X. REIGN OF ABD-AL-RAHMAN II.; REIGN OF MOHAMMED…

X. REIGN OF ABD-AL-RAHMAN II.; REIGN OF MOHAMMED

822–886

Accession of Abd-al-Rahman II.--Defection of Abdallah--Invasion of the Gothic March--Embassy from the Greek Emperor--Revolt of Merida--Sedition at Toledo--Incursion of the Normans--Persecution of the Christians--Death of Abd-al-Rahman--His Love of Pomp--His Virtues--His Patronage of Art and Letters--Ziryab--His Versatility---Conspiracy of Tarub--Stratagem of Mohammed--His Bigotry--Toledo again Revolts--Rise of the Beni-Kasi--War with the Asturias--Rebellion of Ibn-Merwan--The Serrania de Ronda--Ibn-Hafsun, his Origin and Exploits--Death and Character of Mohammed--Incipient Decadence of the Moslem Power.

At the mature age of thirty-one, endowed with every talent which contributes to political success and intellectual eminence, accustomed for many years to the arduous details of civil affairs as well as to the direction of important military operations and the command of armies, Abd-al-Rahman II. ascended the throne of the emirate. A handsome person and an engaging address aided not a little to increase the general esteem which had been evoked by his capacity for business and his great services to the state. An index to his popularity may be discovered in the honorable titles bestowed upon him by the admiration and love of his subjects. While a youth he was known as Al-Modhaffer, The Victorious, and his benevolence and generosity had, long before his accession, acquired for him the suggestive appellation of the “Father of the Poor.” The physical and mental infirmities of Al-Hakem had, for years before his death, induced him to relinquish the cares of government, and to practically abandon to his son and successor all the power, the duties, and the responsibilities of sovereignty.

Domestic discord, which seemed to be a necessary incident of the inauguration of every prince of the Ommeyades, was not wanting to that of Abd-al-Rahman. His great-uncle, Abdallah, in whose breast the fires of ambition still burned fiercely in spite of his advanced age, leaving his home at Tangier accompanied by a considerable band of friends and retainers, landed in Andalusia and proclaimed himself Emir by virtue of his relationship to the founder of the dynasty. His prospect of success he regarded as the more certain on account of the positions occupied by his three sons, who had enjoyed the confidence and shared the favor of Al-Hakem, and who now exercised the most important commands in the gift of the monarch.

The sanguine hopes of the venerable Abdallah were soon shown to be fallacious. No sooner had he landed when, attacked by the cavalry of Abd-al-Rahman, his forces were put to flight, and, driven from point to point, he was finally compelled to take refuge in Valencia. His sons, so far from sympathizing with his aspirations, did all in their power to thwart them, and by personal appeals to his interest and affection urged him to abandon his treasonable enterprise. Persuaded by their entreaties, which were materially promoted by the timely occurrence of an unfavorable omen,--a portent never unheeded by the superstitious Oriental,--he reluctantly consented to forego his pretensions to the crown and to swear fealty to his nephew. An interview was arranged; Abdallah was escorted by his sons into the presence of the Emir, and the latter, embracing him, not only pardoned his offence, but conferred upon him the government of Murcia, where he remained in peace until his death.

The embarrassment of Abd-al-Rahman, who, at the moment of his accession, found himself confronted with an insurrection whose consequences threatened to be serious, was not lost upon his enterprising neighbors of the Gothic March. They raised a numerous army, ravaged the Moorish territory at the North as far as the left bank of the Segre, returning without having encountered any opposition and laden with the spoils of war. This expedition was commanded by Bernhart, Count of Barcelona, son of the renowned William of Toulouse, upon whom Louis had conferred the fief; the former suzerain, Bera, having been accused of treason and convicted by wager of battle, according to the martial customs of the age. The substitution of a foreigner for a native Goth whose aspirations for independence were a title to favor rather than a reproach with his subjects, who, for the most part of Spanish extraction, cherished the traditions and indulged the pleasing but delusive hope of the ultimate restoration of the organization and power of the ancient Visigothic empire, was a stroke of policy which augured ill for the success or perpetuity of the Frankish domination.

Abd-al-Rahman, aware of the political necessity of making a demonstration to counteract the effects of the inroads that his helpless situation had invited, and not unwilling to inaugurate his reign with a brilliant military exploit, prepared to invade the Gothic March with the army already collected for the suppression of the insurrection fomented by Abdallah. The advance guard, commanded by the wali Abd-al-Kerim, approaching from Valencia met the Christians not far from Barcelona, and, after a short but hotly contested engagement, drove them inside the gates. The Emir having arrived soon after with the main body, the city was besieged. A number of determined attempts to carry it by escalade having failed, and the force of Abd-al-Rahman not being sufficient to maintain a thorough blockade, the intrenchments were finally abandoned; and the Moslem army, pouring over the country, in a few months succeeded in occupying the entire territory subject to the Count of Barcelona. The Christians, repulsed in every encounter, sought, in dismay and confusion, the most inaccessible heights and defiles of the mountains. The castles were stormed and their garrisons massacred. A feeling of terror seized the population, which included many of the most experienced warriors of the Frankish empire, who, allured by the princely grants held out to colonists and the prospect of a life of excitement and adventure, had established themselves in the Gothic March. But the expedition of the Moslems, although attended with such successful results, did not rise above the dignity of a foray. No attempt at a permanent occupation was made. The capital, which alone maintained its independence and which, deprived of all prospect of relief, could not have resisted a second attack, was not compelled to again endure the horrors of siege. Satisfied with the advantages he had gained and with the vengeance he had inflicted, Abd-al-Rahman returned in triumph to Cordova, which he entered amidst the plaudits and congratulations of the people.

The declining fortunes of the Byzantine Empire, whose sovereign, Michael the Stammerer, found himself unequal to the task of coping with his redoubtable adversary, Al-Mamun, Khalif of Bagdad, induced him, during the second year of the reign of Abd-al-Rahman, to despatch an embassy to Cordova to conclude an alliance with the Sultan of the Ommeyades, the fame of whose dynasty had already reached the extreme limits of the Orient. The envoys of the Emperor of Constantinople were received with every evidence of distinction. A vast multitude attended their entrance into the capital. They were lodged in the royal palace, and all the pomp of the most splendid and luxurious court in Europe was exhibited upon the occasion of their reception by the Emir. The magnificence of the gifts which they brought--among which are mentioned a number of beautiful horses caparisoned with cloth-of-gold and silver--excited the wonder of the multitude, for no such treasures had ever before been seen in Spain. An alluring prospect of conquest was held out by the subtle Greeks, accompanied by the tender of troops and munitions of war for the recovery of the lost inheritance of the Ommeyades in Syria; but the precarious condition of the Emir, barely able to maintain his authority against the plots of his disaffected subjects, forbade, for the present, the formation of an offensive league with the monarch of the East, and the ambassadors were dismissed with a profusion of compliments and indefinite and conditional assurances of support in the future. A special envoy of the Emir, Yahya-al-Ghazzali, so named for his extraordinary charms of person and manner, and equally famous as a poet and a diplomatist, accompanied them, charged with the thanks of Abd-al-Rahman, and commissioned to present to the Emperor some scimetars and trinkets of the finest workmanship which the skill of the artisans of the Peninsula had been able to produce.

During the same year an ambassador of a far different character, and representing a power numerically inferior to the smallest city acknowledging the sovereignty of the Emperor of the East, but whose geographical position imparted to its advances a peculiar and weighty significance, visited Cordova upon a similar errand. The recently organized duchy of Navarre, an appanage of the Frankish empire, had grown restive under the extortions of its suzerain. Accustomed to the largest individual liberty, the mountaineers could ill endure the exactions of irresponsible tyranny which the example of their neighbors and a delusive pretence of public advantage had insensibly imposed upon them. The bond of a common religious belief which united them with the Franks was but weak when compared with the deeply rooted national prejudice which the assumption of superiority by the vassals of Charlemagne and Louis did much to promote, and which caused the latter to be regarded with a far greater degree of execration than was entertained against the Mohammedans, the natural enemies of their country and their faith.

The Navarrese envoy, whose uncouth manners exhibited a striking contrast to the courtly graces of the Byzantine nobles, was received by the Moorish sovereign, if not with distinguished ceremony, yet with courtesy and royal hospitality. A treaty was negotiated, which assured the mountaineers of the aid of the government of Cordova, and a free passage was granted to the Moslems for any expedition whose destination lay beyond the Pyrenees. The effects of the judicious policy which dictated this alliance soon became manifest. A few months afterwards a great army, under the Counts Eblus and Asenarius, dependents of the King of Aquitaine, traversed the sierra and invaded Spain. The city of Pampeluna was taken, and, after some desultory operations yielding little profit or glory, the Franks retired in imaginary security. The defile of Roncesvalles once more became the scene of a fearful disaster; the invaders, surrounded by a host of mountaineers and Arabs, were cut to pieces, and the prisoners divided among the allies, the two counts being among those who survived the disgrace of incompetency and defeat. This military success was contemporaneous with the assertion of the independence and political organization of the principality of Navarre, which were maintained thereafter with the exception of a few years of nominal subordination to the Crown of the Asturias until its final incorporation into the dominions of France and Spain.

The catastrophe of Roncesvalles encouraged the Moors to prosecute with greater activity the operations against the Christians, whom the unsettled condition of affairs in the east and south of the Peninsula had long permitted to rest in peace. Three successive expeditions, all commanded by Obeydallah-Ibn-Abdallah, were sent to invade the enemy’s country, but the campaigns were not distinguished by any important action, and the determination and well-known ferocity of the mountaineers appear to have succeeded in preventing the Moslems from inflicting any serious damage upon the hostile territory.

The vast system of public works inaugurated by Abd-al-Rahman, the splendor of his court, and the prodigal munificence with which he rewarded his favorites, entailed an immense expense upon the administration, and necessitated a new and oppressive burden of taxation to meet the constantly increasing demands on the treasury. The authorities, regardless of the experience of former reigns, augmented the public discontent by levying the bulk of the taxes on indispensable articles of daily consumption. The Jewish and Christian tributaries, by whom these exactions were most severely felt, were loud in their clamors, and it was not long before the Moslem population of the different cities joined in the increasing remonstrances against the arbitrary measures resulting from the unprecedented extravagance of the court. The dissatisfaction was most pronounced at Merida, and this fact having been communicated, either orally or by correspondence, by the clergy of that city to their brethren at the court of Louis, the Frankish monarch determined to avail himself of the information in furtherance of his own designs and for the confusion of his infidel neighbors. He therefore addressed a letter to the people of Merida, professing great sympathy with them on account of the impositions of the government, exhorting them to exert their rights and regain their liberties, and promising that, in case they made an open demonstration to redress their grievances, he would march to their support across the Pyrenees. The sincerity of Louis in making this offer may well be questioned. Whether or not his tender was made in good faith is of little consequence, as his attention was immediately distracted from foreign intrigue by serious disturbances in his own dominions. A Gothic officer of rank named Aizon, having incurred the displeasure of his sovereign, fled from the court of Aix-la-Chapelle, and, betaking himself to the Gothic March, declared his enmity to the Franks, and especially to the Count of Barcelona. Through the influence of his name and nationality, aided by the habitual inconstancy of the restless adventurers who composed the frontier population and the general prejudice existing against the domination of the Franks, he soon found himself at the head of a powerful faction. Having seized the fortress of Ausona by treachery, and destroyed the town of Rosas which attempted to resist him, he sent his brother to Cordova with a request for aid, accompanied with an assurance that the disaffection was such as to warrant the hope of an easy recovery of the country by the Moslems. The appeal of Aizon was not suffered to pass unheeded. A considerable body of troops was assembled under the command of the veteran Obeydallah; the party of the malcontents increased daily in numbers and influence, and it was not long before the Count of Barcelona found himself deprived of authority over all his domain except Gerona and the city from which he derived his title.

Louis, who was then in Germany engaged in the settlement of a quarrel between two chieftains whose untamed spirits menaced the peace of the empire, had neither time nor available resources to suppress by arms an insurrection, however dangerous, in the other extremity of his dominions. But what he could not accomplish by military force he determined to attempt by negotiation, and three commissioners were accordingly appointed to persuade the colonists of the Gothic March to return to their allegiance.

The embassy, composed of a priest and two nobles, received, as might have been expected, small consideration in an age where the arts of peace were held in disrepute and the palm of popular esteem was accorded to deeds of martial heroism, and the envoys accomplished nothing. They managed, however, to widely disseminate the report that an army of Franks was about to invade the country, a rumor which so alarmed Aizon and his followers that a second appeal was sent to Cordova, and a portion of the Emir’s body-guard was ordered to reinforce the allies of the Moslems without delay. The army of the Franks arrived; but the enemy had retired to Saragossa, either dreading the result of an encounter with the hardy warriors of the North, or unwilling to incur the hazard of being compelled to relinquish the valuable booty which he had so easily secured. The suspicious conduct of the generals of the Frankish army in permitting the Moslems to retreat without molestation brought upon them the reproach of treachery, an accusation which was so far sustained the following year in the National Council as to subject the culprits to the deprivation of their commands.

Abd-al-Rahman had projected an invasion of France, and the preparations were completed; the advance guard under Abd-al-Ruf--who had filled the position of vizier under Al-Hakem--was already on the way to the Pyrenees, and the Emir himself was about to depart with the main body of the army, when the unwelcome news reached him that Merida was in rebellion.

The unpopular system of taxation, already referred to, aggravated by the brutal conduct of the officials charged with its enforcement, had almost assumed the character of a persecution, while the public mind was agitated by the plausible representatives of demagogues and deluded with the hope of protection and encouragement from the powerful vassals of the Emperor. A certain Mohammed Ibn-Abd-al-Jebir, formerly a collector of the revenue, was the originator of the conspiracy. The governor, Ibn-Masfeth, saved himself by a hasty flight. The houses of the viziers were sacked, and their owners put to death or driven from the city. Mohammed appointed himself wali, seized the magazines and arsenals, and, having divided their contents among the inhabitants without distinction of creed, as a return for this act of generosity appealed to the populace to confirm him in his usurped authority. The resolution of the insurgents, sustained by the knowledge of their resources and the impregnable character of their defences, was encouraged by the arrival of fierce adventurers, who were attracted in multitudes by the prospect of rebellion and pillage. The garrison increased until it reached the number of forty thousand. No insurrection of a local character had ever presented so menacing a front to the power of the emirate. The occasion demanded the exertion of the most prompt and energetic measures. The command of Abd-al-Ruf was hastily recalled, and that officer was entrusted with the conduct of the siege. The hardened veteran carried on his operations as he would have done in an enemy’s country. The beautiful villas and gardens that surrounded the city were burned and laid waste. The growing crops were cut down. Preparations were made to carry the place by storm, which would necessarily have entailed the destruction of an immense amount of property and a massacre in which the innocent must have suffered equally with the guilty. Abd-al-Rahman, averse to an exercise of severity which threatened to weaken one of the greatest cities of the kingdom, and knowing that the unequal contest could not be long maintained, ordered Abd-al-Ruf to reduce the place by famine. A strict blockade was accordingly established. The ruffian soldiery of the garrison, cooped up within the walls, condemned to inaction and suffering for provisions, indulged their predatory inclinations by robbing and maltreating the citizens. The better class of the inhabitants, which had been induced to favor the insurrection by the expectation of compelling the withdrawal of oppressive edicts, saw, when too late, that it had exchanged a condition of comparative safety and prosperity for one of anarchy and the irresponsible despotism of armed banditti. A movement for the surrender of the city to the besiegers was quietly inaugurated by some loyal subjects of the Emir who had been forced to enlist under the banner of the rebels. Communication was opened with Abd-al-Ruf. Favored by the darkness of the night, a strong detachment was admitted; the walls were occupied, the armed mob was put to flight, the leaders escaped in the general confusion, and daybreak found the authority of Abd-al-Rahman once more established over the city of Merida. Resistance had been slight owing to the surprise, and but seven hundred rebels paid the penalty of treason. The fears of the people were soon allayed by the publication of a general amnesty, for the gentle disposition of Abd-al-Rahman revolted at the prospect of exemplary punishment for a rebellion which subsequent events demonstrated would have justified the most sanguinary retribution.

