A Short History of Spain Part 4

Abd-er-Rahman was a Prince belonging to the deposed family of the Omeyyads. He was the only one of his family who escaped the exterminating fury of the Abbasides. There was no future for him in the east, so the thoughts of the ambitious youth turned to the west--to the newly won territory of Spain.

The coming of this last survivor of the Omeyyads to Andalusia is one of the romances of history, and was not unlike the coming of another young Pretender to Scotland, one thousand years later. It aroused the same wild enthusiasm, and as if by magic an army gathered about him, to meet the army of the Governor, Yusuf, which would resist him.

Victory declared itself for the Prince, and he entered Cordova in triumph. Before the year had expired the dynasty of the Omeyyads--which was to stand for three centuries--was finally established, and its first king--Abd-er-Rahman--reigned at Cordova.

His hereditary enemies the Abbasides followed him to Spain, and found supporters among the disaffected. But it was in vain. The Abbaside army of invasion was utterly annihilated; and the qualities slumbering in this son of the Khalifs may be judged when we relate that the heads of the Abbaside leaders were put into a bag with descriptive labels attached to their ears, and sent to the reigning Khalif as a present.

This little incident does not seem to have injured him in the estimation of Mansur, the new Khalif, who said of him: "Wonderful is this man! Such daring, wisdom, prudence! To throw himself into a distant land; to profit by the jealousies of the people; to turn their arms against one another instead of against himself; to win homage and obedience through such difficulties; and to rule supreme--lord of all!

Of a truth there is not such another man!" Abd-er-Rahman (the Sultan, as he was called) merited this praise. He knew when to be cruel and when to show mercy; and how to hold scheming Arab chiefs, fierce, jealous Berbers, and vanquished Christians, and could placate or crucify as the conditions required.

CHAPTER XI.

Charlemagne was at this time building up his colossal empire. His Christian soul was mightily stirred by seeing an infidel kingdom set up in Andalusia; and when, in 777, the Saracen governor and two other Arab chiefs appealed to him for aid against the Omeyyad usurper, Abd-er-Rahman, he eagerly responded. His grandfather Charles Martel had driven these infidels back over the Pyrenees; now he would drive them out of Spain, and reclaim that land for Christianity!

His army never reached farther than Saragossa. He was recalled to France by a revolt of the recently conquered Saxons, and the "Battle of Roncesvalles" is the historic monument of the ill-starred attempt.

The battle in itself was insignificant. No action of such small importance has ever been invested with such a glamour of romance, nor the theme of so much legend and poetry. It has been called the Thermopylae of the Pyrenees, because of the personal valor displayed, and the tragic death of the two great Paladins (as the twelve Peers of Charlemagne were called) Roland and Olivier. The _Chanson de Roland_ was one of the famous ballads in the early literature of Europe, and Roland and Olivier were to French and Spanish minstrelsy what the knights of King Arthur were to the English.

The simple story about which so much has been written and sung is this: As the retreating army of Charlemagne was crossing the Pyrenees, the rear of the army under Roland and Olivier was ambuscaded in the narrow pa.s.s of Roncesvalles by the Basques and exterminated to a man.

These Basques were the unconquerable mountain tribe of which we heard so much in the early history of Spain. They had been on guard for centuries, keeping the Franks back from the Pyrenees. They may have been acting under Saracenic influence when they exterminated the rear-guard of Charlemagne's army. But it was done, not because they loved the Saracen, but because they had a hereditary hatred for the Franks.

Mediaeval Europe never tired of hearing of the Great Charles' lament over his Roland: "O thou right arm of my kingdom,--defender of the Christians,--scourge of the Saracens! How can I behold thee dead, and not die myself! Thou art exalted to the heavenly kingdom,--and I am left alone, a poor miserable King!"

CHAPTER XII.

The tide which had flowed over southern Spain was a singular mixture of religious fervor, of brutish humanity, and refinements of wisdom and wickedness. No stranger and more composite elements were ever thrown together. Permanence and peace were impossible. Nothing but force could hold together elements so incongruous and antagonistic. As soon as the hand of Abd-er-Rahman I. was removed disintegration began.

