Volume 55 / Part 2 — MOSLEM HISTORIES OF SPAIN.1

MOSLEM HISTORIES OF SPAIN.¹

THE ARABS OF CORDOVA.

An authentic and comprehensive view of the Arab period, as described by their own writers, was therefore still a desideratum in European literature, which the publication before us may be considered as the first step towards supplying. The work of Al-Makkari, which has been taken as a text-book, is not so much an original history as a collection of extracts, sometimes abridged, and sometimes transcribed in full, from more ancient historians; and frequently giving two or three versions of the same event from different authorities—so that, though it can claim but little merit as a composition, it is of extreme value as a repository of fragments of authors in many cases now lost; and further, as the only "uninterrupted narrative of the conquests, wars, and settlements of the Spanish Moslems, from their first invasion of the Peninsula to their final expulsion." In the arrangement of his materials, the translator has departed considerably, and with advantage, from the original; giving the historical books in the form of a continuous narrative, and omitting several sections relating to matters of little interest—while the deficiencies and omissions of the author are supplied by an appendix, containing, in addition to a valuable body of original notes, copious extracts from numerous unpublished Arabic MSS. relating to Spain, which afford ample proof of the extent and diligence of his researches among the Oriental treasures of Paris and London. To those in the Escurial, however, he was denied access during his labours—an almost incredible measure of illiberality, which, if he be correct in ascribing it to his known intention of publishing in England, "ill suits a country" (as he justly remarks in the preface) "which has lately seen its archives and monastic libraries reduced to cinders, and scattered or sold in foreign markets, without the least struggle to rescue or secure them."

Ahmed Al-Makkari, the author or compiler of the present work, derived his surname from a village near Telemsan called Makkarah, where his family had been established since the conquest of Africa by the Arabs. He was born at Telemsan some time in the latter half of the sixteenth century, and educated by his uncle, who held the office of Mufti in that city; but having quitted his native country in 1618 on a pilgrimage to Mekka, he married and settled in Cairo. During a visit to Damascus in 1628, he was received with high distinction by Ahmed Ibn Shahin Effendi, the director of the college of Jakmak in that city, and a distinguished patron of literature; at whose suggestion (he tells us) he undertook this work. His original purpose had been only to write the life of Abu Abdullah Lisanuddin, a celebrated historian and minister in Granada, better known to Oriental scholars as Ibnu'l-Khattib; but having completed this, the thought struck him of adding, as a second part, an historical account of the Moslems of Spain. He had formerly written an extensive and elaborate work on this subject, composed (to use his own words) "in such an elevated and pleasing style, that had it been publicly delivered by the common crier, it would have made even the stones deaf:—but, alas! the whole of this we had left in Maghreb (Morocco) with the rest of our library.... However, we have done our best to make the present work as useful and complete as possible." It was probably the last literary undertaking of his life; since he was on the point of quitting Cairo to fix his residence in Damascus, when he died of a fever in the second Jomada of A.H. 1041, (Jan. 1632,) leaving a high reputation as a traditionist and doctor of the Moslem law.

