CHAPTER VIII.

REVIEW OF THE POLITICAL AND INTELLECTUAL CONDITION OF THE SPANISH ARABS

PREVIOUS TO THE WAR OF GRANADA.

Conquest of Spain by the Arabs.--Cordovan Empire.--High Civilization and

Prosperity.--Its Dismemberment.--Kingdom of Granada.--Luxurious and

Chivalrous Character.--Literature of the Spanish Arabs.--Progress in

Science.--Historical Merits.--Useful Discoveries.--Poetry and Romance.--

Influence on the Spaniards.

We have now arrived at the commencement of the famous war of Granada,

which terminated in the subversion of the Arabian empire in Spain, after

it had subsisted for nearly eight centuries, and with the consequent

restoration to the Castilian crown of the fairest portion of its ancient

domain. In order to a better understanding of the character of the Spanish

Arabs, or Moors, who exercised an important influence on that of their

Christian neighbors, the present chapter will be devoted to a

consideration of their previous history in the Peninsula, where they

probably reached a higher degree of civilization than in any other part of

the world. [1]

It is not necessary to dwell upon the causes of the brilliant successes of

Mahometanism at its outset,--the dexterity with which, unlike all other

religions, it was raised upon, not against, the principles and prejudices

of preceding sects; the military spirit and discipline, which it

established among all classes, so that the multifarious nations who

embraced it, assumed the appearance of one vast, well-ordered camp; [2]

the union of ecclesiastical with civil authority intrusted to the caliphs,

which enabled them to control opinions, as absolutely as the Roman

pontiffs in their most despotic hour; [3] or lastly, the peculiar

adaptation of the doctrines of Mahomet to the character of the wild tribes

among whom they were preached. [4] It is sufficient to say, that these

latter, within a century after the coming of their apostle, having

succeeded in establishing their religion over vast regions in Asia, and on

the northern shores of Africa, arrived before the Straits of Gibraltar,

which, though a temporary, were destined to prove an ineffectual bulwark

for Christendom.

The causes which have been currently assigned for the invasion and

conquest of Spain, even by the most credible modern historians, have

scarcely any foundation in contemporary records. The true causes are to be

found in the rich spoils offered by the Gothic monarchy, and in the thirst

of enterprise in the Saracens, which their long uninterrupted career of

victory seems to have sharpened, rather than satisfied. [5] The fatal

battle, which terminated with the slaughter of King Roderic and the flower

of his nobility, was fought in the summer of 711, on a plain washed by the

Guadalete near Xerez, about two leagues distant from Cadiz. [6] The Goths

appear never to have afterwards rallied under one head, but their broken

detachments made many a gallant stand in such strong positions as were

afforded throughout the kingdom; so that nearly three years elapsed before

the final achievement of the conquest. The policy of the conquerors, after

making the requisite allowance for the evils necessarily attending such an

invasion, [7] may be considered liberal. Such of the Christians, as chose,

were permitted to remain in the conquered territory in undisturbed

possession of their property. They were allowed to worship in their own

way; to be governed, within prescribed limits, by their own laws; to fill

certain civil offices, and serve in the army; their women were invited to

intermarry with the conquerors; [8] and, in short, they were condemned to

no other legal badge of servitude than the payment of somewhat heavier

imposts than those exacted from their Mahometan brethren. It is true the

Christians were occasionally exposed to suffering from the caprices of

despotism, and, it may be added, of popular fanaticism. [9] But, on the

whole, their condition may sustain an advantageous comparison with that of

any Christian people under the Mussulman dominion of later times, and

affords a striking contrast with that of our Saxon ancestors after the

Norman conquest, which suggests an obvious parallel in many of its

circumstances to the Saracen. [10]

After the further progress of the Arabs in Europe had been checked by the

memorable defeat at Tours, their energies, no longer allowed to expand in

the career of conquest, recoiled on themselves, and speedily produced the

dismemberment of their overgrown empire. Spain was the first of the

provinces which fell off. The family of Omeya, under whom this revolution

was effected, continued to occupy her throne as independent princes, from

the middle of the eighth to the close of the eleventh century, a period

which forms the most honorable portion of her Arabian annals.

The new government was modelled on the eastern caliphate. Freedom shows

itself under a variety of forms; while despotism, at least in the

institutions founded on the Koran, seems to wear but one. The sovereign

was the depositary of all power, the fountain of honor, the sole arbiter

of life and fortune. He styled himself "Commander of the Faithful," and,

like the caliphs of the east, assumed an entire spiritual as well as

temporal supremacy. The country was distributed into six

_capitanías_, or provinces, each under the administration of a _wali_, or

governor, with subordinate officers, to whom was intrusted a more

immediate jurisdiction over the principal cities. The immense authority

and pretensions of these petty satraps became a fruitful source of

rebellion in later times. The caliph administered the government with

the advice of his _mexuar_, or council of state, composed of his principal

_cadis_ and _hagibs_, or secretaries. The office of prime minister, or

chief hagib, corresponded, in the nature and variety of its functions,

with that of a Turkish grand vizier. The caliph reserved to himself the

right of selecting his successor from among his numerous progeny; and this

adoption was immediately ratified by an oath of allegiance to the heir

apparent from the principal officers of state. [11]

The princes of the blood, instead of being condemned, as in Turkey, to

waste their youth in the seclusion of the harem, were intrusted to the

care of learned men, to be instructed in the duties befitting their

station. They were encouraged to visit the academies, which were

particularly celebrated in Cordova, where they mingled in disputation, and

frequently carried away the prizes of poetry and eloquence. Their riper

years exhibited such fruits as were to be expected from their early

education. The race of the Omeyades need not shrink from a comparison with

any other dynasty of equal length in modern Europe. Many of them amused

their leisure with poetical composition, of which numerous examples are

preserved in Conde's History; and some left elaborate works of learning,

which have maintained a permanent reputation with Arabian scholars. Their

long reigns, the first ten of which embrace a period of two centuries and

a half, their peaceful deaths, and unbroken line of succession in the same

family for so many years, show that their authority must have been founded

in the affections of their subjects. Indeed, they seem, with one or two

exceptions, to have ruled over them with a truly patriarchal sway; and, on

the event of their deaths, the people, bathed in tears, are described as

accompanying their relics to the tomb, where the ceremony was concluded

with a public eulogy on the virtues of the deceased, by his son and

successor. This pleasing moral picture affords a strong contrast to the

sanguinary scenes which so often attend the transmission of the sceptre

from one generation to another, among the nations of the east. [12]

The Spanish caliphs supported a large military force, frequently keeping

two or three armies in the field at the same time. The flower of these

forces was a body-guard, gradually raised to twelve thousand men, one-

third of them Christians, superbly equipped, and officered by members of

the royal family. Their feuds with the eastern caliphs and the Barbary

pirates required them also to maintain a respectable navy, which was

fitted out from the numerous dock-yards that lined the coast from Cadiz to

Tarragona.

The munificence of the Omeyades was most ostentatiously displayed in their

public edifices, palaces, mosques, hospitals, and in the construction of

commodious quays, fountains, bridges, and aqueducts, which, penetrating

the sides of the mountains, or sweeping on lofty arches across the

valleys, rivalled in their proportions the monuments of ancient Rome.

These works, which were scattered more or less over all the provinces,

contributed especially to the embellishment of Cordova, the capital of the

empire. The delightful situation of this city, in the midst of a

cultivated plain washed by the waters of the Guadalquivir, made it very

early the favorite residence of the Arabs, who loved to surround their

houses, even in the cities, with groves and refreshing fountains, so

delightful to the imagination of a wanderer of the desert. [13] The public

squares and private court-yards sparkled with _jets d'eau_, fed by

copious streams from the Sierra Morena, which, besides supplying nine

hundred public baths, were conducted into the interior of the edifices,

where they diffused a grateful coolness over the sleeping-apartments of

their luxurious inhabitants. [14]

Without adverting to that magnificent freak of the caliphs, the

construction of the palace of Azahra, of which not a vestige now exists,

we may form a sufficient notion of the taste and magnificence of this era

from the remains of the far-famed mosque, now the cathedral of Cordova.

This building, which still covers more ground than any other church in

Christendom, was esteemed the third in sanctity by the Mahometan world,

being inferior only to the Alaksa of Jerusalem and the temple of Mecca.

Most of its ancient glories have indeed long since departed. The rich

bronze which embossed its gates, the myriads of lamps which illuminated

its aisles, have disappeared; and its interior roof of odoriferous and

curiously carved wood has been cut up into guitars and snuff-boxes. But

its thousand columns of variegated marble still remain; and its general

dimensions, notwithstanding some loose assertions to the contrary, seem to

be much the same as they were in the time of the Saracens. European

critics, however, condemn its most elaborate beauties as "heavy and

barbarous." Its celebrated portals are pronounced "diminutive, and in very

bad taste." Its throng of pillars gives it the air of "a park rather than

a temple," and the whole is made still more incongruous by the unequal

length of their shafts, being grotesquely compensated by a proportionate

variation of size in their bases and capitals, rudely fashioned after the

Corinthian order. [15]

But if all this gives us a contemptible idea of the taste of the Saracens

at this period, which indeed, in architecture, seems to have been far

inferior to that of the later princes of Granada, we cannot but be

astonished at the adequacy of their resources to carry such magnificent

designs into execution. Their revenue, we are told in explanation,

amounted to eight millions of _mitcales_ of gold, or nearly six

millions sterling; a sum fifteen-fold greater than that which William the

Conqueror, in the subsequent century, was able to extort from his

subjects, with all the ingenuity of feudal exaction. The tone of

exaggeration, which distinguishes the Asiatic writers, entitles them

perhaps to little confidence in their numerical estimates. This immense

wealth, however, is predicated of other Mahometan princes of that age; and

their vast superiority over the Christian states of the north, in arts and

effective industry, may well account for a corresponding superiority in

their resources.

