Chapter IX (2)

The Christian population welcomed its change of masters with no manifestations of joy or enthusiasm. A gloomy silence pervaded the crowds lining the streets, as the prelates in gorgeous vestments and the men-at-arms in glittering steel swept by in majestic procession, to solemnize, with every circumstance of ecclesiastical ceremony and military ostentation, the fortunate termination of their enterprise. In the early ages of Islam the beneficent and tolerant rule of the Moor seems to have universally won the respect and inspired the confidence of conquered nations and hostile sectaries alike. For the happy conditions promoted by the exercise of the generous principles of equity and religious freedom, the ignorance, tyranny, and intolerance of a foreign hierarchy offered no adequate compensation. From the hamlets of Provence to the plains of Andalusia, the tributary Christians, save only such as were invested with the dignity of the sacerdotal order, appear to have always beheld, with unconcealed regret, the discomfiture and displacement of their infidel lords.

Well apprized of the uncertainty and difficulty of retaining his conquest, Louis repaired--as well as circumstances would permit--the walls of Barcelona, which had sustained considerable damage from the mines and military engines of his soldiery. A governor of Gothic race was left in command of a well-appointed garrison, and, his object finally attained, the King of Aquitaine retired from the scene of such devotion, self-sacrifice, and valor. The heroic Zaid, after receiving the reproaches and vituperation of his conqueror, who, actuated by some unknown motive, condescended to spare his life, was condemned to perpetual banishment, and henceforth disappears from history.

The introduction of the Feudal System into Spain practically dates from the capture of Barcelona by the army of Louis. That system had long before been instituted in France. Its germs, as yet undeveloped, had appeared in many of the regulations of the Visigothic constitution. But the minutely defined and mutual obligations of vassal and lord, and the exact nature of the allegiance due from the noble to his prince as suzerain, had been neither established by prescription nor formulated by law. Nor did its rules ever acquire among the independent races of the Peninsula the force and extent accorded to them elsewhere. The humiliating seigniorial rights claimed and exercised by the dissolute barons of England, France, and Germany were never imposed upon the brave and self-respecting peasantry of Spain. It was long before the hereditary transmission of fiefs was fully recognized in that country.

North of the Pyrenees the duties of feudalism, once assumed, could never be relinquished. In Castile and Aragon the vassal could renounce the service of one protector for that of another, if he had previously surrendered all property received from the former or its pecuniary equivalent. This establishment of feudal institutions in the Gothic March not only assured the permanence of its conquest, but gave the Franks an influence in the affairs of the Peninsula as advantageous to the promotion of Christian success as it was prejudicial to the continuance of Moslem power.

The loss of Barcelona was, as soon became evident. a catastrophe of signal importance, whose consequences seriously affected the prestige and diminished the strength of the Moorish empire in Spain. No explanation has ever been adduced to account for the surprising indifference or culpable neglect of Al-Hakem in allowing the enemies of his faith and his dynasty to wrest from its brave defenders one of the most considerable and prosperous cities in his dominions. A mysterious silence pervades the ancient chronicles in regard to the reasons for his conduct,--so extraordinary; so at variance with the energy of his character; so detrimental to the interests of his kingdom; so destructive to his hopes of future greatness. Experience had proved him to be endowed with many of the qualities of a daring and active leader. From his very youth, the excitement of war had been to his fiery spirit a favorite and exhilarating pastime. His resources were unlimited, his army well equipped and numerous. So far as we have any information, the remainder of his kingdom was at peace. In case the Christian host was too powerful to encounter in battle, the sea offered a broad and unobstructed highway for the transportation of supplies and reinforcements. Time was not wanting, for the siege lasted seven months. Whether the menacing attitude of the King of the Asturias, or some obscure domestic sedition, which, obscured by the crowning exploit of the Frankish crusade, has escaped the notice of historians, is responsible for this apparently unaccountable and suicidal apathy, must remain forever a matter of conjecture. But whatever was the cause, the misfortune was irreparable. The iron grasp of the Frank never slackened its hold. The colony became a principality, the principality a kingdom, which, in time, consolidated with other provinces into the monarchy of Aragon, led the van of the Christian armies in the War of the Reconquest.

All authorities agree, however, that the Emir was on the point of marching to the relief of Barcelona when information reached him of its surrender. Unwilling to disband his army without an attempt to at least partially regain his lost prestige, he proceeded to Saragossa, and then, following the course of the Ebro, succeeded in retaking Huesca, Tarragona, and some other places of inferior importance. The rebel chieftains, Hassan and Bahlul, to whose treasonable artifices is mainly to be credited the loss of Eastern Spain, were captured and beheaded. No demonstration was made before Barcelona, a fact that would seem to suggest either the inferiority of the troops in numbers and equipment or the prudence or fears of their commander.

