Chapter XXX (3)

Under the Spanish Arabs, women enjoyed privileges from which they were rigidly excluded in other Mohammedan countries. They appeared everywhere unveiled. As mentioned in a previous chapter, public opinion not only permitted, but openly encouraged, their participation in the national and provincial contests for the palm of literary excellence. The rare educational facilities of the khalifate were at their disposal. Many--proficient in poetry, philosophy, grammar, and rhetoric--excited universal admiration by the scope and variety of their mental accomplishments. Some even became the political advisers of great sovereigns. These circumstances, so favorable to the development and exaltation of the female character, eventually procured for the sex a consideration elsewhere denied. As Mohammedanism was the first of creeds to spontaneously recognize the right of woman to an amelioration of her social condition, so in the Peninsula the Hispano-Arab invested her personality with a dignity and an importance heretofore not conceded to her merits by members of any race or religion. From such novel doctrines were evolved those chivalrous sentiments which, imparted to Europe, effected such a salutary reformation in the intercourse and social usages of mediæval society. Mohammedan Spain presents the only instance, in ancient or modern history, of a country under whose laws and customs woman did not exist in a state of tutelage. The quality of infant or chattel has, to a greater or less extent, always seemed inseparable from her condition. Among races highest in the scale of civilization, her inferiority appeared the more striking, partly from actual legal disabilities, partly from contrast. It is true that among the Greeks, when Athens was at the summit of her renown, there were females of polished education, of extensive knowledge, gifted with talents of the highest order, able to cope in every intellectual exercise with the most distinguished scholars, philosophers, and statesmen. But these were few in number, and belonged to a class which modern prejudice has branded as infamous; the Athenian wife of the time of Pericles was little better than a slave. Charlemagne is generally conceded to have been the most enlightened Christian sovereign of his epoch. The civilization of his dominions offers a vivid contrast to the darkness which enveloped contemporaneous states and kingdoms. He professed at least a nominal respect for the precepts of Christianity. He publicly avowed himself the champion of the Holy See. To the policy inherited by his successors is largely due the subsequent increase of authority which rescued the Papacy from contempt and made the Bishop of Rome for centuries the dictator of Europe. The learning of his court, modified and in a measure directed by Arabic influence, was far from mediocre. And yet the old chronicles inform us that this great prince in the presence of his courtiers engaged with his sister in a personal encounter, whose result was doubtful until the vigorous use of his steel gauntlet, which knocked out several teeth of his amazonian adversary, gave him the advantage. If such was the treatment accorded to ladies of the highest rank in the Middle Ages, the degradation of women belonging to the remaining orders of society can scarcely be conceived. Nor were these conditions materially improved for centuries. Even so late as 1750, the laws of England permitted women to be treated with a severity almost barbarous; nor have the humiliating restrictions born of masculine superiority been in our age entirely removed. During the reign of Charles II. illiteracy was almost universal; learning in the sex was decried as pedantry or worse; it was rarely that a housewife could write her name; and even the princesses of the royal blood were unable to speak or spell grammatically. This condition, born of ecclesiastical precept derived from the customs of a remote and barbarous age and confirmed by national depravity whose tendency was to depreciate and ridicule female virtue, is an unfailing sign of moral perversity and intellectual decadence. Eight hundred years before, women of Cordova had established an enviable reputation for their proficiency in all the arts which contribute to the culture of nations; for the skill which they exhibited in every department of scientific research; for their profound acquaintance with the models of classic antiquity; for their originality in poetical composition; for the signal success they achieved in the literary congresses, wherein they were forced to compete with the assembled genius and learning of the empire. They were treated with the dignified respect and courtesy which were due to high mental attainments, as well as dictated by the regulations of chivalry which governed the conduct of every Moorish cavalier. These demonstrations of gallantry never degenerated, however, into the fulsome adulation and the worship, half mystical, half sensual, and expressed in terms of florid hyperbole, that prevailed in the social life of the Limousin and Provençal courts, whose development marked an age unique for its extravagance, its epicureanism, its licentiousness; an age of ostentatious asceticism and secret indulgence; an age when ballad-singers moralized and bishops abandoned the crosier for the lute; an age of arduous pilgrimage and romantic exploit; the age of Jongleur, Knight-errant, Crusader, and Troubadour.

In spite of the distinguished consideration they evinced for woman, the Moslems of Spain were unable to divest themselves of the prejudice regarding the fickleness of the sex, which, from immemorial antiquity, had been accepted as one of its prominent characteristics. The position she occupied in the social polity was anomalous. Her features were exposed to the public gaze; she was permitted to attend the lectures of the University; she participated in academical exhibitions. But the liberty she enjoyed was only apparent. Her steps were constantly guarded by eunuchs. Her lord was not less suspicious than his Oriental brethren, and she, if the literature of the time is to be credited, probably for fear of disappointing him, not infrequently gave abundant cause for jealousy. Nothing discloses the general sentiment of a people upon any given subject so comprehensively as its proverbs and epigrams. The estimation in which the Spanish Arabs held the feminine character is indicated by the following saying, often quoted by them, and which is as old as the Pharaohs, “Never trust in women, nor rely upon their vows, for their pleasure and displeasure depend upon their passions. They offer a false affection, while perfidy lurks within their garments. By the tale of Joseph be admonished, and guard against their stratagems.”