The introductory chapter gives a sketch of the various nations which inhabited Andalus or Spain before the Arab conquest, prefaced by extracts from numerous writers eulogistic of a country "whose excellences" (as Al-Makkari himself declares) "are such and so many that they cannot easily be contained in a book ... so that one of their wise men, who knew that the country had been called the bird's tail, owing to the supposed resemblance of the earth to a bird with extended wings, remarked that that bird was the peacock, the principal beauty of which was in the tail." These panegyrics are not in all cases exactly consistent; for while the famous geographer, Obeydullah Al-Bekri, "compares his native country to Syria for purity of air and water, to China for mines and precious stones, &c. &c., and to Al-Ahwaz (a district in Persia) for the magnitude of its snakes"—the Sheikh Ahmed Al-Razi (better known as the historian Razis) praises its comparative freedom from wild beasts and reptiles. The name Andalus is derived by some authors from a great grandson of Noah so named, who settled there soon after the deluge; but Al-Makkari rather inclines, with Ibn Khaldun and other writers, to deduce it from the Andalosh, (Vandals,) "a tribe of barbarians," who appear to be considered as the earliest inhabitants; but who, having incurred the divine wrath by their wickedness and idolatry, were all cut off by a terrible drought, which left the land for a hundred years an uninhabited desert. A colony then arrived from Africa, under a chief named Batrikus, eleven generations of whose descendants reigned for one hundred and fifty-seven years; after which they were all annihilated by the "barbarians of Rome, who invaded and conquered the country; and it was after their king Ishban, son of Titus, that Andalus was called Ishbaniah," (Hispania.) As Ishban is just after said to have "plundered and demolished Ilia, which is the same as Al-Kods the illustrious," (Jerusalem,) it is obvious that the name must be a corruption of Vespasian, who is thus made the son instead of the father of Titus. We are told that authors differ whether it was on this occasion, or at the former capture of Jerusalem by Bokht-Nasser, (Nebuchadnezzar,) at which a king of Spain named Berian was also present, that the table constructed by the genii for Solomon, and which Tarik afterwards found at Toledo, was transported to Spain—and Al-Makkari professes himself, as well he may, unable to reconcile the different accounts. Fifty-five kings descended from Ishban, whose race was dispossessed ("about the time of the Messiah, on whom be peace!") by a people called Bishtilikat, (Visigoths?) under a king called Talubush, (Ataulphus?) whom Al-Makkari holds to have been the same people as the "barbarians of Rome," though "there are not wanting authors who make the Goths and the Bishtilikat only one nation." After holding possession during the reigns of twenty-seven monarchs, they were in turn subdued by the Goths, whose royal residence was "Toleyalah, (Toledo,) though Isbiliah (Seville) continued to be the abode of the sciences." The Gothic kings are said to have been thirty-six;—but the only one particularized by name is "Khoshandinus, (Constantine,) who not only embraced Christianity himself, but called on his subjects to do the same, and is held by the Christians as the greatest king they ever had.... Several kings of his posterity reigned after him, till Andalus was finally subdued by the Arabs, by whose means God was pleased to make manifest the superiority of Islam over every other religion."

Musa was on his march into Galicia to crush the last embers of national resistance, when his progress was checked by a peremptory summons from the Khalif, to answer at Damascus the charges forwarded against him by Tarik, whom he had unjustly disgraced and punished. Being convicted of falsehood, on the production by Tarik of the missing foot of the table of Solomon, the merit of finding which had been claimed by Musa, he was tortured and deprived of his riches; and the head of his gallant son Abdulaziz, whom he had left in command in Spain, was shown to him in public by the Khalif Soliman, the successor of Walid, with the cruel demand if he knew whose it was. "I do," was the father's reply: "it is the head of one who fasted and prayed; may the curse of Allah fall on it if he who slew him is a better man than he!" But though Musa was thus arrested in the last stage of his conquering career, so complete was the prostration of the Christians, that the viceroys who succeeded Abdulaziz, overlooking or disregarding this yet unsubdued corner of Spain, at once poured their forces across the Pyrenees, seeking new fields of conquest and glory in the countries of the Franks. But the antagonists whom they here encountered, unlike the luxurious Goths of Spain, still preserved the barbarian valour which they had brought from their German forests. And As-Samh, (the Zama of the Christian writers,) the first Saracen general who obtained a footing in France, "fell a martyr to the faith," with nearly his whole army, in a battle with Eudo, Duke of Aquitaine, before Toulouse, May 10, A.D. 721. But the fiery zeal of the Moslems was only stimulated by this reverse. In the course of the ten following years, their dominion was established as far as the Rhone and Garonne; till, in 732, the torrent of invasion, headed by the Wali Abdurrahman, burst into the heart of the country; and the battle, decisive of the destinies of France, and perhaps of Europe, was fought between Tours and Poitiers, in October of that year, (Ramadhan, A.H. 114.) Few details are given by the Arab writers of the seven days' conflict, in which the ranks of the Moslems were shattered by the iron arm of Charles Martel; "and the army of Abdurrahman was cut to pieces at a spot called Balatt-ush-Shohadá, (the Pavement of the Martyrs,) he himself being in the number of the slain." Some confusion here appears, as the same epithet had been applied to the former battle near Toulouse; but this "disastrous day" of Tours virtually extinguished the schemes of Arab conquest in France, though it was not till many years later that they were completely dislodged from Narbonne, and their other acquisitions between the Garrone and the Pyrenees.

