| | Invasion of Andalusia by the Almohades, 214—Victory at Alarcos, 217—Defeat at Las Navas, 217—Expulsion of the Almohades, 217—Advance of the Christians, 217—Granada alone left to the Moors, 218—Dynasty of the Beny-Nasr of Granada, 218—Their tribute to Castile, 221—The Alhambra, 221—Ferdinand and Isabella, 232—Abul-Hasan (Alboacen) throws off his allegiance, 232—Capture of Zahara, 233—Fall of Alhama, 235—Disasters of the Christians in the mountains of Malaga, 236—Defeat of the Moors at Lucena, the hordes of the barbarians bore down upon the wide-reaching provinces of the CÆsars—and still the Arabs remained undisturbed, unexplored, and unsubdued. Their frontier cities might pay homage to Chosroes or CÆsar, the legions of Rome might once and again flash across their highland wastes; but such impress was faint and transitory, and left the Arabs unmoved. Hemmed in as they were by lands ruled by historic dynasties, their deserts and their valour ever kept out the invader, and from the days of remote antiquity to the seventh century of the Christian era hardly anything was known of this secluded people save that they existed, and that no one attacked them with impunity. Then suddenly a change came over the character of the Arabs. No longer courting seclusion, they came forth before the world, and proceeded in good earnest to conquer it. The change had been caused by one man. Mohammed the Arabian Prophet began to preach the religion of Islam in the beginning of the seventh century, and his doctrine, falling upon a people prone to quick impulses and susceptible of strong impressions, worked a revolution. What he taught was simple enough. He took the old faith of the Hebrews, which had its disciples in Arabia, and, making such additions and alterations as he thought needful, he preached the worship of One God as a new revelation to a nation of idolaters. It is difficult for us in the present time to understand the irresistible impulse which the simple and unemotional creed of Mohammed gave to the whole people of Arabia; but we know that such religious revolutions have been, and that there is always a mysterious and potent fascination in the personal influence of a true prophet. Mohammed was so far true, that he taught honestly and strenuously what he believed to be the only right faith, and there was enough of sublimity in the creed and of enthusiasm in the Prophet and his hearers to produce that wave of overmastering popular feeling which people call fanaticism. The Arabs before the time of Mohammed had been a collection of rival tribes or clans, excelling in the savage virtues of bravery, hospitality, and even chivalry, and devoted to the pursuit of booty. The Prophet turned the Arab tribes, for the nonce, into the Moslem people, filled them with the fervour of martyrs, and added to the greed of plunder the nobler ambition of bringing all mankind to the knowledge of the truth. Before Mohammed died he was master of Arabia, and the united tribes who had embraced the Moslem or Mohammedan faith were already spreading over the neighbouring lands and subduing the astonished nations. Under his successors the Khalifs, the armies of the Mussulmans overran Persia and Egypt and North Africa as far as the Pillars of Hercules; and the Muezzins chanted the Call to Prayer to the Faithful over all the land from the river Oxus in Central Asia to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. The Mohammedans, or Saracens (a word which means "Easterns"), were checked in Asia Minor by the forces of the Greek Emperor; and it was not till the fifteenth century that they at last obtained the long-coveted possession of Constantinople, by the valour of the Ottoman Turks. So, too, at the opposite extremity of the Mediterranean, it was an officer of the Greek Emperor who for a while held the Arab advance in check. The conquerors swept over the provinces of North Africa, and, after a long struggle, reduced the turbulent Berber tribes for a while to submission, till only the fortress of Ceuta held out against them. Like the rest of the southern shore of the Mediterranean, Ceuta belonged to the Greek Emperor; but it was so far removed from Constantinople that it was thrown upon the neighbouring kingdom of Spain for support, and, while still nominally under the authority of the Emperor, looked really to the King of Toledo for assistance and protection. It is not likely that all the aid that Spain could have given would have availed against the surging tide of Saracen invasion; but, as it happened, there was a quarrel at that time between Julian the governor of Ceuta and Roderick the King of Spain, which opened the door to the Arabs. Spain was then under the rule of the Visigoths, or West Goths, a tribe of barbarians, like the many others who overran the provinces of the Roman Empire in its decline. The Ostrogoths had occupied Italy; and their kinsmen the Visigoths, displacing or subduing the Suevi (or Swabians) and other rude German tribes, established themselves in the Roman province of Iberia (Spain) in the fifth century after Christ. They found the country in the same condition of effeminate luxury and degeneracy that had proved the ruin of other parts of the empire. Like many warlike peoples, the Romans, when their work was accomplished and the world was at their feet, had rested contentedly from their labours, and abandoned themselves to the pleasures that wealth and security permit. They were no longer the brave stern men who lived simple lives and left the ploughshare to wield the sword when a Scipio or a CÆsar summoned them to defend their country or to conquer a continent. In Spain the richer classes were given over to luxury and sensuality; they lived only for eating and drinking, gambling and all kinds of excitement. The mass of the people were either slaves, or, what was much the same thing, labourers bound to the soil, who could not be detached from the land they cultivated but passed with it from master to master. Between the rich and the slaves was a middle class of burghers, who were perhaps even worse off: for on their shoulders lay all the burden of supporting the State; they paid the taxes, performed the civil and municipal functions, and supplied the money which the rich squandered upon their luxuries. In a society so demoralized there were no elements of opposition to a resolute invader. The wealthy nobles were too deeply absorbed in their pleasures to be easily roused by rumours of an enemy; their swords were rusty with being too long laid aside. The slaves felt little interest in a change of masters, which could hardly make them more miserable than they already were; and the burghers were discontented with the arrangement of the burdens of the State, by which they had to bear most of the cost while they reaped none of the advantages. Out of such men as these a strong and resolute army could not be formed; and the Goths therefore entered Spain with little trouble; the cities willingly opened their gates, and the diseased civilization of Roman Spain yielded with hardly a blow. The truth was that the road of the Goths had been too well prepared by previous hordes of barbarians—Alans, Vandals, and Suevi—to need much exertion on their own part. The Romanized Spaniards had fully learned what a barbarian invasion entailed; they had seen their cities burnt, their wives and children carried captives, those few leaders who showed any manly resistance massacred; they had seen the consequences of the barbarian scourge—plague and famine, wasted lands, starving inhabitants, and everywhere savage anarchy. They had learned their lesson, and meekly admitted the Goths. In the beginning of the eighth century, when the Saracens had reached the African shore of the Atlantic and were looking across the Straits of Hercules to the sunny provinces of Andalusia, the Goths had been in possession of Spain for more than two hundred years. There had been time enough to reform the corrupt condition of the kingdom and to infuse the fresh vigour of youth which an old civilization sometimes gains by the introduction of barbarous but masculine races. There were special reasons why the Goths should improve the state of Spain. They were not only bold, strong, and uncorrupted by ease of life; they were Christians, and, in their way, very earnest Christians. Spain was but nominally converted at the time of their arrival: Constantine had indeed promulgated Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire, but it had taken very little root in the Western provinces. The advent of an ignorant but devout race like the Goths might probably arouse a more earnest faith in the new religion amid the worn-out paganism of the kingdom, and the Catholic priests were full of hope for the future of their church. The result did not in any way justify the anticipation. The Goths remained devout indeed, but they regarded their acts of religion chiefly as reparation for their vices; they compounded for exceptionally bad sins by an added amount of repentance, and then they sinned again without compunction. They were quite as corrupt and immoral as the Roman nobles who had preceded them, and their style of Christianity did not lead them to endeavour to improve the condition of their subjects. The serfs were in an even more pitiable state than before. Not only were they tied to the land or master, but they could not marry without his consent, and if slaves of neighbouring estates intermarried, their children were distributed between the owners of the several properties. The middle classes bore, as in Roman times, the burden of taxation, and were consequently bankrupt and ruined: the land was still in the hands of the few, and the large estates were indifferently cultivated by crowds of miserable slaves, whose dreary lives were brightened by no hope of improvement or dream of release before death. The very clergy, who preached about the brotherhood of Christians, now that they had become rich and owned great estates, joined in the traditional policy and treated their slaves and serfs as badly as any Roman noble. The rich were sunk in the same slough of sensuality that had proved the ruin of the Romans, and the vices of the Christian Goths rivalled, if they did not exceed, the polished wickedness of the pagans. "King Witiza," says the chronicler, anxious to find some reason for the overthrow of the Christians by the Saracens, "taught all Spain to sin." Spain, indeed, knew only too well how to sin before, and Witiza may have been no worse than his predecessors; but the Goths gave a fresh license to the general corruption. The vices of barbarians show often a close resemblance to those of decayed civilization, and in this instance the change of rulers brought no amelioration of morals.[1] Such was the condition of Spain when the Mussulman approached her borders. A corrupt aristocracy divided the land among themselves; the great estates were tilled by a wretched and hopeless race of serfs; the citizen classes were ruined. On the other side of the straits of Gibraltar were the soldiers of Islam, all hardy warriors, fired with the fervour of a new faith, bred to arms from their childhood, simple and rude in their life, and eager to plunder the rich lands of the infidels. Between two such peoples there could be no doubt as to the issue of the fight; but to remove the possibility of doubt, treachery came to the aid of the invaders.
