HISTORY
OF THE
Moorish Empire
IN EUROPE

BY

S. P. SCOTT

AUTHOR OF “THROUGH SPAIN”

Corduba famosa locuples de nomine dicta,

Inclyta deliciis, rebus quoque splendida cunctis

Hroswitha, Passio S. Pelagii

IN THREE VOLUMES

VOL. I.

PHILADELPHIA & LONDON
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1904

Copyright, 1904
By J. B. Lippincott Company

Published March, 1904

Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, U. S. A.

PREFACE

This work has engaged the attention of the author for more than twenty years. Its object is an attempt to depict the civilization of that great race whose achievements in science, literature, and the arts have been the inspiration of the marvellous progress of the present age. The review of this wide-spread influence, whose ramifications extend to the limits of both Europe and America, has required the introduction of some matter apparently extraneous, but which, when considered in its general relations to the subject, will be found to be not foreign to the purpose of these volumes.

The list of authorities cited does not, by any means, include all that have been examined. Many, from which comparatively few facts have been gleaned, have been omitted. Among the works that have been made the subject of careful research, and have yielded most valuable information—in addition to the Arabic and Spanish chronicles—are those of Al-Makkari, Romey, Rosseuw St. Hilaire, Le Bon, Sédillot, and Casiri. The utter unreliability of Conde, who compiled the only detailed history of the Moors of Spain, is well known, and his statements have not been adopted except when amply verified. The histories of the late R. Dozy, Professor in the University of Leyden, which for learning, accuracy, impartiality, and critical acumen have few rivals in this branch of literature, have been the principal dependence of the author, who gladly takes this opportunity to acknowledge his obligations to the labors of one whose genius and attainments are recognized by every Oriental scholar in Europe.

It may seem a work of supererogation to traverse once more a portion of the ground covered by Irving and Prescott. The final episode in the fall of a great empire could not, however, with propriety be omitted. Moreover, the accounts of these two famous writers swarm with errors, as any one can readily discover who will consult the chronicles of Pulgar and Bernaldez, eye-witnesses, and consequently the most reliable authorities concerning what they relate. The quotations of Irving, it may be added, indicate a surprising want of familiarity with the Castilian language.

That writer best fulfils the office of an historian who passes before the mind of the reader, as in a panorama, not merely the more striking events of war and diplomacy, but circumstances often regarded as unimportant, yet which illustrate, as no others can do, the condition of the masses as well as the policy of the prince; which indicate the condition of public and private morals; which exhibit the effects of domestic manners, of ingenious inventions, of literary progress and artistic development; which reveal the unfolding of national taste—which present, in short, the portraiture of every material and intellectual feature necessary to the elucidation of the character, the aspirations, and the foibles of a people. With this end in view, sources of information usually regarded as beneath the dignity of an historical work have been drawn on for material in the following pages.

The author cherishes no feeling of animosity towards the Spanish people. He remembers with pleasure a long sojourn among them. He can never forget the dignified courtesy of their men, the incomparable grace and fascinations of their women. Their faults are those entailed by a pernicious inheritance and a corrupt religion, which have perverted their principles, destroyed their power, and tarnished their glory.

As the greater part of this book was written before 1898, any unfavorable criticism of Spanish politics or manners which it contains must be attributed to a desire to adhere to historic truth, and not to a contemptible prejudice engendered by our unfortunate “War of Humanity.”

Philadelphia, 1903.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

AUTHORITIES CONSULTED IN THE PREPARATION OF THIS WORK

(To promote facility of reference, the following list has been classified not only alphabetically by authors, but also by languages.)

ENGLISH.

Al-Hariri—Makamat. 8vo. London, 1850.

Ali Bey—Travels. 2 vols. 4to. London, 1816.

Al-Makkari—History of the Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain. 2 vols. 4to. London, 1840.

Anderson—History of Commerce. 4 vols. 4to. London, 1789.

Arnold—Ishmael: The Natural History of Islamism. 8vo. London, 1859.

Beattie—Castles and Abbeys of England. 2 vols. 8vo. London.

Berington—Literary History of the Middle Ages. 4to. London, 1814.

Blunt—A Pilgrimage to Nejd. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1881.

Bosworth-Smith—Mohammed and Mohammedanism. 8vo. London, 1876.

Bower—History of the Popes. 3 vols. 8vo. Philadelphia, 1844.

Brand—Popular Antiquities. 8vo. London, 1810.

Burckhardt—Notes on the Bedouins and Wahabys. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1831.

Burckhardt—Travels in Arabia. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1829.

Burckhardt—Travels in Nubia. 4to. London, 1822.

Burton—A Pilgrimage to Medina and Mecca. 12mo. New York, 1856.

—— Chronicle of London—1089–1483. 4to. London, 1827.

Cosmo III.—Travels in England. Folio. London, 1821.

Cutts—Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages. 8vo. London, 1886.

Davenport-Adams—Witch, Warlock, and Magician. 8vo. London, 1889.

Davenport—An Apology for Mohammed and the Koran. 8vo. London, 1869.

Davis—Carthage and her Remains. 8vo. London, 1861.

Deutz—Islam. 8vo. London.

D’Israeli—Curiosities of Literature. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1807.

Draper—History of the Intellectual Development of Europe. 8vo. New York, 1875.

Emillianne—History of the Monastic Orders. 12mo. London, 1677.

Fergusson—History of Architecture. 2 vols. 8vo. New York, 1885.

Finlay—History of the Byzantine Empire. 8vo. London, 1856.

Finn—History of the Jews in Spain and Portugal. 8vo. London, 1841.

Fort—Medical Economy during the Middle Ages. 8vo. New York, 1883.

Fosbrooke—British Monarchism. 8vo. London, 1843.

Frith—Life of Giordano Bruno. 8vo. London, 1887.

Gibbon—History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 8 vols. 8vo. London, 1855.

Hall—Chronicle of England. 4to. London, 1809.

Hall—Society in the Elizabethan Age. 8vo. London, 1886.

Hardy—Eastern Monarchism. 8vo. London, 1850.

Hazlitt—Popular Antiquities of Great Britain. 3 vols. 8vo. London, 1870.

Hecker—The Epidemics of the Middle Ages. 8vo. London, 1844.

Higgins—An Apology for the Life and Character of Mohammed. 8vo. London, 1829.

Hodgetts—The English in the Middle Ages. 8vo. London, 1885.

Hone—Ancient Mysteries Described. 8vo. London, 1823.

Hone—Popular Works. 4 vols. 8vo. London.

Howitt—History of the Supernatural. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1863.

Hueffer—The Troubadours. 8vo. London, 1878.

Ibn-al-Hakem—History of the Mohammedan Conquest of Spain. 8vo. Göttingen, 1858.

Ibn-Haukal—Oriental Geography. 4to. London, 1800.

Ibn-Khallikan—Biographical Dictionary. 4 vols. 4to. London, 1842.