The revenue of the Cordovan sovereigns was derived from the fifth of the

spoil taken in battle, an important item in an age of unintermitting war

and rapine; from the enormous exaction of one-tenth of the produce of

commerce, husbandry, flocks, and mines; from a capitation tax on Jews and

Christians; and from certain tolls on the transportation of goods. They

engaged in commerce on their own account, and drew from mines, which

belonged to the crown, a conspicuous part of their income. [16]

Before the discovery of America, Spain was to the rest of Europe what her

colonies have since become, the great source of mineral wealth. The

Carthaginians, and the Romans afterwards, regularly drew from her large

masses of the precious metals. Pliny, who resided some time in the

country, relates that three of her provinces were said to have annually

yielded the incredible quantity of sixty thousand pounds of gold. [17] The

Arabs with their usual activity penetrated into these arcana of wealth.

Abundant traces of their labors are still to be met with along the barren

ridge of mountains that covers the north of Andalusia; and the diligent

Bowles has enumerated no less than five thousand of their excavations in

the kingdom or district of Jaen. [18]

But the best mine of the caliphs was in the industry and sobriety of their

subjects. The Arabian colonies have been properly classed among the

agricultural. Their acquaintance with the science of husbandry is shown in

their voluminous treatises on the subject, and in the monuments which they

have everywhere left of their peculiar culture. The system of irrigation,

which has so long fertilized the south of Spain, was derived from them.

They introduced into the Peninsula various tropical plants and vegetables,

whose cultivation has departed with them. Sugar, which the modern

Spaniards have been obliged to import from foreign nations in large

quantities annually for their domestic consumption, until within the last

half century that they have been supplied by their island of Cuba,

constituted one of the principal exports of the Spanish Arabs. The silk

manufacture was carried on by them extensively. The Nubian geographer, in

the beginning of the twelfth century, enumerates six hundred villages in

Jaen as engaged in it, at a time when it was known to the Europeans only

from their circuitous traffic with the Greek empire. This, together with

fine fabrics of cotton and woollen, formed the staple of an active

commerce with the Levant, and especially with Constantinople, whence they

were again diffused, by means of the caravans of the north, over the

comparatively barbarous countries of Christendom.

The population kept pace with this general prosperity of the country. It

would appear from a census instituted at Cordova, at the close of the

tenth century, that there were at that time in it six hundred temples and

two hundred thousand dwelling-houses; many of these latter being,

probably, mere huts or cabins, and occupied by separate families. Without

placing too much reliance on any numerical statements, however, we may

give due weight to the inference of an intelligent writer, who remarks

that their minute cultivation of the soil, the cheapness of their labor,

their particular attention to the most nutritious esculents, many of them

such as would be rejected by Europeans at this day, are indicative of a

crowded population, like that, perhaps, which swarms over Japan or China,

where the same economy is necessarily resorted to for the mere sustenance

of life. [19]

Whatever consequence a nation may derive, in its own age, from physical

resources, its intellectual development will form the subject of deepest

interest to posterity. The most flourishing periods of both not

unfrequently coincide. Thus the reigns of Abderrahman the Third, Alhakem

the Second, and the regency of Almanzor, embracing the latter half of the

tenth century, during which the Spanish Arabs reached their highest

political importance, may be regarded as the period of their highest

civilization under the Omeyades; although the impulse then given carried

them forward to still further advances, in the turbulent times which

followed. This beneficent impulse is, above all, imputable to Alhakem. He

was one of those rare beings, who have employed the awful engine of

despotism in promoting the happiness and intelligence of his species. In

his elegant tastes, appetite for knowledge, and munificent patronage he

may be compared with the best of the Medici. He assembled the eminent

scholars of his time, both natives and foreigners, at his court, where he

employed them in the most confidential offices. He converted his palace

into an academy, making it the familiar resort of men of letters, at whose

conferences he personally assisted in his intervals of leisure from public

duty. He selected the most suitable persons for the composition of works

on civil and natural history, requiring the prefects of his provinces and

cities to furnish, as far as possible, the necessary intelligence. He was

a diligent student, and left many of the volumes which he read enriched

with his commentaries. Above all, he was intent upon the acquisition of an

extensive library. He invited illustrious foreigners to send him their

works, and munificently recompensed them. No donative was so grateful to

him as a book. He employed agents in Egypt, Syria, Irak, and Persia, for

collecting and transcribing the rarest manuscripts; and his vessels

returned freighted with cargoes more precious than the spices of the east.

In this way he amassed a magnificent collection, which was distributed,

according to the subjects, in various apartments of his palace; and which,

if we may credit the Arabian historians, amounted to six hundred thousand

volumes. [20]

If all this be thought to savor too much of eastern hyperbole, still it

cannot be doubted that an amazing number of writers swarmed over the

Peninsula at this period. Casiri's multifarious catalogue bears ample

testimony to the emulation, with which not only men, but even women of the

highest rank, devoted themselves to letters; the latter contending

publicly for the prizes, not merely in eloquence and poetry, but in those

recondite studies which have usually been reserved for the other sex. The

prefects of the provinces, emulating their master, converted their courts

into academies, and dispensed premiums to poets and philosophers. The

stream of royal bounty awakened life in the remotest districts. But its

effects were especially visible in the capital. Eighty free schools were

opened in Cordova. The circle of letters and science was publicly

expounded by professors, whose reputation for wisdom attracted not only

the scholars of Christian Spain, but of Prance, Italy, Germany, and the

British Isles. For this period of brilliant illumination with the Saracens

corresponds precisely with that of the deepest barbarism of Europe; when a

library of three or four hundred volumes was a magnificent endowment for

the richest monastery; when scarcely a "priest south of the Thames," in

the words of Alfred, "could translate Latin into his mother tongue;" when

not a single philosopher, according to Tiraboschi, was to be met with in

Italy, save only the French pope Sylvester the Second, who drew his

knowledge from the schools of the Spanish Arabs, and was esteemed a

necromancer for his pains. [21]

Such is the glowing picture presented to us of Arabian scholarship, in the

tenth and succeeding centuries, under a despotic government and a sensual

religion; and, whatever judgment may be passed on the real value of all

their boasted literature, it cannot be denied, that the nation exhibited a

wonderful activity of intellect, and an apparatus for learning (if we are

to admit their own statements) unrivalled in the best ages of antiquity.

The Mahometan governments of that period rested on so unsound a basis,

that the season of their greatest prosperity was often followed by

precipitate decay. This had been the case with the eastern caliphate, and

was now so with the western. During the life of Alhakem's successor, the

empire of the Omeyades was broken up into a hundred petty principalities;

and their magnificent capital of Cordova, dwindling into a second-rate

city, retained no other distinction than that of being the Mecca of Spain.

These little states soon became a prey to all the evils arising out of a

vicious constitution of government and religion. Almost every accession to

the throne was contested by numerous competitors of the same family; and a

succession of sovereigns, wearing on their brows but the semblance of a

crown, came and departed, like the shadows of Macbeth. The motley tribes

of Asiatics, of whom the Spanish Arabian population was composed, regarded

each other with ill-disguised jealousy. The lawless predatory habits,

which no discipline could effectually control in an Arab, made them ever

ready for revolt. The Moslem states, thus reduced in size and crippled by

faction, were unable to resist the Christian forces, which were pressing

on them from the north. By the middle of the ninth century, the Spaniards

had reached the Douro and the Ebro. By the close of the eleventh, they had

advanced their line of conquest, under the victorious banner of the Cid,

to the Tagus. The swarms of Africans who invaded the Peninsula, during the

two following centuries, gave substantial support to their Mahometan

brethren; and the cause of Christian Spain trembled in the balance for a

moment on the memorable day of Navas de Tolosa. But the fortunate issue of

that battle, in which, according to the lying letter of Alfonso the Ninth,

"one hundred and eighty-five thousand infidels perished, and only five and

twenty Spaniards," gave a permanent ascendency to the Christian arms. The

vigorous campaigns of James the First, of Aragon, and of St. Ferdinand, of

Castile, gradually stripped away the remaining territories of Valencia,

Murcia, and Andalusia; so that, by the middle of the thirteenth century,

the constantly contracting circle of the Moorish dominion had shrunk into

the narrow limits of the province of Granada. Yet on this comparatively

small point of their ancient domain, the Saracens erected a new kingdom of

sufficient strength to resist, for more than two centuries, the united

forces of the Spanish monarchies.

The Moorish territory of Granada contained, within a circuit of about one

hundred and eighty leagues, all the physical resources of a great empire.

