into his place. He was now at the height of power, and enjoyed the
position of virtual ruler of all Mohammedan Spain. The government of
Andalusia consisted of the Khalif in council; but Almanzor had buried
the Khalif in his seraglio; and as for the Council of Vizirs who should
advise him concerning affairs of State, Almanzor virtually united it in
his own person. From his palace in the suburbs he ruled the whole
kingdom; letters and proclamations were issued in his name; he was
prayed for from the pulpits and commemorated on the coinage; and he even
wore robes of gold tissue woven with his name, such as kings only were
wont to wear. He was not, however, safe from the attacks of his enemies.
Ambition brings its own dangers, and those who have been trampled upon
are apt to turn and avenge themselves. Such was the case with Almanzor.
One of the "Slavs," whom he had summarily deposed when they were
planning a change in the succession, made an attempt to assassinate him;
but it failed, and its author, along with a number of influential
persons who had abetted the conspiracy, was arrested, condemned, and
crucified.
In Cordova Almanzor was now supreme, for the young Khalif showed no
symptoms of rebelling against the tutelage to which he was subjected,
and the queen of the har[=i]m, Aurora, was still the great minister's
friend. One man only could pretend to any sort of equality with
Almanzor, and this was Gh[=a]lib, his father-in-law. The army admired
Almanzor, and wondered at his daring in taking the command of campaigns
against the Christians without military experience; but they loved and
adored Gh[=a]lib, as a type of the true warrior, bred to arms, and
unconquerable in personal prowess. Gh[=a]lib was therefore a formidable
rival, and Gh[=a]lib must be removed. The Prime Minister set about this
task with his usual quiet determination. Whatever he undertook he
carried out with the same immovable composure and iron will. A proof of
his character was shown very strikingly one day, when he was seated with
the Council of Vizirs, who formed the Cabinet of the Moorish government.
They were discussing some public question, when a smell of burnt flesh
rose in the chamber, and it was discovered that the minister's leg was
being cauterized with red-hot iron while he was calmly debating the
affairs of State! Such a man would find little difficulty in disposing
of any obstacle--even General Gh[=a]lib. He laid his plans carefully, and
they never failed. When his measures were a little too strong to be
immediately approved by the people, he always had a plan ready for
restoring the mob to acquiescence. Thus, when the revolt of several
leading men had culminated in the attempted assassination already
mentioned, he perceived that he had enemies among the theological and
legal classes, and he lost no time in making his peace with them.
Summoning a meeting of the chief doctrinal authorities, he asked them to
make a list of those works on philosophy which they considered dangerous
and heretical. The Moslems of Spain were famous for their rigid
orthodoxy, and the philosophers received very harsh treatment from them.
They soon decided upon what the Roman Catholic Church calls an "Index
Expurgatorius," or list of condemned books, and Almanzor forthwith had
the proscribed works publicly burnt. By this simple means, although
really a man of broad views and perfectly tolerant of philosophical
speculation, he succeeded in making himself the champion of orthodoxy;
the theologians conspired no more against him.[24]
A man so fertile in expedients would not find much difficulty in getting
rid of Gh[=a]lib. He first began a series of army reforms, by which he
reduced the influence of individual commanders and gained for himself
the devotion which had previously been bestowed upon captains of
divisions. This he accomplished by drawing his recruits from Africa and
from among the Christians of the north, who were of course without any
prejudice in favour of any particular Moslem leader, and soon became
attached to Almanzor, when they understood his liberality, and were
convinced by repeated proofs of his military genius. He was a stern
commander, and had been known to cut a man's head off with the culprit's
own sword, because the same weapon had been seen gleaming in the dressed
ranks when it should have been in its scabbard. But while a martinet in
matters of drill and discipline, he was a father to his soldiers so long
as they fought well and maintained order. His influence was unbounded.