The religious enthusiasts of the capital had seen, with alarm and disgust, the accession of Al-Hakem. While not eminent for piety like his father, he, on the other hand, had manifested no particular hostility to the theological faction. Its members, however, were not his favorites. He was devoted to amusements and practices abhorrent to the principles openly preached and secretly neglected by these rigid precisians. His frequent intoxication, a vice which outraged public opinion and provoked the contempt of the conscientious Moslem, made the palace the scene of orgies that were the reproach and the scandal of the capital. From childhood he had been immoderately devoted to sensual indulgence. The pastime of the chase, which involved the employment of animals declared unclean by the Koran, occupied no small part of his leisure. A ferocious temper, an exaggerated idea of his authority, an implacable spirit, and a merciless severity in the infliction of punishment for even trifling offences increased the terror with which he was regarded by noble, peasant, and theologian. But these sins were venial when compared with the indifference with which he treated the saints and the doctors upon whom Hischem had bestowed distinguished honors and unbounded confidence. Those who had formerly been entrusted with important secrets of state, which they were able to use for their personal advantage, were now excluded from the Divan. Instead of entering the royal presence without ceremony, they were compelled to wait the pleasure of their master in the antechambers. The donations from the public treasury, which had been bestowed with unstinted hand upon every specious pretext, were now withheld. Degraded in the popular estimation, humbled in pride, diminished in wealth, derided by the court, but still retaining the sympathy of the masses, the fanatics of rival sects began to overlook their mutual animosity in the hope of restoring the vanished importance of their order, and to entertain designs against the life as well as the government of Al-Hakem.

The scheming and disappointed Malikite faquis, whose ecclesiastical character, assisted by a talent for imposture, had caused the multitude to attribute to them supernatural powers, were the chief promoters of the conspiracy. The prestige of a royal name being considered essential to their success, they approached Ibn-Shammas, son of Abdallah, and a cousin of the Emir, and, finding him apparently favorable to their designs, openly tendered him the crown. The ambition of that chieftain, however, was not sufficiently strong to induce him to compromise his loyalty. Dissembling his indignation at the presumption of those who could think him capable of such flagrant ingratitude and treason, he demanded a list of the principal conspirators as an indispensable condition of his compliance. The deputation, headed by a faqui named Yahya, readily agreed to this, and a night was designated when the information would be given. Meanwhile, Ibn-Shammas informed the Emir of what had happened, and when Yahya and his companions were introduced into his apartments, Ibn-al-Khada, the private secretary of Al-Hakem, was already there concealed behind a curtain, and ready to write down the names as fast as they were communicated. The list included many of the most considerable nobles and citizens of Cordova, and the secretary, fearing lest the conspirators, to magnify their importance, might include his own name among the number, an act which would insure his destruction, designedly allowed the reed with which he was writing to scratch upon the paper. The traitors instantly took the alarm; the house of Ibn-Shammas was deserted in a moment; all implicated who had time to escape fled precipitately from the city, and the others, to the number of seventy-two, were crucified.

The year 805 witnessed the institution of an alliance between the Emirate of the West and the newly founded kingdom of the Edrisites in Africa, destined to exercise a marked influence upon the fortunes of the former power, and whose close relations in peace and war were not finally sundered until the kingdom of Granada was incorporated into the Spanish monarchy. Several years previously a noble Syrian named Edris, a fugitive like Abd-al-Rahman from the persecution of the Abbasides, had sought a refuge in the mountain defiles and desert wastes of Western Africa. Without friends, money, or influence, he nevertheless received a hearty welcome from the tribes of the Atlas. His manly traits and chivalrous bearing soon secured for him the esteem of his protectors, and, from a penniless refugee, he rose by degrees to be the chieftain of a clan, the founder of a nation, and the head of a dynasty. It was to his son and successor Edris that Al-Hakem now sent an embassy to felicitate him upon his accession, and to propose an alliance which might be employed to contract the dominions and weaken the power of the detested tyrants of the East. The importance of the occasion was disclosed by an escort of five hundred Andalusian nobles, and the interchange of magnificent presents. The embassy was splendidly entertained by the African monarch, and a treaty concluded which, by its provisions for mutual support and constant hostility against the common enemy, accomplished much towards the consolidation and perpetuity of the Moslem power in the West. Two years afterwards the city of Fez was founded. Its population, composed largely of Christians, Jews, fire-worshippers, and idolaters, excited the wonder and contempt of the pious Mussulmans who visited it; and the incessant strife promoted by the political adventurers and zealots of the various forms of faith, who had established their abode within its walls, augured ill for the future peace or prosperity of the Edrisite capital.