Its broad valleys were intersected by mountains rich in mineral wealth,

whose hardy population supplied the state with husbandmen and soldiers.

Its pastures were fed by abundant fountains, and its coasts studded with

commodious ports, the principal marts in the Mediterranean. In the midst,

and crowning the whole, as with a diadem, rose the beautiful city of

Granada. In the days of the Moors it was encompassed by a wall, flanked by

a thousand and thirty towers, with seven portals. [22] Its population,

according to a contemporary, at the beginning of the fourteenth century,

amounted to two hundred thousand souls; [23] and various authors agree in

attesting, that, at a later period, it could send forth fifty thousand

warriors from its gates. This statement will not appear exaggerated, if we

consider that the native population of the city was greatly swelled by the

influx of the ancient inhabitants of the districts lately conquered by the

Spaniards. On the summit of one of the hills of the city was erected the

royal fortress or palace of the Alhambra, which was capable of containing

within its circuit forty thousand men. [24] The light and elegant

architecture of this edifice, whose magnificent ruins still form the most

interesting monument in Spain for the contemplation of the traveller,

shows the great advancement of the art since the construction of the

celebrated mosque of Cordova. Its graceful porticoes and colonnades, its

domes and ceilings, glowing with tints, which, in that transparent

atmosphere, have lost nothing of their original brilliancy, its airy

halls, so constructed as to admit the perfume of surrounding gardens and

agreeable ventilations of the air, and its fountains, which still shed

their coolness over its deserted courts, manifest at once the taste,

opulence, and Sybarite luxury of its proprietors. The streets are

represented to have been narrow, many of the houses lofty, with turrets of

curiously wrought larch or marble, and with cornices of shining metal,

"that glittered like stars through the dark foliage of the orange groves;"

and the whole is compared to "an enamelled vase, sparkling with hyacinths

and emeralds." [25] Such are the florid strains in which the Arabic

writers fondly descant on the glories of Granada.

At the foot of this fabric of the genii lay the cultivated _vega_, or

plain, so celebrated as the arena, for more than two centuries, of Moorish

and Christian chivalry, every inch of whose soil may be said to have been

fertilized with human blood. The Arabs exhausted on it all their powers of

elaborate cultivation. They distributed the waters of the Xenil, which

flowed through it, into a thousand channels for its more perfect

irrigation. A constant succession of fruits and crops was obtained

throughout the year. The products of the most opposite latitudes were

transplanted there with success; and the hemp of the north grew luxuriant

under the shadow of the vine and the olive. Silk furnished the principal

staple of a traffic that was carried on through the ports of Almeria and

Malaga. The Italian cities, then rising into opulence, derived their

principal skill in this elegant manufacture from the Spanish Arabs.

Florence, in particular, imported large quantities of the raw material

from them as late as the fifteenth century. The Genoese are mentioned as

having mercantile establishments in Granada; and treaties of commerce were

entered into with this nation, as well as with the crown of Aragon. Their

ports swarmed with a motley contribution from "Europe, Africa, and the

Levant," so that "Granada," in the words of the historian, "became the

common city of all nations." "The reputation of the citizens for trust-

worthiness," says a Spanish writer, "was such, that their bare word was

more relied on, than a written contract is now among us;" and he quotes

the saying of a Catholic bishop, that "Moorish works and Spanish faith

were all that were necessary to make a good Christian." [26]

The revenue, which was computed at twelve hundred thousand ducats, was

derived from similar, but, in some respects, heavier impositions than

those of the caliphs of Cordova. The crown, besides being possessed of

valuable plantations in the vega, imposed the onerous tax of one-seventh

on all the agricultural produce of the kingdom. The precious metals were

also obtained in considerable quantities, and the royal mint was noted for

the purity and elegance of its coin. [27]

The sovereigns of Granada were for the most part distinguished by liberal

tastes. They freely dispensed their revenues in the protection of letters,

the construction of sumptuous public works, and, above all, in the display

of a courtly pomp, unrivalled by any of the princes of that period. Each

day presented a succession of _fêtes_ and tourneys, in which the

knight seemed less ambitious of the hardy prowess of Christian chivalry,

than of displaying his inimitable horsemanship, and his dexterity in the

elegant pastimes peculiar to his nation. The people of Granada, like those

of ancient Rome, seem to have demanded a perpetual spectacle. Life was

with them one long carnival, and the season of revelry was prolonged until

the enemy was at the gate.

During the interval which had elapsed since the decay of the Omeyades, the

Spaniards had been gradually rising in civilization to the level of their

Saracen enemies; and, while their increased consequence secured them from

the contempt with which they had formerly been regarded by the Mussulmans,

the latter, in their turn, had not so far sunk in the scale, as to have

become the objects of the bigoted aversion, which was, in after days, so

heartily visited on them by the Spaniards. At this period, therefore, the

two nations viewed each other with more liberality, probably, than at any

previous or succeeding time. Their respective monarchs conducted their

mutual negotiations on a footing of perfect equality. We find several

examples of Arabian sovereigns visiting in person the court of Castile.

These civilities were reciprocated by the Christian princes. As late as

1463, Henry the Fourth had a personal interview with the king of Granada,

in the dominions of the latter. The two monarchs held their conference

under a splendid pavilion erected in the vega, before the gates of the

city; and, after an exchange of presents, the Spanish sovereign was

escorted to the frontiers by a body of Moorish cavaliers. These acts of

courtesy relieve in some measure the ruder features of an almost

uninterrupted warfare, that was necessarily kept up between the rival

nations. [28]

The Moorish and Christian knights were also in the habit of exchanging

visits at the courts of their respective masters. The latter were wont to

repair to Granada to settle their affairs of honor, by personal

rencounter, in the presence of its sovereign. The disaffected nobles of

Castile, among whom Mariana especially notices the Velas and the Castros,

often sought an asylum there, and served under the Moslem banner. With

this interchange of social courtesy between the two nations, it could not

but happen that each should contract somewhat of the peculiarities natural

to the other. The Spaniard acquired something of the gravity and

magnificence of demeanor proper to the Arabian; and the latter relaxed his

habitual reserve, and, above all, the jealousy and gross sensuality, which

characterize the nations of the east. [29]

Indeed, if we were to rely on the pictures presented to us in the Spanish

ballads or _romances_, we should admit as unreserved an intercourse

between the sexes to have existed among the Spanish Arabs, as with any

other people of Europe. The Moorish lady is represented there as an

undisguised spectator of the public festivals; while her knight, bearing

an embroidered mantle or scarf, or some other token of her favor, contends

openly in her presence for the prize of valor, mingles with her in the

graceful dance of the Zambra, or sighs away his soul in moonlight

serenades under her balcony. [30]

Other circumstances, especially the frescoes still extant on the walls of

the Alhambra, may be cited as corroborative of the conclusions afforded by

the _romances_, implying a latitude in the privileges accorded to the

sex, similar to that in Christian countries, and altogether alien from the

genius of Mahometanism. [31] The chivalrous character ascribed to the

Spanish Moslems appears, moreover, in perfect conformity to this. Thus

some of their sovereigns, we are told, after the fatigues of the

tournament, were wont to recreate their spirits with "elegant poetry, and

florid discourses of amorous and knightly history." The ten qualities,

enumerated as essential to a true knight, were "piety, valor, courtesy,

prowess, the gifts of poetry and eloquence, and dexterity in the

management of the horse, the sword, lance, and bow." [32] The history of

the Spanish Arabs, especially in the latter wars of Granada, furnishes

repeated examples not merely of the heroism, which distinguished the

European chivalry of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but

occasionally of a polished courtesy, that might have graced a Bayard or a

Sidney. This combination of Oriental magnificence and knightly prowess

shed a ray of glory over the closing days of the Arabian empire in Spain,

and served to conceal, though it could not correct, the vices which it

possessed in common with all Mahometan institutions.

The government of Granada was not administered with the same tranquillity

as that of Cordova. Revolutions were perpetually occurring, which may be

traced sometimes to the tyranny of the prince, but more frequently to the

factions of the seraglio, the soldiery, or the licentious populace of the

capital. The latter, indeed, more volatile than the sands of the deserts

from which they originally sprung, were driven by every gust of passion

into the most frightful excesses, deposing and even assassinating their

monarchs, violating their palaces, and scattering abroad their beautiful

collections and libraries; while the kingdom, unlike that of Cordova, was

so contracted in its extent, that every convulsion of the capital was felt

to its farthest extremities. Still, however, it held out, almost

miraculously, against the Christian arms, and the storms that beat upon it

incessantly, for more than two centuries, scarcely wore away anything from

its original limits.

