In the north there was developing another and very different power.
The descendants of the Visigoth Kings, making common cause with the
rough mountaineers, had shared all their hardships and rigors in the
mountains of the Asturias. Inured to privation and suffering, entirely
unacquainted with luxury or even with the comforts of living, they had
grown strong, and in a century after Alfonso I. had emerged from their
mountain shelter and removed their court and capital from Oviedo to
Leon, where Alfonso III. held sway over a group of barren kingdoms,
poor, proud, but with _Hidalgos_ and _Dons_, who were keeping alive
the sacred fires of patriotism and of religion. This was the rough
cradle of a Spanish nationality.
They had their own jealousies and fierce conflicts, but all united in
a common hatred of the Moor. Though they did not yet dream of driving
him out of their land, their brave leaders, Ramiro I. and Ordono I.
had been for years steadily defying and tormenting him with the kind
of warfare to which they gave its name--_guerrilla_--meaning "little
wars."
While the Great Khalif was consolidating his Moorish kingdom and
driving the Christians back into their mountains, the power of that
people was being weakened by internal strifes existing between the
three adjacent kingdoms--Leon, Castile, and Navarre. The headship
of Leon was for years disputed by her ambitious neighbor Castile (so
called because of the numerous fortified castles with which it was
studded), under the leadership of one Fernando, Count of Castile.
There had been the usual lapse into anarchy and weakness after the
Great Khalif's death. Andalusia always needed a master, and this she
found in _Almanzor_, who was Prime Minister to one of the Khalif's
feeble descendants. It was a sad day for the struggling kingdom in the
north when this all-subduing man took the reins in his own hands, and
left his young master to amuse himself in collecting rare manuscripts
and making Cordova more beautiful.
This Almanzor, the mightiest of the soldiers of the Crescent since
Tarik and Musa, proclaimed a war of faith against the Christians, who
were obliged to forget their local dissensions and to try with their
combined strength to save their kingdom from extermination. These were
the darkest days to which they had yet been subjected. But for the
death of Almanzor the ruin of the Christian state would have been
complete. A monkish historian thus records this welcome event: "In
1002 died Almanzor, and was buried in hell."
The death of Almanzor was the turning point in the fortunes of the two
kingdoms--that of the Moors and of the Christians.
The magnificence and the glory of the kingdom faded like the mist
before the morning sun. Never again would Cordova be called the "Bride
of Andalusia." Eight years after the death of Almanzor anarchy and
ruin reigned in that city. The gentle, studious youth who was Khalif,
was dragged with his only child to a dismal vault attached to the
great mosque; and here, in darkness and cold and damp, sat the
grandson of the first Great Khalif, his child clinging to his breast
and begging in vain for food, his wretched father pathetically
pleading with his jailers for just a crust of bread, and a candle to
relieve the awful darkness.
The brutal Berbers now had their turn. The priceless library, with its
six hundred thousand volumes, was in ashes. They were in the "City of
the Fairest." Palace after palace was ransacked, and in a few days
all that remained of its exquisite treasures of art was a heap of
blackened stones (1010). The Christians drew their broken state closer
together, and gathered themselves for a more aggressive warfare than
any yet undertaken. The time when the Moors were in the throes of
civil war was favorable. The three kingdoms of Asturias, Leon, and
Castile were in 1073 united into one "kingdom of Castile," under
Alfonso VI., who had already made great inroads upon the Moslem
territory and laid many cities under tribute. With this event, the
name _Castilian_ comes into Spanish history, and from thenceforth that
name represents all that is proudest, bravest, and most characteristic
of the part of the race which traces a direct lineage from the ancient
Visigoth Kings.
Alfonso had not misjudged his opportunity. He had traversed Spain
with his army, and bathed in the ocean in sight of the "Pillars of
Hercules." His great general Rodrigo Diaz, known as "My Cid, the
Challenger," had cut another path all the way to Valencia, where he
reigned as a sort of uncrowned king; and he will forever reign
as crowned king in the realm of romance and poetry; the perfect
embodiment of the knightly idea--the "Challenger," who, in defense
of the faith, would stand before great armies and defy them to single
combat! Whether "My Cid" ever did such mighty deeds as are ascribed to
him, no one knows. But he stands for the highest ideal of his time.