Order had scarcely been restored at Merida when it became known that the contagion of insurrection had again spread to Toledo. A renegade named Hashim, who had long in secret meditated vengeance for persecution suffered by his family under Al-Hakem, taking advantage of some trifling cause of popular discontent, raised the standard of revolt. The wali being absent, the mob, who welcomed with eagerness every occasion of opposing the authorities, found little trouble in expelling the garrison and the adherents of the Emir. Hashim, whose success had surpassed all expectations, as soon as his partisans were organized, extended his operations to the surrounding country. His following received accessions daily from the brigands who infested the mountain districts, and the floating population, always on the alert for plunder, that swarmed in the purlieus of the great cities. Mohammed-Ibn-Wasim, the wali of the frontier, having attacked the rebels, was beaten in several engagements; exulting in the promises of its citizens, Toledo maintained a successful resistance against the entire resources of the emirate, and Ommeyah, the son of Abd-al-Rahman, was forced to retire in disgrace from before its walls. At length the army of Hashim fell into an ambuscade planned by an officer who commanded a force stationed at Calatrava, the Toledans were defeated with great loss, and, soon afterwards, the city was taken by storm. Accounts vary as to the fate of Hashim, but it appears from the most reliable sources that he fell into the hands of the troops of the Emir and was beheaded without ceremony. The incapacity of the government of Cordova to deal with its domestic foes may be inferred from the duration of this outbreak, whose importance must have called forth the most vigorous attempts to suppress it, for during a period of eight years Toledo enjoyed absolute independence in the heart of a hostile monarchy. This immunity was, in some degree, due to a second insurrection which broke out in Merida while the prestige of the victorious Toledans was at its height. Mohammed, who had fled to Lisbon when the city had been taken, returned unexpectedly; having again summoned the populace to arms, he divided the contents of the magazines as before, and, calling together his outlaws, renewed the scenes of license and disorder which had formerly led to his expulsion. Abd-al-Rahman, apprized of this new disaster, raised an army of forty thousand men, of which he assumed command in person, and, arriving at the city, made several ineffectual attempts to carry it by storm. The walls, however, were too strong and too well defended to be scaled, and the besiegers were reduced to employ the more difficult operation of mining to open a breach. When all was ready, the Emir harangued the troops, reminded them that their adversaries were Moslems like themselves, and exhorted them to avoid all violence except against such as offered resistance. As a last resort, to prevent bloodshed and the lamentable consequences of an assault, Abd-al-Rahman ordered arrows to which scrolls were attached to be shot over the walls. These scrolls conveyed the information that the walls were undermined, that an attack was impending, and that an amnesty would be granted the inhabitants upon the surrender of their leaders. Some of these proclamations fell into the hands of the chiefs of the rebellion; their fears were aroused, and they lost no time in making good their escape, which they readily effected either through the negligence or the connivance of the besiegers. The damages resulting from the siege were repaired; the fortifications strengthened; the wants of the poor, who were suffering from hunger, supplied; and Merida, having for a second time experienced the extraordinary clemency of her sovereign, returned to her doubtful allegiance.

Fortunately for the Saracens, the commotion excited throughout the Frankish empire by the rebellion of the sons of Louis prevented the Christians from profiting by the misfortunes of their enemies, harassed as they themselves were by the revolt of great capitals and the growing disaffection of the people.

The disturbances once quelled and the country apparently at peace, the pious and ambitious spirit of Abd-al-Rahman, actuated by motives entertained since the day of his accession, induced him to pursue the traditional policy of Islam and inaugurate a campaign against the infidel. Expeditions were despatched into Galicia and the Gothic March, which were generally successful, but which exhibited only the grievous and transitory effects of predatory warfare, despite the accounts of monkish chroniclers, whose love of the marvellous has embellished their pages with accounts of great victories and miraculous events recorded with all the circumstantial minuteness which not infrequently characterizes these narratives. The fleet of the emirate, which had no rival on the Mediterranean, co-operated with its armies, and, landing a detachment on the coast of France, overran the country and plundered the suburbs of Marseilles.

The martial enterprise and increasing arrogance of the Khalifate of Bagdad, which had stripped the Byzantine Empire of its possessions in Asia Minor and had frequently threatened Constantinople itself, led the Emperor Theophilus to imitate the example of his predecessor and solicit the aid of the Emirate of Spain, whose power had attained a greater reputation in the East than was warranted either by the character of its population, the stability of its civil institutions, or the extent of its military resources. The result of this embassy corresponded with that of the one sent by Michael the Stammerer. The envoys were received and dismissed with honor; costly gifts were exchanged between the two sovereigns; and the most flattering promises of assistance were given by Abd-al-Rahman contingent on the security of his own dominions, whose fulfilment was prevented, however, by the incessant agitation of domestic foes and the apprehension of foreign invasion. The measures of the Byzantine court were counteracted by the political intrigues of the Abbasides, who maintained a close alliance with the Franks; lavished upon the semi-barbaric monarchs of the Rhine the curiosities and luxuries of the Orient; and, in the treaties with their Christian auxiliaries, stigmatized the Ommeyades as schismatics, blasphemers, and traitors, objects of abhorrence to orthodox Moslems and entitled to no consideration from an adversary.

The hopes of relief entertained by the Greeks, sufficiently unpromising before, were now rendered entirely vain by the appearance of a strange and terrible enemy, who descended like a destructive tempest upon the coast of Lusitania. The Normans, a branch of the Germanic race, whose origin was identical with that of the Franks, but who cherished the most uncompromising hostility towards the latter on account of their conversion to Christianity, had, for half a century, been the terror of the maritime countries of Northern Europe. Inhabiting the bleak and inhospitable coasts of Scandinavia, instinct and necessity had early taught them the science of navigation, and experience had shown the facility by which the richest spoils might be wrested from the less warlike nations of the South. Their boats were of the rudest type, of small dimensions, constructed of osier and hides, propelled by oars and sails of skins, yet such was the daring of these sailors that they did not hesitate to encounter in their frail vessels, during the most inclement seasons, the storms of the English Channel and the Bay of Biscay. They had already carried their terrible inroads far into the most accessible provinces of England and France. The swiftness of their movements, their frightful aspect, and the ferocity of their manners imparted to their incursions the character of a visitation of incarnate demons. The votaries of the savage Woden, the Teutonic God of War, they seemed totally deficient in the attributes of humanity and mercy. More ruthless than other barbarians, the infirmities of age, the helplessness of sex, received no indulgence at their hands. Women, children, and old men were butchered with the same relentless animosity as the warrior disabled in the field of battle. They took no prisoners. All animals that they encountered were killed. Their brutal natures were displayed even in their amusements; and, amidst the drunken orgies of their festivals, their gods were pledged in draughts of mead quaffed from the skulls of slaughtered enemies. Their lofty stature and gigantic strength; their adventurous spirit, which carried them across seas where experienced mariners scarcely dared to venture; their courage, which inspired them to contend with tenfold odds, combined to increase the terror derived from their sudden appearance and mysterious origin. They had infested the shores of England during the last years of the preceding century. Encouraged by success and tempted by the prospect of booty, their expeditions had alarmed the provinces of Western France during the reign of Charlemagne, and had desolated a region where their descendants were destined to found a principality to which they gave their name, and with whose fortunes, in after times, were associated, in no small degree, the social organization, the laws, the glories, and the misfortunes of the people of Great Britain. They had at first effected a landing on the coast of the Asturias, whence they soon retired, prompted to this step rather by the poverty of the country, which held out no inducements to their avarice, than through any apprehension from the well-known prowess of its defenders. Not long after this, a fleet of fifty-four Norman vessels swept down upon the shores of Lusitania. The environs of the city of Lisbon experienced the full effects of the destructive instincts of these enemies of mankind. Expelled by the uprising of the population of the neighborhood, they sailed around the Peninsula; extended their depredations to the coast of Africa; plundered Cadiz, and finally entered the Guadalquivir. Ascending that stream, they occupied and sacked the suburbs of Seville, whose inhabitants had fled at the first intelligence of their approach. In their encounters with the troops of Abd-al-Rahman, the pirates had in almost every instance a decided advantage; but news having reached them that a fleet of fifteen vessels, supported by a powerful army, was preparing to intercept their retreat, they hastily set sail and effected their escape with insignificant loss. The facility with which these ferocious adventurers had penetrated into his dominions, and the damage inflicted by their pitiless hostility, convinced the Emir of the necessity of increasing his naval power, the only effectual means of protecting the vulnerable points of his kingdom and of preventing the recurrence of such a calamity. Vessels were accordingly constructed in the dock-yards of the Mediterranean; watch-towers were erected at frequent intervals; a system of signals and posts was established; and the coast defences in each military district were placed in charge of an experienced officer, with whose command the naval forces were directed to co-operate. The wisdom of these precautions was soon demonstrated, and the Normans, warned by the formidable preparations everywhere in readiness to oppose their landing, ceased to seriously molest the shores of the Peninsula.

In the division of the vast and unwieldy empire of Charlemagne, which scarcely preserved its original boundaries until the second generation, France and the Gothic March fell to the share of Charles the Bald, the eldest son of the weak and amiable Louis. The discord which had arisen between Frankish and Gothic aspirants to power in the fief that the foresight of the Emperor had founded beyond the Pyrenees, grew more bitter with the progress of time and the infliction of mutual injury. The intrigues of Count Bernhart, formerly chamberlain at the court of Aix-la-Chapelle, who represented the national party against the Frankish usurpation, were principally responsible for the manifestation of the independent spirit which not infrequently ignored the rights of the foreign suzerain, and even maintained amicable relations with the infidels of Cordova. Charles, aware of the intrepid character of his secret enemy whose popularity made him still more dangerous, inveigled him into his power by flattering promises of favor and promotion; and, as the unsuspecting victim bent the knee before his master, the latter stabbed him with his own hand. The enormity of the deed was aggravated by the horrible suspicion of parricide, as popular opinion, based upon his former intimacy with the Empress Judith, had long ascribed to Count Bernhart the paternity of the Frankish sovereign.

This act of perfidy, so far from appeasing the discontent that pervaded the turbulent society of the Gothic March, contributed greatly to its encouragement. The populace, as well as the nobles, whose opinions had changed, and who now regarded Bernhart as the champion of their liberties instead of an intruder, were thoroughly exasperated. The country became a prey to anarchy, where the rule of the strongest prevailed. This favorable opportunity, aided perhaps by suggestions of sympathizers with the government of Cordova and individuals who had suffered from the rapacity of the feudal lords, invited another invasion by the Saracens. The land was again devastated. Barcelona was delivered to the troops of the Emir through the connivance of the Jews, whose trade was seriously affected by the interminable disputes and broils which had interrupted foreign communications and shaken public confidence. The Moslem occupation of the Gothic March, like others that had preceded it, was, however, but temporary. The walis of the border cities, to all intents and purposes paramount, were often united by the closest ties of interest with the Counts of Barcelona, and therefore thwarted every attempt at the recovery of the Gothic territory by the emirs as having a tendency to ultimately curtail their privileges and diminish their power. The existence of a foreign nation within the borders of the emirate, which could be at once appealed to for support in case of an attempt by the court of Cordova to enforce its authority, was a practical guarantee of independence.

The closing years of the reign of Abd-al-Rahman were clouded by a persecution of the Christians provoked by the obstinacy and presumption of aggressive fanatics who violated the laws, profaned the mosques, and insulted the memory of Mohammed through an insane desire for notoriety and martyrdom. The most severe punishments as well as the most noble clemency failed alike to suppress this new and increasing disorder. The nature of the Emir, always averse to cruelty, hesitated to inflict the penalties imperatively demanded by the outraged feelings of all true believers. Deeply affected by the troubles which oppressed his kingdom and cast a shadow over his domestic life, his health became impaired, and he died suddenly of apoplexy in the year 822, at the age of sixty years.

The luxurious tastes and the love of pomp, which were prominent traits in the character of Abd-al-Rahman, produced greater changes in the social and political aspect of the court of Cordova than had been known under his predecessors. He was the first of the Moslem rulers of Spain in whose robes were interwoven the royal cipher and the device selected by the monarch at his accession. He assumed a dignity and a mystery in his demeanor that had heretofore been the peculiar attributes of the despotisms of the Orient. Habitually secluded from the eyes of his subjects, he never went abroad without a veil, which effectually concealed his features from the public gaze. He increased the body-guard, formed by his father, and spared no expense in securing its devotion and perfecting its equipment. He established a mint in Cordova, and greatly improved the coinage, both in the purity of the metal and the elegance of the inscriptions. Under his supervision two sides of the court-yard of the Mosque were enclosed with beautiful peristyles, corresponding with the finish and decorations of the interior. He added to the magnificence of the capital by the construction of public baths and fountains, fed by leaden pipes, through which were conducted into every quarter of the city the crystal waters of the Sierra Morena. The demands of religion and piety were gratified by the foundation and endowment of innumerable mosques, whose materials were composed of costly woods, variegated jasper, and exquisite marbles, and to each of these houses of worship was attached either a school or a hospital. Upon the banks of the Guadalquivir stretched an endless series of gardens devoted to the recreation of the people, and within whose delightful precincts were displayed all the resources of the picturesque horticulture of the Orient. Abd-al-Rahman rivalled the most enlightened khalifs of the East in his zeal for the encouragement of learning; in his patronage of science and the arts; in his admiration for the works of the Greek philosophers, which, during his reign, were introduced into the Peninsula. One of his greatest pleasures was to listen to the reading of the productions of the great scholars of antiquity. In every town schools sufficient to meet the requirements of the population, and provided with the best available facilities for the imparting of instruction, arose. All children whom misfortune had left destitute were cared for in charitable institutions maintained by the government.

The system of highways, a precious heritage of the Cæsars, was diligently inspected; the roads which had fallen into decay were repaired; new ones were projected and completed; and the means of intercommunication with the most remote provinces of the emirate brought to a degree of perfection unknown even in the most flourishing days of the Roman Empire. Many of these great works were undertaken to relieve the universal distress induced by national calamities. A withering drought had destroyed the crops and swept away the flocks and herds in Andalusia. Swarms of locusts then settled over the land, and turned the once smiling landscape into a desert. Unable to sustain life, multitudes of the starving peasantry emigrated to Africa, where they found an hospitable welcome and abundance of food to supply their necessities. To the poor who remained, the customary taxes were remitted and regular employment given, the expense being met by disbursements from the private purse of the Emir. The public granaries and magazines were opened, and supplies distributed to the helpless and unfortunate. Thus, by the encouragement of industry, the promotion of important public improvements throughout the country, and the embellishment of the city of Cordova and its environs, the mournful consequences incident to inevitable public disasters were largely averted, and the very events which, at first sight, seemed to threaten the life of the nation were, through the beneficence and wisdom of a great monarch, made to contribute to its profit and permanent advantage.