The question of polygamy is one which is almost universally viewed through a false medium. Its existence in the torrid climates of the East from a period of unknown antiquity would seem to demonstrate at least the practical usefulness, if not the supreme physiological necessity, of a system which has endured for so many ages. It is eminently unfair for us to condemn a practice sanctioned by Holy Writ and recognized by the patriarchs, without an accurate knowledge of the ethnological conditions under which it is perpetuated. What public opinion, custom, and long experience have found to be beneficial and have pronounced not inconsistent with morality, is very often not a question of ethics, but merely a matter of expediency. Institutions which nations inhabiting the tropics defend as necessary could not be adopted without injury by the sluggish races of the North; and of their propriety, we at a distance of eight thousand miles are incompetent, not to say prejudiced, judges. The women who rose to such distinction under the khalifate were, without exception, members of polygamous households, a circumstance which would seem to effectually contradict the prevalent idea that the system of the harem inevitably tends to intellectual debasement. The standard of morals under the Hispano-Arab domination was probably much superior to that which now obtains in the great capitals of Europe. The deplorable condition of modern society, even among the highly cultivated, where monogamy nominally exists, is disclosed by the frequency of divorce cases and the significant revelations of criminal statistics. It demonstrates that the primitive impulse which among barbarians leads to communal marriage--the original social state of man--is not only not extinct, but even generally prevails, although decorously concealed, and, however repugnant to every principle of morality, must be recognized as a powerful and retarding element of our boasted civilization.

The chivalrous courtesy born of intellectual culture and refined surroundings which distinguished the Spanish Moslems in all the phases of their social life was, as above stated, eminently conspicuous in their treatment of females. The latter were, for the most part, highly educated. Even to-day, in the harems of Constantinople, it is not unusual to see women fine musicians, excellent conversationalists, familiar with the principles of art, able to express themselves fluently in three or four languages. Such accomplishments are still sufficiently rare to confer distinction upon their possessors in London, Paris, and New York. Under the khalifs of the House of Ommeyah, the mental faculties of the sex were cultivated to a marked degree; no field of literature was closed to those who aspired to eminence. They were everywhere received with great respect. They were never insulted in public. They traversed districts in revolt without molestation. The laws protected them against the excesses of marital jealousy. If divorced, the wife was certain of maintenance. It was she who, at marriage, received the dowry. Public opinion denounced as infamous the husband who permitted his spouse to labor in order that he might profit by her earnings. In case of his death she was entitled to a share of his estate. All things considered, the legal status of woman under the khalifate appears to advantage when compared with that to which she is restricted by modern legislation. If polygamy entailed the unhappiness which foreign prejudice is accustomed to attribute to it, the practice would long since have been abolished. It is but a natural result of climatic and physiological conditions, an apparently indispensable factor in the maintenance of Oriental life.

Slavery in Europe under the Moslems brought with it the numerous privileges and indulgent treatment enjoined by the Prophet. The Mohammedan slave was rarely abused or persecuted. His acceptance of the faith of Islam rendered his manumission easy. No stigma attached to his condition. He could aspire to the most noble matrimonial alliance. He was eligible to the most important political employments. While his master was entitled to exercise despotic authority over him, the patriarchal customs of the Orient discouraged all exhibitions of unmerited severity, and designated the slave rather as a companion than a dependent in the household. It was contrary to law to put him in chains. His personality was never sacrificed to the convenience of trade; his classification as a chattel would have been abhorrent to all Mussulman ideas of justice and humanity; and in this respect the laws of the Koran are immeasurably superior to the provisions of Roman and Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence. An obligation, whose force the lapse of time could never diminish, was imposed upon the descendants of a freedman to assist and protect at the risk of their lives all members of the family which had liberated their ancestor from bondage. The dignity of human nature was never outraged by the infliction of torture upon those whom fate had condemned to a state of helpless subjection; on the contrary, the slave was usually educated by his master; he became his secretary, his agent, his counsellor; he superintended the affairs of his family; he executed with diligence and fidelity important commissions in distant lands.

The cheapness of slaves indicates their abundance; their price was within reach of the humblest laborer. After the battle of Zallaca, an ordinary captive could be obtained for a dirhem. Many inmates of the harems came from the East. Circassian and Georgian girls, purchased in the markets of Constantinople, were imported into Spain as early as the ninth century. In Mussulman law a distinction existed between slaves bought for service and prisoners taken in battle. The latter shared few of the privileges of the ordinary bondman, and, strictly speaking, could never be liberated or ransomed.

The amusements of the Spanish Arabs were derived from the East. There was nothing in Roman tradition or Visigothic inheritance which appealed to their imagination like the diversions of the idle and sensuous races that inhabited the tropics, and which, with other congenial customs, they had appropriated. They felt but a languid interest in the chase of ferocious beasts. They shrank with horror from the gladiatorial contests of the arena and their scenes of blood and butchery. Exhibitions of strength, where muscular superiority carried off the palm, were scarcely less distasteful to a people accustomed to rely for success on fertility of resource and personal agility. While active exercise was not neglected, those pastimes were in highest favor which required the least physical exertion. Among these, the principal one was the game of chess. Of unknown but high antiquity, it had been brought by Arabic merchants from India. In that country it had long been used as an instrument of divination, and, in time of war, the movements of its pieces frequently directed the evolutions of armies on the march and in battle. A part of the sacred furniture of every Hindu temple, the board had also a cabalistic and astrological significance. Long before the appearance of Mohammed, this game was the solace of the vagrant sheiks of the Desert and the delight of the wealthy traders of Yemen. It followed everywhere in the train of the Moslem armies. In Spain it was universally popular. The chessmen of the khalifs were not inferior in richness to the other accessories of royal luxury,--the arms, the plate, the furniture of the palace. Some were made of the precious metals; others were curiously carved of ivory; most of them were incrusted with gems. The boards were of ebony and sandalwood inlaid with gold. In this instance, also, as in many others, the prohibition of the Koran relating to the representation of animal forms was disregarded. The Spanish Moslems were passionately fond of chess. It became one of the favorite diversions of the court; and it was no unusual occurrence for players to pass the entire day engrossed by its fascinations and entirely oblivious of their surroundings. The story, already related, of the prince who pleaded for time to finish his game after his death-warrant had been read to him, is an example of the absorbing interest excited by this scientific pastime in the mind of the Moor. Cards were known to the Arabs long before the Hegira. Naipe, the Spanish name for them, is from the Arabic word naib, “viceroy,” whence comes the English “nabob.” Introduced into Italy by the Saracens, they were at first called The Game of the Kings. They were not generally used in Europe until the latter part of the fourteenth century. Backgammon and draughts were also familiar to the Moors of Spain. The genius of Mohammed recognized the hidden danger which beset his followers when he forbade indulgence in all games of chance. To such a temptation the ardent and romantic nature of the Oriental is peculiarly susceptible. No information, in this respect, is now obtainable concerning the Mohammedan population of the Peninsula, but the copious accounts of the prevalence of other vices under the domination of the emirs and the khalifs would seem to indicate, from the general silence on this point, that gaming was not commonly practised.

