CHAPTER VIII

THE OMMEYADES; REIGN OF ABD-AL-RAHMAN I.

756–788

The Ommeyade Family--Its Origin--Its Hostility to

Mohammed--The Syrian Princes--Their Profligacy--Splendors

of Damascus--Luxury of the Syrian Capital--Rise of the

Abbasides--Proscription of the Defeated Faction--Escape of

Abd-al-Rahman--His Romantic Career--He enters Spain--His

Success--Defeat and Dethronement of Yusuf--Constant

Insurrections--Enterprise of the Khalif of Bagdad--Its

Disastrous Termination--Invasion of Charlemagne--Slaughter

of Roncesvalles--Death of Abd-al-Rahman--His Character--His

Services to Civilization--Foundation of the Great Mosque--The

Franks reconquer Septimania.

I now turn to that splendid period wherein was displayed the glory

of the line of the Ommeyades, an epoch forever memorable for its

achievements in science and practical philosophy; forever illustrious

in the history of intellectual progress as well as for the development

of those useful arts which diminish the toil and increase the happiness

of every individual, irrespective of rank, whose influence and

avocations insensibly contribute their share to the amelioration or

degradation of humanity.

Prominent among the nobles of Mecca, equal in pride of lineage and

superior in real power to the Hashemites, to which tribe the Prophet

belonged, was the family of the Ommeyades. Although not exempt from

a well-grounded suspicion of atheism, they were, from motives of

policy, devoted champions of the worship of the Kaaba. Their idolatrous

predilections were disclosed by the significant names of their

chieftains, and especially by that of their founder, Abd-al-Shams,

“The Slave of the Sun.” While the sheiks of the Hashemites, the

hereditary guardians of the Kaaba, enjoyed the nominal authority of

heads of the Koreish, the military talents and intellectual endowments

of the Ommeyades secured for their chiefs the command of the army,

an advantage by no means counterbalanced by the spiritual influence

possessed by their rivals over the worldly and skeptical population of

Mecca. The commerce of the Holy City, which reaped such substantial

benefits from its position as the centre of Arabian superstition, was

largely in the hands of the Ommeyades. The great caravans, which, at

regular periods, carried on a lucrative traffic with Egypt and Syria,

were placed under the charge of their most distinguished leaders. The

riches amassed by the principal members of the family were prodigious,

and their insolence and cruelty were, in nearly every instance, in

a direct ratio to their wealth and power. Quick to perceive that

their political influence as well as their pecuniary interests would

be seriously imperilled by the spread of Islam, the Ommeyades early

displayed the most unrelenting hostility towards their countryman

Mohammed. They reviled his doctrines. They scoffed at his pretensions

to divine inspiration. His proselytes were followed by the taunts and

insults of the mob of Mecca, instigated by the dissolute young nobles

of the Koreish aristocracy. Long before he had secured a respectable

following, the Prophet, on several occasions, narrowly escaped the

violence of his insidious enemies; and the Hegira itself, the era

from which the magnificent dynasties of Syria and Spain were to date

the acts of their sovereigns, was necessitated by the discovery of a

murderous plot against him hatched and matured by the chiefs of the

Ommeyades.

In the defeat of Ohod, where the Prophet was wounded and nearly lost

his life; at the siege of Medina, which menaced with destruction the

existence of the new religion, the hostile armies were commanded by

Abu-Sofian, the principal sheik of this powerful family. His wife, the

termagant Hind, prompted by the impulses of a savage and a cannibal,

had torn out and partly devoured the liver of Hamza, Mohammed’s uncle,

and had worn a necklace and bracelets of the ears of Moslems who had

fallen bravely in battle. After the surrender of Mecca, Abu-Sofian and

his partisans were induced to show a pretended conformity with the

observances of the detested faith, but only under the threat of instant

death.

The Syrian princes, despite their services to literature and art, were,

almost without exception, profligates and infidels. Ever famous for

voluptuousness and frivolity, they had inherited and improved upon the

seductive dissipations of the Roman Empire. In the ingenious invention

and development of depraved tastes and acts of unspeakable infamy,

Antioch and Damascus stood unrivalled. The use of wine, prohibited by

the Koran, was universal; the debauchery of the court, which rivalled

that of the worst period of imperial degradation, excited the wonder

and disgust of foreigners. The ministers of the most revolting vices,

unmolested, defiled with their presence alike the halls of the palace

and the precincts of the mosque. The drunkenness of the Khalif not

infrequently required the constant attendance of slaves, even in the

audience chamber. Vast sums were lavished upon singing and dancing

boys painted and attired like women, an abomination in the eyes of

every conscientious Mussulman. Female musicians and performers, whose

attractions often obtained over the susceptible monarch a dangerous

and permanent ascendency, were imported at great expense from Mecca,

the focus of the religion and the vice of Asia. A spirit of boundless

extravagance was cultivated as a necessary attribute of regal splendor,

and a timely jest or a ribald song often procured for an unworthy

favorite a reward equal to the revenue of a province.

Damascus, under the rule of the Ommeyades, presented a picture of

licentiousness and luxury unequalled, before or since, by that or any

other community of the Moslem world. The importance of its commerce,

the opulence of its citizens, the beauty of its suburbs, the sanctity

of its traditions, and the prestige of its name gained for the most

venerable city of antiquity the admiration and the reverence of every

traveller. Its temples were embellished with all the magnificent

creations of Oriental art. Its palaces were encrusted with porphyry,

verde-antique, lapis lazuli, and alabaster. Through its gardens, over

whose mosaic walks waved in stately majesty the palm, and where the

air was perfumed with the fragrance of a thousand flowers and aromatic

shrubs, flowed rivulets of the purest water. In every court-yard were

fountains, and in the harems of the wealthy they were often fed with

costly wines. The most gaudy attire was affected even by the populace,

and no material but silk was considered worthy of the dignity of a

Syrian noble. In the shops of the bazaar, divided as are those of the

East to-day into sections appropriated to different wares, were to be

found objects of commerce of every country from Hindustan to Britain.

The various nationalities which composed the population of the city

were each distinguished by a peculiar costume, and the brilliant and

picturesque aspect of the living streams which poured unceasingly

through the streets was enhanced by the multitudes of visitors whom

business or curiosity had attracted to the capital of the khalifate.

With the occupation of the city by the Moslems, its physical aspect,

the character of its population, and the nature of its political

institutions had changed with its religion. From Græco-Syrian, affected

to some extent by Persian influence, it became thoroughly Arab. The

apparently ineradicable ideas of personal liberty entertained by the

Bedouin, inconsistent even with the salutary restraints necessary for

the maintenance of government and the preservation of society, were

carried from the boundless Desert into the circumscribed area of the

Syrian metropolis. Every tribe had its own municipal district or ward,

separated from the others by walls fortified by towers, and closed

at sunset by massive gates. So perfect was this isolation that each

quarter exhibited the picture of a miniature town, independent of the

others, with its markets, caravansaries, mosques, and cemeteries. The

rule of separation was carried still farther in these communities by

assigning different wards to Jews and Christians, a practice still to

be observed in the cities of the Orient. Unobstructed communication

with the surrounding country was obtained by means of gateways in

the principal wall, of which each quarter always possessed one and

sometimes more. This singular arrangement, a constant protest against

the centralized despotism which, despite its professions, is the

governing principle of Islam, greatly facilitated the political

disturbances and insurrections whose prevalence is so marked a feature

in the history of Damascus.

The Great Mosque, inferior in sanctity only to the temples of Mecca,

Medina, and Jerusalem, stood in the very centre of the city. The plan

and decorations of the structure were Byzantine, and still bear no

inconsiderable resemblance to those of the Cathedral of St. Mark at

Venice. In such profusion were mosaics lavished upon its walls that

even the exterior blazed with the intolerable brilliancy of this

elegant ornamentation. Its imposing dome and slender minarets, rising

above a maze of houses and gardens, were the first objects which met

the expectant glance of the camel-driver as he urged his weary beast

over the drifting sands of the Desert. At the fountain of its spacious

court the pilgrim from Yemen and the merchant from Irac, side by side,

performed the lustrations enjoined upon the true believer. Before

its gorgeous Kiblah the curious of every clime, the devout of every

rank, the prince and the beggar, the noble and the dervish, the master

and the slave, in fraternal concord implored the protection and the

blessing of God.

The splendors of the Orient were reflected by the court and the

palace of the khalifate. The quarries of Europe, Africa, and Asia

were ransacked for the rarest marbles. Temples of Pagan deities were

stripped of frieze and capital carved by the hands of famous sculptors

of antiquity. Byzantine mosaics glittered upon the floors and walls

with a sheen that resembled folds of satin drapery and cloth of gold.

The tapestries of Persia, whose designs ignored the injunction of the

Koran prohibiting the representation of forms of animal life, were

suspended, in gorgeous magnificence, from portals of verde-antique and

arcades of Numidian marble and polished jasper. The gilded ceilings

were of odoriferous woods curiously inlaid in bewildering arabesques

with ivory, mother-of-pearl, ebony, and tortoise-shell. The profusion

of water recalled the partiality of the Arab for the precious fluid

associated with the toilsome march of the caravan, with the repose of

the camp, with the refreshing coolness of the verdant oasis, with the

triumph of the foray, with many a happy memory and sacred tradition of

the Desert. In every court-yard sparkled jets of spray drawn from the

sources of the famous rivers Abana and Pharpar. Channels cut in the

marble floors conducted the overflow through the summer apartments of

the palace into the little canals which traversed, in every direction,

the fragrant gardens. The baths, designed to subserve the threefold

purpose of religion, health, and pleasure, were fitted up with almost

incredible luxury. Upon their walls the artists of Constantinople had

exhausted their utmost ingenuity and skill. The basins were of porphyry

and alabaster; the silver pipes were finished with the heads of animals

carved in solid gold. The air that came from the furnace through the

hypocaust was laden with the sweetness of a hundred intoxicating

odors. The divans upon which the bathers reclined were covered with

damask, embroidered with many colored silk in a maze of graceful and

capricious patterns. Through windows of stained glass, high up in the

vaulted ceiling, the brilliant rays of a Syrian sun fell, tempered and

refracted in iridescent hues upon the scene of luxurious repose and

sensuality below.

With the terrible retribution that followed the death of Othman, the

tribal supremacy--and with it the control of the Moslem government--was

transferred to the heads of the Meccan aristocracy of the clan of

Abu-Sofian. The sincerity of their professions had long been doubted.