TOLEDO.
TOLEDO. Witiza had been deposed by Roderick, a prince who seems to have begun his reign well, but who presently succumbed to the temptations of wealth and power. His selfish pleasure-loving disposition set fire to the combustible materials that surrounded him and that needed but a spark to explode and destroy his kingdom. It was then the custom among the princes of the State to send their children to the court, to be trained in whatever appertained to good breeding and polite conduct. Among others, Count Julian, the governor of Ceuta, sent his daughter Florinda to Roderick's court at Toledo to be educated among the queen's waiting women. The maiden was very beautiful, and the king, forgetful of his honour, which bound him to protect her as he would his own daughter, put her to shame.[2] The dishonour was the greater, since Julian's wife was a daughter of Witiza, and the royal blood of the Goths had thus been insulted in the person of Florinda. In her distress the young girl wrote to her father, and, summoning a trusty page, bade him, if he hoped for knightly honour or lady's favour, to speed with all haste, night and day, over land and sea, till he placed the letter in Count Julian's hand. Julian had no reason to love King Roderick; his own connection with the deposed and probably murdered King Witiza forbade fellowship with the usurper; and his daughter's dishonour fanned his smouldering rancour to a blaze of vengeful fury. He had so far successfully resisted the attacks of the Arabs; but now he resolved no longer to defend the kingdom of his daughter's destroyer. The Saracens should have Spain if they would, and he was ready to show them the way. Full of a passion for revenge, Julian hastened to the Court of Roderick, where he so skilfully disguised his mind that the king, who felt some remorse and trusted that Florinda had kept the secret, heaped honours upon him, took his counsel in everything relating to the defence of the kingdom, and even by his treacherous advice sent the best horses and arms in Spain to the south under Julian's command, to be ready against the infidel invaders. Count Julian departed from Toledo in the highest favour of the king, taking his daughter with him. Roderick's parting request was that the Count would send him some special kind of hawks, which he needed for hunting; Julian made answer, that he would bring him such hawks as he had never in his life seen before, and with this covert hint of the coming of the Arabs he went back to Ceuta. As soon as he had returned, he paid a visit to Mūsa, the son of Noseyr, the Arab governor of North Africa, with whom his troops had many times crossed swords, and he told him that war was now over between them—henceforth they must be friends. Then he filled the ears of the Arab general with stories of the beauty and richness of Spain, of its rivers and pastures, vines and olives, its splendid cities and palaces, and the treasures of the Goths: it was a land flowing with milk and honey, he said, and Mūsa had only to go over and take it. Julian himself would show him the way, and lend him the ships. The Arab was a cautious general, however; this inviting proposal, he considered, might cover a treacherous ambuscade; so he sent messengers to his master the Khalif at Damascus, to ask for instructions, and meantime contented himself with sending a small body of five hundred men, under Tarīf, in 710, to make a raid, in Julian's four ships, upon the coast of Andalusia. The Arabs had not yet become used to the navigation of the Mediterranean, and Mūsa was unwilling to expose more than an insignificant part of his army to the perils of the deep. Tarīf returned in July, having successfully accomplished his mission. He had landed at the place which still bears his name, Tarīfa, had plundered Algeciras, and seen enough to assure him that Count Julian's tale of the defenceless state of Spain was true, and that his own loyalty to the invaders was to be depended upon. Still Mūsa was not disposed to venture much upon the new conquest. The Khalif of Damascus had enjoined him on no account to risk the whole Moslem army in unknown dangers, and had only authorized small foraying expeditions. Still, encouraged by Tarīf's success, Mūsa resolved upon a somewhat larger venture. In 711, learning that Roderick was busy in the north of his dominions, where, there was a rising of the Basques, Mūsa despatched one of his generals, the Moor Tārik, with 7,000 troops, most of whom were also Moors,[3] to make another raid upon Andalusia. The raid carried him further than he expected. Tārik landed at the lion's rock, which has ever since borne his name, Gebal-Tarik, Gibraltar, and after capturing Carteya, advanced inland. He had not proceeded far when he perceived the whole force of the Goths under Roderick advancing to encounter him. The two armies met on the banks of a little river, called by the Saracens the Wady Bekka, near the Guadalete, which runs into the Straits by Cape Trafalgar. The legend runs that some time before this, as King Roderick was seated on his throne in the ancient city of Toledo, two old men entered the audience chamber. They were arrayed in white robes of ancient make, and their girdles were adorned with the signs of the Zodiac and hung with innumerable keys. "Know, O king," said they, "that in days of yore, when Hercules had set up his pillars at the ocean strait, he erected a strong tower near to this ancient city of Toledo, and shut up within it a magical spell, secured by a ponderous iron gate with locks of steel; and he ordained that every new king should set a fresh lock to the portal, and foretold woe and destruction to him who should seek to unravel the mystery of the tower. Now, we and our ancestors have kept the door of the tower from the days of Hercules even to this hour; and though there have been kings who have sought to discover the secret, their end has ever been death or sore amazement. None ever penetrated beyond the threshold. Now, O king, we come to beg thee to affix thy lock upon the enchanted tower, as all the kings before thee have done." Whereupon the aged men departed. GATE OF BISAGRA, TOLEDO.