While absent on the expedition to Eastern Spain, the mind of Al-Hakem had been disturbed by tidings of another outbreak at Toledo. Yusuf, the son of Amru, who, through paternal fondness and the partiality of the Emir, had been exalted to a position to the discharge of whose responsibilities his experience and qualifications were wholly inadequate, had signalized his promotion by flagrant and repeated acts of tyranny and insolence. The Toledan populace, seditious by inheritance and practice, and which, from time immemorial, had been ready to assert, on the slightest provocation, the dangerous privilege of resistance, at the perpetration of some outrage of unusual atrocity ran to arms, attacked the palace, and overpowered a detachment of the guard. The principal citizens, dreading the consequences of an insurrection, interposed their good offices between the governor and the mob, and, with great difficulty, prevented the sack of the palace and the death of its master. But the latter, far from appreciating either the efforts of his benefactors or the peril which he had just escaped, meditated and planned, without concealment or precaution, a bloody and merciless revenge. Informed of his intentions, the nobles deprived him of his office without ceremony, and threw him into prison. A messenger was sent to Al-Hakem to acquaint him with the facts, and to explain the danger which justified the adoption of such extreme and arbitrary measures. The Emir, with every appearance of kindness, excused the violence of his subjects; gave orders for the removal of the obnoxious Yusuf; and reinstated, at his own solicitation, Amru as wali; the grateful inhabitants returned to their avocations, and the city once more assumed the appearance of its former tranquillity.

But the habitual defiance of his authority by the Toledans rankled in the breast of Al-Hakem. The city had long been the focus of insurrection, the rallying-point of the discontented, the head-quarters of every turbulent and ambitious chieftain. Not even the metropolis itself surpassed it in its influence on the politics of the kingdom. The audacity of its citizens and the pride of its clergy concurred in supporting its extravagant pretensions to supremacy. The limited area enclosed by its walls had always been occupied by a dense population, among whose members the Christians largely preponderated, and over whose minds the traditions of the Visigothic monarchy exerted a power constantly distrusted and feared by every Moslem ruler who exercised jurisdiction over its territory. The Arab historians have repeatedly asserted, with every appearance of truth, that no other body of subjects within the dominions of Islam were so infected with the spirit of mutiny and disorder as the populace of Toledo. Even the descendants of renegades who had renounced their creed and their nationality--a class whose religious zeal and uncompromising fidelity are proverbial--were not insensible to the time-honored legends and historical souvenirs that recalled, on every side, the glorious events and vanished grandeur of the ancient capital of the Visigoths. The Moslems, who had settled principally in the environs, were overawed by the insolence of their neighbors, who, although their tributaries, maintained all the haughtiness that ordinarily attaches to superior birth and exalted station. Once more installed as governor, Amru exerted all his tact to allay the apprehensions of the people, who feared that his paternal pride might impose upon them a heavy penalty for their former disobedience. By every expression of solicitude, by every show of partiality and consideration, he sought to regain their confidence. He privately assured their leaders of his approval of, and sympathy with, their efforts to obtain their independence and resist the imposition of tyrannous exactions and unjust laws. He even went so far as to denounce the Emir, and to promise his own co-operation in case of future unwarrantable encroachment upon the lives and liberty of the Toledans by the despotic court of Cordova. Thoroughly imposed upon by his duplicity, the masses, as well as the nobles and the priesthood, regarded him as their benefactor, and bestowed upon their crafty governor every mark of honor and esteem. Then, instructed by Al-Hakem, Amru represented that, as the ordinary practice of billeting soldiers upon the families of the citizens was a serious grievance and productive of much disorder, this inconvenience could be obviated by the erection of a strongly fortified citadel, which he suggested would also be of incalculable value in the assertion of popular rights in future insurrections. Public approval was readily obtained; the fortress rose on the most commanding point of the city; the wealthy contributed of their means, the poor donated their labor, to aid in its construction; the advantages of location and the resources of engineering skill conspired to make its defences almost impregnable. A powerful garrison was introduced, and Al-Hakem was notified that the time had finally arrived for the gratification of his long-meditated vengeance.