The unwise appointments of Othman, a member of that family, was the

principal cause of the popular discontent that culminated in his

assassination. Weak and vacillating, his movements were directed by

his uncle Hakem, who had betrayed the confidence of Mohammed, and

had been ignominiously driven from the Hedjaz. Another Ommeyade, the

father of Walid, Governor of Kufa, spat in the face of the Prophet,

and had been executed as a felon, while the sacrilegious conduct of

his worthy son had provoked a dangerous riot in the very mosque of his

capital. Still another, Abdallah-Ibn-Sad, Governor of Egypt, raised

to the coveted dignity of secretary of Mohammed, had perverted the

texts of the Koran, and had fled and apostatized, thereby incurring the

penalty of death. Under Muavia, the first Syrian Khalif, the outward

ceremonies of religion were practised and the precepts of the Koran

obeyed with apparent fidelity. But this conformity, palpably insincere,

was largely the effect of policy. The orthodoxy of a people whose

ancestors were for centuries the ministers of idolatrous worship, who

resisted with every resource of contumely and violence the apostle

of a new religion in his weakness, and assented reluctantly to his

dogmas in his power, and whose political importance was directly

dependent upon the maintenance of that religion, may, with propriety,

be questioned. The Pagan traditions of his ancestors were predominant

in the breast of Muavia. A decent reverence for the Koran, an apparent

assent to its tenets, together with a politic and strict performance of

the ceremonies of its ritual, concealed from his subjects all of the

skepticism of his family, all of the abject superstition of his race.

His palace swarmed with soothsayers and charlatans. Before engaging

in any important undertaking, in the presence of public calamity,

under the weight of domestic misfortune, he appealed for counsel to

the arts of divination, denounced by Mohammed as a relic of idolatry

and offensive to God. In his adherence to these heathen rites he was

encouraged by the influence and example of his favorite consort, the

mother of Yezid, a Bedouin of the tribe of the Beni-Kalb, who, amidst

the luxurious pomp of the Syrian court, still pined for the coarse fare

and untrammelled freedom of the Desert.

The Ommeyade Khalifs grudged no treasure and spared no toil in the

adornment of their capital, the centre of their religion, the seat of

their empire. To their political sagacity are to be attributed the

massive fortifications which preserved the city from the encroachments

of Persia and the plots of daring aspirants to imperial power. Their

paternal beneficence was manifested by aqueducts and countless

subterranean conduits which conveyed an unfailing supply of water into

even the humblest dwellings of the poor. Their enlightened generosity

relieved the suffering, encouraged the learned, promoted commerce,

repressed fanaticism, dispelled the mists of ignorance. The white

banner of their dynasty floated in triumph over the mosque of Medina,

the towers of Bassora, the walls of Kairoan, the citadel of Toledo.

In scientific acumen and literary renown the reputation of the court

of Damascus was far inferior to that subsequently attained by the

Khalifate of Bagdad. The genius of the Syrian seemed less adapted to

the slow and plodding researches of the laboratory than to the noisy

wrangles of theological controversy. But in the material enjoyments

of life, in the pomp which invested the dignity of sovereign, in the

riotous exhibition of sensual extravagance, Damascus was supreme. On

occasions of ceremony the attire of the Khalif was of gold brocade,

and only when he exercised the religious functions of his holy office

incumbent on him as the head of Islam did he condescend to don the

plain white vestments of his order. The menials of his household,

even to the cooks, when they appeared before the Divan, were clad in

damask. The devotees of pleasure were the favorite companions of the

Successor of the Prophet. His days were passed at cock-fights and

horse-races. The number of coursers which contended in these trials

of speed was immense, sometimes amounting to the incredible figure of

one thousand. His nights were amused by the tales of story-tellers,

by the improvisations of poets, by the antics of buffoons, by the

lascivious contortions of professional dancers. The barbaric orgies of

the Bedouin tents were transferred to the palace of the khalifate,

and supplemented with the polished vices of Egypt and the nameless

iniquities of Rome and Constantinople. In the depth and frequency

of his potations, the royal expounder of the Koran might well

challenge the admiration of the seasoned revellers of Scandinavia. His

drinking-horns were of enormous size. The wine used in the banquets was

of the choice vintage of Tayif, a town in the vicinity of Mecca. Potent

of itself, the effect of its draughts was heightened by the addition of

musk and other aphrodisiacs. When the surfeited stomach could endure

no more, emetics were employed to prolong the debauch and obviate its

unpleasant consequences.

What a contrast does all this splendor and profligacy present to the

frugal habits, patriarchal simplicity, and homely virtues of the early

khalifs! What a change from the humble domestic offices performed by

the Arabian Prophet, who often himself prepared his frugal meal and

mended his tattered sandals! How different from the dignified reserve

and earnest piety of Abu-Bekr; how strange when compared with the

stoical demeanor and abstemious life of Omar, who entered Jerusalem

at the head of his victorious army in a garb inferior to that of the

meanest soldier, and whom an ambassador of the King of Persia found

asleep, surrounded by beggars, upon the steps of the Great Mosque of

Medina! And yet a century had not elapsed from the Hegira to the period

when the Ommeyades of Syria reached the meridian of their greatness and

their power.

The liberty enjoyed by women at this period was much greater than

that subsequently conceded them by Mohammedan law. The lax manners of

the Desert had not yet been completely subjected to the restrictions

demanded by new social conditions. During the reigns of the first

khalifs, the barbarous practice which countenanced the traffic in and

service of eunuchs was unknown. Later, however, the close intercourse

with the Byzantine and Persian courts suggested and encouraged the

custom. But it would seem from accounts transmitted by the writers of

the time that the institution of these guardians produced no marked

effect upon the prevailing immorality; and the fidelity of even the

modern eunuch is, as every adventurous Oriental traveller knows, far

from incorruptible. Princes visited clandestinely the harems of their

subjects, and celebrated in licentious verse, without concealment of

name or opportunity, the charms of their mistresses. Ladies of the

royal household intrigued openly with the poets and singers of the

court. With such examples before them, the inferior orders of the

people could hardly be expected to preserve even the appearance of

virtue. As a matter of fact, in no country was society more corrupt,

and the name of Syrian was everywhere a synonym of effeminacy,

infidelity, and vice.

But the excesses of the Khalifs of Damascus, scandalous as they

were, became trifling faults in the eyes of the pious Moslem when he

considered the horrible acts of sacrilege of which these sovereigns

were guilty. The generals of Yezid, after the battle of Harra

which avenged the murder of Othman and decided the fate of Arabia,

delivered up the city of Medina to pillage. A massacre, so cruel as

to provoke the indignation of an age accustomed to scenes of butchery

and violence, was perpetrated by the infuriated soldiery. A thousand

infants were born of the outrages of that fatal day to be branded for

life with the epithet of the “Children of Harra.” The troopers of the

Syrian army, encumbered with their horses, fastened them amidst gibes

and curses in the mosque; the mosque founded by Mohammed upon the

spot of propitious augury, where his favorite camel had halted at

the termination of the flight from Mecca. There, tethered between the

pulpit, whence the texts of the Koran had fallen from the lips of the

Prophet upon the attentive ears of multitudes of believers, and the

tomb where his remains had been reverently laid by the hands of his

companions, the restless horses defiled the place holiest on earth to

the Mussulman save the Kaaba alone. The survivors of Bedr, whom the

favor of Mohammed and the veneration of the populace had exalted to the

rank of an ecclesiastical nobility, perished to a man. At the siege of

Mecca, which soon followed, the privileges that, from time immemorial,

had protected the sacred territory from insult were violated, and the

mosque, set on fire by order of the commander of the army, was, with

the Kaaba, entirely consumed.

Under the administration of the succeeding khalifs of the House of

Ommeyah, the mad freaks of these unworthy chiefs of Islam attained

the climax of extravagance and sacrilege. Exhausted by debauchery and

careless of public opinion, they sent their boon companions and their

concubines, muffled in the royal robes, to repeat the morning prayer

from the pulpit of the mosque. They degraded their sacred office by

the assumption of mean disguises, the better to penetrate the interior

of the houses of their neighbors, inviolable in the sight of every

sincere Mussulman. They maintained and publicly caressed animals whose

contact the law of Islam declared unclean. Their lives were sullied

with incests and every physical abomination. The reverent Moslem will

not tread upon a piece of paper, for fear it may be inscribed with

a sentence from the Koran; but so little regard did the scoffing

Ommeyade princes entertain for its sacred texts that they used it as a

target for their arrows. Each was noted for his predilection for some

favorite vice. Al-Walid I. was seldom sober, and suffered no day to

pass without a drunken orgy. Yezid II. starved himself on account of

the death of a female slave. The conduct of Al-Walid II. was a strange

compound of the tricks of a buffoon and the vagaries of a lunatic.

In absolute defiance of the prejudices of his fellow-Mussulmans, he

insisted that his dogs should accompany his retinue on the Pilgrimage

to Mecca. Although, by virtue of his office, the leader of the great

Pilgrim caravan, who was expected to afford an edifying example of

piety to his followers and direct the customary devotional exercises,

so little did he appreciate the duties of the occasion that he

delegated his spiritual authority to one of his friends, and was with

difficulty dissuaded from erecting a tent on the very summit of the

Kaaba, wherein he might the more publicly outrage the feelings of

the inhabitants of the Holy City by scenes of drunkenness and riot.

A pet monkey, which had been christened Abu-Kais, was an inseparable

companion of his revels. He quaffed the strong wine of Tayif from

the same cup as his royal master, and with him shared alike the

pleasures of intoxication and the depression consequent upon prolonged

indulgence. The Khalif presented his strange associate to grave

ambassadors as a venerable and learned Jew whom the justice of the

Almighty had overtaken, and who, under the spell of enchantment, was

now expiating, in the form of an unclean animal, a life of hypocrisy

and sin. When the Khalif rode abroad, Abu-Kais accompanied him, clad

in silk, and mounted on a donkey magnificently caparisoned. But it

happened one day that Abu-Kais, having imbibed too freely of his

master’s liquor, was thrown from his steed and broke his neck. The

grief of Al-Walid for the loss of the monkey was for weeks the jest

of the capital. Abu-Kais was, to the great scandal of the faithful,

honored with the rites of Moslem burial, and the Khalif, whose poetic

talent was far above mediocrity, composed some plaintive verses as a

well-merited tribute to his conviviality and wisdom.