Isaacs—Ceremonies, Customs, etc. of the Jews. 8vo. London.

Jackson—An Account of the Empire of Morocco. 4to. London, 1809.

Jennings—Phallicism. 8vo. London, 1884.

Jennings—The Rosicrucians. 8vo. London, 1879.

Jessup—The Women of the Arabs. 8vo. New York.

Jones—History of the Waldenses. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1816.

Jones—Moallakat. 4to. London, 1783.

Jones—The Alhambra. 2 vols. Folio. London, 1830.

Jones—Works. 7 vols. 4to. London, 1804.

Kenrick—History of Phœnicia. 8vo. London, 1845.

Kingsley—Alexandria and Her Schools. 8vo. Cambridge, 1854.

Kington—History of Frederick II. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1862.

Knight—Symbolical Language of Ancient Art and Mythology. 8vo. Boston, 1836.

Knight—The Normans in Sicily. 8vo. London. 1838.

Knight—The Worship of Priapus. 4to. London, 1865.

Koeller—Mohammed and Mohammedanism. 8vo. London, 1889.

Kroeger—The Minnesingers of Germany. 8vo. New York, 1873.

Lacroix—The Arts of the Middle Ages. Folio. London.

Lane—Arabian Society in the Middle Ages. 8vo. London, 1883.

Lane—Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1842.

Lane-Poole—The Art of the Saracens in Egypt. 8vo. London, 1886.

Lane-Poole—The Speeches of Mohammed. 12mo. London, 1882.

Lea—History of Sacerdotal Celibacy. 8vo. Philadelphia, 1867.

Lea—Superstition and Force. 8vo. Philadelphia, 1866.

Lewis—An Essay on the Origin and Formation of the Romance Languages. 8vo. London, 1839.

Lewis—Historical Survey of the Astronomy of the Ancients. 8vo. London, 1862.

Limborch—History of the Inquisition. 4to. London, 1731.

Lindo—History of the Jews in Spain and Portugal. 8vo. London, 1848.

Macaulay—History of England. 5 vols. 8vo. New York.

Maitland—The Albigenses and Waldenses. 8vo. London, 1832.

Maitland—The Dark Ages. 8vo. London, 1844.

Malcolm—Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London. 6 vols. 8vo. London, 1810.

Markham—Irrigation in Eastern Spain. 8vo. London.

McLennan—Studies in Ancient History. 8vo. London, 1876.

McMurdo—History of Portugal. 8vo. London, 1888.

Meer Hassan Ali—Observations on the Mussulmans of India. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1832.

Merrick—Life and Religion of Mohammed. 8vo. Boston, 1850.

Milman—History of Latin Christianity. 8 vols. 8vo. New York, 1859.

Muir—Annals of the Early Caliphate. 8vo. London, 1883.

Muir—Life of Mohammed. 8vo. London, 1878.

Murphy—History of the Mahometan Empire in Spain. 4to. London, 1816.

Newton—Principia. 8vo. New York.

Ockley—History of the Saracens. 8vo. London. 1848.

Omarah—Yaman. 8vo. London, 1892.

Osborn—Islam under the Khalifs of Bagdad. 8vo. London, 1878.

Palgrave—A Year’s Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia. 12mo. New York, 1871.

Palgrave—Essays on Eastern Subjects. 8vo. London, 1872.

Pettigrew—Superstitions connected with the Practice of Medicine. 8vo. London, 1844.

Plumptre—History of Pantheism. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1879.

Price—Essay toward the History of Arabia. 4to. London, 1824.

Rhoïdis—Pope Joan. 8vo. London, 1886.

Russell—The Natural History of Aleppo. 4to. London, 1856.

Rutherford—The Troubadours. 8vo. London, 1873.

Shurrief—Customs of the Mussulmans of India. 8vo. London, 1832.

Smith—Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia. 8vo. Cambridge, 1885.

Stirling-Maxwell—Don John of Austria. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1883.

Syed-Ahmed—Essays on the Life of Mohammed. 8vo. London, 1870.

Thomson—History of Chemistry. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1830.

Urquhart—The Pillars of Hercules. 2 vols. 8vo. New York, 1850.

Wellsted—Travels in Arabia. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1837.

Williams—On Hinduism. 12mo. London, 1882.

Wright—Early Christianity in Arabia. 8vo. London, 1855.

Wright—Manners and Sentiments of England during the Middle Ages. 4to. London, 1862.

Wright—Narratives of Sorcery and Magic. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1851.

Wright—Womankind in Western Europe. 4to. London, 1869.

FRENCH.

Abd-al-Rahman-al-Sufi—Description des Étoiles Fixes. 4to. St. Petersbourg, 1874.

Abd-al-Rezzaq—Traité de Matière Médicale Arabe. 8vo. Paris, 1874.

Abd-el-Halim—Roudh-el-Kartas. 8vo. Paris, 1859.

Abul Hassan Ali—Lettres. 8vo. Paris.

Al-Kaliouby—Quelques Chapitres de Médecine Arabe. 8vo. Paris, 1856.

—— Anecdotes Arabes et Musulmanes. 12mo. Paris, 1772.

Arcoleo—Palerme et la Civilisation en Sicile. 8vo. Paris, 1898.

Arnoult—Mémoires de la Langue Romane. 3 vols. 8vo. Toulouse, 1842.

Astruc—Mémoires pour servir à l’Histoire de la Faculté de Médecine de Montpellier. 4to. Paris, 1777.

Aubertin—Histoire de la Langue et la Littérature Françaises au Moyen Age. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1876.

Babelon—Du Commerce des Arabes dans le Nord de l’Europe. 8vo. Paris, 1882.

Bailly—Histoire de l’Astronomie Ancienne et Moderne. 5 vols. 4to. Paris, 1781.

Baissac—Les Grands Jours de la Sorcellerie. 8vo. Paris, 1890.

Barbier de Meynard—Ibrahim. 8vo. Paris, 1869.

Baret—Espagne et Provence. 8vo. Paris, 1857.

Baret—Les Troubadours. 8vo. Paris, 1857.

Bargès—Histoire des Beni-Zeiyan, Rois de Tlemcen. 8vo. Paris, 1887.

Bargès—Recherches sur les Colonies Phéniciennes. 8vo. Paris, 1878.

Bargès—Tlemcen. 8vo. Paris, 1859.

Barrau—Monfort et les Albigeois. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1840.

Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire—Du Bouddhisme. 8vo. Paris, 1855.

Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire—Mahomet et le Coran. 8vo. Paris, 1865.

Basset—La Poësie Arabe Anté-Islamique. 12mo. Paris, 1880.

Batissier—Histoire de l’Art Monumental. 8vo. Paris, 1860.

Baudrillart—Histoire du Luxe. 4 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1880.

Bayet—L’Art Byzantin. 8vo. Paris.

Bazancourt—Histoire de la Sicile sous la Domination des Normands. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1846.

Beaudrimont—Histoire des Basques. 8vo. Paris, 1867.