Clashing races, clans, and political parties had in a few years made such havoc that it seemed as if the Omeyyad dynasty was crumbling.

It might have been an Arab who said "he cared not who made the laws of his country, so he could write its songs." Learning, literature, refinements of luxury and of art had taken possession of the land, which seemed given up to the muses. When in 822 Abd-er-Rahman II.

reigned, he did not trouble himself about the laws of his crumbling empire. The one man in whom he delighted was _Ziryab_. What Petronius was to Nero,[A] and Beau Brummel to George IV., that was Ziryab to the Sultan Abd-er-Rahman II., the elegant arbiter in matters of taste.

From the dishes which should be eaten to the clothes which should be worn, he was the supreme judge; while at the same time he knew by heart and could "like an angel sing" one thousand songs to his adoring Sultan.

Even the Gothic Christians were seduced by these alluring refinements.

They felt contempt for their old Latin speech and for their literature, with the tiresome asceticism it eternally preached. The Christian ideal had grown to be one of penance and mortification of the flesh, and to a few ardent souls these sensuous delights were an open highway to death eternal. _Eulogius_ became the leader of this band of zealots. In lamenting the decadence of his people, he wrote, "hardly one in a thousand can write a decent Latin letter, and yet they indite excellent Arabic verse!" Filled with despairing ardor this man aroused a few kindred spirits to join him in a desperate attempt to awaken the benumbed conscience of the Christians. They could not get the Moslems to persecute them, but they might attain martyrdom by cursing the Prophet; then the infidels, however reluctant, would be compelled to behead them. This they did, and one by one perished, to no purpose. The Gothic Christians were not conscience-stricken as Eulogius supposed they would be, and there was no general uprising for the Christian faith.

In 912 the threatened ruin of the dynasty was arrested by the coming of another Abd-er-Rahman, third Sultan of that name. Rebellion was put down, and fifty years of wise and just administration gave solidity to the kingdom, which also then became a _Khalifate_.

The Abbaside Khalifs, after the deposition of the Omeyyads, had removed the Khalifate from Damascus to Baghdad. But the empire had extended too far west to revolve about that distant pivot.

Abd-er-Rahman--perhaps remembering the old feud between his family and the Abbasides--determined to a.s.sume the spiritual headship of the western part of the empire. And thereafter, the Mahommedan empire--like the Roman--had two heads, an Eastern Khalif at Baghdad, and a Western Khalif at Cordova.

While thus extending his own power the Khalif was extinguishing every spark of rebellion in the south and driving the rebellious Christians back in the north, and at the same time he was clothing Cordova with a splendor which amazed and dazzled even the Eastern Princes who came to pay court to the great Khalif. His emissaries were everywhere collecting books for his library and treasure for his palaces. Cordova became the abode of learning, and the nursery for science, philosophy, and art, transplanted from Asia. The imagination and the pen of an arab poet could not have overdrawn this wonderful city on the Guadalquivir,--with its palaces, its gardens, and fountains,--its 50,000 houses of the aristocracy,--its 700 mosques,--and 900 public baths,--all adorned with color and carvings and tracery beautiful as a dream of Paradise. One hears with amazement of the great mosque, with its 19 arcades, its pavings of silver and rich mosaics, its 1293 cl.u.s.tered columns, inlaid with gold and lapis-lazuli, the cl.u.s.ters reaching up to the slender arches which supported the roof; the whole of this marvelous scene lighted by countless brazen lamps made from Christian bells, while hundreds of attendants swung censers, filling the air with perfume.

After the ravages of a thousand years travelers stand amazed to-day before the forest of columns which open out in endless vistas in the splendid ruin, calling up visions of the vanished glories of Cordova and the Great Khalif.