I have dwelt at some length upon the description of Damascus because

of the close and significant resemblance of the political, social,

religious, and military institutions of Syria to those of Mohammedan

Spain. In the population of the latter country the Syrian element

greatly preponderated in influence, if not in numbers. The first Khalif

of Andaluz was the last scion of the race of the Ommeyades. The feuds,

the prejudices, the traditions, of both nations were identical. The

Syrian exile ever retained in affectionate remembrance the scenes and

events of his childhood. His armies were marshalled in the same order

as were those which went forth to victory under the white banner of

Muavia and Al-Walid. His cities were laid out in imitation of the

irregular lines and labyrinthine streets of the Syrian capital. His

palaces were constructed by architects familiar with the splendid

edifices which were the crowning ornament of the Eastern Khalifate.

The mosaics that sparkled around the Kiblah of the Great Temple of the

West were the handiwork of the same school of Byzantine artists whose

creations had adorned the stately dome which rose over the site of the

ancient Church of St. John the Baptist. The Koran, whose leaves dyed

with the life-blood of Othman were long exhibited with the garments of

the martyred Khalif in the Djalma of Damascus, was for more than two

centuries the object of a veneration approaching to idolatry, rendered

by countless myriads of worshippers, attracted from every quarter of

the globe by the marvels and the sanctity of the Mosque of Cordova.

The gross and offensive ridicule of everything connected with religion

and with a life passed in strict accordance with the principles of

moral rectitude, so popular at the court of Damascus, would have been

considered impolitic and ill-bred by the polished society whose cities

lined the shores of the Tagus and the Guadalquivir. But education and

skepticism were almost equally diffused throughout the Peninsula, and

there was, in fact, but little difference in the opinions concerning

the divine origin and authenticity of the Koran entertained by the

Moslem of Syria and the Moslem of Spain. Nor was the influence of the

occult sciences less prominent in the West than in the East. Superior

intelligence, which brought emancipation from many of the vices of

superstition, did not seem to perceptibly diminish the confidence

inspired by the mummeries and impostures of the wizard and the

astrologer.

The Spanish Arabs, following the example of their Syrian brethren,

raised woman to a position equally removed from the one she so

ignominiously occupied in earlier and in later times, as the giddy toy

of man or the abject slave of religious credulity. The voice of the

princesses of Syria not infrequently decided the policy of the Divan.

The ladies of Cordova were the chosen advisers of the monarch; the

friends of philosophers; the learned associates of great physicians,

astronomers, generals, and diplomatists. Free from the excessive

prodigality, the defiant blasphemy, the extravagant follies of the

Syrian dynasty, the sovereigns of the Western Khalifate suffered no

opportunity to escape which would, even indirectly, secure for their

subjects the substantial benefits of commerce, the manifold advantages

of science, the pleasures of art, the consolations of literature; while

they at the same time, actuated by a lofty ambition not confined by the

limits of their own dominions, fostered those noble aspirations and

incentives to progress which promote the generous emulation of nations.

A society whose religious teachers are atheists and hypocrites, the

contempt of whose rulers is constantly manifested towards a faith to

which they are solely indebted for their authority and whose wickedness

has become proverbial, can hardly survive the first resolute attempt

at its overthrow. And so it happened with the Ommeyades at Damascus.

Not only in Syria, but to the uttermost bounds of the khalifate, the

stories of the vices and skepticism of the Commander of the Faithful

were heard with disgust and horror. The law-abiding were scandalized

by the orgies of the court. The descendants of those who had perished

at Harra and Mecca, the remnant of the recalcitrant non-conformists

of Persia, the seditious populace which had felt the iron hand of

the governors of Irac, were inflamed with the desire and the hope of

vengeance. The devout Mussulman, who conscientiously observed the

injunctions of the Koran and to whom the traditions of Islam were

sacred as connected with the life and sayings of the Prophet, was

shocked at the blasphemy which the Successor of Mohammed did not

hesitate to utter, even within the precincts of the mosque and before

the very altar of God. From time to time the popular indignation was

displayed in insurrections, which, being spontaneous and deficient

in organization and leadership, were crushed without difficulty. But

under the reign of Merwan II., the fourteenth khalif of the dynasty,

a formidable rebellion broke out in Persia. The descendants of Abbas,

the uncle of Mohammed and the grandfather of Ali, openly laid claim

to the throne of the Orient. Their party was supported by Abu-Muslim,

the greatest military commander of the age. Attached for generations

to the memory of Ali, the Persians flocked by thousands to the camp of

the insurgents, and the pretender, Abul-Abbas, having established his

authority over the eastern provinces, moved westward to the conquest of

Syria. Aware, when too late, of the magnitude of the impending danger,

which at first had been despised, the Khalif brought into requisition

the entire resources of his empire to repel the invasion. In the plains

of the Zab, a tributary of the Tigris, and not far from the site of

ancient Nineveh, the two armies met in a conflict upon whose result

were staked the destinies of the two great factions of Islam. The valor

of the Abbasides, aided by the treason which pervaded the ranks of the

enemy, prevailed; the forces of Merwan were routed; and the foundations

of a new empire were laid which was destined to eclipse, by the glories

of Bagdad, the dazzling and meretricious splendor of the court of

Damascus. And now a frightful proscription was inaugurated. Even the

schismatics, whose lukewarm support had incurred the suspicions of the

Ommeyades, were unable to escape the sword of the conqueror. It soon

became evident that the fury of the Abbasides would be satisfied only

with the absolute extermination of the hostile faction. The deposed

Khalif, Merwan, who had fled to Egypt, was defeated in a skirmish and

killed. Every member of his house whose rank was sufficiently exalted

to inspire the usurper with apprehensions was ruthlessly murdered.

Where open violence did not avail, the basest treachery was employed.

Abdallah, the uncle of Abul-Abbas, by affording some of the exiles

assistance, had succeeded in gaining the confidence of the proscribed

faction. He solemnly promised an asylum to all who would resort to

Damascus and invoke his protection. Deluded by his professions, many

left their hiding-places, where they had been in comparative security,

to expose themselves to the designs of a perfidious enemy. When all had

arrived who could be induced to confide in him, Abdallah gave a banquet

in honor of his distinguished protegés, which more than seventy of the

Ommeyades attended. In the midst of the festivities, at a given signal,

a band of soldiers burst in upon the assembly, and the unhappy guests

were massacred. Rugs and curtains were thrown over their prostrate

bodies; the revelry was renewed; and the partisans of the Abbasides

toasted the monster whose ferocious cunning had cut off his most

dangerous adversaries by the sacrifice of the rites of hospitality.

Within the tent of the Bedouin the life of his most deadly enemy is

sacred. But to the Arab of Syria or Persia no promise was binding, no

engagement was inviolable, where his interests or his ambition were

concerned. Thus had the fatal influence of Roman and Byzantine manners

vitiated the nature of a people whose sense of manly dignity and

personal honor had for ages been conspicuous amidst the wide-spread

depravity of Asia.

Every member of the detested race whom the blood-thirsty diligence

of their foes could discover was hunted like a wild beast and put

to death. Children were butchered in the presence of their parents.

Women who refused to disclose the hiding-places of their kindred,

or the whereabouts of their jewels, were stabbed without ceremony.

Abu-Ibn-Muavia, one of the noblest cavaliers of Damascus, was deprived

of a hand and foot, and paraded through the cities of Syria upon an ass

until pain and exhaustion relieved him of his misery. The ferocious

Abbasides were not content with outrages upon the living; they even

violated the tombs of the khalifs and scattered to the winds the

remains of those princes whose glory and whose crimes had adorned or

defiled the throne of the East.

Amidst the universal ruin of his family, one prince alone of the

Ommeyades, Abd-al-Rahman-Ibn-Muavia, had survived. Of rare promise and

endowed with many virtues, he had long been the ornament of the court

of Syria. He had received the best education obtainable in the schools

of the capital. His mind had been enlarged by travel. The fortuitous

advantages of wealth and royal lineage added but little to the

prestige attaching to his name. The conversation of learned men, daily

attendance upon the proceedings of the Divan, intimate association with

the highest dignitaries of the state, all had aided to familiarize

him with the complex machinery of government. The turbulence of the

times necessarily enlisted the military services of the various

members of the royal house, and Abd-al-Rahman was not deficient in the

knowledge of those duties required by the stirring life of the camp

and the battle-field. In proficiency in manly exercises, in the daring

adventures of the chase, in skill in the use of arms, he surpassed all

competitors.

An accidental and timely absence from the court had preserved the

young prince from the fate of his kindred. As soon as intelligence

of the massacre reached him, he fled to an estate which he possessed

near the Euphrates, and there he was soon joined by his household.

But the horsemen of Abul-Abbas, whose implacable cruelty had acquired

for him the appropriate title of Al-Saffah, The Sanguinary, were

already upon his track; his villa was surrounded, and by swimming the

river he barely escaped with his life. By dint of perseverance and

courage, after many perils, he succeeded in reaching Palestine, where

he was found by Bedr, a freedman of his father, who brought him his

sister’s jewels, generously donated to relieve his necessities. From

Palestine he passed in disguise into Africa, a province which had not

yet renounced allegiance to the Ommeyades, and whose governor had been

one of the most ardent supporters of the proscribed faction. Here

he was hospitably welcomed, and at once found himself surrounded by

friends and refugees who had eluded the vigilance of the Abbasides.

The spirits of the exile rose with the present assurance of security

in the companionship of adherents whose sympathies were aroused, and

whose passions were excited by the story of his wrongs. Years before,

the downfall of the race of Ommeyah had been foretold by an astrologer,

who had, at the same time, predicted the future greatness of the

illustrious fugitive. The intellect of Abd-al-Rahman, though strong,

was not proof against the oracles of superstition which flattered his

vanity while they inspired him with awe, and he had listened, with all

the credulity of an Oriental, to the mysterious hints of the charlatan.

The first portion of the prediction had been verified. With the single

exception of himself, the princes of his house had been exterminated.

His conscious mental superiority, his political experience, his keen

insight into human nature, his public and domestic virtues, persuaded

him and suggested to his partisans that no one of his family was so

worthy of a throne. Actuated by these ambitious feelings, and rashly

permitting his aspirations to prevail over his gratitude, Abd-al-Rahman

began to entertain hopes of securing the sovereignty of Africa. His

imprudent speeches came to the ears of the Viceroy, Ibn-Habib, a stern

old soldier, who was a relative of Yusuf and had once held high command

in the army of Spain. He also was acquainted with the astrologer’s

prediction, and was not disposed to contribute to its accomplishment

by the loss of his own life and the sacrifice of his power. Despising

the guests whose base conduct had so ill requited his hospitality, he

tendered his allegiance to the Abbaside Khalifate. All members of the

obnoxious faction were at once expelled from the country. Abd-al-Rahman

was forced to seek in disguise the most secluded regions of the Desert.