Bédarride—Les Juifs en France, Italie, et Espagne. 8vo. Paris, 1861.

Belin—Du Régime des Fiefs Militaires dans l’Islamisme. 8vo. Paris, 1870.

Bénétrix—Les Femmes Troubadours. 8vo. Paris, 1890.

Berger—L’Arabie avant Mahomet. 8vo. Paris, 1883.

Berthelot—Les Origines de l’Alchimie. 8vo. Paris, 1885.

Berthérand—Médecine et Hygiène des Arabes. 8vo. Paris.

Biot—L’Astronomie Indienne et Chinoise. 8vo. Paris, 1862.

Boell—Histoire de la Corse. 8vo. Marseille, 1878.

Boisgelin—Malte Ancienne et Moderne. 3 vols. 8vo. 1809.

Bordier—L’Art Byzantin. 4to. Paris, 1885.

Boucher—Deux Poëtes Anté-Islamiques. 8vo. Paris, 1867.

Bourgoin—Les Arts Arabes. 4to. Paris.

Boutharic—Traité des Droits Seigneureaux. 4to. Toulouse, 1751.

Bruce-Whyte—Histoire des Langues Romanes. 3 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1841.

Burnouf—Essai sur Le Veda. 8vo. Paris, 1863.

Cadoz—Civilité Musulmane. 12mo. Alger, 1889.

Capefigue—Histoire de France au Moyen Age. 4 vols. 8vo. Bruxelles, 1843.

Capefigue—Histoire Philosophique des Juifs. 8vo. Bruxelles, 1839.

Cardonne—Histoire de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne. 3 vols. 12mo. Paris, 1765.

Cardonne—Mélange de la Littérature Orientale. 12mo. Paris, 1786.

Catel—Histoire de Languedoc. Folio. Tolose, 1633.

Catel—Histoire des Comtes de Tolose. Folio. Tolose, 1623.

Caussin de Perceval—Essai sur l’Histoire des Arabes avant l’Islamisme. 3 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1847.

Chapo et Belzunce—Histoire des Basques. 3 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1847.

Chaumeil de Stella—Essai sur l’Histoire de Portugal. 8vo. Bruxelles.

Chénier—Recherches Historiques sur les Maures. 3 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1787.

Cherrier—Histoire de la Lutte des Papes. 4 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1841.

Chiarini—Le Talmud de Babylone. 8vo. Leipzig. 1831.

Choiseul-Dallecourt—De l’Influence des Croisades. 8vo. Paris, 1809.

Christianowitsch—Esquisse Historique de la Musique Arabe. 4to.

Circourt—Histoire des Mores Mudejares et des Morisques. 3 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1846.

Clot-Bey—Aperçu Général sur l’Égypte. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1840.

Coupry—Traité de la Versification Arabe. 8vo. Leipzig, 1875.

Coypel—Le Judaïsme. 8vo. Paris, 1877.

Daremberg—Histoire des Sciences Médicales. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1870.

Daumas—La Vie Arabe. 8vo. Paris.

Davillier—Histoire des Faïences Hispano-Moresques. 8vo. Paris, 1861.

Davillier—Les Arts Décoratifs en Espagne. 8vo. Paris, 1879.

Davillier—Notice sur les Cuirs de Cordoue. 8vo. Paris, 1878.

Davillier—Origines de la Porcelaine en Europe. 4to. Paris, 1882.

Delambre—Histoire de l’Astronomie Ancienne. 2 vols. 4to. Paris, 1817.

Delaporte—Vie de Mahomet. 8vo. Paris, 1874.

De l’Isle—Des Talismans. 12mo. Paris, 1636.

Denis—Chroniques et Traditions Provençales. 8vo. Toulon, 1831.

De Parctelaine—Histoire de la Guerre contre les Albigeois. 8vo. Paris, 1833.

Depping—Histoire du Commerce entre le Levant et l’Europe. 2 vols. 8vo. 1830.

Depping—Les Juifs dans le Moyen Age. 8vo. Paris, 1834.

De Rochat—Les Parias de France et d’Espagne. 8vo. Paris, 1876.

De Sacy—Chrestomatie Arabe. 3 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1826.

De Sacy—Mémoires sur l’Histoire des Arabes avant Mahomet. 4to. Paris.

De Saulcy—Histoire de l’Art Judaïque. 8vo. Paris, 1858.

Desvergers—Arabie. 8vo. Paris, 1847.

D’Herbelot—Bibliothèque Orientale. 6 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1773.

Dinaux—Les Trouvères Artésiens. 8vo. Paris, 1843.

Douais—Les Albigeois. 8vo. Paris, 1879.

Dozy—Essai sur l’Histoire de l’Islamisme. 8vo. Leyde, 1879.

Dozy—Glossaire des Mots Espagnols et Portugais dérivés de l’Arabe. 8vo. Leyde, 1869.

Dozy—Histoire des Musulmans d’Espagne. 4 vols. 8vo. Leyde, 1861.

Dozy—Le Cid. 8vo. Leyde, 1860.

Dozy—Notices sur Quelques Manuscrits. 8vo. Leyde, 1847.

Dozy—Recherches sur l’Histoire et la Littérature de l’Espagne pendant le Moyen Age. 2 vols. 8vo. Leyde, 1860.

Dubois—Histoire de l’Horlogerie. 4to. Paris, 1849.

Dugat—Histoire des Philosophes Musulmans. 8vo. Paris, 1878.

Dugat—Traité de Médecine d’Abou Djafar. 8vo. Paris, 1853.

Dupouy—Le Moyen Age Médical. 12mo. Paris, 1880.

Egger—L’Hellenisme en France. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1869.

El-Bekri—Description de l’Afrique Septentrionale. 8vo. Paris, 1859.

Fabre—Le Troubadour. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1843.

Fauriel—Histoire de la Gaule Méridionale. 4 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1836.

Fauriel—Histoire de la Poësie Provençale. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1846.

Ferreras—Histoire Générale d’Espagne. 10 vols. 4to. Paris, 1744.

Fétis—Histoire de la Musique. 5 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1869.

Figuier—L’Alchimie et les Alchimistes. 12mo. Paris, 1856.

Fleury—Histoire Ecclésiastique. 6 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1844.

Flückiger et Hanbury—Histoire des Drogues Végétales. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1878.

Fouriel—Conquête de l’Afrique par les Arabes. 2 vols. 4to. 1875.

Fournel—Les Berbères. 2 vols. 4to. Paris, 1875.

Franck—La Kabbale. 8vo. Paris, 1843.

Fréguier—Les Juifs Algériens. 8vo. Paris, 1865.

Fresnel—Lettre sur l’Histoire des Arabes avant l’Islamisme. 8vo. Paris, 1836.

Gagnier—La Vie de Mahomet. 12mo. Amsterdam, 1732.

Garcin de Tassy—Mémoire sur les Noms Propres et les Titres Musulmans. 8vo. Paris, 1878.

