Chapter LXXXIV: Part of Ceiling of a Portico (1)

MOORISH REMAINS IN SPAIN

INTRODUCTORY

The conquest of Spain by the Moors, and the story comprised in the eight centuries during which they wielded sovereignty as a European power, forms a romance that is without parallel in the history of the world. Under Mohammedan rule Spain enjoyed the first and most protracted period of comparative peace and material prosperity she had ever known. She had been plundered by Carthage and Phœnicia, ground beneath the iron heel of Rome, devastated and enslaved by those Christianised but corrupt barbarians, the Visigoths. All the evils and demoralisation arising from successive waves of bloody conquest and decadent voluptuousness had been sown in the breast of Spain. The squandered might of Carthage had left the country a prey to the vigorous Roman; the degenerate Roman had been banished by the rugged, victorious Goth, who, after two centuries of security and sensual ease, was to be made subject to the warlike and enlightened Moor. Once more the land was to be overrun and the face of the country was to be scarred with fire and the sword; once more the people were to learn to serve new masters and conform to new laws. Of a truth the last state must have seemed worse than the first to the Romanised Spaniards. Carthage had brought chains, but it had also introduced artificers and a form of Government; the Roman eagles had been accompanied by Roman engineers and road-builders; the Goths erected upon the broken altars of mythology temples to the living God. But it now seemed that the whips of ancient foes were to be replaced by the scorpions of their new taskmasters; the Christianity which the East had sent them was to be uprooted by the Eastern infidels.

Such must have been the prospect before Spain, and even before the rest of Europe, when Tarik returned in 710 to Ceuta, from a marauding expedition upon the coast of Andalusia, and reported to Musa, the son of Noseyr, the Arab Governor of North Africa, that the country was ripe for conquest and well worth the hazard of the cast. Twenty years later the Moslems had overrun Spain, captured Bordeaux by assault and advanced to the conquest of Gaul. It is passing strange to reflect that these far-reaching, epoch-making events had not been undertaken as the result of a deep-laid scheme of national expansion or religious enterprise. According to tradition the foundation of the Moslem supremacy in Spain was instigated by the hatred of a single traitor, Count Julian, the Governor of Ceuta, and his treachery was inspired by the dishonour of one young girl--Julian’s daughter, Florinda.

At the beginning of the eighth century, when the Moors had extended their possessions up to the walls of Ceuta, which was held for Roderick, King of Spain, by Count Julian, the Count, in accordance with the custom among the Gothic nobility, had sent his daughter to the Court of Roderick, at Toledo, to be educated among the Queen’s gentlewomen in a manner befitting her rank and lineage. The rest is the old story of a beautiful, unprotected girl, a lascivious guardian, and a father thirsting for vengeance. So far Count Julian had defended Ceuta against the Moors with unbroken success, now he came to Toledo to relieve the king of the custody of his daughter, and repay the breach of trust which Roderick had committed by making a compact with the king’s enemies. On the eve of his departure from the capital, the king requested the Count to send him some hawks of a special variety that he desired for hunting purposes, and the vengeful noble pledged himself to supply his master with hawks, the like of which he had never seen.

But Count Julian found the Saracenic hawks less keen for the hunting he had in view than he expected. That old bird of prey, Musa, listened to the alluring tales of the richness and beauty of Spain, but doubted the good faith of his long-time enemy, who proposed that the Moors should invade this promised land in Spanish ships, lent to them for the purpose. But the love of conquest and the lust of loot, which had inspired and sustained the Arab arms in all their territorial campaigns, overcame the natural hesitancy of the Moorish Governor, and in 710 Musa despatched Tarik with a small expedition to spy out the state of the Spanish coast. So successful was the mission, and so rich the plunder they brought back, that in the following year he adventured an army of 7,000 men under Tarik for the spoliation of Andalusia. Tarik, who landed at the rock of Gibraltar--Gebal Tarik, which still bears his name--captured Carteya, and encountered the army of Roderick, who had hurried from the North of his dominions to repel the invaders, on the banks of the Guadalete.

Washington Irving, in the _Conquest of Spain_, has related, in his brilliantly picturesque style, the old legend of the prophecy of Roderick’s overthrow and the mystery surrounding his death. The king was proof against the solemn warnings of the old warders of the tower of Hercules,--the tower of “jasper and marble, inlaid in subtle devices, which shone in the rays of the sun,”--wherein lay the secret of Spain’s future, sealed by a magic spell, and guarded by a massive iron gate, and secured by the locks affixed to it by every successive Spanish king since the days of Hercules. Roderick came not to set a new lock upon the gate, but to burst the bolts of the centuries and reveal the mystery that his predecessors had gone down into their graves without solving. All day long his courtiers urged him vainly against his own undoing, and the custodians laboured at the rusty locks, and at evening he entered the mighty, outer hall, rushed past the bronze warder, penetrated the inner chamber, and read the inscription attached to the casket, which Hercules had deposited in the gem-encrusted tower. “In this coffer is the mystery of the Tower. The hand of none but a King can open it; but let him beware, for wonderful things will be disclosed to him, which must happen before his death.” In a moment the lid is prized open, the parchment, folded between plates of copper, is brought into the light of day, and the king has read the motto inscribed upon the border: “Behold, rash man, those who shall hurl thee from thy throne and subdue thy Kingdom.”