His condition became more and more precarious. A reward of a thousand

pieces of gold was offered for his head. He sought concealment among

the Bedouins, but their generous hospitality was not able to protect

him from the tireless emissaries of the Viceroy, who pursued him from

camp to camp and from tribe to tribe. On one occasion, he escaped from

a tent just as the Berbers rushed into it. On another, the wife of a

sheik concealed him in a corner under a pile of her garments. His means

long since exhausted, he became dependent upon charity. His food was

coarse and scanty, his clothes old and tattered. Although his youth

had been pampered with the choicest delicacies of a royal table, he

ate the barley bread and drank the camel’s milk of the douars without

a murmur. The nobility of his birth, the suavity of his manners, his

skill and daring in the chase, and the patience with which he submitted

to the trials of adverse fortune, gained for him the respect and esteem

of his wild associates. Even in his destitution he never ceased to

aspire to the throne of Africa, and, while his efforts were futile, the

activity of the indignant Viceroy kept him in continual apprehension.

At length, after five years of vagabondage and perilous adventure, he

became the guest of the Berber tribe of the Beni-Nafsa, a branch of the

Zenetah, from which his mother derived her origin and whose members

inhabited the mountainous region to the south of Ceuta. Here, under the

guardianship of his fellow-tribesmen, an alluring prospect was erelong

opened to his ambition, and the penniless wanderer, without country or

kindred, was suddenly called by the voice of a distant nation to found

a new empire and fulfil a grand and magnificent destiny.

In the mean time, the civil war in Spain between Yusuf and Ahmar, ruler

of Saragossa, had been proceeding with increasing atrocity but with

various and doubtful fortune. Owing to the close relations maintained

by Africa and the Spanish Peninsula with each other, the armies of the

latter country being constantly recruited from the martial population

of the former, and the governors themselves being connected by the

ties of blood, an abiding interest in the political fortunes of their

brethren beyond the strait was naturally manifested by the Arab and

Berber tribes, and intelligence of every important movement in Spain

was transmitted to the cities and camps of Al-Maghreb with unfailing

regularity. The vigilance and ability of the Viceroy of Africa had

at length convinced Abd-al-Rahman of the hopelessness of any attempt

to usurp his power. Ease of access to Andalusia and the distracted

condition of that country, with whose troubles he was thoroughly

familiar, caused him to abandon the scheme which had for so long been

the cherished object of his life for another which promised to be less

impracticable. A seasonable supply of money had lately reached the

impoverished prince from his friends in Syria. With this he despatched

the faithful Bedr, who had without complaint shared the privations

of his exile, to Spain; after entrusting him with a letter, in which

he laid claim to the throne by right of inheritance, directed to

the partisans of his family who, to the number of several hundred,

inhabited the eastern portion of Andalusia. The letter was in due

time delivered to the chiefs of the Syrians, who secretly convoked an

assembly of their tribesmen to determine what course should be pursued.

The hereditary loyalty of the adherents of the Ommeyades; the apparent

justice of the title of Abd-al-Rahman; the anarchy that everywhere

prevailed, and whose effects were at that time painfully manifest

in the threefold scourge of massacre, famine, and disease; and the

prospect of official promotion, assisted by a judicious distribution

of the gold brought by Bedr, decided the suffrages of the council in

favor of the prince. Scarcely had this opinion been adopted when a new

difficulty was added to those which had already rendered the issue

of the enterprise doubtful as well as hazardous. The Syrians were

ordered by the Emir to attend him in an expedition to the North. But,

by plausible excuses, the chieftains were enabled to defer the time of

departure, and a gift of a thousand pieces of gold was even obtained

from Yusuf under pretext of relieving the pressing necessities of

their dependents, but, in fact, to further a conspiracy having for its

end his own dethronement. A ship was at once equipped; Abd-al-Rahman

was conveyed with a small escort of Berbers to the coast of the

Peninsula, and, landing at the port of Almuñecar, was received with the

acclamations of a great multitude attracted to the spot by the combined

motives of curiosity and loyal enthusiasm. After being duly proclaimed

Emir, Abd-al-Rahman was conducted to a castle not far from Loja as the

guest of the owner Obeydallah, one of his most zealous adherents.

While these events were transpiring in the South, the expedition of

Yusuf against the rebellious Berbers of Saragossa had been singularly

fortunate. Overawed by superior numbers, the insurgents had purchased

immunity by the craven surrender of their leaders, Amir, Wahab, and

Hobab. With these redoubtable chieftains in his custody, the Emir was

moving leisurely southward when he was informed of the defeat of a

body of his troops by the Basques, and in a fit of ungovernable rage

he ordered the immediate execution of his prisoners. By this cruel

and impolitic act,--for the culprits were of the purest blood of the

Koreish, and were not responsible for the disaster to his arms,--he

alienated many of his stanchest supporters and materially increased

the following and resources of his rival. A few hours afterwards a

courier brought tidings of the landing of Abd-al-Rahman and of the new

and formidable danger that menaced his crown. Thirsting for revenge,

the dependents of the massacred captives deserted his standard by

hundreds. The forces of the Ommeyade prince increased daily; the

Yemenites, who regarded his family with a hatred intensified by

generations of injury and oppression, but whose detestation of Yusuf

was even deeper than that entertained towards the Syrian dynasty, were

easily induced to embrace the cause of the former; and, by a strange

revolution of fortune, the fugitive, who but a few weeks before had

been in hourly peril of his life, now found himself invested with

imperial authority and the commander of a veteran army of several

thousand men. Fully appreciating the dangerous character of the revolt,

as well as the uncertain consequences of a prolonged conflict, Yusuf

attempted negotiation. Envoys bearing valuable presents were despatched

to the camp of Abd-al-Rahman, who were authorized to promise him the

daughter of the Emir in marriage and an estate commensurate with his

dignity if he would renounce all claims to the throne. The advisers

of the prince, whose enthusiasm had somewhat abated since they had

taken time to reflect upon the possible results of their temerity,

recommended that the proposals be accepted. A bitter taunt, however,

provoked by the awkwardness of one of Abd-al-Rahman’s retinue,

abruptly terminated the negotiation; the sarcastic envoy was cast into

a dungeon; and the embassy of the Emir, dismissed without ceremony,

narrowly escaped being plundered before it reached the gates of Cordova.

No further course was now possible except an appeal to arms. The

prevalence of anarchy, the frequent change of rulers, the pernicious

immigration of barbarians from Africa, had thoroughly disorganized

society. The allegiance of every subject was regarded as a mere matter

of policy or choice. The armies were little better than banditti.

Even the ties of tribal union had been relaxed, save when the spirit

of vengeance required to be satisfied in accordance with the bloody

traditions of the Desert. Treachery was so rife that no man was certain

of the sincerity of his neighbor or could trust the loyalty of his

friend. It was no uncommon occurrence for troops at the critical moment

of a battle to publicly desert to the enemy, and immediately turn their

weapons against their late companions-in-arms. The grave uncertainties

of a contest, carried on under such circumstances, are apparent to

every reader. The forces of Abd-al-Rahman had recently received an

important accession by the arrival of a considerable number of African

cavalry, warriors of the clan of the Zenetah, whose tribal connections,

as well as their inexperience in the political intrigues of the

emirate, rendered their allegiance less precarious than that of the

veterans to whom all masters were alike and whose principal incentive

was plunder.

Early in the spring the army of Abd-al-Rahman took up its march with a

view to the capture of Cordova. Its course, however, was not directly

towards the capital, but farther to the south, where the Syrian and

Egyptian tribes--whose sentiments were known to be favorable to the

cause of the Ommeyades--had been distributed. Everywhere the insurgents

were welcomed with enthusiasm; the bravest warriors joined their ranks;

and the towns, one after another, including Seville, the most important

city of Andalusia in point of population, opened their gates to the

pretender. Abd-al-Rahman had scarcely received the homage of his new

subjects before he learned that Yusuf, who, aided by his counsellor

Al-Samil, had collected a formidable army in the provinces of Toledo

and Murcia, had marched from Cordova to intercept him. Leaving the

city, the prince proceeded northward with the expectation of seizing

the capital during the absence of the Emir. But the crafty old soldier

was not to be taken unawares. The movement of the insurgents was at

once detected; Yusuf retraced his steps; and for several hours the

two armies raced on together with the river between them. Arriving

at a village called Mosara, situated about a league from Cordova,

Abd-al-Rahman halted. The clamors of his soldiers, who had been on

short rations and were greatly fatigued by the rapid march they had

been compelled to undertake, now rose ominously on his ears. A council

of war was called, and it was decided to attack the enemy on the

following morning. By means of a ruse, which reflected little credit

upon his character, Abd-al-Rahman was enabled to cross the river

without molestation. He sent word to Yusuf that he was willing to renew

the negotiations which had been broken off before the commencement

of hostilities; that the terms were entirely acceptable; and that

there was so fair a prospect of peace that the treaty could be more

conveniently arranged if the two camps were more accessible to each

other. Duped by these plausible representations, the Emir suffered his

enemies to pass the Guadalquivir, and, learning of their half-famished

condition, even sent provisions to their camp. At dawn the troops of

Abd-al-Rahman prepared for action. The day was propitious. It was the

anniversary of the conflict of the Prairie, where an ancestor of the

young prince had signally defeated an adversary whose title was the

same as that of Yusuf. The coincidence was carried still further, for

it was not forgotten by the superstitious Arabs that the vizier of the

Emir and his royal tribesman both belonged to the race of Kais. These

prognostics of success were diligently circulated through the ranks of

the Ommeyades, already elated by the prospect of victory. The unwelcome

omens did not have a less powerful influence upon the imagination

of their opponents, for, disheartened and faltering, they regarded

themselves as having incurred the displeasure of heaven. The battle was

half lost before it fairly began.

So little confidence had the Yemenites in their commander, whose life

and fortunes were staked on the issue, that the prince was compelled

to exchange his war-horse for an old and crippled mule to avoid the

suspicion of intending to abandon his followers in the event of

disaster. The royal standard was a white turban attached to a lance;

an ensign of equally humble origin, and destined to no less celebrity

than the leathern apron of the Persian dynasty, for many generations

the symbol of conquest, empire, and glory. The cavalry of Abd-al-Rahman

routed that of the enemy, driving it back upon the infantry and

throwing the latter into confusion. The right wing and centre soon gave

way; the left wing maintained its position for some hours, when it also

was broken. The plain was covered with fugitives, who were speared

without mercy and trampled to death by the savage Zenetes. Yusuf and

Al-Samil succeeded in escaping by the fleetness of their horses; the

former fled to Merida, the latter took refuge in Jaen. Such was the

battle of Mosara, upon whose result hinged the destinies of Spain.