Garnier—Célibat et les Célibataires. 12mo. Paris, 1889.

Garnier—Histoire de la Verrerie. 8vo. Tours, 1886.

Gastineau—Les Femmes et les Mœurs d’Algérie. 12mo. Paris.

Gaufridi—Histoire de Provence. 2 vols. Folio. Aix, 1694.

Gauttier d’Arc—Histoire des Conquêtes des Normands en Italie, en Sicile, et en Grèce. 8vo. Paris, 1830.

Ghazzali—Le Préservatif de l’Erreur. 8vo. Paris, 1878.

Girault de Prangey—Essai sur l’Architecture des Arabes et des Maures. 4to. Paris, 1842.

Goldzieher—Le Culte des Ancêtres chez les Arabes. 8vo. Paris, 1885.

Graetz—Les Juifs d’Espagne. 8vo. Paris, 1872.

Grangeret de Lagrange—Les Arabes en Espagne. 8vo. Paris, 1824.

Guardia—La Médecine à travers les Siècles. 8vo. Paris, 1865.

Guizot—Collection des Mémoires relatifs à l’Histoire de la France. 31 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1824.

Guizot—Histoire de la Civilisation en France. 4 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1846.

Guyard—La Civilisation Musulmane. 12mo. Paris, 1884.

Guyard—Théorie de la Métrique Arabe. 8vo. Paris.

—— Histoire des Papes. 10 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1844.

Hoefer—Histoire de la Chimie. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris.

Hoefer—Histoire des Mathématiques. 12mo. Paris, 1874.

Hovelacque—L’Avesta. 8vo. Paris, 1880.

Huillard-Bréholles—Histoire Diplomatique de Frédéric II. 4to. Paris, 1859.

Huillard-Bréholles—La Vie de Pierre de la Vigne. 8vo. Paris, 1865.

Ibn-al-Awam—Le Livre de l’Agriculture. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1866.

Ibn-el-Beithar—Traité des Simples. 3 vols. 4to. Paris, 1877.

Ibn-Haukal—Description de Palerme au X Siècle. 8vo. Paris, 1845.

Ibn-Khaldun—Histoire des Berbères. 4 vols. 8vo. Alger, 1856.

Jacob—Curiosités de l’Histoire du Moyen Age. 12mo. Paris, 1859.

Jacobi—Histoire de la Corse. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1833.

Jagnaux—Histoire de la Chimie. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1891.

Jaubert de Passa—Voyage en Espagne. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1891.

Jomard—Études sur l’Arabie. 8vo. Paris, 1839.

La Beaume—Le Coran Analysé. 8vo. Paris, 1878.

Labessade—Le Droit du Seigneur. 8vo. Paris, 1878.

Lacroix—Mœurs et Usages au Moyen Age. 8vo. Paris, 1878.

Lacroix—Sciences et Lettres au Moyen Age. Folio. Paris, 1877.

Langlé—Historial du Jongleur. 8vo. Paris, 1829.

La Primaudaie—Les Arabes en Sicile et en Italie. 8vo. Paris, 1867.

La Roque—Voyage dans l’Arabie Heureuse. 12mo. Paris, 1725.

Lebeau—Histoire du Bas Empire. 13 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1820.

Le Bon—La Civilisation des Arabes. 8vo. Paris, 1884.

Lebrun—Histoire Secrète des Couvents. 12mo. Bruxelles.

Leclerc—Abul Casis. 8vo. Paris, 1874.

Leclerc—Histoire de la Médecine Arabe. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1876.

Lenient—La Satire en France au Moyen Age. 8vo. Paris, 1877.

Lenormant—La Grande Grèce. 12mo. Paris, 1881.

Lenormant—La Divination. 8vo. Paris, 1875.

Lenormant—Les Premières Civilisations. 8vo. Paris, 1874.

Lenthéric—La Grèce et l’Orient en Provence. 12mo. Paris, 1878.

Letourneaux—La Kabylie et les Coutumes Kabyles. 3 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1872.

Linguet—Essai Philosophique sur le Monachisme. 12mo. Paris, 1777.

Llorente—Histoire de l’Inquisition d’Espagne. 4 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1817.

Louis-Lande—Basques et Navarrais. 8vo. Paris, 1878.

Lucas—Documents sur le Cid. 8vo. Paris, 1860.

Magen—Les Prêtres et les Moines à travers les Ages. 8vo. Paris, 1857.

Makrizi—Histoire des Sultans Mamlouks. 2 vols. 4to. Paris, 1837.

Makrizi—Traité des Monnaies Musulmanes. 8vo. Paris.

Mandel—Histoire de la Langue Romane. 8vo. Paris, 1840.

Marchand—Moines et Nonnes. 12mo. Paris, 1881.

Marmol—L’Afrique. 3 vols. 4to. Paris, 1667.

Martin—Les Signes Numéraux chez les Peuples de l’Antiquité et du Moyen Age. 4to. Rome, 1864.

Martonne—La Piété du Moyen Age. 8vo. Paris, 1855.

Mas Latrie—Histoire de l’Isle de Chypre. 3 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1855.

Mas Latrie—Traités de Paix des Arabes du Moyen Age. Folio. Paris, 1866.

Maury—Croyances et Légendes de l’Antiquité. 8vo. Paris, 1863.

Maury—Essai sur les Légendes Pieuses du Moyen Age. 8vo. Paris, 1843.

Maury—Histoire des Religions de la Grèce Antique. 3 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1857.

Maury—La Magie et l’Astrologie. 12mo. Paris, 1860.

Ménant—Zoroastre. 8vo. Paris, 1857.

Méray—La Vie au Temps des Cours d’Amour. 8vo. Paris, 1876.

Méray—La Vie au Temps des Trouvères. 8vo. Paris.

Mérimée—Histoire de Don Pedro I. 12mo. Paris, 1865.

Michaud—Histoire des Croisades. 4 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1867.

Michelet—Histoire de France. 19 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1870.

Michel—Histoire des Races Maudites de la France et de l’Espagne. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1847.

Michel—Le Pays Basque. 8vo. Paris, 1859.

Miège—Histoire de Malte. 2 vols. 8vo. Bruxelles, 1841.

Millot—-Histoire Littéraire des Troubadours. 3 vols. 12mo. Paris, 1774.

Mimaut—Histoire de Sardaigne. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1825.

Mohammed-Ibn-Djobair—Voyage en Sicile. 8vo. Paris, 1846.

Moline de Saint-Yon—Histoire des Comtes de Toulouse. 4 vols. 8vo. Paris.

Montucla—Histoire des Mathématiques. 2 vols. 4to. Paris, 1758.

Morlillaro—Légendes Historiques Siciliennes. 8vo. Palermo, 1890.

Niebuhr—Description de l’Arabie. 4to. Paris, 1779.

Oelsner—Des Effets de la Religion de Mohammed. 8vo. Paris, 1810.