There is not time to tell of the city this Spanish Khalif built for his favorite wife, "The Fairest," and which he called "Hill of the Bride," upon which for fifteen years ten thousand men worked daily; nor of the four thousand columns which adorned its palaces, presents from emperors and potentates in Constantinople, Rome, and far-off Eastern states; nor of the ivory and ebony doors, studded with jewels, through which shone the sun, the light then falling on the lake of quick-silver, which sent back blinding, quivering flashes into dazzled eyes. And we are told of the thirteen thousand male servants who ministered in this palace of delight. All this, too, at a time when our Saxon ancestors were living in dwellings without chimneys, and casting the bones from the table at which they feasted into the foul straw which covered their floors; when a Gothic night had settled upon Europe, and blotted out civilization so completely that only in a part of Italy, and around Constantinople, did there remain a vestige of refinement!

It is said that when the emba.s.sy from Constantinople came bearing a letter to the Khalif, the courtier whose duty it was to read it was so awed by all this splendor that he fainted!

And yet the owner and creator of this fabulous luxury,--Sultan and Khalif of a dominion the greatest of his time, and with "The Fairest"

for his adored wife,--when he came to die, left a paper upon which he had written that he could only recall fourteen days in which he had been happy.

[Footnote A: See "Quo Vadis?"]

CHAPTER XIII.

In the north there was developing another and very different power.

The descendants of the Visigoth Kings, making common cause with the rough mountaineers, had shared all their hardships and rigors in the mountains of the Asturias. Inured to privation and suffering, entirely unacquainted with luxury or even with the comforts of living, they had grown strong, and in a century after Alfonso I. had emerged from their mountain shelter and removed their court and capital from Oviedo to Leon, where Alfonso III. held sway over a group of barren kingdoms, poor, proud, but with _Hidalgos_ and _Dons_, who were keeping alive the sacred fires of patriotism and of religion. This was the rough cradle of a Spanish nationality.

They had their own jealousies and fierce conflicts, but all united in a common hatred of the Moor. Though they did not yet dream of driving him out of their land, their brave leaders, Ramiro I. and Ordono I.

had been for years steadily defying and tormenting him with the kind of warfare to which they gave its name--_guerrilla_--meaning "little wars."

While the Great Khalif was consolidating his Moorish kingdom and driving the Christians back into their mountains, the power of that people was being weakened by internal strifes existing between the three adjacent kingdoms--Leon, Castile, and Navarre. The headship of Leon was for years disputed by her ambitious neighbor Castile (so called because of the numerous fortified castles with which it was studded), under the leadership of one Fernando, Count of Castile.

There had been the usual lapse into anarchy and weakness after the Great Khalif's death. Andalusia always needed a master, and this she found in _Almanzor_, who was Prime Minister to one of the Khalif's feeble descendants. It was a sad day for the struggling kingdom in the north when this all-subduing man took the reins in his own hands, and left his young master to amuse himself in collecting rare ma.n.u.scripts and making Cordova more beautiful.

This Almanzor, the mightiest of the soldiers of the Crescent since Tarik and Musa, proclaimed a war of faith against the Christians, who were obliged to forget their local dissensions and to try with their combined strength to save their kingdom from extermination. These were the darkest days to which they had yet been subjected. But for the death of Almanzor the ruin of the Christian state would have been complete. A monkish historian thus records this welcome event: "In 1002 died Almanzor, and was buried in h.e.l.l."

The death of Almanzor was the turning point in the fortunes of the two kingdoms--that of the Moors and of the Christians.

The magnificence and the glory of the kingdom faded like the mist before the morning sun. Never again would Cordova be called the "Bride of Andalusia." Eight years after the death of Almanzor anarchy and ruin reigned in that city. The gentle, studious youth who was Khalif, was dragged with his only child to a dismal vault attached to the great mosque; and here, in darkness and cold and damp, sat the grandson of the first Great Khalif, his child clinging to his breast and begging in vain for food, his wretched father pathetically pleading with his jailers for just a crust of bread, and a candle to relieve the awful darkness.

