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FORsix hundred years the greater part of the Mohammedan Empire was nominally under the authority of a central ruler called a Khalif, a title which signifies a "successor" or "substitute." At first this authority was real and powerful: the Khalif appointed the governors of all the provinces, from Spain to the borders of the Hindu Kush, and removed any of them at his pleasure. But the empire was too large to hold together round a central pivot for any length of time, and gradually various local governors made themselves virtually independent, although they generally professed the utmost devotion to the Khalif and paid him every honour except obedience. By degrees even this show of respect was thrown off, and dynasties arose which espoused heretical tenets, repudiated the spiritual supremacy of the Khalif, and denounced him and all his line as usurpers. Finally the time came when the Khalifs were as weak in temporal authority as the Pope of Rome, and were even kept prisoners in their palace by the mercenary body-guard they had hired to protect them against their rebellious nobles. This took place about three hundred years after the foundation of the Khalifate;and for the second half of their existence the Khalifs were little more than ciphers to be played with by the great princes of the empire and to contribute a little pomp to their coronations. Finally the Khalifate was abolished in Asia by the Mongol invasion in the thirteenth century, and though the title is still claimed by the Sultan of Turkey, there is no Khalif now in the old comprehensive sense of the word.[10]
The earliest province to shake off the authority of the Khalif was Andalusia. To understand how this happened, we must remember that the Khalifs did not succeed one another in one unbroken line of family inheritance. After the first four (or "orthodox") Khalifs, Abu-Bekr, Omar, Othmān, and Aly, who were elected more or less by popular vote, the Syrian party set up Moāwia as Khalif at Damascus, and from him sprang the family of the Omeyyad Khalifs, so called from their ancestor Omeyya. There were fourteen Omeyyad Khalifs, who reigned from 661 to 750, when they were deposed by Es-Seffāh, "the Butcher," who was the first of the second dynasty of Khalifs, called Abbāside, after their ancestor Abbās, an uncle of the Prophet Mohammed. The Abbāside Khalifs transferred the seat of government from Damascus to Baghdad, and held the Khalifate until its destruction by the Mongols in 1258. Among the members of the deposed family of the Omeyyads was Abd-er-Rahmān, a name which means "Servant of the Merciful God." Most of his relations wereexterminated by the ruthless Abbāside; they were hunted down in all parts of the world and slain without mercy. Abd-er-Rahmān fled like the rest, but with better fortune, for he reached the banks of the Euphrates in safety. One day, as he sat in his tent watching his little boy playing outside, the child ran to him in affright, and, going out to discover the cause, Abd-er-Rahmān saw the village in confusion, and the black standards of the Abbāsides on the horizon. Hastily seizing up his child, the young prince rushed out of the village, and reached the river. Here the enemy almost came up with them, and called out that they need have no fear, for no injury would be done to them. A young brother, who had accompanied him, and who was exhausted with swimming, turned back and his head was immediately severed from his body; but Abd-er-Rahmān held on till he reached the other side, bearing his child, and followed by his servant Bedr. Once more on firm earth, they journeyed night and day till they came to Africa, where the rest of his family joined them, and the sole survivor of the Omeyyad princes had leisure to think of his future.
He was but twenty years of age, and full of hope and ambition. His mental powers were considerable, and to these he added the advantages of a noble stature and great physical energy and courage. The Arab historians, however, add the unfavourable details that he was blind of one eye and devoid of the sense of smell. In his childhood wise men had predicted great things of his future, and in spite of the ruin of his family he was not yet daunted. His firstthoughts turned to Africa; for he clearly perceived that the success of the Abbāsides had left him no chance in the East. But after five years of wandering about the Barbary coast he realized that the Arab governor was not easily to be overturned, and that the already revolted Berbers in the West would not willingly surrender their newly-won independence for the empty glory of being ruled by an Omeyyad. His glance, therefore, was now directed towards Andalusia, where the various factions, in their perpetual strife, offered an opening to any clever pretender, and much more to one who could bring such hereditary claims as Abd-er-Rahmān. He therefore sent his servant Bedr to the chiefs of the Syrian party in Spain, among whom many were freedmen of the Omeyyads and were thus bound by the Arab code of honour to succour any relation of their former patrons. Bedr found these chiefs willing to receive the young prince, and, after some negotiation with the hostile factions, the support of the men from the Yemen was also promised. Upon this Bedr returned to Africa.
Abd-er-Rahmān was saying his prayers on the seashore when he saw the vessel approaching which brought him the good news; and, prone as all Easterns are to draw omens from insignificant circumstances, the name of the first envoy from Andalusia who was presented to him, Abu-Ghālib Temmām (which means Father of Conquest Attainment) suggested a happy fate: "We shallattainour object," cried the prince, "andconquerthe land!" Without delay he stepped on board, and they sailed for Spain in September,755. The coming of the survivor of the Omeyyads to Andalusia was like a page of romance, like the arrival of the Young Pretender in Scotland in 1745. The news spread like a conflagration through the land; the old adherents of the royal family hurried to pay him homage; the descendants of the Omeyyad freedmen put themselves under his orders. Even the Yemen clans, though they could not be expected to feel any peculiar sentiment for the young prince, were sufficiently infected by the zeal of his adherents to keep to their promise and band together for his support. The Governor of Andalusia found himself deserted by most of his troops and forced to wait for a new army; and meanwhile the winter rains made a campaign impossible, and left Abd-er-Rahmān leisure to recruit and organize his forces.
In the spring of the following year the struggle began in earnest. Abd-er-Rahmān was received with enthusiasm at Archidona and Seville, and thence prepared to march on Cordova. Yūsuf, the governor, advanced to resist him, but the Guadalquivir was swollen with rains, and the two armies, on opposite banks, raced with each other who should first arrive at Cordova. At length Abd-er-Rahmān, by means of a deceitful stratagem, unworthy of a prince of romance, induced Yūsuf to let him cross the now falling river under pretext of peace; and once on the other side, he fell upon the unsuspecting enemy. Victory declared itself for the prince, and he entered Cordova in triumph. He had the grace to exert himself to arrest the plundering passions ofhis troops, and to place the harīm or women-folk of the ex-governor in safety. Before the year was out he was master of all the Mohammedan part of Spain, and the dynasty of the Omeyyads of Cordova, destined to endure for nearly three centuries, was established.[11]
The King of Cordova, however, was not firmly seated without many a struggle. Abd-er-Rahmān had indeed been placed on the throne, but the feat had been accomplished by a small faction out of the numerous parties that divided the land. The new Sultan was, however, better able than most princes to hold his own amidst the striving elements of his kingdom. Prompt and decisive in action, troubled by few scruples, by turns terribly severe and perfidiously diplomatic, his policy was always equal to an emergency; and there were not a few occasions on which it was put to the test. He had not been long in Andalusia when Ibn-Mughīth sailed from Africa to set up the black standards of the Abbāsides in Spain. He landed in the province of Beja, and soon found supporters among the disaffected, always ready to join in some new thing. Abd-er-Rahmān was besieged for two months in Carmona. The situation was perilous in the extreme, for every day gave the enemy more opportunity of increasing their forces. Abd-er-Rahmān, ever full of resource, hearing that the enemy had somewhat relaxed their precautions, gathered together seven hundred of his bravest followers, kindled a great fire, and, saying that it was now a question of death or victory, flung his scabbardinto the flames. The seven hundred followed his example, in token of their resolution never to sheathe their swords again till they were free, and, sallying out after their leader, fell upon the besiegers tooth and nail. The Abbāside invasion was utterly annihilated. Abd-er-Rahmān, with the ferocity that occasionally disfigured him, put their leaders' heads in a bag, with descriptive labels attached to their ears, and confided the precious parcel to a pilgrim bound for Mekka, by whom it was put into the hands of the Abbāside Khalif Mansūr himself. When the Khalif had seen the contents of the bag, he was very wroth; but he could not help exclaiming, "Thank God there is a sea between that man and me!" While cordially detesting the successful Sultan of Cordova, his Abbāside foe was forced to render homage to his skill and courage. He called Abd-er-Rahmān "the hawk of the Koreysh," the falcon of the Prophet's own tribe. "Wonderful," he would exclaim, "is the daring, wisdom, and prudence, he has shown! To enter the paths of destruction, throw himself into a distant land, hard to approach, and well defended; there to profit by the jealousies of the rival parties, to make them turn their arms against one another instead of against himself; to win the homage and obedience of his subjects; and, having overcome every difficulty, to rule supreme lord of all! Of a truth, no man before him has done this!"