A despatch was now sent to the frontier directing one of the officers who commanded in that quarter to petition for reinforcements, in view of a pretended demonstration of the Franks. This was accordingly done; and a force of several thousand troops, commanded by the young prince, Abd-al-Rahman, heir to the throne, who was assisted by the counsels of three viziers of age and experience, marched out of Cordova, apparently destined for service in the Pyrenees. When the army reached Toledo, it was informed that the anticipated danger had been exaggerated; that the enemy had withdrawn from the vicinity of the frontier, and consequently that all prospect of hostilities had disappeared. While encamped in the vicinity, the officers received a visit from the governor, who was accompanied by a number of the most prominent citizens. The deputation was received and entertained with distinction and hospitality, and the guests were delighted with the politeness, the condescension, and the precocious talents of their prospective sovereign, who had not yet attained the age of fifteen years. Then, at the suggestion of Amru, an invitation was extended to the prince to make the city his home until his departure, a proposal which was accepted with well-feigned reluctance. Preparations were made for a sumptuous banquet. In the long list of guests appeared the names of the most distinguished nobles, the most opulent citizens, the most eminent leaders, who were either suspected of disaffection or had openly signalized their zeal for the popular cause, either by open resistance or by instigation to rebellion. When the hour designated for the festivities approached, the guests were introduced, one by one, through a postern, where they successively fell by the hands of the soldiers. As each party arrived, the equipages and attendants were sent to the opposite gate of the fortress, there to await the reappearance of their masters. An immense crowd, attracted by the novelty of the occasion and the presence of royalty, surrounded the citadel. Among the spectators, a physician, shrewder or more suspicious than his companions, had remarked the ominous stillness that reigned within the walls, and the fact that of all the guests who had been known to enter none had been seen to leave, although the sun was now far past the meridian. A bystander directed his attention to a cloud of vapor faintly discernible above the ramparts as an evidence that the festivities had not ceased. The experience of the practitioner at once detected the cause, and raising his hands in horror, he exclaimed: “Wretch! that is not the smoke which proceeds from the preparation of a banquet; it is the vapor from the blood of your murdered brethren!”

The number of victims of this awful crime is variously stated at from seven hundred to five thousand. As the bodies were decapitated, they were cast into a trench which had been dug during the construction of the castle; and from this fact the deed which violated the rites of hospitality so sacred in the eye of the Arab became known in the annals of the Peninsula as the “Day of the Ditch.”

The next morning the heads of those who, by an act of unparalleled treachery, had so severely expiated their past offences and the faults of their kindred, were ranged in bloody array upon the battlements. There was scarcely a household among those of the most distinguished residents of the city which was not filled with mourning. A feeling of deep but smothered exasperation pervaded the community. But the object of the tyrant was attained; a lesson of terror had been inculcated; the leaders were gone; the spirit of insurrection was effectually crushed; and many years elapsed before Toledo was again vexed by the tumults and the violence of a seditious demonstration.

About this time a serious difficulty arose at Merida. Esbah, the wali of that city, was, as will be remembered, at once the cousin and the brother-in-law of the Emir. For some cause he dismissed his vizier, and the latter, by false statements concerning the ambitious designs of his superior, induced Al-Hakem to deprive him of his office and confer it upon himself. The wali, indignant at being thus unjustly accused, defied the royal edict; the people, by whom he was greatly beloved, espoused his cause; and a formidable rebellion seemed imminent, when the beautiful Kinza, the sister of Al-Hakem, succeeded by her entreaties in averting the impending calamity. Explanations were tendered, the incensed and alienated kinsmen were reconciled, and Esbah was reinstated in his authority amidst the congratulations of his wife and the acclamations of the people.

