance. The principal
bridge that gave access to the city was secretly mined. An attack was
then made on one of the gates; the assailants retired in apparent
disorder; the besieged pursued; and, at the proper instant, the wooden
supports were removed from the piers, and the whole structure, crowded
with the soldiers of the enemy, was precipitated into the waters
of the Tagus. Not an individual escaped, for such as were able to
save themselves from the rapid current of the river were shot by the
archers of the Emir, stationed on the banks for that purpose. These
repeated misfortunes impressed the Toledans with the necessity of
peace. Their valor and their constancy under the most discouraging
circumstances, although exhibited in an evil cause, cannot but excite
the admiration of every reader. For the long period of twenty years
Mohammed made incessant but vain attempts to subdue them. They defied
the utmost efforts of his power. They menaced him in his very capital.
They routed his armies, often commanded by princes of the blood. They
dismantled his strongholds. The most overwhelming reverses only nerved
them to greater exertions. Great losses in the field, the tortures of
famine, the murmurs of their disaffected townsmen, could not shake
their determination or excite their fears. The attempts to storm their
fortifications were repulsed with heroic courage. Their decimated
ranks were recruited from the sturdy mountaineers of Leon and the
Asturias. It is in vain that the modern historian searches for the
motives that inspired and sustained this sentiment of independence,
this habitual defiance of authority. The ancient Gothic spirit was
not sufficient to account for such an anomalous condition of affairs,
although the Christians greatly outnumbered the members of all other
sects. There existed no unity of religious feeling which might actuate
zealots to deeds of self-sacrifice and martyrdom. The population of
Toledo is represented by all writers as a remarkably heterogeneous one.
The Christians mention it freely with contempt. The Moslems, without
exception, allude to it as a faithless and turbulent rabble. The reason
for the suicidal policy that neglected to demolish the fortifications
of this centre of sedition, and did not resort to the drastic measure
of wholesale expatriation when milder means had repeatedly failed,
also remains a mystery. It required no great degree of statesmanship
to perceive the inevitable consequences of the irrepressible spirit
of rebellion encouraged, as it was, by the ill-timed clemency and
indulgence of the sovereign. At length, emboldened by their alliance
with the Christians of the North, and taking advantage of the
embarrassments of their antagonist, harassed by enemies at home and
abroad, they extorted from the Emir a treaty which virtually conceded
their independence. It allowed them to select their own magistrates,
including the governor, and to regulate without interference their
municipal and ecclesiastical affairs. Toledo, by the payment of an
annual tribute, was thus placed upon the same political footing as
that of a province recently subjected to the arms of Islam, and must
henceforth, for many years, cease to be regarded as an integral part of
the Moorish empire.
In the meantime, the example of Toledo had been followed by other
cities, whose inhabitants, exasperated by their grievances and
instigated by the ambition of daring chieftains, kept the country
in continued disorder and exercised to the utmost the energy and
abilities of Mohammed. The evil consequences of that pernicious system,
peculiar to the Arabs, of entrusting important commands to renegades
without previous satisfactory tests of their fidelity, were once more
demonstrated. Musa-Ibn-Zeyad, who traced his descent from the branch
of the Visigothic nobility known to the Arabs as the Beni-Kasi, and
whom we have seen defeated at Albeyda, was soon afterwards, through the
intrigues of fanatical courtiers who accused him of treason, removed
from his post of wali of Saragossa and disgraced. This officer, whose
military talents and political capacity were far above the average,
seeing all avenues for promotion under the emirate closed, and keenly
feeling the injustice of the treatment he had received, proceeded at
once to organize an insurrection, an easy matter among the adventurers
of the frontier naturally prone to inconstancy and insubordination.
Popular among his subjects, almost the entire province of which
Saragossa was the capital declared for his cause. Tudela, Huesca,
Toledo, solicited his alliance. Having baffled the efforts of the
Emir to crush him, he transmitted his authority to his son Musa. The
latter, securing the friendship and support of the Navarrese, crossed
the Pyrenees, and carried fire and sword into Southern France. His
success was so remarkable, and the resources of the French monarchy
were so inadequate to resist the progress of this enterprising
partisan, that Charles the Bald not only condescended to treat with
him on equal terms, but purchased immunity from future inroads by the
payment of a large sum of money and the bestowal of magnificent gifts.
The distinction acquired by Musa from the results of this expedition
indirectly produced great accessions to his power. His son Lope became
one of the magistrates of Toledo. The restless population of the
border flocked to his standard by thousands. His army was further
augmented by numbers of Christians,--Mozarabes as well as Gascons and
Navarrese,--whose former habits and experience made them valuable
soldiers. The martial spirit of Musa was displayed indiscriminately
against Christian and Moslem; his prowess was respected and his
independence reluctantly acknowledged alike by the courts of Cordova,
Aix-la-Chapelle, and Oviedo. With a pardonable vanity, justified by
actual power and the possession of territory, he assumed the title
of Third King of Spain. His death in 862 was followed by a partial
dismemberment of his dominions, which enabled Mohammed to recover
Saragossa, Tudela, and a few other places of minor importance; but only
a few years elapsed before the family of Musa, endeared to the people
by the exploits of its founders, regained its former ascendency, and
once more expelled the forces of the emirate. Although nothing is said
of the religious belief of the Beni-Kasi, it may be inferred that they
had returned to the Christian communion, as Alfonso III., their close
ally, entrusted to these distinguished princes the education of his son
Ordoño, heir to the crown of the Asturias and Leon.
The Norman pirates, familiar to the reader of Arab chronicles as
Magioges,--a name derived from the fabulous Gog and Magog, whose
descendants they were, according to the doubtful authority of mediæval
tradition,--seven years after Mohammed ascended the throne made a
second descent upon the shores of the Peninsula. The spoil which they
had collected in their first excursion and the facility with which
they had penetrated into the heart of France and Spain excited their
insatiable cupidity, and inspired them with the hope of even more
profitable adventures. But these expectations were defeated by the
valor of the Galicians and by the prudence of Abd-al-Rahman II.,
who, as already related, had established a coast-guard, and disposed
the naval forces of the emirate to intercept the landing and chastise
the audacity of these intrepid and mysterious rovers of the seas. The
fame of their former success had increased their numbers, and, after
an ineffectual and disastrous attempt to plunder the seaport towns
of Galicia, seventy well-manned vessels of their fleet appeared off
the coast of Andalusia. Disembarking at various points, the Normans
effected considerable damage, but, not venturing inland, their booty
bore no comparison in quantity or value to that obtained by their
former visitation, and meeting with a resistance entirely unexpected,
they retired to try their fortunes on the coast of Africa. In that
country many settlements suffered the dreadful evils consequent upon
such attacks, and, after destroying whatever they could not carry
away, they ravaged the Balearic Isles, and, steering eastward, swept
along the shores of the Mediterranean as far as Sicily and Malta. The
unprotected regions of Italy and Greece again experienced the dire
effects of barbarian malevolence, this time unmitigated by the sympathy
of a common religious belief; the instinctive antipathy of the savages
of the North to all that bore the stamp of civilization was gratified
without restraint; and, laden with plunder of incalculable value and
for once satiated with blood and havoc, the pirates directed their
course homeward through the Strait of Gibraltar.
The incessant hostilities maintained by Ordoño with the kingdom of
Cordova were, in general, favorable to the Christian arms. Encouraged
by the victory he had obtained at Albeyda, the Asturian monarch
extended his operations far to the south of the Douro. The knowledge of
the growing weakness of their enemies, and the consciousness of their
own valor and resources, impelled the mountaineers to still greater
exertions. The expeditions which had been at first but mere predatory
incursions, now assumed the character of enterprises looking towards
a permanent occupation of the country. Every advantageous post beyond
the border which it was thought possible to retain was thoroughly
fortified and garrisoned immediately after its capture. The walls of
dismantled Moorish fortresses were repaired. In those towns where the
Arab inhabitants preponderated, the latter were replaced by Galician
and Asturian colonists. In all cases where a place was taken by storm,
the male population was exterminated, and the women and children led
into slavery. Many important cities, including, among others, Coria
and Salamanca, fell into the hands of the Christians. The effects of
this vigorous policy began to be felt so seriously at Cordova that the
government summoned all its energies in an endeavor to counteract it,
and a powerful army was assembled under the orders of Al-Mondhir, heir
presumptive to the crown. That warlike and experienced prince met the
forces of the enemy on the banks of the Douro; the Christians sustained
a disastrous defeat; the larger part of the lost territory was
recovered; and Al-Mondhir, relieved of further care in this quarter,
turned his attention to Alava and Navarre. The victorious banners of
the Moslems were next displayed before Pampeluna. The environs of that
city were devastated; some castles throughout the province which had
sheltered formidable bands of marauders were taken and dismantled; and
Al-Mondhir, after a campaign unattended by a single disaster, returned
in triumph to Cordova.
These reverses, while not sufficient to deter the indomitable
mountaineers from repeating their forays, had at least the effect
of changing their direction and limiting their extent. Lusitania,
formerly invaded with impunity, was again selected as the object of
their attack. The fields and vineyards of Lisbon were trampled down
by the Christian squadrons; the town of Cintra was burned, and every
hamlet accessible to the fury of a pitiless enemy was depopulated and
destroyed. But the salutary lesson the Asturians had been recently
taught was not lost upon them, and, without waiting for the army that
Mohammed despatched in all haste to intercept their retreat, they
retired with the same celerity which had marked their appearance.
Unable to arrest these inroads by ordinary means, Mohammed determined
to have recourse to his navy, and disembark a force in the centre of
the enemy’s country. The fleet reached the western coast in safety, but
before a landing could be effected was destroyed by a hurricane. The
more rigid Moslems, whose strict ideas had been shocked by the braving
of an element of which the Prophet had stood in wholesome dread,
regarded this catastrophe as a well-merited chastisement from heaven
for disobedience to the Koran.
The revolt of Toledo had, from time to time, been followed by the
defection of other cities, whose disorders, while important in the
aggregate, were singly of little moment in their effects upon the
affairs of the Peninsula. One, however, in some respects greatly
resembling that by which the old capital of the Visigoths had secured
its independence, deserves to be related, as it demonstrates,
more thoroughly than an entire chronicle could do, the deplorable
helplessness into which the empire founded by Abd-al-Rahman had
fallen. Ibn-Merwan, a renegade prominent in former rebellions, and
whom the foolish policy of the Moslems has again entrusted with a
position of responsibility, aggrieved by some petty insult, deserted,
and, accompanied by a few of his retainers, seized the castle of
Alanje, near Merida. Besieged before he had time to collect supplies,
he nevertheless held out for three months, when he surrendered on
condition of his retirement to Bagdad. No sooner was he free, however,
than he proclaimed himself the apostle of a new religion, whose
doctrines were borrowed from those of both Christianity and Islamism;
increased his following by the enlistment of bandits and outlaws;
and, imitating the example of the Toledans, strengthened his cause by
an alliance with the King of the Asturias. His depredations became
so annoying that an army under Haschim, Mohammed’s favorite vizier,
was despatched against him. The wily partisan found little trouble in
decoying the vizier into an ambuscade; his command was annihilated; and
he himself was sent as a trophy to the court of Alfonso. When the Emir
made proposals for the ransom of Haschim, the Christian king demanded
the immense sum of a hundred thousand pieces of gold. Much as he
desired the release of his minister, the parsimony of Mohammed, which
had increased with years, deterred him from so profuse an expenditure.
For many months Haschim remained in captivity, but at length the
entreaties of his family overcame the reluctance of the Emir, and he
consented to send a portion of the ransom. The balance was secured by
the delivery of hostages, and the vizier was finally liberated.
On his return to Cordova, Haschim found that his ancient enemy, with
whom even Mohammed himself was unable to cope, had, during his absence,
attained to the dignity of an independent prince. The Emir, intimidated
by the menaces of Ibn-Merwan, had been compelled to conclude a peace
with that chieftain; to cede to him the strong city of Badajoz;
to release him from the payment of tribute; and to accede to such
conditions as virtually dispensed with the duties of the subject, as
well as abrogated the authority of the sovereign.
The effect of this pusillanimous conduct upon the malcontents and
fanatics who infested every community of the emirate--a society the
amalgamation of whose elements seemed utterly impracticable; destitute
of religious unity; without the slightest idea of political virtue
or patriotism; and acknowledging no incentive to subordination but
that suggested by the employment of military force--may readily be
imagined. Few cities preserved even the appearance of order. Every
lawless passion raged without control. Feuds were prosecuted without
interference. The functions of the magistrate, the obligations of the
people, were suspended. The empire, shattered in every part, seemed on
the verge of dissolution. Neither proximity to the seat of government,
the prospect of royal favor, nor fear of the consequences of treason
sufficed to retain the states in their allegiance. Andalusia alone
sustained with apparent fidelity the cause of Islam and the dignity and
fortunes of the monarch; but even this province was now destined to be
the seat of an insurrection whose consequences threatened to involve
the civilization of the West and the dynasty of the Ommeyades in sudden
and irretrievable ruin.
From the time of the Cæsars, that picturesque chain of mountains now
known as the Serrania de Ronda, which traverses the southern part of
the Peninsula, has been the scene of insurrection and of lawless deeds
which no government has ever been able to thoroughly suppress. The
proverbial reluctance of the mountaineer to conform to established laws
was, in this region especially, encouraged by the savage character of
the country, which, to all unacquainted with its intricate paths and
gloomy fastnesses, offered an aspect as forbidding as it was pregnant
with danger. The population of these mountains, in love of freedom, in
strength of body, in military prowess, was the counterpart of that of
the Asturias, while in graceful bearing, in beauty of form and feature,
and, above all, in intelligence, it far excelled the uncouth barbarians
of the North. It united the various qualities of Roman courage,
Punic shrewdness, and Arab temperance and agility. The difficulty of
enforcing obedience to the constituted authority was vastly increased
by the close relations maintained by even the most remote settlements,
leagued together in a confederacy which was, in all but name and
acknowledged leadership, an independent republic. The brigand who
swooped down upon the flocks of the Roman shepherd, or pillaged the hut
of the Visigothic peasant, has his worthy counterparts to-day in the
smuggler and highwayman. It has not been many decades since the robber
chieftain of the Serrania de Ronda levied blackmail on the posts and
convoys of the Spanish government; and the contraband traffic of that
region at present exceeds in importance the legitimate trade of any
other district of equal area and wealth in the Peninsula.
On the slope of this mountain range, not far from Malaga, lived in the
reign of Mohammed a youth of fiery temper and dissolute habits, named
Omar-Ibn-Hafsun. His father, descended from a distinguished Gothic
family, like many others, had renounced his faith rather with a view
to future advantage than from belief in the doctrines of Islam. His
son, concerned in frequent broils with the hot-headed peasantry of
the neighborhood, had, while but a child, obtained a most unenviable
reputation for cruelty and violence. At length, in an encounter with
one of his most redoubtable antagonists, the latter paid the penalty of
his rashness with his life. Ibn-Hafsun fled to the sierra and joined
a gang of banditti, but was eventually seized by the authorities and
scourged into insensibility. Escaping from the clutches of the law,
he sought the presence of his father, who disowned him and drove him
from his home. Knowing that he could not for a great while longer
elude the search of the officers who were scouring the country in all
directions, he embarked for Tahort in Africa, where he found refuge in
the house of a tailor who knew of his family but was ignorant of his
recent history, and who willingly accepted him as an apprentice. Here
he was soon after recognized by an acquaintance, and, apprehensive
of being denounced as a fugitive from justice and surrendered for
execution, he left his benefactor and secretly returned to Andalusia.
Impelled, perforce, to the profession of an outlaw, he assembled a
number of adventurous spirits, repaired an old Roman fort on the summit
of Mount Bobastro, and entered upon a life of rapine. The great plain
stretching from the foot of the sierra to the capital was soon at his
mercy. His band increased with the fame of his exploits; the cities
of Andalusia trembled at his name; the governor of the province, who
had ventured to attack him with a strong body of regular troops, was
reduced to the humiliation of seeing his soldiers routed and his
camp pillaged by a handful of daring marauders. This official, whose
incompetency was presumed to be the cause of his misfortune, was
removed, but his successor, an experienced veteran, fared no better.
After a time, the rebel was surrounded by a strong force under the
vizier Haschim, and compelled to surrender. His bravery and talents
had so excited admiration of the latter that he induced the Emir to
offer him an important command in the army. Between the acceptance
of this unexpected favor and confinement in a dungeon there could be
no hesitation in making a choice, and the former brigand was duly
commissioned an officer of the emirate. In many engagements with the
insurgents and mountaineers of the North, he bore himself with a
self-respecting dignity little to be expected from his former lawless
behavior. Admired by his general, respected by his comrades, and feared
by his enemies, there seemed to unfold before him the flattering
prospect of speedy promotion and all the honors and wealth incident
to a distinguished military career. But the petty jealousies of rival
courtiers could not brook the sudden elevation and rising prosperity of
this new favorite of Haschim. The party opposed to the vizier employed
every means to annoy and humiliate the haughty renegade. The governor
of the city, under various pretexts, compelled him to constantly move
his quarters. The purveyors of the army, instigated by the enemies of
his patron, regularly furnished him with rations unfit for consumption.
His complaints were ineffectual; even his patron told him that he must
avenge his own wrongs. Exasperated by such treatment, above all as it
was in no wise deserved, and unwilling to longer submit to the insults
that every day became less endurable, Ibn-Hafsun deserted, and again
sought the protecting solitudes of the Serrania de Ronda. His band
was soon reassembled; the fortress of Bobastro, which the prudence
of Mohammed had greatly strengthened, was surprised; and the daring
partisan, in the space of a few weeks, became once more the idol of
the mountaineers and the terror of the peasantry of Andalusia. But
his service in the army of the Emir had wrought a remarkable change
in the sentiments and conduct of the outlaw. He proclaimed himself
the champion of freedom, the avenger of all who had suffered from the
extortions and injustice of the reigning family. In this capacity he
was recognized as the representative of the renegades, the Christians,
and the Berbers, who thus formed an incongruous, but, for a time, an
effective alliance against the dominant Arab aristocracy. By assuming
the character of a defender of the oppressed, he invested his cause
with a national importance, and relieved it, to a great extent, from
the disgraceful imputation of brigandage. The members of his band were
subjected to the most severe restraint. Robbery and insubordination
were punished with instant death. The entire mountain district was
gradually included within his jurisdiction, and security of property
and life, such as that region never knew before, existed. It became a
common saying among the Andalusians that a woman loaded with silver
might cross any portion of the Serrania de Ronda without the least
danger of molestation. Such a demonstration of security would have been
elsewhere impracticable, even in the populous districts of the emirate
patrolled by a vigilant police, and its attempt would have invited
certain death in the distant and unprotected provinces of the empire.
In the control of his soldiers, Ibn-Hafsun adopted all those politic
expedients which raise commanders to popularity and renown,--inexorable
justice, unstinted liberality, prompt recognition of efficient
service, merciless punishment of serious infractions of discipline.
His increasing power invited the adherence of malcontents who held
responsible posts under the government, among them not a few renegades,
those pests of every administration whose credulous weakness heeded
their protestations or trusted their loyalty. In the year 886,
Ibn-Hafsun was assisting one of these traitors in the defence of
Alhama against the prince Al-Mondhir. The bandit chieftain had been
wounded in a sally, and the garrison was about to surrender, when
news reached the prince of the death of his father, and necessitated
his immediate return. This unhoped-for change in his fortunes offered
an opportunity which the wily Ibn-Hafsun was not slow to appreciate.
By plausible representations he induced many towns to submit to his
authority, and the accession of Al-Mondhir found him at once confronted
with a powerful enemy, whose military genius and fertility of resource
promised a long and doubtful struggle for supremacy.
The death of Mohammed was sudden and peaceful. His reign of thirty-four
years was the most stormy and unfortunate of any hitherto directed by
the Ommeyade monarchs. In addition to manifold political calamities, it
was afflicted with a drought severe beyond all hitherto mentioned in
the annals of Spain, with famine and pestilence, and with earthquakes
that increased the mortality to an appalling degree.
This epoch is conspicuous for the shameful degradation of the Ommeyade
dynasty of Spain. In its general features, it also presents an epitome
of the evils which afflicted the Hispano-Arab domination under every
ruler and in every age. The inherent vices of the Moslem system; the
irreconcilable character of the constituents of Moslem society--their
turbulence, malignity, and faithlessness--were discernible alike under
the administration of Abd-al-Aziz, the first of the emirs, and of
Boabdil, the last of the kings. The condition of Mohammed at times
seemed desperate. The majority of his subjects were in rebellion.
Twenty years of warfare had failed to subdue Toledo, which, with the
extensive territory subject to it, was now practically independent. The
power of the Christians was increasing daily. Their boundaries were
steadily advancing southward. Their banners had even been seen from
the walls of the capital. The Franks had obtained a permanent foothold
in the Gothic March, forever lost to the jurisdiction and the faith
of Islam. The mighty kingdom which had once reached from the banks of
the Garonne to the Mediterranean had shrunk to the dimensions of an
insignificant principality. Septimania, Leon, Aragon, Catalonia, and a
large portion of Castile were in the hands of the enemy. In the North,
the walis of the scattered fortresses which still preserved a nominal
allegiance to the Emir were secretly leagued with the infidel. In the
West, the audacious Ibn-Merwan plundered at will the rich settlements
of Estremadura and Lusitania. Valencia and Murcia, the nurseries of
many a serious revolt, exhibited unconcealed signs of disaffection,
caused by the imposition of excessive taxes and the uncontrolled
rapacity of their governors. In the South, the daring Ibn-Hafsun, the
representative of the prejudices and the aspirations of a numerous
and growing faction, exercised despotic rule over the greater part of
Andalusia. Brigands swarmed on the highways. Travel was impossible,
except under the protection of a strong escort. Communication between
the great cities of the Peninsula was as difficult as if they had been
separated by vast continents or seas. At one time, for eight years,
intercourse was entirely suspended between Saragossa and Cordova. In
every community an ill-defined but universal presentiment of impending
evil prevailed. Society was distracted by the quarrels of theologians,
frivolous in their nature, but often serious in their consequences.
In the history of Islam, a dispute concerning a religious formula or
the authenticity of a tradition had, more than once, led to a bloody
proscription, or involved entire nations in war. While the majority
of the Christian tributaries acquiesced in the conditions imposed
by the Moslem laws, numbers of deluded fanatics, resorting to every
species of outrage and blasphemy, courted the tortures and the fame of
martyrdom. Much of the country was depopulated. Where the inhabitants
remained, agricultural and commercial operations greatly declined,
and in some districts were absolutely suspended. The public revenues
were diminished to such an extent that even the penuriousness of the
Emir, aided by the extortions of his merciless officials, could with
difficulty provide for the necessary expenses of the royal household.
At the death of Mohammed, scarcely one-fourth of the territorial
area over which he claimed sovereign jurisdiction acknowledged the
legitimacy of his title or contributed to the maintenance of his power.
The evidences of national decadence are only too perceptible in
the disappearance of public spirit and military virtue; in the
incessant prosecution of intestine warfare; in the almost unresisted
encroachments of the Christian arms; in the habitual treachery of
officers entrusted with high commands; in the jealousies of courtiers
and the intrigues of fanatics; in the feigned enthusiasm of crusades
inaugurated in obedience to the principles of Islam, sometimes crowned
with partial success, but often terminating in disgrace and disaster.
The character of Mohammed was principally remarkable for irresolution
and parsimony. He surrendered whole provinces and degraded his dignity
by humiliating concessions extorted by the threats of insolent chiefs
of banditti. Such was his meanness that, in a transaction involving
the payment of more than a hundred thousand dinars, he defrauded the
treasury officials of a few pieces of copper. He reduced the pay of
his soldiers. He condescended to share the salaries of government
employees, whom he appointed conditionally upon the division of
their earnings. Yet, with these serious faults, he was the patron of
science, the friend of the learned, a graceful poet and orator, and
one of the most accomplished calligraphists of his time. The lack
of effective organization; the secret and implacable hostility that
pervaded every branch of the body politic; the boldness and tenacity
of the Asturians, aided by the sympathy of an innumerable body of
Christian ecclesiastics domiciled in every city and village of the
empire; and the unavoidable catastrophes of nature, render it extremely
problematical whether, under similar circumstances, a prince possessed
of greater ability than Mohammed could have better sustained the
declining fortunes of the emirate.
CHAPTER XI
REIGN OF AL-MONDHIR; REIGN OF ABDALLAH
886–912
Parallel between the Policy of the Moorish and Asturian
Courts--Alfonso III.--His Conquests--Energy of Al-Mondhir--Siege
of Bobastro--Stratagem of Ibn-Hafsun--The Emir is
Poisoned--Abdallah ascends the Throne--Conditions of Parties and
Sects--Prevalence of Disorder--Insurrection at Elvira--Success
of the Arab Faction--Disturbances at Seville--General
Disaffection of the Provinces--Ibn-Hafsun defeated at
Aguilar--Disastrous and Permanent Effects of the Continuance of
Anarchy--Sudden Death of Abdallah--Important Political Changes
wrought by a Generation of Civil Warfare.
A striking parallel exists between the successive events that compose
respectively the political history of the rival kingdoms of Christian
and Moorish Spain. In the circumstances of physical environment, in
national traditions, in manners, language, and religious belief,
no two races could be more dissimilar. Yet, in many respects, the
accounts of the disturbances following the accession of the Kings of
the Asturias and the Emirs of Cordova are counterparts of each other.
Both monarchies were, in theory, elective. The independent spirit of
the Arab and the untamed ferocity of the Goth were equally opposed
to the subordination necessarily implied by the adoption of the law
of hereditary descent. As the ruler grew more powerful, he naturally
became more anxious to transmit to his descendants the authority which
had been gained by his valor or confirmed by his prudence. To secure to
his family this coveted advantage, he was accustomed to solicit, in his
lifetime, the public acknowledgment of his son as heir apparent, who
had, not infrequently, been associated with him in the conduct of the
administration. A council composed of the principal officers, prelates,
and nobles of the realm was convoked, and required to show its devotion
to king or emir by swearing allegiance to the prince whom paternal
affection, and sometimes distinguished merit, had designated as the
future sovereign. This assent, prompted by interest and the certainty
of royal favor, was seldom refused, and, strengthened by custom until
it became a part of the constitution, was, after a few generations,
regarded as a mere ceremonial,--the formal assertion of a right whose
legality had been tacitly established by considerations of public
policy, if not by ancient prescription. But such was the effect of a
regulation in governments which preserved the forms of election but
repudiated its untrammelled exercise, that the choice of the monarch,
as soon as he ascended the throne, generally found himself embroiled
with his less fortunate brethren, each of whom believed that he had
been defrauded of his birthright. That the mere consent of the council
was not deemed conclusive is proven by the fact that possession of the
palace was deemed _prima facie_ evidence of title, a principle
recognized equally at Oviedo and Cordova. With insubordination came
civil war and the lamentable consequences of internecine conflict.
The savage instincts of the Gothic princes caused them to blind their
unfortunate rivals and immure them for life in the foul and reeking
cells of subterranean dungeons. The vengeance of the Moor, however,
was usually satisfied with short imprisonment, and, if the culprit
expressed contrition, he was often restored to favor and his crime
condoned. The student of ancient Spanish history cannot fail to be
deeply impressed with the different methods of dealing with treason
in the north and south of the Peninsula, regions arrayed against each
other in continual hostility,--exhibiting marked resemblances when
they were least to be expected, and, in disposing of offences aimed
at the throne and life of the monarch, displaying, on the one hand,
an indulgence dictated by a magnanimity that seemed almost suicidal;
on the other, a severity characterized by atrocities that could only
proceed from the grossest barbarism.
The long and illustrious reign of Alfonso III., worthily named The
Great, which occupies so much space in the early annals of the
Reconquest, affords a conspicuous example of the vicissitudes and
trials that attended the adventurous lives of the princes of the
Asturian monarchy. Associated with his father Ordoño for four years
preceding his advent to the throne, he was far from being a novice when
summoned to assume the grave responsibilities of sovereignty. The four
brothers of the King, jealous of the paternal preference, and disputing
the legality of a custom that arbitrarily excluded from the succession
even those most eligible under the provisions of the ancient Visigothic
constitution, united their forces in a formidable attempt to subvert
the authority of Alfonso. The enterprise resulted disastrously; the
barbarous severity of the laws was demonstrated without the mitigation
that might have been expected from the influence of fraternal sympathy,
and the unhappy princes were deprived of their eye-sight and imprisoned
for life in the castle of Oviedo. Three of them speedily sank under
the hardships of confinement; but the fourth, Veremundo, succeeded, by
some fortunate circumstance, in escaping, and was eventually raised
by his adherents to the government of Astorga. In this strong city,
occasionally assisted by the arms of the Moors, he successfully defied
the attacks of the King of the Asturias for more than seven years. The
address and courage necessarily implied by this determined resistance
are in themselves sufficiently remarkable; but the fact that the hero
who directed operations which thwarted the designs and repulsed the
forces of an entire kingdom for this extended period was totally blind
may well awaken surprise and admiration.
The eminent abilities of Alfonso III. were displayed on many a hotly
contested field and in many a critical emergency during his long
career. His arms were carried farther into the country of the enemy
than the bravest of his predecessors had ventured to penetrate.
Coimbra, Oporto, Zamora, Toro, Simancas, and numerous other cities of
less importance were added to the dominions of the Christian monarchy
by the efforts of his valor or the terror of his name. The sound
of his trumpets had awakened the affrighted peasantry whose fields
occupied the fertile slopes of the Sierra Morena. His banners had
been repeatedly seen from the battlements of Merida. His squadrons
had menaced the suburbs of the Moslem capital. He enforced with
unabated rigor the ruthless policy of extermination inaugurated by
the first monarch of his name. The captives taken in his numerous
expeditions were, for the most part, distributed among the estates
of the ecclesiastical order and the royal demesnes, to be employed
in the construction of churches, monasteries, castles, and palaces.
With each advance of the line marking the boundary of the two kingdoms
to the southward, new fortresses were erected, the most famous of
which was that which stood upon the site of modern Burgos, a city
whose fortunes have ever been so closely identified with those of the
Castilian monarchy. The province of Navarre, heretofore considered as
an insignificant principality, whose allegiance to the Asturian Crown
was conceded rather by the indifference of its inhabitants than based
upon the acknowledgment of any well-defined obligation, was, by the
marriage of Alfonso III. to Ximena, daughter of the count, enabled to
claim, for the first time in history, the position of an independent
kingdom. For thirty-one years Alfonso maintained an incessant contest
with the Emirs of Cordova. He saw the dominions of the descendants of
those terrified fugitives who had taken shelter in the wilds of the
Pyrenees extended far beyond the Douro and the Tagus to the shores of
the distant Guadiana. He witnessed the thorough consolidation of the
temporal and ecclesiastical powers, a union portending so much to the
future renown and dishonor of Spain. The shrine of Santiago had already
been enriched by the devotion of the pious and the fears of the wicked;
the rude hamlet had begun to assume the appearance of a city; the
homely chapel had been replaced by a stately cathedral; and a constant
stream of weeping and hysterical pilgrims attested the growth of a
spirit of fanaticism whose effects were to be, erelong, conspicuously
exhibited in those romantic deeds of daring which abound in the
annals of the Reconquest. At the close of his reign, three-fourths of
the Peninsula--a territory that, with the exception of a corner of
the mountain wilderness, had once paid tribute to the followers of
Mohammed--was in the possession of the champions of Christendom or
their allies.
The youth of the new Emir, Al-Mondhir, had, like that of his ancestors,
been passed amidst military exercises or in warlike enterprises. No
prince had yet ascended the throne under more auspicious circumstances,
nor, at the same time, better qualified to restore the tarnished
lustre of the Moslem name. His discretion and sagacity bore a just
proportion to the impulsive courage that distinguished him among a
nation of heroes. The energy of his character may be inferred from his
response to the Toledans, who, immediately after his accession, sent
him the customary tribute, which he at once returned with the following
message, “Keep your money for the expenses of war, for, if God so
wills, I shall soon attack you.”
The absence of Al-Mondhir, as has been already related, gave the
redoubtable rebel Ibn-Hafsun an opportunity to greatly increase his
following, and to secure, by threats and delusive promises, many
important fortresses in Andalusia. The resolute prince, thoroughly
cognizant of the dangerous character of his adversary, did not suffer
him to long enjoy the advantages which the domestic misfortune of
others rather than his own abilities had enabled him to obtain.
Leaving Cordova quietly at the head of a body of veteran troops, he
suddenly laid siege to the strong post of Archidona, commanded by
an ally of Ibn-Hafsun, and, like him, a renegade. The boldness of
this chieftain, who, while defaming the religion he had renounced,
declared his willingness to be executed in case of capture, led
Al-Mondhir to tempt the cupidity of the citizens by an enormous
bribe; the apostate was surrendered, and, in accordance with the
terms of his defiance, underwent a death ignominious in the eyes of
all Mussulmans,--crucifixion between the bodies of two of the most
unclean of animals. Terrified by this example of severity, Archidona
opened its gates. The cavalry of the Emir then swept the country of
provisions; some towns were plundered; a score of insurgents selected
for prominence in their party were executed; and the entire army of
Al-Mondhir, flushed with success and animated by the hope of booty and
vengeance, invested the formidable stronghold of Bobastro.
While he entertained little fear that his castle could be taken, the
cunning Ibn-Hafsun determined to provide if possible against such a
contingency, and relieve his followers from the disastrous consequences
of a blockade. With every appearance of sincerity, he professed
a desire to conclude a permanent peace. Al-Mondhir, with all his
experience, was not proof against the humble protestations of regret
and assurances of future loyalty proffered by the rebel chieftain.
A treaty was drawn up virtually at the dictation of the latter. At
his request, a hundred mules, guarded by an escort of a hundred and
sixty horsemen, were furnished to convey his family and property to
Cordova. His apparent submission having removed all suspicions of his
good faith, he escaped without difficulty in the dead of night; and
having returned to Bobastro, which the army of the Emir had quitted,
he collected a few soldiers, massacred the escort, and by daybreak
was once more under shelter of the towers of the fortress. The rage
of Al-Mondhir, aroused to the highest pitch by this exhibition of
duplicity, impelled him to take a solemn oath that he would never cease
his efforts until the perfidious rebel should have paid the extreme
penalty of his treason. The blockade was renewed, but with diminished
vigor, as the discipline of the troops was not only lax, but they
were disheartened at the prospect of a protracted siege, the opinion
prevailing among them that Bobastro was impregnable. Aware of the
increasing discontent, a conspiracy was formed against Al-Mondhir by
his brother Abdallah and the eunuchs of the palace; the court physician
was prevailed upon to use a poisoned lancet to bleed his royal patient
for some trifling indisposition; and the gallant prince, whose career
bade fair to be one of the most illustrious of his dynasty, died in
excruciating torture after a reign of a little less than two years.
He left no sons, and the criminal design of Abdallah, which had been
pushed rapidly to its execution for this very reason, having been
accomplished, that prince, informed of the death of Al-Mondhir before
it was known to his friends, appeared suddenly in camp, asserted his
claim to the throne, and received the reluctant homage of the officers
of the army.
The soldiers, who respected the abilities and stood in awe of the
ferocious spirit of Ibn-Hafsun, displayed no grief at the death of
their sovereign. With every manifestation of joy, they turned their
backs upon the rebel stronghold, and, without preserving the semblance
of military order, began a straggling march towards their homes. Each
village which this armed rabble traversed was the scene of hundreds
of desertions, and of the plunder of the already grievously oppressed
inhabitants. The disorderly retreat had not escaped the notice of
Ibn-Hafsun, and he was already close in the rear of the retiring column
when a messenger arrived from the usurper imploring his forbearance,
and declaring that he entertained no hostile intentions towards him.
The rebel leader had the courtesy to respect this petition; and
Abdallah, guarding his brother’s corpse lashed carelessly upon a camel,
was permitted to reach Cordova without molestation. So complete was the
disorganization of the army, that of a force numbering several thousand
men scarcely twoscore troopers remained to escort the new monarch to
the gates of the capital.
The crown that had been polluted by treason and fratricide seemed
destined now to become the instrument of universal misfortune.
The political condition of the Peninsula was already extremely
complicated. Society was everywhere threatened with dissolution. The
Arabs, proud of their lineage, and appropriating to their race the
credit of conquests largely achieved by their allies and proselytes,
constituted an aristocracy whose pretensions were both unwarrantable
and offensive. Far from recognizing the new converts to Islam as
brothers,--as recommended by the Koran,--they treated them as
inferiors, and frequently loaded them with indignities which they
would have hesitated to inflict upon their own slaves. The lapse of
generations, the most eminent services, the greatest talents, the
performance of acts of valor that evoked the plaudits of their enemies,
could not, in the eyes of these haughty descendants of idolaters and
banditti, atone for the reproach of ancient infidelity. But it was
only in their antagonism to recent converts and their children that
the Arabs were united. Between the Syrian and the Bedouin of the
Hedjaz still existed an irreconcilable enmity. The hereditary feud
of Maadite and Yemenite preserved all its original bitterness and
intensity, although, on account of the incessant clashing of other
interests, its manifestations were not so pronounced as they had been
in the earlier years of the emirate. The confiscation of the estates
of Gothic fugitives and the fortunes of the Conquest had given the
Arabs an opportunity to acquire extensive estates and to amass immense
riches. The deeply-rooted antipathy of the Bedouin to confinement had
caused the aristocracy of the Peninsula to establish itself in the
vicinity of large cities, such as Jaen, Cordova, Seville, and Malaga,
where, surrounded by an army of retainers and slaves, they enjoyed
the pleasures and independence of a pastoral life, for which they had
inherited a predilection from their ancestors, the nobles of Central
and Western Arabia.
But the several factions into which the Arabs were divided bore no
comparison in numbers, power, or opulence to those composing the
remainder of the population. It was but a small proportion of the
Christians who, in consequence of the invasion of Tarik, had sought
the unfettered exercise of political and religious liberty amidst the
wilds of the Asturias. The sacred traditions of ancestry, the ties of
birth, the associations of childhood, the fear of penury, the hope of
wealth and distinction, retained the large majority in their homes,
where many continued to enjoy the consideration derived from exalted
rank and great possessions. Some paid gladly the reasonable tribute
that promised a greater degree of security than they had ever known
under the kings and chieftains of Gothic lineage. These were called
Ahl-al-Dhimmah, The Tributaries. The members of another class, the
Ajem, boldly refused to recognize the authority of the conqueror,
and maintained a nominal independence in the mountains where they
had their haunts, but, destitute of effective organization, they
scarcely rose to the dignity of banditti. The alluring inducements
of pecuniary interest and political advantage had formed another
caste or faction, more numerous and more important in its influence
on the fortunes of the Peninsula than all the others combined,--the
Muwallads, a comprehensive term denoting persons whose derivation,
while nominally Arab, was yet tainted with some foreign impurity, and
which, corrupted into mulatto, has been incorporated into many of the
languages of Europe. This designation was popularly applied to the
descendants of renegades or apostates, called Mosalimah, an appellation
corresponding to the Moriscoes, or New Christians, converted after the
capture of Granada by the zealous Ximenes and his coadjutors through
the potent arguments of the rack and fagot. Still another caste was the
Muraddin, former converts, who, having renounced the faith of Islam,
had rendered themselves amenable to death, the penalty prescribed by
Mohammed for the unpardonable crime of apostasy. These were outlaws
and highwaymen, who, in defiance of the feeble police maintained by
the government, openly levied contributions upon travellers within
sight of the minarets of Cordova. Add to these disorganizing elements
of society the half-savage Berbers,--for the most part idolaters in
religion and assassins in war,--and the difficulties that confronted
the ablest princes of the Ommeyades may well be conceived. The Jews,
whose mercantile pursuits made them on all occasions advocates for
peace and frequently useful mediators, were robbed and oppressed in
turn by every faction into whose hands they were unfortunate enough to
fall. No region in the world of equal area contained such a mixed and
turbulent population as the Spanish Peninsula before the Reconquest.
The emirs, actuated by a principle familiar to all despotic sovereigns
threatened with a curtailment of their power, bestowed their favor in
turn upon the Arabs and the Muwallads, according as one or the other
seemed about to obtain a pre-eminence dangerous to the safety of the
state. But this policy reacted in an unexpected manner, and aggravated
the evils it was intended to obviate. The victorious party never failed
to abuse its advantage with brutal severity. The faction for the time
being under the frown of the Court, lost all respect for, and renounced
its allegiance to, a government that refused it the protection of the
laws. The result was a bitter conflict in which Arab and Muwallad were
arrayed against the Emir and against each other at the same time. The
death of Al-Mondhir was the signal for increased disorder, which the
feeble and hypocritical Abdallah was incompetent to suppress. The
Arab nobles had long hoped to revive, in another land, that period of
unrestricted license whose traditions survived in the exciting poems of
the robbers and shepherds of the Desert. The famous Ibn-Hafsun, whose
name was the terror of every hamlet, and who, as the head of the rebels
of Bobastro and the natural ally of every party of malcontents, was
more powerful than the Emir himself, now began to entertain hopes of
being actually invested with the royal dignity which he in substance
already enjoyed.
The situation of Abdallah was perilous in the extreme. The loyalty
for the House of Ommeyah, which had been for generations the marked
characteristic of the Arab of Syrian descent and the Koreishite alike,
was greatly impaired. The treasury was empty. The taxes due from the
walis were, for the most part, withheld. The tribute of the Christians,
instigated by the Muwallads whom they considered their champions,
was, except in Cordova and its immediate environs, suspended. The
royal convoys were intercepted and plundered on the highways. The
fidelity of the populace of the capital, suspected of secretly holding
communication with the enemy, was distrusted. A spirit of bravado had
even prompted Ibn-Hafsun to pass several days within its gates, which
he had entered unchallenged in the disguise of a beggar. The prejudices
of Abdallah inclined him to an alliance with the renegades. His early
years had been passed in intimate friendship with the officers of the
guard, who had since become distinguished leaders of that party. The
achievements of Ibn-Hafsun had rather awakened his admiration than
provoked his resentment. Conscious of his helplessness, and desirous of
conciliating the most powerful chief of the opposition, he went so far
as to tender him the government of Regio, conditional upon his return
to his allegiance. The crafty rebel, to whom an oath was an unmeaning
ceremony and who desired a respite to enable him to reorganize his
army, acquiesced without hesitation, and even consented to send his son
and several of his officers as hostages to the court of the Emir. The
latter treated these pledges of the uncertain fidelity of a perfidious
vassal with all the distinction usually reserved for the emissaries of
royalty. They were magnificently entertained, lodged in palaces, and
presented with costly gifts. Unrestrained of their liberty, they had no
trouble in escaping when, a few months later, they received a secret
message to repair to Bobastro. All security for his loyal behavior
being lost by their departure, Ibn-Hafsun resumed his depredations
with greater audacity than ever. His aid was soon afterwards solicited
by the renegades of a district which had hitherto rather avoided than
courted his alliance,--the city and province of Elvira.
In the general distribution of lands made under the direction of
the emirs who acknowledged the Khalif of Damascus, the beautiful
plain subsequently known as the Vega of Granada was assigned to the
natives of Syria. With true Bedouin reserve and love of freedom, the
adventurers who had won this earthly paradise by their valor disposed
their habitations as far from the crowded haunts of men as the extent
and situation of their estates would permit. The increase of their
flocks, and the produce of the soil tilled by multitudes of industrious
slaves, soon raised their descendants to the height of opulence. In the
course of events, through confiscations for treason, the casualties of
war, and the effects of disease, many Arab families became extinct,
and their real property, by purchase or extortion, became vested in
a comparatively small number of great proprietors, whose possessions
embraced all the most valuable estates in the province. These lords
formed a caste that, for arrogance and exclusiveness, had no equal in
the Peninsula. The national pride of the Syrian noble was immensely
flattered by the sovereign pre-eminence of his countrymen, the princes
of the House of Ommeyah. In his inordinate vanity he fancied that
the future of that dynasty depended on his individual exertions, as
he habituated himself to believe that its establishment was solely
due to the genius and efforts of his ancestors. And yet with all his
professed attachment to the crown, his loyalty had been more than once
justly suspected. There, as elsewhere, the interests of the court had
been repeatedly sacrificed to gratify the malice of faction,--for
the inappeasable feud between Yemenite and Maadite was nowhere
maintained with greater virulence than in the province of Elvira. In
his intercourse with his equals the Arab of the Vega--like all his
brethren exposed for a time to the refinements of civilization--was a
model of chivalrous politeness and graceful courtesy. But his demeanor
was far different when his affairs demanded any association with the
inhabitants of the city, who, in his eyes, labored under the double
reproach of being traders and renegades. No opportunity was lost to
humiliate these peaceful citizens; although in practice devout Moslems,
they were constantly taunted with their apostasy; and for their
denunciation the inexhaustible vocabulary of the Arab was ransacked for
opprobrious epithets, one of which, “filii canum,” has descended to our
time as the very epitome of insult.
The high spirit of the inhabitants of Elvira chafed under the gross
and unprovoked abuse which they were constantly compelled to undergo.
They also were vain of their ancestry and proud of their souvenirs.
In the early days of the Visigothic empire, the ancient Illiberis
had been an oasis in the dismal waste of Paganism that included the
entire Peninsula. It had been the seat of the first Spanish bishopric.
There had been held, in the first quarter of the fourth century, a
famous Council, many of whose canons are still recognized as valid by
the Roman Catholic Church. Among them was one requiring the celibacy
of the priesthood, a regulation subsequently adopted and enforced by
Gregory VII. There, too, was contrived a scheme of discipline which,
originally aimed at the rich and prosperous Hebrews, became the model
of that awful engine of persecution, the Inquisition, whose tortures,
improved by ecclesiastical deviltry, filled the world with terror after
the lapse of more than a thousand years. The city, although inferior in
natural advantages to its growing neighbor, Granada, was nevertheless
of considerable political and commercial importance. The generous piety
of the Gothic nobles had enriched its see with large endowments, and
its churches in elegance and splendor could compare with any of the
kingdom.
But the contagious example of the prevalent apostasy, a condition which
dispensed with tribute and at the same time appealed strongly to the
ambition of the unscrupulous and the selfish passions of the multitude,
made itself felt before long even in this citadel of Christianity.