The kindness and generosity of Abd-al-Rahman at times degenerated into weakness, which made him the facile victim of the occupants of his household and his harem. Constitutionally averse to any display of severity, acts of insubordination and dishonesty were suffered, in his very presence, to pass without a reprimand. A passion for music, which dominated his very being, made him the munificent patron of every minstrel, whose influence at court was usually proportionate to his talents as a singer or as a performer on the lute. A famous musician named Ziryab, whom Al-Hakem had invited from Bagdad but who arrived too late to enjoy the favor of his royal host, was received by his successor with honors worthy of the ambassadors of the greatest princes. The walis of the cities through which he was to pass on his way to Cordova were directed to extend to him every courtesy; he was furnished with an escort, and his retinue was increased by a number of eunuchs with whom the Emir had presented him. A magnificent residence was assigned to him in the capital. His pension amounted to the annual sum of forty thousand pieces of gold, derived from one of the most valuable estates of the kingdom. Ziryab, while distinguished for his musical talents, was also one of the most profound scholars of his time. His wonderful memory retained without difficulty the words and airs of ten thousand different songs. The pupil of the most eminent doctors of the East, he was equally well versed in the sciences of history, geography, philosophy, and medicine. So versatile were his talents and so varied his accomplishments, that not only the populace, but even learned writers, gravely attributed the achievements of his extraordinary intellectual powers to communion with the genii. His extensive acquirements made him the chosen companion of Abd-al-Rahman, who delighted in his conversation; and, while the power of the favorite over his master was unbounded, it must be said to his credit that it was never abused or exerted for any base or mercenary purposes. His exquisite taste and dignified courtesy were not long in producing an impression upon the society of Andalusia. The manners of the people insensibly grew refined and elegant. Customs savoring of the barbaric life of the Desert, which the stubborn persistence of the Arab and Berber natures had retained through many generations, were by degrees abandoned. The prolific genius of this wonderfully gifted personage prescribed different modes of dress, adapted to the changing seasons; improved regulations in the diplomatic service; innovations in the methods of private entertainments; dignified and urbane laws for formal and social intercourse. It revealed the valuable character of plants and vegetables whose names were familiar to the Spanish Arabs, but whose uses as food, or whose medicinal virtues, had hitherto remained unknown. It added a fifth string to the lute, thereby greatly increasing the compass and harmony of that instrument. It bestowed upon the toilets of the harem harmless and refreshing perfumes and cosmetics. It supplied the banquets of the rich with savory dishes, worthy of the most fastidious epicure, some of which bear to this day the name of their inventor. It devised means for increasing the comfort and cleanliness of the poor. It suggested sanitary arrangements which might promote the healthfulness of great cities by an improved system of drainage. The wit of Ziryab which delighted the court was not inferior to his learning, nor to the wonderful ingenuity which applied to the various concerns of life the valuable principles of practical philosophy. His epigrams are still repeated as proverbs by the Mohammedans of Africa. His skill in the art of improvisation was phenomenal. A couplet appropriate to every occasion, a witticism in rhyme which enlivened the most ordinary discourse, were never wanting to his ready and active intellect. His mental powers were unconsciously employed while those of others slumbered, and he not infrequently aroused his female slaves in the middle of the night in order to seize and memorize the harmonious creations of his tireless brain. The creed of the Moslem peremptorily forbids the adoration of its heroes, but the justice of humanity has immortalized the name of Ziryab by transmitting it to after-ages in the same category with those of its most illustrious philosophers, and has thus indemnified itself for the privation of a useful custom which would elsewhere have honored the object of its admiration and gratitude with splendid statues of bronze and marble, and with an eternal abiding-place in both the visible and invisible heavens.

The intercession of Ziryab with his royal master, whose mind was absolutely dominated by the brilliant talents and courtly graces of his favorite, was often invoked by applicants for pecuniary emoluments and official distinction, but generally in vain. The hazardous game of politics offered no allurements to the polished and dainty epicurean. Secure in the possession of wealth and fame, he cheerfully abandoned the intrigues, the vexations, and the dangers of political life to another personage whose abilities, in their peculiar sphere, not inferior to his own, bore the stamp of a dark and sinister character.

The ambition of the faqui Yahya-Ibn-Yahya, the leader of the revolt of the southern suburb of Cordova, which caused the depopulation of one-fifth of the area of the capital and the expatriation of twenty thousand industrious subjects of the emirate, has already been mentioned in these pages. The nationality of this fanatic, and the address which he displayed in excusing his crimes, had, strangely enough, exempted him from the punishment he merited. Having regained, to a certain extent, the favor of the proud and arbitrary Al-Hakem, whose inclinations were never to the side of mercy, he had obtained a singular ascendant over the mind of the more pliable Abd-al-Rahman. Instructed by experience that open opposition to the constituted authority was not the surest method of attaining to distinction, he changed his tactics; courted the approbation of the monarch by subservience and flattery, varied at times by fits of insolence, which were overlooked as eccentricities or manifestations of righteous indignation provoked by the depravity of mankind; and, while he appeared to figure only as an occasional adviser of the Emir, he in reality engrossed the entire political and judicial power of the State. His ostentatious humility procured for him the reverent esteem of the populace. The superiority of his intellect and his vast attainments were tacitly acknowledged by the learned. The prestige he had acquired as the founder of the Malikites in Spain made him the oracle of every student and doctor of theology. It was by means of this latter distinction that he was enabled to immeasurably extend and confirm his influence. Ambitious men soon perceived that the great civil dignitaries of the realm--the chief kadis and the subordinate officials of the courts of judicature--were invariably selected from the fashionable sect, and were individuals who stood highest in Yahya’s favor. As a natural consequence, the popularity of the doctrines of Malik-Ibn-Anas increased daily, and the adherents of the Medinese sage, in a few years, outnumbered all other sectaries combined. The policy of Yahya led him to decline the exercise of all official employments, an example of self-denial which, while it served to disguise his ambition, greatly strengthened his authority. In the exalted sphere in which he moved his power was autocratic. He imposed degrading penances upon his sovereign, who performed them with patience and humility. He exacted from the people those outward signs of reverence which superstition is accustomed to accord to the favorites of heaven and which are but one degree below idolatry. The ecclesiastical affairs of the Peninsula were absolutely subject to his control. He dictated the most important decisions emanating from the courts of justice; and, when a magistrate ventured to assert his independence by the promulgation of an opinion which had not been approved by the arrogant faqui, he at once received a slip of paper on which was written the single word, “Resign!”

The plastic nature of Abd-al-Rahman, utilized for the profit of a musician and a religious impostor, also exposed him to the artifices of a petulant and selfish woman. An ardent temperament rendered him peculiarly susceptible to the attractions of the sex. Among the numerous beauties of his harem was one named Tarub, who was equally dominated by the absorbing passions of ambition and avarice. Infatuated with her charms and beguiled by her caresses, the Emir became her slave. His prodigal generosity towards this unworthy favorite, which threatened to deplete the treasury, frequently, but in vain, elicited the remonstrances of his councillors. On one occasion her blandishments induced him to present her with a necklace valued at a hundred thousand dinars. On another, she refused to open her door until it had been entirely concealed by bags of money heaped up against it. Utterly destitute of affection or gratitude, she endeavored to perpetuate her influence by a crime which reveals the incredible cruelty and infamy of her character. Of the forty-five sons of Abd-al-Rahman, the eldest, Mohammed, had been selected by his father to succeed him. Tarub, who had employed all her arts, but without success, to obtain the crown for her own son, Abdallah, now determined to secure by murder what her powers of persuasion had failed to accomplish. The services of the eunuch Nassir, who exercised the office of chamberlain, was devoted to the interests of his mistress, and bore no good-will to the Emir, were employed in this emergency. Nassir was of Spanish origin, hated the sect of his ancestors with peculiar animosity, and had been the willing instrument of the recent persecution which the mistaken policy of the government had deemed it necessary to inflict upon the Christians. Under the direction of Tarub, the eunuch paid a visit to Harrani, a distinguished Syrian physician, who had recently begun the practice of his profession at Cordova. Nassir, having assured Harrani of his esteem and hinted that the conferring of the favor he was about to ask would enure to his future advantage, presented him with a purse containing a thousand pieces of gold, and requested him to have ready by a certain day a quantity of one of the most deadly poisons known to science.

The natural acuteness of the physician, increased by long experience in the sinister transactions of courts, was at no loss to detect the object for which these preparations were intended. The character of the perfidious Tarub and her inordinate ambition were, moreover, no secret in Cordova; but, while the politic Harrani had no desire to, even by implication, connive at the death of the Emir, he was equally averse to compromise his prospects and imperil his own safety by openly denouncing the eunuch, whose friends would not fail to avenge the betrayal of his treason. He therefore caused a warning to be secretly conveyed to Abd-al-Rahman not to taste anything offered him by the chamberlain. The declining health of the monarch favored the designs of the conspirators, and the eunuch seized the first opportunity to recommend, with every expression of solicitude, the poison to his master as a potent remedy which he had procured from a famous practitioner. The Emir, upon whom the warning of Harrani had not been lost, and who seemed to the attendants to be merely adopting a salutary and not unusual precaution, directed the eunuch to drink some of the potion himself. Unable to refuse, Nassir swallowed a part of the contents of the phial. Then, withdrawing from the royal presence, he sought in terror the aid of the physician. An antidote was promptly administered, but the poison had done its work, and, the victim of his own perfidiousness, Nassir expired in horrible agony.

The enfeebled constitution of Abd-al-Rahman was unable to sustain the revelation of the malice and dishonor of those whom he loved and trusted; and the amiable monarch who had not, by many years, reached the allotted term of human life, a few weeks after the exposure of the conspiracy followed his chamberlain to the grave.

The jealousy of the Ommeyades, following the example of the Khalifs of Damascus, early introduced into their dominions the employment of eunuchs, and these creatures almost immediately assumed and exercised a secret, but none the less dangerous, power in the administration of the government as well as in the intrigues and plots of the harem. Their mutilation, which, according to common belief, was presumed to insure absolute fidelity to their masters’ interests, made them the enemies of the human race. An insatiable thirst for gold, a vindictiveness only to be appeased by the destruction of the objects of their displeasure, had supplanted in their breasts those sentiments of natural affection which had been forever eradicated by the barbarity of man. The confidants and constant associates of the sultanas, they became the tools of every conspiracy, and not infrequently the originators of measures involving the most important political consequences.

The support of these vile instruments, indispensable to the designs of criminal ambition, had been already secured by the Princess Tarub, whose rapacity had, for once, yielded to her greed for power. Undismayed by the fate of Nassir, and ignoring the suspicions aroused by his sudden death, she, by every artifice at her command, by promises of future favors and concessions and by a prodigal liberality, had enrolled among her partisans the potent and unscrupulous guardians of the harem.

The careless Abd-al-Rahman, whose condition had not warranted any expectation of his untimely end, had neglected to officially designate his successor to the throne. His choice, however, was well known to have been fixed upon his eldest son, Mohammed, a cold, sordid, narrow-minded, but able prince; penurious to a degree unprecedented among youths of royal lineage, but of large experience in the arts of war and government, and of unquestioned orthodoxy. Abdallah, on the other hand, was a devotee of pleasure. His palace was nightly the scene of boisterous revels, that were protracted until long after sunrise. He shunned all serious occupations. His intimate friends were debauchees and parasites, whose conversation was seasoned with licentious jests which did not spare either the officials of state or the ministers of religion. Rarely was he seen to enter the door of the mosque, or to assist at the ceremonies of public worship. Despised by the populace and abhorred by the devout, his pre-eminent unfitness for the responsibilities of empire was also recognized by the eunuchs, whom nothing but the prodigality of his mother could ever have induced to espouse his cause. Abu-al-Mofrih, one of the former, who possessed great influence among his fellows, determined, with the proverbial inconstancy of his kind, to gratify his malice and provide for the future by the commission of a double treason. The heterodox opinions of Abdallah afforded a plausible excuse for the perfecting of his scheme. By constant insinuations of the dangers to which the emirate would be exposed if he were raised to power, and by descanting with pious horror upon the sacrilegious life of that profligate prince, he excited apprehensions in the minds of the eunuchs that their own interests might be seriously endangered by a ruler whose previous career had been directed by unbelievers and by persons who had frequently evinced marked contempt for their order. The harshness and notorious parsimony of Mohammed were at first declared by the eunuchs to render him ineligible; serious impediments to success, indeed, in a court governed to a great extent by the soft influences of the seraglio and by the unsparing use of gold. The objections were soon answered by the wily Abu-al-Mofrih, whose experience and reputation gave him a right to take the lead in a project demanding courage and tact, and it was quietly understood that Mohammed was the candidate for whom the empire was reserved. The death of Abd-al-Rahman occurred after midnight. According to Oriental custom, the gates of the palace--which was walled and moated like a castle--were closed, and no one was permitted to leave or enter without satisfactory explanation of his errand and proof of his identity. By a time-honored practice that prescriptive usage had confirmed as legal, the prince who first after the monarch’s death obtained possession of the royal residence was considered to have the presumptive right to the crown. Sadun, a eunuch, who had reluctantly assented to the rejection of Abdallah, but who had lately become a firm partisan of his brother, was selected to inform Mohammed of his good fortune. The villa of the latter was on the opposite bank of the Guadalquivir, and the eunuch, providing himself with the keys of the city gate, which opened upon the bridge, traversed the silent streets until he reached the palace of Abdallah, in front of which he was forced to pass. The halls were aglow with light and the noise of drunken revelry rang upon the air, as the muffled figure of the eunuch glided stealthily by the portals on its mysterious errand. Mohammed, summoned from the bath, received the message with surprise and incredulity. Even the production of his father’s signet, which Sadun exhibited as a token of good faith, was not sufficient to convince him. Regarding the eunuch as an executioner sent by Abdallah to take away his life, he abjectly implored the mercy of the messenger, who, so far from intending injury, had been deputed to tender him a crown. The protestations of Sadun finally prevailed, and the steward of Mohammed’s household was called to assist in devising means to enter the royal palace, an indispensable preliminary to success. His suggestion to apply to the governor of the city was adopted, but that cautious functionary declined to compromise himself by countenancing an enterprise whose issue was so hazardous. The night was fast passing away, and it was evident that something must be done quickly, as dawn would bring discovery, and perhaps death, to all concerned. Again the fertile invention of the steward, Ibn-Musa, came to the aid of his master in his deep perplexity. “Thou knowest, O my Lord,” said he, “that I have often conducted thy daughter to the royal palace. Disguise thyself at once in her garments, and God willing we shall pass the guards.” The advice being approved, Mohammed was speedily enveloped in the veil and flowing robes of the inmates of the harem and mounted upon an ass. The animal was led by the steward, Sadun marching in front; the sentinels were passed without difficulty; but the wary eunuch, fearful of being followed, directed Ibn-Musa to remain near Abdallah’s mansion, while he conducted the prince alone. Arriving at the palace, the knock of Sadun was answered by the porter, an old man who had long served the emirs in that responsible capacity. Peering cautiously through the postern and recognizing the eunuch, he exclaimed, “Whom have you there, O Sadun?” The latter responded, “The daughter of our prince Mohammed; make haste and admit us!” Smiling, as he suspiciously examined the lofty stature and ample proportions of the supposed damsel, the porter rejoined, “Verily, O Sadun, the lady has grown to almost twice her size since she was here a few days since; let her raise her veil that I may see her face.” The eunuch demurred; but the porter threatening to withdraw, Mohammed himself lifted the veil, and disclosed to the astonished gaze of the porter the well-known features of the eldest son of Abd-al-Rahman. “My father is dead,” said the prince, “and I have come to take possession of the palace.” “I do not doubt thy word,” replied the porter, “but mine own eyes must convince me of the truth of thy statement before I can admit thee.” “Then come at once,” exclaimed Sadun, and, leaving Mohammed in the street, the eunuch led the way to the death-chamber of the Emir. “I am satisfied,” said the faithful servitor, bursting into tears, and returning, he opened the gate and kissed the hand of the prince with every protestation of loyalty and obedience. The household was aroused; the officials of state were summoned in haste to the palace, and required to swear allegiance to the new sovereign; and thus, through the address of a handful of eunuchs, who dispensed with equal alacrity the penalties of hatred and the offices of friendship, a serious revolution was averted, and a turn given to national affairs that permanently influenced the future of the Saracen empire.