Several circumstances may be pointed out as enabling Granada to maintain

this protracted resistance. Its concentrated population furnished such

abundant supplies of soldiers, that its sovereigns could bring into the

field an army of a hundred thousand men. [33] Many of these were drawn

from the regions of the Alpuxarras, whose rugged inhabitants had not been

corrupted by the soft effeminacy of the plains. The ranks were

occasionally recruited, moreover, from the warlike tribes of Africa. The

Moors of Granada are praised by their enemies for their skill with the

cross-bow, to the use of which they were trained from childhood. [34] But

their strength lay chiefly in their cavalry. Their spacious vegas afforded

an ample field for the display of their matchless horsemanship; while the

face of the country, intersected by mountains and intricate defiles, gave

a manifest advantage to the Arabian light-horse over the steel-clad

cavalry of the Christians, and was particularly suited to the wild

_guerilla_ warfare, in which the Moors so much excelled. During the

long hostilities of the country, almost every city had been converted into

a fortress. The number of these fortified places in the territory of

Granada was ten times as great as is now to be found throughout the whole

Peninsula. [35] Lastly, in addition to these means of defence, may be

mentioned their early acquaintance with gunpowder, which, like the Greek

fire of Constantinople, contributed perhaps in some degree to prolong

their precarious existence beyond its natural term.

But, after all, the strength of Granada, like that of Constantinople, lay

less in its own resources than in the weakness of its enemies, who,

distracted by the feuds of a turbulent aristocracy, especially during the

long minorities with which Castile was afflicted, perhaps, more than any

other nation in Europe, seemed to be more remote from the conquest of

Granada at the death of Henry the Fourth, than at that of St. Ferdinand in

the thirteenth century. Before entering on the achievement of this

conquest by Ferdinand and Isabella, it may not be amiss to notice the

probable influence exerted by the Spanish Arabs on European civilization.

Notwithstanding the high advances made by the Arabians in almost every

branch of learning, and the liberal import of certain sayings ascribed to

Mahomet, the spirit of his religion was eminently unfavorable to letters.

The Koran, whatever be the merit of its literary execution, does not, we

believe, contain a single precept in favor of general science. [36]

Indeed, during the first century after its promulgation, almost as little

attention was bestowed upon this by the Saracens, as in their "days of

ignorance," as the period is stigmatized which preceded the advent of

their apostle. [37] But, after the nation had reposed from its tumultuous

military career, the taste for elegant pleasures, which naturally results

from opulence and leisure, began to flow in upon it. It entered upon this

new field with all its characteristic enthusiasm, and seemed ambitious of

attaining the same pre-eminence in science, that it had already reached in

arms.

It was at the commencement of this period of intellectual fermentation,

that the last of the Omeyades, escaping into Spain, established there the

kingdom of Cordova, and imported along with him the fondness for luxury

and letters that had begun to display itself in the capitals of the east.

His munificent spirit descended upon his successors; and, on the breaking

up of the empire, the various capitals, Seville, Murcia, Malaga, Granada,

and others, which rose upon its ruins, became the centres of so many

intellectual systems, that continued to emit a steady lustre through the

clouds and darkness of succeeding centuries. The period of this literary

civilization reached far into the fourteenth century, and thus, embracing

an interval of six hundred years, may be said to have exceeded in duration

that of any other literature, ancient or modern.

There were several auspicious circumstances in the condition of the

Spanish Arabs, which distinguished them from their Mahometan brethren. The

temperate climate of Spain was far more propitious to robustness and

elasticity of intellect than the sultry regions of Arabia and Africa. Its

long line of coast and convenient havens opened to it an enlarged

commerce. Its number of rival states encouraged a generous emulation, like

that which glowed in ancient Greece and modern Italy; and was infinitely

more favorable to the development of the mental powers than the far-

extended and sluggish empires of Asia. Lastly, a familiar intercourse with

the Europeans served to mitigate in the Spanish Arabs some of the more

degrading superstitions incident to their religion, and to impart to them

nobler ideas of the independence and moral dignity of man, than are to be

found in the slaves of eastern despotism.

Under these favorable circumstances, provisions for education were

liberally multiplied, colleges, academies, and gymnasiums springing up

spontaneously, as it were, not merely in the principal cities, but in the

most obscure villages of the country. No less than fifty of these colleges

or schools could be discerned scattered over the suburbs and populous

plain of Granada. Seventy public libraries, if we may credit the report,

were counted within the narrow limits of the Moslem territory. Every place

of note seems to have furnished materials for a literary history. The

copious catalogues of writers, still extant in the Escurial, show how

extensively the cultivation of science was pursued, even through its

minutest subdivisions; while a biographical notice of blind men, eminent

for their scholarship in Spain, proves how far the general avidity for

knowledge triumphed over the most discouraging obstacles of nature. [38]

The Spanish Arabs emulated their countrymen of the east in their devotion

to natural and mathematical science. They penetrated into the remotest

regions of Africa and Asia, transmitting an exact account of their

proceedings to the national academies. They contributed to astronomical

knowledge by the number and accuracy of their observations, and by the

improvement of instruments and the erection of observatories, of which the

noble tower of Seville is one of the earliest examples. They furnished

their full proportion in the department of history, which, according to an

Arabian author cited by D'Herbelot, could boast of thirteen hundred

writers. The treatises on logic and metaphysics amount to one-ninth of the

surviving treasures of the Escurial; and, to conclude this summary of

naked details, some of their scholars appear to have entered upon as

various a field of philosophical inquiry, as would be crowded into a

modern encyclopaedia. [39]

The results, it must be confessed, do not appear to have corresponded with

this magnificent apparatus and unrivalled activity of research. The mind

of the Arabians was distinguished by the most opposite characteristics,

which sometimes, indeed, served to neutralize each other. An acute and

subtile perception was often clouded by mysticism and abstraction. They

combined a habit of classification and generalization, with a marvellous

fondness for detail; a vivacious fancy with a patience of application,

that a German of our day might envy; and, while in fiction they launched

boldly into originality, indeed extravagance, they were content in

philosophy to tread servilely in the track of their ancient masters. They

derived their science from versions of the Greek philosophers; but, as

their previous discipline had not prepared them for its reception, they

were oppressed rather than stimulated by the weight of the inheritance.

They possessed an indefinite power of accumulation, but they rarely

ascended to general principles, or struck out new and important truths; at

least, this is certain in regard to their metaphysical labors.

Hence Aristotle, who taught them to arrange what they had already

acquired, rather than to advance to new discoveries, became the god of

their idolatry. They piled commentary on commentary, and, in their blind

admiration of his system, may be almost said to have been more of

Peripatetics than the Stagirite himself. The Cordovan Averroes was the

most eminent of his Arabian commentators, and undoubtedly contributed more

than any other individual to establish the authority of Aristotle over the

reason of mankind for so many ages. Yet his various illustrations have

served, in the opinion of European critics, to darken rather than

dissipate the ambiguities of his original, and have even led to the

confident assertion that he was wholly unacquainted with the Greek

language. [40]

The Saracens gave an entirely new face to pharmacy and chemistry. They

introduced a great variety of salutary medicaments into Europe. The

Spanish Arabs, in particular, are commended by Sprengel above their

brethren for their observations on the practice of medicine. [41] But

whatever real knowledge they possessed was corrupted by their inveterate

propensity for mystical and occult science. They too often exhausted both

health and fortune in fruitless researches after the elixir of life and

the philosopher's stone. Their medical prescriptions were regulated by the

aspect of the stars. Their physics were debased by magic, their chemistry

degenerated into alchemy, their astronomy into astrology.

In the fruitful field of history, their success was even more equivocal.

They seem to have been wholly destitute of the philosophical spirit, which

gives life to this kind of composition. They were the disciples of

fatalism and the subjects of a despotic government. Man appeared to them

only in the contrasted aspects of slave and master. What could they know

of the finer moral relations, or of the higher energies of the soul, which

are developed only under free and beneficent institutions? Even could they

have formed conceptions of these, how would they have dared to express

them? Hence their histories are too often mere barren chronological

details, or fulsome panegyrics on their princes, unenlivened by a single

spark of philosophy or criticism.

Although the Spanish Arabs are not entitled to the credit of having

wrought any important revolution in intellectual or moral science, they

are commended by a severe critic, as exhibiting in their writings "the

germs of many theories, which have been reproduced as discoveries in later

ages," [42] and they silently perfected several of those useful arts,

which have had a sensible influence on the happiness and improvement of

mankind. Algebra and the higher mathematics were taught in their schools,

and thence diffused over Europe. The manufacture of paper, which, since

the invention of printing, has contributed so essentially to the rapid

circulation of knowledge, was derived through them. Casiri has discovered

several manuscripts of cotton paper in the Escurial as early as 1009, and

of linen paper of the date of 1106; [43] the origin of which latter fabric

Tiraboschi has ascribed to an Italian of Trevigi, in the middle of the

fourteenth century. [44] Lastly, the application of gunpowder to military

science, which has wrought an equally important revolution, though of a

more doubtful complexion, in the condition of society, was derived through

the same channel. [45]

The influence of the Spanish Arabs, however, is discernible not so much in

the amount of knowledge, as in the impulse, which they communicated to the

long-dormant energies of Europe. Their invasion was coeval with the

commencement of that night of darkness, which divides the modern from the

ancient world. The soil had been impoverished by long, assiduous

cultivation. The Arabians came like a torrent, sweeping down and

obliterating even the land-marks of former civilization, but bringing with

it a fertilizing principle, which, as the waters receded, gave new life

and loveliness to the landscape. The writings of the Saracens were

translated and diffused throughout Europe. Their schools were visited by

disciples, who, roused from their lethargy, caught somewhat of the

generous enthusiasm of their masters; and a healthful action was given to

the European intellect, which, however ill-directed at first, was thus

prepared for the more judicious and successful efforts of later times.