The contest was hardly over before the characteristic perfidy of the

Yemenite chieftains began to manifest itself. To the latter the lineage

of Abd-al-Rahman was peculiarly offensive. Aside from the general and

deep-seated prejudice they entertained against his family, many of

them were descendants of the martyrs and exiles of Medina and Harra.

Having satiated their revenge by the rout of the Maadites, and being

restrained from indiscriminate pillage by the command of Abd-al-Rahman,

Abu-Sabbah, one of the leaders, proposed to assassinate him. The

suggestion was listened to calmly by his associates, who discussed

it without regard to its moral aspect but solely with a view to its

present expediency and political consequences, and the more readily

as tribal interest was ever the controlling motive of their conduct.

Notified of their treasonable deliberations, Abd-al-Rahman lost no

time in surrounding himself with a guard. Thus foiled, the leader of

the conspirators dissembled his chagrin and endeavored by extravagant

demonstrations of loyalty to atone for his crime, but the penetration

of Abd-al-Rahman was not to be deceived, and, some months afterwards,

the treacherous Abu-Sabbah was summarily executed.

Although attended with success at the outset, the task of Abd-al-Rahman

was far more difficult than he had anticipated. The chiefs of the

opposite faction soon repaired their fortunes and appeared at the

head of fresh troops. While Abd-al-Rahman was on the march to attack

Yusuf, who had joined Al-Samil in the province of Jaen, the Emir sent

his son, Abu-Zaid, by unfrequented roads, to seize and recover the

capital. The city was surprised and the garrison made prisoners, but

the hasty return of the Ommeyades rendered an immediate evacuation

necessary. Resuming his march, Abd-al-Rahman proceeded rapidly towards

the mountains of Jaen. Yusuf and Al-Samil, conscious of their present

weakness, made overtures for peace; and a treaty was concluded by

whose terms Abd-al-Rahman was to allow the Emir and his vizier the

unmolested possession of their estates, and they, on the other hand,

were to surrender the strongholds held by their partisans. It was also

stipulated that Yusuf should reside permanently at Cordova, where two

of his sons, Abu-Zaid and Abu-al-Aswad, were detained as hostages.

The renunciation of authority by Yusuf left Abd-al-Rahman the nominal

master of the Peninsula. But the elements of discord, which had so

long harassed the country, were too powerful to be restrained by the

influence of a youth who was a comparative stranger to the majority

of his subjects. Anarchy, sustained and promoted by the avarice of

lawless bands and the ambition of unscrupulous chieftains, had become

the normal condition of a society whose constituents were accustomed

to be arrayed against each other, and the services of whose soldiers

were notoriously at the disposal of whoever was willing to pay the

most liberally for them. At first the deposed Emir and his faithful

councillor seemed resigned to the reverses which had imposed upon them

the conditions of vassalage. They lived in apparent harmony with the

new sovereign. Their advice was frequently solicited and adopted in

matters of importance. Their vanity was flattered and their dignity

sustained by the pomp of establishments not inferior in splendor to

those which they had possessed in their days of independence. Not so,

however, with the subordinate officers and ministers of the emirate.

Under the new administration all employments of responsibility and

power had been vested in the friends and adherents of Abd-al-Rahman.

The opportunities for peculation and official corruption, once so

abundant and lucrative, had disappeared, or were enjoyed by aliens

and hereditary enemies. From positions of trust and circumstances of

opulence many distinguished nobles had been degraded to a life of

insignificance and poverty. These malcontents, whose tribal relations

with Yusuf gave them ready access to his presence, took advantage of

every occasion to influence his hatred and stimulate his ambition with

tales of oppression and hopes of independence. The constitutional

weakness of the Emir was not proof against these specious

representations, incessantly urged by his partisans. Having secretly

made his preparations he fled to Merida. Pursuit was fruitless, and

the sole consolation left to Abd-al-Rahman was the knowledge that

Al-Samil and the sons of Yusuf were still in his power. Mortified

beyond expression, and apprehensive that they also might escape, he

ordered them to be cast into prison.

The reputation of Yusuf, and the habitual discontent of the masses,

naturally inclined to disorder, soon provided him with a well-appointed

force of twenty thousand men. With this he laid siege to Seville, whose

governor at that time was Abd-al-Melik, an Ommeyade refugee. Scarcely

had the Emir invested the city when he abandoned the undertaking, and

attempted, by a rapid march, to seize Cordova before its garrison could

be reinforced. He was too late; the army of Abd-al-Rahman was already

in motion, and Yusuf retired only to meet the forces of Abd-al-Melik,

whose son had come to his aid with a large detachment, enabling him

to approach the enemy from the rear. A battle was fought, and Yusuf

sustained a crushing defeat. With great difficulty the discomfited

prince escaped the swords of the victors, and he had almost reached

Toledo when he was intercepted and cut down by a party of Yemenites,

who hoped by this important service to obtain favor for themselves and

peace for their distracted country. Thus perished miserably the most

formidable adversary of Abd-al-Rahman. His distinguished connexions;

the military experience of half a century; the responsible commands

which he had administered; the prestige that attached to him as the

successful opponent of Charles Martel; the consideration resulting from

the exercise and enjoyment of royal dignity; the numerous following

which had shared his favor and hoped for the re-establishment of

his power, had acquired for him a reputation and an influence far

beyond his merits. His character was a strange compound of noble and

vicious qualities. Courageous on the field of battle, in his tent he

became the timorous dupe of every conjuror, the obsequious slave

of every charlatan. While not destitute of resolution in moments of

danger, he accepted, without question, the pernicious advice of evil

counsellors. So absolute was this dependence that, during the latter

years of his life, his vizier, Al-Samil, was recognized as the actual

master of Spain. But, despite his failings, Yusuf was not deficient in

generosity, nor in those qualifications which raise men to political

eminence and military fame; and it was not without reason, when the

events of his extraordinary career are considered, that popular rumor

and personal esteem conferred upon him the flattering distinction of

being one of the most accomplished rulers of his time.

As soon as he was informed of the death of his rival, Abd-al-Rahman,

instructed by experience of the danger attending temporizing measures,

proceeded to dispose permanently of those members of Yusuf’s party from

whom he had reason to apprehend future annoyance. The vizier, Al-Samil,

whose talents had long exercised a controlling influence in the state,

and whose moroseness of temper had been aggravated by punishment,

in all probability unmerited, was quietly strangled in prison.

Abu-Zaid, the elder of the Emir’s sons, whose lives, as hostages,

had been forfeited by their father’s rebellion, was beheaded. The

extreme penalty was commuted, in the case of the younger, to perpetual

imprisonment, and Abu-al-Aswad, who was indebted for this clemency

to his tender age, was immured in one of the strongest towers of the

citadel of Cordova.

These violent and decisive measures were productive of only temporary

security. The sight of the grisly heads of the Fihrites nailed over the

gates of the capital awakened resentment and horror rather than fear.

The country still remained in a turmoil. Bands of marauding Berbers

roamed far and wide, molesting the peasantry, threatening the cities,

closing the avenues of trade, discouraging all the avocations of peace.

The universal agitation at length developed into open rebellion.

Hischem-Ibn-Ozra, a Fihrite chieftain, whose relationship to Yusuf,

joined to an enterprising spirit, gave him considerable political

influence, organized an insurrection in the North, and occupied

Toledo. Strongly garrisoned by the insurgents, it had held out against

the army sent to reduce it for more than a year, when tidings were

received by the court of Cordova of the landing of a more dangerous

enemy than had yet menaced the stability of the newly established

kingdom. The Abbasides, whose capital had been removed from Damascus

to Bagdad, had, under a succession of able princes, reached the summit

of intellectual greatness and military renown. They had seen, with

envy and indignation, the accomplishment of the ambitious designs of

the most implacable enemy of their house. He had almost miraculously

escaped the manifold snares which their ingenuity had laid for him.

The magnificent reward which had been offered for his head had failed

to corrupt the fidelity of the indigent and grasping Berbers, whose

cupidity was seldom proof against the most insignificant bauble. If of

sufficient importance to excite apprehension when a fugitive, how much

more was to be feared from his ambition and revenge as a rival; the

sovereign of a mighty kingdom, the claimant of the honors and dignity

of the khalifate! Resolved to crush, if possible, the growing power of

the Ommeyades before it became too strong to be successfully assailed,

the Abbaside Khalif, Abu-Giafar-al-Mansur, ordered Ala-Ibn-Mugayth wali

of Kairoan, to attempt the subjection of Spain. In order to inspire

deeper confidence in the powers delegated to his lieutenant, a black

silken banner, whose color was the emblem of his party, accompanied

that officer’s commission. The details of this undertaking--the more

ominous because it presented an opportunity for the reconciliation of

factions; appealed strongly to the turbulent and rapacious spirit of

the populace; and asserted a prescriptive claim of authority based

upon conquest and dominion hitherto tacitly accorded to the monarch of

the East--had been carefully pre-arranged. An understanding had been

established between the malcontents of the Peninsula and the court

of Bagdad. The rebels besieged in Toledo maintained, through their

friends, frequent and uninterrupted communication with the Viceroy of

Africa. When Ala-Ibn-Mugayth landed in the province of Beja, he was

received with even more enthusiasm than had been manifested on the

arrival of Abd-al-Rahman. The Khalif of Bagdad was proclaimed. The

prince of the Ommeyades was not only declared a rebel and an usurper,

but an effort was made to inflame the passions of the combatants, in

a struggle already sufficiently malevolent, by investing it with a

religious character, and Abd-al-Rahman was declared a schismatic and

an infidel. A price was set upon his head, and the revered name and

authority of the Successor of the Prophet was invoked to effect his

assassination, which was to be rewarded with the distinguished favor

of the sovereign, a treasure of gold and jewels, and, by what was of

far more value to the devoted fanatic, eternal happiness in the life to

come.

It soon became evident that this outbreak was no ordinary insurrection.