The defeat of the Abbāside invasion was followed by other successes on the part of the new Sultan. He induced the people of Toledo, who had long held out against him, to consent to a peace and deliver uptheir chiefs; and the leaders were grossly humiliated and then crucified. The chief of the Yemenite faction proving dangerous, Abd-er-Rahmān gave him a safe-conduct, and thus enticed him into his palace, where he tried to stab him with his own hand, but finding the Arab too vigorous, called in the guard and had him assassinated. Almost immediately, a great revolt of the Berbers of the northern borders occurred. Ten years were occupied in reducing them to obedience, and meanwhile the Yemenites, burning with vengeance for the murder of their chief, took advantage of the Sultan's absence in the north to rise. They had not yet realized the energy or the astuteness of the man. He had already set the revolted Berbers by the ears by playing upon their petty jealousies; and he now exerted his diplomacy to breed discord among the Yemenites. He tampered with the Berbers who formed a large part of their army, so that they deserted in the midst of the fray, and Abd-er-Rahmān's soldiers fell upon the flying multitude, until thirty thousand bodies lay on the field: their huge grave long remained a sight to be seen by the curious. Then followed that formidable coalition between three disaffected Arab chiefs and Charlemagne, which was so near destroying the fabric that Abd-er-Rahmān had painfully built up, but collapsed before Zaragoza and at Roncesvalles without a single blow from the very person they had assembled to destroy.
Henceforward the Sultan was allowed to enjoy in comparative peace the fruits of his victories. He had subdued all the hostile elements in Spain to his ironwill; he had cast down the proud Arab chiefs who had dared to measure swords with him; he had massacred, or assassinated, the leaders of rebellion, and had proved himself master of the position. But tyranny, cruel and perfidious as his, brings its own punishment. The tyrant may force the submission, but he cannot compel the devotion of his people, and the empire that is won by the sword must be sustained by the same weapon. Honest men refused to enter into the service of a lord who could betray and slay as did this Sultan; his old supporters, those who had first welcomed him to Spain, now turned coldly away when they saw the tyrant in his naked cruelty; his own relations, who had flocked over to his Court, as an asylum from the Abbāsides, found his despotism so intolerable that they plotted again and again to depose him, with the inevitable result of losing their heads. Abd-er-Rahmān was left in mournful solitude. His old friends had deserted him; his enemies, though helpless, cursed him none the less; his very kinsmen and servants turned against him. It was partly that the long war with faction had spoilt a fine nature; partly that the character was relentless. No longer could he mingle as before in the crowds that thronged the streets of Cordova; suspicious of every one, wrapped in gloomy thoughts and distracted by bloody memories, he rode through the streets surrounded by a strong guard of foreigners. Forty thousand Africans, whose devotion to their paymaster was equalled by their hatred of the whole population whom they repressed, formed the Sultan's protection against the peoplewhom he ground under his heel. In his desolation he wrote a poem on a palm which he transplanted from the land of his ancestors—for, like most Andalusian Arabs, he was something of a poet—in which he compassionated the tree for its exile: "Like me, thou art separated from relations and friends; thou didst grow in a different soil, and now thou art far from the land of thy birth." He had accomplished the object which he had set before himself in the days of his young ambition, when he came a stranger and alone to subdue a kingdom: he had brought the Arabs and Berbers into subjection, and restored order and peace in the land; but he had done it all at the expense of his subjects' hearts. The handsome youth who had come like "the young chevalier" to win the homage and devotion of the Spanish Arabs, after thirty-two years went down to his grave a detested tyrant, upheld in his blood-stained throne only by the swords of mercenaries whose loyalty was purchased by gold. He had inaugurated the sway of the sword in Spain, and his successors would have to maintain the principle. As the great historian of the Moors has observed, it is not easy to see by what other means the turbulent factions of Arabs and Berbers were to be kept in order, or how anarchy was to be averted without severe measures of repression: neither of these races was accustomed to monarchy. Nevertheless a tyranny so sustained formed a melancholy spectacle, despite all the glories and triumphs that illumined it.
An ancient Arab historian, Ibn-Hayyān, gives the following portrait of the first Sultan of Cordova:"Abd-er-Rahman was kind-hearted and well disposed to mercy. He was eloquent in his speech, and endowed with a quick perception. He was very slow in his determinations, but constant and persevering in carrying them into effect. He was active and stirring; he would never lie in repose, or abandon himself to indulgence. He never entrusted the affairs of government to any one, but administered them himself; yet he never failed to consult in cases of difficulty the men of wisdom and experience. He was a brave and intrepid warrior, always the first in the battle-field; terrible in his anger, and intolerant of opposition: his countenance inspired awe in those who approached him, friends and foes alike. He was wont to follow biers and pray over the dead, and in the mosque on Fridays he would often enter the pulpit and address the people. He visited the sick, and mixed with the people in their rejoicings." This is doubtless the young Abd-er-Rahmān, before opposition and conspiracy had made him suspicious and cruel. Power has often a terrible manner of punishing its possessors.
THE BRIDGE OF CORDOVA.THE BRIDGE OF CORDOVA.
The usual question that is asked, when a despot dies, is, Who will succeed him? And the common answer is, Revolution and anarchy. A throne that is set upon steel edges does not readily pass from father to son. Yet the dynasty of Abd-er-Rahmān did not collapse with the death of its despotic founder. It was to be expected that the many hostile forces which he had with difficulty restrained, when released by his death, would have sprung into redoubled activity. Such, however, was not the case.