It is comparatively easy to determine the value of the scientific labors

of a people, for truth is the same in all languages; but the laws of taste

differ so widely in different nations, that it requires a nicer

discrimination to pronounce fairly upon such works as are regulated by

them. Nothing is more common than to see the poetry of the east condemned

as tumid, over-refined, infected with meretricious ornament and conceits,

and, in short, as every way contravening the principles of good taste. Few

of the critics, who thus peremptorily condemn, are capable of reading a

line of the original. The merit of poetry, however, consists so much in

its literary execution, that a person, to pronounce upon it, should be

intimately acquainted with the whole import of the idiom in which it is

written. The style of poetry, indeed of all ornamental writing, whether

prose or verse, in order to produce a proper effect, must be raised or

relieved, as it were, upon the prevailing style of social intercourse.

Even where this is highly figurative and impassioned, as with the

Arabians, whose ordinary language is made up of metaphor, that of the poet

must be still more so. Hence the tone of elegant literature varies so

widely in different countries, even in those of Europe, which approach the

nearest to each other in their principles of taste, that it would be found

extremely difficult to effect a close translation of the most admired

specimens of eloquence from the language of one nation into that of any

other. A page of Boccaccio or Bembo, for instance, done into literal

English, would have an air of intolerable artifice and verbiage. The

choicest morsels of Massillon, Bossuet, or the rhetorical Thomas, would

savor marvellously of bombast; and how could we in any degree keep pace

with the magnificent march of the Castilian! Yet surely we are not to

impugn the taste of all these nations, who attach much more importance,

and have paid (at least this is true of the French and Italian) much

greater attention to the mere beauties of literary finish, than English

writers.

Whatever may be the sins of the Arabians on this head, they are certainly

not those of negligence. The Spanish Arabs, in particular, were noted for

the purity and elegance of their idiom; insomuch that Casiri affects to

determine the locality of an author by the superior refinement of his

style. Their copious philological and rhetorical treatises, their arts of

poetry, grammars, and rhyming dictionaries, show to what an excessive

refinement they elaborated the art of composition. Academies, far more

numerous than those of Italy, to which they subsequently served for a

model, invited by their premiums frequent competitions in poetry and

eloquence. To poetry, indeed, especially of the tender kind, the Spanish

Arabs seem to have been as indiscriminately addicted as the Italians in

the time of Petrarch; and there was scarcely a doctor in church or state,

but at some time or other offered up his amorous incense on the altar of

the muse. [46]

With all this poetic feeling, however, the Arabs never availed themselves

of the treasures of Grecian eloquence, which lay open before them. Not a

poet or orator of any eminence in that language seems to have been

translated by them. [47] The temperate tone of Attic composition appeared

tame to the fervid conceptions of the east. Neither did they venture upon

what in Europe are considered the higher walks of the art, the drama and

the epic. [48] None of their writers in prose or verse show much attention

to the development or dissection of character. Their inspiration exhaled

in lyrical effusions, in elegies, epigrams, and idyls. They sometimes,

moreover, like the Italians, employed verse as the vehicle of instruction

in the grave and recondite sciences. The general character of their poetry

is bold, florid, impassioned, richly colored with imagery, sparkling with

conceits and metaphors, and occasionally breathing a deep tone of moral

sensibility, as in some of the plaintive effusions ascribed by Conde to

the royal poets of Cordova. The compositions of the golden age of the

Abassides, and of the preceding period, do not seem to have been infected

with the taint of exaggeration, so offensive to a European, which

distinguishes the later productions in the decay of the empire.

Whatever be thought of the influence of the Arabic on European literature

in general, there can be no reasonable doubt that it has been considerable

on the Provençal and the Castilian. In the latter especially, so far from

being confined to the vocabulary, or to external forms of composition, it

seems to have penetrated deep into its spirit, and is plainly discernible

in that affectation of stateliness and Oriental hyberbole, which

characterizes Spanish writers even at the present day; in the subtilties

and conceits with which the ancient Castilian verse is so liberally

bespangled; and in the relish for proverbs and prudential maxims, which is

so general that it may be considered national. [49]

A decided effect has been produced on the romantic literature of Europe by

those tales of fairy enchantment, so characteristic of Oriental genius,

and in which it seems to have revelled with uncontrolled delight. These

tales, which furnished the principal diversion of the East, were imported

by the Saracens into Spain; and we find the monarchs of Cordova solacing

their leisure hours with listening to their _rawis_, or novelists, who

sang to them.

"Of ladye-love and war, romance, and knightly worth." [50]

The same spirit, penetrating into France, stimulated the more sluggish

inventions of the _trouvère_, and, at a later and more polished period,

called forth the imperishable creations of the Italian muse. [51]

It is unfortunate for the Arabians, that their literature should be locked

up in a character and idiom so difficult of access to European scholars.

Their wild, imaginative poetry, scarcely capable of transfusion into a

foreign tongue, is made known to us only through the medium of bald prose

translation, while their scientific treatises have been done into Latin

with an inaccuracy, which, to make use of a pun of Casiri's, merits the

name of perversions rather than versions of the originals. [52] How

obviously inadequate, then, are our means of forming any just estimate of

their literary merits! It is unfortunate for them, moreover, that the

Turks, the only nation, which, from an identity of religion and government

with the Arabs, as well as from its political consequence, would seem to

represent them on the theatre of modern Europe, should be a race so

degraded; one which, during the five centuries that it has been in

possession of the finest climate and monuments of antiquity, has so seldom

been quickened into a display of genius, or added so little of positive

value to the literary treasures descended from its ancient masters. Yet

this people, so sensual and sluggish, we are apt to confound in

imagination with the sprightly, intellectual Arab. Both indeed have been

subjected to the influence of the same degrading political and religious

institutions, which on the Turks have produced the results naturally to

have been expected; while the Arabians, on the other hand, exhibit the

extraordinary phenomenon of a nation, under all these embarrassments,

rising to a high degree of elegance and intellectual culture.

The empire, which once embraced more than half of the ancient world, has

now shrunk within its original limits; and the Bedouin wanders over his

native desert as free, and almost as uncivilized, as before the coming of

his apostle. The language, which was once spoken along the southern shores

of the Mediterranean and the whole extent of the Indian Ocean, is broken

up into a variety of discordant dialects. Darkness has again settled over

those regions of Africa, which were illumined by the light of learning.

The elegant dialect of the Koran is studied as a dead language, even in

the birth-place of the prophet. Not a printing-press at this day is to be

found throughout the whole Arabian Peninsula. Even in Spain, in Christian

Spain, alas! the contrast is scarcely less degrading. A death-like torpor

has succeeded to her former intellectual activity. Her cities are emptied

of the population with which they teemed in the days of the Saracens. Her

climate is as fair, but her fields no longer bloom with the same rich and

variegated husbandry. Her most interesting monuments are those constructed

by the Arabs; and the traveller, as he wanders amid their desolate, but

beautiful ruins, ponders on the destinies of a people, whose very

existence seems now to have been almost as fanciful as the magical

creations in one of their own fairy tales.

* * * *

Notwithstanding the history of the Arabs is so intimately connected with

that of the Spaniards, that it may be justly said to form the reverse side

of it, and notwithstanding the amplitude of authentic documents in the

Arabic tongue to be found in the public libraries, the Castilian writers,

even the most eminent, until the latter half of the last century, with an

insensibility which can be imputed to nothing else but a spirit of

religious bigotry, have been content to derive their narratives

exclusively from national authorities. A fire, which, occurred in the

Escurial in 1671, having consumed more than three-quarters of the

magnificent collection of eastern manuscripts which it contained, the

Spanish government, taking some shame to itself, as it would appear, for

its past supineness, caused a copious catalogue of the surviving volumes,

to the number of 1850, to be compiled by the learned Casiri; and the

result was his celebrated work, "Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana

Escurialensis," which appeared in the years 1760-70, and which would

reflect credit from the splendor of its typographical execution on any

press of the present day. This work, although censured by some later

Orientalists as hasty and superficial, must ever be highly valued as

affording the only complete index to the rich repertory of Arabian

manuscripts in the Escurial, and for the ample evidence which it exhibits

of the science and mental culture of the Spanish Arabs. Several other

native scholars, among whom Andres and Masdeu may be particularly noticed,

have made extensive researches into the literary history of this people.

Still, their political history, so essential to a correct knowledge of the

Spanish, was comparatively neglected, until Senor Conde, the late learned

librarian of the Academy, who had given ample evidence of his Oriental

learning in his version and illustrations of the Nubian Geographer, and a

Dissertation on Arabic Coins published in the fifth volume of the Memoirs

of the Royal Academy of History, compiled his work entitled "Historia de

la Dominacion de los Arabes en España." The first volume appeared in 1820.

Bat unhappily the death of its author, occurring in the autumn of the same

year, prevented the completion of his design. The two remaining volumes,

however, were printed in the course of that and the following year from

his own manuscripts; and although their comparative meagreness and

confused chronology betray the want of the same paternal hand, they

contain much interesting information. The relation of the conquest of

Granada, especially, with which the work concludes, exhibits some

important particulars in a totally different point of view from that in

which they had been presented by the principal Spanish historians.

