VIII. THE OMMEYADES; REIGN OF ABD-AL-RAHMAN I…

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.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

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.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us