Note (return) — MOSLEM HISTORIES OF SPAIN.1

The system of government under these princes, appears to have remained in nearly the same form as it had been fixed by Abdurrahman I. The monarch nominated, during his lifetime, one of his sons as his successor; and the wali-al-ahd, or crown-prince, thus selected, received the oaths of allegiance of the dignitaries of the state, and was admitted to a share in the administration—a wise regulation, which prevented the recurrence of the civil wars arising from the ambition of princes of the blood, which had distracted the reigns of Al-hakem I. and Abdurrahman II. The council of the sovereign was composed of the vizirs or ministers of the different departments, the katibs or secretaries, and the chiefs of the law; the walis of the six great provinces into which Abdurrahman I. divided his empire,15 as well as the municipal chiefs of the principal cities were also summoned on emergencies:—while the prime minister, or highest officer of the state, in whom, as in the Turkish Vizir-Azem,16 the supreme direction of both civil and military affairs was vested, was designated the Hajib or chamberlain. Of the four orthodox17 sects of the Soonis, the one which predominated in Spain, as it does to the present day in Barbary and Africa, was that of Malik Ibn Ans, whose doctrines were introduced in the reign of Al-hakem I., by doctors who had received instruction from the lips of the Imam Malik himself at Mekka; and was formally established by that prince throughout his dominions. The judicial offices were filled, as in other Moslem countries, by Kadis, whose decisions were regulated by the precepts of the Koran: but we find no mention (even before the assumption of the titles of Imam and Khalif by Abdurrahman III.) of any supreme ecclesiastical chief like the Sheikh-al-Islam or Mufti of the Ottomans;—though there were chief justices analogous to the Turkish Kadileskers, who bore the title of Kadi-'l-jamah.