The first volume, which may be considered as having received the last

touches of its author, embraces a circumstantial narrative of the great

Saracen invasion, of the subsequent condition of Spain under the viceroys,

and of the empire of the Omeyades; undoubtedly the most splendid portion

of Arabian annals, but the one, unluckily, which has been most copiously

illustrated in the popular work compiled by Cardonne from the Oriental

manuscripts in the Royal Library at Paris. But as this author has followed

the Spanish and the Oriental authorities, indiscriminately, no part of his

book can be cited as a genuine Arabic version, except indeed the last

sixty pages, comprising the conquest of Granada, which Cardonne professes

in his Preface to have drawn exclusively from an Arabian manuscript.

Conde, on the other hand, professes to have adhered to his originals with

such scrupulous fidelity, that "the European reader may feel that he is

perusing an Arabian author;" and certainly very strong internal evidence

is afforded of the truth of this assertion, in the peculiar national and

religious spirit which pervades the work, and in a certain florid

gasconade of style, common with the Oriental writers. It is this fidelity

that constitutes the peculiar value of Conde's narrative. It is the first

time that the Arabians, at least those of Spain, the part of the nation

which reached the highest degree of refinement, have been allowed to speak

for themselves. The history, or rather tissue of histories, embodied in

the translation, is certainly conceived in no very philosophical spirit,

and contains, as might be expected from an Asiatic pen, little for the

edification of a European reader on subjects of policy and government. The

narrative is, moreover, encumbered with frivolous details and a barren

muster-roll of names and titles, which would better become a genealogical

table than a history. But, with every deduction, it must be allowed to

exhibit a sufficiently clear view of the intricate conflicting relations

of the petty principalities, which swarmed over the Peninsula; and to

furnish abundant evidence of a wide-spread intellectual improvement amid

all the horrors of anarchy and a ferocious despotism. The work has already

been translated, or rather paraphrased, into French. The necessity of an

English version will doubtless be in a great degree superseded by the

History of the Spanish Arabs, preparing for the Cabinet Cyclopaedia, by

Mr. Southey,--a writer, with whom few Castilian scholars will be willing

to compete, even on their own ground; and who is, happily, not exposed to

the national or religious prejudices, which can interfere with his

rendering perfect justice to his subject.

FOOTNOTES

[1] See Introduction, Section I. Note 2, of this History.

[2] The Koran, in addition to the repeated assurances of Paradise to the

martyr who falls in battle, contains the regulations of a precise military

code. Military service in some shape or other is exacted from all. The

terms to be prescribed to the enemy and the vanquished, the division of

the spoil, the seasons of lawful truce, the conditions on which the

comparatively small number of exempts are permitted to remain at home, are

accurately defined. (Sale's Koran, chap. 2, 8, 9, et alibi.) When the

_algihed_, or Mahometan crusade, which, in its general design and

immunities, bore a close resemblance to the Christian, was preached in the

mosque, every true believer was bound to repair to the standard of his

chief. "The holy war," says one of the early Saracen generals, "is the

ladder of Paradise. The Apostle of God styled himself the son of the

sword. He loved to repose in the shadow of banners and on the field of

battle."

[3] The successors, caliphs or vicars, as they were styled, of Mahomet,

represented both his spiritual and temporal authority. Their office

involved almost equally ecclesiastical and military functions. It was

their duty to lead the army in battle, and on the pilgrimage to Mecca.

They were to preach a sermon, and offer up public prayers in the mosques

every Friday. Many of their prerogatives resemble those assumed anciently

by the popes. They conferred investitures on the Moslem princes by the

symbol of a ring, a sword, or a standard. They complimented them with the

titles of "defender of the faith," "column of religion," and the like. The

proudest potentate held the bridle of their mules, and paid his homage by

touching their threshold with his forehead. The authority of the caliphs

was in this manner founded on opinion no less than on power; and their

ordinances, however frivolous or iniquitous in themselves, being enforced,

as it were, by a divine sanction, became laws which it was sacrilege to

disobey. See D'Herbelot, Bibliothèque Orientale, (La Haye, 1777-9,) voce

_Khalifah_.

[4] The character of the Arabs before the introduction of Islam, like that

of most rude nations, is to be gathered from their national songs and

romances. The poems suspended at Mecca, familiar to us in the elegant

version of Sir William Jones, and still more, the recent translation of

"Antar," a composition indeed of the age of Al Raschid, but wholly devoted

to the primitive Bedouins, present us with a lively picture of their

peculiar habits, which, notwithstanding the influence of a temporary

civilization, may be thought to bear great resemblance to those of their

descendants at the present day.

[5] Startling as it may be, there is scarcely a vestige of any of the

particulars, circumstantially narrated by the national historians

(Mariana, Zurita, Abarca, Moret, etc.) as the immediate causes of the

subversion of Spain, to be found in the chronicles of the period. No

intimation of the persecution, or of the treason, of the two sons of

Witiza is to be met with in any Spanish writer, as far as I know, until

nearly two centuries after the conquest; none earlier than this, of the

defection of Archbishop Oppas, during the fatal conflict near Xerez; and

none of the tragical amours of Roderic and the revenge of count Julian,

before the writers of the thirteenth century. Nothing indeed can be more

jejune than the original narratives of the invasion. The continuation of

the Chronicon del Biclarense, and the Chronicon de Isidoro Pacense or de

Beja, which are contained in the voluminous collection of Florez, (España

Sagrada, tom. vi. and viii.) afford the only histories contemporary with

the event. Conde is mistaken in his assertion (Dominacion de los Arabes,

Pról. p. vii.), that the work of Isidoro de Beja was the only narrative

written during that period. Spain had not the pen of a Bede or an Eginhart

to describe the memorable catastrophe. But the few and meagre touches of

the contemporary chroniclers have left ample scope for conjectural

history, which has been most industriously improved.

The reports, according to Conde, (Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. i. p.

36,) greedily circulated among the Saracens, of the magnificence and

general prosperity of the Gothic monarchy, may sufficiently account for

its invasion by an enemy flushed with uninterrupted conquests, and whose

fanatical ambition was well illustrated by one of their own generals, who,

on reaching the western extremity of Africa, plunged his horse into the

Atlantic, and sighed for other shores on which to plant the banners of

Islam. See Cardonne, Histoire de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne sous la

Domination des Arabes, (Paris, 1765,) tom. i. p. 37.

[6] The laborious diligence of Masdeu may be thought to have settled the

epoch, about which so much learned dust has been raised. The fourteenth

volume of his Historia Crítica de España y de la Cultura Española (Madrid,

1783-1805) contains an accurate table, by which the minutest dates of the

Mahometan lunar year are adjusted by those of the Christian era. The fall

of Roderic on the field of battle is attested by both the domestic

chroniclers of that period, as well as by the Saracens. (Incerti Auctoris

Additio ad Joannem Biclarensem, apud Florez, España Sagrada, tom. vi. p.

430.--Isidori Pacensis Episcopi Chronicon, apud Florez, España Sagrada,

tom. viii. p. 290.) The tales of the ivory and marble chariot, of the

gallant steed Orelia and magnificent vestments of Roderic, discovered

after the fight on the banks of the Guadalete, of his probable escape and

subsequent seclusion among the mountains of Portugal, which have been

thought worthy of Spanish history, have found a much more appropriate

place in their romantic national ballads, as well as in the more elaborate

productions of Scott and Southey.

[7] "Whatever curses," says an eye-witness, whose meagre diction is

quickened on this occasion into something like sublimity, "whatever curses

were denounced by the prophets of old against Jerusalem, whatever fell

upon ancient Babylon, whatever miseries Rome inflicted upon the glorious

company of the martyrs, all these were visited upon the once happy and

prosperous, but now desolated Spain." Pacensis Chronicon, apud Florez,

España Sagrada, tom. viii. p. 292.

[8] The frequency of this alliance may be inferred from an extraordinary,

though, doubtless, extravagant statement cited by Zurita. The ambassadors

of James II., of Aragon, in 1311, represented to the sovereign pontiff,

Clement V., that, of the 200,000 souls, which then composed the population

of Granada, there were not more than 500 of pure Moorish descent. Anales,

tom. iv. fol. 314.

[9] The famous persecutions of Cordova under the reigns of Abderrahman II.

and his son, which, to judge from the tone of Castilian writers, might vie

with those of Nero and Diocletian, are admitted by Morales (Obras, tom. x.

p. 74) to have occasioned the destruction of only forty individuals. Most

of these unhappy fanatics solicited the crown of martyrdom by an open

violation of the Mahometan laws and usages. The details are given by

Florez, in the tenth volume of his collection.

[10] Bleda, Corónica de los Moros de España, (Valencia, 1618,) lib. 2,

cap. 16, 17.--Cardonne, Hist. d'Afrique et d'Espagne, tom. i. pp. 83 et

seq. 179.--Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, Pról., p. vii. and tom. i. pp.

29-54, 75, 87.--Morales, Obras, tom. vi. pp. 407-417; tom. vii. pp. 262-

264.--Florez, España Sagrada, tom. x. pp. 237-270.--Fuero Juzgo, Int. p.