Pariset—Histoire de la Soie. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1862.

Perron—Femmes Arabes. 8vo. Paris, 1858.

Perrot—Histoire des Antiquités de la Ville de Nismes. 8vo. Nismes, 1842.

Peyrat—Histoire des Albigeois. 3 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1870.

Pleyte—La Religion des pré-Israélites. 8vo. Utrecht, 1862.

Poiret—Voyage en Barbarie. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1789.

Prisse d’Avesnes—La Décoration Arabe. Folio. Paris, 1885.

Querry—Le Droit Musulman. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1871.

Ramée—Histoire Générale de l’Architecture. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1859.

Reinaud—Extraits des Historiens Arabes relatifs aux Croisades. 8vo. Paris, 1829.

Reinaud—L’Art Militaire chez les Arabes au Moyen Age. 8vo. Paris, 1848.

Reinaud—Les Invasions des Sarrasins en France. 8vo. Paris.

Reinaud—Monumens Arabes, Persans, et Turcs. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1828.

Reinaud—Notice sur Mahomet. 8vo. Paris, 1860.

Reinaud—Relation des Voyages dans l’Inde. 2 vols. 18mo. Paris, 1845.

Renan—Averroes et l’Averroïsme. 8vo. Paris, 1852.

Renauldon—Dictionnaire des Fiefs et des Droits Seigneureaux. 4to. Paris, 1765.

Renouard—Histoire de la Médecine. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1846.

Romey—Histoire d’Espagne. 9 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1839.

Ronna—Les Irrigations. 3 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1888.

Roquaire—La Papauté au Moyen Age. 8vo. Paris, 1881.

Rosseuw Saint-Hilaire—Histoire d’Espagne. 14 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1859.

Sabatier—Notice sur Gerbert. 8vo. Paris, 1850.

Sainte-Pelaie—Histoire Littéraire des Troubadours. 3 vols. 12mo. Paris, 1774.

Schmolders—Essai sur les Écoles Philosophiques chez les Arabes. 8vo. Paris, 1842.

Schoebel—Le Bouddhisme et ses Origines. 8vo. Paris, 1874.

Scholl—L’Islam et son Fondateur. 8vo. Neuchatel, 1844.

Sédillot—Histoire Générale des Arabes. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1877.

Sédillot—Matériaux pour servir à l’Histoire Complète des Sciences Mathématiques chez les Orientaux. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1845.

Sédillot—Mémoire sur les Systèmes Géographiques des Arabes. 8vo. Paris, 1842.

Sédillot—Prolégomènes des Tables Astronomiques d’Oloug Beg. 8vo. Paris, 1853.

Sédillot—Traité des Instruments Astronomiques des Arabes. 4to. Paris, 1833.

Sismondi—Histoire de la Littérature du Midi de Europe. 4 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1829.

Sismondi—Républiques Italiennes du Moyen Age. 10 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1840.

Solvet—Description du Pays de Magreb. 8vo. Alger, 1839.

Torres—Histoire des Chérifs. 4to. Paris, 1667.

Vacherot—Histoire Critique de l’École d’Alexandrie. 3 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1846.

Vertot—Histoire des Chevaliers Hospitaliers. 5 vols. 8vo. Amsterdam, 1732.

Viardot—Histoire des Arabes et des Mores d’Espagne. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1857.

Viardot—Scènes des Mœurs Arabes. 8vo. Paris, 1834.

Villemain—Histoire de Gregoire VII. 8vo. Paris, 1874.

Villemain—Tableau de la Littérature au Moyen Age. 8vo. Paris, 1878.

Vincent—Études sur la Loi Musulmane—Législation Criminelle. 8vo. Paris, 1842.

Woepcke—L’Algèbre d’Omar Al-Khayymi. 8vo. Paris, 1857.

Woepcke—Mémoire sur la Propagation des Chiffres Indiens. 8vo. Paris, 1863.

Woepcke—Recherches sur l’Histoire des Sciences Mathématiques chez les Orientaux. 8vo. Paris, 1860.

Woepcke—Sur l’Introduction de l’Arithmétique en Occident. 4to. Paris, 1859.

Zamakhschari—Les Colliers d’Or. 8vo. Paris, 1876.

Zeller—Entretiens sur l’Histoire du Moyen Age. 12mo. Paris, 1865.

Zeller—Histoire d’Allemagne. 7 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1872.

SPANISH.

Abarca—Anales de Aragon. 2 vols. Folio. Salamanca, 1684.

Aldrete—Varias Antigüedades de España. 4to. Amberes, 1614.

Almagro—Inscripciones Arabes de Granada. 4to. Granada, 1877.

Alonso el Sabio—Las Siete Partidas. 3 vols. 4to. Madrid, 1807.

Araquistan—Tradiciones Vasco-Cántabras. 8vo. Tolosa, 1866.

Argote de Molina—Nobleza de Andalucia. Folio. Sevilla, 1581.

Argote—Nuevos Paseos por Granada. 2 vols. 12mo. Granada, 1820.

Baeza—Ultimos Sucesos del Reino de Granada. 8vo. Madrid, 1868.

Balaguer—Historia de los Trovadores. 6 vols. 8vo. Madrid, 1878.

Balaguer—Los Reyes Catolicos. 2 vols. 8vo. Madrid, 1894.

Bernaldez—Historia de los Reyes Catolicos. 2 vols. 4to. Sevilla, 1870.

Bleda—Coronica de los Moros de España. Folio. Valencia, 1618.

Boix—Xativa. 8vo. 1857.

Canas—De la Agricultura Española. 16mo. Valladolid, 1868.

Caro—Antigüedades de Sevilla. Folio. Sevilla, 1634.

Cascales—Discursos Historicos sobre Murcia. Folio. Murcia, 1775.

Caveda—Ensayo Historico sobre los diversos generos de Architectura en España. 8vo. Madrid, 1848.

Caveda—Cronica de Don Alvaro de Luna. Folio. Madrid, 1784.

Cebrian—Historia de los Arabes en Murcia. 8vo. Palma, 1845.

Codera y Zaidin—Tratado de Numismatica Arabigo-Española. 4to. Madrid, 1879.

Colmenares—Historia de Segovia. Folio. Madrid, 1640.

Conde—Historia de la Dominacion de los Arabes en España. 2 vols. 4to. Madrid, 1820.

Contreras—Monumentos Arabes. 4to. Madrid, 1878.

—— Cronicas de los Reyes de Castilla. 3 vols. 8vo. Madrid, 1875.

Dameto—Historia del Reyno Balearico. 3 vols. 4to. Palma, 1840.

Danvila y Collado—La Expulsion de los Moriscos. 8vo. Madrid, 1889.

De la Pena—Anales de Cataluña. 3 vols. Folio. Barcelona, 1709.

De los Rios—El Arte Latino-Byzantino. 4to. Madrid, 1861.

De los Rios—Historia de los Judios de España. 3 vols. 8vo. Madrid, 1876.