The Yemenites, whose loyalty to the cause of Abd-al-Rahman had always

been suspected; the Fihrites, who had recent grudges to satisfy;

the Berbers, ever ready for bloodshed and rapine; the zealots of

every faction, who regarded the title of the Ommeyades as a flagrant

usurpation of divine authority, enrolled themselves in the ranks of

the Abbasides. The constant defection of large bodies of troops made it

necessary to draw on the army investing Toledo, and, in consequence,

the rebel garrison of that city was soon united with the already

immense host of the wali of Kairoan. Many of the towns of Andalusia

were occupied. The fertile environs of the capital were swept by the

Berber cavalry. Abd-al-Rahman was besieged in Carmona, whose garrison

was soon reduced to extremity through lack of provisions. The siege had

lasted two months when the Abbasides, confiding in their overwhelming

numbers, began to grow careless. The officers neglected their duties.

The sentinels relaxed their vigilance. With the proverbial inconstancy

of the Oriental, discontented with delay and impatient of hardship,

hundreds deserted their standards. Aware of these circumstances,

Abd-al-Rahman, at the head of a picked band of warriors, made a sudden

attack by night. The enemy was surprised; a panic seized the camp; all

thought of resistance was abandoned, and at dawn the chieftains of the

hostile army and seven thousand of their men lay dead on the field of

battle. The commander and his principal officers were decapitated; and

their heads, after having been thoroughly cleansed, were packed in

camphor and salt, with a label fastened to an ear of each to designate

the name and rank of the owner. These ghastly trophies were then

placed in sealed bags, together with the commission of the wali and

the standard of the Abbasides, and conveyed by a merchant to Kairoan,

where they were secretly deposited at night in the market-place. When

Abu-Giafar-Al-Mansur received intelligence of the catastrophe that

had befallen his enterprise, and of the fearful manner in which that

intelligence had been communicated, he exclaimed, “It is the act of a

demon; God be praised who has placed the sea between me and such an

enemy.”

The fate of the rebels before Carmona struck terror into the garrison

of Toledo, again blockaded by a great army. Negotiations were opened

with the besiegers, and favorable terms obtained, conditional upon the

surrender of the most prominent leaders to the vengeance of the Emir.

Orders were then received to conduct the prisoners to Cordova. At some

distance from its destination the escort was met by a tailor, a barber,

and a basket-maker, each provided with the implements of his calling.

The soldiers halted, and the barber removed the hair and beards of the

rebels. The tailor enveloped their bodies in strait-jackets of coarse

cloth, and the basket-maker wove for each one a pannier, which, closely

encircling his waist, rendered all movement of his lower extremities

impossible. These grotesque figures were then slung on donkeys, and,

after having been paraded through the streets of the city, accompanied

by the taunts and missiles of a howling mob, were dragged to the place

of public execution and crucified.

The Berbers, whose predatory habits kept the first emirs in a state

of constant apprehension and whose savage instincts were the ultimate

cause of the ruin of the Moslem empire in Spain, now once more took

up arms in defiance of the sovereign authority. A shrewd adventurer,

Chakya by name, of the tribe of Miknesa, had, by a spurious claim of

descent from the Prophet, through Fatima his daughter, and by the

assumption of miraculous gifts, succeeded in gaining the confidence

of these superstitious barbarians. His profession of school-master

acquired for him a reputation for extensive learning in an age of

ignorance; and the assiduous study of the Koran invested his person

with a sanctity whose advantages he did not underrate in the selection

of means to be employed for the realization of his schemes of ambition.

The extravagant veneration of the Berbers for individuals supposed

to be possessed of supernatural endowments, a sentiment which, in

this instance, perfectly coincided with their inclinations for war

and rapine, caused them to hasten from all directions to support the

claims of the impostor. The latter displayed no little political tact

and generalship. His active emissaries tempted the fealty of every

chieftain accessible to their insinuating arts. His armies, inspired

with the ardor of fanaticism, and directed with an ability not to be

expected from a leader hitherto without experience in the conduct of

military operations, repeatedly defeated the forces of Abd-al-Rahman;

ravaged his dominions to the very environs of the capital; and, secure

in the mountains of the West, defied the entire power of the government

for nearly ten years. The political situation was further complicated

by the defection of the Yemenites, who, on the eve of a decisive

battle, assailed the Emir in the rear. The remarkable prominence

attained by Chakya was eventually fatal to the continuance of his

power. A Berber chieftain of great influence was approached by the

agents of Abd-al-Rahman and persuaded to betray his party. In the midst

of a fiercely contested engagement the Berbers gave way; their lines

were broken; and a frightful butchery ensued, in which the impostor

lost thirty thousand of his followers. His control over the minds of

his dupes was, however, not shaken by this disaster, and he maintained

the struggle for four years longer, when he was murdered by his

comrades in a private quarrel. The great mound enclosing the remains of

these victims of treason and carnage was, more than two hundred years

afterwards, a prominent feature of the landscape, and a significant

memorial of the suicidal wars which consumed the resources and retarded

the progress of the Moslems of Spain.

Notwithstanding the bloody retribution provoked by every attempt to

overturn the throne of Abd-alRahman, conspiracy continued to follow

conspiracy without interruption. Abu-al-Aswad, the surviving son

of Yusuf, imprisoned at Cordova, had, under pretence of blindness,

deceived his keepers and escaped by swimming the Guadalquivir.

Incredulous at first, the guards subjected him to every test they could

devise, all of which he endured with remarkable patience and without a

murmur. The imposture was carried on for months, and in consequence of

his supposed affliction he was less carefully watched, and was indulged

with many unusual privileges. One morning, while bathing with other

prisoners in the river, he took advantage of a favorable opportunity,

and swam to the opposite shore without having been observed. His

friends met him, provided him with clothes and a horse, and a few days

found him safe in Toledo. In this city, the seat of Berber and Yemenite

intrigue, an enterprise of great moment was then maturing. The chief

parties to it were Ibn-Habib, the son-in-law of Yusuf, and Al-Arabi,

the wali of Barcelona. These malcontents had for some time maintained

a correspondence with Charlemagne. The escape of Abu-al-Aswad was part

of the preconcerted design, his noble descent and his sufferings as

a captive from childhood exciting the sympathies of the populace and

rendering him an important ally. A treaty had already been executed,

and presents and compliments had been exchanged between the Khalif

of Bagdad and the Emperor. It was said that a secret understanding

existed between these two potentates, and that the standard of the

Abbasides was to be displayed by the insurgents, indirectly in aid of

the Christians and with the tacit assent of the Moslem sovereign of

the East. The principal conspirators sought the King of the Franks at

Paderborn, where he was celebrating his triumph over the Saxons by

the compulsory baptism of thousands of these Pagan barbarians. The

ambition, the zeal, and the adventurous spirit of the Frankish monarch

were aroused by consideration of the project, and he agreed to invade

the Peninsula with a large force, which was to be supported by an

uprising in the North. The plan having been minutely arranged, and the

rôle of each conspirator assigned to him, the insurgent chieftains took

their departure.

Implacable, indeed, must have been the resentment of the Commander

of the Faithful, which could thus liberally contribute to surrender

a territory, acquired by such an expenditure of Moslem blood, to the

most relentless foe of Islam. The chances of success were largely in

favor of the coalition. The martial superiority of the Franks had been

signally displayed on the field of Poitiers over troops more warlike

and formidable than those which Abd-al-Rahman could now bring into

action. The country was exhausted by half a century of internecine

conflict. Frequent insurrections had effaced alike the sentiment of

loyalty and the reproach of treason. An undercurrent of disaffection

pervaded even the society of the court; and the inconstancy of the

Berbers, dangerous in itself, was even less to be feared than the

deadly malice of tribal hatred, the confirmed habit of resistance, and

the ruthless vengeance of disappointed ambition.

The motives which induced Charlemagne to undertake this expedition were

of a religious as well as of a political nature; but he was impelled

less by an ambition to rid the country of infidels and to exert the

powers of compulsory proselytism than by an insatiable craving for

territorial aggrandizement and military glory. The project was not an

original one. It had been formed ten years previously by his father,

and its prosecution had only been prevented by his death. The great

sovereign so lauded as the champion of Catholicism was anything but a

zealot. His orthodoxy was strongly suspected by the churchmen of his

time; in fact, it was whispered that he was more than half a Pagan.

His public conduct and private habits exhibited little evidence of the

beneficent influence of the Christian virtues. His life was stained

with deeds of perfidy and violence. The morals of his court were

proverbial for their laxity, a condition to which the monarch himself

afforded an unworthy example by the practice of extensive concubinage.

The most intimate political connections were maintained between the

courts of Aix-la-Chapelle and Bagdad, associations regarded by the

devout of the age with pious horror. It is therefore absurd to suppose,

as is repeatedly stated by ecclesiastical chroniclers, that the

invasion of Spain by Charlemagne was mainly undertaken as a crusade,

for the Franks were actuated by no prejudice against the Saracens as

Mohammedans, and the relations of their king with the Khalifate of the

East were more friendly than those he entertained towards any European

power.

In the early months of the ensuing spring, the forces of Charlemagne

were in motion. No important event of the Middle Ages has been more

neglected by contemporaneous as well as subsequent historians than

this expedition. The accounts of Christian writers are so defective

and so overloaded with fable as to render them, as usual, thoroughly

unreliable. The numbers of the invaders were so great that they were

compelled to separate into two divisions and pass the Pyrenees by

different routes. Converging towards Saragossa, the armies were united

before its walls. The city was in the hands of their allies, but at the

last moment the hearts of the latter failed them, when they considered

the sacrifice of religion and the violation of every principle of

honor and loyalty which a surrender implied. Other causes combined to

shake their resolution. The results attending the preliminary steps

of the conspiracy had proved disastrous. The leaders, suspicious

of each other, were constantly apprehensive of treachery, while

tribal prejudice and the irreconcilable spirit of discord prevented

sincere co-operation in any measure. Ibn-Habib, the originator of

the enterprise, convinced of the perfidy of Al-Arabi, and hoping to

anticipate its results, rashly attacked his ally, was defeated, and

soon after perished by the hand of an assassin. Long imprisonment had

unfitted Abu-al-Aswad for decisive action, and he failed to meet the

requirements of his position. Conscious of the miscarriage of their

plans, discouraged, and apprehensive of the future, the garrison of

Saragossa refused to open the gates of the city. Charlemagne, enraged

by this breach of faith, made vigorous preparations for a siege. But

the walls had hardly been invested when a despatch arrived announcing

that the Saxons were again in rebellion, and had already advanced

as far as the Rhine. The siege was raised, and the Franks retired,

after an abortive and inglorious campaign, to once more defend

their homes against the barbarians of Germany. The fortifications

of Pampeluna--which city had surrendered at their approach--were

dismantled, and the mighty host then defiled, with slow and painful

steps, through the valley of Roncesvalles.