Partly because he had too thoroughly terrified the people for them easily to recover their courage, and partly because in his successor they recognized the very antithesis of his father—a prince to be loved and honoured—the people remained quiet for some years. Hishām, who in 788 succeeded his father, at the age of thirty, was a model of all the virtues; and, as if to make sure that he should practise them with assiduity during his brief reign, an astrologer predicted that he had but eight years to live. The Sultan naturally devoted this short space to preparing for the next world. In his youth his palace had been filled with men of science, poets, and sages; and the boy was father of the man. His acts of piety were numberless, and in him the indigent and the persecuted had a sure refuge. He would send trusty emissaries into all parts of his dominions to seek out wrong-doing and repress it, and to further the cause of righteousness. He had the streets patrolled at night to prevent riotous and vicious conduct; and the fines they levied on the evildoers were distributed among those good souls whom rain and cold could not deter from attending the mosques at night-time. The Sultan himself visited the sick, and would often go forth on stormy nights to carry food to some pious invalid and to watch beside his bedside. With all this he was no poltroon. He would lead his armies against the Christians of the North, like the thoroughbred Arab he was; and, though the people affectionately dubbed him "The Amiable" and "The Just," he could show sufficient firmness when his reign was menaced by the conspiracies of his uncles. He increased thenumber of his mamlūks, or body-guard, and a thousand of them were always on duty day and night on both sides of the river to protect his palace. He was a huntsman; yet so scrupulous was he that when he rebuilt the bridge of Cordova, which still stands to this day, hearing that his subjects murmured that he only built this great work to make his hunting parties more convenient, he vowed he would never cross it again; and he never did. Before the eight years had quite expired, this exemplary prince was gathered to his well-earned paradise; and then it became apparent that his very goodness had but served to stir up a new factor of rebellion in the State.
This new danger was the power of the Mohammedan priests. The term is hardly an accurate one, for in Islam there is no priesthood in the strict sense of Catholic Christianity. The men who recite the prayers and preach the weekly sermons in the mosques are laymen taken from their shops or other occupations, and appointed for the time to lead the congregations. There is no distinction between laic and cleric in Islam. Nevertheless, there is something which tallies more or less with what we mean by a priesthood. There is always in Mohammedan countries a body of men whose lives are specially devoted to religion; they may be dervishes with peculiar rites, or they may be merely theological students, pupils of some renowned teacher, whose doctrine fills them with unwonted zeal and enthusiasm; they may be reciters of the Koran, or school-masters. Such a body is found throughout the Moslem world, and it has to be reckoned with in everyMohammedan country. The students of the Azhar mosque at Cairo, the Softas of Constantinople, the Mullas of many an Eastern city, have shown what the force of fanaticism can avail in times of excitement. In Andalusia this power was now about to be displayed. The first rebellion after Abd-er-Rahmān's death came from the least expected quarter; not from the Christians, nor from any special political party of Arabs or of Berbers, but from the devout sons of Islam, the theological students of Cordova.
These students were largely composed of renegades, or the sons of renegades. It has already been seen that the Spaniards cheerfully adopted Islam, and, like most converts, became more Moslem than the Moslems themselves. Abd-er-Rahmān was far too wise, and also far too worldly, to permit the theologians—especially those of Spanish blood—any preponderating influence in his kingdom; but the pious Hishām neither saw the danger, nor, had he perceived it, would have regarded it as a danger at all. He loved to place his confidence in holy men, whose conduct was dictated by the strict observance of their religion, and in whom he failed to detect the germs of common worldly ambition and love of power. It happened, too, that at this time the theologians were headed by a singularly gifted and active mind, a favourite pupil of one of the lights of the Holy City Medina, where the Arabian Prophet was buried, and a man whose soul was devoured by that mixture of religious fervour and political ambition which has so often made havoc of nations. This doctor, Yahya, profited by the devotionand piety of Hishām to raise the theologians of Cordova to a height of influence and power that might have made his shrewd father, Abd-er-Rahmān, turn in his grave. So long, indeed, as they had their own way, all went well. But in 796, when the good Hishām departed in the odour of sanctity, a complete change came over the Court. The new Sultan, Hakam, was not indifferent to religion or in any way a reprobate; but he was gay and sociable, and enjoyed life as it came to him, without the slightest leaning towards asceticism. Such a character was wholly objectionable to the bigoted doctors of theology. They spoke of the Sultan with pious horror, publicly prayed for his conversion, and even reviled and insulted him to his face. Finding him incurable in his levity, they plotted to set up another member of his family on the throne. The conspiracy failed, and many of the leading nobles, who had joined in the plot, together with a number of fanatical doctors, were crucified. Undeterred by this, in 806 the people, stirred up by the bigots, rose again, only to be as summarily repressed as before. Even the terrible fate of the nobles of Toledo,—who had rebelled, as was their wont, and were at this time treacherously inveigled into the hands of the Crown Prince and massacred to a man,—did not deter the Cordovans from another revolt.
For seven years, indeed, the memory of the "Day of the Foss," as the massacre at Toledo was called, kept the fanatics of Cordova within bounds; but as the recollection of that fearful hole into which the murdered bodies of all the nobility of Toledo hadbeen cast, grew fainter, there were symptoms of a fresh insurrection at the capital. Popular feeling ran very high, not only against the Sultan, because he would not wear sackcloth and ashes or pretend to be an ascetic, but still more against his large body-guard of "Mutes," so called because, being negroes and the like, they could not speak Arabic. The Mutes dared not venture in the streets of Cordova except in numbers; a single soldier was sure to be mobbed, and might be murdered. One day a wanton blow struck by a member of the guard roused the whole people. They rushed with one accord to the palace, led by the thousands of theological students who inhabited the southern suburb of the city, and seemed bent on carrying it by assault in spite of its fortifications and garrison. The Sultan Hakam looked forth over the sea of faces, and watched with consternation the devoted mob repulsing the charge of his tried cavalry; but even in this hour of desperate peril he did not lose thesang-froidwhich is the birthright of great men. Retiring to his hall, he told his page Hyacinth to bring him a bottle of civet, with which he proceeded calmly to perfume his hair and beard. The page could not repress his astonishment at such an occupation, when the cruel mob was even then battering at the gates; but Hakam, who was fully aware of his danger, replied: "Silence, rascal! How do you suppose the rebels would be able to find out my head among the rest, if it were not distinguished by its sweet odour?" He then summoned his officers, and took his measures for the defence. These were simple enough; butthey proved effectual. He despatched his cousin with a force of cavalry, by a roundabout way, to the southern suburb, which he set in flames, and when the people turned back in terror from the besieged palace to rescue their wives and children from their burning homes, Hakam and the rest of the garrison fell on them in the rear. Attacked on both hands, the unfortunate rebels were cut to pieces; the grim Mutes rode through them, slashing them down by the hundred, and disregarding, if they understood, their prayers for mercy. Hakam's manœuvre saved the palace and the dynasty; and the insurrection was converted into a wholesale massacre.[12]
Yet in the moment of his triumph the Sultan stayed his hand; he did not press his victory to the last limits, but was content with ordering the destruction of the rebellious suburb and the exile of its inhabitants, who were forced to fly, some to Alexandria, to the number of fifteen thousand, besides women and children, whence they eventually crossed to Crete; others, eight thousand in all, to Fez, in Africa. The majority of the exiles were descendants of the old Spanish population, who had embraced Islam, but were glad of a pretext to assert their racial antipathy for the Arab rule. The chief offenders, thefakis, or theological students, however, were left unpunished, partly, no doubt, because many of them were Arabs, and partly in deference to their profession of orthodoxy. To one of their leaders, who was dragged before Hakam, and who told the Sultan, in the heat of his fanatical rage, that inhating his king he was obeying the voice of God, Hakam made the memorable reply: "He who commanded thee, as thou dost pretend, to hate me, commands me to pardon thee. Go and live, in God's protection!"