Once, when he sat in camp and saw his men in panic, running in, with the
Christians at their heels, he threw himself from his throne, flung his
helmet away, and sat down in the dust. The soldiers understood the
despairing gesture of their general, and, suddenly turning about, fell
upon the Christians, routed them, and pursued them even into the streets
of Leon. Moreover, no one could lead them to such vast stores of booty
as the man who made more than fifty successful campaigns against the
princes of the north. The army thus formed of new levies became devoted
to their master, and Gh[=a]lib and his veterans of the frontier were
speedily beaten; Gh[=a]lib himself died in an engagement. One other leader,
Ja'far, the Prince of Z[=a]b, threatened the peace of Almanzor by his
extreme popularity with the troops; and he was presently invited to the
minister's hall, made very drunk, and assassinated on his way home. This
was by no means a solitary instance of Almanzor's treachery and
bloodguiltiness; such acts deprive him of the title of hero to which his
many brilliant qualities almost attain, and it is impossible to like
him. Yet, with all his sternness and unscrupulousness, Almanzor brought
Andalusia to a pitch of glory such as even the great Khalif,
Abd-er-Rahm[=a]n III., had hardly contemplated. While keeping such hostile
factions as remained in Cordova tranquil and powerless; whilst
conciliating the people by making splendid additions to the great mosque
of Cordova, when he found that they were beginning to grow indignant at
the seclusion in which their young Khalif was kept, and were listening
to the insinuations of Aurora and the palace party, who had grown tired
or jealous of Almanzor; whilst overawing the Khalif himself by his
personal influence; whilst keeping a watchful eye, that nothing escaped,
upon every department of the administration, and devoting no little time
to the cultivation of literature and poetry--amid all these various
employments, this indefatigable man waged triumphant war in Africa and
spread the dominion of the Khalif along the Barbary coast; and twice a
year, in spring and autumn, led his troops, as a matter of course,
against the Christians of Leon and Castile. Like a man of culture, he
took his books along with his sword--his books were the poets who always
accompanied his campaigns. Never was a general so constantly victorious.
Supported by his hardy foreigners, and also by many Christians who were
attracted by his pay and the sure prospect of booty, he carried fire and
sword through the lands of the north. He captured Leon, and razed its
massive walls and towers to the ground; he seized Barcelona; and, worst
of all, he even ventured into the passes of Galicia, and levelled to the
ground the splendid church of Santiago de Campostella, which was the
focus of countless pilgrimages and almost formed the Kaaba of Europe.
The shrine of St. James, however, where numerous miracles attested the
presence of the saint's relics, was spared. It is said that when the
conqueror entered the deserted city he found of all its inhabitants but
a solitary monk, who still prayed before the holy shrine. "What doest
thou here?" demanded Almanzor. "I am at my prayers," replied the old
monk. His life was immediately spared, and a guard was set round the
tomb to protect him and it from the violence of the soldiery, who
proceeded to destroy everything else in the city. Almanzor well deserved
his title of "Victorious," which was assumed after one of these
campaigns. So long as his armies made their half-yearly expeditions, the
Christian princes were paralysed, and Leon and the neighbouring country
became a mere tributary province of the kingdom of Cordova. Castile,
Barcelona, and Navarre were repeatedly defeated. He had taken the very
capitals--Leon, Pamplona, Barcelona, and even Santiago de Campostella.
Once he had brought the King of Navarre to his knees simply because the
uncompromising Minister learned that there remained one captive Moslem
woman in his kingdom. She was instantly delivered up, and many apologies
were tendered for the inadvertence. Another time Almanzor found himself
and his army cut off by the Christians, who had occupied an impregnable
position in his rear, and barred his return to Cordova. Nothing daunted,
he ordered his troops to foray the country round about, and collect
materials for sheds, and implements of husbandry. Soon the Christians,
who dared not attack, but believed they held the Moslems in their grasp,
perceived them deliberately setting up barracks, and contentedly tilling
the soil and preparing for the various operations of agriculture. Their
astonished inquiries were answered by the cool reply, "We do not think
it is worth while to go home, as the next campaign will begin almost
immediately; so we are making ourselves comfortable for the interval!"
Filled with consternation at the prospect of a permanent Moslem
occupation, the Christians not only abandoned their strong position and
allowed the enemy to go scot free, laden with booty, but even supplied
them with baggage mules to carry off the spoils!
Almanzor, however, though invincible by man, was not proof against
death. After a last victorious campaign against Castile, he was seized
with mortal illness, and died at Medinaceli. The relief of the
Christians is expressed in the simple comment of the monkish annalist:
"In 1002 died Almanzor, and was buried in hell."
[Illustration]
X.
THE BERBERS IN POWER.
The best constituted countries will occasionally fall into anarchy when
the will that has guided them is removed; and this is one of the strong
arguments of those who hold that a State is best governed by the mass of
its people. Keep a people in leading strings, it is said, and the moment
the strings break, or are worn out, the people will not know where to
go. The theory, however, is only a general statement of an obvious
truth, and its application depends greatly upon the character of the
people. Some nations seem always to need leading strings, and none has
yet become absolutely independent of the guidance of a dominant mind;
nor would such independence be desirable, unless a dead level of
mediocrity be our ideal of a State. Andalusia, at all events, could not
dispense with her leaders; and the instant her leader died, down fell
the State. When "great Caesar fell," then "I and you and all of us fell
down," not so much for sympathy as incapacity. The multiplicity of
mutually hostile parties and factions made anything resembling a settled
constitution impossible in the dominion of the Moors. Only a strong hand
could restrain the animosity of the opposing creeds and races in
Andalusia; and those who have considered the character and history of
Ireland, and the irreconcilable enmity which prevails between the north
and the south in that island of factions, will allow that the Arabs were
not the only people who found mixed races and religions impossible to
govern with the smoothness of a homogeneous nation.