The pass grew more and more difficult and obscure, encompassed as it

was by dense forests and precipitous mountains. The advance guard

pursued its way without molestation, and had already reached the

northern slope of the Pyrenees, when the rear, in whose custody was

the baggage of the army, became engulfed in gloomy ravines, whose

shadows concealed thousands of Basques lying in ambush. Suddenly

the long and tortuous line was attacked by swarms of mountaineers.

Hemmed in on all sides, the retreat of the Franks was cut off. Every

advantage of surprise, of position, of familiarity with the ground, of

experience in ambuscade and partisan warfare, was with the assailants.

Resistance was vain. Bravery profited nothing where neither missile nor

hand-to-hand weapons were available against an active and invisible

enemy. The rear guard was absolutely annihilated. The baggage-train

fell into the hands of the victors, who, after plundering the dead,

quietly dispersed and sought their homes in the inaccessible recesses

of the mountains. By this catastrophe Charlemagne lost nearly half of

his army and many distinguished officers, among them the famous Roland,

Prefect of the March of Brittany, whose career the poetic genius of

bard and troubadour has adorned with many a romantic tale and fabulous

legend.

No one reaped any advantage from the Frankish invasion except

Abd-al-Rahman, whose destruction was its avowed object. While the

enemy was in retreat, he advanced upon Saragossa; the city surrendered

after a short resistance, and Al-Arabi, the insurgent chieftain, was

assassinated while at prayer in the mosque. Before returning, the

Emir marched into the country of the Basques, where he conquered the

domain of the Count of Cerdagne, who became a tributary of the court

of Cordova. Soon afterwards, Abu-al-Aswad once more tempted the evil

fortune of his family by promoting another insurrection, which resulted

in the defeat of Guadalimar, where he, with four thousand of his

followers, lost their lives.

The last years of Abd-al-Rahman were embittered by disaffection among

his kindred, whose political fortunes he had repaired, and who had been

raised to wealth and influence by his boundless generosity. His nearest

relatives conspired against him. Princes of the blood and nobles of the

highest rank forgot the sacred ties of family and tribe in repeated

attempts to overturn his power. But the wary monarch, equally proof

against the schemes of both open and concealed hostility, easily

triumphed over all his adversaries. His armies returned victorious from

every campaign. The conspirators who plotted in the imaginary security

of the palace were, sooner or later, betrayed by their accomplices, and

punished with exemplary severity. His rebellious and ungrateful nephew,

Ibn-Aban, was strangled. His brother, Walid, was exiled. Koreishite

chieftains, convicted of treason, after having had their hands and feet

cut off, were beaten to death with clubs. The remonstrances and threats

of trusty councillors were repressed by banishment and studied neglect.

Even the services of the faithful Bedr were not sufficient to atone for

subsequent insolence; his property was confiscated, and he was confined

in a dungeon where he ended his days in penury and disgrace.

Warned by the vicissitudes of a life of peril of the necessity of

providing for the succession, and feeling the weight of physical

infirmities induced by anxiety and exposure, the Emir, a short time

before his death, summoned the officers of state and the nobles of

the kingdom to swear allegiance to his third son, Hischem, whom he

had chosen to succeed him. This ceremony performed, and the elder

brothers of Hischem, Suleyman and Abdallah, having formally renounced

their claims to the throne, Abd-al-Rahman withdrew to Merida, where he

died a few months afterwards, at the age of fifty-eight, and in the

thirty-third year of his reign.

The character of this great prince, gifted as he was by nature with

the noblest qualities of mind and heart, was still materially affected

by the circumstances of an adventurous career and the sentiments and

habits of a turbulent age. His tastes inclined to literature and art,

but necessity developed in him the talents of a cautious negotiator

and skilful general. Of a generous and benevolent disposition, the

proscription of his family, the perpetual hostility of his enemies, the

treachery of his kindred, and the ingratitude of his friends embittered

his spirit, and led to acts of cruelty, which, though justified by

political expediency, have greatly tarnished the lustre of his fame.

Reared amidst the splendors of the most polished and luxurious of

courts, he bore with singular equanimity the reverses of fortune and

the evils of abject poverty, trials which, by inculcating the virtue

of philosophical resignation and acquainting him with the failings

and inconsistencies of humanity, the better prepared him for the high

and responsible position he was destined subsequently to occupy. Even

before his power had been firmly established, he sent messengers to

the remote regions of the East to search for the scattered members and

dependents of the Ommeyades, who were conducted to Spain at the public

expense, granted estates, and not infrequently appointed councillors

or governors of cities and provinces. The versatility of his genius

provoked the envy and elicited the admiration of his most determined

foes. While his attention was still occupied by resisting the

encroachments of the mountaineers of the Asturias and the suppression

of formidable insurrections, he successfully repelled the invasions of

two powerful and warlike sovereigns in whose jurisdiction were included

the most opulent and productive regions of the globe. Charlemagne,

the greater of these, offered him the hand of his daughter and urged

the alliance, which was declined on account of his failing health.

Fertile in resources, the privations and sorrows of youth had taught

him to bear adversity in silence if not with complacency. Thorough

familiarity with the character of Berber and Arab convinced him that

the pretensions of the children of the Desert were incompatible with

the submission requisite to the exercise of royal authority, and he

did not hesitate to crush, with a relentless hand, the insolence or

the presumptuous freedom of a tribesman or a friend. Popular at first,

this unusual severity in time alienated the warmest supporters of

his throne. Inexorable necessity, the principles of self-protection

and self-preservation, dependent upon conditions not unusual after a

protracted period of revolution and anarchy, rendered the establishment

of a despotism imperative. Once founded, it was maintained by an army

of forty thousand mercenaries, chiefly recruited from the barbarians

of Africa, enlisted with multitudes of enfranchised slaves, who were

bound to the interests of the monarchy by the double tie of dependence

and gratitude. The romantic spirit of adventure often impelled

Abd-al-Rahman, in the early years of his reign, to wander in disguise

through the streets of his capital; but the animosity engendered by

frequent revolutions soon rendered this diversion too hazardous, and he

was compelled to adopt the seclusion and the military precautions which

provide for the security of royalty in the kingdoms of the Orient.

The gradations of official rank, the territorial divisions of the

empire, the duties of the magistracy, the regulations of police, were

also, with slight modifications, framed after the pattern of similar

institutions in the East. In these details of political organization

the number twelve and its factors, so popular among nations of Semitic

origin, were especially prominent. The Peninsula was divided into

six provinces, each of which was subject to the jurisdiction of a

military governor. Under the control of this dignitary were two walis

and six viziers, who administered affairs of minor importance in their

respective districts. These officials were assisted in their labors by

a host of kadis and secretaries, who sent, at stated periods, regular

reports of their proceedings to the Council, or Divan, at Cordova.

The available moments of leisure, during a life of almost incessant

conflict, were employed by Abd-al-Rahman in works intended for the

improvement of the masses; in the perfection of regulations which

encouraged the accumulation and permitted the unrestricted enjoyment of

property; and in the promotion of educational and literary facilities,

as well as in the institution of measures upon whose enforcement

absolutely depended the continuance of his power. He repaired the

Roman highways that traversed the Peninsula. He established a system

of couriers, with relays of post-horses, for the rapid transmission of

important despatches. He ruled the fierce outlaws of the Peninsula,

whose trade was rapine, and who considered mercy an indication of

cowardice, by the only means they respected, the government of the

sword. They hated and cursed him, they plotted against his life,

they rejected his gifts and spurned his honors, but they obeyed his

commands, for they stood in wholesome dread of his resentment, and had

been taught, by many a bloody lesson, the consequences of disputing his

authority. During his reign, for the first time since the Conquest, the

nomadic propensity of the Berbers, the source of incessant disturbance

and universal insecurity, was restrained, and these barbarians were

compelled to conform to the laws and to choose a settled habitation.

A code of judicature, adapted to the circumstances of a population

composed of so many diverse and often hostile constituents, was framed,

in whose statutes the useful institutions of the Visigoths were

recognized under the general predominance of Moslem law.

Abd-al-Rahman made frequent excursions through his dominions, the

better to familiarize himself with the conduct of his officers and

the necessities of his subjects. His course was marked by charity

to the needy; by munificent donations for public improvements; by

institutions for the encouragement of the arts; by the erection of

magnificent palaces and temples. But his generosity, ample elsewhere,

was displayed with unprecedented lavishness in his capital, the object

of his pride and of his peculiar affection. Its plan, its buildings,

its fortifications, its suburbs, were modelled after those of beautiful

Damascus. A palm-tree, the first ever seen in Spain, was brought from

Syria, and planted in the court-yard of the royal palace as a memorial

of the scenes of his childhood. In the environs of the city he laid

out a garden, called Rusafah, after one formerly possessed by his

grandfather, Hischem, and of which it was the counterpart. A mint was

founded in Cordova, whose coins were identical in design, weight, and

inscription with the pieces issued by the Ommeyade princes of Syria.

The fame of the court and the reputation of the sovereign attracted

to the Moslem capital of the West the learned and the polite of every

clime. The spirit of literary emulation and philosophical inquiry,

which attained such a remarkable development under succeeding khalifs,

began to be awakened. The sovereign himself composed with facility

and correctness verses of considerable merit. His sons were provided

with the best instruction that the age afforded; were compelled to be

present during the transactions of the Divan and the business of the

courts; and were frequently entrusted with the negotiation of treaties

and the administration of government. The public taste was cultivated

by periodical literary contests, in which the most accomplished

scholars and poets of the day participated; where splendid rewards for

proficiency were distributed; and whose proceedings were invested with

additional prestige by the presence and supervision of royalty.