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MOORISH IVORY CASKET OF THE 11TH CENTURY IN THE CATHEDRAL OF PAMPLONA.MOORISH IVORY CASKET OF THE 11TH CENTURY IN THE CATHEDRAL OF PAMPLONA.
THESultan Hakam died in 822, after a reign of twenty-six years. He left a comparatively tranquil inheritance to his son Abd-er-RahmānII.; the renegades of Cordova had been subdued and exiled, the bigots had been given a lesson that they were not likely to forget, and there only remained the chronic disturbances on the Christian borders to be occasionally repressed. Abd-er-RahmānII. inherited his father's talent for enjoyment, but not that strength of character by which self-indulgence was preserved from degenerating into weakness. The new Sultan converted Cordova into a second Baghdad, and imitated the prodigalities of the great Harūn-er-Rashīd, who had recently left the scene of his fantastic amusements for, let us hope, a better world. Abd-er-Rahmān built palaces, laid out gardens, and beautified his capital with mosques, mansions, and bridges. Like all cultivated Moslem sovereigns, he was a lover of poetry, and claimed to be no mean poet himself, though his verses were sometimes written by other pens whom he paid to compose for him. His tastes were refined, and his nature was gentle and easily led. Four people ruled him throughout his career: onewas a singer, the second a theologian, the third a woman, and the fourth a black slave. The most influential of these was the theologian Yahya, the same who had before stirred up the students against Hakam, and who now acquired an absolute ascendency over the mind of the new Sultan. The Queen Tarūb and the slave Nasr, however, exercised no light authority in political matters; but the singer Ziryāb confined his interest to matters of taste and culture, and refused to meddle in the vulgar strife of politics. He was a Persian, and had been a pupil of the famous musician of Baghdad, Isaac the Mosilite, until one day he had the misfortune to excel his master in a performance before the Khalif Harūn, and had immediately afterwards been offered by the jealous Mosilite the choice of death or banishment. He accepted the latter; and, arriving in Spain, was received with effusion by the cultivated Sultan, who assigned him a handsome pension, supplies of food, houses, and other privileges and allowances, so that the fortunate singer counted an immense income. So delighted was the Sultan with Ziryāb's talents that he would seat him beside him, and share his meals with him, and would listen for hours to his songs and to the wonderful tales he could tell of bygone times, and the wise sayings he could relate from his boundless stores of reading. He knew more than a thousand songs by heart, each with its separate tune, which he said the spirits of the air taught him; he added a fifth string to the lute, and his style of playing was quite unlike any one else's, so that people who had heard him would listen to none other afterwards.He had a curious way with his musical pupils. He used to make the would-be singer sit down and try to sing his loudest. If the voice was weak, he told him to tie a band round his waist to increase the volume of sound; if he stammered or had any defect in his speech, Ziryāb made him keep a piece of wood in his mouth till his jaws were properly stretched. After this, if the novice could shoutAhat the top of his voice, and keep the sound sustained, he took him as a pupil and trained him carefully; if not, he dismissed him.[13]Never was any one so polished, so witty, so entertaining as Ziryāb; he soon became the most popular man in Andalusia, and held the position of arbiter of fashion, like Petronius or Beau Brummell. He made the people change their manner of wearing their hair. He introduced asparagus and force-meat balls to Andalusia, and a dish was long afterwards known as "Ziryāb's fricassee." He set the example of drinking out of glass vessels instead of metal, of sleeping on leather beds, dining off leather mats, and a host of other refinements; while he insisted on a careful gradation of clothes, diminishing by slow degrees from the thick of winter to the thin of summer, instead of the abrupt change which the people had hitherto made. Whatever he prescribed, the fashionable world followed; there was nothing that this delightful epicure could not persuade them to think both necessary and charming.
But while the Court was preoccupied with the tasting of new dishes, or the cut of its hair, therewere earnest people among the subjects of the Sultan, in Cordova itself, who were absorbed by much deeper thoughts. It was not the external enemy that thus endangered the peace of the Moorish kingdom. Many a time, indeed, did Abd-er-RahmānII., who was not wanting in personal courage and love of military glory, lead his armies with success against the Christians of the north, who, aided by Louis the Debonnaire, were continually making some expedition or foray over the frontiers. These petty campaigns were not yet serious enough to shake the stability of the Moslem rule. The trouble in these early days always came from within. In the present instance it arose from the too exalted spirit of a small number of Christians at Cordova. Most of the Christians, indeed, were by no means anxious to emphasize their creed; they found themselves well treated, free to worship as they pleased, with no hindrance from their rulers; and also free to trade and get rich, as well as their Moslem neighbours. What more could be desired, unless the recovery of their ancient kingdom? And as that was impossible just then, they were content to let well alone, and make the best of their mild and tolerant governors.
This temper was very general in Andalusia, but there were here and there ambitious or enthusiastic spirits that chafed against such compliance with the rule of the "infidel." They remembered the former power and prosperity of their church, and the priests especially could no longer restrain their hatred of the Moslems who had taken away from them their authority and substituted a false creed for the religionof Christ. The very tolerance of the Moors only exasperated such fervent souls; they preferred to be persecuted, like the saints of old; they longed to be martyrs, and they were indignant with the Moslems, because they would not "persecute them for righteousness' sake" and ensure them the kingdom of heaven. Especially hateful to these earnest people was the open gaiety and sensuous refinement of the Moors; their enjoyment of life and all its pleasure, their music and singing, their very learning and science, were abhorrent to these ascetics. Life, to the true believer, meant only scourges and fasts, penances and confessions, purification through suffering, the mortifying of the flesh and sanctifying of the spirit. What happened was, in truth, nothing but the manifestation of the ascetic or monastic form of Christianity among the subject populations. A sudden and violent enthusiasm took the place of the indifference that had hitherto been the prevailing characteristic of Spanish Christianity, and a race for martyrdom began.
It was a grievous pity to see good people throwing away their lives, and the lives of others, for a dream. The suicides of Andalusia were really no whit more reasonable or truly religious than the sufferings of the priests of Baal who cut themselves with knives, or of the Indian ascetics who let their nails grow through the palms of their hands. The fact that the Spanish "martyrs" were mad in a better cause does not make them less insane. Christianity does not teach its disciples to fling away their lives wantonly, out of mere joy in being tortured and killed. It was not as if the Christians were persecuted or hindered in theexercise of their faith; it was not as if the Moors were ignorant of Christianity and needed to be preached to. They knew more of the Scriptures than many of the Christians themselves, and they never spoke the name of Jesus Christ without adding, "May God bless him." Mohammedanism recognizes the inspired nature of Christ, and inculcates profound reverence towards him. The Moslems were not ignorant of Christianity, but they preferred their own creed; and while they let the Christians hold to theirs, there was no excuse for the latter posing in the heroic character of persecuted believers. Indeed there was no rational way of getting martyred; since Christians were allowed free exercise of their religious rites, might preach and teach without let or hindrance, they could not find a legal ground for being persecuted unless they left the paths of the Gospel and set aside the great lesson of Christ, "Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you." They were not despitefully used or persecuted; the mass of the Christians were entirely unmolested and though the priests were sometimes subjected to some public ridicule by the street boys and common people, the better class of Moslems never joined in this; yet so far were the poor Christians from attempting to love these mild adversaries that they went out of their way to curse them and blaspheme their religion, with the simple intention of being martyred for their pains. Now it is a well-known law in Moslem countries that he who blasphemes the Prophet Mohammed or his religion must die. It is astern and barbarous law, but the world has seen as bad principles carried into effect over the faggots of Smithfield and Oxford in later ages than that of which we are writing. Wilfully to stir up religious strife and injuriously to abuse another faith are no deeds for Christians; voluntarily to transgress a law which carries with it capital punishment is not martyrdom, but suicide; and the pity we cannot help feeling for the "martyrs" of Cordova is the same that one entertains for many less exalted forms of hysterical disorder. The victims were, indeed, martyrs to disease, and their fate is as pitiable as though they had really been martyrs for the faith.
