Tarik and his twelve thousand Berbers,^A or Moors, had at one stroke won the Spanish Peninsula. The banner of the Prophet waved over every one of the ancient and famous cities in Andalusia, and the turbaned army had marched through the stubborn north as far as the Spanish border. As Musa, intoxicated with success, stood at last upon the Pyrenees, he saw before him a vision of a subjugated Europe. The banner of the Prophet should wave from the Pyrenees to the Baltic! A mosque should stand where St. Peter's now stands in Rome! So, step by step, the Moslems pressed up into Gaul, and in 732 their army had reached Tours.

It was a moment of supreme peril for Christendom. But, happily, the Franks had what the Goths had not—a great leader. Charles Martel,—then Maire du Palais, and virtually King of France, instead of the feeble Lothair,—led his Franks into what was to be one of the most decisive of the world's battles; a battle which would determine whether Europe should be Christian or Mahommedan.

The tide of infidel invasion had reached its limits. The strong right arm of Charles dealt such ponderous blows that the Moslems broke in confusion, and this savior of Christendom was thenceforth known as Charles Martel: "Karl of the Hammer."

After this crushing disaster at Tours the Moors realized that they were not invincible. Their vaulting ambition did not again try to overleap the Pyrenees; and they addressed themselves to settling affairs in their new territory.

It has been wisely said that if the Mahommedan state had been confined within the borders of Arabia, it would speedily have collapsed. Islam became a world-wide religion when it clothed itself with armor, and became a church militant. It was conquest which saved the faith of the Prophet. In its home in Asia the Empire of Mahommed was composed of hostile tribes and clans, and as it moved westward it gathered up Syrians, Egyptians, and the Berbers on the African coast, who, when Morocco was reached, were known as Moors. This strange, heterogeneous mass of humanity, all nourished from Arabia, was held together by two things: the Koran and the sword.

When conquest was exchanged for peaceful possession, all the internecine jealousies, the tribal feuds, and old hatreds burst forth, and the first fifty years of Moorish rule in Spain was a period of internal strife and disorder—Arabs and Moors were jealously trying to undermine each other; while the Arabs themselves were torn by factions representing rival clans in Damascus.

But a singular clemency was shown toward the conquered Spaniards. They were permitted to retain their own law and judges, and their own governors administered the affairs of the districts and collected the taxes. The rule of the conquering race bore upon the people actually less heavily than had the old Gothic rule. Jews and Christians alike were free to worship whom or what they pleased; but, at the same time, great benefits were bestowed upon those who would accept the religion of the Prophet. The slave class, which was very large and had suffered terrible cruelties under its old masters, was treated with especial mildness and humanity. There was a simple road to freedom opened to every man. He had only to say, "There is one God, and Mahommed is his Prophet," and on the instant he became a freeman!

Such gentle proselytizing as this speedily won converts, not alone among slaves but from all classes. The pacification of Spain by the Romans had required centuries; while only a few years sufficed to make of the vanquished in the southern provinces, a contented and almost happy people; not only reconciled, but even glad of the change of masters. Never was Andalusia so mildly, justly, and wisely governed as by her Arab conquerors.

The most delicate of all problems is that of dealing with a conquered race in its own land. That this should have been so wisely and so skillfully handled would be incomprehensible if this had been really, what it is always called, a Moorish conquest. But to be accurate, it was a Moorish invasion and a Saracen conquest!

The fierce Berber Moor contributed the brute force, which was wielded by Saracen intelligence.

The Saracens were the leaven which penetrated the whole sodden mass of Mahommedanism. With a civilization which had been ripening for centuries under Oriental skies,—rich in wisdom, learning, culture, science, and in art,—they had come into Europe, infidels though they were, to build up and not to destroy.

The Roman conquest of Spain had civilized a barbarous race. The Gothic conquest of Romanized Spain had converted an effete civilization into a strong semi-barbarism. Now again the Saracen had come from the East to convert a semi-barbarism into a civilization richer than any Spain had yet known, and, more than that, to hold up a torch of learning and enlightenment which should illumine Europe in the days of darkness which were at hand. Although this difference between Arab and Moor primarily existed, they became fused, and we shall speak of them only as Moors. But we should not lose sight of the fact that the superior intelligence which made the Moorish kingdom magnificent was from the land of the Prophet.

The Saracen dealt gently with the conquered Spaniard, not because his heart was tender and kind, but because he was crafty and wise, and knew when not to use force, in order to accomplish his ends. For the same reason he refrained from trying to break the spirit of the independent northern provinces, where the descendants of the old Visigoths—the Hidalgos ("sons-of-somebody")—proudly intrenched themselves in an attitude of defiance, making in time a clearly defined Christian north and Moslem south, with a mountain range (the Sierra Guadarrama) and a river (the Ebro) as the natural boundary line of the two territories. The Moor was a child of the sun. If the stubborn Goth chose to sulk, up among the chilly heights and on the bleak plains of the north, he might do so, and it was little matter if one Alfonso called himself "King of the Asturians," in that mountain-defended and sea-girt province. The fertile plains of Andalusia, and the banks of the Tagus and Guadalquivir, were all of Spain the Moor wanted for the wonderful kingdom which was to be the marvel of the Middle Ages.

Footnote A: (return)

The old Phenician name for the North African tribes, derived from the word Iberi.