The history of Andalusia, so far as we have told it, has been a series
of ups and downs. First we saw a magnificent raid, led by born soldiers,
ending in an unexpected conquest. Hardly was the peninsula won, when the
jealousies and divisions of the various elements that made up the
invading host bade fair to destroy the harvest just reaped by the sword.
Then the strong man, the born king, appeared in the person of the first
Abd-er-Rahm[=a]n, and Andalusia once more became, outwardly, one dominion.
"O King, live for ever!" was the conventional form of address to the
Persian monarch, and one is tempted to think that its realization might
be the solution of all political troubles, provided the right king was
chosen for immortality. The first king of Andalusia was naturally not
immortal; and the consequence of his death was what always happens when
a strong repressing force is withdrawn: the people fell again into civil
war and anarchy. Yet again the God-gifted king came to rescue the
nation. The Great Khalif imposed law and order throughout his dominions,
beat back the invader, and trod the rebel under foot. For fifty years
Andalusia was a paradise of peace and prosperity; had the third
Abd-er-Rahm[=a]n been immortal she might have been peaceful to this day,
and we should never have heard of the persecutions of Jews and Moors,
of the terrible work of the Inquisition, or even (to come to very small
things) the Carlists. It is a pity that such dreams cannot be true. But
the Great Khalif had not left the country unprovided with a leader. A
king had saved Spain twice, and now it was a prime minister who held the
State together. Almanzor, the unconquerable minister, was able to make
his masterful will felt to every corner of the peninsula; but Almanzor,
too, was mortal, and when he died, and (as the monk piously hoped) "was
buried in hell," the land which owed him her prosperity and wealth, her
perfect orderliness and security, became a prey to all the hostile
forces which only his iron hand could repress. For eighty years
Andalusia was torn to pieces by jealous chiefs, aggressive and
quarrelsome tyrants, Moors, Arabs, Slavs, and Spaniards; and though many
of the old roots of dissension had been plucked up by time, and the
jealousies that arose from memories of tribal glories were sometimes
forgotten because men had lost their pedigrees, there were enough
rivalries, personal, racial, and religious, to make Andalusia as much a
hell upon earth as even the monkish chronicler could have desired for a
burial-place for Almanzor.
For six years after the Prime Minister's death, his son Muzaffar
maintained the unity of the kingdom. Then followed the deluge of greedy
adventurers, rival khalifs, and impudent pretenders. The Spaniards, who
formed after all the bulk of the population in which they were merged,
loved to be ruled by a king; they liked a dynasty, and were proud of
the memories of the great Omeyyad house. The rule of a minister,
however just and good, was not their idea of government; the king must
rule by himself. So they rebelled against the authority of a second son
of Almanzor, who had provoked them by publicly putting in his claim to
succeed to the throne, and they insisted on the Khalif taking the reins
of State into his own weak hands. The unfortunate Hish[=a]m, thus suddenly
dragged out of the seclusion of his har[=i]m, where he had been a happy
prisoner for thirty years, in vain implored the people not to demand
impossibilities of him; they would have him rule, and when it became
clear to everybody that the feeble middle-aged man was as helpless as an
infant, they made him abdicate, and set up another member of his family
in his place. This was really the end of the Omeyyad dynasty of
Andalusia. Khalif after khalif was set up for the next twenty years; one
was the puppet of the Cordovans, another was the puppet of the Slav
guards; a third was the puppet of the Berbers; a fourth was a sort of
figure-head to mask the ambition of the ruler of Seville; but all were
puppets of some faction, and had no vestige of real authority. The
throne-room in the palace became the scene of murder after murder, as
khalif succeeded khalif. One poor wretch hid himself in the oven of the
bath-room, till he was discovered, dragged out, and butchered before the
eyes of his successor, whose turn was not far off. Hish[=a]m II., the poor
creature who had been kept in a state of perpetual infancy by Almanzor
and the queen-mother Aurora, was forced to play his part in the
raree-show. He was again set up, and again pulled down; and the silken
chains of his imprisonment among the beauties of his har[=i]m were
exchanged for the gloomy walls of a real dungeon. What became of him
afterwards is unknown. His women said that he had contrived to escape,
and had taken refuge in Asia, or at Mekka. The throne possessed few
attractions for the miserable Khalif, who loved seclusion and pious
duties; and he must have known that his presence in Andalusia gave a
rallying cry to ambitious partisans, and could only lead to further
strife. It was natural that he should prefer to end his days in the
exercise of devotion at the holy temple of Islam. An impostor, who
closely resembled Hish[=a]m in person, set himself up as the Khalif at
Seville, and was acknowledged as a convenient puppet by the powerful
lord of that city; but the real Hish[=a]m had disappeared for ever, and no
one heard of him again.