Among the few survivors of the general doom, was a youth named Abdurrahman Ibn Muawiyah, a grandson of the Khalif Hisham. In his infancy his granduncle Moslemah, the leader of the first Saracen host sent against Constantinople, had indicated him, from certain marks, as the destined restorer of the fallen fortunes of his race; and he was preserved, by a timely warning from a client of his house, from the fatal banquet, in which ninety of the Beni-Umeyyah were treacherously massacred. Yet so hot was the pursuit, that his younger brother was taken and slain before his eyes, while swimming the Euphrates with him in their flight. But Abdurrahman, after numberless perils and adventures, at length reached Africa, which was ruled by the wali or viceroy Abdurrahman Ibn Habib, the father of Yusuf Al-Fehri, who had been a personal retainer of his family. But he soon found that he had erred in trusting to the faith of Ibn Habib; and, after narrowly escaping the search made for him by the emissaries of the governor, lay concealed for several years, a fugitive and outlaw, among the tribes of Northern Africa. In this extremity, he at length cast his eyes on Spain, where the Abbasides had never been recognized, and where his own clansmen of the Koreysh, with their maulis, (freedmen or clients,) were numerous and powerful. The overtures of the royal adventurer were eagerly listened to by the Yemenis, who burned to revenge their late defeat on the Beni-Modhar; and Abdurrahman, landing at Al-muñecar in the autumn of 755, found himself instantly at the head of 700 horse, and was speedily joined by the chieftain of the Yemenis, who admitted him into Seville. During the march the want of a banner was remarked, "and a long spear was produced, on the point of which a turban was to be placed; but as it would have been necessary to incline the head of the spear, which was supposed to be of extremely bad omen, it was held erect between two olive trees, and a man, ascending one of them, was enabled to fasten the turban to the spear without lowering it.... With this same banner did Abdurrahman, and his son Hisham, vanquish their enemies whenever they met them; and in such veneration was it held, that whenever the turban by long use decayed, it was not removed, but a new one placed over it. In this manner it was preserved till the days of Abdurrahman II.; some say till the days of his son Mohammed, when the turban on the spear being decayed, the vizirs of that monarch, seeing nothing under it but a few rags twisted round the spear, gave orders for their removal, and the whole was thrown away.... 'From that time,' remarks the judicious historian Ibn Hayyan, 'the empire of the Beni-Umeyyah began visibly to decline.'"

Under the auspices of this novel oriflamme the Umeyyan prince and his followers advanced upon Cordova, whither Yusuf Al-Fehri, who had been engaged in suppressing an insurrection in the Thagher, (Aragon,) had hastened to oppose them at the head of the Beni-Modhar. Exchanging for a mule the fiery courser which the jealous whispers of his adherents had remarked as designed to secure his escape in case of defeat, Abdurrahman led his troops to the attack; and his victory established on the throne of Spain a new dynasty of the Beni-Umeyyah, "who thus regained in the west the supremacy which they had lost in the east." Those of the fallen family who had escaped the general massacre, flocked to the court of their fortunate kinsman, "to all of whom he gave pensions, commands, and governments, by which means his empire was strengthened;"—and the robes and turbans of the monarch and the princes were always white, the colour assumed by the house of Umeyyah, in opposition to the black livery of their rivals. Though Abdurrahman never assumed the title of commander of the faithful, he suppressed the khotbah or public prayers in the name of the Abbasides; and when Al-Ala, the wali of Africa, invaded Spain in order to re-establish the supremacy of the eastern khalif, the head of his unsuccessful general, thrown before the tent of Al-mansor at Mekka, conveyed to him the first tidings of the destruction of the armament by the "hawk of the Koreysh," as he was wont to term Abdurrahman. In the elation of triumph from this success, he is even said to have contemplated marching through Africa to attack Al-mansor in the east; but this design was frustrated by the continual rebellions of the Arab tribes, whom all his address and prudence was unable to keep in order; and "while the Moslems were revolting against their sovereign, the Christians of Galicia gathered strength, took possession of the towns and fortresses on the frontier, and expelled their inhabitants." We find him at length obliged, in order to maintain his authority, to have recourse to the system, which in the next century became universal in the east, of entrusting the defence of his throne and person, not to the native levies of his kingdom, but to a standing army of purchased slaves or Mamlukes. "He began to cease all communication with the chiefs of the Arabian tribes, whom he found animated with a strong hatred against him, and to surround himself with slaves and people entirely devoted to him; for which end he engaged followers and took clients from every province of his empire, and sent over to Africa to enlist Berbers. 'Thus,' says Ibn Hayyan, 'Abdurrahman collected an army of slaves and Berbers, amounting to upwards of 40,000 men, by means of whom he always remained victorious, in every contest with the Arabian tribes of Andalus.'"