The habitual distrust of Al-Hakem, his love of military pomp, and the knowledge of the turbulence and duplicity of a large proportion of his subjects, had led him to increase his body-guard to the number of six thousand. The impatience of the Arab under restraint, as well as his suspicious fidelity, excluded him from the select corps entrusted with the protection of the life of the sovereign. The lessons of experience, and the well-recognized principle of despotism which discourages all sympathy between the people and the army, suggested the enlistment of foreigners and infidels. Three thousand of the guard were Spanish Christians, the rest were slaves--Ethiopian and Asiatic captives purchased in the marts of the eastern Mediterranean, who were popularly designated mutes on account of their ignorance of the Arabic language. Their arms and equipment were of the finest and most expensive description. Their discipline was as thorough as the tactics of the age could inculcate. Two thousand were quartered in extensive barracks erected on the southern side of the Guadalquivir, whose banks were constantly patrolled by their sentinels. The others, whose numbers were swelled by hundreds of eunuchs and retainers of the Emir’s household, were stationed in the palace, whose defences were more characteristic of an impregnable fortress than of the ordinary abode of a sovereign. The great mass of the people, and especially the severely orthodox, viewed the establishment of this large military force--whose existence was a silent reproach to their loyalty and whose opinions were considered idolatrous--with mingled feelings of hatred, jealousy, and contempt. The fierce zealots and ecclesiastical demagogues, whose arts had acquired for them a dangerous pre-eminence and whose influence had been of late years a perpetual menace to the government, regarded the royal guards with sentiments of peculiar aversion. The maintenance of this splendid body of soldiers, whose expenses far exceeded those of an ordinary division equal to it in numbers, was a heavy charge upon the treasury. To meet the increasing expenditure, a new duty was levied upon all merchandise imported into the capital. The burdens arising from the imposition of this tax, and the inconvenience attending its collection, were the most keenly felt by the southern suburb. Of this densely populated quarter, fully one-fifth of the inhabitants were teachers and students of theology. Not only over these, but over the various guilds of merchants, tradesmen, and laborers, the authority of a few faquis, who united the qualifications of religious instructors with the privileged attributes of saints, was despotic. A soldier who ventured alone into the stronghold of these desperate fanatics did so at the risk of his life. No opportunity was suffered to pass whereby indignity could be heaped upon the guards of the Emir. The monarch himself was not less unpopular. The theological faction constantly made unfavorable comparisons between his skepticism and luxury and the austere virtues of his father, Hischem, whose partiality for their sect had formerly obtained for its dogmas the highest respect and consideration. The failings and vices of royalty received scant indulgence at the hands of the Malikites. When, from the summit of the minaret, the muezzin proclaimed the hour of public devotion, a hundred voices responded in derision from street, bazaar, and garden: “Come to prayer, O Drunkard, come to prayer!” Aided by the encouragement and sympathy of their companions, the culprits foiled without difficulty every attempt at detection. Neither the sacred associations of the mosque, nor the moments consecrated to divine communion, when the assembly of the faithful bowed reverently before the Kiblah, nor the prospect of condign punishment, were sufficient to deter fanatical agitators, who prided themselves on their piety and orthodoxy, from the perpetration of outrage and insult. They vilified the monarch while in the exercise of his sacred duties as the officiating minister of Islam. They ridiculed his actions and mocked his resentment in the streets. Exasperated beyond all endurance, Al-Hakem ordered that ten of the leaders should be arrested and delivered to the executioner to be crucified. This summary proceeding, far from allaying the excitement, only intensified it. The desire to wreak their vengeance on the persecutor of their martyred brethren was now the paramount consideration, compared with which the prevalence of vice, the evils of taxation, and the tolerance of heretics were matters of trifling importance. It soon became evident that a serious disturbance was impending.

The most influential and dangerous instigator of the populace was another Yahya, part knave and part zealot, whose learning and effrontery had procured for him great renown both as a saint and a politician. He had been a pupil and disciple of the famous Malik-Ibn-Anas at Medina, and had been distinguished by the favor of that oracle of Islam. The fame of his sanctity, and an extravagant idea of his attainments and his virtues entertained by the members of his sect, had increased his reputation and inflated his pride. His intriguing genius was now exerted to precipitate the explosion.

It was the month of Ramadhan, the Mohammedan Lent, and the outbreak had been planned for the last Wednesday, a day of ill omen in the Moslem calendar. The efforts of Yahya and his coadjutors were being constantly exerted to inflame the passions of the populace by private exhortations and public discourses under the pretext of religious instruction, when a quarrel arose between a soldier and an armorer which resulted in the death of the latter. In an instant the southern suburb was in arms. The contagion of rebellion and vengeance spread fast through the other disaffected quarters of the capital. A raging mob rolled down upon the citadel, driving before it the scattered eunuchs and dependents of the palace and the soldiers of the outposts. In vain was the cavalry ordered to clear the streets; the veteran troopers of the Emir were overwhelmed and driven back in confusion. The gates of the castle were closed and barred, and the multitude, wild with baffled rage, at once prepared, with the aid of fire and heavy timbers, to force an entrance. The serious aspect of the situation was fully appreciated by the inmates of the palace, who knew that in case the fanatics succeeded in penetrating the walls not a soldier or servant of the royal household would be left alive. As conscious of his peril as the rest, not a sign of emotion clouded the placid visage of Al-Hakem. While the shouts of the mob were resounding through the courts and gardens, he ordered his favorite page to bring him a bottle of civet. The lad in wonder obeyed, and the monarch carefully and deliberately poured the perfume upon his hair and beard. The curiosity of the page prevailing over his discretion, he inquired the cause of this singular proceeding at a time of such imminent danger. “O son of an unbeliever,” responded the Emir, “how can he who will cut off my head distinguish my rank unless by the sweet odor that exhales from my beard!”