The feats of jugglers were a source of popular amusement in mediæval Cordova. These mountebanks were intimately associated with itinerant minstrels and extemporaneous rhymers, whose coarse effusions, while they could scarcely be dignified by the name of poetry, yet often contributed to the diversion of the court, and whose calling and example produced the troubadour, such an important agent in the civilization of Europe. The lascivious contortions of the dancers of ancient Gades, immortalized in the epigrams of Martial, and which have been transmitted with probably trifling changes through the Phœnician, Carthaginian, Roman, Gothic, and Mussulman dominations to the Spanish gypsies of our day, were constantly exhibited, in all their suggestive indecency, before the appreciative audiences of Moorish Spain. Nothing can indicate more positively the general relaxation of manners than the popularity of such an amusement. Even the indulgent and profligate spirit of Roman society eyed it with marked disfavor. The poets lampooned those who patronized or encouraged it. Moralists and legislators condemned it as a prolific source of corruption. Mohammed forbade it to his followers as a relic of Paganism and an incentive to immorality. Under no circumstances did men participate in it, or, indeed, in any of the terpsichorean exercises practised by Orientals. The dance, as we understand it, was unknown to the Moslems. Among them the practice was abandoned to female professionals, who constituted a caste, who were distinguished by a peculiar costume, and whose calling was infamous. This prejudice, descended from a remote antiquity, exists in full force in all Eastern countries to-day. The degradation of Herodias was far more reprobated by the Hebrews than her inhumanity. The character of the bayadere of India, of the ghawazee of Egypt, of the Jewess of Tunis, of the gypsy of Spain, inheritors of the lewd Phœnician positions and gestures, is familiar to all travellers.

In the dances of Mohammedan Spain, as in those still practised at Cairo, the lower limbs were stationary, and all movements were performed with the body and the arms. Their impropriety generally consisted rather in their suggestiveness than in any flagrant personal exposure. Rarely were they performed in a condition of nudity; as a rule, the form was completely enveloped in graceful folds of silk and linen. The dancers kept time with castanets, which were originally small copper cymbals, and every motion was made in perfect cadence with the music. The extraordinary effect of these exhibitions upon the imagination, even when represented by women not adepts in the art, can be understood only by those who have witnessed them.

The taste for improvisation pervaded the music of the Hispano-Arabs as it did their poetry. Although to foreign ears it might appear wholly destitute of measure and harmony, the monotonous execution of the performer impressed the feelings of his audience to an extent incomprehensible to nations of northern blood. The profoundly emotional nature of the Moor, readily susceptible to every kind of mental excitement and passionately devoted to rhyme, at one time roused him to frenzy, at another deprived him of consciousness. No race has ever enjoyed to an equal degree with the Arabs the faculty of investing fiction with the semblance of truth, of transforming images created by an inexhaustible fancy into the realities of life, of giving

--“to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.”

The music of the khalifate was largely derived from Greek and Roman sources. Its peculiarities, inherited by the Spaniards, have imparted a national character to their minstrelsy, as well as measures unknown to the other nations of Europe. It had nothing in common with our ideas of harmony. It consisted principally of monotonous chants, whose time was marked by rude instruments of percussion; whose melody was partly classic, partly barbaric; and which disclosed none of that novelty and variety which constitute the greatest charm of modern music. The Spanish Arabs had no theory, used no notes, and possessed no means of preserving musical compositions except by memory and oral tradition. Under these disadvantages, improvement in one of the most pleasing of sciences was impossible, and most pieces rarely survived their composers. The musical instruments of the Spanish Moslems were of many kinds; there were thirteen different varieties--among them viols, lutes, dulcimers, harps--made in Seville, which was the most celebrated seat of their manufacture in the world. The great Ziryab, who lived at the court of Abd-al-Rahman II., added a fifth string to the lute, to which, as to the others, the Moors attached a symbolic significance. The remaining strings, which were of different colors, represented the supposed four humors of the human body; that of Ziryab was presumed to represent the soul. The school of music which he founded at Cordova endured until the last days of the khalifate, to which is no doubt due the fact that the writers of Spain on this subject are the most numerous and prolific of any age.

The antipathy with which this science was regarded by theologians did not prevent it from being the delight of the prince and an indispensable diversion of the people. Its power was so great that it early invaded the shrines of the religion that condemned it, and for centuries the verses of the Koran have been intoned in the mosques. The story-teller recited his tales to music; the itinerant buffoon interspersed his coarse but expressive pantomime with rhyming jests and ribald songs. The Arab notes are harsh, nasal, and guttural, unpleasant beyond measure to European ears. Their scale includes seventeen intervals in the octave, and it is said by learned authority on the subject that the Italian, from which ours is derived, was originally copied, without alteration, from that of the Arabs of Sicily and Spain.