Beneath the motto is drawn a panorama of horsemen, fierce of countenance, armed with bows and scimitars. As the king gazes wonderingly upon the picture, the sound of warfare rushes on his ear, the chamber is filled with a cloud, and in the cloud the horsemen bend forward in their saddles and raise their arms to strike. Amazed and terrorised, Roderick and his courtiers drew back and “beheld before them a great field of battle, where Christians and Moors were engaged in deadly conflict. They heard the rush and tramp of steeds, the blast of trump and clarion, the clash of cymbal, and the stormy din of a thousand drums. There was the flash of swords and maces and battle axes, with the whistling of arrows and hurling of darts and lances. The Christian quailed before the foe. The infidels pressed upon them, and put them to utter rout; the standard of the Cross was cast down, the banner of Spain was trodden under foot, the air resounded with shouts of triumph, with yells of fury, and the groans of dying men. Amidst the flying squadrons, King Roderick beheld a crowned warrior, whose back was turned towards him, but whose armour and device were his own, and who was mounted on a white steed that resembled his own war horse, Orelia. In the confusion of the fight, the warrior was dismounted and was no longer to be seen, and Orelia galloped wildly through the field of battle without a rider.”

The vision he had witnessed in the Tower of Hercules must have recurred to Roderick when he saw the Moorish army encamped against him by the waters of the Guadalete, but he must have noted its numbers with surprise, and contemplated his own host with complacency. For Tarik, even with his Berber reinforcements, only counted 12,000 men, and nearly four score thousand slept beneath the standard of Spain. If ever prophecy was calculated to be found at fault it must have seemed to be so that day, and Tarik published his estimate of the enormity of the odds that were against him when he cried to his army of fatalists, “Men, before you is the enemy, and the sea is at your backs. By Allah, there is no escape for you, save in valour and resolution.” But valour and resolution belonged to the Spaniards as well as to the Moors; and, but for the action of the kinsmen of the dethroned King Witiza, who deserted to the side of the Saracens in the midst of the seven day battle, the Moorish conquest would have been delayed, if not even entirely abandoned. But Witiza’s adherents turned the tide of battle against Roderick, the Spaniards broke and fled, and Orelia galloped riderless through the field. Tarik, in a single encounter, had won all Spain for the infidels.

Without hesitation, and in defiance of the commands of Musa, who coveted the glory that his lieutenant had so unexpectedly won, Tarik proceeded to make good his mastery of the entire Peninsula. He despatched a force of seven hundred horsemen to capture Cordova; Archidona and Malaga capitulated without striking a blow; and Elvira was taken by storm. City after city surrendered to the victorious invaders, and the principles of true chivalry, which the Moors invariably observed, reconciled the vanquished Spaniards to their new conquerors. The common people welcomed the promise of a new era, while the nobles fled before the advancing armies, and abandoned the country to the enemy. With the surrender of Toledo, Tarik had added a new dominion to the crown of Damascus. Musa left Ceuta in 712 with 18,000 men to join Tarik at Toledo, taking Seville, Carmona, and Merida _en route_. The meeting of the Governor and his General at the capital revealed the first flash of that fire of personal jealousy and internecine conflict which kept Spain in a blaze throughout the eight centuries of the Moorish occupation.

To the intrepid warriors, who were bred to war and trained to the business of conquest, the Pyrenees represented, not a bar to further progress, but a bulwark from which they were to advance to the subjugation of Europe. The total defeat of the Saracens under the walls of Toulouse by the Duke of Aquitana in 721 turned their course westwards; and after occupying Carcasonne and Narbonne, raiding Burgundy and carrying Bordeaux by assault, they suffered a decisive defeat at the hands of the Franks, under Charles Martel, at the Battle of Tours in 733. The tide of Arabian aggression was arrested and rolled back; and although the Moors repulsed the Frankish invasion of Spain under Charlemagne, a bound had been put upon their empire-building ambitions, and they set themselves resolutely to accomplish the pacification of the kingdom they had already won. It is the boast of the Northern Spaniards, the hardy mountaineers of Galicia and Leon, of Castile and the Biscayan provinces, that they were never subject to Moslem rule. There is good warrant for their claim, and in truth the independence of the North was maintained, but the fact remains that the Moors had no desire for those bleak and unfruitful districts; and so long as the savage Basques did not disturb the security of Arabian tenure in the fertile South, they were left in the enjoyment of their dreary, frozen fastnesses, and their wind-swept, arid wastes.

The Moors had made themselves secure in the smiling country that, roughly speaking, lies South of the Sierra de Guadarrama; and here, with a genius and success that was unprecedented, they organised the Kingdom of Cordova. “It must not be supposed,” writes Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole, “that the Moors, like the barbarian hordes who preceded them, brought desolation and tyranny in their wake. On the contrary, never was Andalusia so mildly, justly, and wisely governed as by the Arab conquerors. Where they got their talent for administration it is hard to say, for they came almost direct from their Arabian deserts, and their rapid tide of victories had left them little leisure to acquire the art of managing foreign nations. Some of their Counsellors were Greeks and Spaniards, but this does not explain the problem; for these same Counsellors were unable to produce similar results elsewhere; all the administrative talent of Spain had not sufficed to make the Gothic domination tolerable to its subjects. Under the Moors, on the other hand, the people were on the whole contented--as contented as any people can be whose rulers are of a separate race and creed--and far better pleased than they had been when their sovereigns belonged to the same religion as that which they nominally professed. Religion was, indeed, the smallest difficulty which the Moors had to contend with at the outset, though it had become troublesome afterwards. The Spaniards were as much pagan as Christian; the new creed promulgated by Constantine had made little impression among the general mass of the population, who were still predominantly Roman. What they wanted was--not a creed, but the power to live their lives in peace and prosperity. This their Moorish masters gave them.”