The leading spirit of these suicides was Eulogius,[14]a priest who belonged to an old family of Cordova, always noted for its Christian zeal. Eulogius had spent years in prayer and fasting, in bitter penance and self-mortification, and had reduced himself to the ecstatic condition which leads to acts of misguided but heroic devotion. There was nothing worldly left in him, no thought for himself or personal ambition; to cover the false faith of the Moors with contumely, and to awaken a spirit of exalted devotion among his co-religionists, such were his aims. In these he had throughout the cordial support of a wealthy young man of Cordova, Alvaro by name, and of a small but fervid body of priests, monks, and women, with a few laymen. Among those who found a close affinity to the devoted young priest, was a beautiful girl named Flora. She was the child of a mixed marriage, and her Christian mother had brought her up secretly inher own faith. For many years Flora was to all outward appearance a Mohammedan; but at length, moved by the same spirit of sacrifice and enthusiasm which had stirred Eulogius, and excited by such passages in the Bible as, "Whoso shall deny Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father which is in heaven," she fled from her brother's house—her father was dead—and took refuge among the Christians. The brother, a Mohammedan, searched for her in vain; many priests were thrown into prison on the charge of being accomplices in the abduction; and Flora, unwilling that others should suffer through her fault, returned to her home and confessed herself a Christian. Her brother tried the sternest means at his disposal to compel her to recant, and at last, in a rage at her obstinacy, brought her before the Kādy, or Mohammedan judge, and accused her of apostacy. The child of a Moslem, even though the mother be a Christian, is held in Mohammedan law to be born a Moslem, and apostacy has always been punishable by death. Even now in Turkey the law holds good, though there has been a tacit understanding for the last forty years that it shall not be enforced; and a thousand years ago we must expect to find less tenderness towards renegades. Yet the judge before whom Flora was thus arraigned displayed some compunction towards the unhappy girl. He did not condemn her to death—as he was in law bound to do—or even to imprisonment; he had her severely beaten, and told her brother to take her home and instruct her in the Mohammedan religion. She escaped, however, again, and took refuge with someChristian friends, and here for the first time she met Eulogius, who conceived for the beautiful and unfortunate young devotee a pure and tender love such as angels might feel for one another. Her mystical exaltation, devout piety, and unconquerable courage, gave her the aspect of a saint in his eyes, and he had not forgotten a detail of this first interview six years later when he wrote to her these words: "Thou didst deign, holy sister, to show me thy neck torn by the scourge, and shorn of the beautiful locks that once hung over it. It was because thou didst regard me as thy spiritual father, and believe me to be pure and chaste as thyself. Softly did I lay my hand on thy wounds; I had it in me to seek to heal them with my lips, had I dared.... When I parted from thee I was as one that walketh in a dream, and I sighed without ceasing." Flora and a sister who shared her enthusiasm were removed to a safe place of concealment, and Eulogius did not see her again for some time.
Meanwhile the zeal of the Cordovan Christians was bearing fruit. A foolish priest, Perfectus, had been led into cursing the dominant religion, and had been executed on a great Mohammedan feast-day, when all the world was rejoicing at the termination of the rigorous fast of Ramadan, which had lasted a whole month. The Moslems, men and women, made this feast a special occasion of merry-making, and the execution of the offending priest added a new subject of excitement to the crowds that thronged the streets and sailed on the river and frolicked on the great plain outside the city. The poor priest died bravely, cursing Mohammed and his religion with his lastbreath, surrounded by a vast crowd of scoffing and pitiless Moslems. The Bishop of Cordova, followed by an army of priests and devotees, took down his body, buried him with the holy relics of St. Acisclus, a martyr of Diocletian's persecution, in whose church he had officiated, and forthwith had him made a saint. The same evening two Moslems were drowned, and this was at once accepted as the judgment of God on the murderers of Perfectus. The black slave, Nasr, who had superintended the execution, died within the year, and the Christians triumphantly declared that Perfectus had predicted his decease: "It was another judgment!"
Soon a monk named Isaac sought an interview with the Kādy, on the pretext of wishing to be converted to the Mohammedan religion; but no sooner had the learned judge explained the doctrines of Islam than the would-be convert turned round, and began to heap maledictions upon the creed which he had asked to be taught. It was no marvel that the astonished Kādy gave him a cuff. "Do you know," said he, "that our law condemns people to death for daring to speak as you have spoken?" "I do," answered the monk; "condemn me to death; I desire it; for I know that the Lord said, 'Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.'" The Kādy was sorry for the man, and begged the Sultan to overlook his crime, but in vain. Isaac was decapitated, and thereupon became a saint, and it was proved conclusively that he had worked many miracles, not only ever since his childhood, but even before he came into the world.
Presently one of the Sultan's guards, Sancho, a pupil of Eulogius, blasphemed Mohammed, and lost his head. Next Sunday six monks rushed before the Kādy and shouted, "We, too, say what our holy brothers Isaac and Sancho said," and forthwith fell to blaspheming Mohammed, and to crying, "Avenge your accursed Prophet! Treat us with all your barbarity!" Their heads were cut off. Three more priests or monks, infected with the fever of suicide, rushed excitedly to present their necks to the headsman. Eleven thus fell in less than two months during the summer of 851.
The great body of the Christians were dismayed at the indiscreet zeal of their brethren. It must not be forgotten that the Spaniards had not so far been remarkable for religious fervour. Their creed sat lightly upon them, and so many of them had been converted to Islam, that the two creeds and the two peoples had become to a considerable extent mixed together in friendly intercourse. The Christians had come to despise their old Latin language and literature; they learned Arabic, and soon were able to write it as well as the Arabs themselves. Eulogius himself deplores this change. The Christians, he says, delight in the Arabic poems and romances instead of the Holy Scriptures and the works of the Fathers. The younger generations know only Arabic; they read the Moslems' books with ardour, form great libraries of them, and find them admirable; while they will not glance at a Christian book. They are forgetting their own language, he adds, and hardly one in a thousand can write a decent Latin letter; yet they indite excellent Arabic verse. The Christians, in fact, found Arabromances and poetry much more entertaining than the writings of the Fathers of the Church. They were growing more and more Arab; more civilized, more refined, and also more indifferent to distinctions of faith. They were grateful to the Moors for treating them well, and the sudden animosity displayed by their excited brethren amazed and shocked them. They endeavoured to avert the threatening storm by showing their brethren the futility of their conduct. They argued with them; reminded them how tolerant the Moslems had always been to the Christians; recalled to them the peaceful teaching of the gospel, and the words of the apostle, that "Slanderers shall not enter the kingdom of heaven;" and told them how the Moslems regarded these deaths with no disquietude, for they argued, "If your religion were true, God would have avenged His martyrs."