The corruption of the prelates, headed by the bishop, Samuel, whose
profligacy attained for him a notoriety proportionate to the dignity
of the office he disgraced, drove the indignant Christians by hundreds
into the fold of Islam. Those who remained faithful to the traditions
of the Church were so persecuted that no resource was left to them but
to join their brethren, many of whom had sacrificed their convictions
from more ignoble motives than that of self-preservation. This
wholesale desertion was greatly facilitated by the connivance of the
inferior clergy, as well as by the open violence of the bishop and his
coadjutors, who, corrupted by the Moslems, exerted themselves with far
greater energy and success in obtaining proselytes to the religion of
Mohammed than they had ever done in promoting the cause of Christ. In
the end, the excesses of this unworthy prelate became so insufferable
that he was removed from his see and divested of his sacred authority;
whereupon he at once repaired to Cordova, and, having publicly
renounced his faith, was rewarded with the lucrative employment of
persecutor, an infamous office whose duties he discharged with all
the malignant assiduity of the renegade. Long before the accession
of Abdallah, the resentment of the Muwallads of Elvira, inflamed to
the highest pitch, had broken out against their churlish neighbors,
the Arab nobles, in acts of open hostility. The sympathies of the
Jews of Granada seem to have been with the latter, who, on various
occasions, were saved from destruction by the friendly walls of that
city. Superior in numbers and equal in bravery to their adversaries,
the result of every engagement was favorable to the renegades. As
neither party was accustomed to give quarter, the struggle soon assumed
the character of a war of extermination. In the year 889 a number of
Syrian chieftains, who were visiting the capital of the province under
the protection of a truce, were treacherously massacred in the streets,
a catastrophe that gave the Muwallads, already sufficiently powerful,
a momentary but uncontested ascendency. The Arabs, whose numbers had
been depleted by many consecutive years of warfare, forgot, for the
moment, their hereditary enmities, which no disaster, however serious,
could entirely reconcile, in the engrossing passion of vengeance. They
chose for their leader Sauwar, a venerable warrior whose declining
age had been embittered by the bloody sacrifice of his only son to
the fury of the renegades. His misfortunes had erased from his bosom
every feeling of compassion, every suggestion of humanity. A brutal
ferocity that regarded the slightest concession to the weakness of an
enemy as a crime was the prominent characteristic of the sheik whom
the Arabs now selected to restore their fallen fortunes. The first
exploit of this savage warrior was the capture of Monte Sacro, a
stronghold north of Granada which had been the scene of the greatest
victory of the Muwallads and the occasion of the death of his beloved
son. Notwithstanding its strength, the castle was carried at the first
attack, and the garrison, six thousand in number, massacred to a man.
Encouraged by his success and infuriated by the taste of blood, the
desperate Sauwar sated to the full his thirst for retribution. The
terror of his arms caused many towns to surrender without a blow. But
submission conferred no indulgence, and the work went relentlessly on.
No Muwallad who was so unfortunate as to fall into the hands of the
Arabs escaped. A mere suspicion of Spanish or Gothic descent was deemed
sufficient evidence of identity, and brought certain and speedy death.
Even those conditions of helplessness which most readily appeal to
the compassion of mankind were not considered in this indiscriminate
proscription, and many distinguished families whose names were
identified with some of the most conspicuous events of Roman and
Visigothic annals were swept at one blow from the face of the earth.
This reign of terror, which threatened the extermination of their
race, induced the renegades to appeal for assistance to Djad, the
Arab governor of the province, whose authority they had disputed
after refusing the customary tribute. Satisfied of their sincerity,
he marched at the head of a considerable force against the formidable
partisan. The result was a decisive victory for the Arabs; the bodies
of seven thousand dead strewed the field of battle, and the governor
remained a prisoner in the camp of the enemy.
The prestige acquired by Sauwar after these decisive advantages caused
his alliance to be sought by many neighboring cities, among them
Calatrava and Jaen. Reduced to despair, the Muwallad faction declared
their willingness to renew their allegiance to the Emir. But the
latter was powerless to render them any substantial assistance. The
credit of the government was so low that it could scarcely pay the
troops required for the defence of the capital. The personal qualities
of Abdallah were not such as to enlist the sympathy or arouse the
enthusiasm of the people, and thereby compensate, in some degree,
for the deficiencies of the treasury. The governors of the provinces
were, for all practical purposes, independent princes. Cordova was the
residence of the flower of the Arab nobility, whose prejudices were all
on the side of Sauwar and his followers in their efforts to exterminate
the detested renegades, an enterprise which they regarded as little
less meritorious than a crusade against an infidel foe. Willing but
unable to exert his authority in behalf of his unfortunate subjects,
the Emir decided to assume the less dangerous office of mediator. He
therefore offered Sauwar the government of several cities on condition
that he would acknowledge himself a vassal of the crown and cease
his persecution of the renegades. This advantageous proposal was
readily agreed to; the oath of allegiance was taken by both factions;
hostilities were suspended, and, for the first time in many years, the
province of Elvira was permitted to enjoy the blessings of public and
private tranquillity.
Habituated to warfare and scenes of carnage, the active spirit of
Sauwar chafed under the monotony and dullness entailed by civil
drudgery and magisterial duties. The territory that Ibn-Hafsun had
seized, and over which he ruled with despotic sway, extended to the
borders of the province of Elvira. Unable to resist the temptation,
Sauwar turned his attention to the adherents of that renowned champion
of the Muwallads, and soon the valleys and hamlets of eastern Andalusia
were visited with a scourge whose barbarity had no parallel since the
invasion of the Vandals. The sympathy of their fellow-sectaries, the
subjects of Sauwar, was enlisted in behalf of those who were sufferers
in a common cause; the Muwallads of Elvira almost without exception
rose in arms; and the Arabs, expelled from the city and chased in every
direction, sought by a common impulse a temporary refuge in Granada.
The fortress of the Alhambra, a structure of remote and uncertain
antiquity, is mentioned definitely for the first time during the civil
wars of Elvira. It was known to the Arabs at least a century after
the Conquest, as Ka’lat-al-Hamra, The Red Castle, and its commanding
position and natural strength render it probable that it may have
been the site of a citadel as early as the Carthaginian occupation.
The whole of the Alhambra Hill was not enclosed, as at present, and,
at the time under consideration, the fortifications were confined to
the jutting point overlooking the present city and familiar to modern
travellers as the Alcazaba. Abandoned by the government, and uncared
for by the inhabitants, whose Jewish antecedents induced them to trust
for their safety rather to their acuteness than to their courage, the
venerable castle had fallen into decay. The repeated sieges which it
had sustained in the incessant contests between rival factions had, in
addition to the ruin produced by the effects of time and the action
of the elements, greatly diminished its capacity for resistance. In
their critical situation, where all depended on their individual
exertions,--for no hope of reinforcements could be entertained,--the
superstitious fears of the people, aided by the suggestions of a vivid
imagination, found in each trivial incident a token of propitious
or fatal augury. Fortunately for their cause, the favorable omens
preponderated on the day when the besieging force, whose numbers
amounted to twenty thousand, prepared to storm their intrenchments.
With characteristic cunning the prudent Sauwar determined to counteract
by stratagem the overwhelming superiority of his adversaries. Leaving
the citadel, and unobserved in the confusion of battle, he suddenly
appeared at the head of a picked detachment in the rear of the enemy.
Completely surprised, the latter was at once thrown into confusion;
the entire army took to flight, and the terrified renegades were
pursued to the very gates of Elvira. The Muwallad army was completely
destroyed. The entire province was in mourning. There was no household
that did not lament the absence of one or more of its number, no
soldier that did not deplore the loss of a comrade or a friend. In deep
humiliation the remnant of the renegade host prepared to defend the
capital to which but a few hours before they had expected to return
in triumph. The elation of the Arabs exhibited itself in all the
extravagant exultation peculiar to that impassioned race. The fame of
Sauwar spread to the furthest limits of the Peninsula. His exploits
were celebrated with varying partiality by the poets of both factions,
whose interesting productions often compensate for the unsatisfactory
accounts of the chronicler, and in their animated and graphic
description of important events and distinguished personages contribute
copious and invaluable information to the historian.
The disheartened members of the Muwallad faction now resolved to
place themselves under the protection of Ibn-Hafsun. As yet, they had
never asked his assistance, nor, what is even more remarkable, had
tempted his ambition or incurred his hostility. The aspiring chieftain
embraced with ardor a cause so congenial to his adventurous spirit.
With a confidence born of many victories he encountered the Arabs in
the field. The Muwallads were again defeated, however, and it was
with difficulty that Ibn-Hafsun, badly wounded, and seeing decimated
the ranks of the veterans who had been his reliance in a score of
campaigns, effected his retreat and escaped to the mountains of Ronda.
The inhabitants of Elvira eventually succeeded in accomplishing by
artifice what they had failed to do by arms, and Sauwar, lured with his
escort into an ambuscade, was slaughtered. The brutal instinct of human
nature that, foiled in its efforts against the living, finds a savage
gratification in the mutilation of the dead, was exhibited in its
most revolting aspect by the women of Elvira. With the cries of wild
beasts they tore in pieces and devoured the corpse of their persecutor.
This resort to cannibalism as a means of revenge appears to have been
frequently practised in the wars of the Arabs and of those nations
subjected to their domination. It is mentioned in the pre-Islamitic
poems and traditions. A conspicuous instance, already referred to,
occurred at the battle of Ohod. And examples are not wanting of the
preservation of a custom aggravated by the rancor resulting from
almost perpetual civil war under the Eastern and Western Khalifates,
whose violation of the decencies of life would seem sufficient to
disgust barbarians, to say nothing of nations long familiar with the
amenities of society and the requirements of a comparatively advanced
civilization.
The serious commotions which disturbed the peace of Elvira were no
isolated instances of public disorder, but rather a type of what was
afflicting the entire Peninsula. In Seville, the rebellious Arabs had
by turns united with and opposed the renegades in defiance of the
authority of the sovereign. The old metropolis of Bætica has, from
its foundation, never relinquished its proud position as the capital
of Southern Spain. Other cities have enjoyed the nominal title, but
the Queen of Andalusia has always, under Carthaginian, Roman, Goth,
and Arab, maintained an acknowledged and deserved pre-eminence. Its
natural advantages were unsurpassed. It stood in the midst of one
of the most fertile plains of Europe. The Guadalquivir brought the
treasures of the East to its gates. Long the seat of the primate of
the kingdom, its souvenirs gave it a peculiar sanctity in the eyes
of the Christian. Its business facilities attracted a numerous and
enterprising Hebrew colony. The blending of many races, the dominion
of a score of dynasties, had imparted to the disposition of its
inhabitants a peculiar character, an uncommon fertility of genius,
a phenomenal activity of intellect. To their literary talents and
stinging wit was added an inconstancy in political affiliations and
religious belief that was often a subject of reproach and scandal. With
a strange unanimity they had at the first suggestion of the substantial
benefits of apostasy renounced the truths of the gospel. A magnificent
mosque had been built to reward their subserviency, but neither the
daily practice of the rites of Islam, the adoption of the Arabic
language, nor the change of costume could eradicate those prominent
mental characteristics which had been formed by the domestic life and
time-honored traditions of twelve eventful centuries.
The same prejudices and national antagonism existed between the
Muwallad and the Arab parties at Seville as at Elvira with the notable
exception that their mutual dislike had not yet been embittered by
deeds of blood. But the dangerous proximity of lawless Arab nobles
occupying the fertile district of the Axarafe that skirted the
Guadalquivir had early suggested to the renegades the propriety
of making thorough preparations for defence. An organization had
accordingly been formed, whose members were liable to a summons for
active service, and which, in its regulations and military duties, bore
a considerable resemblance to the militia of modern times.
The acknowledged chiefs of the Sevillian aristocracy were the sheiks
of the two powerful tribes of the Beni-Khaldun and the Beni-Hadjadj.
Their estates comprised the most valuable and productive lands in the
vicinity of the Andalusian capital. In some respects the Arab prejudice
against the promotion of trade and the employment of the mechanical
arts had been relaxed, and the proud descendants of the Bedouins of
Yemen did not consider it inconsistent with their dignity to add to
their resources by the freighting of ships, the buying and selling
of merchandise, and the fabrication of weapons and armor. The wealth
derived from these profitable occupations, added to the income of their
vast plantations, enabled them to maintain a state that eclipsed even
the regal splendor of the court of Cordova. Faithful to the pastoral
traditions of their race, these princely nobles passed the greater
portion of their time at their country-seats; but they also maintained
palatial establishments in the city, whither they resorted on Fridays
to attend the services of the mosque and to dazzle the eyes and provoke
the envy and indignation of the populace by the magnificence of their
attire and the insolence of their manners.
It is proverbial that the ordinary tendency of opulence and prosperity
is rather to allay than to stimulate the passions of ambition and
independence. A notable exception to this principle existed in the
case of the Arab aristocracy of Seville. The wealthiest and most
epicurean in its tastes of any in the kingdom, it was at the same time
the most narrow, belligerent, and exclusive. The persistent evils
of the Desert--the love of warfare, the Bedouin repugnance to royal
power, which seemed to imply undue superiority on the one hand and an
appearance of servitude on the other--outweighed all considerations of
security, all the advantages of peace. This propensity to disturbance
was largely confined to those who resided in the country, where a
marked contraction of intellect and a tenacity of prejudice have
always been the well-known characteristics of those who pass their
lives amidst scenes unaffected by the collision of interests, the
bustle, the enterprise, the ever-changing panorama, of metropolitan
life. The Arabs of Seville regarded the impatience of their brethren
of the Axarafe with a disapproval which not even tribal attachment and
ancestral pride could overcome. But their numbers were small and their
influence inappreciable when compared with the great power of the rural
noble whose multitudes of slaves and vassals imparted to his seat the
appearance of the capital of a principality.
Despite all their pretensions, the blood of many of these lords
had been contaminated by an impure commerce with the infidel. The
family-tree of the Beni-Khaldun showed numerous crosses which had
greatly deteriorated the pure stock of the nobility of Hadramaut. The
Beni-Hadjadj traced their pedigree in the maternal line from the royal
family of the Visigoths. The admixture of Christian blood had, however,
no visible effect in softening their manners, and they were at heart as
lawless as the most savage Bedouin who still adored the idols of the
Age of Ignorance, and regularly plundered the caravans between Medina
and Mecca.
The head of the Arab faction at Seville was Koraib, sheik of the
Beni-Khaldun. In talent for political intrigue, in unblushing
effrontery, in bigoted devotion to what he considered the honor of
the tribe, he stood without a rival. For many years he had nursed
in secret a dream of independence, to be realized by violence and
rapine. Personal ambition does not seem to have had any part in his
plan of universal disorder. An unreasoning hatred of royalty and a mad
aspiration to restore the freedom of pre-Islamic times appear to have
been the only motives that actuated this dangerous agitator, whose
intellect was too much obscured by rancor and prejudice to perceive
that the only safeguard of his own possessions lay in the preservation
of a strong and arbitrary government.
Repulsed by his countrymen in the city, Koraib turned his attention
to the inhabitants of the suburbs. His influence was so extensive and
his cause so popular in the Axarafe that it was not long before he
found himself in a condition to take the offensive. Many influential
Arab and Berber sheiks promised their co-operation. The rich spoils of
the province of Seville were offered to the Berbers of Merida, and to
the outlaws who swarmed in the fastnesses of the Sierra Morena. The
signal given, these merciless savages poured down upon the fields and
habitations of the defenceless peasantry. With amazement and terror the
industrious farmer saw the accumulations of a lifetime swept away in a
moment, his home given to the torch, his sons butchered in cold blood,
his wife and daughters dragged into slavery. At the first appearance
of the enemy, the governor had summoned all the neighboring chieftains
to join him with their retainers. Among these was Koraib, who, in
consequence of a previous understanding with the Berbers, deserted at
a favorable opportunity. In the first encounter the rebels obtained
a complete victory, and, having plundered the country at will, they
returned to Merida, leaving the environs of Seville in the condition of
a conquered province which had undergone all the injury that barbarian
ruthlessness could inflict.
Information of this successful enterprise was soon conveyed to the
lair of every brigand and outlaw in the Peninsula. While long since
aware of the weakness of the emirate and the military incapacity of
its sovereign, the banditti had nevertheless hesitated to approach
the neighborhood of large towns like Seville, and their depredations
had been confined to isolated hamlets and the highways connecting the
provincial capitals with the seaboard. Now, however, a wider field was
opened to their indulgence of their predatory instincts. From every
quarter of the compass armed desperadoes and criminals, accustomed
from childhood to deeds of cruelty and rapine, made their way singly,
and in companies, to the province of Seville. The entire country was
laid under contribution. The peasantry abandoned their possessions and
fled with their families to the metropolis. The powerful chieftains of
Lusitania and Estramadura, who had thrown off the yoke of the emirate
but had for years been content to govern their principalities in
peaceful independence, now hastened to secure a share of the plunder.
The renegade, Ibn-Merwan, whose exploits under a preceding reign have
already been recounted, descended upon the plains of Andalusia at the
head of the fierce warriors of Badajoz.
The provincial governors, as incompetent as their master, were unable
or unwilling to repress the prevalent anarchy. That apparently hopeless
task was finally performed by Ibn-Ghalib, a Muwallad of Ecija, whose
abilities and courage in a few months restored comparative order
throughout Andalusia.
The prestige thus attained by one of the despised race that the
malevolent prejudice of party had devoted to extermination was
especially odious to the Arab aristocracy. The contest which was
raging between the rival castes for self-preservation on the one hand,
and absolute supremacy on the other, now became more sanguinary and
irreconcilable. The cities were filled with tumult. The Emir was openly
insulted. The influence of the Arab faction in the Divan prevailed in
the end, and Ibn-Ghalib was sacrificed by an act of treachery to the
hatred of his enemies through his zeal for his master’s interests.
The news of his death provoked an insurrection at Seville. The
sympathies of the people had been with him in his quarrel with the
Arab nobles. Many causes contributed to his popularity. He was a
renegade, and his political interests were identified with those
of a majority of the citizens. Large numbers of the natives of the
province had served under his banner. He had swept brigandage from the
highways. In consequence of his vigorous measures trade had revived,
and public confidence had, to a certain degree, been restored. Not only
his partisans, but even those who from policy had hitherto remained
neutral, now clamored for the heads of his murderers. The city was
in the hands of an infuriated mob. The governor was besieged in his
palace. It required all the resources of the government to suppress
the outbreak, which, for a time, threatened the most serious results.
A terrible retribution was exacted of all taken in arms, or suspected
of having accorded to the insurrection aid or sympathy. The leaders of
the Muwallad faction, the most prominent merchants of the city, were
decapitated or crucified. Many of the unfortunates who had escaped
the blind fury of the pursuit were deliberately massacred. Their
houses were abandoned to the avarice, their harems to the lust, of
the brutal soldiery. It required all the influence of leading members
of the successful party, little given to the exercise of clemency, to
check the indiscriminate slaughter of their unhappy neighbors. The
cessation of hostilities was, however, only temporary. Mutual acts of
violence renewed the deadly struggle between contending factions. The
province was at length abandoned to the Arabs by the weakness of the
court. History shrinks from the task of recording the outrages and the
tortures of barbarians inaccessible to pity and unrestrained by any
law of God or man. Suffice it to say the Muwallads of Seville were
annihilated. The memories of a catastrophe which produced a profound
impression on the politics of the Peninsula are still discernible in
the traditions and minstrelsy of the South of Spain.
The Arab faction was now triumphant. The balance of power had been
destroyed. The Christians of Cordova, persuaded that the end of the
Moslem domination was at hand, made overtures to Ibn-Hafsun, whose
former affiliations and present influence seemed to point to him as
their deliverer, an advantage which he was not slow to recognize.
The consciousness of great talents; the uniform success which had
attended his operations; the virtual control of the most opulent
provinces of the Peninsula; and the boundless, almost servile, devotion
of his followers, now prompted Ibn-Hafsun to aspire to the rights as
well as the actual possession of absolute power. With this end in view,
he sent an embassy, laden with costly presents, to the Abbaside Viceroy
of Africa, offering to become the vassal of the Eastern Khalifate
in return for the commission of Emir of Spain. The application was
forwarded to Bagdad, and Ibn-Hafsun was encouraged to expect the speedy
fulfilment of his hopes.
This ominous design had not been conducted so secretly as to escape
the knowledge of the court. Abdallah perceived at a glance the
imminent peril that menaced his throne. There was little doubt that
the consideration acquired by the vassal of the Abbasides would
at once invest with dignity and authority the renegade chieftain,
whose pretensions grounded upon force were still deficient in the
indispensable requisite of legality. The jurisdiction of the emirate
was not recognized beyond the actual confines of the capital. The
palace was infested with traitors. An active and fanatical sect was
distributed throughout the city conveying secret information to the
enemy, and impatiently expecting the moment when they might exact
retribution at once for the humiliation of conquest and the wrongs of
persecution. In his extremity the Emir endeavored, but in vain, to
conciliate his foe. Foiled in this attempt, he resolved to risk an
appeal to arms. His decision was heard by the Divan with unconcealed
dismay, but their remonstrances were unheeded. In the abject nature
of Abdallah, degraded by superstition and haunted by the memory of
atrocious crimes, an heroic sentiment, born of despair, had at last
arisen. When intelligence of his determination to substitute for the
pusillanimous policy he had hitherto employed the hazardous experiment
of the sword was conveyed to Ibn-Hafsun, his surprise was provoked
to the point of incredulity. But when he was told that the advance
guard of the hostile troops was in motion, and that the royal pavilion
had been pitched in the plain of Secunda to await the arrival of the
sovereign, he no longer doubted the truth of a report which seemed to
be a certain presage of victory. The insurgent army mustered thirty
thousand strong. It was composed of veterans who knew no home but the
camp, no pleasure but the excitement of battle, no law but the command
of their general. The royal force, on the other hand, numbered scarce
fourteen thousand men. One-third of these were the guards of the Emir;
the remainder was composed of raw recruits whose courage and fidelity
could not be depended upon in the hour of trial.
The two armies met near Aguilar. Whatever hesitation the inexperienced
soldiers of the emirate may have previously manifested, none flinched
in the presence of the enemy. Their courage was nerved to desperation
when they remembered that defeat meant death, for Ibn-Hafsun never
gave quarter. The efforts of the combatants were encouraged by the
exhortations of the imams and the prelates, who fearlessly exposed
their unprotected persons in the thickest of the fight. The rebel
lines were broken by the furious charge of Abdallah’s troops. Once
in confusion, they could not be rallied, and, dispersed in every
direction, they fell by thousands under the weapons of their pursuers.
Their leader, having narrowly escaped capture, with difficulty
succeeded in reaching his mountain stronghold.
An abundant and acceptable supply of arms, treasure, and munitions of
war came into the possession of Abdallah by the capture of Aguilar. A
thousand renegade Christians who preferred death to a second apostasy
were beheaded. The moral effect of the victory was important and
wide-spread. Ecija was taken after a short resistance. Archidona
and Jaen voluntarily implored the clemency of the conqueror. The
Viceroy of Africa notified the discomfited renegade at Bobastro that
his pretensions to the Spanish Emirate, under the auspices of the
Khalifate of Bagdad, could no longer be entertained. The friends of
order of every faction--the nobles, the merchants, the proprietors of
large estates, the artisans, and the peasantry--for a moment regained
confidence in a cause which they had recently considered as hopelessly
lost.
This flattering prospect was, however, soon clouded by fresh disasters.
The reverse sustained by Ibn-Hafsun was temporary, and had not
seriously affected either his popularity or power. With little effort
he succeeded, in a measure, in re-establishing his authority. The lost
cities were retaken through treachery or by force. The royal governors
were decapitated, as an intimation to the monarch that his appointees
were to be classed as rebels, the servants of a usurper. The Arab party
of Granada was beaten in a great battle, and its influence forever
destroyed. The reviving fortunes of Ibn-Hafsun had produced a strong
reaction in his favor when his renunciation of Islamism--an act of
mistaken policy which, without gaining the respect of the Christians,
made him an object of aversion to every Mussulman--effected greater
injury to his cause than a score of defeats could have accomplished.
The last nine years of Abdallah’s life were the least turbulent
of his reign. The substantial aid afforded by the Arab nobles, at
last convinced of their dependence on the crown, had restored the
languishing authority of the emirate.
Radical changes had been produced in the political complexion and
social condition of the Peninsula by a generation of civil war.
Factions had been practically exterminated. All the great leaders, save
one, had been removed by age, disease, or assassination. The motive
of the original sedition had long been forgotten. Religion had become
the nominal incentive to hostility. The enthusiasm of the clansman
aspiring to independence had been supplanted by the avarice of the
brigand eager for rapine. The general character of the subjects of
the emirate had undergone a complete metamorphosis. They had lost the
ferocious and uncompromising spirit of their ancestors. They were no
longer oppressed by the tyranny of the monarch, whose helplessness and
imbecility everywhere provoked public contempt. The enmity with which
the members of opposing parties regarded each other was rather apparent
than real. Their military operations were languidly prosecuted. Their
encounters were often bloodless. Familiarity with disorder induced
many to consider it the natural condition of society. The vitality of
the royal power seemed proof against all the resources of treason and
violence. Thousands of lives had been sacrificed in futile attempts to
overturn a government whose support rested neither upon the valor of
its soldiery, the genius of its statesmen, nor the affections of its
people.
The sober sense of the masses, chastened by misfortune, eventually
caused them to reflect upon the advantages of submission to authority
and the restoration of order. Insubordination had brought nothing but
distress. The great works of the founders of the dynasty--souvenirs of
former prosperity and renown--were everywhere around them. Principles
of vital importance to their forefathers were but meaningless names to
the present generation. These considerations first affected communities
whose commercial interests were seriously involved. A number of the
provincial capitals voluntarily returned to their allegiance. Gradually
other towns followed their example. Even in the mountain fastnesses
the spirit of returning loyalty began to assert itself. Anarchy and
exhaustion effected what force was powerless to accomplish, and the
close of the administration of one of the worst of Moslem princes was
characterized by a degree of tranquillity unknown to those of many of
his race eminently distinguished for their genius and their virtues.
During all these internal commotions, the peace existing between the
courts of Oviedo and Cordova was never broken by hostilities of a
serious character, a circumstance that contributed largely to the
preservation of the Moslem empire. Everything seemed to indicate at
least a respite from the evils that had so long afflicted the people
and harassed the government, when Abdallah suddenly expired, in the
sixty-ninth year of his age.
The relation of the monotonous and sanguinary events of this period is
valuable, in a philosophical point of view, in determining the real
causes of the decadence of the Mohammedan power in Western Europe.
The chronicle of the reign of Abdallah, the Emir, is in reality the
story of Ibn-Hafsun, the renegade. Yet this enterprising partisan was
indebted for his fame far less to his own abilities, conspicuous as
they were, than to the disputes and jealousies of his enemies. These
effects of tribal prejudice made possible the organization of a troop
of banditti that a single squadron of cavalry, properly directed,
would have been sufficient to disperse. The spirit of insubordination
became contagious; the governors of remote provinces threw off their
allegiance; the sources of public revenue were obstructed; repeated
disasters shook the precarious loyalty of powerful chieftains,
whose barbaric traditions deluded them with the fallacious hope of
independence; the fires of religious discord were kindled in every
community; and the government, deprived of its subjects, seemed
repeatedly on the verge of dissolution. The character of the sovereign
was, in a measure, responsible for many of the most serious disasters
of his reign. It possessed no qualities that could inspire the respect
or elicit the approbation of either friend or foe. Abdallah was a
miserable compound of hypocrite and poltroon. His title had been
obtained by fratricide. The crime had been attended with circumstances
which heightened its atrocity. Popular rumor attributed to him the
murder of two of his sons. Without faith, he betrayed in turn both his
allies and his enemies. He neglected the appeals of devoted adherents
whose fidelity had long been proof against temptation. He suffered
himself to be deceived by the representations of rebels whom experience
had shown to be wholly devoid of truth and honor. He possessed neither
the capacity of the general nor the courage which is an indispensable
attribute of the common soldier. His impiety was so universally
recognized that it was the favorite theme of satirical poets, and
even the imams frequently omitted to mention his name in the khotba,
or public prayer. Little wonder was it that, under such a ruler, the
Emirate of Cordova should have reached the lowest point in its fortunes
to which it was reduced before its final overthrow. The authority of
the crown was everywhere disputed. The great cities,--Seville, Cadiz,
Toledo, Jaen, Granada, Valencia, Saragossa,--whose power and glory
had been the pride of former ages, no longer sent their rich tributes
to the capital on the Guadalquivir. The slumbers of the citizens of
Cordova were nightly disturbed by the shrieks of peasants dying under
the weapons of banditti, and by the lurid glare of burning villages
that lighted up the landscape with the brilliancy of noon-day. Traffic
disappeared from the highways. The markets were empty and deserted.
The prevalent insecurity had suspended the operations of agriculture,
and the necessaries of life became luxuries attainable only by the
rich. In many localities famine-stricken wretches fed, with ghastly
satisfaction, upon the bodies of their friends and neighbors. These
deplorable conditions were aggravated by the denunciations and
prophecies of the ministers of religion, who, with characteristic
audacity, shifted the blame for public misfortune upon those who were
in reality its victims, and called down upon the heads of a sinful and
pleasure-loving people the long-deferred but inexorable wrath of an
avenging God.
CHAPTER XII
REIGN OF ABD-AL-RAHMAN III.
912–961
Eminent Qualities of the New Ruler--His Firmness--Rapid
Subjection of the Rebel Territory--Dissensions of
the Christians--Defeat of Ibn-Abi-Abda--Death of
Ibn-Hafsun--Impaired Power of the Arab Nobles--War with the
Fatimites of Africa--Rout of Junquera--Abd-al-Rahman assumes the
Title of Khalif--Its Significance--Invasion of Castile--Reverse
of Alhandega--Civil Wars of the Christians--The Princes of Leon
and Navarre visit the Moslem Court--Abd-al-Rahman dies at the
Age of Seventy Years--His Remarkable Achievements--The Greek
and German Embassies--The Saracens in France and Italy--The
Slaves and their Influence--Plot of Abdallah--Condition of
the Country under Abd-al-Rahman III.--Cordova--Its Wealth
and Magnificence--The Royal Villas--The City and Palace of
Medina-al-Zahrâ--Melancholy Reflections of the Greatest of the
Khalifs.
The sceptre of the emirate had, by the choice of Abdallah, been
bequeathed to Abd-al-Rahman, his grandson, to the prejudice of his
second son, Al-Modhaffer, who stood next in the order of succession.
Mohammed, the heir to the throne, accused of treason, had perished in
a dungeon, the victim of the jealousy or the justice of his unfeeling
father. The circumstances attending this tragedy, as well as the
events which provoked it, are alike involved in uncertainty. That the
heir apparent should have allied himself with the Christians, have
served under the banner of Ibn-Hafsun, the implacable enemy of his
race, and have attempted to overturn the very government which it was
his duty as well as his interest to support, seems highly improbable.
Yet this is what we are led to infer from the obscure statements of
such chronicles as condescend to mention, even with meagre details,
this episode of the reign of Abdallah. That the deed was not entirely
without justification may be presumed from the fact that the latter has
not received, on this account, the denunciation of posterity. Reverence
for the greatest sovereign of the Western Empire has silenced the voice
of criticism, which might otherwise have arraigned the treachery and
ingratitude of a father. These motives have combined to invest with an
air of mystery an occurrence whose consequences were so momentous in
their subsequent influence on the history of the Peninsula.
The character of the young prince was conspicuous for every excellence
which could either be inherited or conferred by education. His person
was attractive, his manners affable and urbane, his talents conspicuous
in a court renowned for its wit, its learning, and its eloquence.
His skill in chivalrous exercises evoked the acclamations of the
soldiery. His knowledge of affairs, and his capacity to carry to a
successful issue the most delicate transactions of diplomacy, had
long been the admiration of venerable and distinguished statesmen.
The fond partiality of his grandfather, who was constantly haunted
by the memory of a crime induced by political necessity, had caused
the youthful heir to the throne to be instructed in all the knowledge
to be acquired in the most accomplished and enlightened society of
Europe. The fortunate object of this solicitude early demonstrated his
eminent fitness for the responsibilities of his exalted destiny. A
thirst for knowledge, combined with a precocious sedateness of demeanor
tempered by a sprightliness, which, while it had nothing in common
with frivolity, yet enlivened the discussion of the most serious and
prosaic questions of philosophical research, procured for him the love
of the scholars of Cordova; whose opinions were respected by even
the barbarian nations of Christendom. The general satisfaction with
which the accession of Abd-al-Rahman was received demonstrated not
only the propriety of the selection but also the great popularity of
the prince. Nothing occurred to disturb the public tranquillity. The
members of the royal family, who, with color of right and encouraged
by precedent, might have disputed the succession, were the first to
attest their loyalty to the new sovereign. A feeling of confidence
seemed to pervade all ranks of society, as the result of an event
which promised the reconciliation of long-existing enmities; the
submission of rebellious vassals; the encouragement of commerce; the
security of agriculture; the return of that long-banished and most
priceless of blessings, domestic peace. With the natural expectation
of these benefits were mingled not unreasonable visions of romantic
crusade and foreign conquest. The martial spirit of the nation had
been perverted rather than discouraged by the incessant religious
and political seditions of nearly half a century. There was scarcely
a family in which was not included at least one soldier whose scars
gave proof of his acquaintance with the perils and accidents of the
field of battle. The people were weary of intestine turmoil. The time
was most opportune for the exercise of the talents of a ruler whose
tact was equal to his courage, and whose magnanimity rose superior
to the mean and selfish gratifications of persecution and revenge. A
fortunate combination of circumstances prepared the way for the longest
and most brilliant reign of the Ommeyade Khalifate. The spirit of
rebellion was broken. Repeated reverses and an impolitic apostasy had
impaired the prestige and weakened the once invincible following of
the great partisan leader, Ibn-Hafsun. The few surviving heads of the
Arab aristocracy had lost the greater part of their influence. Weary
of strife, their families decimated, their possessions diminished, the
tribesmen of the Koreish began to seriously question the expediency of
incessant revolution, whose risks and privations offered such a marked
and unfavorable contrast to the undisturbed and luxurious enjoyment
of Andalusian civilization. The universal diffusion of knowledge, the
free discussion of scientific problems, the numerous schools, the
acknowledged supremacy of intellectual acquirements over blind and
unreasoning credulity, had perceptibly weakened the power of Islam.
The imams saw with dismay the portentous increase of skepticism, which
threatened alike the emoluments of their office and the foundations
of their faith. The congregations were as numerous, the donations as
liberal, the prayers to all appearances as fervent as formerly, but the
destructive poison of infidelity permeated and was fast corrupting the
entire mass of society. The Christians of the North, who had maintained
their independence through the dissensions of their neighbors, were
now themselves harassed by disastrous revolutions fomented by aspiring
princes who, regardless of the danger which constantly menaced their
territory, never hesitated to sacrifice the welfare of the nation for
the uncertain dignity of royal power. The ancient realm of the Asturias
had spread far beyond the limits of the sierras whose craggy solitudes
had protected its infancy, and had expanded into the kingdoms of Leon
and Navarre, whose petty monarchs wasted in attacks upon each other the
energy and the treasure which would have been more profitably employed
in thwarting the ambitious designs of the infidel.
The crafty and vacillating policy of Abdallah, who was ignorant of the
art of either conciliating or punishing his enemies, and whose crimes
excited the abhorrence of his rebellious subjects while they failed
to arouse their apprehensions, was repugnant to the open and fearless
nature of Abd-al-Rahman. The former had contented himself with the
doubtful evidence of vassalage implied by the payment of tribute.
But the lofty spirit of his grandson was not to be satisfied with
this ambiguous concession to sovereignty. No sooner had he ascended
the throne than he issued a proclamation requiring the unconditional
submission of his subjects, regardless of previous affiliations of
race or religion. To such as properly acknowledged his title he
extended his clemency; but those who persisted in defiance of the law
and in resistance to the constituted authority, he declared should
be removed beyond the pale of indulgence or mercy. This firmness,
which, in view of recent events and the power exercised by rebel
chieftains, seemed to partake of imprudence, not to say of audacity,
soon justified the wisdom and foresight of the prince who adopted it.
The large cities, whose population was most affected by the evils of
anarchy, were the first to return to their allegiance. Ecija, Jaen,
Archidona, and Elvira, whose seditions had long vexed the peace of the
empire, were the first places of importance to open their gates to the
new sovereign. The provinces of which the cities of Jaen and Elvira
were the capitals, dotted with countless strongholds and infested
with partisans leagued with Ibn-Hafsun, still, however, refused
to abandon their habits of rapine; and Abd-al-Rahman prepared, in
person, to reduce to subjection these turbulent vassals, whose habits
of independence, confirmed by almost unbroken success, had induced
them to regard their arms as invincible. But the bandit chieftains
of the Sierra Nevada and the Serrania de Ronda had not taken into
consideration the changes which had occurred in the rude society to
which they themselves belonged. The strong personality and remarkable
achievements of Ibn-Hafsun had hitherto kept united the lawless
elements, which, collected from every province of Africa and Spain,
had found a secure refuge in the mountains of Andalusia. Now, however,
the apostasy of their leader had diminished the confidence and relaxed
the enthusiasm of his followers. His summons to arms was unheeded,
or obeyed with ill-concealed marks of disaffection. The depleted
ranks of his army forced him to the employment of Berber mercenaries,
barbarians wholly destitute of attachment to the cause they served,
and who were always liable in the crisis of a battle to desert to the
enemy under the promise of higher pay. The knowledge that they might,
in the future, be enrolled in the ranks of their present adversaries,
thus hampered their efforts, and induced them to inflict the least
possible damage upon their tribesmen who fought under the standard of
the Emir. From furious battles, in which were often exhibited feats
of prowess worthy of a more chivalrous age, the conflicts with the
brigands of the sierras had become noisy and harmless encounters,
without spirit and without bloodshed. A feeling of mutual distrust,
which needed little provocation to ripen into acts of open hostility,
was engendered between Ibn-Hafsun and his subjects. A growing sense
of insecurity had, years before, caused the rebel leader to swear
allegiance to Obeydallah, the Schiite prince of Africa. Exasperated
by this confession of weakness, the officers of the army were further
alienated by the gifts and honors lavished upon the Pagan mercenaries,
who had supplanted in the favor of their commander the tried veterans
of many campaigns.
For thirty years the Spanish and Berber elements had exhausted every
resource in futile attempts to shake off the Arab yoke. No decisive
victory had ever attended their arms. The struggle never rose above a
merciless guerilla warfare. A large part of the province of Andalusia
was depopulated. Peasants were massacred by thousands. Harvests
were wantonly destroyed. Whenever a town was surprised or taken by
storm, the entire population was butchered. And yet, despite all
their efforts, the savage outlaws, who posed as the deliverers of the
Peninsula, seemed no nearer the attainment of their professed object
than at the beginning. In fact, with all his courage, activity, and
address, Ibn-Hafsun was deficient in the qualities indispensable to
leaders who aspire to organize revolutions and found great dynasties.
His chieftains were often guilty of flagrant insubordination. Some,
confiding in the impregnable situation of their castles, even
proclaimed their independence. The great body of the peasantry--whose
fathers had sympathized with the cause of rebellion and had been
plundered and murdered by their nominal protectors--regarded the
mountain robbers with unspeakable dread and abhorrence. To them the
disadvantages attending the exercise of despotic power were trifling
in comparison with the evils by which they were constantly menaced.
Similar sentiments had begun of late to be secretly entertained by
quite a respectable number of the brigands themselves. The disaffection
of the latter was increased by fears of the ultimate restoration of
Christianity.
Like all apostates, Ibn-Hafsun hastened to signalize his conversion and
confirm his sincerity by conspicuous acts of oppression. Renunciation
of Islamism was encouraged by promises of military honors and high
employments. Moslem officers of distinguished merit were neglected or
regarded with disfavor. To the horror of the disciples of Mohammed,
costly churches rose upon the sites of mosques which had existed since
the Conquest. The court of Ibn-Hafsun became the resort of ascetics,
who from conviction or policy aspired to martyrdom, and openly
performed, to the disgust of the orthodox beholder, the revolting
severities of monastic discipline. The daughter of the rebel chief
herself retired to a cloister, whence she was, years afterwards,
dragged forth to pay the penalty of apostasy, a fate eagerly welcomed
as the fulfilment of a prophecy pronounced by a vagrant monk. The cause
which popular enthusiasm had once invested with a national character,
supported by the traditions of Iberian, Roman, and Gothic dominion, and
which held out delusive hopes of national independence, had disappeared
in the atrocities of the worst of all struggles, a religious war
conducted by renegades. Another powerful element, once allied in
sympathy with the party of Ibn-Hafsun, was now with unbroken unanimity
arrayed against him. The Conquest had brought relief and liberty to
many thousands of families that for generations had groaned under the
oppressions of slavery and serfdom. The remembrance of their sufferings
had been bequeathed to their descendants, and the knowledge that the
restoration of the Christian religion would certainly be accompanied
with the enactment of laws depriving them of the freedom they enjoyed,
confirmed the loyalty of the latter, which had been temporarily
shaken by the disorders of the emirate. With feelings of mingled
apprehension and gratitude, they compared their present condition with
the degradation and miseries of their ancestors, whose most tyrannical
masters had been found in the ranks of the ecclesiastical order, now
seeking by every art of intrigue the re-establishment of the supremacy
of their Church, the recovery of their confiscated lands, and the
restoration of their ancient and irresponsible privileges. The bold
front presented by the rebel forces was formidable only in appearance.
The disintegration of the faction which had more than once threatened
the Moslem capital and the throne of the West was complete. It needed
but the presence of the sovereign to expose the hopeless condition
of an already abandoned cause. Such was the state of society in the
disaffected territory of the emirate, and such the character of the
adversaries with whom the youthful Abd-al-Rahman was now called upon to
contend.
The appearance of the royal standard was the signal for the voluntary
surrender of the greater part of the provinces of Jaen and Elvira. The
castles which had long been the seat of outlawry and brigandage were
razed. As soon as the open country had been secured, Abd-al-Rahman
pushed forward without hesitation into the heart of the sierra. At
first he met with stubborn opposition, but the capture of the strong
town of Finana was followed by the submission of every chieftain
whose proximity to the scene of action led him to fear the exemplary
vengeance of an exasperated master. In less than three months not
a single castle in the Sierra Nevada remained in possession of
the insurgents. Instructed by the experience of his predecessors,
Abd-al-Rahman adopted the most prudent and effective means for
retaining his conquests. The governors and their families were removed
to Cordova. The rebel garrisons were replaced by veterans whose
fidelity was unquestioned. Pardon was granted to all, excepting such
as had rendered themselves undeserving of clemency by the commission
of atrocious crimes. The dignity of the crown was further secured by
the re-establishment of judicial tribunals and the appointment of
magistrates whose reputation and experience were a guaranty of the
faithful discharge of their duties. The moral effect of these politic
measures, the amiable character of Abd-al-Rahman, and the reputation he
enjoyed for justice accomplished as much for the pacification of the
hostile territory as the fear inspired by his arms. His first important
act after assuming the regal office was the remission of taxes,
which, imposed by the necessities or the avarice of his predecessors,
weighed heavily upon a distracted and impoverished people. The general
amnesty which he had proclaimed; his solicitude for the welfare of
his subjects; his firmness in dealing with those who disputed his
authority; the spirit he manifested by appearing at the head of his
troops, who for years had not seen the face of their sovereign; the
physical attributes with which nature had adorned a noble and majestic
presence, all conspired to captivate the imagination and inspire
the respect of both the civilians and the soldiery. A confidence
mingled with enthusiasm and reverence was awakened at his approach,
and the useful members of every community, disheartened by years of
turmoil and misfortune, welcomed each bloodless and decisive victory
of the youthful monarch as an additional harbinger of a peaceful and
prosperous reign.
The city of Seville, now governed by the powerful family of the
Beni-Hadjadj, while a nominal dependency of the emirate, was, in all
respects save this dubious mark of subordination, the seat of an
independent principality. The authority of the Emir was not recognized
within its walls. The Divan had no voice in the appointment of the
officers charged with its government. The levying of troops for
service under the royal banners rested entirely upon the caprice or
discretion of the Arab princes, who had wrested from an enfeebled
dynasty the richest province of the empire. Even the collection of the
annual tax was considered a mere act of condescension and courtesy,
a privilege liable to be revoked at the pleasure of the haughty
tributary. But discord, arising from the ambitious and irreconcilable
pretensions of the Arab aristocracy, had invaded the councils of the
Beni-Hadjadj. The order of succession had been broken, and, through
fortune or by superior abilities, a collateral branch of the Koreishite
family which claimed the sovereignty had been elevated to power.
The unsuccessful competitor, Mohammed, sought the camp of the Emir,
promising his homage in consideration of assistance. The dignity of
Abd-al-Rahman not permitting him to countenance the equality of a
rebellious subject, the offer was rejected, but the Arab noble was
graciously permitted to enlist as a volunteer. A formidable army
besieged Seville, and Ibn-Maslama, the ruling prince of the House of
Hadjadj, saw with concern his newly acquired dignity menaced with
destruction. In his extremity he applied to Ibn-Hafsun. An attempt
by the latter to raise the siege resulted in the annihilation of his
army, and the insurgent leader, whose name had lost its terrors,
fled with a handful of followers to the fortress of Bobastro. Not
long after this event, abandoned by his allies and already feeling
the pangs of famine, Ibn-Maslama capitulated. Encouraged by his
success, with no enemy in his rear and the vast resources of the South
at his command, the way was now open to the Emir to carry the war
into the Serrania de Ronda, and to retaliate upon Ibn-Hafsun those
calamities which he had so long and so ruthlessly inflicted upon the
defenceless peasantry of Andalusia. His preparations were made with
all the prudence and sagacity of an experienced general. The bulk of
the population of the sierra was attached by interest or conviction
to the dogmas of the Christian faith, and the natural courage of the
mountaineer was animated by assurances of divine aid and a burning
desire for martyrdom. From the moment when he penetrated into the
defiles that traversed the domain of Ibn-Hafsun, the Emir experienced
a determined resistance. His foraging parties were ambushed and cut
off. His convoys were intercepted. Having formed the siege of Tolox,
where Ibn-Hafsun commanded in person, a sudden sally of the garrison
was planned with such boldness and success that a panic seized the
army, and a great disaster was narrowly averted. But the genius and
perseverance of Abd-al-Rahman eventually triumphed over all obstacles.
Tolox was taken. Castle after castle was stormed and demolished. The
supplies of the insurgents were exhausted, and they were compelled to
have recourse to the granaries of Africa. The foresight of the Emir
had, however, anticipated this measure of the enemy. The vigilance
of his cruisers blasted the hopes of the famishing rebels, and the
captured ships were added to the navy patrolling the Mediterranean,
while the provisions were conveyed to the royal camp. In time a
considerable extent of mountain territory was conquered; the cities
of Orihuela and Niebla, whose alluvial regions boasted an almost
perennial harvest, were again added to the dominions of the crown;
the tradesmen and the peasantry, alike weary of the contributions
levied by relentless brigandage, zealously co-operated with the
imperial magistrates in the restoration of order; and Abd-al-Rahman,
satisfied with the result of his first campaign and secure against any
attempt upon the capital, now began to meditate an expedition into the
Christian provinces of the North.