The Moors thoroughly understood the almost magical effects which follow the judicious employment of music. Not only was it indispensable on all festive occasions, but its notes brought consolation and comfort to the house of bereavement. It was considered an important remedial agent in disease. It was used to correct the distressing condition of insomnia. In the hospitals of great cities bands were constantly entertained, because it was well known that harmony of sound promoted convalescence. Its aphrodisiacal qualities were appreciated and utilized to fully as great an extent as those of perfumes,--the delight of the Oriental. It was a favorite maxim of the Mussulman doctors that “to hear music is to sin against the law; to make music is to sin against religion; to take pleasure in it is to be guilty of infidelity.” Notwithstanding this, and the fact that it was anathematized by Mohammed, no people were more fond of it than the Arabs; and the professional musician, whose talents had raised him above mediocrity, was sure of distinguished attention at the court of the khalifs; and, once become famous, he was the recipient of honors elsewhere reserved for the descendants and the representatives of royalty. It was not unusual for a master of his art to receive ten thousand pieces of gold for a single performance. Instruments of percussion, and especially drums and tambourines, were most employed by the Spanish Moslems, but their constructive genius produced radical changes in others; they improved the guitar, the flute, and the clarionet; they were the inventors of the mandolin and the organ.

In equestrian sports, which required the highest degree of adroitness and agility, the Moors of Spain had no superiors. First among their pastimes of this description was the bull-fight, which had little in common with the modern spectacle, whose revolting characteristics are the result of long-continued sanguinary and brutalizing influences. The performers were all of noble birth; they were splendidly mounted; their equipments were of the most sumptuous description. No weapon was allowed them but a short, heavy javelin, whose point was partly encased in leather. The rules of the sport required that the animal be killed by a thrust along the spine in front of the shoulder, to deliver which properly demanded great skill and almost superhuman strength. If a blow was landed elsewhere, the knight was compelled to retire from the arena; if his weapon was broken or lost, he was adjudged to have sustained an irretrievable disgrace. The intelligence and training of the horse and the dexterity of the rider were ordinarily sufficient guarantees against disaster; but the occasional sacrifice of a cavalier reminded the survivors of the fearful dangers of the encounter. Trained from early childhood to the use of the horse and the javelin, accustomed to every manly exercise, adepts in the arts of the tourney and the chase, the Spanish Moslems found in the bull-fight the climax of enjoyment, second only to the martial pleasures and excitements of war. With such an education, it is not strange that they were recognized as the finest light cavalry in Europe.

Of equal interest, and of even greater magnificence, was the spectacle presented by the tilt of reeds. In its exhibition and accessories were displayed the inexhaustible profusion and opulence of Moorish luxury. The scene was laid in one of the many squares of the vast Moslem capital. A series of arcades and galleries, supported by columns of colored marble, brilliant with mosaics and gilded stuccoes, were crowded with an enthusiastic audience representing the noblest families of the court and the wealth and fashion of the principal city of the empire. The Khalif was there, surrounded by his body-guard, gigantic blacks from the Atlas and the Soudan, with gem-studded weapons and armor damascened with gold. The balustrades of the galleries were hung with scarlet, emerald, and sky-blue velvet. The inmates of the harems, models of the voluptuous type of Andalusian beauty, unveiled, revealed their smiling features to the public gaze,--a sight to be witnessed in no other quarter of the Mohammedan world. Their silken cloaks striped with every color of the rainbow; their strings of superb jewels, whose collection was an absorbing passion with every Moorish woman of rank; the golden belts and bracelets gleaming in the sunlight; the personal charms of their owners, enhanced to the utmost by every resource of attire and adornment, presented a splendid and enchanting picture unsurpassed in either classic or mediæval times. In the audience, sometimes by courtesy among the cavaliers in the arena were to be seen Castilian knights exiled for political reasons, or competitors for distinction in the national sports of their hereditary foes. The parapets and terraces which commanded the amphitheatre, the arches of the aqueducts, the minarets, the trees, even the spurs of the distant sierra, were white with the robes and turbans of the populace, attracted by the novelty and magnificence of the scene. The performers, in whom all interest centred, were worthy of the attention they excited. Twenty-four in number, they included the flower of the Moorish warriors selected from two of the principal tribes composing the aristocracy of the Peninsula. All were clad in flexible coats of mail covered with tunics of blue or crimson velvet sowed with stars of gold. Their heads were protected by silken turbans; their waists were encircled by sashes of the same material; upon the small buckles worn by each horseman were emblazoned his motto and family crest, from which custom Christian chivalry borrowed its heraldic devices and its coats of arms. The horses of one division were white, those of the other black; they were almost concealed by embroidered housings; the bridles were enriched with jewels, the bits were of massy gold. A short lance, whose point was blunted, was the sole arm upon which the cavalier was permitted to rely for attack or protection; to it were attached the colors of his mistress,--sometimes represented by a knot of ribbons, but more frequently by a scarf of silken tissue, upon which she had traced in golden embroidery the characters of some amorous legend. In the fantastic devices of Oriental imagery, which originated in the voluptuous regions where love is an art, each color, each gesture, even the most prosaic of objects, is invested with more than a passing significance.