These worthy Christians of the common kind, who knew not the force of spiritual exaltation for good and for evil, and only did their duty to their neighbours and said their prayers in the simple, old-fashioned manner, tried in vain to restrain the zealots. They perceived that these continued insults and swift-following punishments must at last end in real persecution. Eulogius, on the contrary, who set himself to answer their objections with texts out of the Bible and the Lives of the Saints, coveted such a result, and the zealots desired nothing better than the fire of persecution. The ecclesiastical authorities, worked upon by the moderate party, and also by the Moorish government, could not permit the spirit of revolt to continue much longer unreproved; the bishops metin council under the presidentship of the Metropolitan of Seville, and though they could not precisely repudiate the former "martyrdoms," since the Church had already canonized the sufferers, yet they ordained that no more exhibitions of the kind should be made, and in furtherance of this decision the leaders of the zealots were thrown into prison. Here Eulogius met Flora again. She had been praying earnestly one day in a church, when she saw beside her a fellow-enthusiast, a sister of that monk Isaac who had been one of the earliest "martyrs." Mary wanted to join her brother in the kingdom of heaven, and Flora resolved to accompany her. They went before the Kādy and did their best to excite his anger by blaspheming the name of Mohammed and his religion. Two young and beautiful girls, professing most sincerely the religion of "peace on earth and goodwill towards men," stood before the magistrate with lips full of cursing and bitterness, reviling his faith as "the work of the devil." But the good judge was not to be roused so easily. He was weary of all this hysterical mania, and had many a time pretended to be deaf when people thrust themselves upon death; he thought it was a pity of these two girls, and wished they would not be so foolish. He would try to induce them to retract, or make as though he had not heard. But they persisted in their heroic purpose, and he had to put them in prison.
Here, in the long confinement, the maidens were daunted, and almost inclined to waver in their sacrificial ardour, when Eulogius came to strengthen and destroy them. His task was the hardest in the world:to encourage the woman whom he loved with all his soul to go to the scaffold; yet, in spite of every natural and human feeling, this man of iron nerved himself to fan the flame of enthusiasm to the point of martyrdom. It was a daily agony to the unhappy priest, but he never relaxed his efforts in what he believed to be the good cause. He even wrote an entire treatise to convince Flora—who needed it but little—of the supreme beauty and glory of martyrdom for the faith. He spent his days and nights in reading and writing, to banish from his heart those feelings of compunction and love which threatened to shake his resolution. But it was only too firm. Flora and Mary remained constant and undismayed in spite of the anxious efforts of the Kādy to help them to save themselves; and after the final interview, when sentence of death was pronounced, Eulogius saw Flora:—"She seemed to me an angel," he wrote afterwards, glorying in the spiritual triumph. "A celestial illumination surrounded her; her face lightened with happiness; she seemed already to be tasting the joys of the heavenly home.... When I heard the words of her sweet mouth, I sought to stablish her in her resolve by showing her the crown that awaited her. I worshipped her; I fell down before this angel, and besought her to remember me in her prayers; and strengthened by her speech, I returned less sad to my sombre cell." Flora and her companion Mary were executed at last, 24th November, 851, and Eulogius wrote a pæan of joy to celebrate what he deemed a great victory of the Church.
Soon after this, Eulogius and the other priests werereleased from prison, and the next year Abd-er-RahmānII. died, and was succeeded by his son Mohammed, a rigid, cold-hearted egotist, who screwed savings out of the salaries of his ministers, and was universally detested for his meanness and unworthiness. The theologians alone liked him, for he seemed likely to avenge to the full the insults which the excited Christians had poured upon the Mohammedan religion. Churches were demolished, and such severe persecutions were set on foot, that though many Christians had become Moslems when the bishops had officially condemned suicidal martyrdom, many more now followed their example; indeed, according to Eulogius and Alvaro, the majority recanted. The wise and kindly policy of Abd-er-Rahmān and his ministers, who shut their eyes when the Christians were wantonly committing themselves, was now exchanged for a policy of cruel repression, and it is no wonder that apostacy was the rule.
Still, the influence of the little band of zealots was powerful, and had already extended far beyond the limits of Cordova. Toledo made Eulogius its bishop, and when the Sultan refused his consent, the primacy was kept vacant until the zealot should be permitted to occupy it. Two French monks came to Cordova to beg some relics of the holy martyrs, and went back to St. Germain-des-Pres with a handsome bag of bones, which were presently displayed to the faithful at Paris. But a heavy blow was about to fall upon the enthusiasts. Another girl deserted her parents to follow Eulogius; and this time she and her teacher were brought before the Kādy. Eulogius was guiltyonly of proselytizing, and his legal punishment was but a scourging. But the priest was not made of the stuff that endures the whip. Humble and long-suffering before his God, willing to inflict any torture on his own body for the sake of the faith, he could not submit to be flogged by the infidel. "Make sharp thy sword, judge," he cried; "send my soul to meet my Creator; but think not that I will suffer my body to be lacerated with whips." And here he burst into a flood of maledictions against Mohammed and his religion.
The Kādy would not take upon himself the responsibility of executing the sentence upon so prominent a leader as Eulogius, and the priest was accordingly brought before the privy council. One of the body expostulated with him, and asked why a man of sense and education should voluntarily run his head into peril of death; he could understand fools and maniacs doing so, he said, but Eulogius was of a different stamp. "Listen to me," he added, "I entreat you; yield for once to necessity; retract what you said before the Kādy; say but the word, and you shall go free." But it was too late. Eulogius, though he preferred the position of trainer of martyrs to setting the example himself, could not retreat from his ground with dignity. He must go on to the bitter end. And refusing to retract anything, he was forthwith led out to execution, and died with courage and devotion on March 11, 859.[15]
Deprived of their leader, the Christian martyrs lost heart, and we do not hear of their mad devotion again.
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MYreaders may perhaps be disappointed that so far we have but few records of noble deeds or great wars, and that instead of individual heroes we have been chiefly interested in large movements of races and religions. We had, it is true, a stirring outset with Tārik and his Berbers, whose brilliant conquests are no more legendary than is the history of the nineteenth century. We had the great and decisive battle of Tours, but of this the details, which might have proved of surpassing interest, are wanting; and the other engagement with the Franks, the field of Roncesvalles, errs in the opposite direction, for it is overclouded with myth. Since that day, a hundred years have now passed, and we have come to the death of Eulogius and the consequent decline of the Christian martyrs; and in all that century we have been reading of nothing but the struggle between the different races and creeds that made up the mixed population of the Spanish peninsula. But after all, golden deeds are rare, and are too often the invention of poets, whose spiritual minds clothe with the attributes of ideal chivalry what are really the ordinary events of war; while the struggle of race with race andcreed with creed is what the world has been incessantly witnessing ever since man came into existence. We must not allow ourselves to think that the history of these large movements is uninteresting because it has not the personal charm of individual acts of heroism. In the devotion of countless unnoticed men and women during the piteous epoch of martyrdom at Cordova there was perhaps more real heroism than in the impetuous deeds of chivalry displayed by rude warriors on the battle-field. It is much easier to be brave in hot blood than to endure the alarms and sufferings of long imprisonment, to look forward with undaunted courage to the day of execution, and keep a firm heart through it all. The Christian martyrs were misguided, they threw away their lives without cause; but their courage is as worthy of admiration as their wisdom is to be pitied. Flora was as real a heroine as if she had sacrificed herself for a worthy sake. Eulogius, with all his bigotry, was of the true hero's mould. And in all these great movements of race or faith there are numberless acts of devotion and fortitude which, though they may escape the eye of the historian, call for as much resolution and endurance as the most brilliant exploits of the soldier. It is often in the little acts of heroism that the hardest duties of mankind are found; and in the conflicts between large bodies of people there are endless opportunities for their exercise.