GATE OF BISAGRA, TOLEDO. But Roderick, when he had thought of all they had said, became filled with a burning desire to enter the enchanted tower, and despite the warnings of his bishops and counsellors, who told him again that none had ever entered the tower alive, and that even great CÆsar had not dared to attempt the entrance— | Nor shall it ever ope, old records say, | | Save to a king, the last of all his line, | | What time his empire totters to decay, | | And treason digs, beneath, her fatal mine, | | And high above, impends avenging wrath Divine— | despite all admonition, he rode forth one day, accompanied by his cavaliers, and approached the tower. It stood upon a lofty rock, and cliffs and precipices hemmed it in. Its walls were of jasper and marble, inlaid in subtle devices, which shone in the rays of the sun. The entrance was through a passage cut in the stone, and was closed by the great iron gate covered with the rusty locks of all the centuries from the time of Hercules to Witiza; and on either hand stood the aged men who had come to the audience hall. All day long did the two old janitors, though foreboding ill, aided by Roderick's gay cavaliers, labour to turn the rusty keys, until, when it was near sundown, the gate was undone, and the king and his train advanced to the entrance. The gate swung back, and they entered a hall, on the other side of which, guarding a second door, stood a gigantic bronze figure of terrible aspect, which wielded a huge mace unceasingly and dealt mighty blows upon the earth around. When Roderick saw this figure, he was dismayed awhile; but seeing on its breast the words, "I do my duty," he plucked up courage and conjured it to let him pass in safety, for he meant no sacrilege, but only wished to learn the mystery of the tower. Then the figure stood still, with its mace uplifted, and the king and his followers passed beneath it into the second chamber. They found this encrusted with precious stones, and in its midst was a table, set there by Hercules, and on it a casket, with the inscription, "In this coffer is the mystery of the Tower. The hand of none but a king can open it; but let him beware, for wonderful things will be disclosed to him, which must happen before his death." When the king had opened the coffer, there was nothing in it but a parchment folded between two plates of copper; on it were figured men on horseback, fierce of countenance, armed with bows and scimitars, and above them was the motto, "Behold, rash man, those who shall hurl thee from thy throne and subdue thy kingdom." And as they gazed upon the picture, on a sudden they heard the sound of warfare, and saw, as though in a cloud, that the figures of the strange horsemen began to move, and the picture became a vision of war: | So to sad Roderick's eye, in order spread, | | Successive pageants filled that mystic scene, | | Showing the fate of battles ere they bled, | | And issue of events that had not been. | "They beheld before them a great field of battle, where Christians and Moors were engaged in deadly conflict. They heard the rush and tramp of steeds, the blast of trump and clarion, the clash of cymbal, and the stormy din of a thousand drums. There was the flash of swords and maces and battle-axes, with the whistling of arrows and the hurling of darts and lances. The Christians quailed before the foe. The infidels pressed upon them and put them to utter rout; the standard of the Cross was cast down, the banner of Spain was trodden under foot; the air resounded with shouts of triumph, with yells of fury, and with the groans of dying men. Amidst the flying squadrons King Roderick beheld a crowned warrior, whose back was turned towards him, but whose armour and device were his own, and who was mounted on a white steed that resembled his own war-horse Orelia. In the confusion of the fight, the warrior was dismounted, and was no longer seen to be, and Orelia galloped wildly through the field of battle without a rider."[4] When the king and his attendants fled dismayed from the enchanted tower, the great bronze figure had disappeared, the two aged janitors lay dead at the entrance, and amid various stormy portents of nature the tower burst into a blaze, and every stone was consumed and scattered to the winds; and it is related that wherever its ashes fell to the earth there was seen a drop of blood. The mediÆval chroniclers, both Christian and Arab, delighted to relate portents such as these: | Legend and vision, prophecy and sign, | | Where wonders wild of Arabesque combine | | With Gothic imagery of darker shade; | and we read how both sides of the approaching combat were cheered or dismayed by omens of various kinds. The Prophet himself is said to have appeared to Tārik, and to have bidden him be of good courage, to strike, and to conquer; and many like fables are related. But whatever may have been the dreams and visions of the armies then encamped over against one another near the river Guadelete, the result of the combat was never doubtful. Tārik, indeed, although he had been reinforced with 5,000 Berbers, commanded still but a little army of 12,000 troops, and Roderick had six times as many men to his back. But the invaders were bold and hardy men, used to war, and led by a hero; the Spaniards were a crowd of ill-treated slaves, and among their commanders were treacherous nobles. The kinsmen of Witiza were there, obedient to the summons of Roderick; but they intended to desert to the enemy's side in the midst of the battle and win the day for the Saracens. They had no idea that they were betraying Spain. They thought that the invaders were only in search of booty; and that, the raid over and the booty secured, they would go back to Africa, when the line of Witiza would be restored to its ancient seat. And thus they lent a hand to the day's work which placed the fairest provinces of Spain for eight centuries under the Moslem domination. When the Moors saw the mighty army that Roderick had brought against them, and beheld the king in his splendid armour under a magnificent canopy, their hearts for a moment sank within them. But Tārik cried aloud, "Men, before you is the enemy, and the sea is at your backs. By Allah, there is no escape for you save in valour and resolution." And they plucked up courage and shouted, "We will follow thee, O Tārik," and rushed after their general into the fray. The battle lasted a whole week, and prodigies of valour are recorded on both sides. Roderick rallied his army again and again; but the desertion of the partisans of Witiza turned the fortune of the field and it became the scene of a disastrous rout. | The hosts of Don Rodrigo were scattered in dismay, | | When lost was the eighth battle, nor heart nor hope had they; | | He, when he saw that field was lost, and all his hope was flown, | | He turned him from his flying host, and took his way alone. | | | | All stained and strewed with dust and blood, like to some smouldering brand | | Plucked from the flame, Rodrigo showed; his sword was in his hand, | | But it was hacked into a saw of dark and purple tint: | | His jewelled mail had many a flaw, his helmet many a dint. | | | | He climbed into a hill-top, the highest he could see, | | Thence all about of that wide rout his last long look took he; | | He saw his royal banners, where they lay drenched and torn, | | He heard the cry of victory, the Arab's shout of scorn. | | | | He looked for the brave captains that led the hosts of Spain, | | But all were fled except the dead, and who could count the slain? | | Where'er his eye could wander, all bloody was the plain, | | And while thus he said, the tears he shed ran down his cheeks like rain: | | | | "Last night I was the King of Spain—to-day no king am I; | | Last night fair castles held my train—to-night where shall I lie? | | Last night a hundred pages did serve me on the knee— | | To-night not one I call my own—not one pertains to me. | | | | O luckless, luckless was the hour, and cursed was the day, | | When I was born to have the power of this great seniory! | | Unhappy me, that I should see the sun go down to-night! | | O Death, why now so slow art thou, why fearest thou to smite?"[5] | So runs the old Spanish ballad; but the fate of Roderick has remained a mystery to this day. His horse and sandals were found on the river bank the day after the battle; but his body was not with them. Doubtless he was drowned and washed out to the great ocean. But the Spaniards would not believe this. They clothed the dead king with a holy mystery which assuredly did not enfold him when alive. They made the last of the Goths into a legendary saviour like King Arthur, and believed that he would come again from his resting-place in some ocean isle, healed of his wound, to lead the Christians once more against the infidels. In the Spanish legends, Roderick spent the rest of his life in pious acts of penance, and was slowly devoured by snakes in punishment for the sins he had committed, until at last his crime was washed out, "the body's pang had spared the spirit's pain," and "Don Rodrigo" was suffered to depart to the peaceful isle, whence his countrymen long awaited his triumphant return. decorative image not available