De los Rios—Inscripciones Arabes de Cordoba y Sevilla. 8vo. Madrid, 1879.

De los Rios—Sevilla Pintoresca. 4to. Sevilla, 1844.

De los Rios—Toledo Pintoresca. 4to. Madrid, 1845.

Del Valle—Anales de la Inquisicion. 8vo. Madrid, 1868.

De Schack—Poesía y Arte de los Arabes en España y Sicilia. 3 vols. 12mo. Madrid, 1872.

Diago—Historia de los Condes de Barcelona. Folio. Barcelona, 1603.

Duro—Memorias de Zamora. 4 vols. 8vo. Madrid, 1883.

Echevarria—Paseos por Granada. 2 vols. 8vo. Granada, 1814.

Escolano—Historia de Valencia. 2 vols. Folio. Valencia, 1610.

Flechier—Historia del Cardenal Ximenes. 8vo. Lyons, 1712.

Florez—España Sagrada. 51 vols. 4to. Madrid, 1754.

Galiano—Historia de España. 4 vols. 8vo. Madrid, 1844.

Garibay—Compendio Historial de las Chronicas. 2 vols. Folio. Barcelona, 1628.

Gomez-Miedes—Historia del Rey Don Jayme I. de Aragon. Folio. Valencia, 1584.

Gongora—Historia de Navarra. 4to. Pamplona, 1628.

Guadalajara y Xavierr—Memorable Expulsion de los Moriscos de España. 4to. Pamplona, 1613.

Hurtado de Mendoza—Guerra de Granada contra los Moriscos. 4to. 1776.

Ibn-Aljathib—Descripcion del Reino de Granada. 8vo. Madrid, 1860.

Janer—Condicion Social de los Moriscos de España. 8vo. Madrid, 1857.

Jimena—Anales de Jaen y Baeza. 4to. Matriti, 1654.

Lafuente-Alcantara—El Libro del Viajero en Granada. 16mo. Granada, 1843.

Lafuente-Alcantara—Historia de Granada. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1852.

Lafuente-Alcantara—Inscripciones Arabes de Granada. 8vo. Madrid, 1859.

Lafuente—Historia General de España. 6 vols. 4to. Barcelona, 1882.

Lozano—Los Reyes Nuevos de Toledo. 4to. Valencia, 1698.

Madrazo—Cordova. 4to. Madrid, 1855.

Madrazo—Sevilla y Cadiz. 4to. Madrid, 1856.

Mariana—Historia General de España. 2 vols. Folio. Madrid, 1650.

Marmol-Carvajal—Historia de la Rebelion y Castigo de los Moriscos. 4to. Madrid, 1797.

Martinez de la Rosa—Obras. 8vo. Paris, 1844.

Masdeu—Historia Critica de España. 20 vols. 4to. Madrid, 1787.

—— Memorial Histórico Español. 21 vols. 4to. Madrid, 1851–1889.

—— Memorias de la Real Academia de Historia. 11 vols. 4to. Madrid, 1796–1888.

Menandez-Valdez—La Monarchia Asturiana. 4to. Madrid.

Mesa-Ginete—Historia de Jerez de la Frontera. 2 vols. 4to. Jerez, 1888.

Mila y Fontenals—De los Trovadores en España. 8vo. Barcelona, 1861.

Molino—Rodrigo el Campeador. 4to. Madrid, 1857.

Mondejar—Memorias del Rei Alonso el Sabio. Folio. Madrid, 1777.

Morales—Coronica General de España. 15 vols. 4to. Madrid, 1791.

Moreti—Historia de Ronda. 4to. Ronda, 1867.

Muñoz y Gaviria—Historia del Alzamiento de los Moriscos. 12mo. Madrid, 1861.

Nebrixa—Chronica de los Reyes Catholicos. Folio. Valladolid, 1565.

Nuñez de Castro—Coronica de los Reyes de Castilla. Folio. Madrid, 1665.

Olivarria y Huartre—Tradiciones de Toledo. 12mo. Madrid, 1880.

Oliver-Hurtado—Granada y sus Monumentos Arabes. 8vo. Malaga, 1875.

Orbaneja—Almeria Ilustrada. Folio. Almeria, 1699.

Pedraza—Historia Eclesiastica de Granada. Folio. Granada, 1638.

Pi y Margall—Granada. 4to. Madrid, 1850.

Rada y Delgado—Museo Español de Antigüedades. 9 vols. Folio. Madrid.

Risco—La Castilla. 4to. Madrid, 1792.

Rivera—Historia de Ronda. 16mo. Ronda, 1873.

Robles—Malaga Musulmana. 4to. Malaga, 1880.

Rojas—Historia de Toledo. 2 vols. Folio. Madrid, 1659.

Saavedra—Estudio sobre la Invasion de los Arabes en España. 8vo. Madrid, 1892.

Salazar de Mendoza—Cronica de la Casa de los Ponces de Leon. 4to. 1620.

Salazar de Mendoza—Cronica del Gran Cardenal de España. Folio. Toledo, 1725.

Sandoval—Chronica de Don Alonso VII. Folio. Madrid, 1600.

Sandoval—Historia de los Reyes de Castilla y Leon. Folio. Pamplona, 1634.

Simonet—Leyendas Historicas Arabes. 8vo. Madrid, 1858.

Tapia—Historia de la Civilizacion Española. 4 vols. 12mo. Madrid, 1840.

Torres—Historia de las Ordenes Militares. 4to. Madrid. 1629.

Valdes—Monarchia Asturiana. 4to. Madrid.

Velasco—Los Euskaros. 8vo. Barcelona, 1879.

Viegas—Principios del Reyno de Portugal. 4to. Barcelona.

Zuñiga—Anales de Sevilla. 5 vols. 4to. Madrid, 1796.

Zurita—Anales de Aragon. 7 vols. Folio. Zaragoza, 1610.

PORTUGUESE.

Benavides—Rainhas de Portugal. 2 vols. 8vo. Lisboa, 1878.

Braga—Historia da Poesia Popular Portuguesa. 12mo. Porto, 1867.

Brito e Brandao—Monarchia Lusitana. 8 vols. Folio. Lisboa, 1690.

—— Cancioneirinho de Trovas Antigas. 12mo. Vienna, 1857.

Da Serra—Colecçao de Livros Ineditos de Historia Portuguesa. 5 vols. Folio. Lisboa, 1790.

De Sousa—Vestigios de la Lingua Arabica em Portugal. 8vo. Lisboa, 1789.

Ennes—Historia de Portugal. 2 vols. 8vo. Lisboa, 1876.

Herculano—Historia da Inquisiçao em Portugal. 3 vols. 12mo. 1874.

Herculano—Historia de Portugal. 2 vols. 8vo. Lisboa, 1880.

Nunez do Liao—Chronicas dos Reis de Portugal. 4 vols. Lisboa, 1774.

ITALIAN.