These equestrian diversions of the Spanish Moslems, unlike the tournaments of the Middle Ages, which were derived from them, were never polluted by the wanton shedding of blood. They represented all the exciting phases of battle,--the attack, the mêlée, the retreat. In the confusing movements of each encounter every facility was afforded for the exhibition of the highest degree of strength, activity, and skill. Their object was not the disabling of an antagonist, but the seizure and retention of the decorations which adorned both horse and rider; and in the evolutions performed for the accomplishment of these ends the most daring feats of horsemanship were exhibited. The course of the rings terminated the brilliant festival. Among the branches of a tree, planted at one extremity of the arena, were suspended a number of rings of gold. One after another the competitors for knightly honors, moving at the greatest speed, endeavored to bear away these trophies of adroitness upon the point of the slender reed which served the purpose of a lance. A magnificent prize, usually a golden vase enriched with jewels, was awarded the victor, who in turn was expected to present it to the lady whose colors he had worn in the contest. The talents of the most famous poets of the khalifate were exercised in the celebration of these splendid spectacles, wonderful exhibitions of human dexterity, whose attractiveness was not marred by suffering, and which revealed to the greatest advantage the chivalrous sentiments and martial ardor of a refined and polished race.

Nor were these the only sports which occupied the leisure of the elegant society of the Moslem court. Its members rarely participated in the chase. Hawking, introduced by Abd-al-Rahman I., was, however, a favorite diversion with them; their hawks were the finest and best trained in Europe, and they constituted an important article of commerce, especially with Italy, France, and England. In the extensive gardens of Granada and Palermo were artificial lakes, where naval spectacles were frequently given upon a much larger scale than in the amphitheatre of Titus during the palmy days of Imperial Rome.

Under a government whose beneficent policy provided work for the industrious and shelter for the helpless, it may well be supposed that mendicancy was neither an honorable nor a lucrative profession. The horrible exhibitions of real or simulated deformity which in Southern Europe now shock the eyes of the traveller were not tolerated under the Moslem domination. While the bestowal of alms is a cardinal principle of the Mohammedan religion, its objects, when worthy, were not permitted to openly solicit the aid of the generous and sympathetic passer-by. The suffering and the crippled were carried to hospitals, where every means was applied to effect their restoration to health; while the impostor, seized by the police, expiated in prison or under the scourge the penalty of his idleness and fraud. Conducted on a plan of boundless charity, no factitious impediments of race or religion interposed to exclude from the public institutions those unfortunates whose physical afflictions claimed the indulgence or the generous solicitude of mankind. Hospitals were open to the worthy applicant, and the Jew, the Christian, even the idolater, received within their walls the same assiduous care bestowed upon the most orthodox Moslem.

In all its tendencies the spirit of Moorish civilization was eminently practical. Even its speculative labors were rather serious than sportive,--the occasional relaxations of arduous and prolonged mental effort. Its grand aims were the security of the individual, the dispensation of impartial justice, the systematic development of the noblest faculties of the human intellect, the amalgamation of the heterogeneous constituents of a proud and turbulent society, the progressive improvement and durable prosperity of a vast and populous, but constantly disintegrating, empire. In the accomplishment of these ends, war, while presumed to be an object, was in reality but an instrument. Public policy required the occupation of the streams of restless barbarians and needy adventurers incessantly pouring into the Peninsula. For their employment in foreign campaigns, the Koranic injunction of perpetual hostility offered a plausible and convenient excuse. This practice, while appealing at once to the religious enthusiasm of the fanatic and the cupidity of the warrior, insured the succession of the dynasty and the permanence of the throne. Without its aid even the administration of Al-Mansur, directed by the consummate ability of that leader, must speedily have fallen. It required semi-annual campaigns, followed by an unbroken succession of victories, to restrain the native insubordination of the African immigrants, whose multitudes, constantly recruited from the innumerable tribes of Mauritania, constituted not only the bulk of the army, but the predominant element of the population.

This mingling of races and the resultant prevalence of crosses, combined with the influence of climate and the stimulants of military and commercial activity, will readily account for the versatility of the Hispano-Arab mind, which was among its most prominent characteristics. No greater contrast in comparative ethnology can be drawn than that presented by the precarious and barbaric existence of the Desert and the polished and highly cultivated life of the Western Khalifate in its most glorious days. And yet but a comparatively insignificant period of time separates the vagrant Bedouin, whose favorite occupation was the plunder of his neighbors and who resented the interference of even his acknowledged chieftain as an infringement of his liberties, and the Spanish Arab, whose despotic government insured the enjoyment of personal freedom and public tranquillity, where intelligence, order, prosperity, took the place of insubordination and discord, and the prestige of foreign conquest and the blessings of civilization travelled in parallel lines and side by side. To the development of that civilization every people became tributary, coincident with its subjection to the Moslem arms. In the character of the conqueror was revealed a spirit of acquisition in no wise inferior to its inventive faculty, and which at once appropriated, and often improved, all that was useful in the systems of others while forming and developing new ideas of its own.

It is with mingled sentiments of admiration and regret that we contemplate the phenomenal rise, the dazzling splendor, the rapid fall, of the Moslem empire in Spain. The material relics which remain to tell the story of its architectural grandeur, of the munificence of its sovereigns, of the acquirements of its scholars, of the skill of its artisans, are few and widely scattered. The destruction has been most complete. The supremacy of Christian ideas and Castilian customs, enforced by diligent persecution, was in all instances necessary before the intellectual aspirations fostered during nine generations of august and learned princes could be subordinated to the sacerdotal ignorance and military ferocity of the age. Some edifices defaced by malice or neglect, their apartments so altered by barbarous innovators that their original plans and the purposes of their construction can often no longer be traced or even conjectured; their delicate ornamentation concealed by many successive layers of lime and plaster; their precincts abandoned to the vilest uses; a meagre collection of manuscripts, whose characters are half obliterated by moisture and rough usage; an occasional trophy rusting in the solitude of the museum, are all the tangible evidences extant of a monarchy once the marvel of Europe. It is elsewhere that we must look for the proofs of its greatness and the trophies of its glory. Its salutary influence in modifying the debased instincts and savage manners of mediæval society is no longer questioned. The enduring impulse it imparted to philosophical investigation, its prosecution of the exact sciences, the consideration in which it held intellectual ability, the honors with which it rewarded proficiency in literature, transmitted through many generations, have placed their seal upon the civilization of the twentieth century. The obligations we are under to the Spanish Arabs cannot be too frequently nor too generally acknowledged; and in ascribing the origin of our progress to the nation whose genius was its inspiring spirit, we are only offering a just and well deserved tribute of gratitude.