40.

[11] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, part. 2, cap. 1-46.

[12] Ibid., ubi supra.--Masdeu, Historia Crítica, tom. xiii. pp. 178, 187.

[13] The same taste is noticed at the present day, by a traveller, whose

pictures glow with the warm colors of the east. "Aussi dès que vous

approchez, en Europe ou en Asie, d'une terre possédée par les Musulmans,

vous la reconnaissez de loin au riche et sombre voile de verdure qui

flotte gracieusement sur elle:--des arbres pour s'asseoir à leur ombre,

des fontaines jaillissantes pour rêver à leur bruit, du silence et des

mosquées aux légers minarets, s'élevant à chaque pas du sein d'une terre

pieuse." Lamartine, Voyage en Orient, tome i. p. 172.

[14] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. i. pp. 199, 265, 284, 285, 417,

446, 447, et alibi.--Cardonne, Hist. d'Afrique et d'Espagne, tom. i. pp.

227-230 et seq.

[15] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. i. pp. 211, 212, 226.--

Swinburne, Travels through Spain, (London, 1787,) let. 35.--Xerif Aledris,

conocido por El Nubiense, Descripcion de España, con Traduccion y Notas de

Conde, (Madrid, 1799,) pp. 161, 162.--Morales, Obras, tom. x. p. 61.--

Chénier, Recherches Historiques sur les Maures, et Histoire de l'Empire de

Maroc, (Paris, 1787,) tom. ii. p. 312.--Laborde, Itinéraire, tome iii. p.

226.

[16] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. i. pp 214, 228, 270, 611.--

Masdeu, Historia Crítica, tom. xiii. p. 118.--Cardonne, Hist. d'Afrique et

d'Espagne, tom. i. pp. 338-343.--Casiri quotes from an Arabic historian

the conditions on which Abderrahman I. proffered his alliance to the

Christian princes of Spain, viz. the annual tribute of 10,000 ounces of

gold, 10,000 pounds of silver, 10,000 horses, etc., etc. The absurdity of

this story, inconsiderately repeated by historians, if any argument were

necessary to prove it, becomes sufficiently manifest from the fact, that

the instrument is dated in the 142d year of the Hegira, being a little

more than fifty years after the conquest. See Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana

Escurialensis, (Matriti, 1760,) tom. ii. p. 104.

[17] Hist. Naturalis, lib. 33, cap. 4.

[18] Introduction à l'Histoire Naturelle de l'Espagne, traduite par

Flavigny, (Paris, 1776,) p. 411.

[19] See a sensible essay by the Abbé Correa da Serra on the husbandry of

the Spanish Arabs, contained in tom. i. of Archives Littéraires de

l'Europe, (Paris, 1804.)--Masdeu, Historia Crítica, tom. xiii. pp. 115,

117, 127, 131.--Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. i. cap. 44.--Casiri,

Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. i. p. 338.

An absurd story has been transcribed from Cardonne, with little

hesitation, by almost every succeeding writer upon this subject. According

to him, (Hist. d'Afrique et d'Espagne, tom. i. p. 338,) "the banks of the

Guadalquivir were lined with no less than twelve thousand villages and

hamlets." The length of the river, not exceeding three hundred miles,

would scarcely afford room for the same number of farm-houses. Conde's

version of the Arabic passage represents twelve thousand hamlets, farms,

and castles, to have "been scattered over the regions watered by the

Gaudalquivir;" indicating by this indefinite statement nothing more than

the extreme populousness of the province of Andalusia.

[20] Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. pp. 38, 202.--Conde,

Dominacion de los Arabes, part. 2, cap. 88.

[21] Storia della Letteratura Italiana, (Roma, 1782-97,) tom. iii. p.

231.--Turner, History of the Anglo-Saxons, (London, 1820,) vol. iii. p.

137.--Andres, Dell' Origine, de' Progressi e dello Stato Attuale d'Ogni

Letteratura, (Venezia, 1783,) part. 1, cap. 8, 9.--Casiri, Bibliotheca

Escurialensis, tom. ii. p. 149.--Masdeu, Historia Critica, tom. xiii. pp.

165, 171.--Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, part. 2, cap. 93.--Among the

accomplished women of this period, Valadata, the daughter of the caliph

Mahomet, is celebrated as having frequently carried away the palm of

eloquence in her discussions with the most learned academicians. Others

again, with an intrepidity that might shame the degeneracy of a modern

_blue_, plunged boldly into the studies of philosophy, history, and

jurisprudence.

[22] Garibay, Compendio, lib. 39, cap. 3.

[23] Zurita, Anales, lib. 20, cap. 42.

[24] L. Marineo, Cosas Memorables, fol. 169.

[25] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. ii. p. 147.--Casiri,

Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. pp. 248 et seq.--Pedraza, Antiguedad y

Excelencias de Granada, (Madrid, 1608,) lib. 1.--Pedraza has collected the

various etymologies of the term _Granada_, which some writers have

traced to the fact of the city having been the spot where the

_pomegranate_ was first introduced from Africa; others to the large

quantity of _grain_ in which its vega abounded; others again to the

resemblance which the city, divided into two hills thickly sprinkled with

houses, bore to a half-opened pomegranate. (Lib. 2, cap. 17.) The arms of

the city, which were in part composed of a pomegranate, would seem to

favor the derivation of its name from that of the fruit.

[26] Pedraza, Antiguedad de Granada, fol. 101.--Denina, Delle Rivoluzioni

d'Italia, (Venezia, 1816,) Capmany y Montpalau, Memorias Históricas sobre

la Marina, Comercio, y Artes de Barcelona, (Madrid, 1779-92,) tom. iii. p.

218; tom. iv. pp. 67 et seq.--Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. iii.

cap. 26.--The ambassador of the emperor Frederic III., on his passage to

the court of Lisbon in the middle of the fifteenth century, contrasts the

superior cultivation, as well as general civilization, of Granada at this

period with that of the other countries of Europe through which he had

travelled. Sismondi, Histoire des Républiques Italiennes du Moyen-Age,

(Paris, 1818,) tom. ix. p. 405.

[27] Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. pp. 250-258.--The fifth

volume of the royal Spanish Academy of History contains an erudite essay

by Conde on Arabic money, principally with reference to that coined in

Spain, pp. 225-315.

[28] A specification of a royal donative in that day may serve to show the

martial spirit of the age. In one of these, made by the king of Granada to

the Castilian sovereign, we find twenty noble steeds of the royal stud,

reared on the banks of the Xenil, with superb caparisons, and the same

number of scimitars richly garnished with gold and jewels; and, in

another, mixed up with perfumes and cloth of gold, we meet with a litter

of tame lions. (Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. iii. pp. 163, 183.)

This latter symbol of royalty appears to have been deemed peculiarly

appropriate to the kings of Leon. Ferreras informs us that the ambassadors

from France at the Castilian court, in 1434, were received by John II.

with a full-grown domesticated lion crouching at his feet. (Hist.

d'Espagne, tom. vi. p. 401.) The same taste appears still to exist in

Turkey. Dr. Clarke, in his visit to Constantinople, met with one of these

terrific pets, who used to follow his master, Hassan Pacha, about like a

dog.

[29] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. iii. cap. 28.--Henriquez del

Castillo (Crónica, cap. 138,) gives an account of an intended duel between

two Castilian nobles, in the presence of the king of Granada, as late as

1470. One of the parties, Don Alfonso de Aguilar, failing to keep his

engagement, the other rode round the lists in triumph, with his

adversary's portrait contemptuously fastened to the tail of his horse.

[30] It must be admitted, that these ballads, as far as facts are

concerned, are too inexact to furnish other than a very slippery

foundation for history. The most beautiful portion perhaps of the Moorish

ballads, for example, is taken up with the feuds of the Abencerrages in

the latter days of Granada. Yet this family, whose romantic story is still

repeated to the traveller amid the ruins of the Alhambra, is scarcely

noticed, as far as I am aware, by contemporary writers, foreign or

domestic, and would seem to owe its chief celebrity to the apocryphal

version of Cinés Perez de Hyta, whose "Milesian tales," according to the

severe sentence of Nic. Antonio, "are fit only to amuse the lazy and the

listless." (Bibliotheca Nova, tom. i. p. 536.)

But, although the Spanish ballads are not entitled to the credit of strict

historical documents, they may yet perhaps be received in evidence of the

prevailing character of the social relations of the age; a remark indeed

predicable of most works of fiction, written by authors contemporary with

the events they describe, and more especially so of that popular

minstrelsy, which, emanating from a simple, uncorrupted class, is less

likely to swerve from truth, than more ostentatious works of art. The long

cohabitation of the Saracens with the Christians, (full evidence of which

is afforded by Capmany, (Mem. de Barcelona, tom. iv. Apend. no. 11,) who

quotes a document from the public archives of Catalonia, showing the great

number of Saracens residing in Aragon even in the thirteenth and

fourteenth centuries, the most flourishing period of the Granadian

empire,) had enabled many of them confessedly to speak and write the

Spanish language with purity and elegance. Some of the graceful little

songs, which are still chanted by the peasantry of Spain in their dances,

to the accompaniment of the castanet, are referred by a competent critic

(Conde, De la Poesía Oriental, MS.) to an Arabian origin. There can be

little hazard, therefore, in imputing much of this peculiar minstrelsy to

the Arabians themselves, the contemporaries, and perhaps the eye-

witnesses, of the events they celebrate.