It is much easier to realize heroic character in a person than in a whole people or even a city; and we are now coming to the career of a man who approachedas few have ever done the high ideal of kingly greatness. A great king is the result of a great need. When the nation is sore beset, when the times are full of presage of disaster, and ruin hangs ominously on the horizon; then the great king comes to rescue his people from danger, to restore order and well-being, and to reign over a realm once more made happy and prosperous by his efforts. The need of such a ruler was anxiously felt at the beginning of the tenth century in Spain. The excited conduct of the Christians of Cordova had been followed by a still more dangerous and widespread rebellion in the provinces. The throne was occupied by incapable sovereigns; for the energetic policy of Mundhir, who had succeeded his father Mohammed in 886, was arrested by his assassination in 888, and his brother Abdallah, who had instigated the murder, was incapable of dealing courageously with the numerous sources of danger which then menaced the kingdom. His policy was shifty and temporizing; he alternately tried the effects of force and conciliation, with the usual consequence that both policies failed; and he was personally so despicable, cruel, and vile, that all parties in his dominions seemed for once to be agreed in their detestation of him, and their resolve to cast off his rule. He had hardly been reigning three years when the greater part of Andalusia was virtually independent. All the various factions of the State were now again in active opposition to the central power. Every nobleman or chief, were he Arab, Berber, or Spaniard, seized the opportunity of a bad and weak sovereign, and general anarchy, to appropriate a portion of the land for his own exclusivebenefit, and from behind his ramparts to defy the Sultan. The old Arab aristocracy, the descendants of the Arab tribes who completed the conquest of Spain, were few and greatly outnumbered by the other races; but though their weakness should have kept them loyal to the Arab kingdom of Cordova, they too turned against it, and established themselves in independent princedoms, especially at Seville, which now became a formidable rival to Cordova. In other cities, though the Arabs were not strong enough to break openly with the Sultan, they gave him but a nominal homage; and the governors of Lorca and Zaragoza were really quite independent of their feeble king. In no place, outside Cordova, where the mercenary guards of the Sultan compelled a certain outward submission, were the Arabs to be counted upon for the defence of the Omeyyad power.
THE GOLDEN TOWER, SEVILLE.THE GOLDEN TOWER, SEVILLE.
The Berbers were more numerous than the Arabs, and at least equally disaffected. They had abandoned any pretence of submission to the Sultan's authority, and had returned to their old political system of clan government. The western provinces of Spain, such as Estremadura, and the south of Portugal, were now the independent possessions of the Berbers; and they also held various important posts, such as Jaen, in Andalusia itself. The Berber family of Dhu-n-Nun, consisting of the father Mūsa, "a great scoundrel and an abominable thief," and his three sons, who resembled him in their physical strength and their unrivalled brutality, carried fire and sword through the land, and burnt, sacked, and massacred wherever they went.
The Mohammedan Spaniards, who had put on something of Arab civilization along with their new faith, were by no means barbarians like the Berbers; but they were not the less hostile to the central power. The province of Algarve, at the south-west corner of the peninsula, was entirely in their power; and they held numerous independent cities and districts throughout Andalusia. Indeed all the most important cities were in secret or open revolt. Arab governors, Berber chiefs, Spanish renegades, alike joined in repudiating or disregarding the sovereign authority of Abdallah; and most powerful of all, Ibn-Hafsūn, a Christian, who had raised the mountaineers of the province of Elvira (Granada), reigned in perfect security in his rocky fastness, Bobastro, and gave laws to the regions around. Again and again had the Sultan attacked him, and each time suffered defeat; now he was disposed to try the ignominious policy of conciliation, only to find Ibn-Hafsūn quite ready to trick him at that. Murcia, the "land of Theodemir," was independent under a mild and cultivated renegade prince, who governed his subjects wisely, and was beloved by them; who was devoted to poetry, but did not neglect to keep up a considerable army, which included five thousand horsemen. Toledo was, as usual, in revolt, and nothing but the jealousies and divisions of the Christians of the north prevented them from reconquering their long lost territory. Split up as it was into numberless little seigniories, resembling rather the estates or counties of feudal barons than portions of a once powerful realm, Andalusia could have offeredbut an ill-directed resistance to a determined invader.[16]
DOOR OF THE MAIDEN'S COURT, ALCAZAR OF SEVILLE.DOOR OF THE MAIDEN'S COURT, ALCAZAR OF SEVILLE.
There were of course some gleams of light amidst all this anarchy. We have said that the province of Murcia was ruled by an enlightened and benevolent prince. The lord of Cazlona was also distinguished for his patronage of poets and the arts; his halls were raised upon marble pillars, and the walls were encrusted with marble and gold; all that makes life enjoyable was to be found within his palace. Ibn-Hajjāj, too, the Arab king—for he was nothing less—of Seville, who had compelled the Sultan to come to terms with him and make him his friend, exercised his unbounded authority in the noblest manner. His city was admirably governed, order reigned there undisturbed, and evil-doers were sternly but justly punished. He kept his state like an emperor; five hundred cavaliers formed his escort, and his royal robe was of brocade, with his name and titles embroidered on it in gold thread. Kings from over the sea sent him presents: silken stuffs from Egypt, learned doctors of the law from Medina, and matchless singers from Baghdad. The beautiful lady "Moon," renowned for her lovely voice, her eloquence, and poetic fire, sang of him thus: "In all the west I find no right noble man save Ibrahim, but he is nobility itself. When one has known the delight of living with him, to dwell in any other land would be misery." The very poets of Cordova were attracted to his brilliant court, where they were sure of a princely welcome. Once only did a poet receive a cold greeting fromIbrahim the son of Hajjāj. This was one who thought to please the prince by reciting a scurrilous poem on the nobles of Cordova, to whom the ruler of Seville was not well disposed. "You are mistaken," was Ibn-Hajjāj's comment, "if you think that a man like myself can find any gratification in listening to these base calumnies."