How pitiful was the fate of the unhappy Omeyyads, who allowed the
ferocious Moors, or Slavs, in turn, to use them as pieces on their
chess-board, may be seen from what happened at the deposition of the
third Hish[=a]m. By order of the chief men of the city, this mild and
humane prince was dragged with his family to a dismal vault attached to
the great mosque of Cordova. Here, in total darkness, half frozen with
the cold and damp, and poisoned by the foul air of the place, the
wretched Khalif sat, holding his only child, a little girl, to his
breast, while his wives hung round him in scanty clothing, weeping,
shivering, and dishevelled. They had been long without food, and their
inhuman jailers had left them unnoticed for hours. The sheykhs then
came to announce to Hish[=a]m the decision of the council which had been
hastily summoned to debate upon his fate; but the poor Khalif, who was
trying to restore a little warmth to the child in his arms, interrupted
them: "Yes! yes! I will submit to their decision, whatever it is; but
for God's sake get me some bread; this poor child is dying of hunger."
The sheykhs were touched--they had not designed such torments--and the
bread was brought. Then they began again: "Sire, they have determined
that you shall be taken at daybreak to be imprisoned in such and such a
fortress." "So be it," answered the Khalif; "I have only one favour to
ask: permit us to have a lantern, for the darkness of this dismal place
appals us." The lord spiritual and temporal of the Mussulmans of Spain
had fallen to such straits that he had to beg for bread and a candle.
[Illustration: THE GIRALDA AT SEVILLE.]
Such scenes as this were now frequent in Cordova. Each revolution
brought its fresh crop of horrors. The people of Cordova, who had
greatly increased in numbers, had also nourished those independent
sentiments which the immense development of trade and manual industry,
and the consequent creation of a prosperous artisan class, generally
promote; and when they overturned Almanzor's dynasty, the mob broke out
in the usual manner of mobs, and wreaked their vengeance by pillaging
the beautiful palace which the great Minister had built in the
neighbourhood of the capital for the use of himself and the government
officials. When they had ransacked the priceless treasures of the
palace, they abandoned it to the flames. Massacres, plundering, and
assassination went on unchecked for four days. Cordova became a
shambles. Then the Berbers had their turn; the imperious Slav guards,
who had won the cordial detestation of the people, were succeeded by the
brutal Berbers, who rioted in the plunder of the city. Wherever these
barbarians went, slaughter, fire and outrage followed. Palace after
palace was ransacked and burnt, and the lovely city of Ez-Zahr[=a], the
delight of the Great Khalif, was captured by treachery, sacked, and set
on fire, so that there remained of all the exquisite art that two
khalifs had lavished upon its ornament nothing but a heap of blackened
stones. Its garrison was put to the sword; its inhabitants fled for
refuge to the mosque; but the Berbers had neither scruples nor bowels,
and men, women, and children were butchered in the sacred precincts
(1010).
While the capital was torn to pieces by savage bands of Slavs and
Berbers, and was setting up one khalif after another, varying the family
of Omeyya with that of Hamm[=u]d, or trying the effect of a governing town
council, the provinces had long thrown off all allegiance to the central
State. Every city or district had its own independent lord--so soon had
the consolidating effects of Almanzor's rule disappeared. The Spaniards
themselves enjoyed little of this sudden accession of small powers. They
had to look on and lament, while foreigners divided their land among
them. Berber generals fattened upon the South; the Slavs subdued the
East; "the rest fell to parvenus or to the few noble families who had by
some accident survived the blows which Abd-er-Rahm[=a]n III. and Almanzor
had dealt at the aristocracy. Cordova and Seville, the two most
important cities of Andalus, had set up republics,"[25] in name,
however, rather than fact; for the Moslem First Consul was a very close
likeness of the Emperor. In the first half of the eleventh century some
twenty independent dynasties came into power in as many towns or
provinces, among which the Abbadites of Seville, the Hamm[=u]d family at
Malaga and Algeciras, the Zirites at Granada, the Beny H[=u]d at Zaragoza,
the Dhu-n-N[=u]n dynasty at Toledo, and the rulers of Valencia, Murcia, and
Almeria, were the most important. Some of these dynasts were good
rulers, most of them were sanguinary tyrants, but (curiously) not the
less polished gentlemen, who delighted to do honour to learning and
_belles lettres_, and made their courts the homes of poets and
musicians. Mo'temid of Seville, for instance, was a prince of many
accomplishments, yet he kept a garden of heads, cut off his enemies'
shoulders, which he regarded with great pride and delight. As a whole,
however, the country was a prey to disorder as intolerable and as
dangerous as that which had prevailed when the Great Khalif came to the
throne. It was not quite the same in character; for there was no great
Christian rebellion like that of Ibn-Hafs[=u]n; but the anarchy was as
universal, and the danger of a total collapse more imminent than ever.