The truce negotiated between Abdallah and Alfonso III. was long
preserved by the political necessities which had originally dictated
its provisions. The Emir was fully occupied in a desperate attempt to
retain his crown amidst the commotions of almost universal rebellion
and anarchy. The Christian monarchs were unable to take advantage of
the helpless position of their adversary, on account of the plots and
crimes of princes of the royal house, the intrigues of the clergy,
and the insubordination of ambitious vassals. Alfonso III., compelled
by the unnatural cruelty and ingratitude of his sons to anticipate the
course of nature by resigning the supreme dignity, had descended into
the grave, broken rather by domestic sorrows than by the infirmities
of age. His efforts, when forced to an untimely abdication, had been
directed with many forebodings of evil to an equitable partition of his
dominions. His three eldest sons shared between them the principalities
of the royal patrimony. Garcia received Leon, to Ordoño was allotted
Galicia, Fruela remained at Oviedo. From this epoch dates the origin
of the kingdom of Leon, which, by its proximity to the frontier and
its more advantageous situation, soon absorbed and eventually eclipsed
the dignity and importance of its rivals. The short reign of Garcia
was occupied by a succession of expeditions into the enemy’s country,
which seem to have been attended with no decisive results. Dying,
after three years, without issue, his brother Ordoño received the
votes of the council, and was raised to the vacant throne amidst the
acclamations of the people. Thus the State of Galicia was merged into
that of Leon, and the two, henceforth existing under the name of the
latter, became in time an integral portion of the Spanish monarchy.
Ordoño was already renowned for his valor in an age of military
heroism and romantic enterprise. His accession was signalized by a
foray which laid waste the flourishing province of Merida. Pursuing
the savage policy inaugurated by Alfonso, he massacred all taken in
arms, and enslaved the non-combatants who were so unfortunate as to
fall into his hands. His retreat was purchased by the inhabitants
of Badajoz, who, collecting an immense treasure--to which the
members of the ecclesiastical order were unwilling but important
contributors--induced him to retire. Upon his return to the capital,
he devoted a considerable portion of the booty to the foundation of a
church, dedicated to the Virgin in acknowledgment of her influence and
protection, to which he attributed the auspicious commencement of his
reign.
Although the territory which had suffered from the recent incursion
of the Christians formed part of that region which still refused to
acknowledge his authority, Abd-al-Rahman was not slow to perceive the
advantages which must accrue to him from assuming the championship
of those who were nominally his enemies. The cause was one of vital
importance to all professing the religion of Mohammed. The dignity of
the emirate had been insulted by a troop of marauding barbarians, whom
the polished Arabs of Cordova with justice considered their inferiors
even in feats of martial prowess, and who, if secure of immunity,
would not only extend their ravages further, but also contract a
profound contempt for the inactive and pusillanimous character of their
adversaries. The fickle attachment of the insurgents of the West might
be regained, or at least their gratitude aroused, by a demonstration
in their favor; and the moral effect upon the enemies as well as upon
the partisans of the crown could not fail to be of great and permanent
value. An army was equipped and despatched under Ibn-Abi-Abda to lay
waste the plains of Leon. For fifteen years the Moslem standards
had not been seen on Christian soil, and the swarthy battalions of
Abd-al-Rahman, scarcely known except by fame to the subjects of Ordoño,
were the source of almost as much terror to the superstitious peasantry
as were their ancestors who served under the banner of the redoubtable
Tarik. The venture of the Emir was rewarded with abundant booty; the
avarice of the soldiery was at once aroused and gratified; and, in the
ensuing year, another expedition, organized on a much larger scale,
under pretext of avenging the wrongs of the oppressed people of the
border, but in reality assembled for purposes of rapine, entered the
dominions of the Christian king. Unfortunately for its success, the
bulk of the army was composed of Berber mercenaries--adepts in the
arts of robbery and murder, but deficient in the constancy and courage
requisite for the maintenance of a protracted conflict--and of refugees
not inferior in insubordination and poltroonery to their companions in
arms. This mob soon proved unequal to sustain the determined assaults
of the Leonese cavalry; the Arabs were attacked in their camp before
San Estevan, and a fearful defeat, with the loss of his general,
announced to the Emir the fatal policy of employing a herd of truculent
barbarians, without experience, discipline, or courage, to re-establish
the credit and assert the power of the Moslem arms.
The discouraging effects of this reverse were, to some extent,
counterbalanced by the intelligence of the death of Ibn-Hafsun, whose
operations had harassed, and whose ambition had menaced, the reigns
of three Moslem sovereigns. With the disappearance of their most
implacable enemy, the inhabitants of Andalusia flattered themselves
that they could hereafter pursue their avocations unmolested and enjoy
the results of their industry, hitherto subject to the extortions and
depredations of unrestricted brigandage. But the fallacy of these
hopes was soon demonstrated. The sons of the renowned partisan leader,
Giafar, Abd-al-Rahman, Suleyman, and Hafs, who inherited all his
audacity and no small share of his military genius, sustained for ten
years longer the unequal and hopeless struggle. The wretched peasantry
were again compelled to acknowledge the weakness of the government
and the uncertain tenure by which they held their property and their
lives. Gradually, however, the resources of the emirate, directed by
a firm and skilful hand, began to prevail in the Serrania. Three of
the sons of Ibn-Hafsun were removed by voluntary retirement, by death
in battle, by murder provoked by a double apostasy. The survivor
Hafs, reduced to extremity by the siege of Bobastro, submitted, and,
having become a loyal subject, served afterwards with distinction
in the imperial army. The fanatics who followed in the train of the
Emir, actuated by all the malignity of their kind, caused the tombs
of Ibn-Hafsun and Giafar to be opened; and Abd-al-Rahman, having
learned that the bodies had been interred according to the customs of
the infidel, ordered them to be nailed to stakes before the principal
gate of Cordova. The surrender of Bobastro was soon followed by the
submission of the entire Serrania. In the mean time, the insurgent
chieftains of the mountains of Priego, of Alicante, and other cities of
the opulent provinces of Tadmir, Merida, Santarem, Beja, and finally
of Badajoz, made humble professions of fealty and obedience to the
conqueror.
The rebel territory, which, not many years before, had extended almost
to the walls of the capital, was now limited to the narrow area
inclosed by the fortifications of Toledo. Anxious to avoid bloodshed,
the Emir attempted to open negotiations for the surrender of the city
without resorting to force. But his overtures were rejected; the
Toledans, whose natural inclination to turbulence had been encouraged
by long impunity, and whose taste for a lawless independence had
been strengthened by its enjoyment, dismissed the royal envoys with
haughty disdain. Abd-al-Rahman at once proceeded to invest the city.
The suburbs were devastated. All supplies were intercepted by a close
blockade. The sallies of the besieged were repulsed at every point.
Their last hope vanished with the defeat of a Christian army sent by
the King of Leon to assist them, and the distressed city, after an
obstinate resistance lasting two years, capitulated.
The fierce and bloody struggle which had decimated communities,
destroyed the accumulations of industry, and retarded national progress
for nearly half a century was finally at an end. From the confines
of the County of Barcelona to the shores of the Atlantic, from the
Pyrenees to the Mediterranean, the authority of Abd-al-Rahman was
now acknowledged as supreme. The danger of successful rebellion had
disappeared with the name and fortunes of Ibn-Hafsun. Since the time
of Sertorius, no leader had so ably defended the cause of the Spanish
people. The effect of the protracted contest in which the latter had
participated had been to raise them from the position of outcasts
to an equality with their ancient oppressors. The brigand chief of
the sierras had been, in a measure, the peculiar champion of their
rights. Though long a Moslem, his following had consisted largely of
Christians, and he had finally been received into their communion. His
sagacity and generous confidence had entrusted them with important
civil offices, with the conduct of delicate negotiations, with
embassies to Africa, with the command of armies. Experience in warfare
had brought with it the civilizing influences which develop, even in
the midst of destruction, increased intelligence, a more tolerant
spirit, a higher sense of personal dignity and honor. Accustomed
from the earliest times to an arbitrary government, while nominally
fighting for liberty, they yet saw nothing repugnant in the despotism
of the emirate. But it was different with the Koreishite nobles, whose
arrogant pretensions had provoked and precipitated the long series of
calamities now happily terminated. The licentious freedom of the Desert
was their ideal, the salutary restraints of authority their aversion.
The haughty pride engendered and transmitted through countless
generations of chieftains in whose veins coursed the purest blood of
Arabia, and whose achievements were recounted in the passionate strains
of famous poets, induced them to regard with ineffable disdain, and to
subject to every indignity, all who were not members of their exclusive
caste. The day of these insolent lords was now over. Of all the parties
whose quarrels had distracted society theirs had fared the worst.
Never strong in numbers, their ranks had been thinned by the ordinary
casualties of war; by the evils inseparable from poverty; by summary
executions for treason. Their power had been so effectually destroyed
that they appear no more as a disturbing element in the annals of
the Peninsula. Submitting, although with reluctance, to the force of
necessity, they by degrees contracted alliances with the faction once
the object of their scorn, and lent their unwilling aid to the noble
project of Abd-al-Rahman, which aimed at a complete fusion of races
and the obliteration of hereditary feuds and ancient prejudices. The
last important constituent of the population, the Berbers, preserved,
under apparent conformity to custom, their character of mercenary and
idolatrous barbarians, who, not amenable to the benefits of peace,
were destined erelong to demonstrate the suicidal policy which had
introduced such perfidious allies into the heart of the empire.
The pacification of the dominions of Abd-al-Rahman had not been
perfected a moment too soon. An enemy more dangerous than any that
had yet menaced the throne of the Ommeyades had appeared on the coast
of Africa. The Ismailians, a branch of the Schiite sect reformed
by a shrewd and ambitious charlatan in Persia, had, through its
missionaries, supplanted the dynasty of the Aghlabites, and now
ruled, with a splendor heretofore unknown in that country, the opulent
and fertile strip of territory extending from Mauritania to Egypt.
The same motives, the same aspirations to supreme power disguised
under professions of religious reformation which had prevailed in
Spain, inspired the leaders of this moral and political revolution.
The tyranny and pride of the Arab nobles had caused the formation of
secret societies, organized ostensibly for the purification of the
faith and the benefit of the oppressed, but in reality to further the
treasonable designs of able and daring conspirators. The hypocrisy of
the latter, who in secret scoffed at all religion, may be gathered from
the following saying current among them: “Prophets are nothing but
impostors, whose real object is to obtain pre-eminence over other men.”
The Fatimite dynasty in Africa had risen to power with a rapidity
astonishing even to an age accustomed to the ever-varying phenomena
of Moslem revolution. Its head, Obeydallah, who traced a fictitious
descent from Ali, son-in-law of the Prophet, assumed the sacred name
and character of Madhi,--the inspired and holy personage whose coming
had been announced by Mohammed. The cruelties perpetrated by the
Fatimites upon their enemies are incredible. No torture was too severe,
no persecution too sanguinary, for those who dared to resist their
demands. The world stood aghast at the horrors of the African conquest.
The prestige derived from a pretended origin gave the fanatics
encouragement to assert the Schiite pretensions to infallibility, and,
by the right of inheritance, to claim the dominion of the world. They
were thoroughly familiar with the politics, intrigues, and military
resources of the Peninsula. Their spies were to be found in every walk
of life. Merchants, travellers, soldiers, dervishes--many of them
men of great intelligence and observation--were in their pay, and
regularly transmitted reports of the condition of trade, the location
of treasure, the prospect of order, or the progress of revolution to
their employers at Kairoan. The famous geographer, Ibn-Haukal, was one
of these Fatimite emissaries, and his work contains many of the results
of his experience which are not complimentary to the general condition
of Mohammedan Spain, the capacity of its rulers, or the humanity of his
own intolerant sect. There is reason to believe that a considerable
party favorable to the reformers, and consisting largely of the better
classes, existed in that country; and it is certain that the Berbers,
whose sympathies were readily enlisted in favor of everything African,
would have deserted by thousands to serve under their banners. This
alarming state of affairs had been promoted by an obscure prediction
sedulously propagated by the agents of the Fatimites, which announced
that an African sovereign was one day to rule over the Peninsula,
and all who believed it confidently asserted that the time of its
realization was at hand.
Fully cognizant of the dangers attending the victorious progress of
the Ismailians, who were now engaged in the conquest of Mauritania,
Abd-al-Rahman heard with joy the appeal for assistance of the
exiled princes of Necour, whose family for more than a century had
been connected with his own by the closest ties of affection and
gratitude. The distinguished refugees who had with difficulty escaped
the vengeance of the tyrant of Kairoan were furnished with ships and
munitions of war, and, by the policy of their benefactor, soon regained
possession of their lost inheritance. Aware of the impossibility of
permanently holding an isolated province against the overwhelming
forces of the enemy, the Prince of Necour at once proclaimed the
authority of the Ommeyades throughout his dominions; and the prudent
generosity of Abd-al-Rahman was rewarded by the addition of a new
state--which embraced the larger part of Mauritania--to the already
extensive territory of his empire. Thus, by the interposition of a
tributary province between the frontiers of Eastern Africa and Spain,
the destructive advance of the Fatimites was stayed, and the permanence
of the Ommeyade dynasty assured for two centuries longer.
The dangerous ambition of the African fanatics having been checked,
Abd-al-Rahman was at liberty to turn his attention to the only foe who
now dared to make war upon him,--the Christians of the North. A great
victory was won by the minister Bedr at Mutonia; and the Leonese,
thoroughly humiliated and convinced of the mutability of fortune,
retired sullenly within the walls of their castles. Impatient of the
monotonous life of his capital and ambitious of military distinction,
Abd-al-Rahman now resumed command in person, and, entering the enemy’s
country, left in his wake the dreary evidence of rapine and desolation.
Osma, Clunia, and San Estevan--over whose gate the head of the
unfortunate general, Ibn-Abi-Abda, had been nailed--were stormed and
destroyed. Navarre was invaded; its king, Sancho, beaten in a pitched
battle and driven into the forests of the Pyrenees. The latter then
effected a junction with Ordoño, and the two monarchs offered battle in
the Valley of Junquera. Accustomed to ambuscade and to the protection
of their native rocks and defiles, the mountaineers proved no match for
the Moorish horsemen in the field. A more signal catastrophe than that
of Junquera had never afflicted the Christian cause. The slaughter was
appalling. The country for leagues was strewn with the bodies of the
slain. A great number of prisoners fell into the hands of the Moslems,
not the least important of whom were the militant bishops, Dulcidius of
Salamanca, and Hermogius of Tuy, who, following a custom ante-dating
the Battle of the Guadalete, were taken, sheathed in armor, and
fighting bravely in the front of battle.
After this victory, no serious resistance was offered to the Moslem
advance. The light Moorish cavalry swept like a hurricane along the
frontier of Navarre. The comparative poverty of the inhabitants
presented few attractions to the invaders, who were forced to content
themselves with flocks and the produce of the fields instead of
the more tempting booty offered by the opulence and luxury of more
civilized nations. The accumulation of provisions was so great in the
Arab camp that they could not be removed, and a vast quantity of wheat
was given to the flames to prevent it from falling into the hands
of the enemy. This campaign was characterized by all the ruthless
barbarity of the time. The women and children of the mountaineers were
enslaved. The unsuccessful resistance of a garrison was followed by its
extermination. The savage instincts of the Berbers were indulged by
tortures and all the arts of the most exquisite cruelty. Whenever these
barbarians encountered a monastery not one of the holy fathers was left
alive. There was now visited upon the Christians a severe retaliation
for the unspeakable horrors which they had been in the habit of
inflicting upon their infidel adversaries in the name of the Gospel of
Peace.
It is a striking peculiarity of the warfare so long waged between
Moslem and Christian in Spain that disasters of the greatest apparent
severity, no matter by whom endured, were productive of no substantial
advantage to the conqueror. Many causes conspired to produce this
anomalous result. The immense resources of the emirs were insufficient
to protect their extended frontier. The numerous castles erected by
the Kings of Leon and the Counts of Castile to retard the advance of
the Arab squadrons failed to intimidate the bold riders of Andalusia.
Thus the armies of either nation penetrated with trifling difficulty
into the heart of the other’s dominions. The extraordinary recuperative
power of the Christians was manifested during the following year
by an expedition of Ordoño, which carried the standard of Leon to
a point but one day’s journey from Cordova. Other evidences of the
indomitable character of his enemies--who continued to capture his
towns and carry off his subjects--having impressed Abd-al-Rahman
with the necessity for future reprisals, he entered Navarre with an
irresistible force. Pampeluna was taken, and its cathedral and many
of its houses destroyed. The attacks of the King of Navarre, whose
efforts were restricted to the feeble devices of guerilla warfare, were
invariably repulsed. The death of Ordoño, and the quarrels resulting
from a disputed succession which followed that event, paralyzed for a
time the efforts of the Christians, and enabled Abd-al-Rahman to take
an important and long meditated step for the increase of his greatness
and the consolidation of his power.
It had hitherto been a legal maxim promulgated by the jurists, and
unanimously recognized by the potentates, of the Moslem world that
the title of Khalif, or Successor of the Prophet, was the peculiar
attribute of that monarch whose dominions included the cities of
Medina and Mecca. The control of the territory of the Hedjaz was thus
considered to carry with it a degree of distinction and sanctity
corresponding to that now conferred upon the successors of St. Peter
by the choice of the conclave and the ceremonies of investiture
which attend the accession of the spiritual sovereigns of Rome. The
princes of the Abbaside dynasty had preserved their title, even
after they had been deprived of the greater part of their empire;
but now, descended to a state of tutelage to powerful vassals, and
restricted in jurisdiction to the walls of their capital, they appeared
to all true believers unworthy of an appellation which implied so
much responsibility and had been the incentive to so much renown.
Considerations of respect for ancestral greatness, the claims of
religious prejudice and established custom, so revered by the Oriental,
no longer existing in their former intensity, the Ommeyade Sultan did
not hesitate to appropriate, in the character of the most opulent
and distinguished of Moslem rulers, a title that had been virtually
abandoned by a dynasty whose degenerate princes had demonstrated their
incapacity to defend it, or even to appreciate the proud and holy
distinction which its possession implied. Conscious of his merits, and
believing that the past achievements of his reign had earned for him an
honor which the imbecility and dependence of the monarchs of Bagdad had
forfeited, Abd-al-Rahman issued an edict in which he assumed the titles
of Amir-al-Mumenin, Commander of Believers, and Al-Nassir-al-Din-Allah,
Defender of the Faith.
For three years the disorders which agitated the kingdom of Leon
suspended hostilities between the Christians of the North and
the khalifate. After many months of anarchy, defiled by horrible
crimes,--crimes which recall the worst scenes that disgraced the
revolutions of the Visigothic empire, assassinations, tortures, the
blinding of some royal captives, the poisoning and starvation of
others,--Ramiro II., a prince of great address and experience, ascended
the throne. Through his intrigues with the governor of Saragossa, of
the powerful family of the Beni-Haschim, he obtained the support,
and at length received the allegiance, of the latter. Garcia, King
of Navarre, was also induced to join the confederacy, which, thus
including all the provinces of the North, both Christian and Moslem,
offered an unbroken and formidable front to the power of the Khalif.
Once more the intrepid Abd-al-Rahman prepared for war. The issue of the
campaign was everywhere favorable to his arms. Ramiro was worsted in a
series of battles. Mohammed, the insurgent chief of the Beni-Haschim,
was besieged in his capital, and either the fears or the clemency of
his sovereign restored to him the trust he had so flagrantly betrayed.
The monarch of Navarre and his mother, whose ambition had taken
advantage of the youth and inexperience of her son, were compelled
to sue for pardon at the feet of the Khalif, and to receive from his
hands, as suzerain, the government of those states which had formerly
been transmitted by Sancho the Great as an independent kingdom.
Elated beyond measure by his triumphs, Abd-al-Rahman conceived the idea
of a grand expedition that might conquer the infidel states of the
North and exterminate, or expel forever, those obstinate and dangerous
enemies whose enterprise was a constant reproach to the zeal of the
Mohammedans and a menace to the prosperity and safety of the khalifate.
In accordance with this resolution the Djihad was proclaimed. A hundred
thousand men rushed to arms. Volunteers came from Egypt, Syria,
Mauritania, and the Libyan Desert to be present at the humiliation of
the infidel, and to share in the plunder of his fields, his churches,
his palaces. Great magazines of provisions and munitions of war were
collected in suitable localities. Pack-trains composed of thousands of
beasts of burden were assembled. No precaution was neglected to insure
success. Surrounded by his splendid body-guard, the Khalif appeared
in person at the head of this immense host, but, with a want of tact
which did little credit to his knowledge of human nature, he bestowed
the command upon Nadja, a Slave, to the exclusion of the nobles, who
saw with inexpressible indignation their hereditary pretensions to
command subordinated to the favor enjoyed by an officer of inferior
rank and of more than plebeian extraction. The Moslems came upon the
allied army of Leon and Navarre at the village of Alhandega, not far
from Salamanca. Undaunted by the superior numbers of the enemy the
Christians bravely sustained the attack. The treachery of the Arab
officers, invested with important commands, aided the intrepidity of
the Leonese; the aristocratic chieftains, preferring the gratification
of their resentment and defeat at the hands of the infidel to victory
under a general of base and ignoble lineage, withdrew, and the Moslems
underwent a terrible defeat. The commander-in-chief was killed. Whole
divisions were destroyed; many distinguished soldiers were dragged away
to the dungeons of Leon and Pampeluna; and the Khalif himself, with
only forty-nine survivors of his numerous escort, succeeded with the
greatest difficulty in escaping the swords of the Christian cavalry.
The imminent peril he had incurred, the sudden disappearance of his
magnificent army, and, perhaps, the consciousness of the impolicy of
his conduct or fear that fortune had averted her face from him, so
affected Abd-al-Rahman that he never again exposed his person in the
field of battle.
But the results of a victory which promised to be so advantageous to
the cause of Christendom was, as usual, nullified by the personal
quarrels and revolutionary proceedings of the conquerors. The County of
Castile, a dependency of the Asturian crown, grown powerful through the
signal abilities and eminent services of its present ruler, Ferdinand
Gonzalez, a personage famous in mediæval history and fable, aspired to
the name and privileges of an independent kingdom. Its governor was
a vassal whose fief was hereditary, but who held his office at the
pleasure of the monarch, and, so far as the scanty annals of the age
afford information, no province of the Peninsula was more inclined
to turbulence and sedition. To distract the attention and divert the
aims of this dangerous population, the Kings of Leon subdivided the
province into four portions; but the counts who subsequently ruled it
found no difficulty in reconciling their pretensions when resistance
to the central authority was involved. A new plan was then devised by
Ordoño II. The four counts were decoyed, upon a specious pretext, to
a conference at Tejiare, on the borders of Castile and Leon, and put
to death. The county now remained without a recognized leader until
the rise of Ferdinand, whom the admiring gratitude of the Spaniards
has exalted to the station of a demigod, and to whose prowess is to be
justly attributed the foundation of the famous monarchy of Castile.
The claims of Ferdinand Gonzalez to the affection and confidence of
his people had been established by many gallant deeds in war and by
noble acts of private munificence in peace. In the numerous campaigns
of Ramiro II. his voice had always been heard in the thickest of the
fray. The spoil he collected from the enemies of Christ he bestowed in
the erection of religious houses, in whose charters the name of the
founder’s suzerain was ostentatiously omitted. His influence was so
great that the sovereign was forced to overlook these insults to his
dignity, and to even seek to gain the support or secure the neutrality
of his formidable vassal by the marriage of his own daughter to the son
of Ferdinand. The attention of the count had been, of late, engrossed
by the expeditions of the Moslems which ravaged his territory, but the
rout of Alhandega gave him an advantage; and, formally revoking his
allegiance, he declared war against the King of Leon. Ramiro, however,
soon proved too strong for his rebellious vassal. Ferdinand was thrown
into prison, his estates were confiscated, and the government of his
dominions transferred to a stranger. But neither the promises nor the
threats of the sovereign could shake the fidelity of the Castilians. In
public acts and proclamations they defiantly effaced the name of Ramiro
and inserted that of Ferdinand. Their devotion carried them to the
verge of idolatry. They made a statue, arrayed in the habiliments of
the illustrious exile, and, on bended knee, proffered to the senseless
marble their unfaltering and reverent homage. Finally, their enthusiasm
impelled them to march in a great body to the capital and demand the
release of their lord, a request which the King of Leon saw proper to
grant, but only under conditions that deprived the Count of Castile of
much of his political influence and power.
The death of Ramiro was the signal for a bitter contest between his
sons, Ordoño and Sancho, for the possession of the throne of Leon. The
assistance of Ferdinand Gonzalez was invoked by the younger son Sancho,
and the Count of Castile, perceiving the advantages that he would enjoy
in the _rôle_ of king-maker and which must eventually lead to his
entire independence, seized without hesitation the golden opportunity.
A bloody civil war ensued, in which Navarre also became involved,
and hatred of the infidel was forgotten in the furious encounters
of domestic strife. In the meantime, the armies of Abd-al-Rahman
ravaged at will the Christian frontier. Raid followed raid with the
assurance derived from constant impunity. The market-places of the
Andalusian cities were heaped up with the significant trophies of
victory,--crosses and crucifixes, embroidered vestments and jewelled
censers, side by side with ghastly pyramids of heads, the number of
the latter in one instance reaching five thousand. Distracted by the
double peril of Castilian revolt and Moslem invasion, Ordoño III. sent
ambassadors to Cordova to solicit peace. A treaty was drawn up by which
the Leonese King agreed to surrender a number of the castles which
protected the frontier; but before this condition could be fulfilled
Ordoño died, and his brother Sancho, who succeeded him, peremptorily
refused to execute the treaty. Hostilities were thereupon renewed; an
Arab force invaded Leon; and a decisive victory gained by the general
of the Khalif, Abu-Ibn-Yila, taught the imprudent Sancho the folly of
resisting, without adequate resources and preparation, the growing
power of the Moorish sovereign.
Sancho appears to have been a prince of ability and resolution, but
his ideas of the royal prerogative were too decided for his age.
Ambitious to enjoy the arbitrary rights which had been conferred by the
ancient Visigothic system, he bent all his efforts to the suppression
of the aristocracy, and, what was more dangerous still, neglected to
conciliate the ecclesiastical order, whose wealth, and the veneration
with which it was regarded, would have made it a dangerous antagonist
for any monarch. The experiment, always a hazardous one, was doubly
so in the case of Sancho, to whom fortune had denied those personal
characteristics which elicit the applause or captivate the attention
of mankind. An excessive and increasing obesity rendered him incapable
of locomotion without assistance, and he had long since found it
impossible to mount a horse. Among an active and athletic people
whose trade was war, whose pastimes were found in the chase and the
field, and with whom all martial exercises were at once a pleasure
and a necessity, the spectacle of a helpless monarch, like Sancho the
Fat, was one calculated to excite only sentiments of the deepest
contempt. But when to this physical disadvantage were added an arrogant
and despotic bearing and an ill-concealed intention to retrench the
privileges of the nobility, whose members considered themselves, by
reason of the theoretically elective character of the crown, almost
equal in dignity, as many of them were superior in prowess, to the
princes of the reigning house, the disdain of the subjects of Sancho
was changed into apprehension lest the unwieldy monarch who excited
their ridicule might ultimately develop into a merciless tyrant. A
plot, to which Ferdinand Gonzalez, the professional agitator of the
time, was a party, was formed; Sancho was compelled to take refuge in
Navarre; and Ordoño IV., a hunchback, whose base and servile nature
corresponded with the deformity of his person, was raised to the
Leonese throne. Received with every demonstration of sympathy by his
grandmother, the martial Tota,--the virtual ruler of Navarre who,
for thirty years, had tried with various success the fortune of war
with the emirs of Cordova,--Sancho experienced little difficulty in
obtaining the promise of her aid in the recovery of his crown. But
Navarre, a mountainous and thinly peopled region, was now exhausted
by continued hostilities, and, indeed, had never been strong enough
to cope unaided with the more extensive kingdom of Leon. An alliance
with some foreign power was therefore an indispensable requisite for
the successful prosecution of the design. In the formation of this
alliance no choice was possible. One monarch alone, the Ommeyade
Khalif, whose resources were sufficient to accomplish the desired end,
could be approached, and that monarch was separated from the Navarrese
queen by the remembrance of all the outrages of incessant warfare,
of the enslavement and decapitation of thousands of her subjects, as
well as by the barrier of a hostile faith, whose ill-comprehended and
purposely distorted tenets were the abomination of every Christian.
Other considerations rendered the present concession to the demands
of a detested adversary even more galling. The warlike princess had
commanded the Navarrese at the rout of Alhandega. She had seen the
pride of the Ommeyades abased. She had trailed their banner in the
dust. Multitudes of captives and incalculable spoil had attested
the prowess of her subjects. The greatest of the Moslem sovereigns
had fled before her arms. The emergency, however, admitted of no
alternative, and demanded the sacrifice of pride and the oblivion
of past injuries, which, in the eyes of Tota, were eclipsed by the
present outrage upon her family. Another motive impelled her to have
recourse to Abd-al-Rahman. The infirmity of Sancho was certainly not
constitutional, and perhaps was not incurable. The reputation of the
Jewish and Arab physicians for learning and skill was unequalled in
the world, and the most eminent practitioners of that calling were
residents of Cordova. It was evident from the experience of Sancho
that the recovery of his health was an indispensable condition of
his restoration to power. Sacrificing her prejudices to imperative
necessity, and with a reluctance she could ill conceal, Tota despatched
a formal embassy to the capital of the khalifate.
Abd-al-Rahman received the envoys of the Queen of Navarre with
distinguished courtesy, and directed them to announce to their royal
mistress that he would at once send an ambassador to her court, who
would prescribe the conditions under which he would accede to her
requests.
The Jew Hasdai was the agent designated by the Khalif to discharge
the duties incident to this important mission. One of the most adroit
and experienced negotiators of the time, the versatile genius of
Hasdai had enabled him to attain to almost as exalted a rank in the
profession of medicine as he had reached in the arts of diplomacy. He
was further qualified for the post by his enjoyment of the confidence
of his sovereign; by his thorough acquaintance with foreign tongues,
including the idiom of the Christians; and by his vast erudition and
elegant manners, which fascinated all with whom he came in contact.
The occasion was one that required an emissary of more than ordinary
ability. The instructions of Hasdai included a demand for the cession
of ten fortresses in the territory of Leon, to be made as soon as
the usurper had been expelled; and that Sancho himself, his uncle
Garcia,--the nominal King of Navarre, in whose name Tota exercised
the royal authority,--and the Queen should come in person to Cordova
and sign the treaty. While no material objection was interposed to
the first condition, in the discussion of the second it required
all the address of Hasdai to overcome the repugnance of Tota to the
humiliation that such a step implied. Finally, however, the eloquence
and craft of the envoy prevailed, and, attended by a numerous company
of ecclesiastics and nobles, the three Christian monarchs began
their tedious journey. Their passage through the Moslem dominions
was attended with every manifestation of public curiosity that such
an extraordinary circumstance could excite. Immense crowds lined the
highways. Cities and villages were emptied of their population, whose
dense masses often seriously interfered with the progress of the
escort. The arrival of the sovereigns at Cordova was signalized by a
magnificent reception, more appropriate to victorious allies than to
petitioners for the recovery of a throne. But the tact of the Khalif
led him to disguise, as far as possible, the humiliating character he
had compelled his guests to assume; and his dignity was at the same
time enhanced by the exhibition of that opulence and grandeur which
the occasion enabled him to display. The treaty was duly signed, and
it was concerted between the parties that the power of the khalifate
should be directed against Leon, while the forces of Navarre made
simultaneously a diversion towards Castile, to prevent the co-operation
of Count Ferdinand with the enemy.
No event of his long and brilliant reign did more to increase the
prestige and strengthen the authority of the famous Moslem ruler than
this stroke of profound policy. The enthusiasm of the people was
unbounded. The feuds of centuries were, for the moment, forgotten in
the indulgence of the feelings of national pride and exultation. The
Jewish and Moslem poets contended with each other in celebrating a
triumph without parallel in the annals of Islam, and lauded the fortune
and the glory of a prince whose achievements had humbled the pride of
the common enemy of their respective sects.
Meanwhile, the medical skill of the accomplished Hasdai had perceptibly
reduced the enormous bulk which had virtually cost the unfortunate
Sancho his crown, and, by the time the Moslem army was ready to
march, he had fully recovered his former lightness and activity.
The campaign was of short duration. City after city was taken; the
entire kingdom renounced the usurper, and Ordoño was driven into the
Asturias. The expedition of the Navarrese was attended with equal
success. Ferdinand’s army was beaten, and he himself taken prisoner.
The mountaineers now refused to shelter any longer a dethroned monarch
whose personal character rendered him unworthy of their sympathy, and
Ordoño was compelled to flee into Castile.
This decisive campaign was the last of the warlike enterprises of the
great Abd-al-Rahman. An imprudent exposure brought on an attack of
pulmonary disease, which defied the skill of the ablest physicians,
and, after an illness of several months, the most renowned sovereign
who had occupied the Ommeyade throne of the West expired at the age of
seventy years.
His reign lacked but a few weeks of reaching the extraordinary length
of half a century. His deeds, however well authenticated, seem almost
to pass the bounds of human credulity. When he received the sceptre,
the regal authority was scarcely recognized within the narrow circuit
of the walls of the capital. When that sceptre fell from his palsied
grasp, the haughty descendants of the Visigoths, the champions of the
Christian faith, the hitherto invincible mountaineers whose pride
and bigotry exceeded even their valor, were his devoted vassals and
tributaries. The most formidable rebellion that had ever afflicted the
Peninsula--a rebellion of thirty years’ standing--was crushed. The
physical traces of that long and disastrous struggle were removed; the
hatred which sprang from it, more implacable than even the aversion of
sect to sect, was allayed. A foreign invasion which threatened not only
the destruction of his race, but the extirpation of all knowledge and
all civilization, was checked, and a long respite given to the cause
of science and the avocations of peace. His predecessor bequeathed
to him an uncertain revenue drawn from a precarious tribute; his own
genius, besides providing for the enormous expenses of government, for
the construction of great public improvements, and for the demands of
a luxury without precedent in its extravagance, was still enabled to
leave in the public treasury a sum equal to a hundred million dollars.
A powerful navy assured the safety of the coast from foreign attack,
and permitted the development of a commerce whose agents had already
established themselves in every province of Europe, Africa, and Asia.
As a result of this extensive trade, the bazaars of the Andalusian
cities abounded with objects of luxury, whose existence had hitherto
been unsuspected by the isolated population of the Peninsula. The
effects of this intimate and constant intercourse with many nations
were, moreover, disclosed by a marked refinement of manners, by
an increased degree of mental activity, by a high appreciation of
the benefits conferred by the possession of learning, and by the
emancipation of the human mind from those theological prejudices
which, in every age, have been at once the cause and the evidence of a
condition of abject intellectual servitude.
The fame of Abd-al-Rahman had penetrated the most remote and barbarous
regions of the globe. Princes of every rank in friendly rivalry
endeavored, by every resource of munificence and adulation, to secure
his friendship and promote his interests. Splendid embassies, bearing
rare and priceless gifts, were frequently seen in the streets of the
capital. The most remarkable of these was one despatched by Constantine
Porphryogenitus, the Byzantine emperor, whose pride made him ambitious
to surpass, in the superb appointments and pompous ceremonial of his
representatives, the reputed magnificence of his distant ally. But
exhibiting, as it did, all the evidences of the opulence and grandeur
of the master of the Eastern Empire, the embassy of Constantine was
eclipsed by the gorgeous blaze of the Ommeyade Court. Its reception
recalled the extravagant tales of Oriental romance. The approaches
to the palace were lined with the guards of the Khalif, whose gay
uniforms, burnished armor, and jewel-hilted scimetars glittered in
the dazzling rays of an Andalusian sun. Beautiful awnings of silk
were suspended over court-yard and archway. The halls of the Alcazar
were hung with cloth of gold and silver, and with tapestry whose
folds exhibited intricate patterns of the most exquisite arabesques.
Through gardens of aromatic plants, through colonnades of many-colored
marble, over floors of polished mosaic, the envoys were conducted to
the audience chamber. Here were seated the Khalif and the members of
his family, while ranged around them stood the great civil and military
dignitaries of the empire, the chiefs of the eunuchs, the officials
of the royal household. After a profound obeisance, the ambassadors
presented the letter of their sovereign. It was of sky-blue parchment,
inscribed with letters of gold. The seal was also of the same precious
metal; it bore on one side the effigy of the Saviour, and on the other
the medallions of Constantine and his son. The letter was enclosed in a
golden box carved with wondrous skill, and it, in turn, was placed in a
case enveloped in tissue of silk and gold. On the lid of this case was
a mosaic portrait of the Greek emperor.
In order to impress the ambassadors with the talents and literary
acquirements of his courtiers, as well as to do them honor, the Khalif
had appointed a famous orator and poet to pronounce an address of
welcome, which should, at the same time, exalt the glories of his reign
and the grandeur of his empire. But the august presence in which he
found himself, and the consciousness of his inability to do justice to
his subject, so affected the impressible nature of the chosen exponent
of the eloquence of Cordova that he was unable to utter a single word.
Then the Khalif called upon one after another of the wise men at his
side, whose skill in improvisation had heretofore never failed them,
to greet the Grecian embassy, but they also were silent. At last,
unsolicited, a Persian, named Mondhir-Ibn-Said, a recent arrival at
the court, arose, and repeated some appropriate and extemporaneous
verses, full of the glowing images and extravagant metaphors which
are the delight of the passionate Oriental. When he concluded, neither
the presence of royalty, nor the stately and dignified etiquette of
the court, could repress the applause of the delighted audience, and
the Khalif recompensed the fortunate poet with a purse of gold, and
at once appointed him--for he was learned in the law--Chief Kadi of
Cordova. The envoys, having received every attention in the power of
their generous host, were dismissed, accompanied by a vizier charged to
offer, in the name of the Khalif, a number of splendid horses, arms,
and coats of mail to the Byzantine emperor.
The account of another embassy of an entirely different character which
arrived some time afterwards is instructive, as affording a curious
picture of the manners of the time. The Khalif having formed, from
the accounts of mendacious travellers, an exaggerated idea of the
extent and resources of Germany, and desirous of opening diplomatic
relations with that power, sent to Otho, the son of Henry the Fowler, a
letter, accompanied with the usual presents. The chief of the embassy,
a Mozarabic bishop, perished on the journey, and the missive was
delivered by his companions, who were ignorant of its contents. The
pride of Abd-al-Rahman had permitted him to incorporate into his letter
expressions which were not complimentary to the Trinitarian belief,
or, as the chronicle suggestively remarks, “in it the German emperor
was much better treated than the God of the Christians,” trusting to
the tact of the bishop to soothe any irritation that might arise from
its perusal. Otho, having read it, in the absence of all explanation,
naturally construed the language of the Moslem as a deliberate insult
to his religion, treated the envoys with marked indignity, removed them
from the precincts of the court, and for three years wholly ignored
their presence, except to restrain them of their liberty.
Then he determined to retaliate in kind. A letter was drawn up by
the Archbishop of Cologne, in which the vocabularies of profane and
ecclesiastical abuse were exhausted in search of epithets to be heaped
upon Mohammed. A messenger was now sought to convey this scurrilous
epistle, for, while many could be found who were willing to write it,
few were inclined to run the risk attending its delivery; for it was
well known that among the Moslems vituperation of the Prophet was
inexorably punished with death. Finally, John de Gorza, a fanatic monk,
whose austere life had obtained for him a reputation for unusual piety,
voluntarily offered himself as a candidate for the perilous duty which
almost necessarily involved the penalty of martyrdom. His services were
accepted in default of those of an ambassador of superior dignity, and
three ecclesiastics of equal rank were selected to accompany him, and
to share the doubtful fortunes of the enterprise. All arrangements
having been completed, this singular embassy set forth from the court
of Otho with but slight probability of its return. Arrived without
accident at Cordova, the monks were detained in one of the suburbs
pending the negotiation which Abd-al-Rahman deemed it proper to enter
into with them touching the offensive letter of the emperor, whose
contents were no secret at the Mussulman court. The Khalif found
himself placed in an unpleasant dilemma. The law was severely explicit
concerning the treatment of such as blasphemed the name of Mohammed.
Should the envoys deliver the letter of Otho, responsibility would
attach to their act as the representatives of their sovereign, and yet
their execution would be, in the eyes of the world, a serious violation
of the law of nations. Every effort was made to induce John de Gorza
to retain the letter and present only the gifts which accompanied it.
The services of the shrewdest diplomatists of the court were enlisted
for this purpose. But the stubborn fanatic, in whom the splendors of
the Moslem empire aroused only a feeling of disdain, was not to be
convinced by the insinuating arts nor intimidated by the menaces of
the emissaries of the Khalif. The difficulty was at length adjusted
by John de Gorza consenting to apply to his royal master for another
letter to be substituted for the objectionable one in his possession.
This was done, and, after a delay of eighteen months, preparations
were made for the reception of the embassy. Now, however, a fresh
obstacle was interposed by the obstinacy of monkish prejudice. The
rigorous etiquette, as well as the elegance and decorum of the Moslem
court, were insulted by the coarse and tattered garments and uncleanly
appearance of the German envoy. Attributing his condition to poverty,
the Khalif sent him a large sum of money to be expended in procuring
suitable clothing. True to his profession, the unselfish anchorite
at once bestowed the whole amount in alms upon the poor. The Khalif,
unable to repress his admiration for the consistent and uncompromising
character of the bold ecclesiastic, exclaimed, “By Allah! were he only
clothed with a bag, I will see him.”
Introduced with every form of ceremonious courtesy into the presence
of the most brilliant court in Europe, John de Gorza, unawed by the
majesty of the monarch and apparently unimpressed by the new and
dazzling scenes that met his eye, bore himself with a calm dignity and
self-possession little to be expected from his previous conduct; and
Abd-al-Rahman, greatly pleased with his candor and humility, accorded
him before his departure the unusual distinction of a private audience,
and finally dismissed him with every token of honor and esteem.
This period is remarkable for the success of a handful of adventurers,
who, in the closing years of the preceding century, had established
themselves on the coast of France, and whose enterprise, had they
received substantial aid from the government of Cordova, might have
affected, in no small degree, the ultimate fate of Christian Europe.
In the year 889, a band of twenty Moorish pirates were driven by
a tempest into the Gulf of Grimaud, which washes the shores of
Lower Provence. Their predatory habits tempted them to explore the
adjacent country; a village was surprised and plundered; and further
investigation convinced them of the advantages which chance had thrown
in their way for the foundation of a permanent colony. It was indeed
an ideal spot for a robber stronghold. The commerce of the Northern
Mediterranean was within easy reach. The harbor was retired and
capacious. Lofty mountains covered with dense forests surrounded it.
From their summits could be discerned the highly-cultivated plains of
France, for generations free from the inroads of the marauder, whose
inhabitants, ruled by a succession of incapable princes, were wholly
destitute of the martial spirit which supplies the neglect of royal
protection in a hardy peasantry, and who had been long unaccustomed to
the use of arms. Near at hand were the Alps, through whose unguarded
passes access was obtainable to the smiling valleys and rich cities of
Italy, a country which has been the goal of every military adventurer
of Western Europe in both ancient and modern times.
The Moslem freebooters lost no time in apprising their friends
and comrades of their discovery. Recruits from Spain, Sicily, and
Africa daily swelled their ranks. It was not long before a score of
castles--each the seat of a marauding chieftain--crowned the heights
overlooking the Gulf of Grimaud and the Forest of Fraxinet. With
profound sagacity, these enterprising bandits sold their support to
the feudal barons, whose quarrels perpetually vexed the petty states
of Provence, always choosing the weakest for their allies. Thus they
held the balance of power, and, enriched by the plunder of civil war,
acquired each year a larger measure of influence and importance.
Their relentless cruelty gave them a weight out of all proportion to
their numbers or their valor. Their excesses were the terror of the
peasantry. By the end of the ninth century, they had crossed the Alps,
threatened Turin, destroyed many monasteries, and laid waste the plains
of Montferrat and Piedmont. They established themselves on the Po. In
935 they had advanced to the borders of Liguria. Their depredations
extended as far as the city of Genoa. The passes of Mount Cenis and
Mount St. Bernard were in their hands. From their strongholds in
the Alps they stopped all traffic and levied contributions on every
traveller. They carried their arms into Switzerland, and penetrated to
the shores of Lake Constance. They burned churches and abbeys under the
walls of Marseilles. The city of Nice still bears, in the name of one
of its quarters, a souvenir of Saracen occupation.
In France, by reason of its proximity to their colony and the greater
facilities it offered to their movements, their incursions were more
frequent and disastrous. Much of the level country was depopulated. In
the strongest cities alone was security to be found. Almost the entire
territory of Provence, Languedoc, and Dauphiné was at one time subject
to the visitations of this awful scourge. So strongly had these daring
banditti intrenched themselves in the mountains of Southwestern Europe,
that the princes in whose dominions they were found were unable to
dislodge them. It is hinted by Liutprand that the embassy of John de
Gorza had for its principal object the cessation of their ravages,
through the intervention of the Khalif, a statement by no means
improbable.
Be this as it may, it was not long after that event that the power
of the Moslem colonists began to decline. For a time the influx of
recruits, the appropriation of women, and the institution of polygamous
households threatened a superiority in numbers as well as in arms,
and a permanency of occupation, conditions whose danger had been
exemplified by the Arab conquests in the South. These fears, however,
proved without foundation. The Christians gradually recovered their
ground. Castle after castle fell before their assaults. Dependent upon
their own efforts, the Moslem pirates could not sustain the combined
attack made upon them from every side, and, before the death of
Abd-al-Rahman, they had lost their influence as a disturbing force in
those countries which they had for three-quarters of a century made the
scene of their depredations.
The operations of these chieftains were never divested of the
character of brigandage. Except in time of common danger, they acted
independently of each other. The permanent success which is derived
from a union of forces and concerted political action never attended
their arms. Yet, without organization and deprived of the support of
any foreign government, they maintained their footing in a hostile
territory for nearly a hundred years. Their only resources were the
plunder they obtained from their neighbors. Their only recruits were
adventurers like themselves, attracted by the hope of booty. Their
harems were filled by their forays, and their race propagated at the
expense of the enemy. No chronicle, Christian or Arab, explicitly
states that they were even countenanced, still less assisted, by the
Khalifate of Cordova. Yet no opportunity so favorable to the extension
of the Faith and the conquest of Europe was ever offered to the Spanish
Moslems. The strategic importance of these piratical strongholds was
far greater than that of the exposed settlements of Septimania. They
were easily accessible by sea. With trifling labor they might have been
rendered impregnable. They controlled the passes of the Alps. They
menaced the great cities of Marseilles, Arles, and Narbonne. As a point
of concentration for an invading army their value was indisputable.
Difficult of approach, they commanded the rich plains of Provence and
Languedoc, of Piedmont and Lombardy. The facility with which their
marauding and undisciplined garrisons overran the adjacent provinces
as far as Genoa and Grenoble is suggestive of the results which might
have been accomplished by the systematic operations of a great military
power like that of Abd-al-Rahman III., supported by the resources of
the most opulent and warlike nation of the age.
The domestic policy of Abd-al-Rahman gave indications of the
same genius that directed his military campaigns and diplomatic
negotiations. The exact administration of justice, the vigilance of a
numerous and well-appointed police, the supervision of an incorruptible
magistracy, guaranteed to every class of society the full enjoyment
of the rights of person and property. The prevalence of order and the
suppression of crime were no less evident in regions far remote from
the seat of government than in the immediate precincts of the capital.
