Note (return) — MOSLEM HISTORIES OF SPAIN.1

The reign of Al-hakem was the Augustan age of Andalusian literature; and besides the numerous learned men whom the fame of his father's and his own liberality, with the security of their rule, had attracted to Spain from other regions of Islam, we find in the pages of Al-Makkari an extensive list of native authors, principally in the departments of poetry, history, and philology, who are said to be "a few only of the most eminent who flourished during this reign"—but none of their names, however noted in their own day, are known in modern Europe. Nor was the gentler sex, as is usually the case in the lands of Islam, excluded from the general taste for letters; and one of our author's chapters is almost entirely filled with a catalogue of the poetesses who adorned Andalus at this and other periods of its history. One of these, Mariam or Mary, the daughter of Abu-Yakub Al-ansari, who rose into celebrity in the latter years of Al-hakem, appears to have been one of the earliest bas-bleus on record. Independent of her poetical talents, she gave lectures at her residence at Seville "in rhetoric and literature; which, united to her piety, virtue, and amiable disposition, gained her the affection of her sex, and procured her many pupils: she lived to old age, and died after the 400th year of the Hejra," (A.D. 1010.) The favourite study of the Moslems, the divinity and law of the Koran, was cultivated with especial zeal under a monarch who was himself a rigid observer of its ordinances; and various anecdotes are related by Al-Makkari of the extraordinary deference paid by Al-hakem to the eminent theologians who frequented his court. The Khalif himself "attended public worship every Friday, and distributed alms to the poor; he laid out large sums in the construction of mosques, hospitals, and colleges for youth;19 and being himself very strict in the observance of his religious duties, he enforced the precepts of the Sunnah (tradition) throughout his dominions." With this view, severe edicts were directed against the use of wine, which had become prevalent among the Andalusian Moslems; and Al-hakem was with difficulty restrained, by representations of the ruin which would be thus brought on the cultivators, from ordering the destruction of all the vines in his dominions. But the reign of this excellent and enlightened prince lasted only fifteen years; and at his death, (Sept. 976,) which was caused by the same malady that had proved fatal to his father, the glory of the house of Umeyyah expired.