It was said by Seneca, “Wherever the Roman conquers, he inhabits.” It might, with almost equal truth, be asserted of the Arab that, wherever his religion and his language are once established, there they will forever prevail. The countries originally subdued by the lieutenants of the Prophet are still Mohammedan. The idiom of Mecca is still spoken from the eastern shore of the Atlantic to the China Sea. Nor does Islam seem to have lost its power of expansion. Its progress has never been arrested. It has penetrated to Central Russia,--in that empire its votaries number eleven millions. It is the faith of hundreds of thousands of Negroes at the equator. In Europe there are seven million Mussulmans, in India fifty-three million, in China twenty-two million. The people of Sicily and Spain alone of the great colonies founded by the Moslem--the seat of his most highly developed civilization, the home of races equally accomplished in learning, advanced in arts, illustrious in arms--were compelled to go into exile or renounce their faith and abandon their language. In neither of these countries have the discoveries, the inventions, and the experience of six centuries, which have long been the common property of all nations, exerted any appreciable effect in repairing the awful damage consequent on Moorish expulsion.

The propagators of a form of religion which relies for its success upon the extermination of all who refuse assent to its dogmas have certainly little faith in the truth or the celestial inspiration of the maxims which they deem it necessary to resort to force to inculcate. During the ascendency of the papal power no one within its reach could publicly profess heretical doctrines and live. Under the Ommeyades and the Aghlabites both the misbeliever and the infidel were safe on the payment of tribute. The occasional outbursts of Moslem fanaticism were directed against literature; the spirit of Christian persecution--a spirit sadly at variance with that evinced by the gentleness and meekness of its Divine Founder--raged fiercely against both literature and humanity. Amru and Al-Mansur burned books. Innocent III. and Calvin tortured men.

The Assyrian, Carthaginian, Roman, and Hispano-Arab empires lasted each about eight hundred years. Of two of these the memory alone survives. A number of defaced monuments, a fragmentary literature, preserve the traditions of the third. The genius of the Moslem, superior to those of all his predecessors, has perpetuated itself in the scientific inspiration and progressive energy of every succeeding age. Remarkable for its unparalleled success, while hampered by tremendous obstacles,--war, sedition, disorder, barbarian supremacy,--it is instructive to reflect what it might have accomplished under the most favorable auspices, when at the height of their prosperity the Moors of Europe controlled the Mediterranean. The latter occupied and colonized in turn the important posts of Sardinia, Corsica, Cyprus, Malta. Their revenues were tenfold greater than those of any contemporaneous state. The inexhaustible population of Africa could be constantly drawn on for hundreds of thousands of soldiers, whose abstemious lives, blind fanaticism, and reckless bravery made them most formidable adversaries. The fleets of the Sicilian emirs threatened the coast of Asia Minor. The Arab governors of Spain established permanent outposts as far as Lyons. The pirates of Fraxinet fortified and held for many years the passes of the Alps. The tracks of the Saracen armies marching northward from Calabria and southward from Provence and Switzerland overlapped on the plains of Lombardy. Such opportunities for conquest have rarely been enjoyed or neglected by any military power. Civil discord and tribal jealousy were all that prevented Europe from being Mohammedanized. In the polity of the Arabs, wherever domiciled, the traditions of the Desert invariably prevailed. The organization of the state was modelled after those of the family and the tribe. No allowance was made for the changed conditions resulting from the extension of dominion and the increase of knowledge. Under such circumstances there could be no cohesion among the parts of the constantly tottering fabric of Moslem power, which, in fact, was undermined from the very beginning. From this instability, the Western Khalifate has been, with some truth, compared to a Bedouin encampment. The defects of an anomalous constitution were aggravated by intestine conflict. Factional hostility in Arabian Spain was always more pronounced and bitter than hatred of the Christian foe.

A great victory and a few unimportant skirmishes gained for the Moslems in less than two years control of the richest kingdom in Europe. To reconquer it required eight centuries and more than five thousand battles. The followers of Pelayus, when the long struggle for Christian supremacy began, were but thirty in number. The host mustered by Ferdinand and Isabella before Granada amounted to nearly a hundred thousand men. The religious character which invested the Reconquest, and from which its prosecution eventually became inseparable, has stamped itself indelibly and ruinously upon the Spanish people. The cost of the triumph was incalculable. It impoverished forever great provinces. It drenched the soil of the entire Peninsula with blood. A single campaign often destroyed an army. The casualties of a single siege sometimes swept away numbers equal to the inhabitants of a populous city. At Baza alone, in the short space of seven months, twenty-one thousand Castilians perished.

The almost universal disbelief in Moorish civilization is hardly less remarkable than its creation and progress. Sectarian prejudice, ignorance of Arabic, and a fixed determination to acknowledge no obligation to infidels have concurred to establish and confirm the popular opinion. To this end the Church has always lent its powerful, often omnipotent, aid. Yet, in spite of systematic suppression of facts and long-continued misrepresentations, it cannot now be denied that no race effected so much for all that concerns the practical welfare of mankind as the Spanish Mohammedans; that no race of kings has deserved so large a measure of fame as that which traced its lineage to Abd-al-Rahman I.