The love of pomp and the prodigal display of luxury kept even pace
with the increasing wealth and multiplied resources of the empire.
The temples were enriched with the spoils and decorated with the
trophies of the churches and monasteries of the infidel. The Great
Mosque of the capital was enlarged, its court enclosed with a graceful
arcade and cooled by delicious fountains. The palaces and gardens of
Cordova surpassed in extent and equalled in magnificence the famous
ones of Bagdad and Damascus. In the charming and luxurious retreat of
Medina-al-Zahrâ, the Khalif transacted the daily routine of business;
received foreign ambassadors; heard and decided contests for literary
precedence; determined questions of civil and ecclesiastical law.
Entertaining, not without reason, a profound distrust of the Arab
element, which composed the most intelligent portion of his subjects,
he committed the principal offices of government and entrusted the
care of his person to the Mamlouks, or Slaves, a class of servile
origin, whose numbers--through royal favor, the possession of marked
capacity for affairs, and the habit of implicit obedience--soon rose
to extraordinary power and influence in the state. This term was
applied at first to captives taken in war by the Arabs themselves,
or sold to them by the barbarian nations of Germany. But by degrees
the name acquired a more extensive significance, and came to include
all persons of foreign birth or base extraction employed in the
civil and military service of the khalifate. Almost every nation and
tribe from the shores of the Caspian to the western extremities of
Lusitania were represented in this important class, the alien birth and
dependent character of whose constituents divested them of sympathy
with the other subjects of the empire, and assured their unwavering
devotion to the interests of their master. From the earliest days of
the emirate, an enormous traffic had been carried on in slaves with
Christian countries, principally with France and Italy. Its profits,
originally monopolized by Jews, were, in time, shared by Christian
ecclesiastics; and it has been established by incontrovertible evidence
that at least one pope did not disdain to replenish the coffers of the
Church by an expedient so prejudicial to the interests of religion and
humanity. The monasteries of the South of France were largely devoted
to the manufacture of eunuchs; those on the Meuse were also especially
celebrated on this account, the unfortunate subjects for mutilation
being procured by the monks through the purchase of children from the
peasantry. The Slave caste, while it included a considerable proportion
of eunuchs, was by no means, however, limited to individuals of that
unfortunate class.
Although condemned by adverse fortune to a subordinate and frequently
to a humiliating position in the scale of society, the inferiority of
the Slave, in this respect, was more than compensated by the authority
he exercised, by the wealth he was enabled to accumulate, and by the
consideration he enjoyed as the chosen agent of the Khalif in posts of
responsibility and confidence. The highest employments were entrusted
to these strangers, to the prejudice of the ancient aristocracy whose
lineage could be traced to the Pagan guardians of the Kaaba and the
Companions of the Prophet. The royal body-guard was entirely composed
of Slaves. Introduced into the country at an age when youth is most
susceptible to outward impressions, they imbibed, through intimate
association, through the influence of example, through religious
instruction, and through considerations of personal interest, the
habits, the prejudices, and the faith of the Moslems. Some amassed
large fortunes in trade. Others rose to important commands in the army.
Many maintained establishments which surpassed those of the nobility in
pomp and extravagance, and themselves owned multitudes of slaves. Not
a few were noted for their scholarly attainments; possessed extensive
libraries; participated with credit in the public debates which amused
the leisure of the court; and acquired no inconsiderable reputation in
the pursuits of literature.
This epoch of Moorish dominion, agitated by foreign war and intestine
disturbance, was likewise oppressed by the calamities of nature and
the grievous machinations of domestic treason. In the year 915,
the Peninsula was visited by a famine of unparalleled severity. A
long-continued drought, which defied the skill of the hydraulic
engineers and the resources of an irrigating system that was the
admiration of Europe, wasted the land. A pestilence followed, as usual,
in the wake of the famine. Deprived of all means of subsistence and
consumed by disease, the unhappy peasantry perished by thousands. The
streets and highways were obstructed with the dying and the dead. The
mosques were crowded day and night with suppliants, who implored the
pity of a God who seemed to have turned His face in anger from His
children. Such was the mortality that the survivors were unable to
afford to the deceased the rites of burial. Every effort was exerted
by the government to alleviate the public misery, but the distress was
so general that the liberality of the Khalif was unable to produce any
great improvement in the lamentable condition of his subjects, whose
violent measures to obtain the necessaries of life not infrequently
required the intervention of military force. The measure of national
misfortune was filled by the ruin wrought by a terrible hurricane that
swept the coasts of Africa and Andalusia, and by a conflagration that
destroyed the larger portion of the capital.
Abd-al-Rahman had two sons, named respectively Al-Hakem and Abdallah.
Of these, the first was the heir apparent, who, though greatly esteemed
and respected for his noble character and princely virtues, was still
generally considered as inferior to his brother in literary ability as
well as in those showy qualities and accomplishments which dazzle the
eyes of the populace. In an evil hour, the ambitious Abdallah, incited
by his friend the theologian Ibn-Abd-al-Barr, was induced to agree to
the assassination of Al-Hakem, and a plot was hatched with that end in
view. Unhappily for their success, a spy had introduced himself into
the councils of the conspirators, and they were secretly arrested. Some
were impaled. Ibn-Abd-al-Barr anticipated the executioner by suicide;
and Abdallah, in spite of the magnanimous intercession of the injured
Al-Hakem, was strangled in prison. The happiness of the Khalif was
deeply and permanently affected by a deed in which paternal affection
was sacrificed to a sense of public duty; and to the day of his death
the memory of the untimely fate of his son constantly haunted his
thoughts and imparted to his character a melancholy which no diversion
could charm away, and no triumph, however glorious, could entirely
efface.
The greatness of the Moslem power in Spain under Abd-al-Rahman III.
is to be attributed to the extraordinary administrative capacity of
that renowned monarch. The glory in fact is exclusively his own. The
attention he paid to the minute details of government was not less
marked than the skill with which he directed to a successful issue
enterprises of the greatest magnitude and importance. He was the
impersonation of imperial despotism. No sovereign of his race had
hitherto centred in his person, to the exclusion of all other sources
of authority, the prestige, the honor, the dignity of empire. He
possessed in a remarkable degree those talents which facilitate the
subordination and amalgamation of hostile elements of society long
accustomed to anarchy, a task far more difficult than the conquest
of great nations. The discernment he exhibited in abolishing all
taxes not authorized by the traditional law of Islam acquired for
him the public confidence at the very beginning of his reign. The
history of that period exhibits a picture of religious toleration in
vivid contrast to the revolting crimes perpetrated by the Sees of
Constantinople and Rome. So little was this great prince influenced
by sectarian prejudice, or even by ordinary considerations of policy,
that he was with infinite difficulty dissuaded from appointing to the
highest judicial office of the realm a renegade, whose father and
mother still belonged to the Christian communion. The assumption of
the title of khalif, attended by the alteration in the coinage and the
modification of the public prayers in the mosques--acts that confirmed
to him the attributes of his new and well-merited dignity--gave him
great prominence in the Mohammedan world. The achievements of a quarter
of a century certainly entitled him to a distinction which his pride
and wisdom now induced him to appropriate, and which was destined to
contribute a new and powerful impulse to the civilization of Western
Europe. His popularity called forth such multitudes of volunteers. when
the Holy War was proclaimed that care had to be taken lest the shops be
left without clerks and the fields without laborers.
The reign of Abd-al-Rahman III. is coincident with the greatest
wealth, grandeur, and prosperity of the Hispano-Arab domination, as
those of his son and grandson indicate respectively the climax of its
intellectual supremacy and its military glory. During this, the most
flourishing era of the Saracen empire, the Peninsula presented the
aspect of a highly cultivated and extraordinarily productive garden.
The graceful and delicious plants of the Orient grew everywhere
side by side with the indigenous flora of less favored Europe. The
semi-tropical region embraced by the provinces of Valencia and Murcia,
thickly settled as they are, then supported a far more numerous
population than now clusters in their fertile valleys. The treeless
and proverbially barren steppes of Old Castile were diversified with
forests and dotted with picturesque villages. Endless fields of
ripening grain met the eye on the plains of La Mancha, where to-day
a sparse and straggling vegetation affords precarious sustenance
to the flock of the shepherd. The nature of the soil, its peculiar
adaptability to certain agricultural products, the rotation of crops,
the fertilizing qualities of all varieties of manures, the systematic
distribution and economy of water, were thoroughly understood, and the
principles of scientific husbandry applied with phenomenal success.
Not a foot of ground was wasted. The rocky hill-sides were, with
infinite labor, cut into terraces, covered with mould, and planted
with vineyards. Where even a single citron, carob, or olive-tree would
grow, a triangular enclosure was constructed of stones filled with
earth and tended with assiduous care. The yield of the harvests was
often a hundred-fold. It was not unusual, in many districts, for the
same ground to produce four crops of different kinds in the course of
a year. In the South, where the warm and genial climate assisted the
natural productiveness of the soil, the country was not inaptly termed
a terrestrial paradise. The suburbs of Cordova, Granada, and Murcia
were proverbial for their beauty, and their luxuriant vegetation was
rather suggestive of the rural surroundings of provincial hamlets
than of the vicinity of great capitals. The olive orchards of Seville
were the most extensive in the world. The banks of the Guadalquivir,
near that city, were lined with fruit-trees, and, for a distance of
thirty miles, one could travel through a succession of farm-houses,
castles, and stately villas embowered in perennial verdure. A net-work
of canals, subject to and regulated by an equitable code of laws
interpreted by rustic magistrates chosen by the people, traversed in
all directions the tillable land of every province. Gigantic aqueducts
spanned valleys and hill-sides, bearing to the parched and thirsty soil
of the distant plains the refreshing waters of the mountain springs.
The experience of the Moor enabled him to detect the presence of the
precious fluid in the most unpromising localities; and subterranean
channels, hundreds of yards in length, hewn in the living rock, still
attest his dauntless energy and perseverance.
The incessant wars and domestic feuds of the Abbasides and the
Fatimites, which consumed their resources and interrupted their
commerce, presented opportunities to the Ommeyades of Spain by which
they were ever ready to profit. The isolated situation of the latter,
and the peaceful condition of their empire for extended periods
of time, were eminently propitious to the development of foreign
trade, while the possession of a large merchant marine facilitated
transportation to points that national hostility and religious
prejudice often rendered inaccessible by land. Although the great
entrepôt of Alexandria was closed to the subjects of the Khalifs of
the West, they were amply indemnified by the hospitable reception and
official courtesies which they habitually received from the people of
Constantinople. It was a judicious and enlightened policy, and one
whose important influence on every branch of art and learning cannot
be estimated by the material prosperity, however great, which its
institution conferred, that dictated the alliance, and preserved the
close relations long existing between the princes of Moorish Spain
and the sovereigns of Byzantium. During its most prosperous era, the
merchant vessels of the khalifate numbered more than a thousand.
Permanent agencies for the purchase and sale of merchandise were
established in the most distant regions of the East,--in Ceylon,
in Sogdiana, in China. There were few bodies of water accessible to
maritime traffic where the flag of the Ommeyades was not known.
The vaunted glories of the Abbaside dynasty were surpassed, in many
respects, by the civilization of the Hispano-Arab empire. In the
extent of its public works, in the magnificence of its palaces, in
the embellishment of its temples, the superiority of the latter can
hardly be questioned. Its thorough and systematic cultivation of the
soil was not inferior in its results to the methods pursued in the most
productive fields of Mesopotamia, the Garden of Asia. No comparison
exists between the trade of Damascus and Bagdad, largely dependent
on caravans, and that of Moorish Spain, which, in addition to this
resource, employed great fleets of merchantmen.
The best indications of the prosperity of the Western Khalifate are to
be derived from its population and its public revenues. It has been
estimated by competent authorities that the subjects of Abd-al-Rahman
III. numbered at least thirty million. Great as was the extent of the
metropolis, incredible as was her wealth, superb as were her environs,
many of the other cities of the empire, while they could not rival
her power and grandeur, shared the enormously profitable benefits of
a civilization in which Cordova enjoyed a well-deserved pre-eminence.
The dominions of the Khalif included eighty municipalities of the
first rank and three hundred of the second; the smaller towns were
almost innumerable. Along the banks of the Guadalquivir alone stood
twelve thousand villages. So thickly was the country settled that the
traveller usually passed, in the space of a single day’s journey, no
less than three large cities in the midst of an unbroken succession of
towns and hamlets. Nothing comparable with the opulence and splendor of
the great provincial capitals was to be seen outside of the Peninsula.
Seville contained five hundred thousand inhabitants; Almeria an equal
number; Granada four hundred and twenty-five thousand; Malaga three
hundred thousand; Valencia two hundred and fifty thousand; Toledo two
hundred thousand.
The sanitary regulations maintained in these large communities were
almost perfect. The streets were paved and lighted. A thorough system
of drainage prevailed. Some of the sewers under the city of Valencia
were large enough to admit a cart with ease, and the smallest could be
traversed by a loaded beast of burden. Order was preserved by means of
a numerous and well-organized police, who patrolled the thoroughfares
day and night.
From the best information to be obtained concerning the revenues of
Spain under the Arabs during the reigns of different monarchs, the
conclusion is indisputable that they exceeded in amount those of all
the other sovereigns of Europe combined. The data we possess, while
much less copious and explicit than could be desired, are, as far as
they go, undoubtedly correct, although some critics have questioned
their accuracy. A single instance may suffice to convey an idea of the
wealth of the khalifs under the most flourishing conditions of their
empire. The revenue of Abd-al-Rahman III. was twelve million nine
hundred and forty-five thousand dinars, equivalent to thirty-three
million six hundred thousand dollars. The immensity of the pecuniary
resources of the khalifate may well excite the wonder, if not the
incredulity, of the scholar when it is remembered that the ratio of
the respective monetary values of the tenth and twentieth centuries
is ten to one. The fact that such a sum could be contributed for the
support of government by a nation occupying a limited territorial area
like that of Spain, without being considered onerous or in any way
impairing its commercial prosperity, is a more reliable indication
of the affluence of the Western Khalifate than a whole library of
statistics. The principal tax levied was one-tenth of the yield of
the mines, crops, mercantile investments, and industrial occupations.
In addition to this was the regular contribution, yielding fourteen
million dollars, paid by Christians and Jews as a consideration for the
enjoyment of their laws and the practice of their religion; certain
taxes on shops and on the sale of property, and duties on imports,
none of which were at all excessive. One of the most important sources
of revenue, in a warlike age, was the fifth of the booty obtained in
battle, which, after division, was deposited in the royal treasury. No
approximate computation can be made of its amount, which necessarily
varied with each campaign, and no appraisement was taken of its actual
value after its first distribution, which was, in most instances,
hastily made and inaccurate. The exigencies of warfare, and the
expenses arising from the construction of important public works, often
demanded the imposition of additional and extraordinary burdens, which,
while not countenanced by law, were usually paid without remonstrance,
as required for the propagation of the Faith and for the completion of
noble architectural monuments representing the glory and piety of the
monarch and the opulence of the state. The dignitaries of the empire
maintained the pomp and state of princes. Their palaces, their courts,
their retinues, were inferior only to those of their royal master. No
Christian potentate could vie with them in magnificence. Their wealth,
accumulated by every legal expedient, by every device of extortion, was
bestowed with lavish hand. A present made by the Vizier, Ibn-Shobeyd,
to Abd-al-Rahman III., and celebrated by the Arab writers of the age
as an instance of prodigal generosity, bears witness of the vast
treasures which must have been possessed by imperial officials of the
highest rank. It included an estate whose forests contained twenty
thousand trees; sixty slaves, male and female, selected for their
accomplishments and beauty; one hundred horses and mules; eight hundred
suits of armor; a large number of costly weapons, tents, and trappings;
carpets, cushions, and silks; rare sables and cloaks of brocade;
quantities of camphor, aloes, musk, and amber. The most important item
of this magnificent gift was coin and virgin gold to the amount of five
hundred and fifty thousand dinars. Its whole value may be estimated at
more than five million dollars.
The political sagacity of the Moorish princes neglected no precaution
which might contribute to the consolidation of their authority or
the security of their dominions. The navy of Abd-al-Rahman III. was
the most powerful in the Mediterranean. The irregular troops at his
command were practically unlimited in number; those regularly enrolled
amounted to more than a hundred and fifty thousand. The body-guard of
the Khalif was famous for the splendor of its arms and the perfection
of its discipline. It was composed of twelve thousand veterans, of whom
eight thousand were cavalry. The accoutrements of the members of this
select corps were the most costly and perfect that the military science
of the time could provide. Their uniform was of the finest silk. The
caparisons of their horses were unequalled in magnificence. The hilts
of their scimetars were jewelled; their belts and scabbards were of
solid gold.
Facilities for rapid and secure communication with the frontiers of the
empire were afforded by substantial causeways, which, radiating from
the capital, were equally available for the passage of troops and the
transportation of merchandise. The safety of the traveller was assured
by patrols and sentinels lodged in barracks distributed at regular
intervals. A system of posts transmitted intelligence by means of
couriers and relays of horses with a rapidity that to the mind of the
astonished foreigner seemed almost magical. Innumerable watch-towers,
still known to the Spaniards by their Arab name, atalayas, rose upon
every promontory of the long extended line of coast, and from their
summits beacons flashed timely notice of the movements of friendly
cruisers and hostile squadrons.
Vast sums were repeatedly appropriated from the treasury for structures
designed for public utility, solely with the object of affording
employment to the industrious artisan and laborer. Abd-al-Rahman II.
caused proclamation to be made throughout his dominions that no man,
able and willing to work, should suffer because of enforced idleness.
Thus was established by implication the salutary principle that the
accumulated wealth of the state was the property of the people, and to
its general application is to be attributed the extraordinary number of
castles, mosques, bridges, and aqueducts which cover every part of the
Peninsula once subject to Mussulman rule.
The sick and the unfortunate were housed and cared for in public
institutions erected for that purpose. Orphans were maintained and
educated from the private purse of the Khalif, five hundred being
enrolled in a single school at Cordova, a noble example of patriarchal
solicitude and royal generosity.
Equally unlike their predecessors the Barbarians and their own
conquerors the Castilians, the Spanish Arabs did not take pleasure
in the destruction of the proud memorials of Roman greatness. It is
true that where a structure was hopelessly ruined, they appropriated
the materials for their own edifices. Wanton injury of the relics of
classic antiquity was, however, always discountenanced by the liberal
spirit of the Spanish Moslem. Even from the earliest epoch of their
occupation, the grandeur of these works, which have immortalized
the power and majesty of the Cæsars, filled their untutored but not
unappreciative minds with awe and wonder. Bridges and fortifications
which had survived since the reign of the first emperors were
rebuilt. The highways, which formed such an important feature of the
military policy of the empire, were thoroughly repaired and extended.
Such objects of Greek or Roman art as came into possession of the
Saracens--with the exception of statuary, which, as representing the
human form, partook of the abomination of idolatrous worship--were
carefully preserved. In every act and sentiment was disclosed a feeling
of reverence and admiration for the imposing and graceful monuments
bequeathed to posterity by the former masters of the world.
The centre of all this wonderful civilization was the famous city of
Cordova. The capital of the empire, of itself, it possessed all the
requisites of a mighty state, a vast population, commercial wealth,
religious prestige, political power. Eight cities of the first rank
and three thousand smaller towns were subject to its jurisdiction.
Each year the sum of three million pieces of gold--sixty million
dollars--was paid into its treasury. No community of ancient or
mediæval times could compare with it in proficiency in the arts, in
scientific attainments, in intellectual culture. Its inhabitants could
not have numbered less than a million. Their dwellings, generally built
of stone, exhibited the unpretending exterior peculiar to Oriental
architecture, but within they were adorned with mosaics and arabesques,
with blooming parterres and marble fountains. The streets, adapted
to the scorching climate, were narrow, but solidly paved, perfectly
drained, and, subject to constant supervision, were kept in a state
of cleanliness unknown to the best-regulated municipalities of modern
Europe. In summer, a grateful coolness was obtained by awnings, which,
stretched from one building to another, excluded the rays of the
sun, facilitating the purposes of traffic and the intercourse of the
people. The houses--exclusive of the palaces of the nobles and public
officials, which were very numerous--amounted to the extraordinary
figure of one hundred and thirteen thousand. There were eighty thousand
four hundred shops, seven hundred mosques, nine hundred baths, and four
thousand three hundred markets, where were constantly to be seen the
costumes and the treasures of every country known to commerce in that
age.
For ten miles in a direct line on the darkest night the pedestrian
could walk securely through the city and its environs by the light of
innumerable lamps. The total area of the capital included a space of
twenty-four miles in length by six in width along the classic Bætis,
which--the only stream of Andalusia that is said to bear a strictly
Arab name--had been designated by the Saracens The Great River. The
circumference of the city proper, enclosed by fortified walls, was
fourteen miles. In the size and number of its bazaars and in the
variety of the merchandise with which its warehouses were filled,
Cordova enjoyed an undisputed pre-eminence over the most luxurious
cities of Asia, and west of the Bosphorus had no rival, with the single
exception of Constantinople.
The rarest and most expensive luxuries of the table and the harem were
to be procured in the shops of the gigantic capital. Beautiful slaves
from Greece, Italy, and Abyssinia; white eunuchs, whose emasculation
had rather enhanced than diminished their elegance of form and
regularity of feature; blacks, whose repulsive hideousness and colossal
stature were qualifications for the retinue of the Khalif; books and
manuscripts in every tongue; the choicest spices and perfumes of the
Orient; priceless jewels, whose sheen enhances to such a degree the
charms of female loveliness; robes of every hue and texture, woven with
texts and mottoes in threads of silver and gold,--all of these, and
many other wares, objects of the cupidity and the passions of man--were
daily exhibited to the covetous and admiring glance of the passer-by.
Great caravansaries afforded shelter to multitudes of merchants,
travellers, and pilgrims, who, allured by avarice, curiosity, or
devotion, daily resorted to the renowned Metropolis of the West.
Inns, where food, lodging, and alms were gratuitously distributed to
the worthy but impecunious scholar, whose means were inadequate to
the gratification of his literary aspirations, established by the
government and maintained from the funds of the public treasury, formed
a peculiar and striking feature of the varied life of the city. From
the rivulets of the distant Sierra, a lofty aqueduct, two leagues and a
half in length--and whose vermilion hue, derived from the cinnabar in
its cement, presenting a vivid contrast to the green of the surrounding
landscape, rendered it a most conspicuous object--furnished the
inhabitants with a never-failing supply of water. Fountains threw up
their glittering spray in every square, before every palace, in the
court-yard of every mosque. In some instances, the stream poured in
noisy volume from the mouth of a lion or a crocodile of gilded bronze,
grotesque and terrible in appearance; in others, the drops rippled
gently over the edges of exquisitely carved basins of porphyry and
alabaster. The air was heavy with the mingled aroma of myriads of
blossoms, as from orchard and garden were wafted the odors of many a
delicious exotic, which filled the streets with their intoxicating
fragrance.
Seven ponderous gates, covered with scales of brass, gave access
to the five different quarters, or wards, into which the city was
divided, each of which was isolated from the rest by walls and
towers, as a means of security against the turbulent populace, whose
insubordination was proverbial and whose loyalty was uncertain even
under the iron hand of the most powerful ruler. To one of these wards
the Christians, to another the Jews, were restricted, and, from their
precincts, after sunset, no individual could emerge without incurring
the penalty of death. From every gate a broad and well-paved highway
led to the frontier cities of the empire,--Malaga, Badajoz, Astorga,
Talavera, Toledo, Saragossa, Merida. The alcazar of the khalifs, built
upon the site of the palace of the Visigothic kings, was of great
size and impregnable strength. It probably included one of the wards
above referred to, and contained the citadel, the official residence
of the principal dignitaries of the court, and the barracks of the
royal body-guard, as well as the quarters of an innumerable retinue of
dependents and slaves. Near it was the gate leading to the bridge over
the Guadalquivir, the scene of more than one historical event which
changed the fortunes of the reigning dynasty in eras of revolution
and disaster. That bridge was one of the grandest works ever designed
by Roman genius. It was twelve hundred feet in length by thirty in
breadth, and stood ninety feet above the water. It was defended by
nineteen turrets. Built during the reign of Augustus, and in good
repair to-day, it has served the purposes of war and commerce for sixty
generations.
The inexhaustible fertility of the soil of Andalusia yielded, in the
greatest profusion, the most delicious products of every clime. The
necessaries of life were to be procured for a trifle. Every description
of food was offered for sale in the markets, and luscious fruits and
vegetables, classed as expensive luxuries or unattainable in the
capitals of Christian Europe, were enjoyed in Cordova by persons in
the most moderate circumstances. The attire of the humblest citizen
indicated an unusual degree of personal comfort; professional
mendicancy, that curse of Oriental communities, was discouraged and
practically unknown; the worthy sufferer found a ready welcome in the
public hospital, while the impostor was scourged into unwonted activity
by the officers of justice.
The suburbs of Cordova, exclusive of the royal residence of
Medina-al-Zahrâ, which was superior to the others in extent and beauty,
were twenty-one in number. They bore romantic names suggested by
their charming situations, and the admiring homage they received from
the people, such as “The Vale of Paradise,” “The Beautiful Valley,”
“The Path of Roses,” “The Garden of Wonders.” While subject to the
jurisdiction of the central municipal power, they, in other respects,
presented the aspect of a series of independent communities, provided
with every necessity and luxury required by a numerous and thriving
population,--shops, baths, inns, warehouses, markets, and mosques.
Two occupied the opposite bank of the river; the others encircled the
Moorish capital with a girdle of dazzling white villas, interspersed
with groves of palms rising amidst a wealth of tropical verdure.
For miles in every direction were orange orchards, whose sweetness
impregnated the air for many a league. Rivulets and fountains diffused
through street and garden a delicious coolness. Blossoms of gaudy hue
and overpowering fragrance grew in profusion along the avenues. The
columns in the court-yards were entwined with roses. Along the stone
causeways radiating in every direction from the city trooped caravans
of plodding camels, laden with products of the art and industry of
Europe, Africa, and Asia; or, riding swift Andalusian horses, sped
the royal couriers with despatches for the governors of the distant
states of the empire. The majestic bridge across the Guadalquivir was,
from sunrise to sunset, crowded to its utmost capacity with traders,
servants, soldiers, mounted cavaliers, and beasts of burden.
The pampered tastes of the khalifs found their utmost gratification in
the comparative seclusion of the ten villas which the latter possessed
in the environs of their capital. Here were provided means of sensual
enjoyment that far eclipsed, in extent and elegance, the voluptuous
attractions and wanton extravagance of Capri, Sybaris, and Antioch.
These abodes of pleasure, contrived with all the skill of the Saracen
architect, were surrounded by grounds that exhibited to perfection
the peculiar and surprising effects of the horticulture of Asia. Airy
galleries, sustained by columns of polished marble, were brilliant with
the beautiful stuccoes of Damascus. The mural decoration, imitated
from the textile fabrics of India, partook of all the richness of
silk brocade interwoven with threads of gold. The sparkling mosaics
of Constantinople, lavished in gay profusion upon arch and alcove,
contributed their share towards the embellishment of these enchanting
retreats. Curious lattices of alabaster admitted a subdued and
uncertain light. Sentences from the works of famous poets--most of them
of an irreverent and bacchanalian character--met the eye upon cornice,
architrave, and capital. The basins, wherein dashed, with musical
tinkle, the jets of countless fountains, were of massy silver. The
furniture was of aloe, sandal-wood, ebony, and ivory, delicately carved
and inlaid. Lovely female slaves of every nationality, accomplished
in the arts of poetry and music, and educated under the supervision
of famous instructors, ministered to the wants of the Commander of
the Faithful, entertained his leisure with animated and intellectual
discourse, or relieved his care with their endearments and with the
charms of song. Vast numbers of white and black eunuchs--the former
selected for their beauty, the latter prized for their lofty stature
and transcendent ugliness--glided mysteriously through the shadowy
apartments, or, armed with jewelled weapons, guarded the forbidden
portals of the harem.
In the gardens, the fertile imagination of the Oriental artist rioted
in its marvellous creations. The walks, paved with colored pebbles,
formed arabesques of quaint and varied patterns. The hedges were
fashioned into imitations of fortified walls, with battlement, tower,
and barbican. From concealed sources, fountains cast at regular
intervals their waters high into the air. Labyrinths, from whose
intricate paths escape was impossible without a guide, beset the way
of the incautious guest. The scene was diversified with lakes, upon
whose crystal surface floated swans and other water-fowl of silver;
by grottos, whose cool recesses were suggestive of luxurious repose;
by arcades of glossy evergreen; by plants of variegated foliage
whose tints, at a distance, resembled a surface of rich enamel; by
enchanting vistas, where clumps of odoriferous shrubs and colored
grasses, interspersed with beds of brilliant flowers arranged in
sentences expressing wishes for the happiness of the monarch and the
glorification of Allah, covered the landscape like a piece of tapestry,
more gorgeous than the most exquisite creations of the weaver that ever
issued from the looms of Persia or Flanders.
The oldest and one of the most famous of these villas was Rusafah,
the favorite resort of Abd-al-Rahman I. It was not merely a place of
relaxation and enjoyment, for in its garden was first attempted the
scientific cultivation of the botanical treasures of the East. Ever
devoted to the romantic traditions of his Syrian home, the exiled
prince had named his palace after one possessed by his ancestors in the
vicinity of Damascus.
The other suburban residences of the khalifs were each distinguished by
some peculiarity of location, structure, or ornament. One was famous
for its innumerable fountains. In another were exhibited, in their
greatest variety and beauty, the charming effects of floral decoration.
A third, from the magnificent view it afforded, was called “The Abode
of the Fortunate.” A profusion of mosaics and enamels had acquired for
the most ornate of all the significant and appropriate name of “The
Palace of the Diadem.”
To the northwest of Cordova, at the base of the picturesque Sierra
Morena, three miles from the city, yet connected with it by a
succession of mansions and gardens, was the palace and suburb of
Medina-al-Zahrâ. Its traditional origin partakes of the romance which
so frequently embellishes the history of the Orient. It is related
by the Moorish historians that a wealthy concubine of Abd-al-Rahman
III., being on her death-bed and desirous that her last act should
be the fulfilment of one of the noblest obligations of her religion,
requested that the wealth she owed to the generosity of her royal
lover be expended in the ransom of Moslem captives. Anxious to comply
with this pious request, the Khalif sent messengers to the Christian
states of the North, but, even with the diligent co-operation of
their princes, who were his allies or tributaries, he was unable
to find a single slave to be redeemed from bondage. Then, at the
suggestion of another concubine, the favorite of his harem, whose
name, Al-Zahrâ, in the poetic nomenclature of the Arabs means The
Blossom, he determined to use the treasure in building a palace whose
unparalleled splendor might form a fitting climax to the glories
of his reign. A third of the public revenues, a sum which, without
including those derived from the taxes of Jews and Christians and
the fifth of the spoils of battle, amounted annually to more than
two million pieces of gold, was also devoted to the work by the
enthusiastic monarch. Ten thousand laborers and twenty-eight thousand
beasts of burden were daily employed. The minuteness and prolixity
with which are described the quantity of materials used and their
value, the nationalities of the artisans and their remuneration, as
detailed by the Arab chroniclers, are instructive though tedious, and
impart an air of veracity to a narrative which would otherwise almost
transcend belief. The plans were drawn by the most eminent architects
of Constantinople. The walls, substantially built of stone, measured
seventeen hundred by twenty-seven hundred cubits, and were provided
with all the outworks and defences of a formidable castle. As was
the case with the Great Mosque, the materials of the edifice were
collected largely from foreign sources and were put together under the
supervision of Byzantine artificers, aided by the most skilful native
workmen. Its construction was supervised by the Khalif in person,
who, in his devotion to the undertaking, having absented himself for
three successive Fridays from the services of the Mosque, was publicly
rebuked by the kadi for this flagrant neglect of duty.
The quarries of Numidia, Greece, and Andalusia contributed supplies
of the finest marble and alabaster. Capitals of Roman origin were
furnished by the ruined temples of Narbonne, Tarragona, Utica, and
Carthage. The Byzantine emperor sent as a present to his ally a number
of columns, whose beautiful tints of green and rose called forth the
admiration of all who beheld them.
The palace was divided into three distinct sections. On the slope of
the mountain rose the magnificent alcazar, within whose apartments
were lodged the monarch and the members of his seraglio, composed of
sixty-three hundred women, with their slaves and attendants. The number
of the latter was, all told, seventeen thousand.
Lower down, towards the city, were the quarters of the body-guard,
the eunuchs, and the pages of the court, for whose accommodation
four hundred houses were required. Next in order came the gardens,
filled with choice plants and delicious fruits, and diversified with
artificial cascades and lakes abounding in goldfish. Within the
precincts of this horticultural paradise were to be encountered every
specimen of the extensive flora--both native and foreign--known to
the accomplished botanists of Andalusia. Hedges of myrtle, box, and
laurel, trimmed in fantastic designs, separated the broad and winding
walks of rustic mosaic. Summer-houses and shady bowers invited to the
siesta after exposure to the glare and heat of a semi-tropical sun. The
prolific ingenuity of the hydraulic engineer had exhausted itself in
the wonderful distribution of streams of water--in the varying play of
a thousand fountains; in miniature rivulets, whose tiny channels were
chiselled in the balustrades of marble staircases; in fairy grottos,
over whose roofs of painted glass the spray from revolving jets shone
with kaleidoscopic effect; in roaring cascades, from whose sombre
depths were constantly visible the iridescent hues of the rainbow.
Some of the fountains were masterpieces of the sculptor’s art. Two of
them are mentioned as being especially remarkable. The larger was of
gilded bronze with human figures elegantly carved in relief, and came
from Constantinople. The basin of the other, of green marble, was of
Syrian workmanship, and disposed about its rim were twelve grotesque
representations of animals and birds, cast in gold, and glittering with
jewels. From the mouths of these curious monsters jets of water were
projected into the basin below.
Over the main portal of the edifice, carved in alabaster with
consummate skill, stood the effigy of the lovely slave whose suggestion
had evoked this palace of the genii, and from whom it had received its
name.
The portion of the gorgeous edifice upon which the Moorish chronicler
most delights to dwell was the central pavilion. Elevated on a terrace
of white marble, in both its exterior and interior it afforded a
dazzling example of the wealth of its owner and of the exquisite taste
of its architect.
Circular in form, its dome was supported by columns of precious
marble and rock-crystal, whose capitals were inlaid with pearls and
rubies. The walls and dome were of translucent onyx; the roof of
gold and silver tiles, placed in alternate rows. The spandrels and
the inscriptions of the frieze exhibited the imperishable tints and
jewelled play of Byzantine mosaic. Doors of odoriferous woods inlaid
with ivory, ebony, and gold, enriched with gems of great value, gave
access to this magnificent apartment. Under the centre of the dome
stood a movable basin of porphyry filled with quicksilver. In some
manner, probably by the use of mirrors, the rays of the sun could be
concentrated upon the metal and the basin caused to rotate rapidly by
hidden mechanism, casting blinding flashes of light in every direction;
dazzling the beholders with the intolerable glare, and striking with
amazement and terror the ambassadors of foreign powers, for whose
benefit this ingenious contrivance, which would seem rather to belong
to the stage than to the audience-chamber of a powerful monarch, was
repeatedly exhibited.
The hall of this pavilion was the scene of many of the most imposing
ceremonies and remarkable events in the history of the khalifate.
Here, the heir to the crown was publicly acknowledged and invested
with his dignity. Here, the princes of the blood, the magnates of the
realm, the heads of departments, the governors of provinces, assembled
after the death of the sovereign to swear allegiance to his successor.
Here, also, the envoys of the monarchies of Europe and the East were
granted an audience under circumstances far exceeding in splendor the
boasted pomp of Constantinople, Aix-la-Chapelle, and Bagdad. Under
this translucent and glittering dome were received the Kings of Leon
and Navarre, suppliants for the favor and alliance of the hereditary
enemy of their people and their faith. On these occasions was displayed
all the ostentatious magnificence of which the most brilliant court in
Europe was capable. The decorations of the audience-chamber--already
unparalleled in richness--were heightened with silken carpets and
hangings of cloth of silver. The Khalif, seated on a throne blazing
with diamonds, rubies, and emeralds, was surrounded by his family and
his courtiers attired in their robes of state. About the pavilion and
around the terrace was marshalled the royal guard, unrivalled in the
elegance of its appointments by any similar body of soldiers in the
world. The white robes of the eunuchs and slaves formed an appropriate
background to the gorgeous picture, which imparted to the bewildered
barbarians of the German forests and the Pyrenean mountains a startling
impression of the civilization and resources of the detested infidel.
The mosque of Medina-al-Zahrâ corresponded in its general details with
the palace, for the convenience of whose occupants it was erected. In
some respects, it surpassed in the elegance of its ornamentation the
great temple of the capital, after whose plan it was modelled. It
contained five aisles; its gilding and mosaics exhibited the finished
labors of the Asiatic artist; its sanctuary and pulpit were marvels
of Oriental taste and skill. A minaret of polished stone, ten cubits
square and forty in height and covered with arabesques in relief,
surmounted the graceful edifice. The court was paved with wine-colored
marble, and provided with a fountain elaborately carved and gilded.
From a royal villa, Medina-al-Zahrâ insensibly expanded into a
miniature city. Around the palace clustered the luxurious dwellings
of the courtiers, the merchants, and the officers of the army. The
avenues were lined with trees, whose foliage formed a continuous arch.
Not a house could be seen that was not embosomed in gardens abounding
with gushing waters and rare exotics. Even the sides of the Sierra had
been stripped of the sombre growth of evergreens which had originally
covered them, and, planted with fig- and almond-trees, appeared in all
the beauty of luxuriant foliage and fragrant blossoms. Not far away,
extensive plantations of the sweetest of flowers gave to the locality
the name of Gebal-al-Wardat, The Mountain of the Rose.
Three hundred baths, exclusive of those appropriated to the use of
the imperial household, contributed to the health and the ceremonial
purity of the inhabitants. The favorite residence of the khalifs,
Medina-al-Zahrâ became the seat of the muses, the home of the arts,
the centre of the intellectual society of the empire. Institutions of
learning sprang up within its borders. The literary contests which
constituted an unique and prominent feature of the Andalusian court
were celebrated there in the presence of the monarch and the companions
of his greatness and his leisure. Forty years were required for its
construction, twenty-five under Abd-al-Rahman and fifteen under his
son Al-Hakem. Its cost represents, at a modern valuation, the enormous
sum of one hundred and fifty million dollars. Experienced travellers of
every nation pronounced, without a dissenting voice, that the world did
not possess, in point of picturesque situation, royal magnificence, and
architectural beauty, a rival of the incomparable city and palace of
Medina-al-Zahrâ.
It is difficult to conceive, from their present forlorn and deserted
condition, of the aspect once presented by the environs of imperial
Cordova. Independent of its populous suburbs, the commercial
tributaries of the capital represented vast mercantile interests, and
furnished support to multitudes of industrious artisans. Five thousand
mills lined the banks of the rapid Guadalquivir. Encouraged by the
profit derived from a regular and extensive trade with foreign nations,
manufacturing establishments had sprung up in every city of importance.
Each of these towns had its mosques and its imams, who, in addition to
their ecclesiastical duties, discharged the functions of magistrates
and reported regularly to the authorities of the capital.
In the patronage of letters, Abd-al-Rahman III. was in no respect
inferior to any of his most liberal predecessors. He himself excelled
in improvisation, that talent so highly prized by his countrymen. His
fame and his munificence allured to the court of Cordova the most
accomplished scholars from every region of the world. The capital
abounded with colleges, academies, lyceums, and other educational
foundations. The medical profession had attained to a high standard
of excellence, and the Jewish surgeons of Cordova were universally
recognized as unrivalled in the extent and variety of their knowledge.
Many physicians held important employments under the government,
deserved tributes to their skill; but such was their charity that
the doors of even the most distinguished of them were always open to
the poor, and their gratuitous ministrations at the service of the
most humble sufferer. The sciences of astronomy and chemistry, based
upon observations at Bagdad and experiments at Cairo and Damascus, had
made an unprecedented advance. In the royal alcazar, in the palaces
of princes, in the mansions of the rich, in the homes of the learned,
the mind of the seeker after knowledge was daily exercised by the
discussion of subjects of universal interest, by the prosecution of
scientific inquiry, by lectures, by improvisations, by the spirited
contests of poets for literary supremacy. In every calling and
profession, in every position of life, the useful and the ornamental
arts, the noble and elegant pursuits of literature were cultivated by
both sexes with an ardor akin to enthusiasm.
The name of Abd-al-Rahman III., glorious in the annals of Moorish
Spain, has not, however, escaped the condemnation of history. His
great deeds; his triumphs in war and diplomacy; his skill in the
reconciliation of adverse factions; his generous clemency; his
encouragement of letters, may well be the subject of extravagant
eulogy. But the sensual passions of his nature bordered upon insanity;
and his character was defiled by that nameless and unnatural vice
which, practised and even defended by one of the most famous of the
Greek philosophers, has from the earliest times been the blemish and
the reproach of Oriental civilization.
The infirmities of age and the irksomeness of satiety embittered
the declining years of the Khalif. He virtually abandoned the
administration of the empire to his heir, Al-Hakem. Renouncing the
gay frivolities of the court, he attached himself to a fanatic named
Abu-Ayub, whose ascetic manners and ostentatious poverty were received
by the vulgar as evidences of extraordinary sanctity. In the society
of this singular companion he passed much of his time in fasting, in
prayer, in the distribution of alms. After his death, in a journal
which recorded his most secret thoughts, were found the following
significant reflections on the disappointments of life and the delusive
attractions of human greatness and imperial ambition. “I have reigned
fifty years in peace and in glory, beloved by my people, feared by
my enemies, respected by my allies. My friendship has been sought by
the great kings of the earth. I have wanted nothing that the heart of
man could desire,--neither renown, nor power, nor pleasure. During
this long life, I have counted the days when I have enjoyed complete
happiness--and they amount to only fourteen! Praise be to Him who alone
possesses eternal glory and omnipotence, there is no other God than
He!”
CHAPTER XIII
REIGN OF AL-HAKEM II.
961–976
Splendid Ceremonial at the Accession of Al-Hakem
II.--His Wise and Prudent Measures--Ordoño seeks an
Audience--His Baseness--Successful Expedition against the
Christians--Disturbances in Africa--Army of the Khalif
Defeated--The Berber Chieftains are corrupted, and their
Forces disband--Importance of Cordova as a Religious
Centre--Description of the Great Mosque--Death of Al-Hakem--His
Literary Attainments--His Patronage of Letters--The
Library--Institutions of Learning--General Prevalence of
Education--Public Improvements--The Khalif the Exemplar of the
Highest Culture of his Age--Prosperity of the Empire.
At the death of Abd-al-Rahman III. the Hispano-Arab empire seemed,
to all unfamiliar with the defects of the Moslem constitution,
invulnerable to the attacks of foreign or domestic enemies. The wise
dispositions of that accomplished ruler had, for a time, reconciled
the differences arising from tribal antipathy and religious discord.
The employment of mercenaries, constituting an army which could not be
corrupted, and whose isolation from the seditious populace was the most
effectual guaranty of its fidelity, apparently assured the perpetuity
of a system which a profound and statesmanlike policy had established.
The administration was directed by capable and experienced ministers.
The public revenues far exceeded in amount those of the wealthiest
contemporaneous nations. Obedient to the law of political attraction,
which like gravity in the material world draws the weaker to the
stronger power, neighboring kingdoms, although separated from the
khalifate by the most powerful motives that can influence humanity--by
the antagonism of race, by the prejudices of religion, by the memory
of generations of incessant warfare, by hostile traditions which
involved the loss of an empire and the subjection of its people--had
acknowledged the supremacy of the Ommeyade princes. In the humiliating
character of suppliants for the favor of an hereditary foe, the
sovereigns of Leon and Navarre had implored the aid of the infidel,
and the former of these had regained possession of his dominions under
a treaty which implied, if it did not actually express, conditions of
vassalage reflecting little credit upon the successor of the haughty
Visigoths. Every consideration which contributes to inspire the
respect and admiration of mankind lent its assistance to exalt the
fame and greatness of the court of Cordova. The most distinguished
monarchs solicited the friendship of the Khalif. His capital was the
literary centre of the Western world. The intellectual activity there
displayed had never been equalled since the glorious days when Grecian
genius immortalized the schools of Ionia and Attica. The Moslem fleets
controlled the Mediterranean. The mechanical arts, the science of
agriculture, the various branches of foreign commerce and domestic
traffic, had, under a well-grounded feeling of public security,
received a prodigious and unexampled impulse. It was, therefore, under
the most happy auspices that Al-Hakem, at the age of forty-eight, with
a character long considered the embodiment of all princely virtues,
assumed the supreme direction of affairs.
On the day following the death of Abd-al-Rahman, the accession of his
son was celebrated with greater splendor than had yet distinguished
this important function since the foundation of the Western empire.
Magnificently attired, the great officers of the khalifate attended to
swear allegiance to the new sovereign. After the members of the royal
family, the chief officials, the ministers of, state, the kadis, and
the chamberlains had taken the oath, they administered it, in turn,
to the host of retainers and subordinates of the royal household. The
pomp displayed on this occasion was worthy of the most powerful, the
most opulent, and the most luxurious monarchy in Europe. The ceremony
was held under the central pavilion of the palace of Medina-al-Zahrâ,
whose decorations, sparkling in the sunlight, seemed to realize
the gorgeous dreams of Oriental enchantment. The eight brothers of
Al-Hakem were escorted to the palace with all the honors due to their
rank; but it could not escape the notice of those princes that the
strong guard which surrounded them, and lined the entrance of their
apartments, was less a manifestation of respect than a menacing
precaution against treason. The viziers, invested with their robes
and insignia of office, and the nobles took up their positions behind
the members of the Khalif’s family, who stood on either side of the
throne. Beyond them, crowding the ample space of the rotunda and even
filling the adjacent apartments, were the imperial magistrates, the
generals of the army, the provincial governors, and the vast crowd of
public functionaries summoned from the capital as well as from the
neighboring cities of Andalusia to render homage to and assist at the
inauguration of the Commander of the Faithful. The eunuchs, that class
of monsters which has always sought indemnity for its degradation by
the acquisition of power and wealth, which has never failed to revenge
itself upon society by the ruin of the government which tolerated
its institution, and whose preponderance in the political system of
the khalifate had become portentous and appalling, were present by
thousands. They were marshalled according to nationality, rank, and the
nature of the service to which they were assigned. Most of them were
clad in white tunics embroidered with gold, white being at the same
time the distinctive color and the badge of mourning of the Ommeyades.