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THE WAVE OF CONQUEST. "O COMMANDER of the Faithful, these are not common conquests; they are like the meeting of the nations on the Day of Judgment." Thus wrote Mūsa, the Governor of Africa, to the Khalif Welīd, describing the victory of the Guadalete. There is little wonder that the Saracens stood amazed at the completeness of their triumph. Leaving the regions of myth, with which the Spanish chroniclers have surrounded the fall of Roderick, it is matter of sober history that the victory of the Guadalete gave all Spain into the hands of the Moors. Tārik and his twelve thousand Berbers had by a single action won the whole peninsula, and it needed but ordinary energy and promptness to reduce the feeble resistance which some of the cities still offered. The victor lost no time in following up his success. In defiance of an order from Mūsa, who was bitterly jealous of the unexpected glory which had come to his Berber lieutenant, and commanded him to advance no further, the fortunate general pushed on without delay. Dividing his forces into three brigades, he spread them over the peninsula, and reduced city after city with little difficulty. Mughīth, one of his officers, was despatched with seven hundred horse to seize Cordova. Lying hid till darkness came on, Mughīth stealthily approached the city. A storm of hail, which the Moslems regarded as a special favour of Providence, muffled the clatter of their horses' hoofs. A shepherd pointed out a breach in the walls, and here the Moors determined to make the assault. One of them, more active than the rest, climbed a fig-tree which grew beneath the breach, and thence, springing on to the wall, flung the end of a long turban to the others, and pulled them up after him. They instantly surprised the guard, and threw open the gates to the main body of the invaders, and the town was captured with hardly a blow. The governor and garrison took refuge in a convent, where for three months they were closely beleaguered. When at length they surrendered, Cordova was left in the keeping of the Jews, who had proved themselves staunch allies of the Moslems in the campaign, and who ever afterwards enjoyed great consideration at the hands of the conquerors. The Moors admitted them to their intimacy, and, until very late times, never persecuted them as the Gothic priests had done. Wherever the arms of the Saracens penetrated, there we shall always find the Jews in close pursuit: while the Arab fought, the Jew trafficked, and when the fighting was over, Jew and Moor and Persian joined in that cultivation of learning and philosophy, arts and sciences, which preËminently distinguished the rule of the Saracens in the Middle Ages. With the coÖperation of the Jews, and the terror of the Spaniards, Tārik's conquest proceeded apace. Archidona was occupied without a struggle: the inhabitants had all fled to the hills. Malaga surrendered, and Elvira (near where Granada now stands) was stormed. The mountain passes of Murcia were defended by Theodemir for some time with great valour and prudence; but at last, being over-persuaded into offering a pitched battle on the plain, the Christian army was cut to pieces, and Theodemir escaped with a single page to the city of Orihuela. There he practised an ingenious deception upon his pursuers. Having hardly any men left in the city, for the youth of Murcia had fallen in the field, he made the women put on male attire, arm themselves with helmets and long rods like lances, and bring their hair over their chins as though they wore beards. Then he lined the ramparts with this strange garrison, and when the enemy approached in the shades of evening, they were disheartened to see the walls so well defended. Theodemir then took a flag of truce in his hand, and put a herald's tabard on his page, and they two sallied forth to capitulate, and were graciously received by the Moslem general, who did not recognize the prince. "I come," said Theodemir, "on behalf of the commander of this city to treat for terms worthy of your magnanimity and of his dignity. You perceive that the city is capable of withstanding a long siege; but he is desirous of sparing the lives of his soldiers. Promise that the inhabitants shall be at liberty to depart unmolested with their property, and the city will be delivered up to you to-morrow morning without a blow; otherwise we are prepared to fight until not a man be left." The articles of capitulation were then drawn out; and when the Moor had affixed his seal, Theodemir took the pen and wrote his signature. "Behold in me," said he, "the governor of the city!" At the dawn of day the gates were thrown open, and the Moslems looked to see a great force issuing forth, but beheld merely Theodemir and his page, in battered armour, followed by a multitude of old men, women, and children. "Where are the soldiers," asked the Moor, "that I saw lining the walls last evening?" "Soldiers have I none," answered Theodemir. "As to my garrison, behold it before you. With these women did I man my walls; and this page is my herald, guard, and retinue!" So struck was the Moorish general with the boldness and ingenuity of the trick which had been played upon him, that he made Theodemir governor of the province of Murcia, which was ever afterwards known in Arabic as "Theodemir's land." Even in these early days the Moors knew and practised the principles of true chivalry. They had already won that title to knightliness which many centuries later compelled the victorious Spaniards to address them as "Knights of Granada, Gentlemen, albeit Moors:" | Caballeros Granadinos | | Aunque Moros hijos d'algo. | PUERTO DEL SOL, TOLEDO.
PUERTO DEL SOL, TOLEDO. Meanwhile Tārik had pressed on to Toledo, the capital of the Goths. He was seeking for the Gothic nobles. At Cordova he had looked to meet them, but they had fled: at Toledo, which the Jews delivered into his hands, the nobles were not to be found; they had fled further, and taken refuge in the mountains of the Asturias. Traitors, like the family of Witiza and Count Julian, alone remained, and these were rewarded with posts of government. The rest of the nobility had disappeared; the country was abandoned to the Moors. Spain had become, in fact, a province of the vast empire of the Arab Khalifs, who held their court at Damascus and swayed an empire that stretched from the mountains of India to the pillars of Hercules. What remained to be done towards the pacification of Spain was effected by Mūsa, who, when he heard of Tārik's continued career of success, sailed in all haste across the Straits, followed by his Arabs, to take his full share of the glory. He crossed in the summer of 712 with eighteen thousand men, and, after reducing Carmona, Seville, and Merida, joined Tārik at Toledo. The meeting between the conqueror and his superior officer was not friendly. Tārik went forth to receive the governor of the West with all honour, but Mūsa struck him with a whip, overwhelmed him with reprimands for exceeding his instructions, and, declaring that it was impossible to entrust the safety of the Moslems to such rash and impetuous leading, threw him into prison. When this act of jealous tyranny came to the ears of the Khalif Welīd he summoned Mūsa to Damascus, and restored Tārik to his command in Spain. Before returning to Syria, Mūsa had stood upon the Pyrenees and seen a vision of European conquest. His recall interrupted his further advance; but others soon pushed forward. An Arab governor, as early as 719, occupied the southern part of Gaul, called Septimania, with the cities of Carcasonne and Narbonne, and from these centres he began to make raids upon Burgundy and Aquitania. Eudes, Duke of Aquitania, administered a total defeat to the Saracens under the walls of Toulouse in 721, but this only diverted their course more to the west. They sacked Beaune, exacted tribute from Sens, seized Avignon in 730, and made numerous raids upon the neighbouring districts. The new governor of Narbonne, Abd-er-Rahmān, resolved upon the conquest of all Gaul. He had already checked the operations of Eudes, who presumed, after his victory at Toulouse, to carry the war into the Saracens' country; and now he attacked the Tarraconaise, and boldly invaded Aquitaine, defeated Eudes on the banks of the Garonne, captured