Such was the civilization which the Spanish and Sicilian Arabs bequeathed to Europe. Their conquests and their influence, their progress in the arts of peace, their industrial and economical inventions, the precocity of their mental development, the perpetuation of their advanced ideas under the most discouraging conditions which can be conceived, present an example without parallel in the history of nations. Their origin had nothing in common with that of any European people. Their religion was avowedly inimical to the one which was professed from the Mediterranean coast to the verge of the Arctic Circle. Their political and domestic institutions were abhorrent to the feelings of their neighbors, their allies, their enemies. From the hour when Tarik landed at Gibraltar to that when Boabdil surrendered the keys of the Alhambra was a period of constant and relentless hostility. Such circumstances as these are not ordinarily propitious to the material or intellectual advancement of mankind.

In the face of such formidable obstacles a mighty empire was founded. The very causes which seemed liable to seriously affect its integrity and permanence in reality increased its strength. Its military power became a standing menace to every state of Christendom. Its fleets of armed galleys dominated the seas. The Saracens of Sicily sacked the suburbs of Rome and insulted the sacred majesty of the Holy Father in the Vatican. In every trade-centre of the East and West, in the streets of Canton and Delhi, in the bazaars of Damascus, along the crowded quays of Alexandria, beside the scattered wells of the Sahara, at the great fairs of Sweden, Germany, and Russia, in the splendid markets of Constantinople, the Moorish merchants and Hebrew brokers of Spain outstripped all commercial competitors in the amounts of their purchases and the shrewdness of their bargains. The wealth which resulted from this vast system of trade was almost inconceivable. In addition, the agricultural and mineral resources of the country, great in themselves, were developed beyond all precedent. The treasures thus amassed were expended in public works, whose neglected ruins amaze the traveller; in the promotion of educational advantages that modern experience and energy have never been able to surpass; in the collection of immense libraries; in the maintenance of a court with whose magnificence the traditional luxury of the Byzantine princes was not worthy of comparison; in the celebration of a worship whose furniture and appointments transcended, in richness and beauty, the vaunted pomp and semi-barbaric ceremonial of pontifical Rome.

It is both popular and fashionable to ascribe to the influence of the Crusades the awakening of the spirit of progress which ultimately led to the revival of letters and to the political and social regeneration of Europe. But the Crusades were only, in an indirect and secondary manner, a factor of civilization. On the other hand, their general tendency was signally destructive. Their track has been compared to that left by a swarm of locusts. Many works of classic genius perished in the sack of Constantinople. The Moslem library of Tripoli, which contained two hundred thousand volumes, was burned when that city was taken by the soldiers of the Cross. It is a well-established fact that few of the latter were actuated by religious motives. Their crimes cast discredit upon their cause and secured the eternal contempt of the Oriental; for even the name of Christianity was unworthily degraded by such vile associations. The results produced upon Europe by these expeditions, instead of being humanizing, were most disastrous. Whole districts were depopulated. The hereditary estates of the nobility were transferred to the Church, whose ministers alone possessed the means of purchase, and who, through promoting the insane spirit of fanaticism by which they subsequently profited, secured a double measure of consequence and power. The Papacy soon controlled the wealth of Christendom, and its irresponsible authority increased in proportion to its influence. With despotism came tyranny, with tyranny persecution. The principle of forcing the acceptance of religious dogmas upon armed enemies was extended to the conviction of recalcitrant sectaries by torture. The atrocities of religious conflict, the war of the Albigenses, the unspeakable horrors of the Inquisition, the massacre of St. Bartholomew, are largely attributable to the sanguinary tastes engendered by the Crusades. In other respects, as well, their influence was highly detrimental to humanity. They introduced vices hitherto confined to the East, and which are to this day blots upon the society of the great European capitals. They filled Europe with leprosy or with an affection similar to it, from which eminent medical authorities have deduced the origin of the most obstinate and loathsome of contagious diseases. They introduced the plague, one visitation of which swept away thirteen million persons. The rupture of family ties occasioned by the absence of such multitudes fostered every form of licentiousness. In some provinces vast tracts of fertile soil, soon overgrown with brushwood, relapsed into primeval wildness. In others, deprived of the means of preserving order, the country became a prey to outlaws. While tens of thousands of armed fanatics were fighting for the Christian cause in Syria, the barbarians of Northern Europe were worshipping idols and serpents and offering human sacrifices.

The Crusades, however, were not wholly an unmixed evil. They increased the power of the clergy, but they exterminated a large part of the most worthless elements of society. It has been estimated that six million persons perished in these expeditions. They made the Papacy autocratic; but, by destroying feudalism through the alienation of the estates of the barons, they greatly improved the condition of the serf. The necessity for treating victims of the horrible maladies contracted in Palestine led to the foundation of the first hospitals in Christendom. They directed the attention of scholars to the study of works in Arabic, a language hitherto unknown outside of Mussulman countries. It was in 1142 that Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, went to Toledo and made a translation of the Koran into Latin, in order that he might demonstrate the falsity of the doctrines of Islamism. Had these successive deluges of fanatics been poured upon the Spanish Peninsula instead of upon the Holy Land, not the slightest trace of Moslem learning and civilization could have survived their attack.