The sciences and fine arts, which had been almost banished from Spain since the conquest, returned in the train of the new dynasty; and literature was encouraged by the example of Abdurrahman, who was himself a poet of no mean merit. His affectionate remembrance of his Syrian home, led him to introduce into his new kingdom the flowers and fruits of the east;—and the palm-tree, which was the parent of all those of its kind in Spain, and to which he addressed the well-known lines, lamenting their common fate as exiles from their fatherland, was planted by himself in the gardens of the Rissáfah, a country palace built on the model of one near Damascus, in which the first years of his life had been spent. In architectural magnificence he rivaled or surpassed the former princes of his race, the monuments of whose grandeur still exist in the mosque of the Beni-Umeyyah at Damascus, and other edifices adorning the cities of Syria. The palaces and aqueducts which he constructed in Cordova, testified his zeal for the splendour, as well as his care for the salubrity, of his capital;—and after expending the sum of 80,000 golden dinars (the produce of the royal fifth of all spoil taken in war) in the erection of the stately mosque which bears his name, he bequeathed the completion of the structure, at his death, A.D. 788, to his younger son Hisham, whom he nominated as his successor, to the exclusion of the elder brother Soliman. Al-Makkari devotes an entire chapter to the wonders of this celebrated temple, which was finished A.D. 794, nine years after its commencement, and received additions from almost every successive sovereign of the house of Umeyyah. In its present state, as the cathedral of Cordova, it still covers more ground than any church in Christendom; but the inner roof, with its elaborate carving, the mihrab, or shrine, of minute inlaid work of ivory, gems, and precious woods, and containing a copy of the Koran which had belonged to the Khalif Othman—the embossed plates of gold and silver which encrusted the doors, and the apples of the same metals which surmounted the dome—have long since disappeared; and the thousand (or, as some say, thirteen hundred) columns of polished marble which it once boasted, have been grievously reduced in number, to make room for the shrines and chapels of Christian saints. The unequal length and proportions of those which remain, their irregular grouping, and the want of height in the roof which they support, indicate a far lower grade of architectural taste than that which we find in the aerial palaces of Granada; but all the Arabic writers who have described it, concur in considering it one of the wonders of the world; and it ranked, in the estimation of the Spanish Moslems, as inferior in point of sanctity to none but the Kaaba, and the mosque of Omar at Jerusalem.

The royal revenue was derived from a variety of sources. The principal were, a land-tax amounting to one-tenth of the produce of the soil and the mines, the capitation-tax paid by the Jews and Christians, and the fifth of the spoil taken from the enemy—an enormously productive item in a time of constant warfare—besides a duty of two and a half per cent on all exports and imports. These were the legitimate dues of the crown, sanctioned by the Koran; but the splendid court maintained by the later sovereigns of Cordova, their lavish expenditure in building, and their large military and naval establishments, often compelled them to have recourse to irregular methods of raising money, by forced loans and by duties laid on different articles of food, in direct violation of the Moslem law. The amount raised by all these means varied greatly at different periods. Under Abdurrahman II., the whole direct revenue is said not to have exceeded 1,000,000 of gold dinārs:—but the royal fifths, and other extraordinary sources of income, appear not to have been included in this estimate:—and a century later, under the third and greatest prince of that name, we are told, on the authority of the biographer Ibn Khallekan, that "the revenues of Andalus amounted to 5,480,000 gold dinārs, collected from taxes," (it is elsewhere said from the land-tax:) besides 765,000 derived from markets—exclusive also of the royal fifth of the spoil, and the capitation-tax levied on Christians and Jews living in the Moslem dominions, the amount of which is said to have equaled all the rest. An annual sum of equal amount, reckoning the dinār at ten shillings, had never in the history of the world been raised in a territory of the same extent, and probably equaled the united incomes of all the Christian princes in Europe—if we except the revenue of the Greek Emperor, it certainly far exceeded them. "Of this vast income," Ibn Khallekan continues, "one-third was appropriated to the payment of the army, another third was deposited in the royal coffers to cover the expenses of the household, and the remainder was spent yearly in the construction of Az-zahra and such other buildings as were erected under his reign." This tripartite allotment of the revenue is alluded to under several reigns: the expenses of administration and the salaries of the civil functionaries were included under the second head; and the third portion was, in ordinary case, reserved "to repel invasions and meet emergencies."