The first acts of Mohammed after his accession gave undoubted proof of his zeal, and elicited the enthusiastic applause of the theologians, who henceforth became his most devoted subjects. Every official and every public servant who was even suspected of a leaning towards Christianity was discharged without ceremony, and their places were filled with Mussulmans of the most pronounced orthodoxy. The law which forbade the erection or the enlargement of churches--a fundamental article of the convention of Musa--had been to a great extent ignored by the emirs, even under the aggravation of treason and conspiracy; and, as a consequence of this indulgence, new places of worship had arisen in those localities where an increasing Christian population required greater facilities for the services of its religion. By a sweeping edict, Mohammed directed every church and chapel built since the invasion of Tarik to be razed to the ground. The officers who were charged with the execution of this order, more zealous for their faith than solicitous for the honor of their sovereign, waged indiscriminate destruction against all edifices set apart by the Christians for sacred uses, regardless of the sanctity of their traditions or the date of their foundation. A persecution, encouraged by the faquis, was also inaugurated against the obstinate sectaries, who continued to solicit with so much ardor the crown of martyrdom, in comparison with which the severity of Abd-al-Rahman assumed the appearance of moderation. The evidence of the Fathers of the Church, so suspicious in regard to all that reflects upon the credit of their profession or decries the triumphs of their enemies, may perhaps be received to confirm the statement of the Arabs that an immense number of Christians, alarmed by the tortures inflicted upon their fellow communicants, yielded to temptation and apostatized.

But it was not among the infidels alone that it was found necessary to invoke the intervention of the sovereign authority. In the bosom of Islam, a serious dispute had arisen concerning the interpretation of the Koran and the settlement of certain controverted points of doctrine that, in their theological importance and general relation to the Faith, bore no proportion whatever to the virulent animosity exhibited by their several advocates. As the Ommeyades of Spain had early arrogated to themselves, without exception, the functions and privileges of the exalted office of khalif, in which were united the most despotic powers of Church and State, Mohammed, whose discrimination showed him the necessity of deciding this religious controversy before its champions appealed to arms, asserted his prerogative by ordering the rival doctors to respectively plead their cause in his presence. The arguments were heard, and the Malikites, whose prosperity under the former reign had greatly increased their pride and insolence, sustained a signal defeat in their attempt to refute the doctrines of the Hanbalites, their adversaries. With a liberality not to be expected in a ruler whom posterity, perhaps not without injustice, has agreed to stigmatize with the name of bigot, Mohammed decided that the objections urged against the creed of the Hanbalites as preached by Al-Baki, the leader of that sect, were frivolous, and that its tenets were neither based upon misinterpretation of the texts of the Koran nor antagonistic to the generally received tradition.

With the double object of diverting the minds of his subjects from theological disputes and projects of sedition and to repress the encroaching spirit of the Christian princes of the North, whose conquests were making serious inroads on the Moslem territory, Mohammed proclaimed the Holy War, the forces destined for this purpose being placed under the command of the walis of Merida and Saragossa. The Gothic March once more underwent the frightful evils of invasion, and the Saracen army again penetrated the enemy’s country to the very walls of Narbonne. The wali of Saragossa, Musa-Ibn-Zeyad, entrusted with the conduct of the campaign against the King of the Asturias, after some unimportant successes in Galicia, was defeated with great loss at Albeyda, which town, having been taken by King Ordoño, and the Arab garrison massacred, was abandoned to the tender mercies of the barbarous soldiery.

The populace of Toledo, whose implacable hatred of its Saracen masters no exhibition of clemency could diminish and no example of severity intimidate, having learned of the persecution of their Christian brethren at Cordova, and apprehensive lest the zealous efforts of the faquis--whose influence at that time dominated the policy of the government--might be extended to their own city, organized a revolt, seized the Arab governor, and demanded of the Emir in exchange for that official the hostages whom they had given to Abd-al-Rahman II. as security for their loyalty and good behavior. With a weakness that formed no part of his character, and for which no historical account affords an explanation, Mohammed acquiesced. The fierce Toledans then began to carry on war in earnest. Accustomed from childhood to the use of arms and the exposure of a military life, they repeatedly proved more than a match for the disciplined veterans of the emirate. They drove out the garrison of Calatrava and demolished its walls. Then, suddenly traversing the passes of the Sierra Morena, they surprised at Andujar a detachment of the royal forces sent to attack them, captured its baggage, and plundered its camp. Never before in the history of Toledan rebellions had the insurgents ventured so near the capital. The Emir keenly felt the insult to his dignity, and, at the head of all the troops he could collect in such an emergency, advanced to punish the rebels. The latter retired, and their leader, Sindola, whose name indicates his Gothic descent, sent an envoy to the King of the Asturias for aid. The Christian prince, perceiving at a glance the extraordinary benefits which would result from an alliance with a powerful faction in the heart of the Moslem dominions, responded at once to the appeal with a strong body of veterans, who succeeded in entering the city before the arrival of Mohammed.

The strength of the walls and the prowess of the garrison forbade the hope of a successful assault, and induced Mohammed to have recourse to a stratagem worthy of the cunning and astuteness of an Arab. Concealing his troops in the ravine traversed by the Guadacelete, he appeared before Toledo with a squadron of cavalry and made preparations to encamp. The rebels, seeing what was apparently an excellent opportunity to cut off this vanguard before the arrival of the main body, made a sally, and, before they were aware of their danger, were drawn into the trap laid for them and surrounded. Dreadful carnage followed; but few escaped, and a ghastly heap of eight thousand heads, collected in the field of battle, attested the animosity of the victors and the misfortune of the vanquished. These sinister trophies, ranged along the battlements of Cordova and other Andalusian cities, were long an admonition to traitors of the terrible lesson that the Toledans and their infidel allies had received on the banks of the Guadacelete. The great loss sustained by the insurgents,--amounting to twenty thousand, for only the Christians and such Mussulman leaders as were killed or taken prisoners were decapitated,--so far from crushing the obstinate spirit of the inhabitants of the imperial city of the Visigoths, only served to increase their fury and confirm their resolution. Their offensive operations were, however, effectually checked. The garrison, reduced to less than one-third of its number, was forced to remain inactive behind the fortifications. It was with mingled feelings of rage and despair that the industrious as well as the wealthy part of the population, whose possessions had hitherto been respected in the hope of timely submission, beheld the desolation of their gardens, the uprooting of their vineyards, the burning of their villas,--those evidences of prosperity and luxury that embellished for many a mile the banks of the famous Tagus. Their thoughts were further embittered by the consciousness that these ravages were not inflicted through any fault of theirs, but through the turbulence and ill-directed ambition of Jews and renegades, whose numbers were swelled by a crowd of vagabonds and criminals attracted by the evil reputation of the city, the worst elements of a lawless population, the refuse of a score of great communities. An additional advantage gained by the troops of Mohammed served to still further depress the spirits of the Toledans, although no disaster seemed sufficient to impel them to a voluntary return to their allegiance. The principal bridge that gave access to the city was secretly mined. An attack was then made on one of the gates; the assailants retired in apparent disorder; the besieged pursued; and, at the proper instant, the wooden supports were removed from the piers, and the whole structure, crowded with the soldiers of the enemy, was precipitated into the waters of the Tagus. Not an individual escaped, for such as were able to save themselves from the rapid current of the river were shot by the archers of the Emir, stationed on the banks for that purpose. These repeated misfortunes impressed the Toledans with the necessity of peace. Their valor and their constancy under the most discouraging circumstances, although exhibited in an evil cause, cannot but excite the admiration of every reader. For the long period of twenty years Mohammed made incessant but vain attempts to subdue them. They defied the utmost efforts of his power. They menaced him in his very capital. They routed his armies, often commanded by princes of the blood. They dismantled his strongholds. The most overwhelming reverses only nerved them to greater exertions. Great losses in the field, the tortures of famine, the murmurs of their disaffected townsmen, could not shake their determination or excite their fears. The attempts to storm their fortifications were repulsed with heroic courage. Their decimated ranks were recruited from the sturdy mountaineers of Leon and the Asturias. It is in vain that the modern historian searches for the motives that inspired and sustained this sentiment of independence, this habitual defiance of authority. The ancient Gothic spirit was not sufficient to account for such an anomalous condition of affairs, although the Christians greatly outnumbered the members of all other sects. There existed no unity of religious feeling which might actuate zealots to deeds of self-sacrifice and martyrdom. The population of Toledo is represented by all writers as a remarkably heterogeneous one. The Christians mention it freely with contempt. The Moslems, without exception, allude to it as a faithless and turbulent rabble. The reason for the suicidal policy that neglected to demolish the fortifications of this centre of sedition, and did not resort to the drastic measure of wholesale expatriation when milder means had repeatedly failed, also remains a mystery. It required no great degree of statesmanship to perceive the inevitable consequences of the irrepressible spirit of rebellion encouraged, as it was, by the ill-timed clemency and indulgence of the sovereign. At length, emboldened by their alliance with the Christians of the North, and taking advantage of the embarrassments of their antagonist, harassed by enemies at home and abroad, they extorted from the Emir a treaty which virtually conceded their independence. It allowed them to select their own magistrates, including the governor, and to regulate without interference their municipal and ecclesiastical affairs. Toledo, by the payment of an annual tribute, was thus placed upon the same political footing as that of a province recently subjected to the arms of Islam, and must henceforth, for many years, cease to be regarded as an integral part of the Moorish empire.

In the meantime, the example of Toledo had been followed by other cities, whose inhabitants, exasperated by their grievances and instigated by the ambition of daring chieftains, kept the country in continued disorder and exercised to the utmost the energy and abilities of Mohammed. The evil consequences of that pernicious system, peculiar to the Arabs, of entrusting important commands to renegades without previous satisfactory tests of their fidelity, were once more demonstrated. Musa-Ibn-Zeyad, who traced his descent from the branch of the Visigothic nobility known to the Arabs as the Beni-Kasi, and whom we have seen defeated at Albeyda, was soon afterwards, through the intrigues of fanatical courtiers who accused him of treason, removed from his post of wali of Saragossa and disgraced. This officer, whose military talents and political capacity were far above the average, seeing all avenues for promotion under the emirate closed, and keenly feeling the injustice of the treatment he had received, proceeded at once to organize an insurrection, an easy matter among the adventurers of the frontier naturally prone to inconstancy and insubordination. Popular among his subjects, almost the entire province of which Saragossa was the capital declared for his cause. Tudela, Huesca, Toledo, solicited his alliance. Having baffled the efforts of the Emir to crush him, he transmitted his authority to his son Musa. The latter, securing the friendship and support of the Navarrese, crossed the Pyrenees, and carried fire and sword into Southern France. His success was so remarkable, and the resources of the French monarchy were so inadequate to resist the progress of this enterprising partisan, that Charles the Bald not only condescended to treat with him on equal terms, but purchased immunity from future inroads by the payment of a large sum of money and the bestowal of magnificent gifts. The distinction acquired by Musa from the results of this expedition indirectly produced great accessions to his power. His son Lope became one of the magistrates of Toledo. The restless population of the border flocked to his standard by thousands. His army was further augmented by numbers of Christians,--Mozarabes as well as Gascons and Navarrese,--whose former habits and experience made them valuable soldiers. The martial spirit of Musa was displayed indiscriminately against Christian and Moslem; his prowess was respected and his independence reluctantly acknowledged alike by the courts of Cordova, Aix-la-Chapelle, and Oviedo. With a pardonable vanity, justified by actual power and the possession of territory, he assumed the title of Third King of Spain. His death in 862 was followed by a partial dismemberment of his dominions, which enabled Mohammed to recover Saragossa, Tudela, and a few other places of minor importance; but only a few years elapsed before the family of Musa, endeared to the people by the exploits of its founders, regained its former ascendency, and once more expelled the forces of the emirate. Although nothing is said of the religious belief of the Beni-Kasi, it may be inferred that they had returned to the Christian communion, as Alfonso III., their close ally, entrusted to these distinguished princes the education of his son Ordoño, heir to the crown of the Asturias and Leon.

The Norman pirates, familiar to the reader of Arab chronicles as Magioges,--a name derived from the fabulous Gog and Magog, whose descendants they were, according to the doubtful authority of mediæval tradition,--seven years after Mohammed ascended the throne made a second descent upon the shores of the Peninsula. The spoil which they had collected in their first excursion and the facility with which they had penetrated into the heart of France and Spain excited their insatiable cupidity, and inspired them with the hope of even more profitable adventures. But these expectations were defeated by the valor of the Galicians and by the prudence of Abd-al-Rahman II., who, as already related, had established a coast-guard, and disposed the naval forces of the emirate to intercept the landing and chastise the audacity of these intrepid and mysterious rovers of the seas. The fame of their former success had increased their numbers, and, after an ineffectual and disastrous attempt to plunder the seaport towns of Galicia, seventy well-manned vessels of their fleet appeared off the coast of Andalusia. Disembarking at various points, the Normans effected considerable damage, but, not venturing inland, their booty bore no comparison in quantity or value to that obtained by their former visitation, and meeting with a resistance entirely unexpected, they retired to try their fortunes on the coast of Africa. In that country many settlements suffered the dreadful evils consequent upon such attacks, and, after destroying whatever they could not carry away, they ravaged the Balearic Isles, and, steering eastward, swept along the shores of the Mediterranean as far as Sicily and Malta. The unprotected regions of Italy and Greece again experienced the dire effects of barbarian malevolence, this time unmitigated by the sympathy of a common religious belief; the instinctive antipathy of the savages of the North to all that bore the stamp of civilization was gratified without restraint; and, laden with plunder of incalculable value and for once satiated with blood and havoc, the pirates directed their course homeward through the Strait of Gibraltar.

The incessant hostilities maintained by Ordoño with the kingdom of Cordova were, in general, favorable to the Christian arms. Encouraged by the victory he had obtained at Albeyda, the Asturian monarch extended his operations far to the south of the Douro. The knowledge of the growing weakness of their enemies, and the consciousness of their own valor and resources, impelled the mountaineers to still greater exertions. The expeditions which had been at first but mere predatory incursions, now assumed the character of enterprises looking towards a permanent occupation of the country. Every advantageous post beyond the border which it was thought possible to retain was thoroughly fortified and garrisoned immediately after its capture. The walls of dismantled Moorish fortresses were repaired. In those towns where the Arab inhabitants preponderated, the latter were replaced by Galician and Asturian colonists. In all cases where a place was taken by storm, the male population was exterminated, and the women and children led into slavery. Many important cities, including, among others, Coria and Salamanca, fell into the hands of the Christians. The effects of this vigorous policy began to be felt so seriously at Cordova that the government summoned all its energies in an endeavor to counteract it, and a powerful army was assembled under the orders of Al-Mondhir, heir presumptive to the crown. That warlike and experienced prince met the forces of the enemy on the banks of the Douro; the Christians sustained a disastrous defeat; the larger part of the lost territory was recovered; and Al-Mondhir, relieved of further care in this quarter, turned his attention to Alava and Navarre. The victorious banners of the Moslems were next displayed before Pampeluna. The environs of that city were devastated; some castles throughout the province which had sheltered formidable bands of marauders were taken and dismantled; and Al-Mondhir, after a campaign unattended by a single disaster, returned in triumph to Cordova.

These reverses, while not sufficient to deter the indomitable mountaineers from repeating their forays, had at least the effect of changing their direction and limiting their extent. Lusitania, formerly invaded with impunity, was again selected as the object of their attack. The fields and vineyards of Lisbon were trampled down by the Christian squadrons; the town of Cintra was burned, and every hamlet accessible to the fury of a pitiless enemy was depopulated and destroyed. But the salutary lesson the Asturians had been recently taught was not lost upon them, and, without waiting for the army that Mohammed despatched in all haste to intercept their retreat, they retired with the same celerity which had marked their appearance.

Unable to arrest these inroads by ordinary means, Mohammed determined to have recourse to his navy, and disembark a force in the centre of the enemy’s country. The fleet reached the western coast in safety, but before a landing could be effected was destroyed by a hurricane. The more rigid Moslems, whose strict ideas had been shocked by the braving of an element of which the Prophet had stood in wholesome dread, regarded this catastrophe as a well-merited chastisement from heaven for disobedience to the Koran.