His toilet completed, Al-Hakem directed the captain of the guard to expose at once upon the battlements the heads of certain faquis who had been imprisoned since the former insurrection. Then, clothing himself in complete armor, he summoned his cousin, Obeydallah, and ordered him, at the head of a picked body of cavalry, to cut his way through the streets and set fire to the southern suburb, shrewdly judging that the attention of the insurgents would be distracted when they perceived that their homes were in flames. The event justified his expectations. The sudden sally of Obeydallah disconcerted the rabble; the river was reached and forded; and in a few moments, the smoke rising in twenty different places beyond the Guadalquivir announced the success of the stratagem. The insurgents, forgetting the animosity to their sovereign in their solicitude for their families and their property, rushed in confusion over the bridge. Then Al-Hakem fell upon their rear with his guards, and Obeydallah, reinforced by detachments from the neighborhood which had been attracted by news of the revolt, assailed them in front. Overcome with terror and incapable of resistance, the unhappy fanatics were massacred by thousands. Three hundred of those conspicuous for their rank, or for the part they had taken in fomenting disorder, were nailed, head downward, to posts on the bank of the river. A council was then held to determine the fate of the survivors. Some of the viziers advocated extermination, but milder opinions prevailed, and it was decreed that the suburb should be razed and the inhabitants banished, within three days, under penalty of crucifixion. This sentence was ruthlessly executed; the condemned quarter was delivered to pillage and the houses destroyed. The exiles, driven from their country, variously experienced the effects of both good and adverse fortune. Many parties were plundered by brigands before they reached the border. Eight thousand families were invited by Edris to form a part of the population of the new city of Fez, where neither the hospitality of their reception nor their subsequent prosperity was able to prevent them from indulgence in perpetual strife with their neighbors, the Arabs. A great body, which included fifteen thousand fighting-men, was transported by sea to Egypt at a time when the country was in arms against the Khalif of Bagdad. Forming an alliance with the malcontents, they stormed Alexandria; and then, declaring their independence, retained possession of that great entrepôt of the Mediterranean against all the power of the Abbasides for more than twelve years. Finally, reduced by the forces of Al-Mansur, they were removed to Crete, a part of which still acknowledged the authority of the Emperor of Constantinople. This island they conquered, and they then founded a state whose piratical expeditions for more than a century were the scourge of the Mediterranean until Crete once more, in the year 961, was added to the dominions of the Byzantine Empire. A reminiscence of the Moslem occupation of the island is suggested by its present name, which, a corruption of the Arabic khandik, a “trench” or “fortification,” survives in the name of Candia.

But while the offences of the populace were thus punished with inexorable rigor, the principal offenders, the promoters of sedition, were the recipients of extraordinary clemency. The explanation of this partiality is to be found in the fact that the mass of the insurgents was of a foreign and, despite their bigoted adherence to the orthodox faith, of a detested caste. The religious teachers of the Malikites, on the other hand, were largely descended from the Koreish, and the ties of blood and the antipathies of race were considerations of greater moment in the mind of Al-Hakem than the insult to his person or the danger to his crown. Some of the leaders who had been prominent in the late troubles were permitted to escape; others underwent short terms of imprisonment; many received the benefit of a general amnesty. The arch-conspirator, Yahya, was of this number, and his talents or his audacity soon restored him once more to a certain degree of royal favor.

The military operations maintained for years in Eastern Spain by the ambition of the Franks, the treachery of the walis, and the weak and faltering policy of Al-Hakem, were not productive of decisive action or enduring results. The city of Tortosa was twice invested, and twice abandoned in disgrace, by the armies of Charlemagne. The first siege was raised after a disastrous defeat sustained by the Franks, of which the Arabs neglected to take advantage; the second was undertaken without adequate preparation, and relinquished under circumstances suggestive of irresolution and cowardice. The hostilities gradually assumed the character of predatory expeditions rather than the systematic efforts of organized warfare. The crusading ardor of the new colonists of the Gothic March soon abated under the tyranny of their feudal masters, who appropriated their lands, oppressed them with taxes, and violated the rights which had been solemnly guaranteed to them conditional upon their allegiance. The justice of Charlemagne was invoked to suppress these increasing disorders, but the distance from his court and the arrogance of the nobles enabled the latter to practically nullify his edicts. The præcepta, or fueros, addressed to the Counts of the Gothic March, and issued from time to time by the Emperor, exhorting these lords to equity, and defining minutely the privileges of their dependents, constitute some of the most interesting and remarkable documents of mediæval jurisprudence. The last three years of the reign of Al-Hakem were passed in peace with the Franks, under a truce concluded between the courts of Aix-la-Chapelle and Cordova.