The prince under whom the vast revenue thus stated is said to have been collected, ascended the throne on the death of his grandfather Abdullah, in the 300th year of the Hejra, and the 912th of the Christian era:—and his reign, of more than fifty lunar years, saw the power and splendour of the Umeyyan dynasty attain its zenith. For some years after his accession, he headed his armies in person against the Christians and the partizans of Ibn Hafssun, who still continued in arms: but the severe defeat which he received in 939 at Simaneas, near Zamora, (called by Moslem writers the battle of Al-handik,) from Ramiro II. of Leon, disgusted him with active warfare; and he deputed the command of his armies to his generals and the princes of the blood, who, in annual campaigns, so effectually kept the Christians within their limits, that little territorial acquisition was made by them during his reign; while the voluntary adhesion of the Berber tribes, after the overthrow of the Edrisite dynasty in 941 by the arms of the Fatimite khalifs, gave him almost unresisted possession of great part of Fez and Morocco. The defeat of Al-handik, and the treason and execution in 950, of his elder son Abdullah, (whom disappointment at being postponed to his younger brother in the succession, had led to conspire against his father's life,) were almost the only clouds which dimmed the continual sunshine of his prosperity—and his grandeur was enhanced in the eyes of his subjects, by the assumption of the highest prerogatives of Islam. Hitherto the princes of his line had contented themselves with the style of Amirs of the Moslems, and Beni-Kholaifah or "sons of the Khalifs;" but in 929, "seeing the state of weakness and degradation to which the khalifate of the Beni-Abbas at Bagdad had been reduced," he no longer hesitated to adopt the titles of Imam and Khalif, with the appellation of An-nasir Ledinillah, (defender of the religion of God,) under which he is generally mentioned by historians.

The writers from whom Al-Makkari has drawn his materials, exhaust their powers of language in panegyrics on the unrivaled magnificence of the court of Abdurrahman; which was thronged both by men of letters whom the distracted state of the East had driven thither for refuge, and by ambassadors, not only from the princes of Islam, but from "Hoto the king of the Alaman," (Otho the Great of Germany,) the king of France, and numerous other Christian potentates. The reception of these missions was usually signalized by a gorgeous display of the pomp of the court—and the ceremonial on the arrival in 949 of the envoys of Constantine VII. of Constantinople, is described at length from Ibn Hayyan. "The vaulted hall in his palace of Az-zahra, which he had fixed upon as the place where he would receive their credentials, was beautifully decorated, and a throne glittering with gold and sparkling with gems raised in the midst. To the right of the throne stood five of the khalif's sons, to the left three others, one being absent from illness. Next to them were the vizirs, each at his post on the right or left of the throne. Then came the hajibs or chamberlains, the sons of the vizirs, the freed slaves of the khalif, and the wakils or officers of his household. The court of the palace had been strewn with the richest carpets; and silken awnings of the most gorgeous description had every where been thrown over the doors and arches. Presently the ambassadors entered the hall, and were struck with awe at the magnificence displayed, and the power of the Sultan before whom they stood. They advanced a few steps, and presented the letter of their master, Constantine son of Leo, Lord of Constantinah the Great, (Constantinople.) It was written on sky-blue paper, and the characters were of gold. Within the letter was an enclosure, the ground of which was also sky-blue like the first, but the characters were of silver: it was likewise written in Greek, and contained a list of the presents which the Lord of Constantinah sent to the Khalif. On the letter was a seal of gold of the weight of four mithkals, on one side of which was a likeness of the Messiah, and on the other those of the King Constantine and his son. The letter was enclosed in a bag of silver cloth, over which was a case of gold, with a portrait of King Constantine admirably executed on stained glass. All this was enclosed in a case covered with cloth of silk and gold tissue. On the first line of the Inwan or introduction was written, 'Constantine and Romanin, (Romanus,) believers in the Messiah, kings of the Greeks;' and in the next, 'To the great and exalted in dignity and power, as he most deserves, the noble in descent, Abdurrahman the khalif, who rules over the Arabs of Andalus: may God preserve his life!'" The conclusion of this splendid ceremony was, however, less imposing than the commencement; for a learned Faquih, who had been appointed to harangue the envoys in a set speech, was so overawed by the grandeur around him, that "his tongue clove to his mouth, he could not aticulate a single word, and fell senseless to the ground" Nor did his successor, "who was reputed to be a prince in rhetoric, and an ocean of language," fare much better; for though he began fluently, "all of a sudden he stopped for want of a word which did not occur to him, and thus put an end to his peroration." In this awkward dilemma, the reputation of the Andalusian rhetoricians was saved by Mundhir Ibn Said, who not only poured forth a torrent of impromptu eloquence, but delivered a long ex-tempore poem, "which to this day stands unequalled; and Abdurrahman was so pleased, that he appointed him preacher and Imam to the great mosque; and some time after, the office of Kadi-'l-jamah, or supreme judge, being vacant, he named him to that high post, and made him besides reader of the Khoran to the mosque of Az-zahra."