Neither the brutal skepticism of the court of Damascus nor the

prevalent idolatry and blasphemy of Spain seem to have affected

the piety of Abd-al-Rahman. Whether induced by motives of interest

or by sincere belief, it is certain that he ever observed with

scrupulous exactness the ceremonial of his faith. Fully alive to the

advantages--social, political, commercial, and religious--connected

with a splendid temple, which, by reason of its magnificence and its

sanctity, might become a place of pilgrimage, he had long meditated

the construction of such an edifice, an aspiration whose fulfilment

was deferred for many years by continuous reverses of fortune. The

possession of the cities of Mecca and Jerusalem by a hostile dynasty

had vastly increased the difficulties imposed upon such Mussulmans of

the Peninsula as desired to make the arduous journey to the venerated

shrines of the East. Moreover, the subjects of the Ommeyade ruler were

regarded with suspicion and dislike by the sovereigns of Bagdad; and

Abd-al-Rahman had, from every pulpit in the realm of the Abbasides,

been proclaimed a usurper, a rebel, and an impostor. The success that

finally attended his arms, and insured the permanent establishment of

his authority, also rendered possible the realization of a project

dictated by a more noble and lofty ambition. His political sagacity

detected at a glance the influence such a temple would exert over the

minds of a highly imaginative and superstitious people. Its erection

would gratify their national pride. Its presence in the midst of the

capital would consolidate and confirm the power of the state. The

sentiment of loyalty still entertained by the descendants of Arabian

exiles for the home of their fathers would be transferred to another

land, whose shrine, if it did not equal that of Mecca in wealth, would

certainly surpass it in grandeur and beauty. “My mosque,” said the

great statesman, “will soon demand a khalif; my sons will assume that

title; and the dispute between the East and West will be terminated

forever. Our constitution is based entirely upon a religious principle,

and my subjects will soon accustom themselves to see nothing beyond my

children but the eye of Allah and the sword of the Prophet.”

In the turbulent times of the Conquest every place of worship

possessed by the Christians in Cordova, save one, was destroyed. In

the cathedral alone, whose ownership was insured by treaty, were the

infidels permitted to perform the rites enjoined by their creed. In

accordance with a custom prevalent in the East, where, however, it

must be acknowledged, it was unusual, under ordinary circumstances,

to violate engagements entered into with Christians, half of the

cathedral had been forcibly appropriated and consecrated to the service

of Islam. It was not many years, however, before its limited area was

found inadequate to the requirements of the crowds of immigrants and

proselytes that were daily added to the population of the growing

capital. The location being the most desirable in the city, a

proposition was made by Abd-al-Rahman for the purchase of the remaining

half of the edifice. The bishop refused, on the reasonable ground that

no other building would then be available for the celebration of the

rites of the Christian faith. But the importunity of the Emir prevailed

in the end; and the Christians obtained for their concessions the sum

of a hundred thousand dinars, and, in addition, the extraordinary

privilege of erecting a certain number of churches to replace those

of which they had been deprived by the rage of fanaticism and the

calamities of war.

The plan of the mosque was traced by Abd-al-Rahman himself, and the

first stone of the foundation was laid by his own hands. Oppressed with

age and physical infirmities, and haunted by a presentiment that he

would not live to see his work completed, he exhausted every effort

to accelerate its progress. A vast number of laborers were employed.

The assistance of the governors of distant provinces was invoked for

the collection and transportation of materials. The emulation of the

artisans was excited by the example of the enfeebled sovereign, who,

for one hour every day, personally shared the toil of his humble

companions. The vaults of the public treasury were opened without

restriction for the benefit of an undertaking which appealed alike

to the patriotic impulses and the religious sentiment of the nation.

The work progressed with astonishing rapidity, but not fast enough

to satisfy the feverish impatience of the illustrious architect. It

was his desire while he yet had strength to perform in those sacred

precincts, as the representative of the Prophet, the simple ceremonial

of the faith so dear to the heart of every Mussulman. A space was

cleared within the enclosure. An awning was raised, and the unfinished

walls were hung with tapestry from the palace. There, surrounded with

heaps of materials, with half-chiselled capitals and naked columns, the

Emir, in his snowy robes of office, ascended the temporary pulpit, led

the prayers, and directed the devotions of a vast concourse assembled

from every quarter of the Moslem capital. It was the last important act

of his life. A few weeks later the multitudes who had listened with

silent reverence to his discourse in the Djalma followed his remains to

the tomb.

Thus, his destiny accomplished and his task performed, died the

founder of one of the greatest dynasties that Europe has ever known.

He possessed, in ample measure, the attributes of a wise, a politic,

an enlightened sovereign. His spirit had been chastened and his

courage tried by many years of persecution and misfortune. The cruelty

with which he has been reproached was a necessary consequence of

the turbulent condition of the society he was called upon to govern.

The solution of the political problem which confronted him was not a

mere question of supremacy; it involved the integrity of the Saracen

domination in the Peninsula and his own existence as a ruler and as an

individual. Force was the only argument used by his adversaries, and

the only one they respected. The influence of the Koran was scarcely

felt. The great majority of the inhabitants of Spain were Pagans

and infidels. The Berbers, who largely preponderated, were fetich

worshippers and believers in witchcraft and sorcery. Years of impunity

and unrestricted license had rendered these wild barbarians more

ferocious in disposition, more impatient of control. Public hostility

and private feuds, the acrimonious disputes between contending sects,

the alternate proscriptions of successful factions, the hope of future

revenge, made permanent reconciliation impossible. In every community

existed a large and compact body of enemies, different in nationality,

antagonistic in faith, firmly united by the evils of common misfortune,

who entertained, under a delusive aspect of submission, dangerous

aspirations for political and religious liberty. Those nearest in blood

to the monarch sought, with unnatural vindictiveness, the life of their

kinsman and benefactor. In the Asturian mountains the power of a rising

kingdom, established by a band of intrepid exiles, had begun seriously

to encroach upon the Moslem possessions of the North. The arms of the

most powerful sovereigns of Europe and Asia were directed, from the

Mediterranean and from the Pyrenees, against a prince whose dominions

were agitated and whose resources impaired by anarchy and sedition.

Exasperated by the interference of the Abbasides, he long contemplated

an expedition to the coast of Syria, a project which the obstinacy of

his domestic enemies made impossible. Under such conditions government

by the scimetar was certainly not inexcusable. These considerations

demanded also the employment of foreign mercenaries. They stimulated

the vigilance and justified the severity of the judicial tribunals.

They prompted the cultivation of religious sentiments as an auxiliary

of royal power by the erection of superb houses of worship. They

suggested the statesmanlike expedient of diverting the attention of

the populace from scenes of disorder, by the endowment of public

institutions, by the cultivation of the arts, by the diffusion of

knowledge.

Abd-al-Rahman was not, by nature, tyrannical. He was ever ready to

listen to the complaints and redress the wrongs of the unfortunate.

The most bitter partisanship never refused him the attribute of strict

and impartial justice. If his severity was sometimes not tempered

by compassion, it was never aggravated by deliberate cruelty. In

his privacy he was affable; in his public conduct dignified; in his

intercourse with his inferiors the embodiment of gentle courtesy.

Temperate in his pleasures, the court of Cordova never exhibited the

disgraceful scenes that offended religion and decency in the palaces

and gardens of Damascus. Without him the Ommeyade dynasty of the West

would never have existed; and without that dynasty a large portion of

the treasures of ancient learning would have been forever lost; the

spirit of scientific inquiry would have been crushed by ecclesiastical

intolerance; the hopes of intellectual freedom suppressed; and the

civilization of Europe retarded for many centuries.

From the accession of Abd-al-Rahman I. dates the autonomy of Moorish

Spain under the Khalifate of the West. Its rulers, however, while

enjoying all the power and attributes of independent sovereigns,

and, as such, requiring the implicit obedience of their subjects

and the recognition of foreign nations, did not, until the reign of

Abd-al-Rahman III., publicly assume the title of Successors of the

Prophet, but exercised their despotism under the less conspicuous

appellation of Emirs, or Governors. Many inducements led to the

adoption of this policy. Moslems still generally regarded the regions

of the East as the source of orthodox belief and the seat of legitimate

empire. The survivors of the House of Ommeyah were under the ban of

the dynasty of Damascus and Bagdad. The conditions of society in

the Peninsula were unsettled. Everywhere the slightest pretext for

rebellion was welcomed with rejoicing by multitudes of desperate

outlaws and fanatics. Ambitious enthusiasts lost no opportunity

of inflaming the public mind, only too susceptible to agitation,

whenever a revolt could increase their gains or contribute to their

notoriety. The union of Church and State under the constitution of

Islam made interference with the established order of affairs doubly

perilous. The premature appropriation of the venerated title of Khalif

by the exiled Ommeyade princes would have entailed the reproach of

sacrilege, and might have overturned their empire, neither founded on

prescriptive right, supported by popular affection, nor maintained

by adequate military force. The assertion of pretensions far less

obnoxious to religious prejudice had frequently produced serious

disorders. By such a claim the dignity of the greatest of Mohammedan

dynasties could receive no accession commensurate with the risk it

involved. Its princes might well, for a time, forego the titles while

in full possession of the substance of power. Such were some of the

politic considerations which long retained, in a nominally subordinate

capacity, the most despotic and irresponsible monarchs of Europe.

The awakening of the national spirit consequent upon the civil wars

of Spain not only permitted the organization of the kingdom of the

Asturias, but it was also productive of a disaster scarcely less

serious,--the loss of the Moslem possessions in France. From the day

of his accession, the energies of Pepin were devoted to the conquest

and expulsion of the Moorish colonists of Provence and Languedoc. The

treason of a Gothic chieftain delivered into his hands the principal

cities of Septimania, except Narbonne. That capital sustained a

siege of more than six years’ duration, an intense prejudice against

the Franks inducing the Roman and Gothic inhabitants to support the

efforts of the Arab garrison; but in the end, the popular discontent

and the hopeless prospect of assistance from Cordova impelled the

prominent citizens to propose terms of accommodation with the enemy.

A capitulation was arranged by which the besieged were to be conceded

the privilege of government by their own laws, but at the last moment

the Saracens refused their assent; hostilities were resumed, and the

garrison, greatly outnumbered by the Christian mob, was annihilated.

For forty-one years the laws, the customs, and the religion of

the Moslems had prevailed in Southern France. The traces of their

domination, as disclosed by the physical and mental characteristics

of the peasantry, have not been effaced by the vicissitudes of more

than a thousand years. This temporary occupation, as will be seen

hereafter, was also productive of a marked effect upon the manners and

the polite literature of Europe, through the diffusion of Hispano-Arab

culture, the influence of the lays of the troubadours, and the adoption

of the laws of chivalry. The intercourse with the Khalifate of Spain,

suspended for a period, was renewed; relations of even closer intimacy

were established; a community of ideas, tastes, and sympathies

developed sentiments of mutual esteem; and the characteristics of

the brilliant and intellectual society of Cordova were reflected

in the refined voluptuousness, the extensive learning, and the

polished skepticism that subsequently distinguished the courts of the

Albigensian princes.