The people were allowed to retain their own religion and their own laws and judges; and with the exception of the poll tax, which was levied only upon Christians and Jews, their imposts were no heavier than those paid by the Moors. The slaves were treated with a mildness which they had never known under the Romans or the Goths, and, moreover, they had only to make a declaration of Mohammedanism--to repeat the formula of belief, “There is no God but God, and Mohammed is His Prophet”--to gain their freedom. By the same simple process, men of position and wealth secured equal rights with their conquerers. But while the Moors thus practised the science of pacification, they were unable to conquer their own racial instincts, which found their vent in jealous blood feuds and ceaseless internal conflicts. In the field the Arabs were a united people; under stress of warfare their rivalries were forgotten; but the racial spirit of the conquerors reasserted itself when the stress of conquest gave place to “dimpling peace,” and government by murder created constant changes in the administration. The Arabs and the Berbers, though they may be regarded as one race in their domination of Spain, were two entirely distinct and fiercely hostile tribes. The Berbers of Tarik had accomplished the conquest of Spain, but the Arabs arrived in time to seize the lion’s share of the spoils of victory; and when the Berber insurrection in

THE MOSQUE--PRINCIPAL NAVE OF THE MIHRAB.]

THE MOSQUE--ENTRANCE TO THE MIHRAB.]

GATES OF PARDON]

FAÇADE AND GATE OF THE ALMANZOR.]

VIEW OF INTERIOR OF THE MOSQUE 961-967.]

I.

THE MOSQUE.

PLAN IN THE TIME OF THE ARABS 786-796, 961-967, 988-1001, 1523-1593.

A--Gate of Pardon. B--Bell Tower. C--Orange Court. D--Principal Entrance. E--Mosque of the time 786-796.

F--Tribunal where the Mufti prays. G--Portion of the time 961-967. H--Hall where the Koran is kept. I--Sanctuary. K--Portion added in 988-1001.]

II.

THE MOSQUE--PLAN IN ITS PRESENT STATE.

786-796, 961-967, 988-1001, 1523-1593.

L--Principal Chapel. M--Choir. N--First Christian Church. O--Chapels. P--The Cardinal’s Chapel.]

North Africa triumphed, their Berber brethren, who had been relegated to the least congenial districts of Estremadura, roused themselves to measures of retaliation, and carried their standards to the gates of Toledo and Cordova. In alarm, the Arab Governor of Andalusia sent for his compatriots of Ceuta to aid him, and he expiated his folly with his life. The African contingent routed the Berbers, murdered the Arab Governor, and set up their own chief in his place, until Abd-er-Rahman arrived from Damascus to unite all factions, for a while, under the standard of the Sultan of Cordova.

Abd-er-Rahman, which signifies “Servant of the Merciful God,” was a member of the deposed family of the Omeyyads, which had given fourteen khalifs to the throne of Damascus. The usurping khalif, Es-Deffah, “The Butcher,” who founded the dynasty of the Abbasides, practically exterminated the Omeyyad family, but Abd-er-Rahman eluded his vigilance, and, after abandoning a project to make himself the Governor of North Africa, he determined to carry his princely pretensions to the newly-founded Spanish dominions. In Andalusia, the advent of the Omeyyads was hailed with enthusiasm. The army of the Governor deserted to the standard of the young pretender; Archidona and Seville were induced to throw open their gates to him by a piece of questionable strategy; he defeated the troops that opposed his march upon Cordova, and before the end of the year 756, or some fifteen months after setting foot in the country, all the Arab part of Spain had acknowledged the dynasty of the Omeyyads, which for three centuries was to endure in Cordova. Brave, unscrupulous, and instant in action, Abd-er-Rahman had recourse to every wile of diplomacy, of severity, and of valour to maintain his supremacy in Spain. He defeated and utterly annihilated an invading army sent against him by the Abbaside khalif, Mansur, and sent a sackful of the heads of his generals as a present to their master; he won over the people of Toledo by false promises, and crucified their leaders; he had the Yemenite chief assassinated while receiving him as an honoured guest; he crushed a revolt of the Berbers in the North, and of the Yemenites in the South; he saw the forces of Charlemagne waste away in the bloody fastnesses of the Pyrenees. By treachery and the sword, by false oaths and murder, he triumphed over every rival and enemy until all insurrection had been crushed by his relentless might, and the Khalif Mansur was fain to exclaim: “Thank God, there is a sea between that man and me.” In an eloquent tribute to his “daring, wisdom, and prudence,” his old-time enemy thus extolled the genius of the conqueror: “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!”

But the tyrant of Spain was to pay a great and terrible price for his triumphs. He had established himself in a kingdom in which he was to stand alone. Long before his death he found himself forsaken by his kinsmen, deserted by his friends, abhorred by his enemies; on all sides detested and avoided, he immured himself in the fastnesses of his palace, or went abroad surrounded by a strong guard of hired mercenaries. His son and successor, Hisham, practised during the eight years of his reign an exemplary piety, and so encouraged and cherished the theological students and preceptors of Cordova, that they rebelled against the light-hearted, pleasure-loving Hakam, who succeeded him, and incited the people to open rebellion.

But while the insurrectionists besieged the palace, the Sultan’s soldiers set fire to a suburb of the city; and when the people retired terror stricken to the rescue of their homes and families, they found themselves between the palace garrison and the loyal incendiaries. The revolt ended in a massacre, but the dynasty was saved, and the palace was preserved to become the nucleus of the gorgeous city which Hakam’s son, Abd-er-Rahman II., was to fashion after the style of Harun-er-Rashid at Baghdad. Under this æsthetic monarch, Cordova became one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Its palaces and gardens, its mosques and bridges were the wonder of Europe; its courtiers made a profession of culture; its arbiter of fashion again asserted himself as the first man in the empire.