Bordeaux by assault, and in 732 marched on in triumph towards Tours, where he had heard of the treasures of the Abbey of St. Martin. Between Poictiers and Tours he was met by Charles, the son of Pepin the Heristal, then virtual King of France, for the feeble Merovingian sovereign, Lothair, had no voice to oppose the will of his powerful Mayor of the Palace. The Saracens went joyfully to the fight. They expected a second field of the Guadalete, and looked to see fair France their prey from Calais to Marseilles. An issue momentous for Europe was to be decided, and the conflict that ensued has rightly been numbered among the fifteen decisive battles of the world. The question to be judged by force of arms was whether Europe was to be Christian or Mohammedan—whether the future NÔtre Dame was to be a church or a mosque—perhaps even whether St. Paul's, when it came to be built, should echo the chant of the Agnus Dei or the muttered prayers of Islam. Had not the Saracens been checked at Tours there is no reason to suppose that they would have stopped at the English Channel. But, as fate decreed, the tide of Mohammedan invasion had reached its limit, and the ebb was about to set in. Charles and his Franks were no emasculate race like the Romanized Spaniards and Goths. They were at least as hardy and valorous as the Moors themselves, and their magnificent stature gave them an advantage which could not fail to tell. Six days were spent in partial engagements, and then on the seventh came a general medley. Charles cut through the ranks of the Moslems with irresistible might, dealing right and left such ponderous blows that from that day he was called Charles Martel, "Karl of the Hammer." His Frankish followers, inspired by their leader's prowess, bore down upon the Saracens with crushing force; and the whole array of the Moslems broke and fled in utter rout. The spot was long and shudderingly known in Andalusia by the name of the "Pavement of Martyrs." The danger to Western Europe was averted. So crushing was the disaster that the Moors of Spain never again, during all the centuries that they ruled in the south, attempted to invade France. They retained, indeed, their hold of Narbonne and the districts bordering the northern slopes of the Pyrenees for some time longer (until 797), and even ventured upon foraying raids into Provence. But here their ambition ceased. The battle of Tours had once for all vindicated the independence of France, and set a bound to the Moslem conquests. Like the swelling tide of the sea, the Saracen hordes had poured over the land; and now, through the Hammerer of the Franks, a voice had spoken: "Hitherto shalt thou come and no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed." ARCH IN THE ALJAFERIA OF ZARAGOZA.
ARCH IN THE ALJAFERIA OF ZARAGOZA. On the other hand, the kings of France were so deeply impressed with the courage of their Moslem neighbours, that, though they too delighted in occasional forays, once only did they attempt the subjugation of Spain. Charlemagne, the second Alexander, could not contemplate with composure the immunity of the Moslem power on the other side of the Pyrenees. As a good Christian he was pledged to extirpate the infidel; and, as an imperial conqueror, the existence of the independent kingdom of Andalusia was hateful to his pride. His opportunity came at last—when the accession of the first Spanish prince of the Omeyyad stock roused the hostility of some of the factions which were always prone to revolt in Spain. Charlemagne was invited to interfere and drive out the usurper. The Spanish chroniclers make Alfonso, King of the Asturias and heir of Pelagius,[6] summon the Frankish emperor to his aid; but there is more reason to believe that the invitation came from certain disappointed Moslem chiefs, who could not brook the authority of Abd-er-Rahmān the Omeyyad, and who were ready to submit even to the sworn enemy of Islam, rather than recognize the new ruler. The moment of their appeal was propitious; Charlemagne had just completed, as he thought, the subjugation of the Saxons; their chief Wittekind had been banished, and thousands of his followers were coming to Paderborn to be baptized. The conqueror's hands were thus free to turn to other schemes of victory. It was arranged that he should invade Spain, while the factious Moslem chiefs should make diversions in his favour at three different points. Fortunately for the newly-founded dynasty of Cordova, this formidable coalition came to naught. The allies in Spain miscalculated their time, and fell to blows with one another; and when Charlemagne crossed the Pyrenees in 777, he found himself unsupported. He began the siege of Zaragoza, when news was brought him that Wittekind had returned and raised the Saxons, who were again in arms, and had advanced as far as Cologne. There was nothing for it but to hurry back and defend his dominions. He rapidly retraced his steps, and the main part of his army had already crossed the mountains when disaster overtook the rear in the Pass of Roncesvalles. The Basques, who nourished an eternal hatred against the Franks, had laid a skilful ambuscade among the rocky defiles of the Pyrenees, and, allowing the advanced part of the army to march through, waited till the rear-guard, encumbered with baggage, began slowly to thread its way through the pass. Then they fell upon it hip and thigh, so that scarcely a Frank escaped. The Christian chroniclers tell terrible tales of the slaughter done that day. According to them it was the Saracens, side by side with the knights of Leon, who wrought this havoc upon King Charles. We read in the old Spanish ballad how the legendary hero Bernardo del Carpio led the chivalry of Leon to the massacre of the Frankish host: | With three thousand men of Leon from the city Bernard goes, | | To protect the soil Hispanian from the spear of Frankish foes; | | From the city which is planted in the midst between the seas, | | To preserve the name and glory of old Pelayo's victories. | | | | Free were we born, 'tis thus they cry, though to our king we owe | | The homage and the fealty behind his crest to go: | | By God's behest our aid he shares, but God did ne'er command | | That we should leave our children heirs of an enslavÈd land. | | | | Our breasts are not so timorous, nor are our arms so weak, | | Nor are our veins so bloodless, that we our vow should break, | | To sell our freedom for the fear of prince or paladin: | | At least we'll sell our birthright dear—no bloodless prize they'll win. | | | | At least King Charles, if God decrees he must be Lord of Spain, | | Shall witness that the Leonese were not aroused in vain: | | He shall bear witness that we died as lived our sires of old— | | Nor only of Numantium's pride shall minstrels' tale be told. | | | | The LION that hath bathed his paws in seas of Lybian gore; | | Shall he not battle for the laws and liberties of yore? | | Anointed cravens may give gold to whom it likes them well, | | But steadfast heart and spirit, Alfonso ne'er shall quell. | Side by side with the doughty warriors of Leon, who thus refused to join the Prince of the Asturias in his homage to Charlemagne, were (according to the romances) a host of valiant Saracens, who joined in the onset upon the retiring Franks. Pseudo-Turpin's legendary history of Charles and Orlando tells of a "fresh body of thirty thousand Saracens, who now poured furiously down upon the Christians, already faint and exhausted with fighting so long, and smote them from high to low, so that scarcely one escaped. Some were transpierced with lances, some killed with clubs, others beheaded, burnt, flayed alive, or suspended on trees." The massacre was horrible, and the memory of that day has never faded from the imagination of the peasantry of the district. When the English army pursued Napoleon's marshals through the pass of Roncesvalles, the soldiers heard the people singing the old ballad of the fatal field; and Spanish minstrels have recorded many incidents, true or false, of the fight. One of the most famous is the ballad of Admiral Guarinos, which Don Quixote and Sancho Panza heard sung at Toboso, according to the veracious history of Cervantes: | The day of Roncesvalles was a dismal day for you, | | Ye men of France, for there the lance of King Charles was broke in two: | | Ye well may curse that rueful field, for many a noble peer | | In fray or fight the dust did bite beneath Bernardo's spear. | | There captured was Guarinos, King Charles's Admiral: | | Seven Moorish kings surrounded him, and seized him for their thrall. | And the ballad goes on to tell the tale of Guarinos' captivity, and of his revenge at the tourney, when he slew his captor, and rode free for France. Among the slain that day was Roland, the