He was the "King Arthur" of Spanish history; and so valiantly did
he serve the Christian cause that the Moors were driven to a most
disastrous step. With the Cid in Valencia, with Alfonso VI. marching
a victorious army through the Moslem territory, and with Toledo, the
city of the ancient Visigoth Kings, repossessed, it looked as if,
after almost four hundred years, the Christians were about to recover
their land.
The Moors, thoroughly frightened, realizing how helpless they had
grown, resolved upon a desperate measure.
There was, on the opposite African coast, a sect of Berber fanatics,
fierce and devout, known as "saints," but which the Moors called
_Almoravides_. Fighting for the faith was their occupation. What more
fitting than to use them as a means of driving the infidel Christians
out of Moslem territory!
They came, like a cloud of locusts, and settled upon the land. Yusuf,
their general, led his men against Alfonso's Castilians October 23,
1086. Near Badajos the attack was made simultaneously in front and
rear, crushing them utterly; Alfonso barely escaping with five hundred
men. This was only the first of many other crushing defeats; the most
disheartening of which was the one in 1099, when the Cid, fighting in
alliance with Pedro, King of Aragon, was defeated near Gardia, on the
seacoast. Then the great warrior's heart broke, and he died; and we
are told he was clothed cap-a-pie in shining armor and placed upright
on his good steed Bavieca, his trusty sword in his hand--and so he
passed to his burial; his banner borne and guarded by five hundred
knights. And we are also told the Moors wonderingly watched his
departure with his knights, not suspecting that he was dead.
The object of the Moors in inviting the odious Almoravides had been
accomplished; the Christians had been driven out of Andalusia back
into their own territory; but their African auxiliaries were too well
pleased with their new abode to think of leaving it. One by one the
Moorish Princes were subdued by the men whose aid they had invoked,
until a dynasty of the Almoravides was fastened upon Spain. To the
refined Spanish Arabs contact with these savages from the desert was
a terrible scourge, and so far as they were able they withdrew into
communities by themselves, leaving these African locusts to devour
their substance and dim their glory.
But luxury was not favorable to the invaders. In another generation
their martial spirit was gone and they had become only ignorant,
sodden voluptuaries; and when the Christians once more renewed their
attacks, they failed to repel them as Yusuf had done thirty years
before.
There was another fanatical sect, beyond the Atlas range in Africa,
which had long been looking for a coming Messiah, whom they called the
_Mahdi_. They were known as the _Alhomades_. A son of a lamp-lighter
in the Mosque of Cordova one day presented himself before the
Alhomades, and announced that he was the great _Mahdi_, who was
divinely appointed to lead them, and to bring happiness to all the
earth.
The path this _Mahdi_ desired to lead them was first to Morocco, there
to subdue the Almoravides in their own land, and thence to Spain. In
a short time this entire plan was realized. The Mahdi's successor was
Emperor of Morocco, and by the year 1150 included in his dominion was
all of Mahommedan Spain! The Spanish Arabs, when they were fighting
Alfonso VI. and the "Cid," did not anticipate this disgraceful
downfall from people of their own faith. They abhorred these
Mahommedan savages, and drew together still closer for a century more
in and about their chosen refuge of Granada.
In the early part of the thirteenth century the Emperor of Morocco
made such enormous preparations for the occupation of Spain that a
larger design upon Europe became manifest. Once more Christendom was
alarmed; not since Charles Martel had the danger appeared so great.
The Pope proclaimed a Crusade, this time not into Palestine, but
Spain.
An army of volunteers from the kingdom of Portugal and from southern
France re-enforced the great armies of the Kings of Castile, Aragon,
and Navarre. The Crusaders, as they called themselves, assembled
at Toledo July 12, 1212, under the command of Alfonso IX., King of
Castile. The power of the Alhomades was broken, and they were driven
out of Spain. The once great Mahommedan Empire in that country was
reduced to the single province of Granada, where the Moors intrenched
themselves in their last stronghold. For nearly three centuries the
Crescent was yet to wave over the kingdom of Granada; but it was to
shine in only the pale light of a waning crescent, until its final
extinction in the full light of a Christian day.