Abbate—Italia nel Medio Evo. 8vo. Alba, 1892.

Airoldi—Codice Diplomatico di Sicilia. 6 vols. 4to. Palermo, 1789.

Amari—Biblioteca Arabo-Sicula. 3 vols. 8vo. Torino, 1880.

Amari—I Diplomi Arabi. Folio. Firenze, 1863.

Amari—Ricordi Arabici. 8vo. Genova, 1873.

Amari—Solwan el Mota. 12mo. Firenze, 1851.

Amari—Storia dei Mussulmani di Sicilia. 3 vols. 8vo. Firenze, 1854.

Amari—Un Periode delle Istoriæ Siciliane. 8vo. Panormo, 1842.

Bardi—Storia della Letteratura Araba sotto il Califato. 2 vols. 8vo. Firenze, 1846.

Bennici—L’Ultimo dei Trovatori in Sicilia. 12mo. Palermo, 1874.

Bertalotti—Gli Arabi in Italia. 8vo. Torino, 1838.

Bruno—Opere. 2 vols. 8vo. Lipsiæ, 1830.

Cavedoni—Ricerche sui Trovatori. Folio. Modena, 1844.

Corbetta—Sardegna e Corsica. 8vo. Milano, 1877.

Cusa—I Diplomi Greci ed Arabi. Folio. Palermo, 1868.

De Renzi—Collectio Salernitana. 5 vols. 8vo. Napoli, 1852.

Ferrario—Storia degli Antichi Romanzi di Cavalleria. 4 vols. 8vo. Milano, 1828.

Galileo—Opere. 16 vols. 8vo. Firenze, 1853.

Giannone—Istoria del Regno di Napoli. 8 vols. 8vo. 1882.

Guicciardini—Storia d’ Italia. 6 vols. 8vo. Parigi, 1837.

Manno—Storia di Sardegna. 8vo. Firenze, 1858.

Marigny—Storia degli Arabi. 4 vols. 12mo. Venezia, 1753.

Martini—Storia delle Invasioni degli Arabi in Sardegna. 8vo. Cagliari, 1861.

Morso—Descrizione di Palermo Antico. 8vo. Palermo, 1827.

Muratori—Annali d’ Italia. 17 vols. 8vo. Milano, 1820.

Navagiero—Il Viaggio Fatto in Spagna et in Francia. 12mo. Venegia, 1563.

Nazari—Della Transmutatione Metallica. 4to. Brescia, 1599.

Pitre—Usi e Costumi del Popolo Siciliano. 4 vols. 8vo. Palermo, 1889.

Teti—Il Regime Feudale. 8vo. Napoli, 1890.

Tiraboschi—Storia della Letteratura Italiana. 27 vols. 8vo. Venezia, 1824.

Vetri—Dei Primordi della Invasione Araba. 8vo. 1882.

GERMAN.

AHLWARDT—Die Alte Arabische Gedichte. 8vo. Greifswald, 1872.

Ahlwardt—Poësie der Araber. 4to. Gotha, 1856.

Appel—Provenzalische Inedita. 8vo. Leipzig, 1890.

Aschbach—Geschichte der Ommaijden in Spanien. 2 vols. 8vo. Wien, 1860.

Aschbach—Geschichte der Westgothen. 8vo. Franc. am Main, 1827.

Aschbach—Geschichte Spaniens und Portugals. 2 vols. 8vo. Franc. am Main, 1833.

Assmann—Geschichte des Mittelalters. 4 vols. 8vo. Braunschweig, 1857.

Bartsch—Grundniss zur Geschichte der Provenzalische Litteratur. 8vo. Elberfeld, 1872.

Baudissin—Studien zur Semitischen Religionsgeschichte. 8vo. Leipzig, 1876.

Bebel—Die Mohammedanische-Arabische Kultur Periode. 8vo. Stuttgart, 1889.

Becker—Chemische Anekdoten. 8vo. Leipzig, 1788.

Bergel—Die Medizin der Talmudisten. 8vo. Leipzig, 1885.

Birch-Hirschfeld—Ueber die den Provenzalischen Troubadours Epischen Stoffe. 8vo. Leipzig, 1878.

Blau—Arabien im VI. Jahrhundert. 8vo.

Bötticher—Geschichte der Carthager. 8vo. Berlin, 1827.

Brinckmaier—Die Provenzalischen Troubadours. 8vo. Göttingen, 1882.

Chwolsohn—Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus. 2 vols. 8vo. St. Petersburg, 1856.

Diercks—Die Araber im Mittelalter. 8vo. Leipzig, 1882.

Dieterici—Die Philosophie der Araber im X. Jahrhundert. 8 vols. 8vo. Leipzig, 1876.

Diez—Die Poësie der Troubadours. 8vo. Zwickau, 1826.

Diez—Leben und Werke der Troubadours. 8vo. Leipzig, 1882.

Döllinger—Von der Papstfabeln des Mittelalters. 8vo. Stuttgart, 1890.

Dukes—Moses ben Ezra aus Granada. 8vo. Altona, 1839.

Ebert—Allgemeine Geschichte der Litteratur des Mittelalters. 3 vols. 8vo. Leipzig, 1887.

Ewald—Geschichte des Volkes Israel. 7 vols. 8vo. Göttingen, 1843.

Fischbach—Geschichte der Textelkunst. 8vo. Hanau, 1883.

Flügel—Die Schulen von Bosra und Kufa. 8vo. Leipzig, 1862.

Flügel—Geschichte der Araber. 8vo. Leipzig, 1867.

Freytag—Darstellung der Arabischen Verskunst. 8vo. Bonn, 1830.

Funk—Kaiser Friedrich II. 8vo. Wien, 1817.

Geiger—Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthum aufgenommen. 8vo. Bonn, 1883.

Goldhann—Wanderungen in Sicilien. 8vo. Leipzig, 1855.

Goldzieher—Der Mythos bei den Hebraern. 8vo. Leipzig, 1876.

Goldzieher—Die Zahiriten. 8vo. Halle, 1884.

Goldzieher—Mohammedanische Studien. 2 vols. 8vo. Halle, 1889.

Gosche—Die Alhambra. 16mo. Berlin, 1854.

Grau—Semiten und Indogermanen. 8vo. Stuttgart, 1867.

Gudemann—Das Judische Unterrechtswesen wahrend der Spanische-Arabische Periode. 8vo. Wien, 1873.

Hammer-Purgstall—Gemäldesaal der grossen Mohammedanische Herrscher. 6 vols. 8vo. Leipzig, 1873.

Hammer-Purgstall—Literaturgeschichte der Araber. 7 vols. 4to. Wien, 1855.

Hankel—Geschichte der Mathematik. 8vo. Leipzig, 1874.

Hausleutner—Geschichte der Araber in Sicilien. 4 vols. 8vo. Königsberg, 1791.

Hirschfeld—Beiträge zur Erklarung des Koran. 8vo. Leipzig, 1886.