redoubtable Paladin, commander of the frontier of Brittany. He is the Sir Launcelot of the Charlemagne romance, and many are the doughty deeds recorded of him. He had fought all day in the thickest of the fray, dealing deadly blows with his good sword Durenda; but all his prowess could not save the day. So, wounded to death, and surrounded by the bodies of his friends, he stretched himself on the ground, and prepared to yield up his soul. But first he drew his faithful sword, than which he would sooner have spared the arm that wielded it, and saying, "O sword of unparalleled brightness, excellent dimensions, admirable temper, and hilt of the whitest ivory, decorated with a splendid cross of gold, topped by a berylline apple, engraved with the sacred name of God, endued with keenness and every other virtue, who now shall wield thee in battle, who shall call thee master? He that possessed thee was never conquered, never daunted by the foe; phantoms never appalled him. Aided by the Almighty, with thee did he destroy the Saracen, exalt the faith of Christ, and win consummate glory. O happy sword, keenest of the keen, never was one like thee; he that made thee, made not thy fellow! Not one escaped with life from thy stroke." And lest Durenda should fall into the hands of a craven or an infidel, Roland smote it upon a block of stone and brake it in twain. Then he blew his horn, which was so resonant that all other horns were split by its sound; and now he blew it with all his might, till the veins of his neck burst. And the | blast of that dread horn, | | On Fontarabian echoes borne, | reached even to King Charles's ear as he lay encamped and ignorant of the disaster that had befallen the rear-guard eight miles away. The king would have hastened to answer the forlorn blast, that seemed to tell of a tragedy; but a traitor told him that Roland was gone a-hunting, and Charlemagne was persuaded not to answer the summons of his faithful paladin; who, after prayer and confession, gave up the ghost. Then Baldwin, another of the peers of France, came running to the king and told him of what had befallen the rear of his army, and the death of Roland and Oliver. Whereupon the king and all his army turned and marched back to Roncesvalles, where the ground was strewn with dead, and Charles himself was the first to descry the body of the hero, lying in the form of a cross, with his horn and broken sword beside him. Then did Great Charles lament over him with bitter sighs and sobs, wringing his hands and tearing his beard, and crying, "O right arm of thy Sovereign's body, honour of the Franks, sword of justice, inflexible spear, inviolable breastplate, shield of safety, noble defender of the Christians, scourge of the Saracens, a wall to the clergy, the widow's and orphan's friend, just and faithful in judgment! Renowned Count of the Franks, valiant captain of our armies, why did I leave thee here to perish? How can I behold thee dead, and not die with thee? Why hast thou left me sorrowful and alone, a poor miserable king? But thou art exalted to the kingdom of heaven, and dost enjoy the company of angels and martyrs!" Thus did Charles mourn for Roland to the last day of his life. On the spot where he died the army rested, and the body was embalmed with balsam, aloes, and myrrh. The whole army of the Franks watched by it that night, honouring the corse with hymns and songs, and lighting fires on the mountains round about. Then they took him with them, and buried him right royally. Thus ended the fatal day— | When Roland brave and Oliver, | | And every paladin and peer, | | On Roncesvalles died. | No action of so small importance has ever been made the theme of so many heroic legends and songs. It is the ThermopylÆ of the Pyrenees, with none of the glory or the significance, but all the glamour, of its prototype.
decorative image not available III.
THE PEOPLE OF ANDALUSIA. THE victory of Charles Martel, in 733, had set a bound to the Saracens' invasion of Europe; they no longer thought of further conquest, but turned to the work of consolidating the kingdom they had acquired. After the brief and disastrous incursion of Charlemagne, they were left in almost undisturbed possession of their new territory for a period of three hundred years. It is true the descendants of the expelled Goths still held out in stubborn independence in the mountainous districts of the north, and from time to time recovered a portion of their ancient dominion; but these inroads, while they gave some trouble, did not materially endanger the domination of the Moors over the greater part of Spain until the eleventh century. The conquerors accepted the independence of the northern provinces as an inevitable evil, which would cost more blood to remove than the feat was worth; and leaving Galicia, Leon, Castile, and the Biscayan provinces to the Christians, they contented themselves with the better part of the land: the Christians might enjoy the dreary wastes and rocky defiles of the north, provided they did not interfere with the Moors' enjoyment of the warm and fertile provinces of the south and east. From the end of the eighth century, when the Moorish boundaries took a tolerably final shape, to the time of the advance of the Christian kingdoms in the eleventh century, the division between the Christian north and the Moslem south may be roughly placed at the great range of mountains called the Sierra de Guadarrama, which runs in a north-easterly direction from Coimbra in Portugal to Zaragoza, from whence the Ebro may be taken as a rough boundary. The Moors thus enjoyed the fertile valleys of the Tagus, the Guadiana, and the Guadalquivir—the very name of which bears witness to its Arab owners, for Guadalquivir is a corruption of the Arabic Wady-l-kebīr, or the "Great River"—besides possessing the famous cities of Andalusia, the wealth and commerce and climatic advantages of which had been celebrated from Roman times. The division was a natural one; the two parts have been distinguished geographically from time immemorial, on account of their climatic differences. The north is bleak and exposed to biting winds, subject to heavy rains and intense cold; a good pasturage country, but in most parts ill to cultivate. The south, while tormented by the hot winds that blow over from Africa, is genial, well watered, and capable of high cultivation. A great plateau divides the two, and though this fell chiefly on the Moorish side, it was to some extent debatable land and insecurely held. Its chilly heights rendered it distasteful to lovers of sunshine like the Moors, and they confided it chiefly to the care of the Berber tribes who had first come over with Tārik, and who were always held in poor estimation by the true Arabs who reaped the fruits of the conquest. ALCANTARA.
ALCANTARA. In the two-thirds of the peninsula thus marked off by nature for their habitation, which the Arabs always called "Andalus," and we shall call Andalusia, to distinguish it from the entire peninsula, the Moors organized that wonderful kingdom of Cordova which was the marvel of the Middle Ages, and which, when all Europe was plunged in barbaric ignorance and strife, alone held the torch of learning and civilization bright and shining before the Western world. It must not be supposed that the Moors, like the barbarian hordes who preceded them, brought desolation and tyranny in their wake. On the contrary, never was Andalusia so mildly, justly, and wisely governed as by her Arab conquerors. Where they got their talent for administration it is hard to say, for they came almost direct from their Arabian deserts, and the rapid tide of victories had left them little leisure to acquire the art of managing foreign nations. Some of their counsellors were Greeks and Spaniards, but this does not explain the problem; for these same counsellors were unable to produce similar results elsewhere, and all the administrative talent of Spain had not sufficed to make the Gothic domination tolerable to its subjects. Under the Moors, on the other hand, the people were on the whole contented—as contented as any people can be whose rulers are of a separate race and creed,—and far better pleased than they had been when their sovereigns belonged to the same religion as that which they nominally professed. Religion was, indeed, the smallest difficulty which the Moors had to contend with at the outset, though it became troublesome afterwards. The Spaniards were as much pagan as Christian; the new creed promulgated by Constantine had made little impression among the general mass of the population, who were still predominantly Roman. What they wanted was, not a creed, but the power to live their lives in peace and prosperity. This their Moorish masters gave them. THE SIERRA NEVADA.