The revolt of Toledo had, from time to time, been followed by the defection of other cities, whose disorders, while important in the aggregate, were singly of little moment in their effects upon the affairs of the Peninsula. One, however, in some respects greatly resembling that by which the old capital of the Visigoths had secured its independence, deserves to be related, as it demonstrates, more thoroughly than an entire chronicle could do, the deplorable helplessness into which the empire founded by Abd-al-Rahman had fallen. Ibn-Merwan, a renegade prominent in former rebellions, and whom the foolish policy of the Moslems has again entrusted with a position of responsibility, aggrieved by some petty insult, deserted, and, accompanied by a few of his retainers, seized the castle of Alanje, near Merida. Besieged before he had time to collect supplies, he nevertheless held out for three months, when he surrendered on condition of his retirement to Bagdad. No sooner was he free, however, than he proclaimed himself the apostle of a new religion, whose doctrines were borrowed from those of both Christianity and Islamism; increased his following by the enlistment of bandits and outlaws; and, imitating the example of the Toledans, strengthened his cause by an alliance with the King of the Asturias. His depredations became so annoying that an army under Haschim, Mohammed’s favorite vizier, was despatched against him. The wily partisan found little trouble in decoying the vizier into an ambuscade; his command was annihilated; and he himself was sent as a trophy to the court of Alfonso. When the Emir made proposals for the ransom of Haschim, the Christian king demanded the immense sum of a hundred thousand pieces of gold. Much as he desired the release of his minister, the parsimony of Mohammed, which had increased with years, deterred him from so profuse an expenditure. For many months Haschim remained in captivity, but at length the entreaties of his family overcame the reluctance of the Emir, and he consented to send a portion of the ransom. The balance was secured by the delivery of hostages, and the vizier was finally liberated.

On his return to Cordova, Haschim found that his ancient enemy, with whom even Mohammed himself was unable to cope, had, during his absence, attained to the dignity of an independent prince. The Emir, intimidated by the menaces of Ibn-Merwan, had been compelled to conclude a peace with that chieftain; to cede to him the strong city of Badajoz; to release him from the payment of tribute; and to accede to such conditions as virtually dispensed with the duties of the subject, as well as abrogated the authority of the sovereign.

The effect of this pusillanimous conduct upon the malcontents and fanatics who infested every community of the emirate--a society the amalgamation of whose elements seemed utterly impracticable; destitute of religious unity; without the slightest idea of political virtue or patriotism; and acknowledging no incentive to subordination but that suggested by the employment of military force--may readily be imagined. Few cities preserved even the appearance of order. Every lawless passion raged without control. Feuds were prosecuted without interference. The functions of the magistrate, the obligations of the people, were suspended. The empire, shattered in every part, seemed on the verge of dissolution. Neither proximity to the seat of government, the prospect of royal favor, nor fear of the consequences of treason sufficed to retain the states in their allegiance. Andalusia alone sustained with apparent fidelity the cause of Islam and the dignity and fortunes of the monarch; but even this province was now destined to be the seat of an insurrection whose consequences threatened to involve the civilization of the West and the dynasty of the Ommeyades in sudden and irretrievable ruin.

From the time of the Cæsars, that picturesque chain of mountains now known as the Serrania de Ronda, which traverses the southern part of the Peninsula, has been the scene of insurrection and of lawless deeds which no government has ever been able to thoroughly suppress. The proverbial reluctance of the mountaineer to conform to established laws was, in this region especially, encouraged by the savage character of the country, which, to all unacquainted with its intricate paths and gloomy fastnesses, offered an aspect as forbidding as it was pregnant with danger. The population of these mountains, in love of freedom, in strength of body, in military prowess, was the counterpart of that of the Asturias, while in graceful bearing, in beauty of form and feature, and, above all, in intelligence, it far excelled the uncouth barbarians of the North. It united the various qualities of Roman courage, Punic shrewdness, and Arab temperance and agility. The difficulty of enforcing obedience to the constituted authority was vastly increased by the close relations maintained by even the most remote settlements, leagued together in a confederacy which was, in all but name and acknowledged leadership, an independent republic. The brigand who swooped down upon the flocks of the Roman shepherd, or pillaged the hut of the Visigothic peasant, has his worthy counterparts to-day in the smuggler and highwayman. It has not been many decades since the robber chieftain of the Serrania de Ronda levied blackmail on the posts and convoys of the Spanish government; and the contraband traffic of that region at present exceeds in importance the legitimate trade of any other district of equal area and wealth in the Peninsula.

On the slope of this mountain range, not far from Malaga, lived in the reign of Mohammed a youth of fiery temper and dissolute habits, named Omar-Ibn-Hafsun. His father, descended from a distinguished Gothic family, like many others, had renounced his faith rather with a view to future advantage than from belief in the doctrines of Islam. His son, concerned in frequent broils with the hot-headed peasantry of the neighborhood, had, while but a child, obtained a most unenviable reputation for cruelty and violence. At length, in an encounter with one of his most redoubtable antagonists, the latter paid the penalty of his rashness with his life. Ibn-Hafsun fled to the sierra and joined a gang of banditti, but was eventually seized by the authorities and scourged into insensibility. Escaping from the clutches of the law, he sought the presence of his father, who disowned him and drove him from his home. Knowing that he could not for a great while longer elude the search of the officers who were scouring the country in all directions, he embarked for Tahort in Africa, where he found refuge in the house of a tailor who knew of his family but was ignorant of his recent history, and who willingly accepted him as an apprentice. Here he was soon after recognized by an acquaintance, and, apprehensive of being denounced as a fugitive from justice and surrendered for execution, he left his benefactor and secretly returned to Andalusia. Impelled, perforce, to the profession of an outlaw, he assembled a number of adventurous spirits, repaired an old Roman fort on the summit of Mount Bobastro, and entered upon a life of rapine. The great plain stretching from the foot of the sierra to the capital was soon at his mercy. His band increased with the fame of his exploits; the cities of Andalusia trembled at his name; the governor of the province, who had ventured to attack him with a strong body of regular troops, was reduced to the humiliation of seeing his soldiers routed and his camp pillaged by a handful of daring marauders. This official, whose incompetency was presumed to be the cause of his misfortune, was removed, but his successor, an experienced veteran, fared no better. After a time, the rebel was surrounded by a strong force under the vizier Haschim, and compelled to surrender. His bravery and talents had so excited admiration of the latter that he induced the Emir to offer him an important command in the army. Between the acceptance of this unexpected favor and confinement in a dungeon there could be no hesitation in making a choice, and the former brigand was duly commissioned an officer of the emirate. In many engagements with the insurgents and mountaineers of the North, he bore himself with a self-respecting dignity little to be expected from his former lawless behavior. Admired by his general, respected by his comrades, and feared by his enemies, there seemed to unfold before him the flattering prospect of speedy promotion and all the honors and wealth incident to a distinguished military career. But the petty jealousies of rival courtiers could not brook the sudden elevation and rising prosperity of this new favorite of Haschim. The party opposed to the vizier employed every means to annoy and humiliate the haughty renegade. The governor of the city, under various pretexts, compelled him to constantly move his quarters. The purveyors of the army, instigated by the enemies of his patron, regularly furnished him with rations unfit for consumption. His complaints were ineffectual; even his patron told him that he must avenge his own wrongs. Exasperated by such treatment, above all as it was in no wise deserved, and unwilling to longer submit to the insults that every day became less endurable, Ibn-Hafsun deserted, and again sought the protecting solitudes of the Serrania de Ronda. His band was soon reassembled; the fortress of Bobastro, which the prudence of Mohammed had greatly strengthened, was surprised; and the daring partisan, in the space of a few weeks, became once more the idol of the mountaineers and the terror of the peasantry of Andalusia. But his service in the army of the Emir had wrought a remarkable change in the sentiments and conduct of the outlaw. He proclaimed himself the champion of freedom, the avenger of all who had suffered from the extortions and injustice of the reigning family. In this capacity he was recognized as the representative of the renegades, the Christians, and the Berbers, who thus formed an incongruous, but, for a time, an effective alliance against the dominant Arab aristocracy. By assuming the character of a defender of the oppressed, he invested his cause with a national importance, and relieved it, to a great extent, from the disgraceful imputation of brigandage. The members of his band were subjected to the most severe restraint. Robbery and insubordination were punished with instant death. The entire mountain district was gradually included within his jurisdiction, and security of property and life, such as that region never knew before, existed. It became a common saying among the Andalusians that a woman loaded with silver might cross any portion of the Serrania de Ronda without the least danger of molestation. Such a demonstration of security would have been elsewhere impracticable, even in the populous districts of the emirate patrolled by a vigilant police, and its attempt would have invited certain death in the distant and unprotected provinces of the empire.

In the control of his soldiers, Ibn-Hafsun adopted all those politic expedients which raise commanders to popularity and renown,--inexorable justice, unstinted liberality, prompt recognition of efficient service, merciless punishment of serious infractions of discipline. His increasing power invited the adherence of malcontents who held responsible posts under the government, among them not a few renegades, those pests of every administration whose credulous weakness heeded their protestations or trusted their loyalty. In the year 886, Ibn-Hafsun was assisting one of these traitors in the defence of Alhama against the prince Al-Mondhir. The bandit chieftain had been wounded in a sally, and the garrison was about to surrender, when news reached the prince of the death of his father, and necessitated his immediate return. This unhoped-for change in his fortunes offered an opportunity which the wily Ibn-Hafsun was not slow to appreciate. By plausible representations he induced many towns to submit to his authority, and the accession of Al-Mondhir found him at once confronted with a powerful enemy, whose military genius and fertility of resource promised a long and doubtful struggle for supremacy.

The death of Mohammed was sudden and peaceful. His reign of thirty-four years was the most stormy and unfortunate of any hitherto directed by the Ommeyade monarchs. In addition to manifold political calamities, it was afflicted with a drought severe beyond all hitherto mentioned in the annals of Spain, with famine and pestilence, and with earthquakes that increased the mortality to an appalling degree.

This epoch is conspicuous for the shameful degradation of the Ommeyade dynasty of Spain. In its general features, it also presents an epitome of the evils which afflicted the Hispano-Arab domination under every ruler and in every age. The inherent vices of the Moslem system; the irreconcilable character of the constituents of Moslem society--their turbulence, malignity, and faithlessness--were discernible alike under the administration of Abd-al-Aziz, the first of the emirs, and of Boabdil, the last of the kings. The condition of Mohammed at times seemed desperate. The majority of his subjects were in rebellion. Twenty years of warfare had failed to subdue Toledo, which, with the extensive territory subject to it, was now practically independent. The power of the Christians was increasing daily. Their boundaries were steadily advancing southward. Their banners had even been seen from the walls of the capital. The Franks had obtained a permanent foothold in the Gothic March, forever lost to the jurisdiction and the faith of Islam. The mighty kingdom which had once reached from the banks of the Garonne to the Mediterranean had shrunk to the dimensions of an insignificant principality. Septimania, Leon, Aragon, Catalonia, and a large portion of Castile were in the hands of the enemy. In the North, the walis of the scattered fortresses which still preserved a nominal allegiance to the Emir were secretly leagued with the infidel. In the West, the audacious Ibn-Merwan plundered at will the rich settlements of Estremadura and Lusitania. Valencia and Murcia, the nurseries of many a serious revolt, exhibited unconcealed signs of disaffection, caused by the imposition of excessive taxes and the uncontrolled rapacity of their governors. In the South, the daring Ibn-Hafsun, the representative of the prejudices and the aspirations of a numerous and growing faction, exercised despotic rule over the greater part of Andalusia. Brigands swarmed on the highways. Travel was impossible, except under the protection of a strong escort. Communication between the great cities of the Peninsula was as difficult as if they had been separated by vast continents or seas. At one time, for eight years, intercourse was entirely suspended between Saragossa and Cordova. In every community an ill-defined but universal presentiment of impending evil prevailed. Society was distracted by the quarrels of theologians, frivolous in their nature, but often serious in their consequences. In the history of Islam, a dispute concerning a religious formula or the authenticity of a tradition had, more than once, led to a bloody proscription, or involved entire nations in war. While the majority of the Christian tributaries acquiesced in the conditions imposed by the Moslem laws, numbers of deluded fanatics, resorting to every species of outrage and blasphemy, courted the tortures and the fame of martyrdom. Much of the country was depopulated. Where the inhabitants remained, agricultural and commercial operations greatly declined, and in some districts were absolutely suspended. The public revenues were diminished to such an extent that even the penuriousness of the Emir, aided by the extortions of his merciless officials, could with difficulty provide for the necessary expenses of the royal household. At the death of Mohammed, scarcely one-fourth of the territorial area over which he claimed sovereign jurisdiction acknowledged the legitimacy of his title or contributed to the maintenance of his power.

The evidences of national decadence are only too perceptible in the disappearance of public spirit and military virtue; in the incessant prosecution of intestine warfare; in the almost unresisted encroachments of the Christian arms; in the habitual treachery of officers entrusted with high commands; in the jealousies of courtiers and the intrigues of fanatics; in the feigned enthusiasm of crusades inaugurated in obedience to the principles of Islam, sometimes crowned with partial success, but often terminating in disgrace and disaster.

The character of Mohammed was principally remarkable for irresolution and parsimony. He surrendered whole provinces and degraded his dignity by humiliating concessions extorted by the threats of insolent chiefs of banditti. Such was his meanness that, in a transaction involving the payment of more than a hundred thousand dinars, he defrauded the treasury officials of a few pieces of copper. He reduced the pay of his soldiers. He condescended to share the salaries of government employees, whom he appointed conditionally upon the division of their earnings. Yet, with these serious faults, he was the patron of science, the friend of the learned, a graceful poet and orator, and one of the most accomplished calligraphists of his time. The lack of effective organization; the secret and implacable hostility that pervaded every branch of the body politic; the boldness and tenacity of the Asturians, aided by the sympathy of an innumerable body of Christian ecclesiastics domiciled in every city and village of the empire; and the unavoidable catastrophes of nature, render it extremely problematical whether, under similar circumstances, a prince possessed of greater ability than Mohammed could have better sustained the declining fortunes of the emirate.

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XI. REIGN OF AL-MONDHIR; REIGN OF ABDALLAH

886–912

Parallel between the Policy of the Moorish and Asturian Courts--Alfonso III.--His Conquests--Energy of Al-Mondhir--Siege of Bobastro--Stratagem of Ibn-Hafsun--The Emir is Poisoned--Abdallah ascends the Throne--Conditions of Parties and Sects--Prevalence of Disorder--Insurrection at Elvira--Success of the Arab Faction--Disturbances at Seville--General Disaffection of the Provinces--Ibn-Hafsun defeated at Aguilar--Disastrous and Permanent Effects of the Continuance of Anarchy--Sudden Death of Abdallah--Important Political Changes wrought by a Generation of Civil Warfare.