The brutal Berbers now had their turn. The priceless library, with its six hundred thousand volumes, was in ashes. They were in the "City of the Fairest." Palace after palace was ransacked, and in a few days all that remained of its exquisite treasures of art was a heap of blackened stones (1010). The Christians drew their broken state closer together, and gathered themselves for a more aggressive warfare than any yet undertaken. The time when the Moors were in the throes of civil war was favorable. The three kingdoms of Asturias, Leon, and Castile were in 1073 united into one "kingdom of Castile," under Alfonso VI., who had already made great inroads upon the Moslem territory and laid many cities under tribute. With this event, the name _Castilian_ comes into Spanish history, and from thenceforth that name represents all that is proudest, bravest, and most characteristic of the part of the race which traces a direct lineage from the ancient Visigoth Kings.

Alfonso had not misjudged his opportunity. He had traversed Spain with his army, and bathed in the ocean in sight of the "Pillars of Hercules." His great general Rodrigo Diaz, known as "My Cid, the Challenger," had cut another path all the way to Valencia, where he reigned as a sort of uncrowned king; and he will forever reign as crowned king in the realm of romance and poetry; the perfect embodiment of the knightly idea--the "Challenger," who, in defense of the faith, would stand before great armies and defy them to single combat! Whether "My Cid" ever did such mighty deeds as are ascribed to him, no one knows. But he stands for the highest ideal of his time.

He was the "King Arthur" of Spanish history; and so valiantly did he serve the Christian cause that the Moors were driven to a most disastrous step. With the Cid in Valencia, with Alfonso VI. marching a victorious army through the Moslem territory, and with Toledo, the city of the ancient Visigoth Kings, repossessed, it looked as if, after almost four hundred years, the Christians were about to recover their land.

The Moors, thoroughly frightened, realizing how helpless they had grown, resolved upon a desperate measure.

There was, on the opposite African coast, a sect of Berber fanatics, fierce and devout, known as "saints," but which the Moors called _Almoravides_. Fighting for the faith was their occupation. What more fitting than to use them as a means of driving the infidel Christians out of Moslem territory!

They came, like a cloud of locusts, and settled upon the land. Yusuf, their general, led his men against Alfonso's Castilians October 23, 1086. Near Badajos the attack was made simultaneously in front and rear, crushing them utterly; Alfonso barely escaping with five hundred men. This was only the first of many other crushing defeats; the most disheartening of which was the one in 1099, when the Cid, fighting in alliance with Pedro, King of Aragon, was defeated near Gardia, on the seacoast. Then the great warrior's heart broke, and he died; and we are told he was clothed cap-a-pie in shining armor and placed upright on his good steed Bavieca, his trusty sword in his hand--and so he pa.s.sed to his burial; his banner borne and guarded by five hundred knights. And we are also told the Moors wonderingly watched his departure with his knights, not suspecting that he was dead.

The object of the Moors in inviting the odious Almoravides had been accomplished; the Christians had been driven out of Andalusia back into their own territory; but their African auxiliaries were too well pleased with their new abode to think of leaving it. One by one the Moorish Princes were subdued by the men whose aid they had invoked, until a dynasty of the Almoravides was fastened upon Spain. To the refined Spanish Arabs contact with these savages from the desert was a terrible scourge, and so far as they were able they withdrew into communities by themselves, leaving these African locusts to devour their substance and dim their glory.

But luxury was not favorable to the invaders. In another generation their martial spirit was gone and they had become only ignorant, sodden voluptuaries; and when the Christians once more renewed their attacks, they failed to repel them as Yusuf had done thirty years before.

There was another fanatical sect, beyond the Atlas range in Africa, which had long been looking for a coming Messiah, whom they called the _Mahdi_. They were known as the _Alhomades_. A son of a lamp-lighter in the Mosque of Cordova one day presented himself before the Alhomades, and announced that he was the great _Mahdi_, who was divinely appointed to lead them, and to bring happiness to all the earth.