THE SIERRA NEVADA. At first of course there was a brief period of confusion, some burning, pillaging, massacring; but this was soon checked by the Arab governors. When things had settled down again, the subject populations found themselves at least no worse off than before, and they shortly began to perceive that they had benefited by the change of rulers. They were permitted to retain their own laws and judges; governors of their own race administered the districts, collected the taxes, and determined such differences as arose amongst themselves. The citizen classes, instead of bearing the whole burden of the State expenditure, had only to pay a poll-tax of no very exacting amount, and they were free of all obligations; unless they held cultivable land, in which case they paid the Kharaj or land-tax as well. The poll-tax was graduated according to the rank of the payer, from twelve to forty-eight dirhems a year, or from about three to twelve pounds at our present purchasing power of money; and its collection in twelve monthly instalments made it the easier to meet. The poll-tax was an impost upon heresy; it was levied only upon Christians and Jews: the land-tax, on the other hand, which varied according to the productiveness of the soil, was assessed equally on Christians, Jews, and Moslems. As a rule the old proprietors and cities preserved their property as before the conquest. The lands of the Church, indeed, and of those landowners who had fled to the mountains of the north, were confiscated, but even then their serfs were left upon them as cultivators, and were only required to pay a certain proportion, varying from a third to four-fifths, of the produce, to their new Moslem lords. Sometimes the cities, such as Merida and Orihuela, had been able to obtain exceptionally favourable terms from the conquerors, and were suffered to retain their goods and lands upon the payment of a fixed tribute. At the worst, beyond the poll-tax, the Christians were in no way subject to heavier exactions than their Moslem neighbours. They had even gained a right which had never been permitted them by the Gothic kings: they could alienate their lands.[7] In religious toleration they had nothing to regret. Instead of persecuting them, and forcing upon them a compulsory conversion, as the Goths had upon the Jews, the Arabs left them free to worship whom or what they pleased; and so valuable was the poll-tax to the treasury, that the Sultans of Cordova were much more disposed to discourage than to welcome any considerable missionary fervour that might deprive the State of so useful a source of revenue. The result was that the Christians were satisfied with the new rÉgime, and openly admitted that they preferred the rule of the Moors to that of the Franks or Goths. Even their priests, who had lost most of all, were at first but little incensed with the change, as the old chronicle, ascribed to Isidore of Beja, written at Cordova in 754, shows. The good monk is not even scandalized at so unholy an alliance as the marriage between Roderick's widow and the son of Mūsa. But the best proof of the satisfaction of the Christians with their new rulers is the fact that there was not a single religious revolt during the eighth century. Above all, the slaves, who had been cruelly ill-used by the Goths and Romans, had cause to congratulate themselves upon the change. Slavery is a very mild and humane institution in the hands of a good Mohammedan. The Arabian Prophet, while unable to do away with an ancient institution, which was nevertheless repugnant to the socialistic principles of Islam, did his utmost to soften the rigours of slavery. "God," said he, "hath ordained that your brothers should be your slaves: therefore him whom God hath ordained to be the slave of his brother, his brother must give him of the food which he eateth himself, and of the clothes wherewith he clotheth himself, and not order him to do anything beyond his power.... A man who ill-treats his slave will not enter into Paradise." There is no more commendable action in Mohammedan morals than to free slaves, and such enfranchisement is enjoined by the Prophet especially as an atonement for an undeserved blow or other injustice. In Andalusia, the slaves upon the estates that had passed from the Christians into the possession of Moslems were almost in the position of small farmers; their Mohammedan masters, whose trade was war, and who despised heartily such menial occupations as tilling the soil, left them free to cultivate the land as they pleased, and only insisted on a fair return of products. Slaves of Christians, instead of being hopelessly condemned to servitude for all their lives, were now provided with the simplest possible road to freedom: they had only to go to the nearest Mohammedan of repute, and repeat the formula of belief, "There is no god but God, and Mohammed is His Prophet," and they became immediately free. Conversion to Islam thus carried with it enfranchisement, and it is no wonder that we find the Spanish slaves hastening to profess the new faith and thus to become free men. The Catholic priests had taken small pains to graft the Christian religion into their hearts; they had enough to do to look after their estates and the souls of the nobles without troubling themselves about the spiritual wants of the ignorant; and the change from semi-pagan, semi-Christian, vacuity to a perhaps equally unintelligent apprehension of Islam was no very severe wrench to the servile mind. Nor were the slaves by any means the only converts to the new religion. Many of the large proprietors and men of position became Mohammedans, either to avoid the poll-tax, or to preserve their estates, or because they honestly admired the simple grandeur of this latest presentment of theism. These converts or renegades were destined to cause some trouble in the State, as will presently be seen. While admitted to the equality involved in conversion, they were not really allowed equal rights and privileges; they were excluded from the offices of State, and regarded with suspicion by the Moslems de la vielle roche as interested converts, people who would sell their souls for pelf. In the end these distinctions died out, but not before they had produced serious dissensions and even insurrections. As far as the vanquished were concerned, we have seen that the conquest of Andalusia by the Arabs was on the whole a benefit. It did away with the overgrown estates of the great nobles and churchmen, and converted them into small proprietorships; it removed the heavy burdens of the middle classes, and restricted the taxation to the test-tax per poll levied on unbelievers, and the land-tax levied equally on Moslem and Christian; and it induced a widespread emancipation of the slaves, and a radical improvement in the condition of the unemancipated, who now became almost independent farmers in the service of their non-agricultural Mohammedan masters. It was otherwise with the victors. There is no greater mistake than to imagine that the Arabs, who spread with such astonishing rapidity over half the civilized world, were in any real sense a united people. So far was this from being the truth, that it demanded all Mohammed's diplomatic skill, and all his marvellous personal prestige, to keep up a semblance of unity even while he was alive. The Arabs were made up of a number of hostile tribes or clans, many of whom had been engaged in deadly blood-feuds for several generations, and all of whom were moved by a spirit of tribal jealousy which was never entirely extinguished. Had the newly-founded Mohammedan State been restrained within the borders of Arabia, there can be no doubt that it would speedily have collapsed in the rivalry of the several clans; as it was, the death of the Prophet was followed by a general rising of the tribes. Islam became a permanent and world-wide religion only when it clothed itself with armour and became a church militant. The career of conquest saved the faith. The Arabs laid aside for awhile their internecine jealousies, to join together in a grand chase for booty. There was of course a strong fanatical element in the enthusiasm of conquest. They fought partly because they were contending with the enemies of God and His Prophet, because a martyr's Benjamin's cup of happiness awaited those who fell in "the path of God," as they termed the religious war; but there is no denying that the riches of CÆsars and Chosroes, the fertile lands and prosperous cities of the neighbouring kingdoms, formed a very large element in the Moslems' zeal for the spread of the faith. As soon as the career of conquest was exchanged for the quiet of settled possession, the various jealousies and dissensions which the tumult and profits of invasion had kept to some degree in abeyance broke forth into dangerous activity. The party spirit of the Arab tribes extended to all parts of the vast empire they had subdued, and influenced even the Khalif at Damascus; the nomination of the governors of the most distant provinces was actuated by mere factious motives. In Spain, where the "Emīr of Andalus," as he was styled, was appointed either by the Governor of Africa or by the Khalif of Damascus himself, these party differences worked havoc with the peace and order of the kingdom during the first fifty years of Moorish rule. Governors were appointed, deposed, or murdered, in deference to the mandates of some faction, who resented the government being entrusted to a man of the Medīna faction, or would not have a clansman of Kays, or objected to the nomination of a member of the Yemen party; and, throughout the history of the domination of the Moors in Spain, these baleful influences continued to work injury to the State.