The servitors of the harem were drawn up in the hall leading to the
audience-chamber; they were both white and black; all were sheathed in
shining armor inlaid with gold and silver, and the hilts and scabbards
of their scimetars sparkled with costly gems. The marble terrace by
which the pavilion was approached was guarded by Sclavonians splendidly
mounted, whose arms and equipments were not inferior in richness to
those of the magnificent array within. Outside, and reaching to the
gate of the capital, were ranged, in exact and motionless order, the
royal archers, the slaves, and the various divisions of the garrison.
The imposing ceremonial concluded, the remains of Abd-al-Rahman were
committed to the tomb. The active mind of Al-Hakem was at once applied
to the consideration of the details which concerned the administration
of every department of his empire. The ministers of his father were
confirmed, without exception. Officials were despatched to exact
the allegiance of the walis of distant provinces. The troops were
reviewed, and a general inspection of the army ordered. A hajib,
or prime minister, was appointed, for the tastes of Al-Hakem were
inclined rather to the quiet and refining pursuits of literature
than to official drudgery and the responsibilities incident to the
administration of a great and turbulent monarchy. In this respect he
ignored the oft-repeated counsels of his father, who, conscious of the
vast power wielded by a hajib, and which, in the hands of an ambitious
and unscrupulous statesman, might be attended with disastrous
consequences, had endeavored to impress upon his heir the policy, and
even the necessity, of retaining unimpaired the authority conferred by
the exalted office of Commander of Believers. The individual selected
for this important post was Giafar-al-Asklabi, a Slave, whose caste
and nationality seemed to Al-Hakem a sufficient warrant for his good
behavior, an opinion subsequently justified by the wisdom and tact he
displayed in the discharge of his official duties. His appointment was
followed, according to the custom of the court, by the delivery of a
magnificent present to the Khalif, consisting, in this instance, of
richly apparelled slaves, and arms and armor inlaid with gold.
The news of the death of Abd-al-Rahman had been received with pretended
grief and secret delight by the sovereigns of Leon and Navarre. The
prestige of the former Khalif, and his ability to enforce his demands,
had been repeatedly demonstrated by the eventful transactions of his
long and glorious reign. The blackened fields and dismantled castles
of the frontier, the heaps of bones bleaching on many a battle-field,
bore silent but conclusive testimony to his ruthless hostility and to
the prowess of his armies. But the character of his successor was,
as yet, undeveloped. A life already advanced beyond middle age had
been distinguished by none of those martial deeds which elicit the
applause of a subject and awaken the respect and the apprehensions of
an enemy. The predilections of the new Khalif for a sedentary life, and
his intimate relations with the learned, were viewed with contempt by
the barbarous Christians, who considered war as the peculiar calling
of a man of spirit, and the acquisition of knowledge as only fit for
monks, an order whose pacific occupations did not, nevertheless,
exclude even its members from the profession of arms. In those early
times, while not as yet expressly sanctioned by the authority of the
Papacy, the violation of an engagement made with the enemies of the
Church was already considered a meritorious action, to be governed
rather by motives of expediency than by any considerations of morality
and national honor. The treaty, by which Sancho had stipulated to
deliver to the Khalif a certain number of fortresses in return for the
restoration of his crown, had not been carried out by the King of Leon.
The temptation to violate it, or at least to elude its performance,
now became irresistible. To the demands of Al-Hakem, Sancho returned
evasive and temporizing answers. The King of Navarre, doubtless acting
in collusion with his neighbor, was even less tractable. Ferdinand
Gonzalez, who had fallen into the hands of the latter, was held a close
prisoner at Pampeluna, and the Khalif, who was anxious, at all hazards,
to obtain possession of the person of this formidable adversary,
promised to abate a portion of his demands in case Garcia would agree
to send his illustrious captive to Cordova. The King of Navarre not
only refused, but actually liberated the Count of Castile, with the
understanding that he should expel his son-in-law, Ordoño IV., who had
sought a refuge at Burgos, and should at once declare war against the
Khalif. Ferdinand promptly fulfilled his engagements. The unfortunate
Ordoño was torn from his family and ignominiously driven across the
border; at his summons to arms the old warriors of the Count flocked
to his standard, and the settlements of Estremadura and Andalusia,
long accustomed to peace, once more experienced the deplorable evils
of partisan hostility. Accompanied by only a score of retainers, who,
of all his numerous retinue, were all that were willing to share his
uncertain fortunes, Ordoño, journeying through the enemy’s country,
reached the city of Medina-Celi. Here, as in all the empire, the
streets resounded with the din of arms, for Al-Hakem, convinced that
the respect of the Christians could only be preserved by a display of
force, was everywhere making active preparations for war. The spirit
of the royal fugitive rose at the inspiring sight, and, hoping that
by proper management the military successes of Al-Hakem might be made
to enure to his own advantage, he requested of the governor of the
city a safe-conduct to Cordova and permission to place himself under
the protection of the Khalif. His wish was readily acceded to, and a
troop of cavalry was detailed to escort him to the capital. The route
passing near the royal cemetery, Ordoño asked to be shown the tomb of
Abd-al-Rahman III. This having been done, he dismounted, uncovered his
head, and, kneeling by the grave of the monarch who in life had been
his most inveterate enemy, he prayed long and fervently for the repose
and welfare of his soul. A few days afterwards he was received by the
Khalif in the palace of Medina-al-Zahrâ. As a token of respect and
an evidence of vassalage, he was required to assume the white robes
of the Ommeyades. Obeydallah-Ibn-Kasim, Archbishop of Toledo, and
Walid-Ibn-Khaizoran, Judge of the Christians of Cordova, whose Arabic
names seem strangely at variance with the offices they administered,
escorted him to the audience-chamber; their presence being necessary,
both as interpreters and to afford information on points of etiquette
rigorously exacted by the punctilious court of Cordova, and concerning
which it was justly conjectured the former associations of a barbarian
ruler had left him entirely unacquainted.
The introduction of the Christian prince was attended with the pomp
ordinarily displayed at the reception of the greatest kings and their
ambassadors. The body-guard of the Khalif was drawn up in all the
panoply of gleaming weapons and costly armor. The officials were
present in their robes of state. Around the throne were ranged the
princes and the officers of the royal household. An innumerable army
of subordinates filled the halls and lined the terraces. Through the
gilded lattices of the harem, which overlooked the hall of audience,
the sheen of jewels and the sparkle of bright eyes occasionally
revealed the presence of the beauties whom Oriental jealousy only on
rare occasions permitted to lend the lustre of their charms to an
important ceremony.
The Leonese nobles and their king moved with downcast heads through
the grim and lowering ranks of the soldiery, whose fierce looks so
terrified them that they endeavored to fortify themselves by the
recitation of prayers and frequent repetitions of the sign of the
cross. After numerous genuflexions Ordoño approached the Khalif,
who gave him his hand to kiss. He was conducted to a seat at some
distance from the throne, and received from Al-Hakem the flattering
assurance that even more favors than he desired would be accorded to
him. It was then that the unspeakable baseness of Ordoño’s character
disclosed itself. He had frequently since his entrance into the Moorish
dominions given evidence of a lack of royal dignity and of a total
absence of those manly qualities which elicit sympathy for greatness
in misfortune. He had courted the favor of the commander of the escort
which had accompanied him to the capital, by flattery, by gifts, by
the most ignoble concessions. With an hypocrisy that did not impose
upon the keen-witted Andalusians, he had bowed in well-feigned grief
before the tomb of Abd-al-Rahman. With a sycophancy that disgusted
the objects of it, he had fawned upon the officials of the court. But
the time was now come when these disgraceful exhibitions of voluntary
self-abasement were to be eclipsed, and the depth of his degradation
attained. As soon as the speech of Al-Hakem had been translated to
him, without making allowance for the courtly exaggeration it implied,
he arose and said: “I am the slave of the Commander of the Faithful;
I trust in his magnanimity; I seek my support in his lofty virtues; I
give him full power over me and mine!” He then, in language worthy only
of the meanest vassal, begged the aid of the Khalif in the recovery
of his throne, and, in conclusion, contrasted his own voluntary
submission with the conduct of his cousin Sancho, who had been
compelled by Abd-al-Rahman to render him homage as a condition of the
treaty. Al-Hakem listened with ill-concealed contempt to his harangue,
promised that all his wishes should be fulfilled, and that he should
be guaranteed. against molestation from his enemies. The interview
terminated, the eunuchs escorted the Leonese from the pavilion. Ordoño
displayed little less servility towards the Vizier Giafar than he had
shown to his master, and was with difficulty prevented from kissing the
hand of that dignitary. Having perceived in an antechamber a seat which
he was informed was sometimes used by the Khalif, he grovelled before
it with as much apparent reverence as if it had been a sacred reliquary
of the most undoubted virtue.
A splendid palace was assigned as a residence to the King and his
suite; they were all clothed with robes of honor,--a mark of the
highest distinction among Orientals,--and a number of valuable presents
sent from the court further assured them of the generous sympathy of
their benefactor. In a few days a treaty was concluded, by which Ordoño
pledged himself to maintain peace with Al-Hakem and perpetual war with
the Count of Castile. The flower of the Moorish troops, commanded by
Ghalib, the ablest of the imperial generals, was ordered to make the
campaign, and the Archbishop of Toledo and the Bishop and the Judge of
Cordova were designated to accompany the army, not so much to assist
the pusillanimous monarch by their counsels as to carefully note his
behavior, and see that he was guilty of nothing that could contribute
to the injury of the Khalif, or even remotely affect in an unfavorable
manner the objects of his ambition.
In the mean time Sancho had taken the alarm. When he learned of the
success of Ordoño, he realized that he had presumed too much upon
the peaceful disposition and epicurean tastes of Al-Hakem. It was no
secret that a powerful army was mustering to invade his dominions. By
the artifices of the enemy, its numbers were purposely multiplied.
His popularity had never been great, and his restoration had been
accomplished by means abhorrent to a large number of his subjects.
Many of his vassals could not be depended upon. The great province
of Galicia, a fief of the crown of Leon, refused to acknowledge his
title, and its count held language that indicated that he only sought
a favorable opportunity to declare himself independent. Under the
circumstances but one course was open to Sancho, and he sent an embassy
to Cordova to state that he was willing to perform, without delay, the
conditions of the treaty he had concluded with Abd-al-Rahman.
The duplicity of Al-Hakem, a defect happily rare in the annals of
his race and which reflects such discredit upon his name, now became
apparent. He violated, without compunction, the compact he had made
with Ordoño. The latter, overcome with disappointment and mortification
at the failure of his hopes, gave himself up to melancholy, and died
the victim of his own abasement and credulity in the gilded prison
which had been set apart as his abode in the environs of the Moslem
capital.
His rival removed, and the alliance of Ferdinand Gonzalez assured,
Sancho concluded that the occasion was most opportune for a further
repudiation of his engagements. He accordingly defied the Khalif, and
the latter at once proclaimed the Holy War. The army of invasion was
commanded by Ghalib. The Count of Castile was defeated in a great
battle. The governor of Saragossa, Yahya-Ibn-Mohammed, easily worsted
the King of Navarre. The important fortresses of San Estevan de Gormaz
and Calahorra, which had been stormed and destroyed, were rebuilt,
provided with Moorish garrisons, and added to the dominions of the
khalifate. The Arab army wasted the borders of Catalonia with fire and
sword; for two counts of that principality, Miron and Borel, endowed
with more hardihood than discretion, had been prevailed upon by the
King of Navarre to join the confederacy, and were now condemned to
expiate their breach of faith by the pillage of their cities and the
misery of their subjects. Everywhere the arms of the Moslems were
triumphant. The enemies who had confidently reckoned on the incapacity
and inertness supposed to attach to a literary life, and the well-known
aversion of Al-Hakem to the military profession, were compelled to
acknowledge the wisdom of his dispositions and the energy with which
he carried them into execution. One after another sued for peace. Even
from distant Galicia came an embassy, headed by a noble matron, the
mother of a count, who was entertained with the distinguished courtesy
for which the court of Cordova was famous, and was dismissed with gifts
whose splendor dazzled the eyes of a barbarian princess born and bred
amidst the barren slopes and poverty-stricken hamlets of the Pyrenees.
This successful campaign closed the military operations of Al-Hakem
in the North. He had taught his perfidious adversaries a severe but
salutary lesson. Whatever inclination to renew hostilities they might
have entertained, their own dissensions precluded its indulgence.
War soon broke out between Galicia and Leon. The rebellious province,
which aspired to independence, was in a fair way to be conquered,
when a resort to treachery accomplished an end unattainable by the
expedients of honorable warfare. Poison was administered to Sancho at
a conference on the banks of the Douro. The King of Leon died after
some days in excruciating agony; his son Ramiro, who succeeded him,
was a child of five years, and the martial aristocracy declined to
recognize the authority of an infant, controlled by his aunt, the nun
Elvira, whose doubtful qualifications for the government of a kingdom
had been acquired in the solitude of a cloister. Elsewhere, also, in
the North, matters were propitious to the security and prosperity of
the khalifate. A great army of Danes, who had served under the standard
of the Duke of Normandy, poured down upon and devastated the plains
and valleys of Galicia. Finally, the death of Ferdinand Gonzalez freed
Al-Hakem from his most dangerous enemy, and during the remainder of his
life the inroads of the Christians ceased to excite the alarm of his
subjects or to disturb the peace of his empire.
While permanent safety had been secured in the North, on the side of
Africa the danger was constant and menacing. The wild tribes of the
Desert had never forgotten with what facility their forefathers had
traversed the strait and subjugated a populous and extensive monarchy.
The covetous eye of the half-naked Mauritanian robber, whose prowess
had at times prevailed over the discipline of the Roman legions, was
ever turned towards the beautiful cities of Andalusia, with their
teeming bazaars, their prodigious wealth, their palaces furnished
with every appliance of luxury, their lovely and fascinating women.
The instinct of conquest, the presentiment that one day the exploit
of Tarik would be repeated, were inspired by hope and encouraged
by tradition. It was not the masses alone who cherished these
ominous aspirations. The princes of the various dynasties who, at
different periods of its history, swayed the destinies of Al-Maghreb,
had, without exception, regarded the riches of the Peninsula as
lawful spoil, if not actually as a part of their patrimony. Its
condition--political, social, religious, commercial--was as familiar to
them as the domestic polity of their own dominions. Their spies were
to be found in the great emporiums of trade, in the most sequestered
hamlets, in the ranks of the army, in the corridors of the palace,
even in the bed-chamber of the khalif. Unknown and often unsuspected,
their influence had been felt in many a bloody insurrection, in the
decisive moment of many an eventful day. Never for a moment did they
abandon the long-nourished project of conquest; never did they renounce
the ambition--destined unhappily to be realized--of planting their
victorious banners and erecting their throne on the banks of the
famous Guadalquivir. Since the assumption of the suzerainty of the
African provinces bordering on the Mediterranean by Abd-al-Rahman, the
maintenance of that dignity had caused no inconsiderable drain on the
treasury of the khalifate. Immense sums were annually transmitted to
maintain troops, to support the pretensions of feeble vassals, and to
bribe barbarian chieftains to refrain from ravaging the lands of their
neighbors. No compensation was offered for the expense incurred except
the negative and uncertain one implied by the temporary restraint of
Berber invasion.
The attention of the Fatimites had been some years before directed
towards the East, and, after a short and victorious struggle, the
princes of that dynasty were enabled to remove the seat of their empire
from the sandy plains of Mauritania to the inexhaustible Valley of
the Nile. A great danger to the Ommeyade Empire of Spain was therefore
apparently removed. At this time, Hassan-Ibn-Kenun, the last survivor
of the Edrisites, exercised a precarious sovereignty over that portion
of the African coast of which Tangier was the capital. A nominal vassal
of Al-Hakem, his loyalty was largely dependent upon the fears excited
by the encroachments of his neighbors, and when Abu-al-Fotuh, the
representative of the Fatimites, invaded his dominions, the allegiance
of Ibn-Kenun was, without hesitation, transferred to the Khalif of
Egypt.
The revolt of Ibn-Kenun, and the alarming progress made by the
Fatimite viceroy, impressed upon Al-Hakem the necessity for immediate
and decisive action. With his customary diligence, he issued orders
for the departure of a strong military and naval force to punish the
treason of his vassal and overawe the fickle and perfidious chieftains
of Africa. The object of the expedition was Tangier, the seat of the
court and the residence of Ibn-Kenun. The Ommeyade fleet blockaded the
harbor, and the troops, having encountered the enemy near the city,
after a sharp engagement gained a decisive victory. But this success
was of short duration. In the land of Al-Maghreb, swarming with active
and warlike barbarians, the recruiting of an army was a matter of
trifling difficulty. The Desert hordes, allured by the expectation of
plunder and the excitement of arms, crowded to the camp of the Edrisite
prince, who soon found himself once more able to tempt the fortunes of
war. Another battle was fought; the troops of the Khalif sustained a
demoralizing defeat; their general, Ibn-Tomlos, was left dead on the
field, and the survivors who escaped the spears of the Mauritanian
cavalry sought security behind the battlements of Tangier. The effect
produced by this victory on the venal and inconstant people of Africa
was serious. The reputation and the power of Ibn-Kenun received an
extraordinary impulse. The petty vassals who for years had enjoyed
the bounty of the Khalif hastened to renounce their allegiance. From
far and near, along the sandy highways towards the camp of Ibn-Kenun,
trooped the ferocious tribesmen whom no prince had yet been able to
conciliate, and no government been able to civilize. No territory,
except that occupied by a few fortified towns, remained loyal to
Al-Hakem; even these places were in a state of siege; and it was
evident that, unless energetic measures were taken to retrieve the
disaster, the war-cry of the Berbers would soon be heard on the plains
of Andalusia.
The Khalif was not unconscious of his danger. From every province of
his dominions he summoned his bravest troops and his most experienced
generals. The supreme command was entrusted to Ghalib, whose skill
and valor had been signalized in the recent campaign against the
Christians, and who was solemnly admonished, on peril of his life,
to return victorious. It was not, however, to the uncertain event
of battle that the Khalif unreservedly committed the destinies of
his empire. The mercenary character of the Berber sheiks, always the
partisans of him who bribed them most liberally, or who bribed them
last, was what Al-Hakem depended upon, far more than upon either the
tactics of his general or the courage of his soldiers. A great treasure
was placed at the disposal of Ghalib, and he was instructed to spare no
pains to detach from the army of Ibn-Kenun every chief of influence,
without regard to the numbers of his following or the extravagance
of his demands. In case he succeeded, he was ordered to conduct the
family of Ibn-Kenun to Cordova. Having landed in safety, Ghalib
studiously avoided a general engagement. His advance was impeded by
the flying squadrons of Ibn-Kenun, who used every artifice to bring
on a battle; but the cautious Ommeyade general, knowing that the fate
of his sovereign, as well as his own life, depended on the issue of a
conflict, had decided to trust to the secret and more certain means
of corruption. Through the medium of trusty messengers, magnificent
weapons, costly garments, and heaps of gold were clandestinely
displayed before the greedy eyes of the Berber chieftains. Their
constancy was not proof against this exhibition of wealth. They even
competed for the infamous distinction of first deserting the standard
of their commander; and, in a few days, Ibn-Kenun, abandoned by all but
a handful of his old retainers, saw himself compelled to take refuge
in a strong castle built on the summit of an isolated mountain called
the Eagle’s Rock, where he had, in prudent anticipation of a reverse of
fortune, already conveyed his harem and his treasures.
The drafts of Ghalib on the royal treasury excited the astonishment and
consternation of the Khalif. Such enormous expenses had never before
been incurred in the conduct of a campaign; and Al-Hakem, suspecting
that all of the public money had not been used to corrupt the Berbers,
and that much of it had been diverted into private hands, determined,
for the purpose of investigation, to send an officer experienced in
matters of finance and clothed with almost despotic authority, who
should not be confined to the mere duties of treasurer, but should
also exercise the high and responsible functions of a general and a
councillor of state. The individual selected for this delicate mission
was Ibn-abi-Amir, a name of both glorious and sinister associations,
which now appears for the first time in the annals of the Hispano-Arab
domination. He was accompanied by a select body of troops commanded by
Yahya-Ibn-Mohammed, Viceroy of the Northern Frontier, whom Al-Hakem,
still fearful of the issue of the African campaign, had sent to
reinforce the army of Ghalib.
The siege of the rebel fortress was pushed with energy, but its
defences were so formidable that four months elapsed before the
garrison could be brought to terms. Then the most favorable conditions
were granted; the personal safety of the soldiers was guaranteed and
their property kept inviolate; and the main article of the instructions
of Al-Hakem, touching the conveyance of the Edrisites to Cordova, was
acceded to, though not without manifest reluctance, which, however, was
of little moment under circumstances where protest and resistance were
equally unavailing. With the capture of the Eagle’s Rock terminated
the campaign in Africa. The remaining Edrisite princes, who had seen
with dismay the sudden disappearance of the host of Ibn-Kenun, lost no
time in making terms with the representatives of the Khalif. The entire
region of Mauritania enjoyed a profound but delusive peace. The Berbers
had retired to their solitudes to enjoy the reward of their treason,
and to watch for another opportunity to dispose of their services
to the highest bidder. The Fatimites, content with their recent
acquisitions, left the administration of their African possessions to a
viceroy, and, fascinated with the attractions of their new home on the
Nile, did not seem, for the moment, desirous of prosecuting any further
schemes of imperial aggrandizement.
Ghalib, escorting his illustrious prisoners, more than seventy in
number, now returned to Cordova. From the hour of his landing at
Algeziras, his march assumed the appearance of a military triumph.
The line of march was obstructed by the throngs that, attracted by
the novelty of the spectacle, had assembled from far and near. Every
town and hamlet through which the cavalcade passed rang with the
exultant shouts of a vast and excited multitude. The rich attire of
the captives; their noble and dignified bearing; the romance attaching
to the story of the foundation of their house; their descent from
the family of the Prophet, certainly remote and probably fictitious,
provoked the curiosity, if it did not excite the sympathy, of the
elated populace, who only saw in their humiliation another addition
to the glory of their sovereign. When the capital was approached,
the Khalif came forth to meet the guard and their prisoners. As soon
as his presence was known, Ibn-Kenun dismounted, knelt before him,
and kissed his hand. Ghalib and his officers were received with all
the honors due to men who under arduous circumstances have achieved
success; the princes were conducted to a fortified palace in the city,
and their attendants distributed in different localities, where their
safe-keeping could be assured; the body-guard of the chief, consisting
of seven hundred warriors of approved valor, was incorporated into a
division of the army, and Al-Hakem could now congratulate himself that
his decision and energy had compelled the respect of his enemies and
had procured for his dominions the benefits of universal peace.
The inconstancy of fortune did not, however, permit the Khalif long
to enjoy the leisure and the satisfaction to be derived from the
indulgence of his literary tastes and the triumph of his arms. His
health, impaired by intense and constant application to study, broke
down. An attack of apoplexy admonished him that he must renounce the
cares of state, and the conduct of the government was henceforth
committed to his vizier Moshafi. The latter, a veteran and accomplished
statesman, signalized his advent to uncontrolled power by the
institution of many radical and greatly needed reforms. The department
of finance, which had become the seat of corruption, was reorganized
and administered with prudence and economy. The discipline of the army
was improved. The former viceroy of the northern frontier, the gallant
Yahya-Ibn-Mohammed, was recalled from command in Africa and reinstated
in his former office, a measure that insured the tranquillity of the
Christian states, which had recently developed symptoms of agitation,
in several instances culminating in acts of open and destructive
hostility. The interests of the Khalif in Mauritania were confirmed
by the appointment of two native princes whose fidelity could be
depended upon; and, by this stroke of policy, the vizier was enabled
to remove all the Arab troops, except the garrisons of a few cities,
to points where their services would be far more advantageous to the
government, and, at the same time, less expensive to the treasury.
The entertainment of the Edrisites, who maintained a pomp little
inferior to that of the royal family itself, was a source of constant
perplexity and annoyance to the economical minister. At length,
profiting by the discontent induced by a sedentary life and a vigilant
espionage ill-disguised under an appearance of liberty, he succeeded
in persuading Ibn-Kenun to allow himself and his followers to be
transported to Tunis, with the understanding that they should never
again set foot on the soil of Mauritania. When the preparations for
departure had been completed, the thrifty vizier partially indemnified
the treasury for the expense caused by the involuntary guests of the
Khalif by unceremoniously appropriating a large piece of ambergris,
of immense value, which Ibn-Kenun considered the most precious object
of all his possessions. After landing at Tunis, the exiles proceeded
to Alexandria, where for many years they enjoyed the hospitality and
protection of the Fatimite Khalif. From this time the princes of the
Edrisite family are no longer prominent in the revolutions of Northern
Africa.
While Cordova was, by far, the most populous and magnificent city of
Moorish Spain, it was indebted, in no small degree, for its superiority
to the prestige derived from its position as a place of pilgrimage
and the religious centre of the khalifate. Even in the eyes of the
most implacable enemies of the Ommeyade dynasty, a sacred character
invested the Western metropolis as the seat of one of the most famous
shrines of Islam. Far more intense was the feeling of reverence in
the minds of the devoted adherents of that dynasty. There was the
throne of the Commander of the Faithful, in whose person the pious
believer recognized not only the representative of a line of princes
whose genius had added vast provinces to the Moslem empire, but
also the venerated successor of the Arabian Prophet. From its gates
had gone forth armies which had traversed the natural boundaries
of the Peninsula, had occupied the fairest portion of France, and
had repeatedly abased the pride of the scoffing infidel. Everywhere
were visible significant tokens of Mussulman triumph and Christian
humiliation. Its warehouses were filled with the plunder of churches.
The inmates of monasteries were exposed by hundreds for sale in
its markets. Its mosques had been raised by the labor of Christian
captives. From the ceiling of the Djalma, the pride of all true
believers, were suspended the bells of the Cathedral of Santiago, which
even the vaunted power of the patron saint of the Asturias had been
unable to save from the sacrilegious hand of the Moslem. No capital
in Africa or Asia enjoyed a larger measure of military glory. No city
in all the wide realm of Islam was so renowned for the munificence of
its rulers, the wealth of its religious foundations, the learning and
eloquence of its theologians, and the pomp of its worship.
On the right bank of the Guadalquivir stood the Great Mosque, in the
eyes of the Mohammedans of Africa and Spain superior in sanctity to all
other temples, save only the Kaaba. Founded by the first Abd-al-Rahman,
fully as much from political motives as through religious zeal, it
had been embellished by the wealth, the taste, the rivalry, and the
enthusiasm of nine generations of sovereigns, having at their command
the resources of one of the richest and most flourishing countries of
the globe. By its erection, the power of the Western Khalifate had
been established upon a firm and enduring basis, and the permanent
independence of its dynasty assured. The more or less intimate
relations hitherto maintained with the Moslem empires of Asia were
severed; the nominal allegiance due to the monarchs of Damascus and
Bagdad, persistently asserted by peremptory edicts and occasionally
conceded by the rendition of a precarious tribute, was forever
renounced. The aims of the founder, dictated by a political sagacity
savoring of almost superhuman wisdom, were finally realized; and among
the subjects and tributaries of the House of Ommeyah, proscribed by the
rulers of Arabia, the sanctuary of the Mosque of his capital usurped
the place once occupied by the temple of Mecca, the scene of the
humiliations, the perils, and the triumphs of the Prophet. Thus, by a
masterstroke of policy, which appealed alike to the worldly ambition
and the religious pride of the people, was consolidated the authority
of a new and progressive race of kings. Its associations especially
struck the imagination of the pious Mohammedan. It occupied the site of
the principal church of Gothic Cordova, which, in its turn, had been
built upon the ruins of a Pagan temple. The stones of its foundation
had been transported from Narbonne. The earth in which they were
embedded had been stained with infidel blood. Christian prisoners,
chained together, had painfully borne these materials for a distance
of two hundred leagues, and others had for generations labored upon
its walls. The spoil of many a successful campaign had contributed to
enrich its interior. On all sides, golden inscriptions and trophies of
conquest attested the glory of the princes of Islam and the invincible
prowess of their armies. The Great Mosque is not merely an epitome of
architecture, wherein are disclosed adaptations of the artistic ideas
of many widely separated nations,--the manifestations of a spirit which
could appropriate and combine in exquisite harmony the columns of the
Roman, the capitals of the African, the arch of the Syrian, the mosaic
of the Byzantine, the battlements of the Persian,--it is an eloquent
testimonial to the genius which could enlist the ordinarily baneful
influence of superstition in the cultivation of literature and the
diffusion of knowledge. For this splendid temple played no unimportant
part in the intellectual advancement of Mohammedan Spain, as well as in
the civilization of barbarian Europe.
The multitudes of pilgrims and scholars who resorted to Cordova
hastened, without delay, to pay their devotions at its shrine. The Arab
recognized in the sweep of its arches, the graceful curves of the palm
groves of Nejd and Yemen, mementos of the Desert immortalized by the
conceptions of the architect, ever mindful of the life and habits of
his Bedouin ancestry. The polished Syrian viewed with admiring rapture
the rich stuccoes, whose complex and gorgeous patterns surpassed in
beauty the brocades of Damascus and the decorations which covered the
palaces of the monarchs of Asia. In the carvings of its lattices was
to be traced the peculiar form of the Indian cross, a symbol whose
origin is unknown to the most ancient tradition, and which appears
sculptured upon the venerable altars of Ceylon and Hindustan. Even the
emblem of a sect most obnoxious to Islam was appropriated, and, by a
singular inconsistency, compelled to assist in the adornment of the
most gorgeous mosque of the Moslem world. The cresting of the walls,
originally painted scarlet, is typical of flame, and, brought from
Persia, symbolized the faith of the Ghebers, the detested worshippers
of fire. Thus were concentrated in this unique structure the ideas, the
materials, the devices, the ornamentation of many epochs and of many
races. Each visit to its hallowed precincts imparted fresh inspiration
to the theologian, to the artist, to the poet, to the student, to the
antiquary. The reverence it claimed as a seat of pilgrimage invested
its shrine with attributes possessed by none of the famous oracles
of antiquity, and shared by few of the fanes of any contemporaneous
religious faith. It was, moreover, justly regarded as the peculiar
creation of a people whom its erection had greatly contributed to form
and amalgamate, and who were entitled to credit for the admiration
which its magnificence and its beauty elicited. Every city and province
of the empire had contributed to the pious undertaking. Cordova paid
the army of laborers employed. Merida furnished columns and other
materials, ready for the mason, from the temples and the amphitheatre
which had embellished the seat of Roman power in ancient Lusitania.
From the quarries of Almeria and Granada came great quantities of
jasper, marble, and alabaster. From the forests of the Sierras was
obtained the larch for the ceiling, whose remarkable preservation
in buildings not subjected to the destructive consequences of
ecclesiastical avarice attest its extraordinary exemption from the
attacks of insects and the ravages of decay. The princes of Mauritania
and the Byzantine vassals or allies of the khalifs, prompted by
feelings of piety or friendship, bestowed upon the rising temple the
most valuable relics of ancient art to be found in their dominions. A
fifth of the spoils of battle--in a single instance amounting to the
sum of forty-five thousand pieces of gold--was appropriated to defray
the enormous expense which, notwithstanding the drafts on the treasury
and the generous donations of the people, was constantly increasing.
In the successive enlargements of the building demanded by the growing
population, the owners of adjacent property, the purchase of which
became indispensable, were rewarded for the sacrifice of their homes
with unstinted generosity. Arab estimates have placed the entire cost
of the Djalma--whose construction and alterations embraced, from first
to last, a period of more than two centuries, under nine princes of the
House of Ommeyah--at fifteen million pieces of gold. The Mosque, as
completed, comprised an area of six hundred and twenty by four hundred
and forty feet, running with the cardinal points of the compass.
About one-third of this enclosure was occupied by a spacious court
surrounded by arcades, planted with oranges, pomegranates, and palms,
and refreshed with the spray of many fountains. The walls, thirty feet
high on the northern side, increased in altitude with the approach to
the river--the land rapidly descending in that direction--until they
rose to the commanding height of seventy feet above the banks of the
Guadalquivir. The roof was protected by plates of lead nearly an inch
in thickness, whose sale in subsequent times yielded a magnificent sum
to priestly depredators. The building, massive and imposing in its
exterior, presented a strong resemblance to a fortress, a resemblance
not inappropriate when the martial traditions of the religion to which
it was dedicated are recalled. Immense buttresses, necessitated by the
weight of the walls and the pressure of the arcades, were placed at
frequent intervals, like flanking towers in the defences of a citadel.
The summits of wall and tower were fringed with battlements. Access was
obtained to the interior by means of twenty-one horseshoe archways,
three of which opened into the court-yard, and nine on the east and
west sides respectively, three, in all, being reserved for the especial
use of women. These archways were decorated with terra-cotta mosaics in
red and yellow, relieved by inscriptions in gold on a ground of blue
and scarlet. The doors were covered with plates of burnished brass,
and provided with rings and knockers of huge dimensions and curious
workmanship.
No church in Christendom could offer to the eyes of the worshipper
such a scene of beauty as that enjoyed by the Moslem as he passed from
the thronged and dusty streets of the city into the spacious Court of
the Oranges. The latter bore the fascinating and voluptuous aspect
of a tropical garden. The atmosphere was fragrant with the perfume
of orange, rose, and jasmine. The foliage of the palm, recalling the
famous groves of Medina and transporting the pilgrim in imagination
to scenes in the distant Orient, rose majestically above the smaller
but not less attractive orange-trees, with their glossy leaves, golden
fruit, and snowy blossoms. Exquisite flowers, arranged in beds of
fantastic patterns, bloomed along the borders of the arcades. Four
great basins, each a monolith, supplied the water for the ceremonial
lustration enjoined by the law of Islam. From the fountains the vast
throng, clad in white robes, moved silently towards the temple and
into the doors, which, looking upon the court, were closed by curtains
of stamped and gilded leather. Within, the eye was bewildered by the
forest of columns,--more than fourteen hundred in number,--stretching
far away to an apparently interminable distance. They were destitute
of bases, and their capitals were entirely covered with gold. Above,
tiers of double arches, in red and white, sustained the ceiling
glittering with arabesques entwined with texts from the Koran. The
divisions of the latter were formed by medallions oval, hexagonal,
and circular, bearing a general resemblance to each other, yet widely
differing in distribution of colors and details of ornamentation.
The floor was composed of many-colored marble, arranged in designs
of simple but pleasing character. Lattices of alabaster, carved
in patterns no two of which were identical, admitted in mellowed
radiance the diminished splendor of a tropical sun. At the southern
extremity was the Kiblah, or point facing Mecca, towards which every
devout Moslem turns five times a day in prayer. It was designated
by the Mihrab, a diminutive chapel corresponding in some respects
to the Holy of Holies of the synagogue, and facing the principal
nave of the Mosque. Constructed by Al-Hakem II., the richness of its
decoration was unparalleled, and the tracery of its design unique.
Engrailed, interlacing arches of peculiar form supported the dome
of the vestibule. The entrance to the Mihrab or sanctuary--a marble
chamber octagonal in form, and fifteen feet in diameter as well as in
height--was flanked by two similar doorways leading into apartments
of smaller dimensions. Four slender columns of verde-antique and
lapis-lazuli sustained the sweeping horseshoe arch of entrance. The
slabs of marble which lined the Mihrab were carved and gilded. The
ceiling was composed of a single block, which the skill of the sculptor
had fashioned into the exact representation of a gigantic shell. In
the vestibule, over portal and wall, upon spandrel and dome, sparkled
elaborate and fantastic creations in Byzantine mosaic, wrought by the
most cunning artificers of Constantinople. It was a condition of the
treaty between Constantine and Abd-al-Rahman that the latter should
be furnished with all the mosaic he required for his buildings. In
a single vessel despatched from the Bosphorus, under direction of
the Emperor, during the reign of Al-Hakem, were sixteen tons of this
precious material.
The legends in the Cufic character, whose forms so readily lend
themselves to mural decoration, were always of gold. The groundwork
was of different colors,--scarlet, black, blue, green, and
crimson,--disposed in harmonious combinations most agreeable to the
eye. The elegant curves of the arabesques formed a charming contrast
with the angular letters of the inscriptions. Composed of minute cubes
of glass, scores of which were necessary to cover a square inch of
surface, the patience and skill required for a work of such magnitude
and delicacy can scarcely be even imagined. Years were employed in its
completion, and its durability was such that, where the mosaics have
escaped the destructive touch of the Christian vandal, their solidity
and lustre remain to-day unimpaired, after the changes, the neglect,
and the depredations of more than eleven centuries.
Within the enclosure of the Mihrab was kept the pulpit built under the
direction of Al-Hakem II., and destined for the use of the sovereign,
when, in the capacity of Successor of the Prophet, he addressed the
multitude congregated in the Mosque. It was made of minute pieces of
costly woods combined with ivory, tortoise-shell, and mother of pearl,
put together with gold and silver nails. Seven years were consumed
in the production of this admirable specimen of the joiner’s art.
The carvings with which it was covered were of the most exquisite
character. Its intrinsic value was greatly enhanced by the jewels
with which it was enriched, and the precious metals used in its
construction. Inside of this pulpit, and enclosed in a case of cloth
of gold studded with rubies and pearls, was preserved the famous
Koran of the Khalif Othman, which he was reading at the time of his
assassination, and whose leaves were said to have been discolored with
his blood. A memento of the relentless persecution of the Ommeyades, no
relic, even of the Prophet himself, was regarded by the adherents of
the Abbaside and Fatimite dynasties with greater veneration than was
this precious souvenir by the princes and the people of the Andalusian
empire. It was at once the talisman of their security, the glory of
their ritual, the emblem of imperial and theocratical power. Deposited
upon a lectern of aloe wood profusely inlaid with gold, it was borne
in state on Fridays to the tribune, where the customary service was
read from its pages. Four men were required to carry the ponderous
volume and its accessories. The cortege was preceded by the imam and
his assistants, and accompanied with the pomp of lamps and incense. The
magnificent processions of the Roman Catholic Church, during the period
of its greatest ecclesiastical and temporal grandeur, could boast no
spectacle more impressive than this ceremonial, celebrated every week
in the presence of twelve thousand worshippers.
Directly in front of the Mihrab was the Maksurah, an enclosure reserved
for the Khalif, the princes of the blood, and the higher ministers of
the Mohammedan religion. It occupied a portion of the seven central
naves, and was terminated on the south by the vestibule of the Mihrab.
It measured one hundred and twelve by thirty-three feet, and was formed
by a lofty screen or lattice elaborately carved, composed, for the
most part, of odoriferous woods enriched with beautiful ornaments.
Despite the numerous interstices with which it was provided, the
interior was not visible to those outside, and its resemblance to a
wall was increased by its towering height of fifty feet, as well as by
the gilded battlements with which it was crowned. The pavement was of
silver tiles, and the central door, destined for the passage of the
Khalif, was heavily plated with gold. During his attendance at the
services of the Mosque, the Commander of the Faithful was rarely seen
by his subjects. From the adjoining palace he crossed the street by
a covered bridge, and, traversing a secret passage contrived in the
southern wall of the Mosque, entered the vestibule of the Mihrab, and
thence proceeded to his post in the elevated tribune of the Maksurah.
This passage contained eight doors, at each of which a sentinel was
posted. These opened alternately towards the east and west, thus,
in case of treachery, precluding the possibility of concert among
the guards, one of whom, if faithful, could, unaided, readily defend
the passage against the combined efforts of the remaining seven. The
entrance of the Khalif was the occasion of a magnificent display. A
silken carpet, interwoven with silver, was spread from the palace
gate to the Maksurah. Black and white eunuchs in splendid costumes
preceded and followed the royal party. The body-guard of the sovereign
was composed of members of his family, carrying drawn scimetars, and
sheathed in shining mail. These precautions were considered necessary
on account of the melancholy experience of former Successors of the
Prophet. The sacred character investing Omar, Othman, Ali, and Muavia
had not preserved them from the assassin’s dagger; and the populace
of Cordova, notorious for its daring criminals and fanatics, excited
well-grounded fears in the mind of a monarch whose formidable army was
sometimes insufficient to restrain its revolutionary spirit, fostered
by turbulent adventurers collected from every nation subject to the
code of Islam. On the western side of the temple, and facing the royal
palace, was the Chamber of Alms, where the charity of the Khalif was
daily dispensed in accordance with the injunctions of his faith.
The interior of the Mosque, by reason of its vast extent and its
comparatively low ceiling, was more or less obscure, even at noon-day,
and lamps were kept constantly burning in its aisles. Two hundred
and eighty chandeliers of brass and silver were suspended from its
arches, the oil used in them being perfumed with costly essences. The
largest of these contained fourteen hundred and fifty-four lamps, and
measured thirty-eight feet in circumference. Its reflector contained
thirty-six thousand pieces of silver fastened with rivets of gold. Its
beauty was enhanced by the gems with which it was studded, and, by
the combined effect of the mirrors, the light was increased to nine
times its original intensity. During the entire month of Ramadhan the
Mosque was illuminated with twenty thousand lights. An enormous taper,
weighing sixty pounds, was placed in the Maksurah. Its dimensions were
calculated with such accuracy that the wax was completely consumed
during the last hour of the last day of the festival.
A deep and mysterious significance has always attached to the
celebration of the feast of Ramadhan in the Mohammedan world, but
nowhere were its rules observed with such solemnity, and its ceremonies
performed with such splendor, as in the capital of Mohammedan Spain. It
corresponded in many respects to the Lent of the Christian Church. From
dawn to dark not a mouthful of food, not a drop of water, could pass
the lips of the consistent believer. After sunset he was, in a measure,
recompensed for his privations during the day. Lamps were hung from
tower and minaret. The tinkle of the mandolin and the mellow notes of
the lute were heard from latticed balconies. The sounds of boisterous
revelry rose faintly on the midnight air from retired court-yards
and the distant apartments of majestic palaces. Crowds in the most
picturesque of costumes swept through the streets. Dancing-girls and
story-tellers, surrounded by appreciative audiences, plied their
several vocations in the squares, under the glistening foliage of
lemon- and orange-trees. The Koranic prohibition of indulgence in wine
was too often forgotten, and the indignation of the abstemious Moslem
was frequently aroused by the sight of transgressors in every stage of
intoxication. On all sides were the evidences of joy, carelessness, and
festivity.
Inside the Mosque a far different scene presented itself to the eye of
the delighted spectator. From the lofty gallery of the minaret,--whose
centre was veiled in obscurity, but whose gilded crest glittered
with the magical play of a hundred colored lanterns,--the piercing
voice of the muezzin was calling the people to prayer. Through every
doorway an endless living stream poured into the temple. Among the
worshippers, but keeping aloof from the surging mass, were numbers of
strangely muffled figures, accompanied by gigantic blacks attired in
robes of silk and gold. These were the ladies of the harems, whom the
liberal ideas of Andalusian society usually permitted to dispense with
the veil, but which, assumed on this occasion from choice, became a
convenient disguise and an invaluable aid to intrigue. The interior
suggested a vision of enchantment. Myriads of lights illumined every
corner of the vast edifice, rivalling in their intolerable brilliancy
the blinding glare of the meridian sun. Their rays were reflected
and multiplied by the gleaming walls; by the ceiling, with its broad
inscriptions and its bewildering arabesques; by the metallic foliage
of a thousand capitals; by the portal of the Maksurah with its scales
of polished gold. The air was heavy with the smoke of amber, aloes,
and ambergris. Far away through long vistas of columns, the beautiful
Mihrab, whose vitreous surface sparkled with the radiance of countless
jewels of every conceivable hue, pointed out to the believer the
location of the Kiblah. Following the example of the imam, visible
from his lofty station in the mimbar, the innumerable multitude, as
if actuated by a single impulse, raised its voice in prayer, and
moved in unison through the repeated prostrations prescribed by the
Mohammedan ritual. Of such a fascinating character was the sight to be
witnessed during every night of the festival, in the most sumptuous
temple of Islam, enriched by the munificence and the piety of the most
enlightened sovereigns of the age, whose appointments surpassed, in
their incredible magnificence, alike the boasted decorations of Pagan
antiquity and the luxurious creations inspired by the wild imagination
of the Orient; where gold and silver, where rare woods and precious
gems were employed, like the commonest materials, in lavish profusion;
where trophies of victory, ostentatiously displayed, reminded the
zealot of the triumphs of the Faith; where the excited senses of the
worshipper were soothed by the costliest odors from jewelled censers;
and where, disposed in silver chandeliers and candelabras, rows upon
rows of perfumed tapers diffused through the endless colonnades their
lustre and their fragrance.
On the north side of the Court of the Oranges stood the stately
minaret erected during the reign of Abd-al-Rahman III. A master-piece
of architecture, and, in every respect, appropriate to the sumptuous
building for whose use it was intended, it was universally conceded to
be without a rival in the world. It was twenty-seven feet square and
one hundred and eight feet high. Constructed of polished freestone
brought from Africa, its sides were carved in elegant tracery, whose
gilded patterns were projected upon a ground of ultramarine and
vermilion. It was lighted by windows forming graceful arches, supported
by diminutive columns of red and white jasper. Half of the windows had
two openings, and the remainder, three, and disposed alternately amidst
the maze of varied and brilliant decorative designs, they produced a
charming effect. The interior contained two stairways, so contrived
that a person ascending or descending either was invisible to any one
upon the other. A gallery, eighty-one feet from the ground, was used
by the muezzin for the duties of his sacred office. Another and a
smaller structure, corresponding in style with the one upon which it
was superimposed, rose to the additional height of twelve feet, and was
furnished with battlements similar to those of the Mosque. Its summit
was adorned with three huge balls, two of gold and one of silver,
encircled by lilies of the latter metal, crowned with a pomegranate of
burnished gold. Three hundred persons of all ranks--many of whom, like
the servitors of the Kaaba, were eunuchs--were employed in the various
offices of the Great Mosque, the menials being lodged within its walls.
A guard was constantly maintained, day and night, in the vicinity of
the Maksurah, under whose floor were vaults for the custody of the
candlesticks and the various sacred vessels used in the ceremonies of
festivals.
Such was the superb temple of Cordova, once the pride of Islam, and one
of the noblest monuments of superstition and policy ever conceived by
human genius or erected by human power. Its completion made possible
the grand achievements of the Ommeyade dynasty, whose influence, acting
indirectly upon Christian nations, greatly facilitated the emancipation
of the human intellect, long confined by the galling bonds of
ecclesiastical intolerance and heathen tradition. The inspiration of
its architects was derived from many sources; in its plan it exhibited
the conformation of the synagogue and the tabernacle; in its decoration
were displayed the luxurious adornments of the Greek cathedral; its
tapers and its incense recalled the Latin ceremonial, in its turn
borrowed from the pompous ritual of Pagan sacrifice. Even in its
present dilapidated state, the original purposes of its institution are
apparent at every step; and nothing short of its entire destruction
could eradicate the enthusiastic impressions excited by the first view
of its singular interior, with its forest of columns, and its tarnished
and mutilated vestiges of Oriental splendor. It is eminently typical
of the civilization of a vanished race, whose deeds are written in
something more enduring than brass or marble, and serves to indicate
to posterity the sublimity of the spirit that could contrive, and the
skill and resources that could execute, an undertaking of such grandeur
and magnificence.