In such a city, and at such an epoch, it was natural, even inevitable, that Christianity should assert itself as a protest against the fashion of the age. But so tolerant was the Mohammedan rule in religious matters, that the too exalted spirit of the Cordovan Christians was hard put to it to find some excuse for its manifestation of discontent. While the sultan and his nobles found their pleasure in music, poetry, and other æsthetic if less commendable indulgences, the prejudices of the devout were always respected. Prosecution for religious convictions was unheard of, and the only way that the Christians could achieve martyrdom for their faith was by blaspheming the creed of their Moslem rulers. These early fanatics, whose religious rites and beliefs had been treated with respect by the Mohammedans, and who knew that by Moslem law he who blasphemes the Prophet Mohammed or his religion must die, voluntarily transgressed the law for the purpose of achieving their object. In spite of warnings, of protests, and of earnest counsel, these suicidal devotees cursed the name of the Prophet, and expiated their wilful fanaticism with death. With the exception of this period of religious mania, which was bewailed by the general body of Christians, and regarded with unfeigned sorrow by the Mohammedan judges, the tolerance of the Moors to the Christians was as unvarying as it was remarkable.

After the execution, in the year 859, of Eulogius, a fanatical priest, and the leader of these misguided martyrs, who was fruitlessly entreated by his judges to retract his maledictions against the Prophet and be restored to freedom, the mad movement flickered and died out. But the devotion displayed by the Cordovan Christians had made its effects felt in widespread rebellion in the provinces, and a series of incapable sovereigns had reduced the throne to the state of an island surrounded by a rivulet of foreign soldiers, in a country bristling with faction jealousies and discontent. Spain had fallen a prey to anarchy, and the end of Mohammedan rule appeared imminent. Petty kings and governors had thrown off their allegiance; Berbers, Arabs, Mohammedan Spaniards and Christians had each asserted their absolute independence; and the sultan at Cordova was “suffering all the ills of beleaguerment.” The last vestige of the power of the Omeyyads was falling away when Abd-er-Rahman III. came to the throne to reconquer Spain, and bring the rebel nobles to their knees. The new sultan was a lad of twenty-one, but he knew his countrymen, and he realised that after a century of lawlessness and wasting strife, the people were ripe for a strong and effectual government. The Cordovans were won by his handsome presence and gallant bearing. The boldness of his programme brought him adherents, and the weariness of internecine warfare, which had devastated the country, prepared the rebellious provinces for his coming. Seville opened her gates to receive him, the Prince of Algarve rendered tribute, the resistance of the Christians of Regio was overcome, and Murcia volunteered its allegiance. Toledo alone, that implacable revolutionist, rejected all Abd-er-Rahman’s overtures, and confidently awaited the issue of the siege. But the haughty Toledans had not reckoned upon the metal of which the new despot was made. Abd-er-Rahman had no stomach for the suicidal tactics of scaling impregnable precipices, but he was possessed of infinite patience. He calmly set himself to build a town on the mountain over against Toledo, and to wait until famine should compel the inhabitants to capitulate. With the fall of Toledo, the whole of Mohammedan Spain was once more restored to the sultans of Cordova. The power, once regained, was never relaxed in the lifetime of Abd-er-Rahman. The Christians of Galicia might push southward as far as the great Sierra, Ordono II. of Leon might bring his marauding hosts to within a few leagues of Cordova, and cause Abd-er-Rahman to exert all his personal and military influence to beat back the obstinate Northerners, but the stability of the throne was never again imperilled. During his fifty years of strenuous sovereignty, the great Abd-er-Rahman saved Spain from African invasion and Christian aggression; he established an absolute power in Cordova that brought ambassadors from every European monarch to his court; and he made the prosperity of Andalusia the envy of the civilised world. This wonderful transformation was effected by a man whom the Moorish historians describe as “the mildest and most enlightened sovereign that ever ruled a country. His meekness, his generosity, and his love of justice became proverbial. None of his ancestors ever surpassed him in courage in the field, and zeal for religion; he was fond of science, and the patron of the learned, with whom he loved to converse.”

In 961, Abd-er-Rahman III., the last great Omeyyad Sultan of Cordova, died. His son Hakam II. employed the peace which he inherited from his illustrious father in the study of books and the formation of a library, which consisted of no fewer than four hundred thousand works. But in his reign, the note of absolute despotism which had re-established the Empire of Cordova, was less evident; and when at his death, his twelve-year-old son, Hisham II., ascended the throne, the government was ripe for the delegation of kingly power to favourites and ministers. The Sultana Aurora, the Queen Mother, had already abrogated that power, and was wielding an influence that Abd-er-Rahman III. would not have tolerated for an instant, and her favourite--an undistinguished student of Cordova, named Ibn-Aby-Amir--was waiting to turn her influence and favour to his own advantage. This youth, who is known to history as Almanzor, or “Victorious by the grace of God”--a title conceded to him by virtue of his many victories over the Christians--was possessed of pluck, genius, and ambition in almost equal proportions; and by the opportunity for their indulgence which the harem influence afforded, he made himself virtual master of Andalusia.

In his capacity of professional letter-writer to the court servants, Almanzor won the patronage of the Grand Chamberlain, and his appointment to a minor office brought him into personal contact with Aurora--who fell in love with the engaging young courtier--and with the princesses, whose good graces he assiduously cultivated. His charm of manner and unfailing courtesy gained for him the countenance of many persons of rank, and his kindness and lavish generosity secured him the allegiance of his inferiors. By degrees he acquired a plurality of important and lucrative posts; he earned the gratitude of the Queen Mother by arranging the assassination of a rival claimant who opposed the accession of her son Hisham to the throne; and he volunteered to lead the sultan’s army against his insurrectionary subjects of Leon. Almanzor was without military training or experience, but he had no misgivings upon the score of his own ability, and his faith in himself was justified. His victories over the Leonese made him the idol of the army; and on the strength of his increased popularity he appointed himself Prefect of Cordova, and speedily rendered the city a model of orderliness and good government. By a politic impeachment of the Grand Chamberlain for financial irregularities, he presently succeeded his own patron in the first office in the State, and became supreme ruler of the kingdom.