The palace of Az-zahra, where the eyes of the Greeks were dazzled by this costly pageant, is one of the familiar names of the romance of Spanish history:—it is known to all the world how Abdurrahman, to gratify the capricious fancy of a beautiful and beloved mistress, expended millions, and tasked the labour of thousands, in erecting on the plain beyond Cordova a fairy palace and city which might bear her name and be her own. And like a fairy fabric did Az-zahra vanish; for so utterly was it destroyed, during the wars and civil tumults attending the fall of the race which raised it, that at the present day not a stone can be found, not a vestige even of the foundations traced, to show where it once stood; and all that we know of this "wondrous freak of magnificence" is drawn from the glowing accounts of contemporary writers, who saw it during the brief period of its glory. It is principally from Ibn Hayyan that Al-Makkari has copied the details of this marvellous structure, with its "15,000 doors, counting each flap or fold as one," all covered either with plates of iron, or sheets of polished brass; and its 4000 columns, great and small, 140 of which were presented by the Emperor of Constantinople, and 1013, mostly of green and rose-coloured marble, were brought from various parts of Africa. Among the principal ornaments were two fountains brought from Constantinople, "the larger of gilt bronze, beautifully carved with basso-relieve representing human figures,"—the smaller surrounded by twelve figures, made of red gold in the arsenal of Cordova: they were all ornamented with jewels, and the water poured out of their mouths. The famous fountain of quicksilver, which could be set in motion at pleasure, was placed in the Kasr-al-Kholaifa, or hall of the khalifs, "the roof and walls of which were of gold, and solid but transparent blocks of marble of various colours: on each side were eight doors fixed on arches of ivory and ebony, ornamented with gold and precious stones, and resting on pillars of variegated marble and transparent crystal:—and in the centre was fixed the unique pearl presented to An-nassir by the Greek Emperor." The mosque and baths attached to the palace were on a corresponding scale of magnificence: and the number of inmates, male and female, is said to have been not less than 20,000. The expenses of the establishment must have consumed the revenues of a kingdom, if we are to believe the statement, that 12,000 loaves of bread were daily allowed to feed the fish in the ponds! "But all this and more is recorded by orators and poets who have exhausted the mines of eloquence in the description,"—says Al-Makkari, who, after enlarging upon "the running streams, the luxuriant gardens, the stately buildings for the accommodation of the guards and high functionaries—the throngs of soldiers, pages, eunuchs, and slaves, attired in robes of silk and brocade, moving to and fro through its broad streets—and the crowds of judges, katibs, theologians, and poets, walking with becoming gravity through the spacious halls and ample courts of the palace,"—concludes with a burst of pious enthusiasm. "Praise be to God who allowed those contemptible creatures (mankind) to build such palaces, and to inhabit them as a recompense in this world, that the faithful might be stimulated to the path of virtue, by reflecting that the pleasures enjoyed by their owners were still very far from giving even a remote idea of those reserved for the true believers in paradise!"