The health of Al-Hakem growing steadily worse, he made preparations to
avoid, as far as possible, the evils incident to a disputed succession.
He had only one son, Hischem, then fourteen years of age; but the
history of his house abounded with instances of the unscrupulous
ambition of royal claimants belonging to the collateral branches who
had aspired to establish their pretensions by arms. Without declaring
his object, a grand council of nobles, governors of provinces, generals
of the army, and ministers of state was convened at Cordova. With bowed
head and faltering gait, the feeble monarch ascended for the last
time the steps of his throne. Through the vizier, he explained to the
assembled officials the reason why he had called them together, and
made the request--which was understood as a command--that all should
attach their signatures to an instrument declaring Hischem the sole
heir to the crown of the khalifate. This having been done, similar
documents were despatched without delay into all the provinces of the
empire, to be signed by the inferior officials of the government and
even by the people, in order to secure, by every practical expedient,
the permanence of the dynasty and the integrity of its succession,
which had at last come to be recognized as dependent upon the law of
primogeniture. We shall see, in the sequel, how far these elaborate and
well-contrived precautions were successful.
The few months which remained to Al-Hakem after the investiture of his
son with royal power were occupied in the performance of good works.
His worldly affairs and the future of his empire had been committed
to the hands of others. The condition of his mind and his failing
eye-sight precluded him from the enjoyments and the consolations of
literature. Conscious of his increasing infirmities, and admonished
daily of his approaching end, he endeavored to employ his entire time
in the fulfilment of the duties of a devout Mussulman. His life had
been disgraced by no excesses, disfigured by no persecutions, stained
with no crimes. He had ever been distinguished for the exercise of
a broad and unostentatious charity. Calumny itself could neither
accuse him of fanaticism nor impute to him even the suspicion of
infidelity. The most precise and orthodox interpreters of the law
and the boldest freethinkers had been equally welcome at his court,
and had daily encountered each other in the great libraries of his
capital. The absolute intellectual liberty which there existed was,
indeed, considered a reproach by ignorant Moslems of less enlightened
lands, who could not understand the association with heretics and the
toleration of infidels; but in Spain, where a system of universal
education had been established, and was enforced as well by law as
by the influence of public opinion, this inestimable privilege was
thoroughly appreciated.
Thus, although the Khalif had no grave offences against morality to
reproach himself with, he felt, like every truly conscientious man,
that he had failed to comply with many of the injunctions of his
creed. To atone, in a measure, for these deficiencies was now his only
care. He dispensed great sums in charity. He diminished the taxes
imposed upon the provinces of the empire by one-sixth, a measure most
grateful to his subjects, and, at the same time, without detriment to
the treasury, the country being at peace, and the revenues increasing
under the wise and economical administration of the Vizier Moshafi.
He emancipated and provided for large numbers of slaves. He directed
that the rent of that quarter of the bazaar of the capital occupied by
the saddlers--which was one of the perquisites of the crown--should
hereafter, for all time, be set apart for the benefit of the schools
maintained at public expense for the children of the poor. And,
finally, knowing how much the happiness of a people is dependent on
the character of their ruler, he constantly inculcated, and impressed
by argument and parental authority upon the mind of his son, Prince
Hischem, the duties and the grave responsibilities of a sovereign;
the evils of war; the destructive consequences of ambition; the
enduring benefits of peace; the necessity of a pure administration of
justice; the value of continence; the pleasures to be derived from the
acquisition of knowledge; the consolations arising from the observance
of the precepts of virtue, and the practice of an enlightened morality.
At last, this great monarch, whose titles to distinction are derived
from far more noble sources than those whence emanates the fame
attaching to the sanguinary achievements of the conqueror, was gathered
to his fathers. His son, whose gentle disposition inspired the hope
that he would profit by the wise counsels and the pious example he
had enjoyed, recited the burial-service, and the body of Al-Hakem
was committed to the sepulchre. The bier was followed by a mighty
concourse, whose tears and lamentations manifested their grief, and
whose apprehensions of impending misfortune were betrayed by the cry,
“Our Father is dead, and with him dies the sword of Islam, the support
of the weak and the terror of the proud!”
The prominent features of the character of Al-Hakem were his love of
learning, his profuse but always judicious liberality, and his profound
reverence for the doctrines of the Koran and the laws of the empire.
The few military operations he was called upon to direct showed no
want of vigor, and suggested that in a less peaceful age he might
have obtained the laurels of a successful general. His devotion to
literature amounted to a passion. No monarch of whom history makes
mention has equalled him in the extent of his knowledge or the number
and diversity of his literary accomplishments. In every country
of the world, in the foci of civilization, in the great capitals
and commercial emporiums of the East, at Bagdad, Cairo, Damascus,
Alexandria, Constantinople, his agents were stationed to secure books
for his libraries. No price was too extravagant to pay, no difficulty
was too arduous to surmount, in the acquisition of a work whose
character made it a desirable addition to the vast collection of the
palace of Cordova. The rarity of a volume was a special inducement to
its purchase. Where the owner refused to part with a manuscript, he
was, as a rule, easily prevailed upon to allow it to be copied, and his
courtesy was always munificently rewarded. In the extensive libraries
of the princes of the Orient, whose collections, however valuable,
could not vie with the superb one of Al-Hakem, were constantly occupied
the expert scribes and copyists of that accomplished, untiring
monarch; investigators whose labors were never terminated, whose pens
were never idle. A premium was offered to every writer of note whose
productions should be first submitted to the Khalif, and the knowledge
of this fact often procured for him the inspection of manuscripts long
before they were made public in the country where they were composed.
The emulation and the aspirations of distinguished authors caused their
works to be transmitted to Cordova from the most distant lands, from
Al-Maghreb, Egypt, Byzantium, Syria, and Persia, and the reward for
a composition of unusual merit not infrequently reached the enormous
figure of a thousand pieces of gold.
Under the influence of such potent agencies, it is not remarkable
that great popularity was communicated to the study of every branch
of human knowledge. Treatises replete with the stores of ancient
wisdom were brought forth from dusty corners where they had lain
neglected for centuries; the sages of Greece were translated into
Arabic; and the philosophy of Aristotle and the problems of Euclid
were publicly expounded for the benefit of the multitude. In a society
where intellectual pre-eminence was a certain passport to official
distinction, the study of letters soon became not only a popular and
absorbing pursuit, but one of the most desirable of professions. The
accumulation of books was the first employment of an aspirant to
public consideration and political fame. In the house of almost every
prosperous citizen a collection of volumes, not exhibited to display
the wealth or pedantry of the owner, but with whose contents he was
more or less familiar, was preserved. For the benefit of those whose
means were too limited for the possession of such luxuries, as well
as to afford every facility for the promotion of intelligence and the
advancement of science, public libraries were founded in all the great
cities of the Peninsula. With the growing demand for manuscripts, their
value not only increased in the markets of the world, but, through the
enormous prices they commanded, literary industry was stimulated to
their search and reproduction. It was a well-known fact that no gift
was so acceptable to the Khalif as a rare manuscript, or the first
copy of a new work by an author of established reputation. The library
of Al-Hakem II. was undoubtedly the greatest repository of learning
which had up to that time existed in Europe. As a significant token
of the estimation in which its volumes were held, the appointments
and furniture of the building where they were deposited exhibited
all the magnificence of a palace. The floor was of rare and costly
marble, the walls and ceiling of alabaster and mosaic, the columns
of jasper and verde-antique. The cases were of polished woods, some
selected for their rarity, others for the delightful fragrance they
exhaled. Inscriptions in characters of gold indicated the contents of
the shelves, or inspired the student, by the repetition of the maxims
of famous writers, to emulate the example of the wise and virtuous
scholars of antiquity. The manuscripts in time became so numerous that
the halls of the library, extensive as they were, could not contain
them. In the scriptorium an army of binders and calligraphists was
employed, and the finest books were gilded and illuminated with a taste
and elegance that have never been equalled. The number of volumes in
the collection of the Khalif is variously stated at from four hundred
thousand to six hundred thousand. Forty-four volumes were required for
the catalogue alone. With the contents of most of these works Al-Hakem
is said to have been familiar, and, indeed, many of them were enriched
with notes and comments written by his own hand. The title-page of each
volume bore not only the name of the author but also his genealogy,
as well as the dates of his birth and his death, all collected and
preserved by the indefatigable industry of the royal scholar. His
prodigious memory; his powers of acquisition; his critical acumen; his
talents for composition; and the capacity which could abstract from the
administration of the public affairs of a great monarchy sufficient
time for literary undertakings that, under ordinary circumstances,
could hardly be accomplished in a lifetime of constant study, are
marvellous and incredible. For Al-Hakem was an historian of approved
merit, as well as an impartial critic and a voluminous commentator.
He wrote a history of Spain, now unhappily lost, which was considered
a high authority in its time, and whose reputation was universally
admitted to be independent of the prestige which it would naturally
derive from the name and rank of the author. Such was his erudition
that in knowledge on obscure points of genealogy and biography he
was without a rival, even in the learned court of Cordova; and his
fund of historical information was so profound, and his judgment
so accurate, that his opinions were respected and unquestioned by
the most accomplished scholars of the Mohammedan world. As may be
conjectured, a prodigious impulse was imparted to education by this
extraordinary patronage of letters. The accumulated wisdom of Africa,
Asia, and Europe was to be found at Cordova. Reports of the munificence
of Al-Hakem, and the fame of his splendid court, where literary
attainments were a recommendation to royal favor, had been transmitted
along the highways of commerce to the most isolated quarters of the
globe. It was the ambition of every scholar to complete his studies
in a society which offered such unrivalled advantages. A multitude of
students of every nationality constantly thronged the streets of the
capital. Education was reduced to a system, whose regulations were
enforced with military precision. To invest the cause of instruction
with additional prestige, the influence of royalty was invoked, and
Al-Mondhir, the brother of the Khalif, was charged with the general
supervision of the institutions of learning. The charity of Al-Hakem
had founded at Cordova no less than twenty-seven schools, where the
children of the poor received an education not inferior in thoroughness
to that conferred by the best colleges of the empire.
The intellectual progress of the nation was greatly assisted by the
freedom of thought which was universally prevalent. The study of
philosophy was encouraged, and the promulgation of the most heretical
opinions was neither prohibited by public sentiment, nor allowed to
be interfered with by the fanaticism of the orthodox sects. By the
incessant collision of opinions, by the comparison of authorities,
and by the examination of antagonistic doctrines a general spirit of
inquiry sprang up; and, in consequence of its dissemination, even the
professors of the University were not wrongfully suspected of a leaning
towards atheism.
The efforts of Al-Hakem had been early directed to the reformation of
manners, an invidious task which might well exhaust the resolution
and tact of the most politic and courageous sovereign. The example
of the Orient, the possession of wealth, and the influence of luxury
had introduced and promoted the demoralizing vice of drunkenness. The
wines of Andalusia were then, as now, famous for their palatable as
well as for their exhilarating qualities. The country was covered with
vineyards, and the products of the wine-press formed no inconsiderable
item of the commercial statistics of the Peninsula. Debauchery, at
first carried on in secret, had grown bold with the open countenance
of high officials and the increasing impunity with which it was
practised; and it was hinted that even the ministers of religion did
not hesitate to indulge in a vice so severely reprobated by the Koran.
The prohibited beverages were not confined to wines, for inebriating
liquors distilled from figs, dates, and other fruits were also consumed
in large quantities. This pernicious habit was not confined to the
wealthier class, but was almost universal; and the scenes of revelry,
in which persons of both sexes participated at banquets and other
festivities, rivalled, if they did not surpass, the scandalous orgies
which had in the day of their splendor and their infamy disgraced
the court and capital of Damascus. The Moslem casuists attempted to
excuse these breaches of the law by alleging that the use of wine
was necessary to the soldier, as it inspired him with courage and
increased his powers of endurance, and that this indulgence should be
at least conceded to those who habitually exposed themselves to the
weapons of the enemy. Such sophistry, however, failed to impose upon
the discerning mind of Al-Hakem. Determined to remove, if possible, the
means of intoxication, he issued a peremptory order that all the vines
in the Peninsula should be torn up and destroyed. His counsellors,
however, having represented that such a sweeping measure would be
productive of great financial loss and consequent suffering, and that
intoxicating beverages could be, and were, even then, made from other
fruits, he consented to withdraw the order, which had already caused
wide-spread alarm among his subjects. But his sense of duty did not
permit him to leave the evil unchecked. The imams were directed to
declare from the pulpits of the mosques that the use of wine was
forbidden at all social assemblies and public festivities; and the
kadis were especially admonished that the penalties prescribed by
the law for drunkenness must be enforced, regardless of the wealth,
rank, or official station of the offender. The vice was, however, too
deeply rooted to be abolished by the denunciations of theologians or
the impotent threats of magistrates, themselves suspected of secret
participation in the offences they affected publicly to condemn.
The society of Cordova, and with it that of the entire khalifate,
in a minor degree, had, in fact, become thoroughly epicurean. The
philosopher, while observing a decent reverence for the national
religion whose rites he openly practised in the character of a good
citizen and privately ridiculed in the company of his friends, was
deeply tinctured with the ancient pantheistic doctrines of India.
Even the populace had ceased to exhibit the fanaticism which is the
inseparable companion of ignorance. The system of universal education
had gradually and insensibly removed many of those prejudices on
whose perpetuity depend the importance and the power of the ministers
of superstition. The example of their superiors was not lost on
the multitude. The attendance at the mosques was not perceptibly
diminished, but it became rather a matter of custom than an observance
dictated by conscientious belief and a sense of religious duty. A
skepticism pervaded the masses which surprised and alarmed the devout
pilgrim from a far-distant country who visited the shrine of Cordova,
in his eyes, second in holiness only to the temple of Mecca. Enjoyment
of the present, indifference to the future, were the principles which
guided the conduct and influenced the lives of the pleasure-loving
subjects of Al-Hakem. Under such circumstances, the correction of
public immorality, and the repression of a popular and prevalent
vice was a difficult, if not a hopeless, undertaking. The edict of
the Khalif against drunkenness was publicly observed and secretly
disregarded. The epicurean tendency of the age was too general and too
well established to be seriously affected by the proclamations or the
example of princes.
In the prosecution of enterprises of public improvement and general
utility, Al-Hakem exhibited no less taste and spirit than the most
renowned of his predecessors. The largest cities and the most
sequestered hamlets of the empire alike acknowledged the benefits of
his discriminating liberality. He repaired the highways; furnished them
with fountains at convenient intervals; and, in obedience to the law
of the Koran, which inculcates the duties of hospitality, established,
at the end of each day’s journey, a caravansary for the entertainment
of travellers. Schools, almshouses, hospitals, rose in every town,
a great portion of the funds required for the construction and
endowment of these institutions being derived from the private purse
of the Khalif. His devotion and family pride caused him to emulate
the example of his ancestors by making additions to the Great Mosque
of the capital. He largely increased the capacity of the building.
He erected the Maksurah, where the Commander of the Faithful could
enter, unperceived by the congregation, and perform his devotions
apart from the other worshippers, in accordance with that practice of
Oriental seclusion which from motives of prudence or mystery had, for
three generations, been adopted by the Ommeyades of Spain. Before the
reign of Al-Hakem, the basin where every devout Mussulman performed
the ablution, symbolical of purification, incumbent on him before
entering the Mosque, was small and inadequate to the necessities of the
multitudes that daily frequented the second in renown and sanctity of
the fanes of Islam. This receptacle was rude and primitive; the water
frequently became stagnant; and the supply was, from time to time,
renewed from a neighboring well by means of vessels borne by beasts of
burden. The inconvenience and incongruity of this arrangement, amidst
all the splendors that surrounded it, forcibly impressed itself upon
the mind of the Khalif. At vast expense and with infinite labor,
he caused four basins of stone to be constructed at the angles of
the court of the Mosque, two for the use of men and two for the use
of women. In the centre was a great monolithic reservoir of marble,
from which rose a fountain that diffused its refreshing spray over
the tropical vegetation with which the court was adorned. The blocks
for these basins were quarried in the mountains, miles from Cordova,
and the largest required the power of seventy oxen and an army of
laborers to transport it to its destination. This gigantic undertaking
consumed twelve days. An abundant supply of water was conveyed from
the springs and rivulets of the sierra through the aqueduct, and the
overflow passed by means of pipes into immense cisterns under the
pavement of the court, available in case of siege and an ever-ready
protection against fire. The aqueduct also supplied many other
fountains throughout the city, which were increased in number and
convenience by the provident care of the Khalif. The hydraulic works
of Al-Hakem are almost intact to-day, after the vicissitudes of many
eventful ages and the constant wear of more than nine hundred years.
The marble reservoirs, where were once performed the lustrations of
Moslem zealots from every land, now furnish with water the populace of
Christian Cordova, whose squalid and repulsive appearance, whose brutal
physical characteristics, whose profound ignorance of the history of
the cleanly, intellectual, and polished race to which these splendid
memorials of art and industry are to be ascribed, offer striking
evidence of the instability of the highest civilization and of the
constant tendency of man to retrograde to the condition of the savage;
of his incapacity to appreciate or profit by the experience and the
wisdom of the conquered when the latter belong to another creed or
another sect; and of the stupendous power for evil that can be exerted
by a hierarchy whose established policy is founded on the systematic
debasement of the intellectual faculties of its slaves.
A pleasing story is related of Al-Hakem which strikingly illustrates
his equanimity and his genial manners as well as that reverence for
learning and its professors which was characteristic both of the man
and the monarch. The imperious demands of despotic power, as we are
accustomed to regard them, admit of no hesitation or compromise in
their obedience. Yet such was the mild and forbearing disposition of
this great sovereign that his subjects could venture, on occasions that
seemed to justify it, to postpone for their own convenience compliance
with orders that were peremptory. While the faqui Abu-Ibrahim, one of
the greatest of the authorities on Mohammedan law whose talents adorned
the University of Cordova, was lecturing one day to a large class
of students in one of the mosques, he received, through a eunuch, a
summons from the Khalif to attend him instantly at the palace.
“I hear with profound respect the order of the Commander of the
Faithful,” replied Abu-Ibrahim. “Return to him, and say that thou
hast found me in the House of God, surrounded by my pupils, whom I am
instructing in the traditions relating to the Prophet. Tell him that
the moment I have finished my lecture on this holy subject, by which
my audience will fail to profit if I am interrupted, I will repair to
him.” The eunuch, confounded by this reply, returned to the palace, and
reported the result of the interview. In a short time he came back, and
addressed Abu-Ibrahim as follows: “O Faqui, I have delivered thy answer
to the Sultan, who applauds thy piety and appreciates the importance
of the labors thou art daily performing for the benefit of our holy
religion; he will await thy pleasure, and has directed me to remain
until thy lecture is finished, that I may escort thee to his presence.”
Not only did the complaisance of Al-Hakem, on this occasion as on many
others, yield to the claims of learning, but it was also indulgent
to the age and weakness of his friend. He caused the gate which was
nearest the palace to be opened to accommodate the venerable professor,
who walked with difficulty and whose infirmities prevented him from
mounting on horseback; and when he arrived at the entrance he found
a great number of officials and domestics assembled to do him honor,
and waiting to conduct him, with the ceremony due to his reputation
and the esteem in which he was held by his royal master, into the hall
of audience. Thus could the placid and magnanimous nature of Al-Hakem
subordinate the prerogatives of royalty to the demands of knowledge,
and sacrifice for the benefit of the votaries of science that
implicit obedience whose neglect is an evidence of treason, and whose
instantaneous observance is one of the inseparable rights of arbitrary
power. His greatness even rose superior to the paltry prejudices of
rank and the requirements of custom; the intimacy in which he lived
with the learned, the respectful familiarity which he encouraged
from his favorites, offer a surprising contrast to the tyranny and
impatience usually associated with the possession of despotic authority.
There have existed few examples of a ruler so perfectly identified
with the spirit of his age and the genius of his people as was
Al-Hakem, whose name most appropriately signifies The Wise. Nature
had not bestowed upon him the consummate talents for organization,
and the prophetic sagacity with which she had gifted the founder of
his dynasty, Abd-al-Rahman I. He did not possess either the political
tact or the military capacity of Abd-al-Rahman III. But in all the
substantial acquirements of useful knowledge; in the appreciation
of the works of genius, and the disposition to reward them; in the
encouragement of every art which promotes happiness and alleviates
suffering; in the practice of those virtues which reflect dignity on
a subject and shine with still greater lustre when included in the
attributes of royalty, he was certainly without a rival among all the
Spanish Mohammedan princes. He was the worthy representative of the
advanced culture, the scientific attainments, the poesy and the art
of Hispano-Arab civilization, as contrasted with the intellectual
darkness, the disgusting immorality, the revolting filth, the abject
superstition, which characterized the contemporaneous society of
Europe. His tireless industry and prodigious erudition were the
marvel of his time. His devotion to literature was imitated by his
subjects, who embraced with enthusiasm pursuits which both diminished
the privations of the poor and contributed to the enjoyment of the
favorites of fortune. The highest and most lucrative positions were
the rewards of those who had attained to distinguished eminence in
literary pursuits, without regard to their political antecedents, their
nationality, or their ancestry.
The example of the Khalif, who often, with his own hands, cultivated
his gardens, was followed by the kadis, the walis, the muftis, the
nobles of the empire. He utilized to the utmost the natural resources
of the Peninsula. Agriculture was brought to such excellence as seemed
to make any further improvement impossible. The ships of Cadiz,
Seville, Almeria, and Valencia boldly traversed the most dangerous
seas. The merino sheep, whose migrations over the plains of Estremadura
and Castile were made subject to laws which have been adopted by and
are still in force among the Spaniards, amounted to millions. Valuable
deposits of ore were opened and developed for the benefit of commerce
and the arts. In short, the reign of Al-Hakem represents the golden age
of Moslem history,--an age that with singular felicity had appropriated
the wisdom and the experience of antiquity; whose wonderful progress
in every branch of industry, in every department of knowledge, was the
admiration of all nations, Christian and infidel; and whose inspiring
genius was, in reality, the last, as he was the most accomplished, of a
famous race of kings.
CHAPTER XIV
REIGN OF HISCHEM II.
976–1012
Origin of Ibn-abi-Amir-Al-Mansur--The Scene in the
Garden--Genius and Attainments of the Youthful
Statesman--His Sudden Rise to Power--Influence of the
Eunuchs--Their Conspiracy Detected--Ibn-abi-Amir aspires
to Supreme Authority--He is appointed Hajib--Ruin of
his Rivals--Reorganization of the Civil and Military
Service--Systematic Degradation of Hischem--The Palace of
Zahira--The Hajib becomes Master of the Empire--Successful
Wars with the Christians--Disturbances in Africa--Destruction
of Leon--Sack of Santiago--Death of Al-Mansur--His Great
Services to the State--His Unbroken Series of Military
Triumphs--Al-Modhaffer--Abd-al-Rahman--Mohammed--Suleyman
--Disappearance of Hischem--Rapid Disintegration of the Empire.
Simultaneously with the accession of Hischem II. a gigantic and ominous
figure, like a portentous spectre, at once the impersonation of glory
and the harbinger of ruin, appears upon the theatre of action in the
Peninsula. Under the two preceding sovereigns the Moslem Empire of the
West had made unparalleled advances in useful knowledge, in commercial
prosperity, in all the arts which raise nations to the most exalted
rank in the scale of civilization. Peace reigned everywhere within
its borders. The tendency to sedition, which had so long obstructed
its prosperity and depleted its population, had been vigorously and
successfully repressed. Justice, untainted with even the suspicion of
corruption, and which was no respecter of persons, was dispensed by
its tribunals. Its system of education and its results were the wonder
of the age. The achievements of its learned men, who were scattered
over Europe, had caused them to incur the suspicion of, and, in some
instances, even to endure the penalties attaching to the profession
and the practice of magic. And yet, with all its greatness and all
its fame, the khalifate was destined, under the administration of
the phantom monarch Hischem II.--the last of his dynasty--to attain
to a still higher position among the nations of the earth. This
pre-eminent distinction; the unbroken triumph of more than fifty
campaigns; the humiliation of its enemies in their formerly impregnable
strongholds; the desecration and plunder of their most sacred shrines;
the devastation and impoverishment of their territory; their regular
payment of tribute and acknowledgment of vassalage,--all of these
results are to be attributed to the talents of the hajib, Al-Mansur,
the most consummate political and military genius that ever guided the
destinies of any portion of the vast and opulent empire conquered and
ruled by the sectaries of Mohammed.
Among the adventurers who followed the banner of Tarik at the time
of the Conquest was Abd-al-Melik, an Arab descended from a noble
family of Yemen, whom political entanglements and financial reverses
had compelled to assume the hazardous but attractive calling of a
soldier of fortune. The scarcity of men of intelligence and integrity
in an army of barbarians led to the appointment of the illustrious
exile to the command of a division. In this capacity he occupied
the ancient town of Carteya, the first fortified place taken by the
invaders. After participating in the campaigns of Tarik and Musa,
Abd-al-Melik retired to the castle of Torrox on the Guadiaro, which
had fallen to his share in the general distribution of the confiscated
lands of the Visigothic monarchy. Although not belonging to the
Koreishite aristocracy, his family was distinguished by its former
services to the state as well as by its social position and scholastic
acquirements. The great-grandson of Abd-al-Melik had been the hajib
of the Emir Mohammed, who loaded him with wealth and honors. Many of
his descendants contracted matrimonial alliances with the daughters of
great physicians, theologians, statesmen. Others filled with credit
high employments at court and in the judiciary. But, with the exception
of the founder of the house, none had embraced that martial profession
from whence it originally derived its eminence. The representative of
this family, at the commencement of the reign of Al-Hakem II., was
Mohammed-Ibn-abi-Amir, a student of law in the University of Cordova.
It was but a few days after the death of Abd-al-Rahman III. that a
group of students, five in number, were seated in a garden belonging to
one of the houses of public entertainment which abounded in the suburbs
of the great Moslem capital. Darkness had fallen, and the reflection
from the myriads of lights, distributed for miles around, diffused its
tempered glow over the innumerable palms and tropical plants which
adorned the streets and public parks, whose sombre foliage was further
brightened by many bronze lamps of curious design, suspended here and
there from the branches. The fragrance of flowers filled the air.
The balmy softness of the Andalusian climate exerted its voluptuous
influence; the perfumed breeze brought to the drowsy ear the confused
murmur of the distant city, about to rest from the labors of the day,
and the broken notes of a plaintive song, to which some anxious lover
under a neighboring balcony was keeping an accompaniment with the lute.
Upon the table were the fragments of a repast, and an empty flagon
which had contained the amber wine of Jerez, whose condition showed
that the revellers viewed with scant reverence the menacing injunctions
of the Prophet. The conversation of four of the party was lively and
boisterous; the fifth, however, plunged in an absorbing reverie, had,
for some time, preserved a gloomy and unbroken silence. “What ails
thee, O Ibn-abi-Amir?” at length exclaimed one of his companions; “thou
art as pensive as a faqui and as silent as a camel that treads the
sand-drifts of the Desert; hast thou perchance lost thy mistress?”
“I have long had a presentiment, O Mohammed, that one day I should rule
this land; let each of you now declare what public employment he most
desires, and I pledge my word that when I rise to power it shall be
conferred upon him,” responded the taciturn student.
A roar of laughter greeted this unexpected reply.
“Ah!” said one of the merry collegians, “these figs are delicious, and
I should be pleased to live in Malaga, where they grow; for my part I
choose to be governor of that province.”
Another exclaimed, “I have never tasted anything as good as these
cakes. I beg you to appoint me inspector of markets, for then I shall
be surfeited with delicacies, without the expenditure of a single
dirhem.”
Another said, “I am enchanted with this magnificent city; whose shrine
is the glory of Islam; whose suburbs are inferior only to the gardens
of Paradise; whose wealth surpasses all the treasures of the Orient;
whose palaces are the wonder of the world. I prefer, above all other
offices, the prefecture of Cordova.”
The fourth student remained sullen and silent.
“O Abdallah!” said one of his companions, “why dost thou not profit by
the generosity of the future ruler of Andaluz?”
Abdallah rose, and, seizing Ibn-abi-Amir by the beard, exclaimed, in a
voice choked with indignation and rage, “Wretched boaster! thy insolent
presumption exceeds that of Iblis himself,--thou the ruler of Andaluz!
Let the first act of thy authority be to have me stripped naked,
smeared with honey that the bees and flies may sting me, placed upon a
donkey with my face to his tail, and paraded in this condition through
the streets of the capital. This is the favor that I demand of thee,
who with thy insufferable conceit and arrogance doth insult the majesty
of the khalifate, and the honor and dignity of the Successors of the
Prophet of God!”
Releasing himself with some difficulty, and stifling, as best he could,
his resentment at the most outrageous affront that could be offered
to a Mussulman, Ibn-abi-Amir calmly replied, “The time will come when
you will all have cause to remember this day. I shall not forget my
promise, and each of you shall have his request granted, according to
the literal terms in which he has preferred it.”
Such was the self-confidence of Ibn-abi-Amir, who, while a poor
and obscure youth, almost unknown amidst the thousands of students
in attendance at the University of Cordova, yet animated by the
inspiration of genius and conscious of his capacity for great
undertakings, could thus indulge in seemingly extravagant dreams of
empire. But with all this apparent presumption his was no common
character. He united in a remarkable degree all the qualities which
conduct men to political eminence. Bold even to the verge of audacity;
energetic, persevering, and hopeful under the most discouraging
circumstances; inexhaustible in resource; absolutely indifferent as
to the morality of the means employed to attain an end so long as its
expediency was established; a grateful friend and an implacable enemy;
an adroit negotiator; a born commander; almost from boyhood he seemed
to have employed his extraordinary abilities in the accomplishment of
the lofty design which was the cherished object of his unscrupulous
ambition. His features were regular, his conversation agreeable, his
manners captivating to a degree that excited admiration in a society
whose politeness was proverbial, and the stately etiquette of whose
court was not excelled by that of any country or of any age. His
knowledge of human nature was so unerring that it almost seemed the
result of inspiration. No one could resist the fascinating influence
that invested his presence. No one could withstand the effects of his
resentment. And yet, despite his fiery nature, the profound policy
which guided all his actions enabled him to restrain his anger and
control his passions until the time for vengeance had come. He was an
accomplished scholar, especially well versed in jurisprudence, and had
early familiarized himself with the stirring annals of Islam; with the
arduous struggles of its Founder; with the sufferings of its martyrs;
with its victories and its disasters; with the wonderful progress of
its civilization; with the martial achievements of its heroes. He
knew by heart the story of the great captains and statesmen, many of
whom, though born in an obscure station like himself, had made the
Moslem cause illustrious under the dynasties of the East and West.
Thus, gifted with every talent that nature could bestow; his faculties
strengthened and developed by the advantages derived from a thorough
mental training; his being dominated by an iron will whose power was
directed to the realization of a project which for the time absorbed
every other aspiration, the unknown and penniless adventurer prepared
to push his fortunes.
After his education was completed, he managed to obtain a precarious
livelihood in the capacity of a public writer who drew up petitions
to be presented to the Khalif. His skill in chirography, and his
knowledge of jurisprudence, obtained for him, in a short time, the
place of under-secretary in the supreme tribunal of Cordova. But
the kadi, a magistrate of strict integrity and a man of reserved
disposition and unsociable manners, soon contracted a prejudice against
his gay and versatile subordinate, and while he could not deny his
extraordinary abilities, his dignity was shocked by his habitual
levity. So he applied to the vizier Moshafi to give his employee
some other appointment. The vizier, knowing that Al-Hakem was about
to select a steward for the estate of Prince Hischem, suggested the
name of Ibn-abi-Amir. The Khalif was willing, but the appointment
was, in reality, vested in the favorite sultana, Aurora. The latter
was a Christian by birth and a woman of great beauty, of avaricious
disposition, of lax morals, and of a fiery temper. She enjoys the
rare and doubtful distinction of being the only member of her sex
who, during the sway of the Ommeyade dynasty, exercised an influence
over the political destinies of her country. Her position as mother
of the heir apparent--the only surviving son of Al-Hakem--had given
her an unbounded ascendant over the mind of her husband, which she
did not hesitate to abuse for her own personal benefit. There were
many candidates for the coveted office, whose dignity and emoluments,
important as they were, yet bore no proportion to the secret power
wielded by the incumbent and the opportunities it afforded for
elevation to the highest employments of the court.
Once established in a position where he could thoroughly avail himself
of his talents, Ibn-abi-Amir soon rose to distinction. He found favor
in the eyes of the Sultana Aurora, who appointed him steward of her
household. Through her influence--all powerful with the Khalif--seven
months after his introduction by the vizier Moshafi and before he had
attained his twenty-seventh year, he was advanced to the responsible
office of Superintendent of the Mint, which included many of the
functions of a minister of finance. The keen observation of the young
official soon disclosed to his penetrating mind the rare facilities for
pecuniary aggrandizement and political promotion his place afforded
to a man of tireless energy, unscrupulous character, and boundless
aspirations. His duties brought him daily into intimate relations
with the most powerful dignitaries of the empire. Great sums of money
were at his disposal. The implicit confidence reposed in him, and
the high favor he enjoyed at court, rendered it improbable that any
inspection of his accounts would be ordered without timely warning,
and an opportunity afforded to correct any embarrassing deficit. The
regular habits of his life, severe almost to austerity; his knowledge
of affairs; the inspiration of his genius which seemed to solve,
without an effort, formidable problems of political economy and finance
which defied the capacity and industry of others, peculiarly fitted
him for the important post he occupied. While strictly observant of
his responsibilities, every circumstance of his surroundings, every
suggestion of his commanding intellect, were made subservient to the
purposes of his ambition. By the exquisite courtesy of his manners
and the deference he displayed towards his superiors, he conciliated
the proud and exclusive nobility, who at first looked with marked
disapproval upon the rapid elevation of the aspiring young statesman.
The lower classes were charmed by his condescension, by his generosity,
by his affability, by the tact that never forgot the claims of old
acquaintance, by the gratitude that never failed to acknowledge the
obligations of ancient friendship. The treasures of the state were
used, without stint or scruple, to increase or to strengthen the
following of the Superintendent of the Mint. No one in distress applied
to him without relief. The fame of his public benefactions spread
even to the borders of the khalifate. Thus, by the improvement of
every opportunity, and by the judicious employment of the unlimited
means at his disposal, Ibn-abi-Amir organized and controlled a large
and growing party of adherents, whose loyalty to his person and his
interests was in many instances even stronger than the devotion which
they entertained towards their lawful sovereign.
It was not, however, through his influence with the nobility, nor from
his popularity with the masses, that Ibn-abi-Amir derived his most
sanguine hopes of success. His personal attractions had captivated the
susceptible Sultana, who, blessed with an unsuspicious and complacent
husband, scarcely deigned to conceal her admiration for her handsome
_protégé_. An intimacy was established between them, whose
continuance seems strangely incompatible with the jealous espionage
of an Oriental court, and which furnished an inexhaustible fund of
raillery for the sarcastic and anonymous poets of the capital. Every
whim of the fair Aurora was gratified by her devoted steward. Her
wishes were often anticipated. The silence of the occupants and the
slaves of the harem was procured and retained by the distribution
of costly gifts. The princess herself was the beneficiary of the
most prodigal munificence. On one occasion, Ibn-abi-Amir caused to
be constructed for her a miniature palace of massy silver. Every
detail of and appendage to a royal dwelling was reproduced in this
expensive and ingenious toy. The eunuchs, the guards, the attendants,
in their appropriate garb, were represented by tiny statuettes. The
fountains were supplied with delicate perfumes instead of water. The
gorgeous ornamentations of an alcazar were delineated with marvellous
fidelity and beauty. This magnificent present excited the wonder of
the populace, when, supported upon the shoulders of a score of slaves,
it was borne through the streets to the palace and laid at the feet
of the delighted Aurora. But this crowning exhibition of extravagance
came near being attended with serious consequences. The promotion of
Ibn-abi-Amir, despite his tact and liberality, which disarmed the envy
and malice of the courtiers, had raised up against him powerful and
resolute enemies. The latter openly accused the Superintendent of the
Mint of embezzlement of the public funds. With the summary proceedings
characteristic of an arbitrary government, Ibn-abi-Amir was cited
at once before the Divan, and ordered to produce his books and all
the treasure in his possession. The wary minister was equal to the
emergency. A thorough accountant, he knew at the close of each day the
exact amount of the deficit which he was conscious must, some time or
other, be made good. He applied to the vizier, Ibn-Hodair, who was
indebted to him for numerous favors, for a temporary loan of several
thousand pieces of gold. The vizier was only too happy to oblige his
friend; the accuracy of the accounts was verified; the sum for which
the Superintendent of the Mint was responsible was found to be intact;
and those who had impeached the official integrity of the minister were
branded with the obloquy which attaches to the unsuccessful persecution
of an honest and capable public servant.
The credit of Ibn-abi-Amir now rose higher than ever. His success in
extricating himself from the snare which had been so artfully laid for
him extorted the unwilling praise of his adversaries. To make amends
for the apparent injustice he had done the favorite by impugning his
honesty, Al-Hakem conferred upon him new and repeated marks of his
confidence. He became, in succession, trustee of intestate estates,
Kadi of Seville, and Chief of Police of Cordova. A still greater
dignity was soon afterwards tendered him, and one whose importance in
advancing his interests he was not slow to appreciate.
The enormous expenditures of Ghalib in Mauritania, which he had
represented as necessary to detach the Berber chieftains from the
standard of Ibn-Kenun, had aroused the suspicions of the Khalif. The
interests of the government in Africa demanded the presence of an able
financier, whose prudence and authority might curb the extravagance
or stop the peculations of the generals who were squandering the
revenues of the empire. The reputation of Ibn-abi-Amir designated
him as the most available personage to discharge the duties of this
important but invidious employment. He was accordingly appointed kadi
of the entire province of Mauritania and invested with extraordinary
powers. His control over the finances of the civil and military
administrations was unlimited and supreme. He was directed to supervise
all expenditures and to rigidly scrutinize all accounts. Such was the
confidence reposed in his judgment, and the high opinion entertained
of his talents by the Khalif, that, although he was entirely destitute
of military training or experience, the veteran generals of the
African army were ordered to undertake no operations without previous
consultation with the Kadi of Mauritania. The difficulties attending
the administration of a charge of this character and responsibility
were such as would have utterly baffled a less dexterous and politic
statesman than Ibn-abi-Amir. By the army he was regarded as an ignorant
upstart, by the civil officials as a spy and informer. But his rare
adroitness and the irresistible fascination of his manners soon removed
these prejudices. Without neglecting the interests of his master, he
succeeded in acquiring the esteem of the officers and the respect of
the soldiery. He astonished the former by his opportune suggestions
concerning an art with the application of whose rules he had no
practical acquaintance. He engaged in the conversation, participated in
the amusements, and shared the privations of the latter. His tenacious
memory, which recalled without effort the name of every individual he
had once seen, aided materially to the increase and the preservation
of his personal popularity. With a view to future contingencies, the
sagacious minister neglected no occasion to secure the good will of the
Berber chieftains. He shared their rude but generous hospitality. He
flattered their ridiculous pretensions, and indulged their hereditary
prejudices. He impressed them with his power by an imposing display of
pomp and magnificence. The presents which he lavished upon them were
reported and exaggerated with barbarian hyperbole in every camp of
the Desert. Such was the affection with which he came to be regarded
by the ferocious bandits of Mauritania that it almost supplanted
the semi-religious respect claimed and exacted by their sheiks, who
exercised the functions of a precarious magistracy, based rather upon
temporary and conditional submission than established by the absolute
and permanent renunciation of a part of the natural rights of the
governed.
After the return of Ibn-abi-Amir in the train of the victorious
Ghalib, he assumed a state corresponding with his rank and the public
estimation in which he was held. His palace at Rusafah, one of the most
charming suburbs of Cordova, rivalled the abodes of royalty in elegance
and splendor. The most exquisite decorations embellished its walls.
Its extensive gardens exhibited all the luxuriance and beauty of the
tropics. The groves swarmed with nightingales and birds of gorgeous
plumage. Innumerable fountains diffused on every side their welcome
and refreshing spray. Multitudes of slaves, arrayed in brilliant robes
of silk, thronged the corridors. In the great marble dining-hall
a table was constantly laid for the benefit of all who desired to
partake of the hospitality of the owner. The influence and popularity
of the latter were daily manifested by the throng of petitioners who,
from dawn to sunset, obstructed the gates of the palace. Of all this
crowd, no suppliant, however humble, was suffered to depart without a
courteous and attentive hearing. The constant accumulation of business,
and the demands of the various official employments of the minister,
required the services of a great number of clerks and secretaries.
These offices, while no sinecures, were eagerly solicited by youths
connected with the most respectable families of Cordova, who esteemed
it an honor to perfect their political education under so accomplished
a master, and who were not slow to detect that through his service
lay the path to future power and distinction. The popularity of
Ibn-abi-Amir, who, in addition to his other official functions, had
recently assumed those of the steward of the palace, was at its height
when Al-Hakem died; and the minister, with the Vizier Moshafi, who
had jointly been invested with that trust by the Khalif, prepared to
establish the regency and assume control of the empire.
The apprehensions entertained by Al-Hakem of the public disapprobation
attending the accession of a minor were speedily realized. The gradual
divergence from the ancient constitution of the Arabs, which recognized
only the claims of princes of mature age and established reputation,
was viewed with suspicion and dislike by every class of the people. The
merely factitious title of hereditary descent was not sufficient, in
their eyes, to compensate for the dangers liable to result from want
of experience and administrative ability. The investiture of an infant
with regal authority was uniformly regarded by the superstitious as
an evil omen, which portended the destruction of the monarchy. The
case was, moreover, without precedent in the history of the khalifate,
for the wise sovereigns of the House of Ommeyah had invariably,
under similar circumstances, subordinated paternal fondness to the
paramount interests of the state. In this instance, the expediency
of an opposite course was obvious, for the brothers of Al-Hakem were
universally recognized as thoroughly competent to discharge with credit
the high and responsible duties connected with the exercise of the
supreme power. Fully cognizant of this prejudice, the eunuchs, those
baneful parasites of Oriental despotism whose lives were passed in an
atmosphere of intrigue and corruption, dexterously prepared to avail
themselves of the popular discontent for the promotion of their own
designs. These incarnate fiends, who found in the betrayal of their
fellow-creatures an inadequate but grateful compensation for the
outrage inflicted on them by society, had acquired, with every reign, a
fresh accession of pride and insolence. A picked body of a thousand of
them constituted the guard of the harem. Although slaves, they enjoyed
exclusive privileges, and, with every opportunity for the indulgence of
their dominating passion of avarice, had accumulated vast possessions.
A mistaken idea, imported with other noxious principles from the
Orient, caused the immunity of the eunuch and the exhibition of his
opulence to be considered as a necessary appendage to the grandeur of
the sovereign. As a natural result of this opinion, the impudence and
oppression of this powerful caste were exercised without restraint
until they became intolerable. They robbed tradesmen with impunity.
They scourged with relentless brutality such unfortunate pedestrians
as crossed their pathway. They invaded the privacy of households
and insulted their inmates,--an inexpiable offence under Mussulman
law. They borrowed large sums of money from wealthy merchants under
conditions which practically amounted to confiscation. Their sanguinary
brawls with the populace, in which the police dared not interfere,
constantly disturbed the peace of the city. No tribunal would venture
to entertain a complaint against these petty tyrants; and the equitable
disposition of the Khalif himself was changed to gross partiality,
where the punishment of a member of that privileged guard, whose
license he considered indispensable to his own safety, was concerned.
The chiefs of this corps, which was at once the terror and the reproach
of the capital, were Fayic and Djaudar, one of whom was Master of the
Wardrobe, the other, Grand Falconer. The affluence and power of these
two officials; the lucrative employments they controlled; the boundless
opportunities for peculation they enjoyed and improved; their constant
and unceremonious access to the monarch; their almost irresponsible
authority over the palace and the harem, gave them a consideration not
possessed by any of the other great dignitaries of the khalifate. From
all who approached them they exacted the deference and the etiquette
due only to those in the highest station. An armed retinue, splendidly
equipped, guarded their persons when they went abroad. In accordance
with the anomalous conditions which prevailed in the society of Moorish
Spain,--where soldiers served eunuchs and freemen obeyed the behests
of slaves,--a numerous following of dependents and employees, who
had not been subjected to either the torture of emasculation or the
restraints of servitude, awaited the pleasure of the unprincipled
favorites of royalty. Their consequence was disclosed by the multitudes
that incessantly besieged the gates of their palaces. The horror and
mystery which invested their character and their lives were frequently
increased by the sudden and permanent disappearance of persons who
were known to have incurred their enmity.
The death of Al-Hakem was unexpected, and no one was present during
his last moments excepting the chief eunuchs, Fayic and Djaudar.
These crafty individuals, conscious of the unpopularity of their
caste, and knowing that their crimes would receive scant indulgence
at the hands of the ministers Ibn-abi-Amir and Moshafi, determined to
suppress for a time the intelligence of the Khalif’s death, change the
succession, and thereby secure for themselves a continuance of power.
The prince they selected to occupy the vacant throne was Moghira, the
brother of Al-Hakem. But a first and indispensable requisite for the
success of the enterprise was, according to the practical Djaudar,
the assassination of the vizier Moshafi. To this suggestion, Fayic,
who underestimated the capacity and resolution of the minister,
refused to accede. After some discussion, it was determined to send
for Moshafi, and endeavor, by every inducement possible, to turn him
from his allegiance. Nothing could have been more gratifying to the
conspirators than the compliance of the vizier. He appeared to enter
heartily into the scheme, gave his new associates much wise counsel,
and promised that he in person would, at the proper moment, guard
the door of the palace. Then returning to his residence, he hastily
assembled a number of civil and military officials upon whose fidelity
he could depend, and acquainted them with the plot that had just come
to his knowledge. The danger was imminent; the accession of Moghira,
and the supremacy of the eunuchs which was certain to result from it
and would affect the life or fortunes of every prominent member of the
government, demanded the most energetic action. It was determined,
without a dissenting voice, that Moghira should be put to death. This
resolution was easily taken, but its execution was a different matter.
The amiable and inoffensive character of the prince rendered his
deliberate assassination extremely repugnant even to men whose cruel
habits and sanguinary experience had ordinarily rendered them deaf to
the appeals of pity. At length, Ibn-abi-Amir rose amidst the silent
assembly, and agreed to assume the invidious office of executioner.