The hostilities between the Asturian and Moorish kingdoms were, during the reign of Hischem and Al-Hakem, prosecuted with energy, but with constantly varying success. The Christians had not become sufficiently strong to provoke with impunity the power of the Moslem sovereigns. The attention of the latter was so occupied with the suppression of intestine turmoil and ineffectual attempts to counteract the ambitious projects of the Franks that they suffered many of the incursions of their infidel neighbors to pass unnoticed. Some expeditions that entered the Asturias returned in triumph, others were annihilated. The forays of the Christian princes spread dismay through the Moorish settlements of Galicia and Lusitania. Occasionally they met with serious reverses, but these were generally retrieved in the next campaign; and when the results of the year were compared, the advantage was always with the Christians. They enlarged their influence and cemented their power, by alliances with the Basques, with the lord of the Gothic March, with the renowned Charlemagne. The limits of their little monarchy, once so insignificant, began to extend south of the mountains, those natural barriers beyond whose protecting peaks and ravines they at first had feared to venture. Constant practice in warfare formed a race of warriors whose prestige increased with their success, and whose experience taught them the importance of loyalty, obedience, and discipline. Their monarchs were, for the most part, eminently fitted for the arduous duties imposed upon them by the accidents of birth and fortune. Of these princes none attained to such eminence in the pursuits of peace or the art of war as Alfonso II., surnamed The Chaste, whose singular title has been variously attributed by historians to mistaken piety and constitutional impotence. His life was one long crusade against the infidel. By every resource of diplomacy, by every exertion of courage, by every sacrifice of comfort and even of independence, he endeavored to promote the interest of that cause which was identified with the honor of the Christian name. He sent gifts and did homage to Charlemagne to secure his aid; and thus, within less than a century of its foundation, the Asturian monarchy twice became the fief of a foreign power; under Alfonso II., whose allegiance was rendered to a Christian king in contradistinction to the conduct of his predecessor Mauregato, the natural son of Alfonso I. and a Berber captive, who had acknowledged the Emir of Cordova as his suzerain, and whose dependence was, in addition to the customary acts of fealty, manifested by the humiliating annual tribute of a hundred virgins. The arms of Alfonso were carried repeatedly beyond the Douro and the Tagus. He took and plundered Lisbon, already a flourishing city, but its distance from his dominions and the small force at his command compelled him soon afterwards to relinquish his prize. His desperate valor and his superiority in partisan warfare frustrated every attempt of the Moslems to effect a permanent lodgement in his dominions. Amidst the excitement of his campaigns, he found time to erect churches, to endow convents, to enlarge and embellish Oviedo, the capital of his little monarchy. The clergy derived liberal support and patronage from his devotion. It was during this period that the invention of an absurd legend produced effects upon the political and religious destinies of Spain little anticipated by the unscrupulous ecclesiastics who promulgated it. In an unfrequented portion of the wilderness of Galicia a mysterious light of celestial radiance, watched by an angel, revealed the burial spot and the body of St. James the Apostle. The Bishop of Iria, to whom posterity is indebted for the discovery of this priceless treasure, communicated without delay the intelligence of the miracle to his sovereign; and a chapel was erected upon the hallowed spot, which, in time, became a magnificent temple and a place of pilgrimage for thousands of the faithful and the curious from every country of Europe. A city sprang up around the church, which, by the translation of the Bishopric of Iria, at once rose to the greatest importance, and its inhabitants were benefited by the trade of the pilgrims, as the shrine was enriched with the contributions prompted by their piety and their gratitude. The simple Asturians never questioned the truth or even the probability of the legend; the priesthood, who sustained the credit of the fiction by every expedient of intimidation and imposture, advanced steadily in consideration and wealth, while the miracles daily wrought by the precious relic confirmed its holy character,--a relic which surpassed in the efficacy of its miraculous virtues the wonderful mementos of the martyrs which had been rescued from obscurity and decay in the catacombs of Rome. Such was the origin of the city and cathedral of Santiago de Compostella, whose foundation contributed so materially to the extension of the Castilian empire and the triumph of the Christian religion. Here first appeared the germ of that enthusiastic spirit--partly military, partly monastic--which prompted the foundation of the numerous orders of knighthood and culminated in the disastrous expeditions for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre. The retired situation and primitive surroundings of the shrine, corresponding with the humble origin of the Saint and his mission, increased the popular faith in its genuineness and sanctity. The fact that the relics were spurious and their discovery a fable was wholly indifferent so long as the reverent credulity of the masses remained unshaken. The hope of salvation, the religious aspirations of the devout, the increase in prestige of the hierarchy, were all centred in the pretended tomb of the Apostle. The apparition of the Saint upon his white charger in the critical moments of battle roused the faltering courage of the champions of the Cross on many a doubtful field, and it may safely be asserted that neither the policy of the wisest statesmen nor the victories of the most accomplished generals of any reign effected more for the glory of the Spanish arms than did the fabrication of a preposterous legend by an obscure prelate in the savage and almost unknown region of Galicia.