"Abdurrahman," as Al-Makkari sums up his character, "has been described as the mildest and most enlightened of sovereigns. His meekness, generosity, and love of justice, became proverbial: none of his ancestors surpased him in courage, zeal for religion, and other virtues which constitute an able and beloved monarch. He was fond of science, and the patron of the learned, with whom he loved to converse.... We should never finish, were we to transcribe the innumerable anecdotes respecting him which are scattered like loose pearls over the writings of the Andalusian poets and historians,"—but as the "pearls" selected possess but little novelty in the illustration of the kingly virtues which they commemorate, we prefer to quote once more the oft-repeated legacy to posterity, in which this "Soliman of the West," as he was called by his contemporaries, confessed that, like his eastern prototype, he had found all his grandeur "but vanity and vexation of spirit."—"After his death a paper was found in his on handwriting, in which were noted those days he had spent in happiness and without any cause of sorrow, and they were found to amount to fourteen. O, man of understanding! consider and observe the small portion of happiness the world affords, even in the most enviable position! The khalif An-nasir, whose prosperity in mundane affairs became proverbial, had only fourteen days of undisturbed enjoyment during a reign of fifty years, seven months, and three days. Praise be given to him, the Lord of eternal glory and everlasting empire! There is no God but he!"

But this daring usurpation was in part redeemed by qualities in the usurper worthy of a king. Though the bigotry of Al-masur led him to order the destruction of those volumes in the library of Al-hakem which treated of philosophy and the abstruse sciences, on the ground that such studies tended to irreligion, he was yet liberal to the learned men who visited his court at Az-zahirah, where he resided in royal splendour during the intervals of his campaigns; and he endeared hinself to the people, by his generosity, his rigid justice, and the strict control which he enforced over his subordinate officers. But it was on his fervent zeal for the cause of Islam, and his martial exploits against the Christians, (whence his surname of Al-mansur, or the Victorious, was derived,) that his fame and popularity chiefly rested. The martial spirit of the Spanish Moslems appears, from various anecdotes related by Al-Makkari, to have suffered great deterioration from the progress of luxury and decay of discipline; but the armies led by Al-mansur were mainly recruited from the fiery tribes of Barbary, and strengthened by numerous Christian slaves or Mamlukes, trained to serve their captors in arms against their own countrymen. With forces thus constituted, did Al-mansur, in whom once more shone forth the spirit of the Arab conquerors of past times, invade the Christian territories in each spring and autumn for twenty-six successive years, carrying the Moslem arms in triumph even to the shores of the "Green Sea," (Atlantic Ocean,) and into regions which Tarik and Musa had never reached. Astorga and Leon, in spite of the efforts of Bermudo II. to save his capital, were taken and razed to the ground in 983. Barcelona only escaped the same fate in the following year by submission and tribute; but the crowning glory of Al-mansur's achievements in the al-jahid or holy war, was the capture, in 997, Santiago, the shrine and sepulchre of the patron saint of Spain. "No Moslem general had ever penetrated as far as that city, which is in an inaccessible position in the most remote part of Galicia, and is a sanctuary regarded by the Christians with veneration equal to that which the Moslems entertain for the Kaaba,"—but Al-mansur, supplied with provisions from a fleet which accompanied his march along the coast of Portugal, forced his way through the Galician defiles, and occupied the holy city without opposition—all the inhabitants having fled, according to Ibn Hayyan, with the exception of an old monk who tended the tomb. The city and cathedral were leveled with the ground; the shrine alone was left untouched in the midst of the ruins, from the belief of the Moslems that St James was the brother of the Messiah—and the church-bells were conveyed on the shoulders of the captives to Cordova, where they were suspended as lamps in the great mosque, to commemorate the triumph of Islam in the principal seat of Christian worship and pilgrimage.