At the head of a strong guard, he proceeded at once to the palace of
the unhappy Moghira, who was equally unconscious of the death of his
brother, of the dangerous honor for which the ambition of the eunuchs
had designated him, and of the stern decree which had just sealed his
fate. With all the matchless courtesy for which he was distinguished,
the messenger of death announced his errand. Overcome with grief at the
loss of his brother, and terrified by the presence of the soldiery,
Moghira, after giving utterances to the most fervid protestations
of devotion to his nephew, implored with tears the clemency of the
minister. Deeply moved by the distress of the prince, the resolution
of Ibn-abi-Amir faltered, and he despatched a messenger to the vizier,
declaring his confidence in the loyalty of Moghira, and suggesting
that the decree of the council should be modified and imprisonment
be substituted for the penalty of death. The reply of Moshafi was
peremptory: “Execute him at once; if thou dost not like the commission
thou hast voluntarily undertaken, I will send another not troubled with
such unseasonable scruples.” Further delay was out of the question;
Moghira was strangled, and the room in which the crime was perpetrated
was at once walled up with solid masonry. The memory of this deed, as
cruel as it was unwise, long rankled in the heart of Ibn-abi-Amir. He
never forgave the vizier for the guilt he had incurred through his
agency, by an act whose expediency no sophistry could establish, and
whose barbarity no political necessity could excuse. The time was
soon to come when the relentless Moshafi was to experience, in his
turn, all the bitterness of death without its consolations; all the
mortifications which attend the loss of power and fortune; all the
pangs of conscience which proceed from the violation of the immutable
laws of justice and the wanton sacrifice of the most obvious principles
of morality.
The placid exterior of Ibn-abi-Amir gave no sign of his outraged
feelings when he returned to his colleagues, but his spirit had been
deeply moved, and, with the vindictive energy of his nature, he
treasured up against the vizier a terrible account to be discharged
upon the day of reckoning.
The chief eunuchs received with consternation the news of the
betrayal of their project and the death of the prince; but they
were so satisfied of the security of their power that they did
not for an instant suspend their treasonable operations. Their
emissaries, dispersed among the populace, multiplied by their artful
representations the perils incident to the accession of a sovereign who
had not yet passed the age of childhood. The circumstances attending
the murder of Moghira--unjustifiable enough in themselves--were
distorted and exaggerated. The resentment of the masses was inflamed
against the ministers, whose rapacity and ambition, it was suggested,
would subordinate to their own designs every consideration connected
with the safety of the state and the prosperity of the empire. The
services of influential and mercenary demagogues were enlisted; the
wealth of the eunuchs was lavished without stint to secure and retain
their partisans; open denunciations of the authorities were heard on
every hand; the appearance of a member of the unpopular faction in the
streets was the signal for a riot; and the restless and seditious
population of Cordova seemed again ripe for revolution.
The manifest incompetency of Moshafi to deal with the situation
impelled Ibn-abi-Amir, who had been raised to the office of vizier,
to proffer to the Divan some wholesome advice, couched in terms not
distinguishable from those of command. The rebellious ardor of the
mob was damped by an imposing military display in which the youthful
Khalif participated. The good-will of the poor was at the same time
secured by the remission of certain oppressive taxes levied during the
reign of Al-Hakem, and which had been the source of great annoyance and
distress. The danger of an uprising having been for the moment removed,
Ibn-abi-Amir bent all his energies to the destruction of the power
of the eunuchs. His secret agents exercised vigilant and incessant
espionage over their movements. His gold seduced their retainers. Those
who had suffered from the avarice and injustice of the subordinates
of the Master of the Wardrobe and the Grand Falconer were privately
encouraged to institute proceedings against their oppressors. Some of
the latter were imprisoned, others were executed, others again sought
safety in flight. Of the chiefs, Djaudar was forced to resign his
employments, and Fayic was banished to Majorca, where he died, not long
afterwards, in poverty. The discomfiture of these bold conspirators
allayed the popular excitement, which was principally due to their
machinations, and enabled the government to turn its attention to
another quarter, where the success of the Christians was causing great
and increasing alarm.
The political agitation which followed the death of Al-Hakem and
the settlement of the regency was well known to the courts of Leon
and Navarre. The occasion was considered an auspicious one for the
abrogation of treaties; for the repudiation of the hateful obligations
of tribute; for the seizure of territory acquired by Moslem valor; for
the recovery of military prestige lost since the time of the great
Abd-al-Rahman. The active partisans of the North accordingly swarmed
over the unprotected provinces, whose inhabitants had slackened their
vigilance and neglected their arms during the long and pacific reign of
Al-Hakem. Little resistance was encountered, owing to the incompetency
of the officers charged with the defence of the frontier. The habitual
indolence of Moshafi was soon found to be unable to cope with these
enterprising marauders, who eluded his squadrons and spread terror and
ruin among the rich plantations and hamlets of Andalusia. At length,
emboldened by success, they passed the Sierra Morena, and the ominous
spectacle of the banners of the infidel was once more visible from the
towers of the capital. This defiance was more than the pride of the
Sultana could endure. She sent for Ibn-abi-Amir, and implored him to
chastise the insolence of the Christians. A council was accordingly
held, and an expedition resolved upon. The vizier, with his usual
address, managed to be assigned to the supreme command, and, to avoid
as far as possible the contingency of a reverse, the wary general,
with the closest discrimination, selected for this service the most
trustworthy officers and the most experienced veterans of the army.
At this time Ibn-abi-Amir had just entered his thirty-ninth year. Of
the theory of the art of war he knew but little, of the practical
application of its principles absolutely nothing. His entire life had
been passed in avocations whose duties were rather a hinderance than
an aid to service in the field. But the powers of his mind, equal
to any emergency, enabled him to surmount with ease the apparently
insuperable obstacles that now confronted him. If he was deficient in
military knowledge and experience, he was, on the other hand, endowed
with qualities too often ignored or despised by the martinet. In
prudence, in coolness, in judgment, in courage, he was not surpassed
by the most accomplished leader that ever directed the movements of an
army. The hitherto successful realization of his projects, which he had
foreseen and carefully planned, inspired him with a just, but not an
arrogant, confidence in the capabilities of his genius. He possessed
the secret of ingratiating himself with the soldiers, whose devotion
to his person subsequently carried the day on many a hard-fought and
doubtful field. All, of whatever rank, shared most liberally the
fruits of his bounty. The officers were daily entertained at his
table. Individual prowess was generously rewarded. The most trifling
infraction of discipline was punished with inflexible severity. Such
was the policy that guided the conduct of the new general from the very
beginning of his martial career. Under the circumstances, it is not at
all surprising that his arms for a quarter of a century should have
been absolutely invincible.
The first expedition of Ibn-abi-Amir was not remarkable for the
results which it accomplished in a military point of view. But its
moral effects upon both Moslem and Christian were far more important
than would seem to proceed from a mere foray into the country of
the enemy. It revived the declining prestige of the khalifate. It
raised the flagging ardor of the soldiery, enervated by the vices
and the indolence of an uneventful and protracted peace. It aroused
well-grounded hopes of future conquest and glory under a new and
enterprising commander. It convinced the implacable enemies of Islam
that the warlike spirit which had so long defeated their projects and
obstructed their ambition was not yet extinct. The flying squadrons of
Leonese ceased to plunder the villages of Andalusia. The shepherd and
the husbandman were henceforth permitted to pursue their vocations in
security. The standards of the infidel, emblazoned with the detested
symbol of the cross, no longer disturbed the devotions or insulted the
majesty of the Moslem capital.
The power of Ibn-abi-Amir being established upon a solid foundation,
he began to mature plans he had long meditated for the acquisition
and exercise of the supreme authority. The talents he had exhibited,
the success he had achieved, had made him the most distinguished and
commanding figure in the kingdom. He now determined to disembarrass
himself, in turn, of such great officials of state as might be able
to thwart him in the execution of his ambitious projects, and he
decided to begin with Moshafi, the only one whose eminent position
could suggest the possibility of rivalry. In the execution of this
project, antipathy of race, ever conspicuous in the Moorish contests
for supremacy, lent its aid to jealousy of power. Moshafi was of Berber
extraction, and consequently obnoxious to the Arab faction to which
Ibn-abi-Amir belonged. The vizier owed the consideration in which he
was held by Al-Hakem solely to his literary attainments, which were
a greater recommendation to the favor of that monarch than either
talents for statesmanship or renown in arms. His pride was excessive;
his character lacked decision; his penuriousness was proverbial; his
peculations conspicuous in a court where moral and political integrity
were the exception. He was already a mere puppet in the hands of his
colleague, whose genius had obtained over his feeble and irresolute
mind a complete ascendency. While maintaining the closest relations
with Moshafi, his perfidious enemy availed himself of every means
to effect his ruin. He constantly excited against him the prejudices
of the Sultana Aurora. He obtained the promotion of Ghalib, the most
distinguished officer of the army, and between whom and Moshafi there
existed a bitter feud, to the highest rank in the military service. He
even enlisted the aid of the unsuspicious vizier for this purpose by
representing the necessity of a reconciliation with that leader, whose
popularity with the soldiery, seconded by his ambition, might at any
time accomplish the overthrow of the administration. Then, this adept
in the arts of intrigue contracted an intimate alliance with Ghalib,
whose principal object was the destruction of the obnoxious vizier.
The two associates worked for a time in harmony for the promotion of
their common interests. Each lauded to the skies the talents and the
virtues of the other. In return for the high commands with which he had
been invested, Ghalib exaggerated the achievements of his companion.
His fulsome praise of the latter secured for him the prefecture of
Cordova, an appointment which involved the dismissal of the son of
Moshafi, who enjoyed the emoluments without discharging the duties of
that responsible office. The venality of this youth, from whom money
could at any time obtain immunity from punishment for even the most
notorious criminal, had completely disorganized the police system
of the city. Footpads infested the streets. Theft and murder were
of nightly occurrence, and the citizens were compelled to rely upon
their own vigilance and courage for that protection to which they
were entitled by law. The mercenary character of the prefect, and the
general demoralization of the municipal government, had, in addition
to the refuse of a great capital, attracted from far and near bands of
desperate characters, eager to profit by the spoils of successful and
unmolested robbery.
But a change was now at hand. The new prefect brought to the
administration of the affairs of his office the same inflexible
justice, the same severity, the same resolution, which had elsewhere
distinguished his conduct in a public capacity. The police system was
remodelled. Its members, terrified by some salutary examples, which
the exigencies of the service required, no longer fraternized with
criminals. The foreign outlaws fled precipitately from the city. The
streets could once more be traversed in security, the suburbs ceased
to be the scene of tumult and disorder. The advantages of rank and
fortune gave no immunity to offenders under the stern jurisdiction of
Ibn-abi-Amir. Even the ties of blood were ignored by this impartial
magistrate, for his own son, having been convicted of some violation
of the law, received such a terrible scourging that he died under the
hands of the executioner.
In the meantime, the friends of Moshafi had called his attention to the
dangers that threatened him, and which his perceptions had not been
acute enough to detect. The crisis was imminent, and the vizier saw no
other means to counteract the insidious designs of his rival except by
courting the favor of his ancient enemy Ghalib. He determined at once
upon a bold stroke of policy, and, with every manifestation of honor
and deference, requested the hand of the daughter of Ghalib for one of
his sons. The pride of the veteran, despite his deep-seated feelings of
enmity, was flattered by the compliment. The family of Moshafi, while
not noble, was one of the most distinguished in Andalusia. His wealth,
acquired by years of peculation, was known to be immense, and his
authority nominally directed the affairs of the khalifate. Impressed
with the advantages of such a matrimonial alliance, Ghalib readily
assented to the proposition of the vizier. Delighted beyond measure
with his success, Moshafi lost no time in arranging the preliminaries;
the marriage-contract was signed, and a day appointed for the final
ceremony. But these arrangements could not be concluded without the
knowledge of the spies of Ibn-abi-Amir, some of whom were members of
the household of the vizier. The latter soon discovered that he was
no match for his wily adversary. His plots were met by counter-plots.
The influence of the Sultana, supported by the entire following of
Ibn-abi-Amir, whose friends included some of the highest functionaries
of the khalifate, was exerted to shake the resolution of Ghalib. The
motives of Moshafi were impugned. It was artfully insinuated that this
sudden demonstration of friendship was only a convenient mask for some
deep-laid act of perfidy. The implacable hatred so long entertained
by the vizier against the veteran commander gave considerable color
of probability to this suggestion. And finally, Ibn-abi-Amir himself
made a formal demand for the hand of the beautiful Asma, protesting
that the son of the plebeian Moshafi was unworthy of a damsel whose
rank and beauty might well entitle her to be the bride of the most
powerful subject of the Moslem empire. The constancy of Ghalib was not
proof against these plausible representations. Without warning, he
repudiated his engagements with Moshafi. His daughter became the wife
of Ibn-abi-Amir; their nuptials were celebrated with a pomp exceeding
anything of the kind ever held in the capital; and the bridegroom
himself was appointed to the office of hajib, the most exalted dignity
in the gift of the crown.
From this time the fall of Moshafi was rapid. The worthless friends of
his prosperity, one by one, abandoned him. He was imprisoned along
with the male members of his family, and their property was seized
pending an investigation for malfeasance in office. There was no
difficulty in establishing the truth of this accusation. The offences
of the culprits had been flagrant and notorious. The sentence of
confiscation imposed upon them swept into the public coffers a great
treasure, most of which had been acquired by fraud and extortion. Such
of the relatives of the vizier as had rendered themselves especially
offensive to their persecutor were strangled. Others managed to eke
out a wretched subsistence by the most menial occupations, and even
by beggary. The venerable Moshafi, after suffering for years every
humiliation that could be imposed by the ingenuity of hatred and the
insolence of power, perished in some unknown way by violence, and
his body was carried to the grave with but little more ceremony than
usually attended the interment of a pauper.
While these events were transpiring, a formidable conspiracy for the
assassination of the Khalif and the promotion of one of his cousins,
Abd-al-Rahman-Ibn-Obeydallah, to the royal dignity, was maturing in the
capital. The great majority of the literary men,--the former companions
and instructors of Ibn-abi-Amir,--with officials who had viewed his
elevation with unconcealed envy and hatred, stimulated by mediocrity
and conscious incompetence, were the promoters of the enterprise.
The dangerous position of leader was assumed by the eunuch Djaudar,
who was anxious to avenge his disgrace, to retrieve his fortunes,
and to restore the failing credit of his caste. There was scarcely a
kadi, a jurist, a poet of the court, or a professor of the University
who was not cognizant of the plot. The faquis and the theologians,
who considered the orthodoxy of Ibn-abi-Amir as more than doubtful,
were concerned in it to a man. The prefect, Ziyad-Ibn-Aflah, who
had succeeded Ibn-abi-Amir in the control of the municipal affairs
of Cordova, promised his co-operation, and agreed to place the armed
force under his command at the disposal of the conspirators. It was
decided that Djaudar should put the Khalif to death. The day for
action arrived; the palace was designedly abandoned by the police;
and Djaudar obtained without suspicion an audience with Hischem. But,
either through awkwardness or irresolution, the blow aimed at the
heart of the Khalif fell short; the assassin was overpowered; and the
prefect, having been summoned to the palace and seeing that all was
lost, endeavored to remove suspicion from himself by the arrest and
zealous prosecution of his accomplices. The leading conspirators were
crucified, and punishments of greater or less severity were inflicted
upon the others. The double traitor, Ziyad-Ibn-Aflah, with brazen
effrontery, assisted at the trial and voted for the condemnation of his
former associates.
Aware that his liberal views on the subject of religion, and the
philosophical studies with which he frequently occupied his leisure,
had created against him a feeling which was largely responsible for the
recent conspiracy, and which might eventually be productive of more
serious disorders, Ibn-abi-Amir determined to make some concessions
to the prejudices of the theologians. The broad toleration of the two
former reigns, when skepticism was fashionable and the cultivation of
philosophy general and popular, had been followed by a reaction. The
influence of the Malikites had been re-established, and it was easy
for these fanatics to excite popular odium against any one suspected
of entertaining heretical opinions. When the obnoxious individual
filled a post of eminence in the state, a hint from a faqui might
be equivalent to a sentence of death. The native shrewdness of
Ibn-abi-Amir suggested a means of counteracting this danger. Having
carefully selected the theologians of the capital most notorious for
their intolerance, he invited them to the palace and solemnly informed
them that the presence of the philosophical and scientific works
in the library of Al-Hakem was a great burden upon his conscience,
and requested their assistance in purging the collection of books
treating of subjects whose study was not sanctioned by the Koran.
Conducted into the immense library whose shelves were covered with the
literary treasures of Europe and Asia, the bigoted enemies of learning
entered upon their task with alacrity. The collection was examined in
detail, and the works known or suspected to be tainted with heterodox
sentiments were consigned to the flames. The distinguished penitent
improved the occasion to offer an edifying exhibition of zeal by
personally assisting in the destruction of the proscribed volumes.
History has failed to acquaint us with the magnitude of this loss. It
must have been important, however, even if due allowance be made for
the ignorance of the muftis and faquis, who had but slight knowledge
of any save theological literature, and whose industry must have
been sorely taxed by the laborious scrutiny of six hundred thousand
volumes. Henceforth no one ventured to question the orthodoxy of the
minister. He patronized with marked partiality all members of the
religious profession; flattered their pride by his attention to their
prosy discourses; won their affection by his liberality; elicited their
praise by his denunciation of infidels. He demonstrated that the skill
of his youth had not departed from him by the production of a beautiful
copy of the Koran, written entirely by his own hand, which he never
suffered to leave his person, and constantly perused in public with
such apparent unction that all who beheld him were greatly impressed
with this remarkable display of devotion.
Moshafi having been disposed of, it was now the turn of Ghalib. The
powerful interest of Ibn-abi-Amir with the Sultana and the nobles
which had raised him to the rank of hajib placed him on a political
equality with his father-in-law. The latter was constantly at variance
with his associate, whom he considered as his inferior, but whose
ascendency in the conduct of the administration he was nevertheless
forced to acknowledge. The annoyance Ibn-abi-Amir suffered from these
disputes, and the fact that Ghalib was now the sole obstacle interposed
between his ambition and the practical sovereignty of the empire, led
him to begin without delay the scheme which he had devised for the
overthrow of his colleague. The first, and indeed the indispensable,
requisite of success was the control of the army. The power of the
audacious minister, which was dreaded by every civil functionary of the
khalifate, virtually ended at the outposts of the nearest garrison.
The soldiery knew him only as a kadi; and while he had behaved with
credit in more than one engagement, and had established a name for
generosity, his military reputation and popularity had so far proved
to be neither brilliant nor enduring. The attachment of the soldiers
centred in Ghalib. They had shared together the hardships and the glory
of many arduous campaigns. Their interests had long been identical,
and any demonstration involving the honor or the safety of the
general would have been resisted by the entire military force of the
monarchy. The army consisted mainly of Arabs, the Berbers enlisted by
Abd-al-Rahman III. having been gradually disbanded and natives of the
Peninsula substituted for them under Al-Hakem. The partiality of their
commander had indulged them in frequent and serious infractions of
discipline. Their equipment was not uniform, and was often defective.
The awkwardness of the horsemen was the jest of foreigners. In many
respects the organization of the various corps did not differ from that
of a disorderly and inefficient militia.
The experience acquired by Ibn-abi-Amir during his sojourn in Africa
had convinced him of the excellence of the Mauritanian cavalry, whose
reputation indeed dated from the First Punic War. The Spanish posts in
that country had been abandoned, with the exception of Ceuta, and the
protectorate formerly exercised by the khalif removed. In consequence
of this measure, and there being no central power to restrain the
Berbers, the entire region became at once a prey to anarchy. At the
time the minister was planning a thorough reorganization of the army,
intelligence was conveyed to him by the governor of Ceuta that a
considerable detachment of Berbers, who had been worsted in a recent
battle and were absolutely impoverished, had appealed to him for
protection, which he had temporarily afforded them. The pleasure of
the government was requested respecting the final disposition of
these refugees. The order was immediately sent to propose to them
enlistment in the army of the khalifate. The offer was accepted without
hesitation, and the inhabitants of Algeziras beheld with consternation
and disgust the disembarkation of a horde of ferocious warriors clothed
in rags and mounted on horses whose skeleton forms seemed hardly
capable of sustaining even the weight of their emaciated riders. But
the sagacious hajib, who recognized in these uncouth barbarians the
formidable instruments of a soaring ambition, entertained his new
_protégés_ with royal hospitality. The finest arms and horses
were furnished them. Their boundless rapacity was gratified by every
concession that insolence could demand or prodigality afford. The
famished bandit, who had lately roamed the desert without shelter, now
revelled in the luxuries of a palace. The servile dependent who a few
months before had trembled at the voice of some vagabond sheik was
now the master of a hundred slaves. The news of this astonishing good
fortune was speedily transmitted to Africa. Thousands of volunteers
applied for admission to the service of so generous a patron. The
object of Ibn-abi-Amir was accomplished, and with secret exultation
he saw placed at his absolute disposal a powerful body of troops,
whose allegiance was due to himself alone, who knew and cared nothing
for patriotic sentiment, and who were practically isolated from the
existing military system. His efforts, however, were not confined to
the enlistment of Berber mercenaries. From the opposite quarter of
the compass, from a region and a nation where one would least suspect
a disposition to serve under the banners of Islam, his army received
important accessions. It does not appear that before the reign of
Hischem any systematic attempt was made to attract to the service of
the khalifate the Christians of the North, whose hostility to their
neighbors was hereditary and instinctive, dictated as well by motives
of patriotism as by the prejudices and the distorted maxims of their
religion. The civil wars of fifty years; the uncertain allegiance
claimed by a succession of known usurpers and legal sovereigns of
suspicious title; the arrogance of the priesthood, which claimed
ascendency over the crown, had destroyed the unity and absorbed
the limited pecuniary resources of the kingdoms of Northern Spain.
The population had increased, while the means of subsistence had
been constantly diminishing. The insecurity of property discouraged
agriculture in a land where untiring industry was at all times
indispensable to procure the most common necessaries of life. The
country was overrun by armed men, who did not hesitate, when occasion
demanded, to rudely strip the unfortunate peasant of the hard-earned
fruits of his labor. The lofty stature and extraordinary strength
of these mountaineers, their unequalled powers of endurance, their
bravery and their steadiness in battle, rendered them most desirable
recruits. The emissaries of Ibn-abi-Amir experienced no difficulty
in convincing them of the benefits they would receive by a change of
masters. A considerable detachment repaired to Cordova and entered
the army of the Khalif. The minister treated them with even greater
indulgence than he had shown to the Africans. They received double pay.
They were lodged in palatial quarters. They were magnificently armed
and mounted, and provided with every attainable comfort and luxury. The
partiality of the hajib for these favorite mercenaries sometimes even
caused him to depart from the equity which had heretofore characterized
his judicial conduct. In the controversies he was called upon, from
time to time, to settle between his Moslem subjects and his Christian
guards, his decisions were almost invariably rendered in favor of the
latter. The effects of this politic course soon became apparent. The
Castilians and Navarrese, like the Berbers, volunteered in larger
numbers than could be accommodated. Only picked men were accepted by
the recruiting officers; and a corps was formed which, for physical
strength, perfection of armament, and excellence of discipline, had not
its counterpart in Europe.
While Ibn-abi-Amir was thus, day by day, tightening his grasp upon
the civil and military departments of the government, he was, at the
same time, gradually undermining the support and weakening the power
of his rival. The custom of tribal organization, inherited from the
pre-Islamic era, still prevailed in the army. Members of the same
tribe, commanded by chiefs of their own kindred, were mustered into
the service together. In numerous instances, by intermarriage with
individuals of other races, the chain of relationship had been broken.
Clannish prejudice had, however, survived the record of genealogies,
for many were found enrolled among the various tribes who evidently had
not the remotest claim to such association. The policy of Ibn-abi-Amir
was directed to the final abrogation of these ancient distinctions. The
Arabs were distributed among the strongest divisions of the Berber and
Christian mercenaries. By this means their identity was lost amidst a
crowd of foreigners ignorant alike of their customs, their traditions,
and, not infrequently, of their language. The favorite troops of Ghalib
were, by this means, quietly and expeditiously scattered beyond the
hope of reorganization. The discipline of the army was sedulously
improved. Officers were appointed to command whose first qualification
was devotion to the personal interests of the hajib, and whose second
was based upon their experience in war and their reputation for
courage. Military regulations were enforced with such severity that
even the accidental exposure of a sword during parade was punished with
death.
Having to his entire satisfaction obtained control of the army,
Ibn-abi-Amir now proposed to himself the audacious project of placing
and retaining the youthful Khalif in a condition of perpetual tutelage.
His mother, over whom the minister still retained his ascendency,
strange to relate, willingly lent her aid to the accomplishment of
this nefarious design. The talents of the young prince, at that time
about fifteen years old, are stated by contemporaneous writers to
have been far above mediocrity. Under favorable circumstances, it is
possible that he might have become a ruler not inferior to the most
distinguished of his line. But, unhappily, every effort was exerted
to dwarf his intellect and impair his physical powers. He was kept
in strict seclusion in the palace of Medina-al-Zahrâ. His teachers
were removed, and his education systematically neglected. It was
constantly inculcated upon him that his chief duties as a monarch were
the diligent perusal of the Koran and the distribution of alms. His
body was emaciated, and his intellectual faculties weakened, by the
frequent and protracted fasts which his religious advisers enjoined.
These regulations, sufficiently injurious to both the body and the
mind of youth, were not to be compared in their destructive effects
with the sensual excesses encouraged by the temptations of the harem.
In its retired and mysterious apartments everything was favorable
to the precocious development of the passions. Crowds of beautiful
slaves constantly surrounded him, and performed for his amusement the
licentious dances of the East. The rarest perfumes diffused their
intoxicating odors through the dimly-lighted apartments. Here, safe
from the frowning glances of faqui and santon, could be quaffed, to
the point of repletion and insensibility, the delicious wines of
Spain. The attendants received peremptory instructions to lose no
opportunity of corrupting and brutalizing their helpless charge. In
consequence, the unfortunate Hischem was degraded by the habitual
practice of the most revolting vices. His prematurely failing powers
were at first stimulated by aphrodisiacs. His virility was afterwards
permanently impaired by drugs administered for that purpose by eunuchs
in the pay of the minister. With the advance of the prince in years,
the conditions and diversions of childhood remained unchanged. The
same toys amused his idle moments. The same devotional exercises were
daily enforced by his spiritual guides. His world was bounded by the
walls of the palace, within which no one unauthorized by the hajib
could enter. Alert and observant spies reported his most trivial
speeches, his most puerile actions. It was gravely suggested to him
that the burden of public affairs was too weighty for his shoulders;
that the favor of God--the object of every true Mussulman--was most
easily secured by devotional exercises; and that the administration
of the government should be confided to others who could assume the
responsibilities, without compromising the future hopes, of the
Commander of the Faithful. The Khalif’s voluntary acceptance of these
propositions--and especially of the last one--was proclaimed far and
wide by the omnipresent agents of the hajib. But the latter, despite
his apparent assurance, knew only too well the desperate game he was
playing. He was familiar with the uncertainty of popular favor and
the prodigious energy suddenly developed by revolutions. His secret
enemies, many of them able and determined men, swarmed alike in the
literary professions and among the populace of the capital. The
isolation of the Khalif was complete, but the treachery of a sentinel
or the venality of a slave might, at any time, mature a conspiracy
or effect the liberation of the royal prisoner. In either of these
contingencies, the life of the minister would not be worth a moment’s
purchase were he found within the walls of Medina-al-Zahrâ. Impressed
with this fact, he secured a large estate east of Cordova, and erected
there a residence which united the twofold advantage of castle and
palace, and to which he gave the name of Zahira. The place was of
great strength, and could accommodate a numerous garrison. When it
was completed, Ibn-abi-Amir removed there all the public records, and
in its halls were henceforth framed the edicts which, issued in the
Khalif’s name, gave law to the people of the Peninsula. Buildings were
erected for the convenience of the great officials of the government,
and Zahira soon acquired the inhabitants and assumed the appearance
of a city. The employees of the court, the personal adherents of the
minister, and the herd of parasites who infested the purlieus of every
palace, together with a multitude of tradesmen and artificers, took up
their residence in the neighborhood; and an idea may be formed of the
extent of Zahira when it is remembered that, although the residence
of Ibn-abi-Amir was twelve miles from Cordova, the gardens of its
environs reached to the banks of the Guadalquivir immediately opposite
the capital, of which it, in fact, formed one of the most attractive
suburbs.
Of this villa a story is told by the Arab historians which illustrates
at once the wealth, the profusion, and the love of ostentation so
prominent in the character of the Oriental. With a view of impressing
the envoys of the King of Navarre with his power and opulence, the
hajib ordered a great lake in the gardens of Zahira to be planted with
water-lilies. Into each of the flowers, during the night, he caused to
be placed a gold or silver coin, large numbers of which he had ordered
struck especially for that purpose. The weight of the precious metals
required was two hundred pounds. At the audience, which took place at
sunrise, in addition to the grand civil and military display usual on
such occasions, a body of eunuchs, a thousand in number and equally
divided, stood on each side of the throne. All were dressed in white
silk. The robes of five hundred were embroidered with gold, those of
the others with silver. Sashes of gold or silver tissue encircled
their waists, and each carried a gold or silver tray. As the first
rays of the sun lighted up the splendors of the scene, the eunuchs
moved forward with military precision, gathered the lilies, and emptied
their precious contents at the feet of their master in a great heap
of glittering coin. The effect of this exhibition upon the simple
mountaineers of Navarre may be imagined. The reputation of the hajib’s
resources, already great, was magnified a hundred-fold. Mystified by
the apparent prodigy, the ambassadors reported to their king that even
the earth and the water surrendered their hidden treasures at the
command of the omnipotent Mohammedan ruler.
While the astute and politic Ibn-abi-Amir was perfecting his
arrangements to secure absolute control of the empire, he treated
Ghalib with far more than ordinary consideration. He exhibited towards
him, on all occasions, the most distinguished courtesy. He deferred to
his opinion on questions of minor importance. He humbly solicited his
advice when satisfied that its acceptance would not interfere with the
accomplishment of his plans. But the shrewd old soldier was not to be
imposed upon by those flattering evidences of esteem and attachment.
Intensely loyal to the House of Ommeyah, he had seen with disgust and
apprehension the restraint of the Khalif and the usurpation of his
prerogatives. He had viewed with scarcely less dismay the inordinate
ambition of his colleague and the predominance to which he had attained.
While he did not at first perceive the ultimate effect of the
reorganization of the military service, the disbanding and transfer
to distant and widely separated provinces of those divisions most
attached to his person, as well as the incorporation of his favorites
into the corps of foreign mercenaries, finally opened his eyes to the
consequences of the policy of his son-in-law. But it was then too
late. The mischief had already been accomplished. The indignation of
the general at first found vent in ineffectual reproaches. At length,
during an expedition into the enemy’s country, while the two ministers
were reconnoitering from the summit of a tower, after a violent
quarrel Ghalib drew his sword and attacked his associate. The latter,
taken by surprise, saw no other way to avoid instant death but by
precipitating himself from the battlements. His flowing robes caught
on a projection and saved his life. The incensed rivals separated with
threats of mutual defiance; war was at once declared between them; and
the diminished forces of Ghalib were strengthened by a considerable
number of horsemen furnished by the King of Leon. The operations of the
campaign were at first indecisive, but Ghalib, having exposed himself
recklessly in an engagement, was killed; his followers were seized with
a panic, and the victory remained with his fortunate adversary.
Ibn-abi-Amir was now the sole master of the Khalifate of the West. By
sheer force of character, by dauntless resolution, by tireless energy,
he had realized his most cherished aspirations. Without friends or the
important aid of family connections, he had obtained and had already
long exercised a preponderating influence in the state. His adroitness
and liberality had organized a numerous faction and a formidable army,
both of which served his personal interests with unswerving loyalty.
The nominal sovereign of the country was virtually his servant. The
entire machinery of government, with its treasures, the appointments of
its officers, the distribution of its rewards, the infliction of its
punishments, the supervision of its civil policy, the conduct of its
campaigns, was in his hands. Such was the exalted position attained
by the former unknown and impecunious student of the University, who
had managed to obtain an uncertain livelihood by writing petitions
for applicants for royal favor, many of whom were now his official
subordinates. Through the changes of many eventful years, amidst the
perils, the trials, the excitements, the triumphs, that attended his
ascent to greatness, he had never forgotten the scene in the garden,
where, encouraged by the hilarity of his companions, he had expressed
what they considered chimerical ideas of future power and distinction.
Soon after the death of Ghalib had left him free to indulge his
arbitrary inclinations, he caused his four collegiate acquaintances,
who had participated in the festivities of that now memorable occasion,
to be brought before him. Three received from the hands of the minister
himself the commissions conferring those employments which they had in
merriment solicited; the fourth, after having been sternly reprimanded
for the unprovoked insult he had inflicted in return for a proffered
honor, was deprived of all his possessions, and led forth by slaves
to perform the public and degrading penance which he himself had
voluntarily prescribed.
The restraints imposed upon Hischem were now increased in severity.
Formerly he had, at rare intervals, been permitted to show himself to
his subjects, but the jealousy of Ibn-abi-Amir could no longer tolerate
this indulgence, and the Khalif was henceforth condemned to absolute
seclusion in the palace of Medina-al-Zahrâ. Even when he performed his
devotions in public he was heavily veiled, and remained in the royal
gallery until the last of the worshippers had left the mosque. He was
not even permitted to enter the walls of his own capital, embellished
with the wealth, and rendered illustrious by the renown, of a dynasty
of great sovereigns who had been his kinsmen, whose name and titles
he had inherited, but whose power he was destined never to enjoy. His
name was mentioned in the khotba, or prayer, offered on Fridays in the
mosques; it appeared on the coins side by side with that of the hajib,
and was embroidered on the skirt of his robes; but these were the only
surviving evidences of the existence and the authority of the last of
the Ommeyades.
In the new and radical policy which Ibn-abi-Amir had inaugurated with
respect to the army, he was far from being actuated by purely selfish
motives. He understood thoroughly the inconstant and restless nature
of the population which he ruled. Experience had repeatedly shown
the perilous conditions arising from a protracted peace. The Koran
enjoined perpetual war against the infidel. Such a crusade was popular
with all classes,--with the theologians, whose religious animosities
it gratified; with the merchants, whose trade it increased and whose
coffers it replenished; with the nobility, to whom it opened an
avenue to military distinction; with the soldiery, who were attracted
by the prospect of unlimited plunder. Every year, from the date of
his association with Ghalib in the administration, Ibn-abi-Amir had
proclaimed the Djihad, and had himself taken part in two expeditions
against the Christians. To this policy, whose expediency was
indisputable, he publicly declared his intention to adhere. The people
heard the announcement with exultation. The faquis applauded the piety
of the hajib with a fervor which they scarcely vouchsafed to the deeds
of the saints who filled the Moslem calendar. The constant employment
of a large number of troops in hostile operations was a substantial
guaranty against revolution. With this potent safeguard, the dangers
of sedition were no longer to be apprehended. The passions and the
energy of the nation were to be expended in a war beyond the borders
of the monarchy. But still another consideration influenced the mind
of the great statesman. He was zealously solicitous for the honor,
profoundly ambitious for the glory, of his country. He desired to
extend her frontiers; to recover the territory that had been conquered
from or basely yielded by her sovereigns, as well as to chastise her
blaspheming enemies.
Of the greater number of the fifty-two campaigns directed by
Ibn-abi-Amir, the chroniclers of the time have left us no record. Many
of them, doubtless, were mere marauding expeditions; but all were
uniformly and signally successful. Not the slightest reverse dimmed the
lustre of a single triumph. With each year the limits of the Christian
kingdoms became more and more contracted, until they barely reached the
southern slopes of the mountains. Beyond, stretching away to the Moslem
border, was a scene of desolation, where once waving crops and verdant
pastures met the eye. The presence of an occasional pile of blackened
ruins was the only indication that the country had ever been inhabited.
So complete was this devastation that the plains of Leon and Castile
have not yet recovered from its effects. The forests then cut down have
never been replanted. The curse of sterility, and the freezing winds
that sweep over this cheerless region, seem to discourage the hope that
it will ever regain its former productiveness. The incessant march of
the Moorish armies for a quarter of a century obliterated every sign of
animal and vegetable life.
The ire of Ibn-abi-Amir was aroused by the reflection that the King
of Leon, despite the admonitions he had received, had dared to assist
his rival Moshafi, and, bent on revenge, he made preparations for the
most important expedition which had under his command ever invaded
the Christian territory. The strong city of Zamora, defended by seven
mighty walls and seven moats, was taken by storm. Four thousand of the
enemy were butchered, and as many more led into captivity. A thousand
settlements, surrounded by evidences of the thrift of an industrious
peasantry, were given to the flames. A considerable number of
monasteries and convents were destroyed, and their inmates delivered to
the Berbers to be insulted and tortured with every device of ruthless
barbarity. Realizing their common danger, the Kings of Leon and Navarre
formed a defensive alliance with the Count of Castile, and ventured to
resist the progress of the Moslems. The hostile armies met at Rueda,
not far from Simancas. A great battle took place; the Christians
were completely routed, and victors and vanquished entered Simancas
together. No quarter was shown by the infuriated Saracens. Every
Christian who fell into their power was put to the sword. Winter was
at hand, but Ibn-abi-Amir, who understood the necessity of following
up a victory, without heeding cold or tempest, moved on Leon. The
city, reduced to extremity, was about to yield, when the intolerable
hardships of the season, which was one of unusual severity, compelled a
retreat.
After the capture of Simancas, the enthusiastic soldiery conferred
upon their commander the appelation of Al-Mansur, The Victorious. This
name, by which the hajib was afterwards universally designated, was, in
imitation of the custom of the khalifs, accepted by him as a title of
honor. With its adoption he arrogated to himself many other tokens of
distinction hitherto considered the exclusive privileges of royalty.
His titles were woven in golden letters on the hem of his garments.
His name was associated with that of Hischem in the khotba. Of all
who approached him the most servile obeisance was exacted. New and
oppressive regulations were added to the already complicated ceremonial
of the court. The marks and requirements of homage extended to every
member of the hajib’s family, even to infants in the cradle. None of
the monarchs who inherited the sceptre of Moorish Spain had ever
enforced rules of this kind with equal severity, or had environed their
persons with such a net-work of formal and frivolous etiquette. While
the neglect of these ceremonies was followed by exemplary punishment,
the least disparagement of the motives or the conduct of the minister
was a mortal offence. Giafar, Prince of Zab, who commanded the first
troop of Berbers enlisted in the service of Al-Mansur, actuated by
envy, permitted himself to publicly criticise the policy of the hajib.
The latter smiled but said nothing when the offensive language of the
Mauritanian chieftain, whom he had loaded with favors, was reported
to him. A magnificent banquet was soon afterwards given at Zahira,
where Giafar was distinguished by the favor and courtesy of Al-Mansur
above all who were present. The precepts of the law were ignored in
these festivities; the richest wines flowed in profusion; and Giafar,
while he was being conducted to his residence in a state of helpless
intoxication, was waylaid and pierced with the daggers of assassins
employed for that purpose by the minister.
The kingdoms of Christian Spain, none of which, in the tenth century,
could aspire to the importance of a modern principality, and which
were always at variance with each other, habitually disregarded the
vital principle of unity that alone could insure their preservation. A
rivalry which, under the circumstances, was suicidal flourished even
in the presence of the Saracen armies. The mutual hatred engendered
by provincial prejudice was incredibly intense and bitter. The pride
of nationality, the spirit of patriotism, were unknown. Each state
labored to defeat the undertakings of the others, no matter how
meritorious was their object. The seal of the Church was branded upon
all laws and political institutions. The predominating ecclesiastical
element still enacted statutes, elected kings, levied taxes, commanded
armies. Leon was seriously weakened by intestine quarrels. The nobles
were constantly aspiring to the throne, and raising up a succession
of incompetent pretenders. The powerful appanage of Castile had
been permanently alienated from the crown, and enjoyed a nominal
independence without the resources to maintain its lofty pretensions.
Many of the bravest warriors of the North had been tempted by promises
of high pay and abundant booty to renounce their allegiance, and were
now serving under the standard of the khalifate. With the successes
of the Moslems, and the diminution of their own territory, the mutual
distrust of the Christian princes increased, and their isolation from
each other became more and more complete. Their domestic feuds and
irreconcilable antipathies induced them, in turn, to solicit the aid
of their natural enemies, a measure which led to the imposition of
tribute and the acknowledgment of vassalage. The city of Cordova was
filled with Christian exiles, who continually importuned the government
to embrace the cause of their several factions against their kindred
and their countrymen. Some of the most serious and fatal revolutions
which disturbed the peace of the northern states were traceable to this
source, and to the intrigues of proscribed adventurers whose designs it
was manifestly the interest of the Moslems to promote. The difficulties
which beset the youth and inexperience of Ramiro III., King of Leon,
caused him to appeal to the court of Cordova for support against the
usurper Bermudo, who had deprived him of his capital and his crown. In
return for the desired assistance, the dethroned King announced his
willingness to become the feudatory of the Khalif. Before the treaty
was concluded, however, Ramiro died. The partisans of the latter were
numerous and powerful; the color of right as well as superiority of
title would invest any candidate whom they might select; and Bermudo
determined to anticipate their designs, follow the unworthy example of
his deceased rival, and, by the sacrifice of his personal honor and the
independence of his country, retain a portion of the authority he had
illegally acquired. The humiliating concessions demanded by Al-Mansur
were acquiesced in without hesitation by the cowardly usurper; homage
was rendered to the hajib as suzerain; and, menaced by the presence
of a Moslem army, the kingdom of Leon, every foot of which had been
won from the infidels at an immense sacrifice of life and valor, for
the third time since its conquest by the Asturians descended to the
position of a tributary principality.
Having reduced the kingdoms of the North to such a condition of
helplessness that he had nothing to fear from their hostility,
Al-Mansur now directed his attention towards a country which had
long enjoyed immunity from Moslem invasion. The County of Catalonia,
while a nominal appanage of France, was ruled by its chief magistrate
with all the attributes of despotic sovereignty. The weakness or the
apprehensions of former khalifs had deterred them from provoking a
contest which might bring upon them, in addition to their domestic
foes, the united forces of the French monarchy. These fears, however,
were ill founded. The provinces of that kingdom, like those of
Christian Spain, were a prey to internal discord. The society of France
was in a state of transition. A bitter contest was raging between
feudal pretensions and royal prerogative. The crown had no resources
to squander in the defence of a distant and unprofitable dependency,
and the haughty nobles would have resisted an attempt to levy troops
for a campaign of doubtful issue beyond the Pyrenees. All these
facts were known to Al-Mansur, whose spies infested every court in
Europe. His resolution formed, the minister caused the Holy War to be
proclaimed against the Catalans. It was the twenty-third expedition
of his reign. Elated by the hope of fresh victories, volunteers
responded by thousands. A great army was mustered, which was met on
the frontier by the Catalan troops commanded by Count Borel in person.
An engagement took place, but the Christians, long unaccustomed to
war, could not stand before the veterans of the khalifate. They were
defeated with serious loss, and, five days afterwards, Barcelona was
stormed and delivered over to pillage. Of the inhabitants few escaped
death or captivity excepting the Jews, those constant sympathizers
with the Moslems, who, early recognizing the advantageous situation
of Barcelona, had settled there in large numbers, had accumulated
vast fortunes, had risen to unrivalled eminence in the knowledge and
practice of medicine, and had founded commercial establishments whose
interests were protected and whose influence was acknowledged in
every country of the globe. The Count preserved the remainder of his
dominions from a similar fate by the payment of an immense ransom. This
dearly-purchased immunity proved the salvation of Eastern Spain, which,
unable to withstand the attacks of the Moslems, and entirely without
hope of foreign aid, must otherwise have been eventually added to the
realm of Islam.
Turning his piercing glance towards every point of the compass where
a victory could be gained or an enemy humiliated, Al-Mansur now
determined to interfere once more in the affairs of Africa. In that
country the partisans of the House of Ommeyah, after many vicissitudes,
had once more regained the ascendency. But scarcely was this result
accomplished, when Ibn-Kenun, the last prince of the Edrisite dynasty,
who, at his own request, had been sent to Tunis by Al-Hakem, on
condition that he would never again set foot on his ancient domain,
appeared to assert his claims as hereditary sovereign of Mauritania.
For ten years he had been the guest of the Fatimite Khalif of Egypt,
whose real or pretended descent from a common ancestor afforded a
specious pretext for granting the exile protection. Overcome by his
importunities, the Sultan had at length consented to assist his
troublesome kinsman to regain his throne. Negotiations were entered
into with the Berbers. The Egyptian monarch furnished a considerable
sum of money and a detachment of soldiers, and Ibn-Kenun was received
by his former subjects with every manifestation of loyalty. The
Ommeyade cause speedily declined; its partisans were put to flight
in repeated skirmishes; their strongholds fell into the hands of
the enemy, and the dreadful prospect of African invasion once more
confronted the inhabitants of the Peninsula.
It was the intelligence of these disasters, received at Barcelona,
which, far more than the great ransom offered by Count Borel,
determined Al-Mansur to relinquish the conquest of Catalonia. A
division of the victorious army, commanded by Askaledja, cousin of
the hajib, disembarked at Ceuta before Ibn-Kenun knew that Al-Mansur
intended to oppose him. The Edrisite prince was beaten, and surrendered
under condition of a safe-conduct to Cordova, with permission to make
that city his future residence. But in the signing of this convention
the self-esteem of the Saracen general had permitted him to exceed
his authority. The dangerous character of Ibn-Kenun, as well as
considerations of public safety, demanded the adoption of a less
indulgent policy towards such an inveterate foe of the khalifate. The
agreement of Askaledja was repudiated by Al-Mansur, and Ibn-Kenun,
having been brought a prisoner to Algeziras, was beheaded without
ceremony. This flagrant disregard of a solemn treaty, a deed which
not only impugned the honor of the hajib’s lieutenant but was branded
as a horrible sacrilege, caused great dissatisfaction throughout
Andalusia. The victim was one of the descendants of Ali, regarded
by a numerous sect as the incarnation of divinity, and revered by a
majority of believers throughout the Moslem world. The indignation of
the populace found vent in murmurs and menaces. Askaledja, infuriated
beyond measure, went so far as to denounce his superior to the troops
under his command. The maintenance of order and the requirements of
discipline could not tolerate such an exhibition of insubordination;
and the imprudent officer was promptly arrested for treason, found
guilty, and executed. This act of justice, although approved by the
Divan, only aggravated the popular resentment. The minister once more
realized that the empire he had secured by intrigue must be constantly
sustained by arms. It was necessary to divert the attention of the
people from the severe measures indispensable to domestic tranquillity
to meritorious schemes of foreign conquest. An opportune pretext for
a rupture with the King of Leon had recently presented itself. The
Moorish force, entertained by Bermudo under pretence of maintaining his
authority, but really to overawe the usurper and enforce the payment
of tribute, had signalized its residence among the infidels by the
perpetration of every kind of outrage. It was in vain that Bermudo
remonstrated; his complaints were received by the government at Cordova
with silent contempt. Then, adopting the only cause possible under
the circumstances, he appealed to the patriotism of his subjects,
assembled an army, and drove out the obnoxious intruders. The pride
of Al-Mansur could not afford to brook such an insult. A strong body
of Moslems attacked Coimbra, whose remote situation and distance from
the usual field of operations had hitherto insured its safety. It was
taken; its buildings were burned and demolished; and for seven years
afterwards the site of this once flourishing city remained desolate
and uninhabited. From Coimbra, crossing the Douro, the hajib directed
his course straight to the enemy’s capital. Formerly, protected by
its massive fortifications and aided by a winter of unusual severity,
the garrison had been able to defy his efforts to take it by storm.