Yet these occasional flashes of enlightenment cannot make amends for the general condition of anarchy to which Andalusia had become a prey, by the weakening of the central power, and the aggrandisement of countless petty rulers and brigand chiefs. The country was in a deplorable state, and Cordova itself, now threatened even with conquest at the hands of Ibn-Hafsūn and his bold mountaineers, was given over to mournful sadness. "Without being yet actually besieged, she was already suffering all the ills of beleaguerment." "Cordova," said the Arab historians, "was in the condition of a frontier town exposed to all the attacks of the enemy." Time after time the inhabitants were startled from their sleep, in the midst of night, by the cries of distress raised by the wretched peasants across the river, when the horsemen of Polei were setting the sword to their throats. "The State is menaced with total dissolution," wrote a contemporary witness; "disasters follow one another ceaselessly; thieving and pillaging go on; our wives and children are dragged into slavery." There were universal complaints of the Sultan's want of energy, of his weakness, and his baseness. The troops were grumbling because they were not paid. The provinces had stopped the supplies, and the treasury was empty.
What money the Sultan had been able to borrow, he spent to bribe the few Arabs who still affected to support him in the provinces. The deserted markets showed how trade had been destroyed. Bread had reached a fabulous price. Nobody believed any longer in the future; despair had sunk into all hearts. The bigots, who regarded all public misfortunes as the chastisement of God, and called Ibn-Hafsūn the scourge of the divine wrath, afflicted the city with their doleful prophecies. "Woe to thee, Cordova!" they cried, "woe to thee, sink of defilement and decay, abode of calamity and anguish, thou who hast neither friend nor ally! When the Captain, with his great nose and ugly face, he who is guarded before by Moslems and behind by idolaters—when Ibn-Hafsūn comes before thy gates, then will thy awful fate be accomplished!"
When things were at the worst, a gleam of hope shone upon the miserable inhabitants of the royal city. Abdallah, who was quite as despairing as his subjects, tried for once a bold policy, and in spite of the discouragement of his followers, and, the overwhelming numbers of the enemy who surrounded him on every side, he contrived to win a few advantages. Then he did the best thing that he could do for his country: he died on October 15, 912, aged sixty-eight, after a reign of twenty-four unhappy years. His life had seen the fall of the Omeyyad power, a fall sudden and apparently irremediable. The reign of his successor was destined to see as sudden, as complete, a restoration of that power.
The new Sultan was Abd-er-RahmānIII., a grandsonof Abdallah. He was only twenty-one when he came to the throne, and there were several uncles and other kinsmen who might be expected to oppose the succession of a mere youth at so troublous a time. Yet no one made any resistance; on the contrary, his accession was hailed with satisfaction on all sides. The young prince had already succeeded in winning the favour of the people and the court. His handsome presence and princely bearing, joined to a singular grace of manner and acknowledged powers of mind, made him generally popular, and it was with a feeling of renewed hope that the Cordovans, who were almost the only subjects he had left, watched the first proceedings of the new Sultan. Abd-er-Rahmān made no attempt to disguise his intentions. He abandoned once and for all the policy of his grandfather, which, in its alternate weakness and cruelty, had worked such injury to the State; and in its place he announced that he would permit no disobedience throughout the dominions of the Omeyyads; he summoned the disaffected nobles and chieftains to submit to his authority; and he let it be clearly understood that he would leave no portion of his kingdom under the control of rebels. The programme was bold enough to satisfy the most sanguine; but there seemed every probability that it would unite all the rebels in all parts in one great league to crush the dauntless young prince. But Abd-er-Rahmān knew his countrymen, and his boldness was well founded. Nearly a generation had passed since Ibn-Hafsūn and the other rebels had raised the standard of insurrection, and every one had come to feel thatthere had been enough of it. The early zeal that had prompted the Spaniards, Moslem and Christian alike, to strike a blow for their national independence, had now cooled,—such movements never last unless they achieve a complete success at the first white heat of enthusiasm; the leaders were either dead or aged, and a calmer spirit had come over their followers. People had begun to ask themselves what was the good that they had obtained by their fine revolutions? They had not freed Andalusia from the "infidel," but had contrariwise given her over to the worst members of the infidel ranks—to brigand chiefs and adventurers of the vilest stamp. The country was harried from end to end by bands of lawless robbers, who destroyed the tilled fields and vineyards, and turned the land into a howling wilderness. Anything was better than the tyranny of brigandage. The Sultan of Cordova could not make matters worse than they were, and there was a general disposition to see whether he might not possibly improve them.
Consequently, when Abd-er-Rahmān began to lead his army against the rebellious provinces, he found them more than half willing to submit. His troops were inspirited to see their gallant young sovereign at their head—a sight that Abdallah had not permitted them for many years—and they followed him with enthusiasm. The rebels, already tired of their anarchic condition, opened their gates after a mere show of resistance. One after another the great cities of Andalusia admitted the Sultan within their walls. The country to the south of Cordova was the first to submit; then Seville opened her gates; the Berbersof the west were reduced to obedience; and the prince of Algarve hastened to offer tribute. Then the Sultan advanced against the Christians of the province of Regio, where for thirty years the mountain fastnesses had protected the bold subjects of Ibn-Hafsūn, and where no one knew better than Abd-er-Rahmān that no speedy victory was to be won. Yet step by step this difficult region was subdued. Seeing the scrupulous justice and honour of the Sultan, who kept his treaties with the Christians in perfect good faith, and observed the utmost clemency to those who submitted to him, fortress after fortress surrendered. Ibn-Hafsūn himself, in his fastness, remained unconquered and defiant as ever, but he was old, and soon he died, and then it was only a matter of time for the arms of the Sultan to penetrate even into Bobastro. When the Sultan stood at last upon the ramparts of this redoubtable fortress, and looked down from its dizzy heights upon the cliffs and precipices that surrounded the rebel stronghold, he was overcome with emotion, and fell upon his knees to render thanks to God for the great victory.[17]Then he turned to acts of mercy and pardon, and all the days he stayed in the fort he observed a solemn fast. Murcia had now given in its allegiance to the Sultan, and Toledo alone remained unsubdued. The proud city on the Tagus haughtily rejected Abd-er-Rahmān's offer of amnesty, and confidently awaited the siege. But it had to do with a different assailant from the feeble generals who had from time to time reaped disgrace beneath the walls of the Royal City. To prove to its defenders that hissiege was no transitory menace, the Sultan quickly built a little town, which he called El-Feth ("Victory"), on the opposite mountain, and there he resided in calm anticipation of the result. Pressed by famine, the city surrendered, and Abd-er-RahmānIII. entered the last seat of rebellion in the dominions which he had inherited from his namesake, the first Abd-er-Rahmān, which now (930) once more reached to their full extent.
AQUEDUCT NEAR GRANADA.AQUEDUCT NEAR GRANADA.
It had taken eighteen years to recover the whole breadth of dominion which his predecessors had lost; but the work was done, and the royal power was firmly established over Arabs, Berbers, Spaniards, Moslems and Christians alike. Henceforward Abd-er-Rahmān permitted no special prominence to any party; he kept the old Arab nobility in severe repression; and the Spaniards, who had always been treated by them as basecanaille, rejoiced to see their oppressors brought low. Henceforth the Sultan was the sole authority in the State; but his authority was just, enlightened, and tolerant. After so many years of confusion and anarchy, the people accepted the new despotism cheerfully. There were no more brigands to destroy their crops and vines; and if the Sultan was absolute in his power, at least he did not abuse it. The country folk returned to the paths of peace and plenty; they were at last free to get rich and to be happy after their own way.
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