The tide which had flowed over southern Spain was a singular mixture
of religious fervor, of brutish humanity, and refinements of wisdom
and wickedness. No stranger and more composite elements were ever
thrown together. Permanence and peace were impossible. Nothing but
force could hold together elements so incongruous and antagonistic. As
soon as the hand of Abd-er-Rahman I. was removed disintegration began.
Clashing races, clans, and political parties had in a few years made
such havoc that it seemed as if the Omeyyad dynasty was crumbling.
It might have been an Arab who said "he cared not who made the laws
of his country, so he could write its songs." Learning, literature,
refinements of luxury and of art had taken possession of the land,
which seemed given up to the muses. When in 822 Abd-er-Rahman II.
reigned, he did not trouble himself about the laws of his crumbling
empire. The one man in whom he delighted was _Ziryab_. What Petronius
was to Nero,[A] and Beau Brummel to George IV., that was Ziryab to
the Sultan Abd-er-Rahman II., the elegant arbiter in matters of taste.
From the dishes which should be eaten to the clothes which should
be worn, he was the supreme judge; while at the same time he knew by
heart and could "like an angel sing" one thousand songs to his adoring
Sultan.
Even the Gothic Christians were seduced by these alluring refinements.
They felt contempt for their old Latin speech and for their
literature, with the tiresome asceticism it eternally preached. The
Christian ideal had grown to be one of penance and mortification of
the flesh, and to a few ardent souls these sensuous delights were an
open highway to death eternal. _Eulogius_ became the leader of this
band of zealots. In lamenting the decadence of his people, he wrote,
"hardly one in a thousand can write a decent Latin letter, and yet
they indite excellent Arabic verse!" Filled with despairing ardor this
man aroused a few kindred spirits to join him in a desperate attempt
to awaken the benumbed conscience of the Christians. They could not
get the Moslems to persecute them, but they might attain martyrdom by
cursing the Prophet; then the infidels, however reluctant, would be
compelled to behead them. This they did, and one by one perished,
to no purpose. The Gothic Christians were not conscience-stricken as
Eulogius supposed they would be, and there was no general uprising for
the Christian faith.
In 912 the threatened ruin of the dynasty was arrested by the coming
of another Abd-er-Rahman, third Sultan of that name. Rebellion was put
down, and fifty years of wise and just administration gave solidity to
the kingdom, which also then became a _Khalifate_.
The Abbaside Khalifs, after the deposition of the Omeyyads, had
removed the Khalifate from Damascus to Baghdad. But the empire
had extended too far west to revolve about that distant pivot.
Abd-er-Rahman--perhaps remembering the old feud between his family
and the Abbasides--determined to assume the spiritual headship of
the western part of the empire. And thereafter, the Mahommedan
empire--like the Roman--had two heads, an Eastern Khalif at Baghdad,
and a Western Khalif at Cordova.
While thus extending his own power the Khalif was extinguishing every
spark of rebellion in the south and driving the rebellious Christians
back in the north, and at the same time he was clothing Cordova with a
splendor which amazed and dazzled even the Eastern Princes who came
to pay court to the great Khalif. His emissaries were everywhere
collecting books for his library and treasure for his palaces. Cordova
became the abode of learning, and the nursery for science, philosophy,
and art, transplanted from Asia. The imagination and the pen of
an arab poet could not have overdrawn this wonderful city on the
Guadalquivir,--with its palaces, its gardens, and fountains,--its
50,000 houses of the aristocracy,--its 700 mosques,--and 900 public
baths,--all adorned with color and carvings and tracery beautiful as a
dream of Paradise. One hears with amazement of the great mosque,
with its 19 arcades, its pavings of silver and rich mosaics, its 1293
clustered columns, inlaid with gold and lapis-lazuli, the clusters
reaching up to the slender arches which supported the roof; the whole
of this marvelous scene lighted by countless brazen lamps made from
Christian bells, while hundreds of attendants swung censers, filling
the air with perfume.
After the ravages of a thousand years travelers stand amazed to-day
before the forest of columns which open out in endless vistas in the
splendid ruin, calling up visions of the vanished glories of Cordova
and the Great Khalif.
There is not time to tell of the city this Spanish Khalif built for
his favorite wife, "The Fairest," and which he called "Hill of the
Bride," upon which for fifteen years ten thousand men worked daily;
nor of the four thousand columns which adorned its palaces, presents
from emperors and potentates in Constantinople, Rome, and far-off
Eastern states; nor of the ivory and ebony doors, studded with jewels,
through which shone the sun, the light then falling on the lake of
quick-silver, which sent back blinding, quivering flashes into dazzled
eyes. And we are told of the thirteen thousand male servants who
ministered in this palace of delight. All this, too, at a time when
our Saxon ancestors were living in dwellings without chimneys, and
casting the bones from the table at which they feasted into the foul
straw which covered their floors; when a Gothic night had settled upon
Europe, and blotted out civilization so completely that only in a part
of Italy, and around Constantinople, did there remain a vestige of
refinement!
It is said that when the embassy from Constantinople came bearing a
letter to the Khalif, the courtier whose duty it was to read it was so
awed by all this splendor that he fainted!
And yet the owner and creator of this fabulous luxury,--Sultan and
Khalif of a dominion the greatest of his time, and with "The Fairest"
for his adored wife,--when he came to die, left a paper upon which he
had written that he could only recall fourteen days in which he had
been happy.
[Footnote A: See "Quo Vadis?"]