Al-mansur had a worthy successor in his son Abdul-malek, who at once received the appointment of Hajib from the passive Khalif:—but on his death in 1008, the post was assumed by his brother Abdurrahman, popularly known as Shanjul, a Berber word signifying madman—a surname which he had earned by his habits of low vice and intemperance. Scarcely had he entered upon office, when, not contented with exercising sovereign authority, like his father and brother, under an appearance of delegation from the Khalif, he persuaded or compelled the feeble Hisham, who had no male issue, to appoint him Wali-al-ahd, or heir-presumptive—the deed of nomination is given at length by Al-Makkari, and is a curious specimen of a state-paper. But this transfer was viewed with deep indignation by the people of Cordova, who were warmly attached to the line of their ancient princes; and their discontent being fomented by the members of the Umeyyan family, they rose in furious revolt during the absence of the Hajib on the Galician frontiers, deposed Hisham, and raised to the throne Mohammed-Al-muhdi, a great-grandson of Abdurrahman III. Abdurrahman, returning in haste to quell the insurrection, found himself deserted by his army, and was put to death with most of his family and principal adherents; and the power of the Amirites vanished in a day like the remembrance of dream. But the sceptre which had thus been struck from their grasp, found no other hand strong enough to seize it; and from the first deposition of Hisham II. in 1009, to the final dissolution of the monarchy on the abdication of Hisham III. in 1031, the whole of Moslem Spain presented a frightful scene of anarchy and civil war. Besides the imbecile Hisham, who was at least once released and restored to the throne, and was personated by more than one pretender, the royal title was assumed, within twenty years by not fewer than six princes of the house of Umeyyah, and by three of a rival race—a branch of the Edrisites called Beni-Hammud, who endeavoured in the general confusion to assert their claims as descendants of the Khalif Ali. The aid of the Christians was called in by more than one faction; and Cordova was stormed and sacked after a long siege in 1013, by the African troops who followed the standard of Soliman Ab-muhdi, one of the Umeyyan competitors. The palaces of Az-zahra and Az-zahirah were utterly destroyed; the remains of Hakem's library, with the treasures amassed by former sovereigns, were either plundered or dispersed; nor did the ancient capital of Audalus, no more the seat of the Khalifate, ever recover its former grandeur. The provincial walis, many of whom owed their appointments to the Hajibs of the house of Amir, and were disaffected to the Beni-Umeyyah, every where threw off their allegiance and assumed independence, till only the districts in its immediate vicinity remained attached to Cordova, which was still considered the seat of the Mohammedan empire. The last Umeyyan prince who ruled there was a grandson of the great Abdurrahman, named Hisham Al-Mutadd; whom the inhabitants, after expelling the troops of the Beni-Hammud in 1027, invited to ascend the throne of his ancestors. "He was a mild and enlightened prince and possessed many brilliant qualities; but notwithstanding this, the volatile and degenerate citizens of Cordova grew discontented with him, and he was deposed by the army in 422, (A.D. 1031.) He left the capital and retired to Lerida, where he died in 428, (A.D. 1036.) He was the last member of that illustrious dynasty which had ruled over Andalus and a great portion of Africa for two hundred and eighty-four years, counting from the accession of Abdurrahman I., surnamed Ab-dakhel, in 138, (A.D. 756.) There is no God but God! He is the Almighty!"

The fall of the Umeyyan khalifate closes the first of the two brilliant periods which illustrate the Arab history of Spain. The uninterrupted hereditary succession for ten generations, and the long average duration of the reign of each monarch, from the arrival in Spain of Abdurrahman I. in 756, to the death or disappearance of Hisham II. in 1009, are without a parallel it any other Moslem dynasty, with the single exception of the Ottoman line; and though, on pursuing the comparison, the Umeyyan princes cannot vie with the last-named race in extent of conquest and splendour of martial achievement, they far surpass not only the Ottomans, but almost every sovereign family in the annals of Islam, in the cultivation of kingly virtues and arts of peace, and the refinement and love of literature, which they introduced and fostered in their dominions. During the greater part of their rule, the court of Cordova was the most polished and enlightened in Europe removed equally from the martial rudeness of those of the Frank monarchs, and the punctilious attention to forms and jealous etiquette, within which the Grcek emperors studiously intrenched themselves. The useful arts, and in particular the science of agriculture, necessary for the support of a dense population, were cultivated to an extent of which no other country afforded an example; and the commerce which filled the ports of Spain, from all parts of Europe and the East, was the natural result of the industry of her people. In how great a degree the personal character of the Umeyyan sovereigns contributed to this state of political and social prosperity, is best proved by the rapid disruption and fall of the monarchy, when it passed into the feeble hands of Hisham II., and by the history of the two following centuries of anarchy, civil war, and foreign domination. But the sun of Andalusian glory, which had attained its meridian splendour under the Khalifs of Cordova, once more emerged before the close of its course from the clouds and darkness which surrounded it;—and its setting rays shone, with concentrated lustre, over the kingdom of GRANADA.