Volume 1 — CHAPTER V THE INVASION AND CONQUEST OF SPAIN 710–713 (continued 2)

After the Conquest, Count Julian retired to Ceuta, which city, with a portion of the contiguous territory, was erected into a principality and bestowed upon him as a reward for his services. Notwithstanding his intimate Mohammedan associations, he and his immediate descendants remained steadfast in the Christian faith. The preponderating influence of Islam was, however, shown in the second generation of his descendants; and his great-grandson Abu-Suleyman-Ayub, who lived in the tenth century, and had studied under the greatest doctors of the time, became famous as one of the most acute and learned expounders of Moslem jurisprudence. The posterity of Tarik was known and esteemed for several centuries in Spain, until his identity and remembrance were finally lost in the civil wars and proscriptions which accompanied the establishment of the dynasty of the Almohades.

The engagements entered into with their allies were performed by the Moslems with scrupulous fidelity. Oppas was rewarded with the government of Toledo. The royal demesnes, amounting to three thousand of the richest estates of the kingdom, were restored to the House of Witiza. Many benefits at once resulted to the masses from the Arab conquest. The condition of the serfs was greatly improved. Tribute was regulated by law, and ceased to be dependent upon the capricious demands of avarice. The burdens of taxation were, however, still excessive; the cultivator paid four-fifths of the products of the land to the owner; from those who tilled the public domain—which comprised a fifth part of the conquered territory—one-third of the results of all manual industry was exacted. The tax of the landed proprietor was approximately twenty per cent. of his income, that of the tributary Christian varied from twelve to forty-eight dirhems—sixteen to sixty-four dollars—a year. A treaty, whose provisions determined the obligations of lord and serf, of subject and sovereign, and signed by Tarik and the representatives of the Gothic nobility before the arrival of Musa, was subsequently ratified by the government of Damascus. Upon this treaty were based all the laws which governed the tributaries in the Peninsula during the long period of Moslem dominion.

Less than fourteen months sufficed for the complete and irrevocable overthrow of the Visigothic empire. Within two years, the authority of the Moslem was firmly established from the Mediterranean to the Pyrenees. History presents no similar instance of the celerity, the completeness, the permanence of conquest. Political discord, social disintegration, the uncertainty of government, the insubordination of the noble, the rapacity of the priest, the despair of the slave, were among the most important aids to Mohammedan success. The aspirations of all not included in the privileged orders were repressed by the inexorable tyranny of caste. The middle class, from whose exertion and industry is necessarily derived the prosperity of a nation, had long been absorbed by the vast body of serfs whose labors contributed to the wealth, and whose numbers swelled the retinues, of the palatine and the bishop. The same conditions prevailed which had three centuries before heralded the fall of the Roman Empire. Force dominated everything. The spirit of individual freedom, the most prominent feature of the Teutonic constitution, had become extinct. The royal prerogative was subordinated to the claims of the nobility, the latter—not, however, without protest—had fallen under the dominion of the priesthood. The prospect of affluence, the enjoyment of power, the indulgence of luxury, were most easily obtained through the avenues of ecclesiastical preferment. A long peace, attributable largely to geographical isolation, had removed alike the necessity for martial exercises and the incentives to military distinction. Concentration of power, in spite of apparent anarchy, in the end tending to the exercise of absolute despotism, had become the controlling principle of government. Yet all of these evidences of national decadence are scarcely adequate to explain the sudden collapse of a great monarchy. Disappointed ambition, organized treason, the wholesale defection of the Jews, contributed their weighty influence to hasten and complete the catastrophe. Among the Visigoths, patriotism, a quality necessarily dependent upon individual attachment to one’s country, was unknown. Public spirit had been supplanted by a thirst for authority, in the gratification of which all moral considerations were ignored. The facility with which the Peninsula was won offers a suggestive contrast to the enormous difficulties which attended its reconquest. The fate of the Visigothic domination was determined in a week. After two short years, nothing remained of its greatness but the melancholy souvenirs of an enslaved people. The conquerors, in their turn, underwent the same experience. The irreconcilable elements of which they were composed, from the very beginning disclosed the defects of their polity which portended inevitable destruction. These elements were far more active and dangerous than those that had undermined the strength of the Gothic state. Nevertheless, it required many centuries of conflict to expel from Western Europe the race whose light-armed horsemen had, almost without resistance, swept the country from Bætica to Provence, from the mountains to the sea.