The benefits arising from the Crusades were far from sufficient to counterbalance their injurious effects. They gave, however, a great impetus to commerce, especially through the enterprise of the Italian republics. They awakened a taste for luxuries which had been hitherto unknown, even to royalty. They stimulated manufactures, particularly those connected with the ornamental arts of glass, wood, ivory, and metals. In one respect, their influence promoted immensely the cause of civilization. Familiarity with Moslem valor, politeness, and culture removed the prejudices maintained through centuries of priestcraft and ignorance by the benighted nations of Europe. Returning pilgrims and adventurers brought back from the Holy Land tales of magnificent cities, of incredible treasures, of deeds of heroism and chivalry, which had no counterparts in any state of Christendom. Accounts of these marvels awakened not only a desire to imitate them, but aroused an involuntary admiration for the superiority of their authors. At the time of the first Crusade, in the closing years of the eleventh century, Moorish civilization in the Peninsula had attained its highest perfection. While its influence had long been imperceptibly exerted upon the populations of France and Italy, deep-seated hatred of the followers of Mohammed had retarded the general diffusion of its benefits. In consequence of the repeated expeditions to Palestine, an increased demand for the manufactures and the agricultural products of Moorish Spain was created. Its language, its improvisations, its literature, soon became familiar to Europe. Even its sports were borrowed, and the graceful courses of the arena, adapted to the rude and ferocious tastes of baronial society, became the most popular of mediæval diversions. The chivalric sentiments inseparable from knightly exercises contributed to social refinement and to the exaltation of woman. The troubadour carried everywhere the amatory songs which had long enchanted the polished society of Andalusia. The coarseness and asperity of feudal manners were softened, and a marked improvement characterized every form of official and domestic intercourse. It is beyond the Pyrenees, and not to the Orient, that the historian must look for the origin of modern civilization.

In rapidity of conquest, in extent of dominion, in successful propagation of religious belief, in ability to profit by the resources of Nature, in profundity of knowledge and versatility of intellect, no people have ever approached the Arabs. Their conquests were secured, and their government made permanent, by that peculiar provision of their civil polity which, appealing to the strongest of human passions and sanctioned by the injunctions of their Prophet, permitted the appropriation of the women of vanquished nations. Their commerce, to which in a land destitute of agricultural resources they were impelled by necessity, developed their trading propensities, and by association from a remote age with their enterprising neighbors, the Phœnicians, familiarized them with the men of all races and the products of all countries; enlarged their faculties; sharpened their intellects; and made them capable of becoming, in after times, the conquerors and the lawgivers of the world. Prodigious energy and aggressiveness were their leading characteristics. These traits were intensified by various, sometimes by unworthy, motives,--by the love of pleasure, the thirst of avarice, the fire of ambition,--as well as by the precepts and promises of a religion congenial to their tastes, their habits, and their excessively romantic and adventurous nature. Of all the dynasties established by the Successors of the Prophet, that of the Ommeyades of Spain is indisputably entitled to the most exalted rank.

The foundation of that dynasty marks a great epoch in the history of Europe. Of its noble deeds, in both war and peace, every individual of Moslem faith or Arab lineage may well be proud; proud of its long line of illustrious princes; proud of its conquests; proud of its civilization, which surpassed the splendors of Imperial Rome, and whose arts modern science has found it impossible to successfully imitate; proud of its unequalled agricultural prosperity; proud of the exquisite beauty of its edifices, still pre-eminently attractive even in their decay; proud of its mighty capital; proud of its academical system, with its perfect organization, its colleges, its lyceums, its libraries; proud of the vast attainments of its scholars, its surgeons, its chemists, its botanists, its astronomers, its mathematicians; proud of the theories of its philosophers, which for a thousand years, amidst the incessant fluctuations of human opinion and the infinite variations of religious belief, have retained their original form, and are accepted as correct by the most enlightened thinkers of the present age. The destruction of this wonderful empire was an event of more than national significance; it was a misfortune to be deplored by every lover of learning for all coming time. For evil was the day for human progress when from his battlemented walls the Moor looked down upon the signing of a truce craftily devised for the betrayal of his kindred; evil was the day when upon the red towers of the Alhambra, decorated by the emirs with profuse and unexampled magnificence, and which for seven centuries had been the stronghold of Moslem power, the home of Moslem art, were raised the victorious banners of the Spanish monarchy, suggestive, it is true, of incredible achievement, of undaunted valor, of heroic self-sacrifice, of imperishable renown, yet at the same time harbingers of an endless train of national calamities which, like avenging and relentless furies, stalked unseen in the wake of the exultant conqueror.

INDEX

A

Abbeys of France and England, their extent and wealth, iii. 351.

Abd-al-Aziz, first Emir of Spain, i. 267;
marries widow of Roderick, 269;
is assassinated, 271.

Abdallah gains crown by treachery, i. 535;
character of, 561.

Abd-al-Melik, emir, i. 306;
is impaled, 317.

Abd-al-Mumen, ruler of the Almohades, ii. 259;
conquers Spain, 287.

Abd-al-Rahman-al-Ghafeki conducts retreat, i. 277;
becomes emir and is deposed, 287;
is again raised to that office, 292;
attempts conquest of France, 295;
defeated and killed at Poitiers, 305.

Abd-al-Rahman I., his early career, i. 384, 385;
escapes to the Desert, 385;
lands in Spain, 389;
conquers the Peninsula, 393, 394;
his death and character, 408–411.

Abd-al-Rahman II., ability of, i. 475;
receives embassies from the East, 478, 479;
builds a navy, 491;
his death, 494.

Abd-al-Rahman III. ascends the throne, i. 563;
his noble qualities, 564;
subdues the rebels, 567;
death of, 596;
his fame, 597;
domestic policy of, 605;
his patronage of letters, 631.

Abd-al-Rahman IV., ii. 85;
his independence, 93.

Abd-al-Rahman V., ii. 99.

Abu-Abdallah, the Mahdi, ii. 249;
character of, 250.

Abu-Bekr, chief of Almoravides, ii. 194;
deposed, 196.