A striking parallel exists between the successive events that compose respectively the political history of the rival kingdoms of Christian and Moorish Spain. In the circumstances of physical environment, in national traditions, in manners, language, and religious belief, no two races could be more dissimilar. Yet, in many respects, the accounts of the disturbances following the accession of the Kings of the Asturias and the Emirs of Cordova are counterparts of each other. Both monarchies were, in theory, elective. The independent spirit of the Arab and the untamed ferocity of the Goth were equally opposed to the subordination necessarily implied by the adoption of the law of hereditary descent. As the ruler grew more powerful, he naturally became more anxious to transmit to his descendants the authority which had been gained by his valor or confirmed by his prudence. To secure to his family this coveted advantage, he was accustomed to solicit, in his lifetime, the public acknowledgment of his son as heir apparent, who had, not infrequently, been associated with him in the conduct of the administration. A council composed of the principal officers, prelates, and nobles of the realm was convoked, and required to show its devotion to king or emir by swearing allegiance to the prince whom paternal affection, and sometimes distinguished merit, had designated as the future sovereign. This assent, prompted by interest and the certainty of royal favor, was seldom refused, and, strengthened by custom until it became a part of the constitution, was, after a few generations, regarded as a mere ceremonial,--the formal assertion of a right whose legality had been tacitly established by considerations of public policy, if not by ancient prescription. But such was the effect of a regulation in governments which preserved the forms of election but repudiated its untrammelled exercise, that the choice of the monarch, as soon as he ascended the throne, generally found himself embroiled with his less fortunate brethren, each of whom believed that he had been defrauded of his birthright. That the mere consent of the council was not deemed conclusive is proven by the fact that possession of the palace was deemed prima facie evidence of title, a principle recognized equally at Oviedo and Cordova. With insubordination came civil war and the lamentable consequences of internecine conflict. The savage instincts of the Gothic princes caused them to blind their unfortunate rivals and immure them for life in the foul and reeking cells of subterranean dungeons. The vengeance of the Moor, however, was usually satisfied with short imprisonment, and, if the culprit expressed contrition, he was often restored to favor and his crime condoned. The student of ancient Spanish history cannot fail to be deeply impressed with the different methods of dealing with treason in the north and south of the Peninsula, regions arrayed against each other in continual hostility,--exhibiting marked resemblances when they were least to be expected, and, in disposing of offences aimed at the throne and life of the monarch, displaying, on the one hand, an indulgence dictated by a magnanimity that seemed almost suicidal; on the other, a severity characterized by atrocities that could only proceed from the grossest barbarism.

The long and illustrious reign of Alfonso III., worthily named The Great, which occupies so much space in the early annals of the Reconquest, affords a conspicuous example of the vicissitudes and trials that attended the adventurous lives of the princes of the Asturian monarchy. Associated with his father Ordoño for four years preceding his advent to the throne, he was far from being a novice when summoned to assume the grave responsibilities of sovereignty. The four brothers of the King, jealous of the paternal preference, and disputing the legality of a custom that arbitrarily excluded from the succession even those most eligible under the provisions of the ancient Visigothic constitution, united their forces in a formidable attempt to subvert the authority of Alfonso. The enterprise resulted disastrously; the barbarous severity of the laws was demonstrated without the mitigation that might have been expected from the influence of fraternal sympathy, and the unhappy princes were deprived of their eye-sight and imprisoned for life in the castle of Oviedo. Three of them speedily sank under the hardships of confinement; but the fourth, Veremundo, succeeded, by some fortunate circumstance, in escaping, and was eventually raised by his adherents to the government of Astorga. In this strong city, occasionally assisted by the arms of the Moors, he successfully defied the attacks of the King of the Asturias for more than seven years. The address and courage necessarily implied by this determined resistance are in themselves sufficiently remarkable; but the fact that the hero who directed operations which thwarted the designs and repulsed the forces of an entire kingdom for this extended period was totally blind may well awaken surprise and admiration.

The eminent abilities of Alfonso III. were displayed on many a hotly contested field and in many a critical emergency during his long career. His arms were carried farther into the country of the enemy than the bravest of his predecessors had ventured to penetrate. Coimbra, Oporto, Zamora, Toro, Simancas, and numerous other cities of less importance were added to the dominions of the Christian monarchy by the efforts of his valor or the terror of his name. The sound of his trumpets had awakened the affrighted peasantry whose fields occupied the fertile slopes of the Sierra Morena. His banners had been repeatedly seen from the battlements of Merida. His squadrons had menaced the suburbs of the Moslem capital. He enforced with unabated rigor the ruthless policy of extermination inaugurated by the first monarch of his name. The captives taken in his numerous expeditions were, for the most part, distributed among the estates of the ecclesiastical order and the royal demesnes, to be employed in the construction of churches, monasteries, castles, and palaces. With each advance of the line marking the boundary of the two kingdoms to the southward, new fortresses were erected, the most famous of which was that which stood upon the site of modern Burgos, a city whose fortunes have ever been so closely identified with those of the Castilian monarchy. The province of Navarre, heretofore considered as an insignificant principality, whose allegiance to the Asturian Crown was conceded rather by the indifference of its inhabitants than based upon the acknowledgment of any well-defined obligation, was, by the marriage of Alfonso III. to Ximena, daughter of the count, enabled to claim, for the first time in history, the position of an independent kingdom. For thirty-one years Alfonso maintained an incessant contest with the Emirs of Cordova. He saw the dominions of the descendants of those terrified fugitives who had taken shelter in the wilds of the Pyrenees extended far beyond the Douro and the Tagus to the shores of the distant Guadiana. He witnessed the thorough consolidation of the temporal and ecclesiastical powers, a union portending so much to the future renown and dishonor of Spain. The shrine of Santiago had already been enriched by the devotion of the pious and the fears of the wicked; the rude hamlet had begun to assume the appearance of a city; the homely chapel had been replaced by a stately cathedral; and a constant stream of weeping and hysterical pilgrims attested the growth of a spirit of fanaticism whose effects were to be, erelong, conspicuously exhibited in those romantic deeds of daring which abound in the annals of the Reconquest. At the close of his reign, three-fourths of the Peninsula--a territory that, with the exception of a corner of the mountain wilderness, had once paid tribute to the followers of Mohammed--was in the possession of the champions of Christendom or their allies.

The youth of the new Emir, Al-Mondhir, had, like that of his ancestors, been passed amidst military exercises or in warlike enterprises. No prince had yet ascended the throne under more auspicious circumstances, nor, at the same time, better qualified to restore the tarnished lustre of the Moslem name. His discretion and sagacity bore a just proportion to the impulsive courage that distinguished him among a nation of heroes. The energy of his character may be inferred from his response to the Toledans, who, immediately after his accession, sent him the customary tribute, which he at once returned with the following message, “Keep your money for the expenses of war, for, if God so wills, I shall soon attack you.”

The absence of Al-Mondhir, as has been already related, gave the redoubtable rebel Ibn-Hafsun an opportunity to greatly increase his following, and to secure, by threats and delusive promises, many important fortresses in Andalusia. The resolute prince, thoroughly cognizant of the dangerous character of his adversary, did not suffer him to long enjoy the advantages which the domestic misfortune of others rather than his own abilities had enabled him to obtain. Leaving Cordova quietly at the head of a body of veteran troops, he suddenly laid siege to the strong post of Archidona, commanded by an ally of Ibn-Hafsun, and, like him, a renegade. The boldness of this chieftain, who, while defaming the religion he had renounced, declared his willingness to be executed in case of capture, led Al-Mondhir to tempt the cupidity of the citizens by an enormous bribe; the apostate was surrendered, and, in accordance with the terms of his defiance, underwent a death ignominious in the eyes of all Mussulmans,--crucifixion between the bodies of two of the most unclean of animals. Terrified by this example of severity, Archidona opened its gates. The cavalry of the Emir then swept the country of provisions; some towns were plundered; a score of insurgents selected for prominence in their party were executed; and the entire army of Al-Mondhir, flushed with success and animated by the hope of booty and vengeance, invested the formidable stronghold of Bobastro.

While he entertained little fear that his castle could be taken, the cunning Ibn-Hafsun determined to provide if possible against such a contingency, and relieve his followers from the disastrous consequences of a blockade. With every appearance of sincerity, he professed a desire to conclude a permanent peace. Al-Mondhir, with all his experience, was not proof against the humble protestations of regret and assurances of future loyalty proffered by the rebel chieftain. A treaty was drawn up virtually at the dictation of the latter. At his request, a hundred mules, guarded by an escort of a hundred and sixty horsemen, were furnished to convey his family and property to Cordova. His apparent submission having removed all suspicions of his good faith, he escaped without difficulty in the dead of night; and having returned to Bobastro, which the army of the Emir had quitted, he collected a few soldiers, massacred the escort, and by daybreak was once more under shelter of the towers of the fortress. The rage of Al-Mondhir, aroused to the highest pitch by this exhibition of duplicity, impelled him to take a solemn oath that he would never cease his efforts until the perfidious rebel should have paid the extreme penalty of his treason. The blockade was renewed, but with diminished vigor, as the discipline of the troops was not only lax, but they were disheartened at the prospect of a protracted siege, the opinion prevailing among them that Bobastro was impregnable. Aware of the increasing discontent, a conspiracy was formed against Al-Mondhir by his brother Abdallah and the eunuchs of the palace; the court physician was prevailed upon to use a poisoned lancet to bleed his royal patient for some trifling indisposition; and the gallant prince, whose career bade fair to be one of the most illustrious of his dynasty, died in excruciating torture after a reign of a little less than two years. He left no sons, and the criminal design of Abdallah, which had been pushed rapidly to its execution for this very reason, having been accomplished, that prince, informed of the death of Al-Mondhir before it was known to his friends, appeared suddenly in camp, asserted his claim to the throne, and received the reluctant homage of the officers of the army.

The soldiers, who respected the abilities and stood in awe of the ferocious spirit of Ibn-Hafsun, displayed no grief at the death of their sovereign. With every manifestation of joy, they turned their backs upon the rebel stronghold, and, without preserving the semblance of military order, began a straggling march towards their homes. Each village which this armed rabble traversed was the scene of hundreds of desertions, and of the plunder of the already grievously oppressed inhabitants. The disorderly retreat had not escaped the notice of Ibn-Hafsun, and he was already close in the rear of the retiring column when a messenger arrived from the usurper imploring his forbearance, and declaring that he entertained no hostile intentions towards him. The rebel leader had the courtesy to respect this petition; and Abdallah, guarding his brother’s corpse lashed carelessly upon a camel, was permitted to reach Cordova without molestation. So complete was the disorganization of the army, that of a force numbering several thousand men scarcely twoscore troopers remained to escort the new monarch to the gates of the capital.

The crown that had been polluted by treason and fratricide seemed destined now to become the instrument of universal misfortune. The political condition of the Peninsula was already extremely complicated. Society was everywhere threatened with dissolution. The Arabs, proud of their lineage, and appropriating to their race the credit of conquests largely achieved by their allies and proselytes, constituted an aristocracy whose pretensions were both unwarrantable and offensive. Far from recognizing the new converts to Islam as brothers,--as recommended by the Koran,--they treated them as inferiors, and frequently loaded them with indignities which they would have hesitated to inflict upon their own slaves. The lapse of generations, the most eminent services, the greatest talents, the performance of acts of valor that evoked the plaudits of their enemies, could not, in the eyes of these haughty descendants of idolaters and banditti, atone for the reproach of ancient infidelity. But it was only in their antagonism to recent converts and their children that the Arabs were united. Between the Syrian and the Bedouin of the Hedjaz still existed an irreconcilable enmity. The hereditary feud of Maadite and Yemenite preserved all its original bitterness and intensity, although, on account of the incessant clashing of other interests, its manifestations were not so pronounced as they had been in the earlier years of the emirate. The confiscation of the estates of Gothic fugitives and the fortunes of the Conquest had given the Arabs an opportunity to acquire extensive estates and to amass immense riches. The deeply-rooted antipathy of the Bedouin to confinement had caused the aristocracy of the Peninsula to establish itself in the vicinity of large cities, such as Jaen, Cordova, Seville, and Malaga, where, surrounded by an army of retainers and slaves, they enjoyed the pleasures and independence of a pastoral life, for which they had inherited a predilection from their ancestors, the nobles of Central and Western Arabia.

But the several factions into which the Arabs were divided bore no comparison in numbers, power, or opulence to those composing the remainder of the population. It was but a small proportion of the Christians who, in consequence of the invasion of Tarik, had sought the unfettered exercise of political and religious liberty amidst the wilds of the Asturias. The sacred traditions of ancestry, the ties of birth, the associations of childhood, the fear of penury, the hope of wealth and distinction, retained the large majority in their homes, where many continued to enjoy the consideration derived from exalted rank and great possessions. Some paid gladly the reasonable tribute that promised a greater degree of security than they had ever known under the kings and chieftains of Gothic lineage. These were called Ahl-al-Dhimmah, The Tributaries. The members of another class, the Ajem, boldly refused to recognize the authority of the conqueror, and maintained a nominal independence in the mountains where they had their haunts, but, destitute of effective organization, they scarcely rose to the dignity of banditti. The alluring inducements of pecuniary interest and political advantage had formed another caste or faction, more numerous and more important in its influence on the fortunes of the Peninsula than all the others combined,--the Muwallads, a comprehensive term denoting persons whose derivation, while nominally Arab, was yet tainted with some foreign impurity, and which, corrupted into mulatto, has been incorporated into many of the languages of Europe. This designation was popularly applied to the descendants of renegades or apostates, called Mosalimah, an appellation corresponding to the Moriscoes, or New Christians, converted after the capture of Granada by the zealous Ximenes and his coadjutors through the potent arguments of the rack and fagot. Still another caste was the Muraddin, former converts, who, having renounced the faith of Islam, had rendered themselves amenable to death, the penalty prescribed by Mohammed for the unpardonable crime of apostasy. These were outlaws and highwaymen, who, in defiance of the feeble police maintained by the government, openly levied contributions upon travellers within sight of the minarets of Cordova. Add to these disorganizing elements of society the half-savage Berbers,--for the most part idolaters in religion and assassins in war,--and the difficulties that confronted the ablest princes of the Ommeyades may well be conceived. The Jews, whose mercantile pursuits made them on all occasions advocates for peace and frequently useful mediators, were robbed and oppressed in turn by every faction into whose hands they were unfortunate enough to fall. No region in the world of equal area contained such a mixed and turbulent population as the Spanish Peninsula before the Reconquest. The emirs, actuated by a principle familiar to all despotic sovereigns threatened with a curtailment of their power, bestowed their favor in turn upon the Arabs and the Muwallads, according as one or the other seemed about to obtain a pre-eminence dangerous to the safety of the state. But this policy reacted in an unexpected manner, and aggravated the evils it was intended to obviate. The victorious party never failed to abuse its advantage with brutal severity. The faction for the time being under the frown of the Court, lost all respect for, and renounced its allegiance to, a government that refused it the protection of the laws. The result was a bitter conflict in which Arab and Muwallad were arrayed against the Emir and against each other at the same time. The death of Al-Mondhir was the signal for increased disorder, which the feeble and hypocritical Abdallah was incompetent to suppress. The Arab nobles had long hoped to revive, in another land, that period of unrestricted license whose traditions survived in the exciting poems of the robbers and shepherds of the Desert. The famous Ibn-Hafsun, whose name was the terror of every hamlet, and who, as the head of the rebels of Bobastro and the natural ally of every party of malcontents, was more powerful than the Emir himself, now began to entertain hopes of being actually invested with the royal dignity which he in substance already enjoyed.

The situation of Abdallah was perilous in the extreme. The loyalty for the House of Ommeyah, which had been for generations the marked characteristic of the Arab of Syrian descent and the Koreishite alike, was greatly impaired. The treasury was empty. The taxes due from the walis were, for the most part, withheld. The tribute of the Christians, instigated by the Muwallads whom they considered their champions, was, except in Cordova and its immediate environs, suspended. The royal convoys were intercepted and plundered on the highways. The fidelity of the populace of the capital, suspected of secretly holding communication with the enemy, was distrusted. A spirit of bravado had even prompted Ibn-Hafsun to pass several days within its gates, which he had entered unchallenged in the disguise of a beggar. The prejudices of Abdallah inclined him to an alliance with the renegades. His early years had been passed in intimate friendship with the officers of the guard, who had since become distinguished leaders of that party. The achievements of Ibn-Hafsun had rather awakened his admiration than provoked his resentment. Conscious of his helplessness, and desirous of conciliating the most powerful chief of the opposition, he went so far as to tender him the government of Regio, conditional upon his return to his allegiance. The crafty rebel, to whom an oath was an unmeaning ceremony and who desired a respite to enable him to reorganize his army, acquiesced without hesitation, and even consented to send his son and several of his officers as hostages to the court of the Emir. The latter treated these pledges of the uncertain fidelity of a perfidious vassal with all the distinction usually reserved for the emissaries of royalty. They were magnificently entertained, lodged in palaces, and presented with costly gifts. Unrestrained of their liberty, they had no trouble in escaping when, a few months later, they received a secret message to repair to Bobastro. All security for his loyal behavior being lost by their departure, Ibn-Hafsun resumed his depredations with greater audacity than ever. His aid was soon afterwards solicited by the renegades of a district which had hitherto rather avoided than courted his alliance,--the city and province of Elvira.