Almanzor had allowed no scruple or fear to thwart him in his struggle for the proud position he had attained, and he now permitted nothing to menace the power he had so hardly won. He met intrigue with intrigue, and discouraged treachery by timely assassination. He placated hectoring, orthodox Moslems; he curtailed the influence of his formidable rival, Ghalib, the adored head of the army; he conciliated the Cordovans by making splendid additions to the mosque; he terrorised the now jealous Aurora and the palace party into quiescence; and he kept the khalif himself in subjection by the magnetism of his own masterful personality. His African campaigns extended the dominion of Spain along the Barbary coast, and his periodical invasions of Leon and Castile kept the Northern provinces in subjection, and his army contented and rich with the spoils of war. The Christians had terrible reason to hate this invincible upstart, and it is not surprising to read in the Monkish annals, the record of his death transcribed in the following terms: “In 1002 died Almanzor, and was buried in hell.” But if his death meant hell to Almanzor, as the Christians doubtless believed, it meant the recurrence of the hell of anarchy for the Kingdom of Spain.

Within half a dozen years of the great Chamberlain’s death, the country which had been held together by the might of one man, was torn to pieces by jealous and tyrannical chiefs and rebellious tribal warriors. Hisham II. was dragged from his harem seclusion, and the reins of Government were thrust into his incompetent hands. He failed, and was compelled to abdicate, and another khalif was set up in his place. For the next twenty years khalifs were enthroned and replaced in monotonous succession. Assassination followed coronation, and coronation assassination, until the princes of every party looked askance at the blood-stained throne, where monarchs and murderers played their several intimate parts. Outside the capital, anarchy and devastation was ravaging the country. Berbers and Slavs were carrying desolation into the South and East of the country, and in the North the Christians were uniting to throw off their dependence. Alfonso VI. was selling his aid to the rival chieftains in their battles amongst themselves, and storing up his subsidies against the day when he would undertake the re-conquest of Spain. The Cid had established his Castilian soldiers in Valencia, and the voluptuous, degenerate Mohammedan princes were panic-stricken by the growing disaffection and the instant danger which they were powerless to overcome.

In their extremity they sent for assistance to Africa, where Yusuf, the king of a powerful set of fanatics whom the Spaniards named Almoravides, had made himself master of the country from Algiers to Senegal. Yusuf came with

ANCIENT ARAB TOWER, NOW THE CHURCH OF ST. NICHOLAS DE LA VILLA.]

ORANGE COURT IN THE MOSQUE, MOORISH STYLE, BUILT 957, BY SAID BEN AYOUT.]

EXTERIOR OF THE MOSQUE.]

THE MOSQUE--SECTION OF THE MIHRAB.]

his Berber hosts in 1086, defeated the Christians, under Alfonso, near Badajoz, and leaving three thousand of his men to stiffen the ranks of the Andalusians in maintaining the struggle, he returned to Africa. Four years later the Spanish Mohammedans again besought Yusuf to bring his legions against their Christian despoilers, offering him liberal terms for his assistance, and stipulating only that he should retire to his own dominions as soon as the work was completed. The Almoravide king subscribed the more readily to this condition, since his priestly counsellors absolved him from his oath, and had little difficulty in convincing him that his duty lay in the pacification of the unhappy Kingdom of Andalusia. Yusuf organised a force capable of contending with both the Christians of Castile and his Moorish allies. The capitulation of Granada provided him with the means of distributing vast treasure among his avaricious followers, and promises of even greater booty inspired them to further faithful service. Tarifa, Seville, and the rest of the important cities of Andalusia, fell before the treasure-hunting Berbers; and with the surrender of Valencia, on the death of the Cid, the re-conquest of Mohammedan Spain was practically completed. Order was temporarily restored, lives and property were once more respected, and a new era of peace and prosperity appeared to have begun. But the degenerating influence of wealth and luxurious ease, which in the course of generations had sapped the manhood of Spain’s successive conquerors, played swift havoc with the untutored Berbers. At the end of a score of years, the Castilians, led by Alfonso “the Battler,” had resumed the offensive, sacking and burning the smaller towns, and carrying their swords and torches to the gates of Seville and Cordova. The Almoravides were powerless to resist their vigorous forays. The people of Andalus, recognising the powerlessness of their protectors, declared their independence, and rallied to the ranks of the score of petty chiefs who raised their standards in every city and castle in Andalusia, and who fought with, or bribed their Christian adversaries for the maintenance of their vaunted power.

At this crisis in the history of Spain, when the dominion of the enfeebled and dissolute Arab and Berber leaders was weakening before the resolute onslaughts of the rude, hard-living, and hard-fighting Christians of the North, a new force was created to turn the scale of Empire and prolong the rule of the Moslem in Europe. Before the Almoravides had been overthrown in Andalus, the Almoravides in Africa had been vanquished and dispersed by the mighty Almohades, who now regarded the annexation of Mohammedan Spain as the natural and necessary climax to the work of conquest. Andalusia had been a dependence of the Almoravide Empire; it was now to be a dependence of the Almoravides’s successors. Between 1145 and 1150 the transfer was completed; but although the Almohades had wrested the kingdom from the Almoravides, they had not subdued the Christian provinces. The new rulers, under-estimating the potentiality of this danger, left the country to be governed by viceroys--an error in statecraft, which ultimately lost Spain to the Mohammedan cause. In 1195 they sent from Morocco a huge force to check the Christian aggressive movement, and the Northern host was routed at Alarcos, near Badajoz. That success was the last notable victory that was to arrest the slow, but certain, recovery of all Spain to Catholic rule. In 1212, the Almohade army suffered a disastrous defeat at the battle of Las Navas; in 1235 they were driven out of the Peninsula; three years later, on the death of Ibn-Hud, the Moslem dominion in Spain was restricted to the Kingdom of Granada; and, although this Moorish stronghold was destined to endure for another two and a-half centuries, it existed only as a tributary to the throne of the Christian kings of Spain.