The uniform success of the piratical excursions of the Saracens, originated under the rule of the emirs and continued by the Ommeyades, promised the adventurous aspirant for glory and wealth a more certain and less hazardous career than the military profession. The Moorish corsairs spread terror through the harbors and along the coasts of the Mediterranean. They reduced to final subjection the Balearic Isles. They plundered Corsica, established a temporary settlement in Sardinia, and threatened the environs of the most opulent seaports of Italy. But the fascinations attaching to the reckless profession of the pirate were more congenial with the spirit of the Arab than the slower and less brilliant results which must have proceeded from the maintenance of an organized maritime power, and the Moslem princes seem never to have seriously considered the construction of a navy which might, with comparatively little exertion or expense, have acquired for them the undisputed dominion of the seas.

The closing years of Al-Hakem were passed in the seclusion of the harem, where, diverted by the companionship of the beauties of his seraglio, amidst the excitements of intemperance and of every species of debauchery, he endeavored to forget the sinister events of his checkered career and the manifold acts of cruelty which had avenged the crimes and errors of those who were unfortunate enough to incur his resentment. The controlling maxim of his policy had always been that mildness was synonymous with cowardice, and that the people must be governed by the sword alone. To the adoption and enforcement of this principle are to be attributed the frequent massacres and executions of his reign. He was the first Moorish sovereign of Spain who established a standing army, that menace to popular liberty and indispensable support of despotism. The safety and health of his soldiers were secured by the erection of commodious barracks; by the collection of provisions and military stores in extensive magazines and arsenals; by the enforcement of a system of perfect and rigorous discipline. His guards, composed of slaves alien to the people and devoted to their master, were the prototypes of the Janizaries and the Mamelukes, whose pride and insubordination were long subsequently productive of such disasters to the monarchies of Turkey and Egypt. The mental constitution of Al-Hakem was disfigured by a vice not common in the natures of men whose courage was never known to falter,--an insatiable thirst for blood. Not a day elapsed when an order did not issue from the tyrant, long invisible to his subjects, delivering some unhappy wretch to the executioner. At length the effects of remorse and prolonged intemperance reduced the Emir to a condition bordering upon insanity. Oppressed with the memory of his crimes, haunted by the groans and imprecations of his expiring victims, he became the prey of frightful hallucinations, the offspring of a disordered brain. In the middle of the night he startled the palace with his shrieks of anguish. The slightest delay or opposition provoked him to fury. He summoned his drowsy councillors in haste from their beds as if for the discussion of affairs of the greatest moment, and, as soon as they were assembled, dismissed them without ceremony. He reviewed his guards at midnight. The hours of darkness were usually whiled away by the women of the harem, who strove to amuse their capricious master with music, songs, and lascivious dances. For four years Al-Hakem continued in this deplorable condition, until relieved by a painful and lingering death. His character was not deficient in many of the attributes of greatness. He was brave, generous, sagacious, constant in friendship, the implacable foe of hypocrisy, the welcome companion of philosophers and poets. Prompt in action and resolute in battle, his indecision at times of emergency nevertheless cost him an important part of his dominions. His reign of twenty-six years was filled with stirring events,--events which too plainly indicate the declining tendency of the Saracen empire, which, deficient in all that constitutes the unity and permanence of a state and a prey to constant disorder, was only saved from precipitate destruction by the statesmanship and military talents of its sovereigns.