In the general distribution of lands made under the direction of the emirs who acknowledged the Khalif of Damascus, the beautiful plain subsequently known as the Vega of Granada was assigned to the natives of Syria. With true Bedouin reserve and love of freedom, the adventurers who had won this earthly paradise by their valor disposed their habitations as far from the crowded haunts of men as the extent and situation of their estates would permit. The increase of their flocks, and the produce of the soil tilled by multitudes of industrious slaves, soon raised their descendants to the height of opulence. In the course of events, through confiscations for treason, the casualties of war, and the effects of disease, many Arab families became extinct, and their real property, by purchase or extortion, became vested in a comparatively small number of great proprietors, whose possessions embraced all the most valuable estates in the province. These lords formed a caste that, for arrogance and exclusiveness, had no equal in the Peninsula. The national pride of the Syrian noble was immensely flattered by the sovereign pre-eminence of his countrymen, the princes of the House of Ommeyah. In his inordinate vanity he fancied that the future of that dynasty depended on his individual exertions, as he habituated himself to believe that its establishment was solely due to the genius and efforts of his ancestors. And yet with all his professed attachment to the crown, his loyalty had been more than once justly suspected. There, as elsewhere, the interests of the court had been repeatedly sacrificed to gratify the malice of faction,--for the inappeasable feud between Yemenite and Maadite was nowhere maintained with greater virulence than in the province of Elvira. In his intercourse with his equals the Arab of the Vega--like all his brethren exposed for a time to the refinements of civilization--was a model of chivalrous politeness and graceful courtesy. But his demeanor was far different when his affairs demanded any association with the inhabitants of the city, who, in his eyes, labored under the double reproach of being traders and renegades. No opportunity was lost to humiliate these peaceful citizens; although in practice devout Moslems, they were constantly taunted with their apostasy; and for their denunciation the inexhaustible vocabulary of the Arab was ransacked for opprobrious epithets, one of which, “filii canum,” has descended to our time as the very epitome of insult.

The high spirit of the inhabitants of Elvira chafed under the gross and unprovoked abuse which they were constantly compelled to undergo. They also were vain of their ancestry and proud of their souvenirs. In the early days of the Visigothic empire, the ancient Illiberis had been an oasis in the dismal waste of Paganism that included the entire Peninsula. It had been the seat of the first Spanish bishopric. There had been held, in the first quarter of the fourth century, a famous Council, many of whose canons are still recognized as valid by the Roman Catholic Church. Among them was one requiring the celibacy of the priesthood, a regulation subsequently adopted and enforced by Gregory VII. There, too, was contrived a scheme of discipline which, originally aimed at the rich and prosperous Hebrews, became the model of that awful engine of persecution, the Inquisition, whose tortures, improved by ecclesiastical deviltry, filled the world with terror after the lapse of more than a thousand years. The city, although inferior in natural advantages to its growing neighbor, Granada, was nevertheless of considerable political and commercial importance. The generous piety of the Gothic nobles had enriched its see with large endowments, and its churches in elegance and splendor could compare with any of the kingdom.

But the contagious example of the prevalent apostasy, a condition which dispensed with tribute and at the same time appealed strongly to the ambition of the unscrupulous and the selfish passions of the multitude, made itself felt before long even in this citadel of Christianity. The corruption of the prelates, headed by the bishop, Samuel, whose profligacy attained for him a notoriety proportionate to the dignity of the office he disgraced, drove the indignant Christians by hundreds into the fold of Islam. Those who remained faithful to the traditions of the Church were so persecuted that no resource was left to them but to join their brethren, many of whom had sacrificed their convictions from more ignoble motives than that of self-preservation. This wholesale desertion was greatly facilitated by the connivance of the inferior clergy, as well as by the open violence of the bishop and his coadjutors, who, corrupted by the Moslems, exerted themselves with far greater energy and success in obtaining proselytes to the religion of Mohammed than they had ever done in promoting the cause of Christ. In the end, the excesses of this unworthy prelate became so insufferable that he was removed from his see and divested of his sacred authority; whereupon he at once repaired to Cordova, and, having publicly renounced his faith, was rewarded with the lucrative employment of persecutor, an infamous office whose duties he discharged with all the malignant assiduity of the renegade. Long before the accession of Abdallah, the resentment of the Muwallads of Elvira, inflamed to the highest pitch, had broken out against their churlish neighbors, the Arab nobles, in acts of open hostility. The sympathies of the Jews of Granada seem to have been with the latter, who, on various occasions, were saved from destruction by the friendly walls of that city. Superior in numbers and equal in bravery to their adversaries, the result of every engagement was favorable to the renegades. As neither party was accustomed to give quarter, the struggle soon assumed the character of a war of extermination. In the year 889 a number of Syrian chieftains, who were visiting the capital of the province under the protection of a truce, were treacherously massacred in the streets, a catastrophe that gave the Muwallads, already sufficiently powerful, a momentary but uncontested ascendency. The Arabs, whose numbers had been depleted by many consecutive years of warfare, forgot, for the moment, their hereditary enmities, which no disaster, however serious, could entirely reconcile, in the engrossing passion of vengeance. They chose for their leader Sauwar, a venerable warrior whose declining age had been embittered by the bloody sacrifice of his only son to the fury of the renegades. His misfortunes had erased from his bosom every feeling of compassion, every suggestion of humanity. A brutal ferocity that regarded the slightest concession to the weakness of an enemy as a crime was the prominent characteristic of the sheik whom the Arabs now selected to restore their fallen fortunes. The first exploit of this savage warrior was the capture of Monte Sacro, a stronghold north of Granada which had been the scene of the greatest victory of the Muwallads and the occasion of the death of his beloved son. Notwithstanding its strength, the castle was carried at the first attack, and the garrison, six thousand in number, massacred to a man. Encouraged by his success and infuriated by the taste of blood, the desperate Sauwar sated to the full his thirst for retribution. The terror of his arms caused many towns to surrender without a blow. But submission conferred no indulgence, and the work went relentlessly on. No Muwallad who was so unfortunate as to fall into the hands of the Arabs escaped. A mere suspicion of Spanish or Gothic descent was deemed sufficient evidence of identity, and brought certain and speedy death. Even those conditions of helplessness which most readily appeal to the compassion of mankind were not considered in this indiscriminate proscription, and many distinguished families whose names were identified with some of the most conspicuous events of Roman and Visigothic annals were swept at one blow from the face of the earth.

This reign of terror, which threatened the extermination of their race, induced the renegades to appeal for assistance to Djad, the Arab governor of the province, whose authority they had disputed after refusing the customary tribute. Satisfied of their sincerity, he marched at the head of a considerable force against the formidable partisan. The result was a decisive victory for the Arabs; the bodies of seven thousand dead strewed the field of battle, and the governor remained a prisoner in the camp of the enemy.

The prestige acquired by Sauwar after these decisive advantages caused his alliance to be sought by many neighboring cities, among them Calatrava and Jaen. Reduced to despair, the Muwallad faction declared their willingness to renew their allegiance to the Emir. But the latter was powerless to render them any substantial assistance. The credit of the government was so low that it could scarcely pay the troops required for the defence of the capital. The personal qualities of Abdallah were not such as to enlist the sympathy or arouse the enthusiasm of the people, and thereby compensate, in some degree, for the deficiencies of the treasury. The governors of the provinces were, for all practical purposes, independent princes. Cordova was the residence of the flower of the Arab nobility, whose prejudices were all on the side of Sauwar and his followers in their efforts to exterminate the detested renegades, an enterprise which they regarded as little less meritorious than a crusade against an infidel foe. Willing but unable to exert his authority in behalf of his unfortunate subjects, the Emir decided to assume the less dangerous office of mediator. He therefore offered Sauwar the government of several cities on condition that he would acknowledge himself a vassal of the crown and cease his persecution of the renegades. This advantageous proposal was readily agreed to; the oath of allegiance was taken by both factions; hostilities were suspended, and, for the first time in many years, the province of Elvira was permitted to enjoy the blessings of public and private tranquillity.

Habituated to warfare and scenes of carnage, the active spirit of Sauwar chafed under the monotony and dullness entailed by civil drudgery and magisterial duties. The territory that Ibn-Hafsun had seized, and over which he ruled with despotic sway, extended to the borders of the province of Elvira. Unable to resist the temptation, Sauwar turned his attention to the adherents of that renowned champion of the Muwallads, and soon the valleys and hamlets of eastern Andalusia were visited with a scourge whose barbarity had no parallel since the invasion of the Vandals. The sympathy of their fellow-sectaries, the subjects of Sauwar, was enlisted in behalf of those who were sufferers in a common cause; the Muwallads of Elvira almost without exception rose in arms; and the Arabs, expelled from the city and chased in every direction, sought by a common impulse a temporary refuge in Granada.

The fortress of the Alhambra, a structure of remote and uncertain antiquity, is mentioned definitely for the first time during the civil wars of Elvira. It was known to the Arabs at least a century after the Conquest, as Ka’lat-al-Hamra, The Red Castle, and its commanding position and natural strength render it probable that it may have been the site of a citadel as early as the Carthaginian occupation. The whole of the Alhambra Hill was not enclosed, as at present, and, at the time under consideration, the fortifications were confined to the jutting point overlooking the present city and familiar to modern travellers as the Alcazaba. Abandoned by the government, and uncared for by the inhabitants, whose Jewish antecedents induced them to trust for their safety rather to their acuteness than to their courage, the venerable castle had fallen into decay. The repeated sieges which it had sustained in the incessant contests between rival factions had, in addition to the ruin produced by the effects of time and the action of the elements, greatly diminished its capacity for resistance. In their critical situation, where all depended on their individual exertions,--for no hope of reinforcements could be entertained,--the superstitious fears of the people, aided by the suggestions of a vivid imagination, found in each trivial incident a token of propitious or fatal augury. Fortunately for their cause, the favorable omens preponderated on the day when the besieging force, whose numbers amounted to twenty thousand, prepared to storm their intrenchments. With characteristic cunning the prudent Sauwar determined to counteract by stratagem the overwhelming superiority of his adversaries. Leaving the citadel, and unobserved in the confusion of battle, he suddenly appeared at the head of a picked detachment in the rear of the enemy. Completely surprised, the latter was at once thrown into confusion; the entire army took to flight, and the terrified renegades were pursued to the very gates of Elvira. The Muwallad army was completely destroyed. The entire province was in mourning. There was no household that did not lament the absence of one or more of its number, no soldier that did not deplore the loss of a comrade or a friend. In deep humiliation the remnant of the renegade host prepared to defend the capital to which but a few hours before they had expected to return in triumph. The elation of the Arabs exhibited itself in all the extravagant exultation peculiar to that impassioned race. The fame of Sauwar spread to the furthest limits of the Peninsula. His exploits were celebrated with varying partiality by the poets of both factions, whose interesting productions often compensate for the unsatisfactory accounts of the chronicler, and in their animated and graphic description of important events and distinguished personages contribute copious and invaluable information to the historian.

The disheartened members of the Muwallad faction now resolved to place themselves under the protection of Ibn-Hafsun. As yet, they had never asked his assistance, nor, what is even more remarkable, had tempted his ambition or incurred his hostility. The aspiring chieftain embraced with ardor a cause so congenial to his adventurous spirit. With a confidence born of many victories he encountered the Arabs in the field. The Muwallads were again defeated, however, and it was with difficulty that Ibn-Hafsun, badly wounded, and seeing decimated the ranks of the veterans who had been his reliance in a score of campaigns, effected his retreat and escaped to the mountains of Ronda.

The inhabitants of Elvira eventually succeeded in accomplishing by artifice what they had failed to do by arms, and Sauwar, lured with his escort into an ambuscade, was slaughtered. The brutal instinct of human nature that, foiled in its efforts against the living, finds a savage gratification in the mutilation of the dead, was exhibited in its most revolting aspect by the women of Elvira. With the cries of wild beasts they tore in pieces and devoured the corpse of their persecutor. This resort to cannibalism as a means of revenge appears to have been frequently practised in the wars of the Arabs and of those nations subjected to their domination. It is mentioned in the pre-Islamitic poems and traditions. A conspicuous instance, already referred to, occurred at the battle of Ohod. And examples are not wanting of the preservation of a custom aggravated by the rancor resulting from almost perpetual civil war under the Eastern and Western Khalifates, whose violation of the decencies of life would seem sufficient to disgust barbarians, to say nothing of nations long familiar with the amenities of society and the requirements of a comparatively advanced civilization.

The serious commotions which disturbed the peace of Elvira were no isolated instances of public disorder, but rather a type of what was afflicting the entire Peninsula. In Seville, the rebellious Arabs had by turns united with and opposed the renegades in defiance of the authority of the sovereign. The old metropolis of Bætica has, from its foundation, never relinquished its proud position as the capital of Southern Spain. Other cities have enjoyed the nominal title, but the Queen of Andalusia has always, under Carthaginian, Roman, Goth, and Arab, maintained an acknowledged and deserved pre-eminence. Its natural advantages were unsurpassed. It stood in the midst of one of the most fertile plains of Europe. The Guadalquivir brought the treasures of the East to its gates. Long the seat of the primate of the kingdom, its souvenirs gave it a peculiar sanctity in the eyes of the Christian. Its business facilities attracted a numerous and enterprising Hebrew colony. The blending of many races, the dominion of a score of dynasties, had imparted to the disposition of its inhabitants a peculiar character, an uncommon fertility of genius, a phenomenal activity of intellect. To their literary talents and stinging wit was added an inconstancy in political affiliations and religious belief that was often a subject of reproach and scandal. With a strange unanimity they had at the first suggestion of the substantial benefits of apostasy renounced the truths of the gospel. A magnificent mosque had been built to reward their subserviency, but neither the daily practice of the rites of Islam, the adoption of the Arabic language, nor the change of costume could eradicate those prominent mental characteristics which had been formed by the domestic life and time-honored traditions of twelve eventful centuries.

The same prejudices and national antagonism existed between the Muwallad and the Arab parties at Seville as at Elvira with the notable exception that their mutual dislike had not yet been embittered by deeds of blood. But the dangerous proximity of lawless Arab nobles occupying the fertile district of the Axarafe that skirted the Guadalquivir had early suggested to the renegades the propriety of making thorough preparations for defence. An organization had accordingly been formed, whose members were liable to a summons for active service, and which, in its regulations and military duties, bore a considerable resemblance to the militia of modern times.

The acknowledged chiefs of the Sevillian aristocracy were the sheiks of the two powerful tribes of the Beni-Khaldun and the Beni-Hadjadj. Their estates comprised the most valuable and productive lands in the vicinity of the Andalusian capital. In some respects the Arab prejudice against the promotion of trade and the employment of the mechanical arts had been relaxed, and the proud descendants of the Bedouins of Yemen did not consider it inconsistent with their dignity to add to their resources by the freighting of ships, the buying and selling of merchandise, and the fabrication of weapons and armor. The wealth derived from these profitable occupations, added to the income of their vast plantations, enabled them to maintain a state that eclipsed even the regal splendor of the court of Cordova. Faithful to the pastoral traditions of their race, these princely nobles passed the greater portion of their time at their country-seats; but they also maintained palatial establishments in the city, whither they resorted on Fridays to attend the services of the mosque and to dazzle the eyes and provoke the envy and indignation of the populace by the magnificence of their attire and the insolence of their manners.