For the purposes of this book, the history of Moorish Spain closes with the expulsion of the Mohammedans from Cordova, Toledo, and Seville. That more modern, and, in some ways more wonderful, Moorish monument--the Red Palace of Granada--I have dealt with in my book on “The Alhambra,” to which this work is intended to be the companion and complement.

CORDOVA

Of the four great cities of the Mohammedan domination in Spain, Cordova, as the seat of the Khalifate established by Abd-er-Rahman I., is rightly regarded as chief. The sun of the Moslem era shone with dazzling brilliance on Seville, and pierced the shadows of grim Toledo ere it set upon the decaying grandeur of Granada; but it had risen first on Cordova, and from “that abode of magnificence, superiority, and elegance” its glory had been reflected to the furthest corner of the civilised world. For Cordova, by reason of its climate, its situation, and its surroundings has, since the beginning of time, been one of the garden spots of Europe. The Carthaginians had aptly styled it “the Gem of the South,” and the Romans had founded a city there in 152 B.C., which they called Corduba. But Corduba had sided with Pompey against Cæsar in the struggle for the mastership of the Roman Empire, and the mighty Julius visited this act of hostility with the destruction of more than half the city, and the massacre of 28,000 of its inhabitants. When the Goths made themselves rulers of Spain in the sixth century, they selected Toledo to be their capital, and Cordova sank into political insignificance. In 711, when Tarik had defeated Roderick near the banks of the Guadalete, he despatched Mughith with 700 horse to seize Cordova. Taking advantage of a fortuitous storm of hail, which deadened the clatter of the horses’ hoofs, and assisted by the treachery of a Christian shepherd, the followers of the Prophet obtained an unopposed entry, and the city fell without a blow being struck. Forty-four years later Abd-er-Rahman I. established the dynasty of the Omeyyads of Cordova, and for three centuries the capital of Mohammedan Spain was to be, in the language of the old chronicler, Ash-Shakand, “the repository of science, the minaret of piety and devotion, unrivalled even by the splendours of Baghdad or Damascus.”

Science has long since deserted Cordova; piety is not obtrusive there; its material magnificence has passed away. To-day the once famous city is a sleepy, smiling, overgrown village; a congregation of empty squares, and silent, winding, uneven streets, which have a more thoroughly African appearance than those of any other town in Spain. Theophile Gautier has described its “interminable white-washed walls, their scanty windows guarded by heavy iron bars,” and its pebbly, straw-littered pavement, and the sensitive spirit of De Amicis was caught by a vague melancholy in the midst of its white-washed, rose-scented streets. Here, he writes, there is “a marvellous variety of design, tints, light, and perfume; here the odour of roses, there of oranges, further on of pinks; and with this perfume a whiff of fresh air, and with the air a subdued sound of women’s voices, the rustling of leaves, and the singing of birds. It is a sweet and varied harmony that, without disturbing the silence of the streets, soothes the ear like the echo of distant music.” It has, as I have observed elsewhere, a charm that fills the heart with a sad pleasure; there is a mysterious spell in its air that one cannot resist. One may idle for hours in the sunshine that floods the deserted squares, and try to reconstitute in one’s mind, that Cordova, which was described as “the military camp of Andalus, the common rendezvous of

CORDOVA.

Shell-like Ornaments in the Cupola of the Mihrab.]

CORDOVA.

Shell-like Ornaments in the Cupola of the Mihrab.]

CORDOVA.

Shell-like Ornaments in the Cupola of the Mihrab.]

CORDOVA.

Part of the ornamentation and keystone of one of the lower arches which gives light to the dome.]

those splendid armies which, with the help of Allah, defeated at every encounter the worshippers of the Crucified.” This indolent, lotus-fed, listless Cordova was once, says El-Makkari, “the meeting place of the learned from all countries, and, owing to the power and splendour of the dynasty that ruled over it, it contained more excellencies than any other city on the face of the earth.” Another Mohammedan author, Al-hijari, Abu Mohammed, writing of the city in the twelfth century, said: “Cordova was, during the reign of the Beni-Merwan, the cupola of Islam, the convocation of scholars, the court of the sultans of the family of Omeyyah, and the residence of the most illustrious tribes of Yemen and Ma’d. Students from all parts of the world flocked thither at all times to learn the sciences of which Cordova was the most noble repository, and to derive knowledge from the mouths of the doctors and ulema who swarmed in it. Cordova is to Andalus what the head is to the body. Its river is one of the finest in the world, now gliding slowly through level lawns, or winding softly across emerald fields, sprinkled with flowers, and serving it for robes; now flowing through thickly-planted groves, where the song of birds resounds perpetually in the air, and now widening into a majestic stream to impart its waters to the numerous wheels constructed on its banks, communicating fresh vigour to the land.”