Thus passed into the hands of another branch of the Semitic race a country which, in former ages, had long flourished under the rule of Tyre and Carthage. Its attractions had been for centuries the theme of every poet, its wealth the aim of every conqueror. Despite repeated changes of government, invasions, conspiracies, revolutions, in its inaccessible fastnesses, its autochthons, the Basques, had preserved unimpaired their liberty and their national characteristics, a fate which distinguished them from all the other nations of Europe. On the fields of the Peninsula the most renowned soldiers of Rome had learned the art of war. The highest civilization of the Teutonic race had been attained in its cities. In its tribunals the most complete system of jurisprudence the world had until then known was perfected. The dignity of its ecclesiastical councils had maintained their independence, and enabled the Spanish hierarchy to withstand alike the insidious plots and the aggressive usurpations of the Papacy. But, of the many races of strangers which had established themselves within its borders, none had been of such a pronounced and original type as that which now occupied all but a small corner of its ample domain. The causes which led to, and the results which proceeded from, this national catastrophe present one of the most curious phases of civil organization and mental development. That an exotic people should at one blow overturn a monarchy of three centuries’ duration is certainly extraordinary. But that this same people, who possessed nothing in common with the vanquished, no acquaintance with the arts, no knowledge of civilization, should, in a few years, found an empire whose inhabitants had already become eminent in every accomplishment which renders nations learned, illustrious, and powerful, and be able to take precedence of all their contemporaries, is far more extraordinary. For an extended period, the affairs of the Peninsula had been ripe for a domestic upheaval. Little respect remained among the masses for the traditions of a monarchy once elective, now nominally hereditary, but whose crown was always obtainable by purchase, assassination, or intrigue. The piety of the priesthood had been supplanted by an insatiable thirst for temporal power. In every part of the body politic flourished antagonistic religious doctrines, racial prejudices, factious opinions, and discordant social interests. The military spirit had disappeared. The authority of the civil magistrate was despised. The enforcement of the laws was regulated according to the rank and influence of the offender rather than by the measure of his guilt. Rival candidates for the throne contended for the glittering prize with all the infamous arts of the conspirator and the demagogue. Organized bands of robbers preyed upon the defenceless; and their chieftains, disdaining disguise, stalked insolently through the streets of the great cities. Boundless luxury and misgovernment had brought in their train a degree of corruption which equalled that caused by the worst excesses of the Cæsars. The labors of the husbandman for two successive seasons had been fruitless, and hunger and disease in their most fearful form contributed in no small degree to the accumulated misery of the nation. In every community the members of a united and isolated sect under the ban of sanguinary laws, yet still powerful in intellect, in wealth, and in political craft, labored as one man for the humiliation of their enemies and their own emancipation. At first the invasion was considered as a mere inroad, and no one supposed that the occupation of the country would be permanent. With the settlement of colonies, the opening of seaports to the commerce of the East, the partition of lands, and the erection of mosques, however, the Visigoths recognized the full extent of the calamity which had befallen them. But the moderation of their new rulers tempered the bitterness of defeat. The payment of tribute, proportioned to the degree of resistance or obedience to the laws, insured protection to the humblest peasant. The orthodox zealot was allowed to perform the ceremonies of his ritual without interference; the heretic could offer his petitions without apprehension from the furious efforts of sectarian hatred. Ecclesiastical dignitaries exercised in peace the functions of their calling, and the monkish chronicler penned fierce anathemas against his indulgent masters within hearing of the call to prayer from a hundred minarets. The accounts of Catholic writers, in which the most flagrant outrages are attributed to the Saracens, are manifestly exaggerations or falsehoods. Still, there can be no doubt that the inevitable accidents of warfare were productive of much suffering. An inconsiderable number of monks, whose clamors and insulting demeanor made them conspicuously offensive, were martyred. A few hundred nuns exchanged the orthodox companionship of canons and bishops for the delights of the seraglio. Fields of grain were given to the torch. Magnificent villas were levelled with the ground. Altars were despoiled of their treasures and sacred relics trodden under foot. But no pledge of security was violated; and absolute immunity in person, property, and religion was afforded by timely submission—a privilege appreciated by the majority of the people, and contemned only by intemperate fanatics who cursed the generous enemy whose prosperity they shared and whose indulgence they abused.

The ancient judicature was respected, and its regulations, subordinated to the legal procedure of the ruling power, were permitted to prevail among the vanquished, so far as they did not directly conflict with those of the Code of Islam. By its example of equity, toleration, and mercy, the new government rapidly gained the attachment of its subjects; the Jew prospered, the Christian forgot his bigotry, and the slave eagerly repeated the formula which released him from bondage and placed him on an equality with kings.

In the dark recesses of the cloister, without knowledge of the outer world, without gratitude for the clemency which permitted him to live, without appreciation of the increasing benefits of civilization, the surly friar, alone in his malice and his ignorance, nourished a spirit of sullen animosity, and with scourge and haircloth performed his frequent penance; listening, with a vague foreboding of even greater evil to his Church and order, to the muezzin’s daily repetition of that ominous monotheistic maxim—ever before the eyes of the fanatic Moslem, whether it appeared carved amidst the marble foliage of his temples, or, emblazoned upon his banners in letters of gold, it glittered in the van of his victorious armies—“There is no God but the Immortal, the Eternal, who neither begets nor was begotten, and who hath neither companion nor equal.”