Leon was the strongest and most important fortress of the North. Its
defences dated from the era of the Roman domination. Its walls, built
by the architects of the Cæsars, measured more than twenty feet in
thickness. Lofty towers, protected by barbicans, rose at frequent
intervals of their extensive circuit, which enclosed houses massed
together and constructed principally of stone. The gates were bronze
and of prodigious weight. They were hung in portals faced with marble
and decorated with carvings and statues. The citadel was considered
absolutely impregnable. The garrison was numerous, experienced in
military operations, and provided with every requisite for a protracted
defence.
But the city once invested, the impetuosity and resolution of the
Moslems disappointed the hopes of the besieged, who expected that the
reverse attending the former attack would be repeated. The reputation
of Al-Mansur was staked upon the issue. Able officers, skilled in the
use of military engines which had descended from Rome and Byzantium,
directed the approaches and superintended the mining of the walls. The
resistance was most obstinate, but, a breach having finally been made,
the veterans of Al-Mansur rushed to the assault. The governor of the
city, Count Gonzalez, whom severe illness had rendered incapable of
action, advised of the progress of the enemy, ordered his attendants
to arm him and carry him to the front. The exhortations and the sight
of its emaciated commander animated the garrison to conspicuous but
unavailing deeds of valor. The front ranks of the Christians were
broken, and the Moslems poured into the breach. The governor, helpless
and bleeding, was killed in his litter at the head of his troops, as
became a gallant and intrepid soldier. Exasperated by the stubborn
resistance they had experienced, the Moslems gave no quarter. The
city, after having been plundered, was razed. The enormous strength of
its defences, the tenacity of the Roman masonry, constructed to defy
alike the slow action of the elements and the destructive efforts of
man, availed nothing against the systematic havoc of the implacable
Al-Mansur. A solitary tower was left standing as a specimen of the
dimensions of those fortifications which had been levelled with the
ground. A vast heap of stones and rubbish marked the site of the
Christian capital, where a populous town had existed from the time of
Augustus, when the camp of the Legio Septima constituted an important
frontier outpost of the Roman empire.
The Saracen army in its march to Leon had flanked Zamora, where Bermudo
had taken refuge. Al-Mansur, on his return, prepared to besiege that
city, and Bermudo took advantage of the prevailing confusion to escape
with the remnant of his followers to Oviedo. Zamora surrendered, and
was forthwith delivered up to the caprices of the licentious soldiery.
Deserted by their monarch, the Leonese nobles hastened to make peace
with the conqueror. Most of them did homage to him for their estates.
The remainder, who declined to sacrifice the prejudices of a lifetime
and disobey the admonitions of the Church for the enjoyment of a
temporary advantage, were rewarded for their loyalty with oppression
and insult. The territory which remained under the control of Bermudo
at the end of this campaign was less in extent than that formerly
possessed by one of his inferior vassals.
The absence of Al-Mansur had been improved by the malcontents who
infested the capital in the formation of a plot which contemplated the
assassination of all of the principal officials of the government, as
well as the Khalif, and the partition of the states of the monarchy.
Abd-al-Rahman-Ibn-Motarrif, governor of the northern frontier, was the
originator of the conspiracy. Abdallah, the oldest son of the minister,
several princes of the blood holding important commands, and a number
of civil and military functionaries whose positions of trust rendered
their complicity the more formidable, were implicated in it. The spies
of Al-Mansur detected this treasonable enterprise before it was fully
matured. The latter, pursuing the course he ordinarily adopted to
disarm suspicion, at first treated the conspirators with conspicuous
marks of favor, and then secretly invited complaints against them for
other offences. Nothing was insinuated of the existence of a plot or
of prosecutions for treason. Some were condemned for dishonesty and
appropriation of the public treasure. Others, among them the son of
Al-Mansur, and another Abdallah, who was of royal lineage and noted
for his avarice, fled to the Christian court for protection. Garcia
Fernandez, Count of Castile, entertained the son of the minister, until
the presence of a great Moslem army admonished him that the privilege
of asylum must yield to political necessity. As soon as the misguided
youth fell into the hands of his father he was beheaded. Then, with
exquisite cruelty, Al-Mansur devised a scheme of retaliation, which,
in spite of its malice, was singularly appropriate. He determined to
inflict upon the Count of Castile himself all the pangs resulting from
paternal disappointment and filial ingratitude. He instigated Sancho,
the son of Garcia, to form a party and drive his father from power. The
nobility unanimously declared for Sancho; a Mussulman force sustained
his pretensions; Al-Mansur seized Clunia and San Estevan as his share
of the spoil; and Garcia, having been wounded and made captive in
a skirmish, died soon afterwards in the hands of the Saracens. The
perfidy of Sancho was rewarded with the government of Castile, which he
held as a feudatory of the Khalif.
The fugitive King, Bermudo, whose usurpation had been attended with a
series of misfortunes, and whose dominions had, with the exception of a
contracted region of which Astorga was the centre, been divided between
his rebellious vassals and the Moors, in defiance of the menaces of
Al-Mansur, still continued to afford protection to Abdallah, the only
survivor of the principal conspirators. The approach of the Mussulman
troops and the seizure and sack of Astorga, convinced the obstinate
monarch of the expediency of submission. Abdallah was surrendered,
taken to Cordova, placed upon a camel, and conducted through the
streets of that city, preceded by heralds who proclaimed him a traitor
to his sovereign and an apostate to his faith. His life was spared, but
he was tortured during the entire administration of Al-Mansur by being
kept in daily fear of execution; a fate which he endeavored to avert
by the most humiliating expressions of contrition, and by exhibitions
of grovelling servility which, so far from exciting the pity of the
minister, only increased his contempt.
A new and implacable adversary, and one whose position placed her
beyond the reach of the minister’s vengeance, now arose to defy his
power. The Sultana Aurora--who united to her amorous susceptibilities
all the obstinacy and vindictiveness of the Basques, to which race she
belonged--had for many years entertained the closest relations with
the favorite whose fortunes she had founded, and whose success she
had so zealously promoted. Their intimacy, even during the lifetime
of Al-Hakem, had been the scandal of the capital. But the lady, like
many of her sex, was inconstant, and other lovers, including the kadi
Ibn-al-Salim, also stood high in her favor. As soon as Al-Mansur no
longer required her services to advance his interests, he had the
imprudence to neglect his haughty mistress. Deeply piqued, she began to
meditate revenge. Her social rank, the inviolability of her person, and
her residence in the palace gave her advantages which she was not slow
to improve. With all the fiery energy of her nature she represented to
the Khalif the degradation of the position he had been compelled to
assume, and urged him to assert his rights as a sovereign. Hischem,
who had hitherto evinced no dissatisfaction with his condition, was
roused from his lethargy. Under his mother’s dictation, he made a
formal demand on the minister for the prerogatives which the latter
had usurped. The viceroy of Africa, Ziri-Ibn-Atia, instigated by the
agents of the Sultana, rose in rebellion, and proclaimed himself the
supporter of the laws of the empire and the champion of its injured
monarch. The ingenuity of Aurora provided her partisans with an
abundant supply of money. The vaults of the palace of Medina-al-Zahrâ,
where was the national treasury, contained six million pieces of gold.
They were deposited in earthenware jars, sealed with wax and impressed
with the royal signet. The astute princess removed a hundred of the
jars, whose contents amounted to the sum of eighty thousand dinars,
broke the seals, covered the gold with honey, drugs, and syrups,
and, having attached to each an appropriate label, caused them to
be conveyed by her slaves to a palace in the city, whence they were,
without delay, transported to Africa. The rage of Al-Mansur on finding
himself thus outwitted by a woman was extreme, but it availed him
nothing. He could not venture to offer violence or even reproaches
to the mother of his sovereign whose servant he was in name. The
trend of recent events suggested that Hischem might have consented
that the money be employed for the recovery of his imperial dignity.
Desirous of obtaining the sanction of law in a matter of such vital
importance, Al-Mansur called the great officers of state together.
To them he represented that the women of the harem were plundering
the treasury, and requested permission to remove the gold from the
palace. This was readily granted; but when the officers exhibited
their warrant, they were refused admission to the vaults, on the
plea that the Khalif had not authorized the removal of the treasure.
Foiled once more, the minister--whose genius, fertile in expedients
and undaunted by reverses, never once despaired of success--devised
a plan whose audacity would have appalled a less determined mortal.
Perfectly familiar with all the approaches to the palace, he penetrated
by a secret passage to the apartments of the Khalif. His unexpected
appearance and menacing aspect terrified the imbecile prince, who
protested that he had no desire to thwart the designs of the minister,
and, without hesitation, signed an order for the removal of the gold.
The politic Al-Mansur, at the same time, extorted from him an edict by
which he unreservedly renounced, in favor of the hajib, all practical
control of the government of the empire. This explicit and indisputable
confirmation of the authority of the latter at once legalized every act
which he had already committed in a public capacity. In a measure, it
invested his person with the sanctity that appertained to his master,
and rendered all liable to the penalty of treason whose intemperate
language or whose violence should be directed against the authorized
representative of absolute sovereignty.
An enterprise of surpassing difficulty and danger, and one which the
bravest of the Ommeyade khalifs had never ventured to undertake, was
now planned by the greatest statesman and warrior of his age. The
shrine of St. James of Compostella was one of the most renowned for
wealth and sanctity in Christendom. In the marvels which had attended
its foundation, in the fame of its miracles, in the number and potency
of its sacred relics, in the touching interest attaching to its
legends, it scarcely yielded to the sacred traditions of the Eternal
City. A countless multitude of pilgrims from every country where the
name of the Saviour was revered had for generations deposited their
oblations upon its altars. The modest chapel which had marked the site
of the apostle’s grave soon after its discovery during the reign of
the pious Alfonso had been replaced by a stately cathedral of marble,
decorated with all the rude magnificence of which the decadent art
of the age was capable. A numerous priesthood, the splendor of whose
appointments and the luxury of whose lives indicated a dispensation
with the vow of poverty, ministered to the wants of the pilgrims, and
acknowledged, with affected gratitude and humility, the bestowal of
their donations and the performance of their vows.
The reverence entertained by the Spanish Christians for the sepulchre
of St. James far exceeded that with which the most fanatic Mussulman
regarded the Prophet’s tomb at Medina. Already, industriously
propagated by monkish imposture and popular credulity, wondrous tales
were whispered of the appearance of the apostle on a milk-white steed
at the head of the Christian squadrons, an infallible harbinger of
victory, and a delusion of ominous import to the Saracen intruders in
the Peninsula. History affords no parallel to the momentous effects
produced by the adoption of this frivolous legend. The circumstances of
its origin, which contemptuously violated every probability of time or
place; its universal acceptance by individuals of every rank in life;
its subsequent extension to the distant lands of an unknown world; the
blind and unquestioning faith with which the impossible miracles of its
subject were received, offer an eloquent commentary on the boundless
influence of the Catholic hierarchy and the debased superstition of the
age.
The destruction of the church of Santiago was now the aim of Al-Mansur.
The depressing influence of such a signal triumph over the adversaries
of Islam, it was thought with much reason, would be incalculable. The
immunity enjoyed by the Christian sanctuary of Spain was attributed by
its votaries to the protection afforded by the body of the saint, far
more than to the natural difficulties which an enemy must surmount to
reach his shrine. Even could an invasion occur and the desecration of
the cathedral be threatened, it was firmly believed that the miraculous
intervention of Heaven--more marked even than that which deterred the
Romans from rebuilding the temple of Jerusalem--would avert such a
calamity from one of the holiest places of the Christian world. The
removal of these impressions, by demonstrating the incapacity of St.
James to defend his own relics, must certainly weaken the faith of the
multitude in his ability to protect the lives of others. The prestige
derived from the interposition of supernatural influence would be
seriously impaired. The menacing spectre of the patron of Spain would
no longer inspire the fanaticism of his followers to strike terror into
the Saracen armies. These conclusions of Al-Mansur, while founded on
reason, in the end proved fallacious. The superstitious veneration,
which, confirmed by blind ignorance and credulity for centuries, now
exercised its power over an entire people, was too deeply rooted to be
more than temporarily affected by the most glaring sacrilege.
The campaign was carefully planned. Every precaution was taken to
provide against any possibility of failure. Marching westward, the
several divisions of Moslem cavalry assembled at Coria. At Oporto they
were joined by the fleet, in which the infantry had already embarked.
A number of Christian vassals, attended by their retainers, responded
to the summons of their suzerain, and lent their reluctant aid to the
injury of their faith and the destruction of their countrymen. The
Douro was crossed upon a bridge constructed of ships. Roads were cut
through rocky and precipitous mountains. Broad estuaries and rivers
were forded. The country, which had long suffered from repeated
forays, was depopulated, and could offer no resistance. When the
mountains of Galicia appeared in the distance, the resolution of the
Christian allies faltered. Some of the counts entered into a secret
correspondence with the enemy. Their designs were betrayed, and a
number of Leonese nobles underwent the extreme penalty of treason. This
salutary example insured the wavering loyalty of their companions, who
henceforth found it expedient to conceal their real sentiments under an
appearance of obedience and alacrity.
The region now traversed by the Moslems had hitherto been safe
from their inroads. This circumstance, the sacred character of the
territory, and the wealth of the clergy had attracted to the vicinity
of Santiago a large and busy population. Ecclesiastical establishments
abounded. Along the hill-sides were countless hermitages, shrines,
and chapels. Almost every valley was occupied by a monastery or a
convent. The lands susceptible of cultivation were tilled by slaves or
dependents of the religious houses, whose condition differed little
from that of hereditary servitude. The mansions of the prelates of
high rank exhibited a palatial magnificence, and were not infrequently
tenanted by occupants of the softer sex, whose charms of face and
figure indicated an appreciation of female beauty hardly to be expected
from their pious companions.
The utter demoralization of the Christian kingdoms through domestic
feuds and incessant warfare, added to the terror inspired by the name
of Al-Mansur, precluded the possibility of effectual resistance. The
inhabitants, taking with them their portable property and the bones of
their saints and kings, fled to the mountains or to islands off the
sea-coast. Santiago was completely deserted. The invaders obtained a
rich booty from the shrines of innumerable chapels and monasteries.
Every building in the city, including the famous cathedral, was razed
to the ground. The latter was constructed of marble and granite.
Its plan and decoration exhibited the corrupt taste and barbaric
splendor inherited from the Visigoths, whose faults of design had been
aggravated by the native rudeness of the Galician architects. In front
of the high altar stood the statue of the saint, carved by the pious
but unpractised hand of a Gothic sculptor, and enclosed in a shrine
of massy silver. Every portion of it except the face was painted or
profusely gilded. One hand clasped a Bible, the other was raised aloft
in the attitude of benediction. The kisses of innumerable pilgrims had
almost obliterated the coarse and grotesque features of the image. By
its side were disposed the emblems of the vagrant apostle, the staff,
the calabash, the scallop shells. Its head was partially enveloped
with a hood identical in shape with that worn by every pilgrim and
glittering with jewels.
The statue and the tomb of the apostle escaped desecration, through
the policy of Al-Mansur, who feared to exasperate his allies, already
shocked by the sacrilegious deeds of their infidel companions in arms.
This forbearance of the Moslem general was afterwards distorted by the
clergy into a stupendous miracle. The Mauritanian cavalry plundered
the neighboring settlements and intercepted many parties of fugitives,
including not a few ecclesiastics, whose faith in the supernatural
virtues of the image and the relics of the saint vanished quickly
before the gleaming lances of the Saracen cavalry.
The return of the army to Cordova was signalized by a military
demonstration that rivalled the pomp of a Roman triumph. In the rear
of the troops, chained together by fifties, thousands of Christian
captives, laden with the spoils and trophies of victory, trudged
painfully along. Some carried the sacrilegious plunder of many a
venerated shrine. Others supported upon their shoulders the ponderous
gates of the city of Santiago. Others, again, sank under the weight of
the bells of the cathedral, into whose molten mass, as yet unformed,
pious devotees of either sex had cast their treasure and their jewels;
whose clangor had solemnized the installation of many a prelate and the
sepulture of many a saint; had aroused the enthusiasm and the devotion
of pilgrims of every clime; had, until this fatal hour, been heard in
a land believed to be exempt from the outrages of the infidel, but
were now destined to be exhibited in his greatest temple as tokens of
the supremacy attained by the most implacable foe of Christianity. In
the addition to the Great Mosque, then building under the direction of
Al-Mansur, these souvenirs of the most memorable campaign undertaken by
the arms of the Western Khalifate were deposited, amidst the frenzied
acclamations of the people. The gates were used to form a portion of
the ceiling, and from them, sustained by chains of bronze, the great
bells were hung inverted, to be utilized as lamps during the ceremonies
of the numerous festivals prescribed by the Moslem ritual.
The career of the Mauritanian rebel Zira-Ibn-Atia, whom the
prodigality of the Sultana Aurora had enabled to assert his
independence, under pretext of liberating the Khalif, was not of
long duration. The first army sent over by Al-Mansur to chastise his
insolence met with disaster. The second, commanded by his own son,
Abd-al-Melik-al-Modhaffer, vanquished the forces of Zira after a
desperate struggle. The latter, with the loss of his possessions, was
also stripped of his power, and died soon after of wounds received in
battle.
Early in the spring of the year 1002 the indefatigable Al-Mansur again
invaded the territory of the Christians. This time his hostility
was directed against the shrine of St. Emilian, the patron saint of
Castile, whose church was in the village of Canales. The town, the
chapel, and the convents, with all their paraphernalia of priestly
imposture and superstition, were destroyed. But the renowned commander,
whose prowess had so long sustained the reputation of the Moslem
arms, had fought his last campaign. A painful malady, whose cause was
unknown, and whose symptoms baffled the skill of the best physicians
of Cordova, had some months before attacked him. The exposure and
excitement of this expedition increased its violence. The illustrious
sufferer became so weak that he was forced to travel in a litter. It
was evident from his emaciated form and incessant agony that he was
fast approaching his end. At Medina-Celi the army halted. Its general
could proceed no farther. A universal feeling of sorrow arose as the
sad tidings of the condition of the dying chieftain spread throughout
the camp.
The memory of the turbulent populace of the capital, and the
consciousness that it had required all the energy of his determined
character to triumph over his domestic enemies, embittered the last
moments of Al-Mansur. He dreaded the inauguration of anarchy and the
resultant partition of the khalifate. He was only too well acquainted
with the instability of the vast and magnificent fabric of greatness
which his genius had reared. With a view to preserve as long as
possible for his sons the power he was unable to legally transmit, he
directed Abd-al-Melik to hasten at once to Cordova and assume command
of the garrison. To his second son, Abd-al-Rahman, he transferred his
authority over the army. Many wise injunctions were imparted by their
dying parent to these two young officers, whose military character
had been formed under his own eye during many eventful campaigns.
The elder, who was not an unworthy descendant of so great a sire,
profited largely by his opportunities. The younger, unequal to the
task of government, was destined to realize the worst expectations his
acquaintances had formed of his erratic and licentious nature.
His instructions ended, the strength of Al-Mansur gave way, and he
received with calm resignation the inexorable summons of the Angel of
Death. For years he had entertained a presentiment that he should end
his days at the head of his army, perhaps in the heat of battle. It was
not only his hope, but he made it the subject of his daily petitions,
that Allah would vouchsafe to him the glorious privilege of dying in
war against the infidel, thereby to merit the recompense of martyrdom.
In expectation of a favorable answer to his prayers, the arrangements
for his burial were always ready. His shroud was invariably included
among the effects of his camp equipage. It was of linen made from flax
grown on his paternal estate at Torrox and woven by the hands of his
own daughters. His conscience told him that the material thus produced
and prepared was not tainted with the bloody reminiscences that popular
report insinuated too often attached to his other possessions. The
provident statesman, whose aspirations were not confined to matters
terrestrial, and carrying into his relations with Allah the same
prudence which had distinguished his earthly career, neglected no
precaution to insure his salvation. A well-known text of the Koran
declares that he who appears before the Almighty with the dust of the
Holy War upon his feet shall be exempt from the tortures of eternal
fire. To secure this advantage on the Day of Judgment, Al-Mansur
carried with him in all his campaigns a silver casket of elegant
design, into which, every evening when the army halted, his attendants
carefully collected the dust which had accumulated upon his garments
during the day. Enveloped in the shroud prepared for so many years, and
sprinkled with this holy dust, the body of the great Moslem general was
laid at rest in the city of Medina-Celi.
The character of Mohammed-Ibn-Amir-Al-Mansur has already been partially
delineated in these pages. In it both good and evil were unsparingly
mingled. Beyond measure shrewd, politic, audacious, and resolute, he
was an adept in instigating others to the commission of discreditable
acts by which he profited, while his instruments alone endured the
odium attaching to them. By the irresistible force of intellect he
had risen from obscurity to the enjoyment of imperial power. No act
of wanton cruelty ever polluted his administration. Yet such was his
firmness and the fear in which he was held that no sedition during
his ascendency disturbed the peace of the khalifate. His conduct on
all occasions where his personal interests were not immediately
concerned was, for the most part, guided by the principles of equity.
His own son was sacrificed to the maintenance of public order. The
deeds of violence and tyranny for which he was so grossly abused
were the results of political necessity,--measures suggested by the
pressing exigencies of the occasion, and dictated by the instinct of
self-preservation. Born in a comparatively humble rank of life, his
matrimonial alliances were sought by princes. The daughters of Bermudo,
King of the Asturias, and Sancho, King of Navarre, were inmates of
his harem. Despite his talents as a statesman and his long series of
military triumphs, his popularity was superficial, and his position
was maintained with difficulty. He was everywhere designated by the
significant and opprobrious nickname of “The Fox.” His old literary
associates envied and maligned him. The courtiers were jealous of
his rapidly acquired fame, and sedulously depreciated his abilities.
The eunuchs justly attributed to his agency the impairment of their
political fortunes, and held him in detestation as the relentless
enemy of their caste. The aristocracy sneered at his pretensions
and privately denounced him as an insolent parvenu. The fanatical
populace repeated his alleged atheistic speeches with pious horror,
a feeling which even his ostentatious charity and apparently strict
observance of the duties of a faithful Mussulman could not counteract.
Inconsistent with the encouragement of literature, as the narrow policy
which delivered the scientific works of the library of Al-Hakem to the
tender mercies of ignorant bigots would seem to indicate, Al-Mansur
was, nevertheless, a munificent patron of letters. His house was so
frequented by men of genius and literary proclivities that it was
compared to an academy. He often visited the University, listened to
the lectures of the teachers, and rewarded the proficiency of the
students. By his express orders the recitations were not suspended
either at his entrance or his departure. Many of the most accomplished
scholars of the East and West continued under his auspices, as they
had done under those of Al-Hakem, to adorn the court, and to delight
with their learning the critical and fastidious society of Cordova.
A special fund, appropriated from the public treasury, was assigned
for the support of these distinguished guests of the State. Famous
grammarians, poets, and historians, who found this a lucrative field
for the exercise of their talents, took up their residence in the
capital. The reputations of the physicians and surgeons of Andalusia,
now greater than ever, had long since spread to the remotest borders
of Europe. Whenever Al-Mansur undertook an expedition, there followed
in his train a number of bards and chroniclers, who could without
delay record his achievements, and celebrate in the most stirring and
pathetic strains of which the poesy of the Desert was capable the
valor, the generosity, the piety, of the renowned champion of the
Moslem faith. Forty-one of the most accomplished literary men of the
empire accompanied the army for this purpose during the Catalonian
campaign.
The enlargement of the Mosque, whose size was doubled by the additions
of Al-Mansur, was undertaken quite as much to restore his failing
credit with the ministers of religion as to accommodate the vast and
increasing crowds which on Fridays assembled in the House of God. The
land required for the extension was paid for at twice the valuation,
already sufficiently exorbitant, estimated by the owners themselves.
In the garden of an old woman, whose premises it was absolutely
necessary for the architect to secure, stood a magnificent palm. At
first she obstinately refused to sell her property, but after repeated
solicitations she consented to exchange it for another residence in
whose grounds was a tree of equal size and beauty. But even amidst the
tropical vegetation of the environs of Cordova such a condition was not
easily complied with. At length, in the vicinity of Medina-al-Zahrâ, an
estate which possessed the desired requisite was procured at a fabulous
price.
In imitation of his predecessors the khalifs, Al-Mansur performed
for weeks the duties of a common laborer on the foundation and
the superstructure of the Mosque. This addition, still intact,
constructed of coarse materials and unsymmetrical in form, is readily
distinguishable from the rest of the interior, whose sweeping horseshoe
arches and exquisite decorations are models of grace and beauty. So
meritorious was this work considered by the Mussulman theologians, that
they declared that its accomplishment alone was sufficient to obtain
for its author a seat in Paradise.
The energy of Al-Mansur was far from being consumed in military
expeditions and the pursuit of glory. In the frequent intervals of
peace his efforts were largely directed to improving the condition
of his subjects, the highest and most noble title to distinction to
which a ruler can aspire. He reformed the abuses which had crept
into the administration of justice. He checked the peculations which
were exhausting the treasury, by the institution of a rigid system
of accounts and the severe punishment of dishonest officials. He
sternly rebuked the intolerance of zealots who attempted to establish,
without his sanction, a policy of persecution for opinions which
they considered heretical. With his advent to power, the malignant
influence of the eunuchs was no longer felt in the precincts of the
court, and the uneasy genius of this pernicious class was diverted
from the tortuous paths of political intrigue to the harmless and
pleasing occupations of literature and art. He improved the breed of
horses by the importation of the purest blood of Arabia. There was
scarcely a river in Andalusia which could not boast of a bridge either
built or repaired by the orders of the able and tireless minister. New
highways were opened. Old ones were widened and extended. By these wise
acts of public utility not only was the march of troops facilitated,
but the trade of country and city was prodigiously increased, with a
corresponding diminution of the price of provisions, whose abundance
and cheapness materially benefited all classes of the population.
The best commentary on his transcendent abilities is found in the
fact that the empire which he had ruled with such glory and success
perished with him. His majestic personality dominated everything. In
the history of Islam no similar example of universally recognized
individual superiority has ever been recorded. This extraordinary
genius seemed impregnable to the temptations which usually assail
the favorites of fortune. He was addicted to none of those unnatural
vices whose practice defiled the characters of even the greatest of
the Ommeyades. His harem was maintained rather as an accessory to his
dignity than as an instrument of his pleasures. His amour with Aurora,
which had provoked the sarcastic jests of the populace, had been from
first to last a mere matter of policy. The passion of the Sultana
he had deliberately used as the instrument of his ambition; when it
had served his purpose it was as deliberately cast aside. With every
opportunity for the accumulation of untold wealth, Al-Mansur acquired
no more than was necessary to sustain the pomp incident to his exalted
rank. Avarice had no place in his nature. His own treasure as well as
that of the government he freely dispensed in charitable donations. The
slightest act of extortion committed by one of his subordinates was met
with chastisement that barely left the offender with life. No one who
had merited his gratitude was ever forgotten in the distribution of
official honors. No one whose insolence had at any time provoked his
indignation went unpunished. In the accomplishment of his ambition,
he persistently ignored the most obvious principles of morality. In
his administration of petty offices of the inferior magistracy and of
the highest employments of the state alike, he ordinarily observed the
rules of the most impartial justice. After every victory gained by his
arms he liberated hundreds of slaves.
A delusive appearance of moderation is suggested by the conduct of
Al-Mansur, when we reflect that he denied himself the more than regal
prestige which attached to the name of Commander of the Faithful.
There is no doubt, however, that he ardently coveted that distinction.
The possession of the substance of power did not satisfy his lofty
aspirations. He arrogated to himself the remaining titles of the
Khalif, as he had already appropriated the latter’s prerogatives. He
substituted his own seal for that of the injured Hischem. He boldly
assumed the right to appoint his son to the office of prime minister,
the very employment from which he himself derived his entire authority.
The brilliancy of his achievements, the extent of his renown, the
autocratic exertion of his power, had awed and dazzled his subjects,
but had not secured their attachment. The masses openly applauded and
secretly detested him. The various nations composing the population
of Moorish Spain, while mutually hostile in many respects, were
firmly united in their reverence for the inalienable rights of the
crown. The religious character which invested the Khalif deepened and
intensified this feeling. The sagacity of Al-Mansur did not suffer
him to be deluded with the idea that he could violate with impunity
the most sacred opinions and prejudices of the people. Moreover, an
ancient tradition, universally believed, declared that a change of the
dynasty portended the speedy destruction of the khalifate. The man
who in defiance of these ideas could attempt open usurpation was a
public enemy, something worse, if possible, than a traitor. For these
cogent reasons, therefore, Al-Mansur did not seize the royal office,
which, had he been able to assume it, might perhaps have retained the
succession in his own family. As it was, he weakened the veneration
entertained for the principle of legitimacy, without acquiring for
his descendants any permanent advantage in return for the sacrifice.
No one realized these facts so thoroughly as himself. The future of
the empire engrossed his thoughts. It presented itself to his mind
amidst the deliberations of the Divan, in the literary discussions of
the University, in the manœuvres on the field of battle. It disturbed
his slumbers. It embittered his dying moments. The mortal torture
he endured from the reflection that by his agency the integrity of
the khalifate had been irretrievably impaired, and that he could not
transmit the inheritance of his glory, was almost as intense as any he
could have experienced through remorse for crimes perpetrated in the
pursuit of his unrighteous ambition.
The history of the campaigns of Al-Mansur differs materially from
that of the military enterprises of his predecessors. Heretofore, in
all important wars, the Christians were the aggressors. But under the
minister of Hischem the Moslems always led the attack. Other rulers
had negotiated treaties either prompted by victory or compelled by
defeat. In twenty-five years he never made terms with the infidel.
His success became habitual, and infused a just confidence into his
own followers, while in a corresponding degree it disheartened the
enemy. Almost for the first time in the annals of Islam the peremptory
injunction of the Koran was fulfilled to the letter. The effects of one
campaign were not repaired before the calamities of another were at
hand. The frontier to the Christian states receded. The great cities
of Zamora, Leon, Astorga, Barcelona, Pampeluna, Santiago were levelled
with the dust. Cathedrals and monasteries were plundered of wealth
bestowed by pious sovereigns and generations of grateful devotees.
The incomes of the priesthood ceased on account of the devastation
of their estates. With the ruin of the religious houses and the
impoverishment of their occupants, the Christian worship declined.
The prestige of the ecclesiastical order was weakened, and over an
extensive region once abounding with churches and convents scarcely a
reminiscence of Christianity survived. By the successive desecration of
the two holiest shrines in Europe, the faith of the multitude in the
boasted efficacy of relics, in the celestial intercession of saints,
and even in the value of religion itself, was seriously shaken. The
misfortunes of the clergy--who still, however, retained a portion of
their ancient discipline--reacted on the other divisions of society,
already sufficiently demoralized. The monarch and the nobles evinced
a disposition to resist the insolent demands of the priesthood, and
have been, in consequence, anathematized by prelates and defamed by
chroniclers. The king seized without ceremony the property of his
subjects. The barons plundered the royal estates, and cast lots for the
serfs and the flocks which they had appropriated. In less than twenty
years the Christians lost all they had gained in the previous three
hundred. Even the defiles of their mountains were occupied by Moorish
garrisons, and the Asturian peasant was compelled to purchase the
uncertain privilege of procuring his own sustenance by the surrender of
the larger share of the results of his labor. Such were the effects
of the policy of Al-Mansur on the two rival nations of the Peninsula,
a policy whose benefits perished with the author, but whose evils were
destined to be augmented and perpetuated through a long period of
national misfortune and disorder.
Berber immigration, encouraged by the conspicuous favor enjoyed by
the African divisions of the army, as well as by the rich rewards of
successful warfare, and which was fated to inflict such disasters
upon the dismembered monarchy, increased beyond precedent during
the administration of Al-Mansur. Entire tribes passed the Strait to
share the tempting spoil of the Holy War. There was no room for these
ferocious soldiers in the crowded cities. Even in the country, so
thickly populated, space could hardly be found for their encampments.
Their tents were pitched in the pastures and on the slopes of the
sierra. Their fierce aspect appalled all who beheld them. Their
costumes and their arms were strange and foreign. Ignorant of Arabic,
the guttural accents of their Mauritanian dialect grated upon the ears
of the polished Andalusian. In times of the greatest victories, when
the people were intoxicated with success, there were discerning men who
dreaded the ascendency of such dangerous allies. It was, however, the
inexhaustible supply of African recruits which secured the unbroken
series of triumphs that signalized the career of Al-Mansur. Their
numbers were overwhelming. In a review held before an expedition into
the North, six hundred thousand troops were mustered in the plain of
Cordova.
The news of the death of the potent minister was received by the
majority of the inhabitants of the capital with a feeling of
exultation. With the multitude, his eminent services could not atone
for the obscurity of his birth or the splendor of his fortune. The
animosities of contending sects, the jealousies of competing tradesmen,
the envy of the masses towards the powerful, the disdain of the wealthy
for the poor, were forgotten in the common desire to humiliate the
family of the great chieftain through whose genius the Moslem empire
had enjoyed such an extraordinary measure of prosperity and fame. An
insurrection broke out. The mob, surrounding the palace, demanded that
the Khalif in person should assume the direction of affairs. But the
latter, who now, more than ever, felt his incompetency to govern, again
voluntarily renounced the rights of sovereignty. The tumult increased;
the garrison was called out, and Al-Modhaffer signalized his accession
as hajib by the massacre of several hundred citizens. This example of
severity was not soon forgotten; the spirit of revolt was crushed,
and Al-Mansur, who on his death-bed had foreseen the occurrence of a
similar catastrophe, thus averted by his prophetic wisdom a rebellion,
which, unchecked, must have been productive of appalling consequences.
The prince, Al-Modhaffer, inherited in no small degree the military
talents and capacity for civil affairs possessed by his father, whose
maxims he in the main adopted. Few details exist relative to his
administration, which, however, was eminently popular and successful.
The expeditions he made into the Christian territory were not attended
with the brilliant results which characterized the exploits of his
father. Neither profit nor glory could be derived from the invasion of
a desert and the chase of bands of wandering robbers. These forays,
however, served the useful purpose of intimidation, and impeded the
recovery of the Christian power. Relieved from the prodigality and
great military expenses incurred by the aggressive policy of Al-Mansur,
the inexhaustible resources of the Peninsula were permitted to develop
to the utmost. Commerce, manufactures, agriculture, flourished to a
degree heretofore unknown. The rule of Al-Modhaffer is regretfully
alluded to by subsequent writers as coincident with the golden age of
Moslem annals.
After a reign of seven years, Al-Modhaffer died, under circumstances
which raised a strong suspicion of poison. By a previous arrangement,
which popular rumor suggested as the motive of his death, his office
was transferred to his brother, Abd-al-Rahman. The latter was the
offspring of a Christian princess, the daughter of Sancho, King of
Navarre. By his vices and his blasphemy he had incurred the dislike of
the people and provoked the execration of the theologians. The former,
in memory of his infidel grandfather, fastened upon him the diminutive
“Sanchol,” an epithet of contempt. The latter recounted with indignant
horror his immoderate indulgence in wine and his open ridicule of the
sacred ceremonies of Islam. Aware of his unpopularity, Abd-al-Rahman
nevertheless continued to outrage public sentiment, and made no
attempt to gain the attachment of his subjects or to conciliate his
ecclesiastical adversaries. He even had the audacity to ask of Hischem
his investiture and acknowledgment as heir presumptive to the throne.
The Khalif was prevailed upon, partly by sophistry, partly by threats,
to comply with this extravagant and impolitic demand, and an edict was
drawn up in due form and published, proclaiming the detested Sanchol
heir to the titles and the authority of the illustrious dynasty of the
Ommeyades.
No measure could have been devised by his most bitter enemy so fatal
to the aspirations of its promoter as this concession wrung from a
reluctant and persecuted sovereign. It was alike an insult to religion
and to loyalty. It attacked the sacred character of the Successor of
the Prophet, while attempting to abrogate the prerogatives which, in
the eye of the devoted subject, were inseparable from the condition
of sovereignty. Sanchol further increased the prevailing discontent
by compelling the soldiers to discard the helmet for the turban, an
innovation which, appropriating a distinctive portion of the attire of
theologians, was generally regarded as a flagrant act of sacrilege.
Careless of public opinion, and confident of the stability of his
power, Sanchol began to entertain aspirations to military distinction.
He led an expedition into the Asturias, the results of which were not
flattering to his vanity. The mountain defiles, filled with snow,
impeded his progress, and the scarcity of provisions, which he had
neglected to provide in sufficient quantities, finally compelled him to
retreat. In the mean time Cordova was in revolt. A band of conspirators
headed by Mohammed, a great-grandson of Abd-al-Rahman III., surprised
the citadel. The unfortunate Hischem, the puppet of every faction, was
compelled to abdicate. The religious fanatics and the populace hailed
the change of government with extravagant expressions of joy, a feeling
by no means shared by the wealthy and intelligent, who anticipated with
undisguised concern the destructive tyranny of a succession of military
adventurers.
The first act of Mohammed was the seizure of Zahira. The stronghold of
the Amirides was entered and sacked by an infuriated rabble. For four
days the beautiful palace founded by Al-Mansur was at the mercy of the
revolutionists and outlaws of the capital. The long rows of villas,
which, embosomed in shady groves of palm- and orange-trees, stretched
away to the Guadalquivir, were visited with the same destruction.
Everything portable, even to the woodwork, was removed. No estimate
could be made of the plunder secured by the mob, who ransacked every
apartment; but the soldiers of Mohammed delivered to their master
two million one hundred thousand pieces of silver and a million five
hundred thousand pieces of gold. The torch was then applied and
the entire suburb was reduced to ashes. The stones were gradually
appropriated for the construction of other buildings, and in a few
years the memory as well as the ruins of the seat of the Amirides had
completely vanished.
When the intelligence of these events was transmitted to Sanchol
at Toledo, he set out at once with his army for Cordova. The march
had scarcely begun before he experienced the full extent of his
unpopularity, which heretofore he had refused to believe. His force
was diminished daily by desertions. Many of the soldiers who remained
refused to obey their officers. At a short distance from the capital,
the Berbers, on whom he placed his main reliance, left the camp at
midnight, and morning found the commander with a slender retinue, whose
number did not equal that of his ordinary body-guard. Notwithstanding
these ominous indications, the infatuation of Sanchol, who fancied
that the people of Cordova would, by the mere effect of his presence,
be induced to return to their allegiance, urged him on to his ruin. He
was seized by the troops of Mohammed, beheaded, his body clothed in
rags and nailed to a stake, and then placed with the head--which was
impaled on a pike--in one of the most public quarters of the city. With
the death of Sanchol, the rule of the Amirides, who, in a subordinate
capacity, had for a generation exercised despotic power, and whose
policy was destined to visit upon their countrymen a long series of
misfortunes, terminated forever.
The pernicious effects of the practical usurpation of Al-Mansur now
became apparent. The ambition of every aspiring partisan was encouraged
by the example of that gifted leader whose extraordinary talents had
raised him to such a height of affluence and renown.
Mohammed was no sooner fairly seated upon the throne, when the populace
again began to murmur. The excitement of revolution, once enjoyed,
was too pleasant to be abandoned for the severe restraints of law and
social order. And in reality only too much cause existed for popular
dissatisfaction. The new sovereign was cruel, rapacious, dissolute. He
took the heads of rebellious vassals sent him by his generals, had them
cleansed, and the skulls--in which flowers had been planted--arranged
in fantastic designs in the garden of his palace. His drunken and
licentious orgies were the reproach of the court. He alienated the
theologians, who soon discovered that they had made a bad exchange for
even the dissipated and impious Sanchol. He persecuted the Berbers,
who had inherited the vices and the unpopularity of the eunuchs, but
who for a quarter of a century had been the support of the monarchy.
To avoid the possible restoration of Hischem, he publicly announced
his death, substituted for his corpse that of a Christian killed for
the occasion, and who bore a striking likeness to the Khalif, and
celebrated his obsequies with all the magnificence due to departed
royalty. The performance of the rites of Mussulman burial over the
body of an infidel was, in the eyes of every true believer, a deed of
unparalleled infamy. The unpopularity of Mohammed increased daily. A
sedition broke out headed by Hischem, a grandson of Abd-al-Rahman III.,
who boldly demanded the crown of his kinsman. The usurper pretended to
accede, and secretly despatched emissaries to incite the Berbers to
plunder the capital. The scheme was successful; at the first appearance
of these detested foreigners in the market-place, the tradesmen arose
in a body and, aided by the royal body-guard, drove the Africans
from the city. The pretender was taken in the confusion attending the
skirmish and immediately executed.
His place was filled by Suleyman, another prince of the Ommeyade line.
Negotiations were entered into with the Count of Castile, who, in
consideration of the surrender of certain territory, agreed to furnish
a large contingent of men and horses. As soon as their organization was
effected, the Berbers marched on the capital. A battle was fought on
the plain of Cantich, but the disorderly rabble of Cordova were unable
to resist the fierce onset of the African cavalry, and ten thousand
of the partisans of Mohammed fell by the sword or perished in the
Guadalquivir. Mohammed then liberated Hischem, whose supposed corpse he
had buried, resigned his dignity, and proclaimed the son of Al-Hakem
sovereign of Spain. But the ruse had no effect. The Cordovans admitted
the Berbers, and Suleyman occupied the palace of the khalifs.
Henceforth the story of the Peninsula is one of anarchy and ruin. Every
province, every hamlet, was a prey to the hatred of contending parties
intensified by the daily infliction of mutual outrages. Christian
mercenaries, paid with the plunder of the enemy, served in the armies
of both factions. The peasantry were robbed and butchered without
mercy. Cordova was repeatedly sacked by the Catalan auxiliaries, by
the Berbers, by ruthless mobs of its own citizens. It endured all
the privations of a protracted siege, all the unspeakable horrors of
famine and pestilence. While the capital was invested by the Berbers,
the suburb of Medina-al-Zahrâ was taken by these savage warriors.
Every being within its limits was slaughtered. The favorite seat of
the khalifs, on whose construction for forty years the wealth of the
empire had been lavished by Abd-al-Rahman and Al-Hakem, was utterly
destroyed. The treasury was empty, and Wadhih, the governor of Cordova
under Hischem,--who had again been made khalif,--was forced to sell the
greater portion remaining of the library of Al-Hakem to obtain money
to pay his troops. At length the Berbers took the city by assault. The
inhabitants dearly expiated the predilection for revolt which they
had so frequently manifested. The butchery was frightful. Families
conspicuous for wealth were reduced in a few hours to abject poverty.
The gutters ran with blood. Heaps of unburied corpses encumbered the
streets. The famous scholars who had been attracted to Spain from
every country in the world perished almost to a man. No considerations
of mercy, policy, or religion restrained the brutal instincts of the
victors. Women and children were cut down or trampled to death. Crowds
of trembling suppliants, who had sought refuge in the mosques, were
massacred. The sanctity of the harems was violated with every attendant
circumstance of lust and cruelty. Palaces erected by the ambition of a
proud and opulent nobility were burned to ashes. With the accession of
Suleyman, an edict confiscating the property of the citizens whom the
public misfortunes had least affected, and banishing the owners, was
promulgated, and the ferocious Africans, who had dealt such a fatal
blow to the civilization of Europe, and in a few months had overturned
a fabric which the intelligence and energy of a line of great princes
had hardly been able to complete in two hundred years, appropriated the
seraglios, and installed themselves in the few remaining mansions whose
luxurious appointments and magnificent gardens had long been the boast
of the Moslem capital.
The dismemberment of the empire now progressed with appalling rapidity.
The chief’s of both factions constantly solicited the aid of the
Christians for the destruction of their adversaries. For a time their
entreaties were heeded, but with each application the surrender of
territory, whose fortresses constituted the security of the frontier
provinces of the khalifate, was required. With the increasing distress
of the party whose nominal head was Hischem, the demands of the Leonese
and Castilian chieftains became more exacting. At length the Count of
Castile threatened that, unless all the strongholds taken and fortified
by Al-Mansur were delivered to him, he would join the Berbers with
the entire force at his command. The cowardice of the government of
Cordova impelled it to make this disgraceful concession. A great
number of fortified places won by the valor of Al-Mansur’s veterans
were evacuated by the Saracen garrisons. Encouraged by the example of
Sancho, the petty sovereigns of Leon and Navarre sent similar messages
to Cordova. The incompetent Wadhih, who exercised the royal power in
the name of the Khalif, terrified by these empty menaces, hastened
to purchase temporary immunity for the capital by the sacrifice of
the remaining bulwarks of the frontier. It was not long before the
Christian princes, without striking a blow or giving any equivalent,
recovered the territory which all the courage and obstinacy of their
fathers had not been able to retain.
The occupation of Cordova by Suleyman was far from obtaining for
him the submission of the remaining cities of the khalifate. The
excesses committed by the Berbers, and the employment of the hated
infidels of Castile, arrayed almost the entire population against
him. The strongholds of the North, through the pusillanimous conduct
of the imperial officials, were irretrievably lost. The governors
of the eastern and western provinces proclaimed their independence.
Thousands of prosperous villages were destroyed; and the plains so
recently covered with luxuriant vegetation again assumed the desolate
appearance they possessed during the disastrous civil wars of the
emirate. So complete was this devastation, that it was said one could
travel for many days northward from Cordova and not encounter a single
human being.
Upon the arrival of Ali, Suleyman’s successor, at the capital, a
thorough search was made for the Khalif Hischem, but without success.
The corpse buried by Mohammed was exhumed, but was not identified as
that of the unfortunate prince. Diligent inquiry failed to elicit
any reliable intelligence concerning the missing monarch. The same
uncertainty envelops the end of the last of the Ommeyades that attaches
to the fate of the last of the Visigoths. Both were the degenerate
heirs of a dynasty of illustrious sovereigns. One lost his crown and
his life directly through the oppression he inflicted on his subjects;
the other indirectly through tyranny endured from an unnatural
relative and an ungrateful minister. Both perished by treason, and
each disappeared in the final catastrophe which overwhelmed his
kingdom. The Khalif Hischem was never seen after the Berbers sacked
the capital. An idle tradition asserted that he escaped the carnage
of that dreadful day and found a refuge in Asia. It is more probable,
however, that he was killed in the confusion of the assault, and that
his body, stripped and unrecognized, was consigned, with those of
thousands of his subjects, to an unknown grave. With him ended the
prosperity, the affluence, the glory of the line of the Ommeyades.
Henceforth, the khalifate, broken into a multitude of independent and
often hostile principalities, offered an easy prey to the enterprise
of the Christians, whose costly experience had finally taught them the
imperative necessity of concerted union.
END OF VOLUME I.
Transcriber’s Notes:
1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been
corrected silently.
2. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have
been retained as in the original.
3. Where hyphenation is in doubt, it has been retained as in the
original.
4. Italics are shown as _xxx_.
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