The extent of ancient Cordova has been differently stated, owing, no doubt, to the rapid increase of its population and the expansion of the buildings under the sultans of the dynasty of Merwan on the one hand, and, on the other, to the calamities and disasters by which it was afflicted under the last sovereigns of that house. Cordova is, moreover, described by Mohammedan writers as a city which never ceased augmenting in size, and increasing in importance, from the time of its subjugation by the Moors until A.D. 1009-10, when, civil war breaking out within it, the capital fell from its ancient splendour, gradually decaying, and losing its former magnificence, until its final destruction in A.D. 1236, when it passed into the hands of the Christians.

From 711 until 755, when Abd-er-Rahman arrived in Spain to seize the new Moorish possession, which had fallen to the military skill and courage of Tarik’s Berbers, the conquerors had been too fully employed in capturing cities to devote much leisure to beautifying their prizes; now, with the foundation of the Omeyyad power, Cordova was to reap the first fruits of comparative peace. But the repulsion of the Abbaside invasion, the subjugation of Toledo, and the suppression of the Berber revolt in the Northern provinces, long delayed the commencement of the great mosque which the sultan projected as “a splendid seal upon the works pleasing to the Almighty, which he had accomplished.” By the building of the mosque, Abd-er-Rahman would secure a place for himself in Paradise, and would leave to his own honoured memory a Mecca of the West to which the followers of the Prophet could go in pilgrimage.

The treasury of Abd-er-Rahman was at this time in a flourishing condition, despite the large sums spent in adding splendour to the growing khalifate, and there appeared to be no difficulty in carrying out his project. But Umeya Ibn Yezid, the favourite secretary of the sultan, who, in his capacity of Katib, was instructed to make overtures for the purchase of the church on whose site the khalif intended to build the new mosque, soon found that the negotiations were beset by serious difficulties. The Christians held firm to the conditions of capitulation granted them by the Saracen conquerors of Cordova, and were not at all inclined to sell to Abd-er-Rahman the temple upon which he had set his heart. This building is described by Pedro de Madrazo as a spacious basilica, which they shared with the followers of the Prophet, since the Mohammedans, according to the practice established amongst them by the advice of the Khalif Omar, shared the churches of the conquered cities with the Christians, and, after taking Cordova, had divided one of the principal basilicas in two parts, one of which they conceded to the Cordovans, reserving the other, which they at once turned into a mosque, for themselves. The Christians had religiously paid the tribute exacted from them that they might keep their churches, bishops, and priests, but this had not protected them from unjust exactions and plunderings at the hands of the governors and representatives of the Eastern khalifs. Knowing this, Abd-er-Rahman was anxious to acquire the desired site without violence, and, with his natural sagacity, he perceived that the religious zeal of the native Christians was much less fervent than that of his own people. Captivity and affliction had damped the old ardour of the natives of Cordova, which, in his day, was no longer the heroic colony, so anxious for martyrdom, and so prodigal of its blood, as it was at the time when the flock of Christ was guided by the great Osius under the persecutions of Diocletian and Maximilian. Neither was it the Cordova which had endured wars, hunger, and plague sooner than be contaminated with Arianism, and the khalif knew, too, that in spite of the education given to the Christian youth in the schools and colleges of the monasteries, where many young priests and secular scholars promised to be a future danger to the Mohammedans, the Church at Cordova was suffering grievous wounds from the new doctrines of Migencio and Elipando. He was, therefore, the more surprised to receive a stubborn refusal to his offer, but the estimation in which he held the vanquished people and their leaders, led him to believe that he could overcome their obstinacy by quiet persistence, and by trusting to time to undermine their scruples. His policy was justified by its eventual success.

How did Abd-er-Rahman succeed in persuading the Christians to make so great a sacrifice? How came they to be induced to abandon their principal church to the infidels? Had not these walls been witnesses of the vows they had sworn at the most solemn epochs of their lives? Perhaps it was already a matter of indifference to them to see the ground, sanctified by the blood of their martyrs, defiled! “God Almighty alone knows” must be our only comment upon this unaccountable transaction, and we leave it thus in accordance with the practice adopted by the Arab historians, when they were at a loss for an explanation.

It is certain that under the reign of Abd-er-Rahman the Christians were no longer persecuted on account of their religion. They paid tribute, it is true, as a conquered people, but their faith was respected; they had their churches and monasteries, where they worshipped publicly; and it is not recorded that any of their priests were molested by the first Moorish king of the West. On the other hand, when they compared their present lot with that of the past, they must have considered themselves greatly fortunate, as they escaped the tyranny under which their fathers had suffered during the years from the cruel Alahor to the time of the covetous Toaba. It is certain that a new empire was rising in Cordova, which was very threatening to the law of Christ; but at first its menace was not revealed, and for this reason it was more to be feared. Its intentions were not published, but they were vaguely felt. Those who were wisest and most far-seeing could perceive, though still far off, the dark cloud of a bloody persecution drawing around the Church of Andalusia; but for the generality of the Christians there seemed to be no reason why the present toleration was not to continue, and it is certain that fear was not the motive that made them yield to the wishes of the khalif.