[8] In Andalusia, moreover, there was another and very important party to be reckoned with, besides the various Arab factions. The conquest of the peninsula had been effected almost entirely by Tārik and his Berbers, and these Berbers (who are the Moors proper, though the word is conveniently employed to denote the mixture of Arabs and Berbers) formed a leading factor in the new state of things. They were not an effete nation like the Romanized Spaniards; but a people full of life and martial energy. In their mountain fastnesses, and ranging the plains from Egypt to the Atlantic, in their numerous and widely distinguished clans, the Berbers had offered to the Arabs a much more formidable resistance than the trained soldiers of Persia or Rome. In many ways they resembled their invaders: they were clansmen like the Arabs; their political ideas were democratic like theirs, with the same reverence for noble families, which took away the dangerous qualities of pure democracy among an ignorant people. Their very manner of warfare was almost Arab. For seventy years the two races of nomads fought together, and when at last the Arabs obtained the upper hand, it was rather by the acquiescence of their foes than by any distinct submission. The Berbers permitted the Arab governor to hold his court near the coast, but insisted on preserving their own tribal government among themselves, and demanded to be treated as brothers, not as servants, by their antagonists. This fraternal system worked fairly well for a time. The Berbers, always a marvellously credulous people, were quick to accept any new faith, and embraced Islam with a fervour far exceeding anything the more sceptical mind of the Arab could evoke. Very soon Barbary became the hotbed of religious nonconformity; the arid doctrines of Islam were supplemented by those more mystical and emotional elements which imaginative minds soon engraft upon any creed soever; and the Mohammedan dissenter, expelled from the more rigid regions of orthodoxy, found a singularly productive soil for his doctrines in the simple minds of the Berbers. The same susceptibility to religious emotion, which had produced so general a conversion that the conquest of Spain was effected by a Berber general and twelve thousand Berber troops, soon led to further movements. The Marabout—saint, missionary, or priest—came to exercise a more potent influence over this credulous people than tribal chief or Arab governor could ever acquire. It needed but a few mock miracles to bring a host of gaping devotees about the shrine of the marabout, and so clearly had an Arab general realized this condition of popularity that, when he perceived the influence which a priestess exercised over the people by her jugglery, the subtle Moslem set to work in the same manner, and soon became an adept at legerdemain or whatever corresponded to spirit-rapping in those days, with the very best results. But a people so easily influenced by such means, a priest-ridden nation, is always liable to sudden and violent revolutions, which its priests can stimulate by a single word. The marabouts among the Berbers were responsible for most of the later changes that took place in North Africa: they set up the Fatimites, sent the Almoravides victorious through Barbary and Spain, and then put them down by the Almohades. They began very early to work against the Arab governors, and when one of these had indulged his passion for luxury at the expense of a cruel oppression of his subjects, the priests set the Berbers in revolt, and in a moment the whole of the western half of the Mediterranean coast was up in arms, and the Arabs were terribly defeated. Thirty thousand fresh troops were sent from Syria to recover the provinces, but these, joined to the Arabs that still remained in Africa, were repulsed with great slaughter, and the remnant were cooped up in Ceuta, where they daily awaited famine and massacre. The Berbers in Andalusia, always in intimate touch with their kinsmen over the water, were quick to feel the influence of such a revolution as was then (741) going forward in Africa. They had cause to grudge the Arabs their lion's share of the spoils of Spain, which had been the trophies of the Berbers' bow and spear. While the Arabs, who had only arrived in time to reap the advantages of the conquest, had appropriated all the most smiling provinces of the peninsula, the Berbers found themselves relegated to the most unlovely parts, to the dusty plains of Estremadura, or to the icy mountains of Leon, where they had to contend with a climate which severely tried natures brought up in African heats, and where, too, they had the doubtful privilege of forming a buffer between their Arab allies and the Christians of the North. Already there had been signs of disaffection. One of Tārik's Berber generals, Monousa, who had married a daughter of Eudes, Duke of Aquitaine, raised the standard of revolt when he heard of the oppression of his countrymen in Africa; and now, when the Berber cause was triumphant across the Straits, a general rising took place among the northern provinces; the Berbers of the borders, of Galicia, of Merida, Coria, and all the region round about, took up arms, and began to march south upon Toledo, Cordova, and Algeciras, whence they intended to take ship and go to join their compatriots in Barbary. The situation was full of peril, and the Arab Emīr of Andalusia, Abd-el-Melik, who had sternly refused to lend any assistance to the Syrian Arabs shut up in Ceuta, now found himself in this dilemma, that either he must submit to his own rebellious Berbers, or he must invite the co-operation of the very Syrians whom he had persistently refused to succour, and who, when they arrived, might possibly turn out to be a worse plague than that they came to remove. In grave apprehension, he sent ships and brought over the Syrians, after first making them promise to go back when their work was done. Thus reinforced, the Arabs of Andalusia put the Berbers to utter rout, hunted them like wild beasts through the country to their mountain fastnesses, and gratified their vengeance to the full. And then the event which Abd-el-Melik had endeavoured to guard against came to pass. The Syrian auxiliaries refused to exchange the rich lands of Andalusia for the deserts of Africa and the spears of triumphant Berbers; they defied and murdered Abd-el-Melik, and set up their own chief in his stead. The result was a long and obstinate struggle between the old Arab party and the new-comers, accompanied by much bloodshed and devastation. The struggle was only decided when the Khalif of Damascus sent over a new and able governor, who divided the hostile factions by giving them settlements in cities far apart from each other, and banished the more turbulent of their leaders. Thus the Egyptian contingent of the Syrian army was settled in Murcia, which they re-christened "Misr" or Egypt; the men of Palestine at Sidonia and Algeciras; the people of the Jordan at Regio (Malaga), those of Damascus in Elvira (Granada), and the battalion of Kinnesrin at Jaen.[9] From this time one of the causes of faction in Andalusia was removed, but party spirit still ran high, and government was often changed to anarchy, until a ruler armed with peculiar prestige, carrying in his person the authority and blood of the Khalifs of Damascus, came to take into his hands the sceptre of the disturbed country and to unite for awhile all factions under the standard of the Sultan of Cordova. This young man was the new ruler whom Charlemagne had so unsuccessfully come to expel, and his name was Abd-er-Rahmān the Omeyyad. |