[31] Casiri (Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. p. 259) has transcribed a

passage from an Arabian author of the fourteenth century, inveighing

bitterly against the luxury of the Moorish ladies, their gorgeous apparel

and habits of expense, "amounting almost to insanity," in a tone which may

remind one of the similar philippic by his contemporary Dante, against his

fair countrywomen of Florence.--Two ordinances of a king of Granada, cited

by Conde in his History, prescribed the separation of the women from the

men in the mosques; and prohibit their attendance on certain festivals,

without the protection of their husbands or some near relative.--Their

_femmes savantes_, as we have seen, were in the habit of conferring

freely with men of letters, and of assisting in person at the academical

_séances_.--And lastly, the frescoes alluded to in the text represent

the presence of females at the tournaments, and the fortunate knight

receiving the palm of victory from their hands.

[32] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. i. p. 340; tom. iii. p. 119.

[33] Casiri, on Arabian authority, computes it at 200,000 men. Bibliotheca

Escurialensis, tom. i. p. 338.

[34] Pulgar, Reyes Católicos, p. 250.

[35] Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., tom. vi. p. 169.--These ruined

fortifications still thickly stud the border territories of Granada; and

many an Andalusian mill, along the banks of the Guadayra and Guadalquivir,

retains its battlemented tower, which served for the defence of its

inmates against the forays of the enemy.

[36] D'Herbelot, (Bib. Orientale, tom. i. p. 630,) among other authentic

traditions of Mahomet, quotes one as indicating his encouragement of

letters, viz. "That the ink of the doctors and the blood of the martyrs

are of equal price." M. OElsner (Des Effets de la Religion de Mohammed,

Paris, 1810) has cited several others of the same liberal import. But such

traditions cannot be received in evidence of the original doctrine of the

prophet. They are rejected as apocryphal by the Persians and the whole

sect of the Shiites, and are entitled to little weight with a European.

[37] When the caliph Al Mamon encouraged, by his example as well as

patronage, a more enlightened policy, he was accused by the more orthodox

Mussulmans of attempting to subvert the principles of their religion. See

Pococke, Spec. Hist. Arabum, (Oxon. 1650,) p. 166.

[38] Andres, Letteratura, part. 1, cap. 8, 10.--Casiri, Bibliotheca

Escurialensis, tom. ii. pp. 71, 251, et passim.

[39] Casiri mentions one of these universal geniuses, who published no

less than a thousand and fifty treatises on the various topics of Ethics,

History, Law, Medicine, etc.! Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. p. 107.

--See also tom. i. p. 370; tom. ii. p. 71 et alibi.--Zuñiga, Annales de

Sevilla, p. 22.--D'Herbelot, Bib. Orientale, voce _Tarikh_.--Masdeu,

Historia Crítica, tom. xiii. pp. 203, 205.--Andres, Letteratura, part. 1,

cap. 8.

[40] Consult the sensible, though perhaps severe, remarks of Degerando on

Arabian science. (Hist. de la Philosophie, tom. iv. cap. 24.)--The reader

may also peruse with advantage a disquisition on Arabian metaphysics in

Turner's History of England, (vol. iv. pp. 405-449.--Brucker, Hist.

Philosophiae, tom. in. p. 105.)--Ludovicus Vives seems to have been the

author of the imputation in the text. (Nic. Antonio, Bibliotheca Vetus,

tom. ii. p. 394.) Averroes translated some of the philosophical works of

Aristotle from the Greek into Arabic; a Latin version of which translation

was afterwards made. Though D'Herbelot is mistaken (Bib. Orientale, art.

_Roschd_) in saying that Averroes was the first who translated Aristotle

into Arabic; as this had been done two centuries before, at least, by

Honain and others in the ninth century, (see Casiri, Bibliotheca

Escurialensis, tom. i. p. 304,) and Bayle has shown that a Latin version

of the Stagirite was used by the Europeans before the alleged period. See

art. _Averroes_.

[41] Sprengel, Histoire de la Médecine, traduite par Jourdan, (Paris,

1815,) tom. ii. pp. 263 et seq.

[42] Degerando, Hist. de la Philosophie, tom. iv. ubi supra.

[43] Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. p. 9.--Andres, Letteratura, part.

1, cap. 10.

[44] Letteratura Italiana, tom. v. p. 87.

[45] The battle of Crécy furnishes the earliest instance on record of the

use of artillery by the European Christians; although Du Cange, among

several examples which he enumerates, has traced a distinct notice of its

existence as far back as 1338. (Glossarium ad Scriptores Mediae et Infimae

Latinitatis, (Paris, 1739,) and Supplément, (Paris, 1766,) voce

_Bombarda_.) The history of the Spanish Arabs carries it to a much

earlier period. It was employed by the Moorish king of Granada at the

siege of Baza, in 1312 and 1325. (Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom.

iii. cap. 18.--Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. p. 7.) It is

distinctly noticed in an Arabian treatise as ancient as 1249; and,

finally, Casiri quotes a passage from a Spanish author at the close of the

eleventh Century, (whose MS., according to Nic. Antonio, though familiar

to scholars, lies still entombed in the dust of libraries,) which

describes the use of artillery in a naval engagement of that period

between the Moors of Tunis and of Seville. Casiri, Bibliotheca

Escurialensis, tom. ii. p. 8.--Nic, Antonio, Bibliotheca Vetus, tom. ii.

p. 12.

[46] Petrarch complains, in one of his letters from the country, that

"jurisconsults and divines, nay his own valet, had taken to rhyming; and

he was afraid the very cattle might begin to low in verse;" apud De Sade,

Mémoires pour la Vie de Pétrarque, tom. iii. p. 243.

[47] Andres, Letteratura, part. 1, cap. 11.--Yet this popular assertion is

contradicted by Reinesius, who states, that both Homer and Pindar were

translated into Arabic by the middle of the eighth century. See Fabricius,

Bibliotheca Graeca, (Hamb. 1712-38,) tom. xii. p. 753.

[48] Sir William Jones, Traité sur la Poésie Orientale, sec. 2.--Sismondi

says that Sir W. Jones is mistaken in citing the history of Timour by Ebn.

Arabschah, as an Arabic epic. (Littérature du Midi, tom. i. p. 57.) It is

Sismondi who is mistaken, since the English critic states that the Arabs

have no heroic poem, and that this poetical prose history is not accounted

such even by the Arabs themselves.

[49] It would require much more learning than I am fortified with, to

enter into the merits of the question, which has been raised respecting

the probable influence of the Arabian on the literature of Europe. A. V.

Schlegel, in a work of little bulk, but much value, in refuting with his

usual vivacity the extravagant theory of Andres, has been led to

conclusions of an opposite nature, which may be thought perhaps scarcely

less extravagant. (Observations sur la Langue et la Littérature

Provençales, p. 64.) It must indeed seem highly improbable that the

Saracens, who, during the Middle Ages, were so far superior in science and

literary culture to the Europeans, could have resided so long in immediate

contact with them, and in those very countries indeed which gave birth to

the most cultivated poetry of that period, without exerting some

perceptible influence upon it. Be this as it may, its influence on the

Castilian cannot reasonably be disputed. This has been briefly traced by

Conde in an "Essay on Oriental Poetry," _Poesia Oriental_, whose

publication he anticipates in the Preface to his "History of the Spanish

Arabs," but which still remains in manuscript. (The copy I have used is in

the library of Mr. George Ticknor.) He professes in this work to discern

in the earlier Castilian poetry, in the Cid, the Alexander, in Berceo's,

the arch-priest of Hita's, and others of similar antiquity, most of the

peculiarities and varieties of Arabian verse; the same cadences and number

of syllables, the same intermixture of assonances and consonances, the

double hemistich and prolonged repetition of the final rhyme. From the

same source he derives much of the earlier rural minstrelsy of Spain, as

well as the measures of its romances and seguidillas; and in the Preface

to his History, he has ventured on the bold assertion, that the Castilian

owes so much of its vocabulary to the Arabic, that it may be almost

accounted a dialect of the latter. Conde's criticisms, however, must be

quoted with reserve. His habitual studies had given him such a keen relish

for Oriental literature, that he was, in a manner, _denaturalized_ from

his own.

[50] Byron's beautiful line may seem almost a version of Conde's Spanish

text, "sucesos de armas y de amores con muy estraños lances y en elegante

estilo."--Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. i. p. 457.

[51] Sismondi, in his Littérature du Midi, (tom. i. pp. 267 et seq.), and

more fully in his Républiques Italiennes, (tom. xvi. pp. 448 et seq.),

derives the jealousy of the sex, the ideas of honor, and the deadly spirit

of revenge, which distinguished the southern nations of Europe in the

fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, from the Arabians. Whatever be thought

of the jealousy of the sex, it might have been supposed that the

principles of honor and the spirit of revenge might, without seeking

further, find abundant precedent in the feudal habits and institutions of

our European ancestors.

[52] "Quas _perversivnes_ potius, quam _versiones_ meritó dixeris."

Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. i. p. 266.