History is very reticent concerning this event; in fact, as Pedro de Madrazo admits, nothing definite has, up to the present, been discovered with regard to it. The probabilities are that the Bishop of Cordova, upon receiving the message of the Moorish king, called a council, and, after due discussion, resolved to part amicably with that which, despite the king’s moderation, would without any doubt be taken from them by force, should they persist in their refusal. In parting with their church, and transferring their place of worship, they hoped, too, to be released from the odious proximity of the infidels, whose presence under the roof of their basilica must always have been looked upon as a desecration of the sacred building. And, finally, the advantages to be gained by removing their holy relics to a more suitable sanctuary may have decided them to accept the khalif’s offer, under the condition that they should be allowed to re-build the basilica of the martyrs St. Faustus, St. Januaris, and St. Marcellus, which had been destroyed in recent years; and this being conceded to them by the khalif, the bishop authorised the transfer. The Arab ordered that the price agreed upon should be sent at once to the Christians, who were in turn to surrender their church forthwith, because Abd-er-Rahman, already advanced in years, was anxious that the edifice he was going to raise should be commenced without delay. No sooner had the Christians departed than Abd-er-Rahman left his villa in Razafa and took up his residence at the alcazar of the city, in order to superintend the projected work. The destruction of the old building was immediately proceeded with. Devoured with the desire to see the work completed, the indefatigable old man spent many hours each day on the scene, carefully examining the portions of the demolished buildings, which were to be utilised for the new mosque, and classifying them with rare skill. The whole city was filled with movement and commotion. There was not a trade amongst the people which did not receive fresh impetus from the new building. Whilst all were busy in the factories and workshop, in the woods, on the mountains, and on the roads from the hills to the city; whilst the furnaces and brick ovens were glowing; whilst the Syrian architect meditated on his plans and on those traced by the king’s own hands, and the Katib wrote to Asia and Africa inviting the co-operation of famous artists; the people, lazy and curious, swarmed around the spacious foundations, and the whole city presented a scene of animation and excitement not easy to describe.

Abd-er-Rahman, who had a presentiment that he would not live to see the mosque finished, pushed on the work with all speed, that he might at least have the satisfaction of covering the arcades which formed its naves, and of inaugurating the cult of Islam with one of those eloquent harangues, which he was in the habit of addressing to his people on the days of “Juma,” or Rest. Barely two years after the foundations were laid the square fortress of Islam rose above the groves by the river, surpassing in height the severe Alcazar of Rodrigo. A few more moons, and the interior walls, the superb colonnades of bold and unusual form,--the mosque of Cordova is probably the first edifice in which superposed arches were introduced--the graceful rows of double arches, the ample porticos, the handsome façade of eleven entrances, the rich side doors, flanked by fretted windows, and finally the incomparable roof of incorruptible wood, carved and painted, would be finished. Still a few more moons, and the “hotba,” or harangue, for the health of Abd-er-Rahman was to be read to the people from the most beautiful “nimbar,” or pulpit in the West, and repeated by two thousand believers as with one voice, drowning in the vibrating surge of an immense and thundering contempt the shamed hymns of the vanquished Nazarenes.

Not only was the mosque to be ready for the celebration of the public ceremonies on the first day of “Alchuma,” but already the sanctuary loomed at the extremity of the principal nave towards the South, covered with rich and dazzling Byzantine ornamentation, the venerated copy of the holy house of Mecca. The great aljama was not yet complete, it is true, but the diligent architects would find a way to satisfy the impatience of the sultan by covering the walls with rich hangings from Persia and Syria. A profusion of Corinthian columns in the principal naves, and of bold marble pillars from the Roman monuments, sent from the provinces as presents to the monarch from his walies, would be in their place. The columns taken from the old basilica of the Visigoths, would be found in the secondary naves, with others, as yet unchiselled. The floor was to be covered with flowers and fragrant herbs, and the sacred precincts would be inundated with light and perfume, diffused by hundreds of candelabra and thuribles. The fortunate Abd-er-Rahman would be able at least once before he died to direct the rites of the religion, for the propagation of which he had made so many sacrifices, in his capacity of “Imam” of the law.

But it was not to be. That day the news spread through the city that the angel of death was seated by the bedside of the khalif; and soon after, the body of Abd-er-Rahman, the wise, the virtuous, and the victorious, lay in one of the chambers of his alcazar, wrapped in the white garments, distinctive of his great lineage. The sad event was announced to the people by Abd-er-Rahman Ibn Tarif, the superior of the Aljama of Cordova, from the very pulpit from which the dead monarch was to have addressed his subjects, and the crowds departed from the mosque exclaiming: “May the Amir rest in the sleep of peace, Allah will smile upon him on the day of reckoning.”

The great glory of completing the mosque was reserved for Hisham, the favourite son of Abd-er-Rahman, to whom all the walies had sworn fealty as the rightful successor. This prince was at Merida when his father died, but he at once left that city for Cordova, where he made the mosque the object of his special solicitude.

Soon after his accession, Hisham consulted a famous astrologer as to his future. The learned man, who was called Abh-dhobi, at first refused to gratify the sultan’s curiosity, but upon being pressed he said: “Thy reign, O Amir, will be glorious and happy, and marked by great victories; but, unless my calculations are wrong, it will only last some eight years.” Hisham remained some time in silence upon hearing these words, but presently his face cleared, and he spoke thus to the astrologer: “Thy prediction, O Abh-dhobi, does not discourage me, for if the days given me still to live by the Almighty are passed in adoring Him, I shall say when my hour comes, ‘Thy will be done.’”

This monarch’s brief reign was rich in notable deeds. He repressed the rebellion of his two brothers Suleyman and Abdullah, carried the holy war as far as Sardinia, entered and sacked the town of Narbonne, and compelled the unhappy Christians to carry the clay of the demolished walls of their city upon their shoulders as far as Cordova, in order to build a mosque in his alcazar. Hisham made himself feared by the Franks, and he did much to establish the empire of Islam in Andalus, enlarging its capital, repairing

THE MOSQUE.

PORTAL ON THE NORTH SIDE, MOORISH STYLE, BUILT UNDER HAKAM III., 988-1001.]

EXTERIOR VIEW OF THE MOSQUE.]

EXTERIOR ANGLE OF THE MOSQUE.]

THE EXTERIOR OF THE MOSQUE.]

CORDOVA.

Curvelinear triangles resulting from the intersection of the arches sustaining the dome.