It is proverbial that the ordinary tendency of opulence and prosperity is rather to allay than to stimulate the passions of ambition and independence. A notable exception to this principle existed in the case of the Arab aristocracy of Seville. The wealthiest and most epicurean in its tastes of any in the kingdom, it was at the same time the most narrow, belligerent, and exclusive. The persistent evils of the Desert--the love of warfare, the Bedouin repugnance to royal power, which seemed to imply undue superiority on the one hand and an appearance of servitude on the other--outweighed all considerations of security, all the advantages of peace. This propensity to disturbance was largely confined to those who resided in the country, where a marked contraction of intellect and a tenacity of prejudice have always been the well-known characteristics of those who pass their lives amidst scenes unaffected by the collision of interests, the bustle, the enterprise, the ever-changing panorama, of metropolitan life. The Arabs of Seville regarded the impatience of their brethren of the Axarafe with a disapproval which not even tribal attachment and ancestral pride could overcome. But their numbers were small and their influence inappreciable when compared with the great power of the rural noble whose multitudes of slaves and vassals imparted to his seat the appearance of the capital of a principality.

Despite all their pretensions, the blood of many of these lords had been contaminated by an impure commerce with the infidel. The family-tree of the Beni-Khaldun showed numerous crosses which had greatly deteriorated the pure stock of the nobility of Hadramaut. The Beni-Hadjadj traced their pedigree in the maternal line from the royal family of the Visigoths. The admixture of Christian blood had, however, no visible effect in softening their manners, and they were at heart as lawless as the most savage Bedouin who still adored the idols of the Age of Ignorance, and regularly plundered the caravans between Medina and Mecca.

The head of the Arab faction at Seville was Koraib, sheik of the Beni-Khaldun. In talent for political intrigue, in unblushing effrontery, in bigoted devotion to what he considered the honor of the tribe, he stood without a rival. For many years he had nursed in secret a dream of independence, to be realized by violence and rapine. Personal ambition does not seem to have had any part in his plan of universal disorder. An unreasoning hatred of royalty and a mad aspiration to restore the freedom of pre-Islamic times appear to have been the only motives that actuated this dangerous agitator, whose intellect was too much obscured by rancor and prejudice to perceive that the only safeguard of his own possessions lay in the preservation of a strong and arbitrary government.

Repulsed by his countrymen in the city, Koraib turned his attention to the inhabitants of the suburbs. His influence was so extensive and his cause so popular in the Axarafe that it was not long before he found himself in a condition to take the offensive. Many influential Arab and Berber sheiks promised their co-operation. The rich spoils of the province of Seville were offered to the Berbers of Merida, and to the outlaws who swarmed in the fastnesses of the Sierra Morena. The signal given, these merciless savages poured down upon the fields and habitations of the defenceless peasantry. With amazement and terror the industrious farmer saw the accumulations of a lifetime swept away in a moment, his home given to the torch, his sons butchered in cold blood, his wife and daughters dragged into slavery. At the first appearance of the enemy, the governor had summoned all the neighboring chieftains to join him with their retainers. Among these was Koraib, who, in consequence of a previous understanding with the Berbers, deserted at a favorable opportunity. In the first encounter the rebels obtained a complete victory, and, having plundered the country at will, they returned to Merida, leaving the environs of Seville in the condition of a conquered province which had undergone all the injury that barbarian ruthlessness could inflict.

Information of this successful enterprise was soon conveyed to the lair of every brigand and outlaw in the Peninsula. While long since aware of the weakness of the emirate and the military incapacity of its sovereign, the banditti had nevertheless hesitated to approach the neighborhood of large towns like Seville, and their depredations had been confined to isolated hamlets and the highways connecting the provincial capitals with the seaboard. Now, however, a wider field was opened to their indulgence of their predatory instincts. From every quarter of the compass armed desperadoes and criminals, accustomed from childhood to deeds of cruelty and rapine, made their way singly, and in companies, to the province of Seville. The entire country was laid under contribution. The peasantry abandoned their possessions and fled with their families to the metropolis. The powerful chieftains of Lusitania and Estramadura, who had thrown off the yoke of the emirate but had for years been content to govern their principalities in peaceful independence, now hastened to secure a share of the plunder. The renegade, Ibn-Merwan, whose exploits under a preceding reign have already been recounted, descended upon the plains of Andalusia at the head of the fierce warriors of Badajoz.

The provincial governors, as incompetent as their master, were unable or unwilling to repress the prevalent anarchy. That apparently hopeless task was finally performed by Ibn-Ghalib, a Muwallad of Ecija, whose abilities and courage in a few months restored comparative order throughout Andalusia.

The prestige thus attained by one of the despised race that the malevolent prejudice of party had devoted to extermination was especially odious to the Arab aristocracy. The contest which was raging between the rival castes for self-preservation on the one hand, and absolute supremacy on the other, now became more sanguinary and irreconcilable. The cities were filled with tumult. The Emir was openly insulted. The influence of the Arab faction in the Divan prevailed in the end, and Ibn-Ghalib was sacrificed by an act of treachery to the hatred of his enemies through his zeal for his master’s interests.

The news of his death provoked an insurrection at Seville. The sympathies of the people had been with him in his quarrel with the Arab nobles. Many causes contributed to his popularity. He was a renegade, and his political interests were identified with those of a majority of the citizens. Large numbers of the natives of the province had served under his banner. He had swept brigandage from the highways. In consequence of his vigorous measures trade had revived, and public confidence had, to a certain degree, been restored. Not only his partisans, but even those who from policy had hitherto remained neutral, now clamored for the heads of his murderers. The city was in the hands of an infuriated mob. The governor was besieged in his palace. It required all the resources of the government to suppress the outbreak, which, for a time, threatened the most serious results. A terrible retribution was exacted of all taken in arms, or suspected of having accorded to the insurrection aid or sympathy. The leaders of the Muwallad faction, the most prominent merchants of the city, were decapitated or crucified. Many of the unfortunates who had escaped the blind fury of the pursuit were deliberately massacred. Their houses were abandoned to the avarice, their harems to the lust, of the brutal soldiery. It required all the influence of leading members of the successful party, little given to the exercise of clemency, to check the indiscriminate slaughter of their unhappy neighbors. The cessation of hostilities was, however, only temporary. Mutual acts of violence renewed the deadly struggle between contending factions. The province was at length abandoned to the Arabs by the weakness of the court. History shrinks from the task of recording the outrages and the tortures of barbarians inaccessible to pity and unrestrained by any law of God or man. Suffice it to say the Muwallads of Seville were annihilated. The memories of a catastrophe which produced a profound impression on the politics of the Peninsula are still discernible in the traditions and minstrelsy of the South of Spain.

The Arab faction was now triumphant. The balance of power had been destroyed. The Christians of Cordova, persuaded that the end of the Moslem domination was at hand, made overtures to Ibn-Hafsun, whose former affiliations and present influence seemed to point to him as their deliverer, an advantage which he was not slow to recognize.

The consciousness of great talents; the uniform success which had attended his operations; the virtual control of the most opulent provinces of the Peninsula; and the boundless, almost servile, devotion of his followers, now prompted Ibn-Hafsun to aspire to the rights as well as the actual possession of absolute power. With this end in view, he sent an embassy, laden with costly presents, to the Abbaside Viceroy of Africa, offering to become the vassal of the Eastern Khalifate in return for the commission of Emir of Spain. The application was forwarded to Bagdad, and Ibn-Hafsun was encouraged to expect the speedy fulfilment of his hopes.

This ominous design had not been conducted so secretly as to escape the knowledge of the court. Abdallah perceived at a glance the imminent peril that menaced his throne. There was little doubt that the consideration acquired by the vassal of the Abbasides would at once invest with dignity and authority the renegade chieftain, whose pretensions grounded upon force were still deficient in the indispensable requisite of legality. The jurisdiction of the emirate was not recognized beyond the actual confines of the capital. The palace was infested with traitors. An active and fanatical sect was distributed throughout the city conveying secret information to the enemy, and impatiently expecting the moment when they might exact retribution at once for the humiliation of conquest and the wrongs of persecution. In his extremity the Emir endeavored, but in vain, to conciliate his foe. Foiled in this attempt, he resolved to risk an appeal to arms. His decision was heard by the Divan with unconcealed dismay, but their remonstrances were unheeded. In the abject nature of Abdallah, degraded by superstition and haunted by the memory of atrocious crimes, an heroic sentiment, born of despair, had at last arisen. When intelligence of his determination to substitute for the pusillanimous policy he had hitherto employed the hazardous experiment of the sword was conveyed to Ibn-Hafsun, his surprise was provoked to the point of incredulity. But when he was told that the advance guard of the hostile troops was in motion, and that the royal pavilion had been pitched in the plain of Secunda to await the arrival of the sovereign, he no longer doubted the truth of a report which seemed to be a certain presage of victory. The insurgent army mustered thirty thousand strong. It was composed of veterans who knew no home but the camp, no pleasure but the excitement of battle, no law but the command of their general. The royal force, on the other hand, numbered scarce fourteen thousand men. One-third of these were the guards of the Emir; the remainder was composed of raw recruits whose courage and fidelity could not be depended upon in the hour of trial.

The two armies met near Aguilar. Whatever hesitation the inexperienced soldiers of the emirate may have previously manifested, none flinched in the presence of the enemy. Their courage was nerved to desperation when they remembered that defeat meant death, for Ibn-Hafsun never gave quarter. The efforts of the combatants were encouraged by the exhortations of the imams and the prelates, who fearlessly exposed their unprotected persons in the thickest of the fight. The rebel lines were broken by the furious charge of Abdallah’s troops. Once in confusion, they could not be rallied, and, dispersed in every direction, they fell by thousands under the weapons of their pursuers. Their leader, having narrowly escaped capture, with difficulty succeeded in reaching his mountain stronghold.

An abundant and acceptable supply of arms, treasure, and munitions of war came into the possession of Abdallah by the capture of Aguilar. A thousand renegade Christians who preferred death to a second apostasy were beheaded. The moral effect of the victory was important and wide-spread. Ecija was taken after a short resistance. Archidona and Jaen voluntarily implored the clemency of the conqueror. The Viceroy of Africa notified the discomfited renegade at Bobastro that his pretensions to the Spanish Emirate, under the auspices of the Khalifate of Bagdad, could no longer be entertained. The friends of order of every faction--the nobles, the merchants, the proprietors of large estates, the artisans, and the peasantry--for a moment regained confidence in a cause which they had recently considered as hopelessly lost.

This flattering prospect was, however, soon clouded by fresh disasters. The reverse sustained by Ibn-Hafsun was temporary, and had not seriously affected either his popularity or power. With little effort he succeeded, in a measure, in re-establishing his authority. The lost cities were retaken through treachery or by force. The royal governors were decapitated, as an intimation to the monarch that his appointees were to be classed as rebels, the servants of a usurper. The Arab party of Granada was beaten in a great battle, and its influence forever destroyed. The reviving fortunes of Ibn-Hafsun had produced a strong reaction in his favor when his renunciation of Islamism--an act of mistaken policy which, without gaining the respect of the Christians, made him an object of aversion to every Mussulman--effected greater injury to his cause than a score of defeats could have accomplished. The last nine years of Abdallah’s life were the least turbulent of his reign. The substantial aid afforded by the Arab nobles, at last convinced of their dependence on the crown, had restored the languishing authority of the emirate.

Radical changes had been produced in the political complexion and social condition of the Peninsula by a generation of civil war. Factions had been practically exterminated. All the great leaders, save one, had been removed by age, disease, or assassination. The motive of the original sedition had long been forgotten. Religion had become the nominal incentive to hostility. The enthusiasm of the clansman aspiring to independence had been supplanted by the avarice of the brigand eager for rapine. The general character of the subjects of the emirate had undergone a complete metamorphosis. They had lost the ferocious and uncompromising spirit of their ancestors. They were no longer oppressed by the tyranny of the monarch, whose helplessness and imbecility everywhere provoked public contempt. The enmity with which the members of opposing parties regarded each other was rather apparent than real. Their military operations were languidly prosecuted. Their encounters were often bloodless. Familiarity with disorder induced many to consider it the natural condition of society. The vitality of the royal power seemed proof against all the resources of treason and violence. Thousands of lives had been sacrificed in futile attempts to overturn a government whose support rested neither upon the valor of its soldiery, the genius of its statesmen, nor the affections of its people.

The sober sense of the masses, chastened by misfortune, eventually caused them to reflect upon the advantages of submission to authority and the restoration of order. Insubordination had brought nothing but distress. The great works of the founders of the dynasty--souvenirs of former prosperity and renown--were everywhere around them. Principles of vital importance to their forefathers were but meaningless names to the present generation. These considerations first affected communities whose commercial interests were seriously involved. A number of the provincial capitals voluntarily returned to their allegiance. Gradually other towns followed their example. Even in the mountain fastnesses the spirit of returning loyalty began to assert itself. Anarchy and exhaustion effected what force was powerless to accomplish, and the close of the administration of one of the worst of Moslem princes was characterized by a degree of tranquillity unknown to those of many of his race eminently distinguished for their genius and their virtues.

During all these internal commotions, the peace existing between the courts of Oviedo and Cordova was never broken by hostilities of a serious character, a circumstance that contributed largely to the preservation of the Moslem empire. Everything seemed to indicate at least a respite from the evils that had so long afflicted the people and harassed the government, when Abdallah suddenly expired, in the sixty-ninth year of his age.

The relation of the monotonous and sanguinary events of this period is valuable, in a philosophical point of view, in determining the real causes of the decadence of the Mohammedan power in Western Europe. The chronicle of the reign of Abdallah, the Emir, is in reality the story of Ibn-Hafsun, the renegade. Yet this enterprising partisan was indebted for his fame far less to his own abilities, conspicuous as they were, than to the disputes and jealousies of his enemies. These effects of tribal prejudice made possible the organization of a troop of banditti that a single squadron of cavalry, properly directed, would have been sufficient to disperse. The spirit of insubordination became contagious; the governors of remote provinces threw off their allegiance; the sources of public revenue were obstructed; repeated disasters shook the precarious loyalty of powerful chieftains, whose barbaric traditions deluded them with the fallacious hope of independence; the fires of religious discord were kindled in every community; and the government, deprived of its subjects, seemed repeatedly on the verge of dissolution. The character of the sovereign was, in a measure, responsible for many of the most serious disasters of his reign. It possessed no qualities that could inspire the respect or elicit the approbation of either friend or foe. Abdallah was a miserable compound of hypocrite and poltroon. His title had been obtained by fratricide. The crime had been attended with circumstances which heightened its atrocity. Popular rumor attributed to him the murder of two of his sons. Without faith, he betrayed in turn both his allies and his enemies. He neglected the appeals of devoted adherents whose fidelity had long been proof against temptation. He suffered himself to be deceived by the representations of rebels whom experience had shown to be wholly devoid of truth and honor. He possessed neither the capacity of the general nor the courage which is an indispensable attribute of the common soldier. His impiety was so universally recognized that it was the favorite theme of satirical poets, and even the imams frequently omitted to mention his name in the khotba, or public prayer. Little wonder was it that, under such a ruler, the Emirate of Cordova should have reached the lowest point in its fortunes to which it was reduced before its final overthrow. The authority of the crown was everywhere disputed. The great cities,--Seville, Cadiz, Toledo, Jaen, Granada, Valencia, Saragossa,--whose power and glory had been the pride of former ages, no longer sent their rich tributes to the capital on the Guadalquivir. The slumbers of the citizens of Cordova were nightly disturbed by the shrieks of peasants dying under the weapons of banditti, and by the lurid glare of burning villages that lighted up the landscape with the brilliancy of noon-day. Traffic disappeared from the highways. The markets were empty and deserted. The prevalent insecurity had suspended the operations of agriculture, and the necessaries of life became luxuries attainable only by the rich. In many localities famine-stricken wretches fed, with ghastly satisfaction, upon the bodies of their friends and neighbors. These deplorable conditions were aggravated by the denunciations and prophecies of the ministers of religion, who, with characteristic audacity, shifted the blame for public misfortune upon those who were in reality its victims, and called down upon the heads of a sinful and pleasure-loving people the long-deferred but inexorable wrath of an avenging God.

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