Höfler—Kaiser Friedrich II. 8vo. Munich, 1844.

Ibn-Ishak—Das Leben Mohammeds. 8vo. Stuttgart, 1864.

Jacobs—Welche Handsartikel bezogen die Araber en Mittelalter aus den Nordische-Baltischen Ländern. 8vo. Berlin, 1891.

Jost—Geschichte des Judenthums. 8vo. Leipzig, 1857.

Kaempf—Poësie Andalusischen Dichter. 8vo. Prag, 1858.

Kapp—Die Alchemie. 2 vols. 8vo. Heidelburg, 1886.

Kayserling—Die Judischen Frauen. 8vo. Leipzig, 1879.

Kayserling—Sephardim. 8vo. Leipzig, 1859.

Kestner—Der Kreuzzug Friedrichs II. 8vo. Göttingen, 1873.

Kiesewetter—Die Musik der Araber. 4to. Leipzig, 1842.

Köpke—Die Anfänge des Konigthums bei den Gothen. 8vo. Berlin, 1859.

Krause—Die Byzantiner des Mittelalters. 8vo. Halle, 1869.

Krehl—Das Leben des Muhammed. 12mo. Leipzig, 1884.

Krehl—Die Religion der Vorislamischen Araber. 8vo. Leipzig, 1863.

Kremer—Culturgeschichte des Orients. 2 vols. 8vo. Wien, 1875.

Kügler—Geschichte der Baukunst. 8vo. Stuttgart, 1859.

Lembke—Geschichte von Spanien. 4 vols. 8vo. Hamburg, 1831.

Mahn—Gedichte der Troubadours. 3 vols. 12mo. Berlin, 1856.

Movers—Das Phönizische Alterthum. 2 vols. 8vo. Berlin, 1850.

Müller—Die Letzten Zeiten von Granada. 8vo. München, 1863.

Müller—Philosophie und Theologie von Averroes. 4to. München, 1875.

Münz—Ueber die Judische Aerzte im Mittelalter. 8vo. Berlin, 1887.

Nesselmann—Versuch einer Geschichte des Algebra. 8vo. Berlin, 1842.

Nöldecke—Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Poësie der Alten Araber. 8vo. Hannover, 1864.

Nöldecke—Das Leben Muhammads. 8vo. Hannover, 1863.

Nordau—Vom Kreml bis zur Alhambra. 2 vols. 8vo. Leipzig, 1889.

Oldenberg—Buddha. 8vo. Berlin, 1881.

Parthey—Das Alexandrinische Museum. 8vo. Berlin, 1838.

Parthey—Wanderungen durch Sicilien. 2 vols. 12mo. Berlin, 1834.

Pischon—Der Einfluss des Islams. 8vo. Leipzig, 1881.

Prutz—Aus Phönizien. 8vo. Leipzig, 1870.

Raumer—Geschichte der Hohenstaufen. 4 vols. 8vo. Leipzig, 1878.

Reber—Geschichte der Baukunst. 8vo. Leipzig, 1866.

Ritter—Die Arabische Philosophie. 4to. Göttingen, 1844.

Röhricht—Geschichte der Kreuzzuge. 2 vols. 8vo. Berlin, 1874.

Schaack—Geschichte der Normannen in Sicilien. 8vo. Stuttgart, 1889.

Schäfer—Geschichte von Portugal. 5 vols. 8vo. Hamburg, 1883.

Schirrmacher—Kaiser Friedrich II. 4 vols. 8vo. Göttingen, 1859.

Schmidt—Geschichte Aragoniens. 8vo. Leipzig, 1828.

Schmieder—Geschichte der Alchemie. 8vo. Halle, 1832.

Schultz—Das Höflische Leben zur Zeit der Minnesinger. 2 vols. 4to. Leipzig, 1889.

Schultz—Italienische Trobadors. 8vo. Berlin, 1883.

Spangenberg—Die Minnehofe des Mittelalters. 8vo. Leipzig, 1821.

Spitta—Zur Geschichte Abul Hasan Ali Asaris. 8vo. Leipzig, 1876.

Sprengel—Geschichte der Arzneikunde. 6 vols. 8vo. Halle, 1821.

Sprenger—Das Leben und die Lehre des Muhammed. 3 vols. 8vo. Berlin, 1861.

Sprenger—Die Alte Geographie Arabiens. 8vo. Bern, 1875.

Stimming—Bertran de Born. 8vo. Halle, 1879.

Stimming—Der Troubadour Jaufre Rudel. 8vo. Kiel, 1873.

Stüwe—Die Handelszüge der Araber. 8vo. Berlin, 1836.

Suchier—Denkmäler der Provenzalische Litteratur. 8vo. Halle, 1883.

Unger—Geschichte der Pflanzenwelt. 8vo. Wien, 1852.

Von Kremer—Gebiete des Islams. 8vo. Leipzig, 1873.

Von Kremer—Geschichte der Herrschenden Ideen des Islams. 8vo. Leipzig, 1868.

Von Ledebur—Zeugnisse eines Handels-Verkehrs mit dem Orient. 8vo. Berlin, 1840.

Wahl—Statistik der Araber in Sicilien. 8vo.

Weil—Die Poetische Literatur der Araber vor Mohammed. 12mo. Stuttgart, 1837.

Weil—Einleitung in den Koran. 12mo. Bielefeld, 1844.

Weil—Geschichte der Chalifen. 3 vols. 8vo. Mannheim, 1846.

Weil—Geschichte der Islamischen Völker. 8vo. Stuttgart, 1866.

Weniger—Das Alexandrinische Museum. 8vo. Berlin, 1875.

Wilken—Geschichte der Kreuzzuge. 8 vols. 8vo. Leipzig, 1830.

Winkelmann—Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums. 8vo. Heidelberg, 1882.

Winkelmann—Kaiser Friedrich II. 2 vols. 8vo. Leipzig, 1889.

Winkler—Geschichte der Botanik. 8vo. Frankfort, 1854.

Woepcke—Ueber Ein Arabisches Astrolabium. 4to. Berlin, 1858.

Wüstenfeld—Die Academien der Araber. 8vo. Göttingen, 1837.

Wüstenfeld—Geschichte der Arabischen Aerzte und Naturforscher. 8vo. Göttingen, 1840.

Zerschwitz—Das Kaisertraum des Mittelalters. 8vo. Leipzig, 1877.

Zimmermann—Geschichte der Hohenstaufen. 8vo. Stuttgart, 1865.

DUTCH.

Dozy—De Israelieten te Mekka. 8vo. Haarlem, 1864.

Houtsma—De Strijd over het Dogma in den Islam. 8vo. Leiden, 1875.

Keijzer—De Leerstellingen van de Mohammedaansche Godsdienst. 8vo. Gorinchem, 1854.

Keijzer—Handboek voor Het Mohammedaansche Regt. 8vo. 's Gravenhage, 1853.

Kern—Het Buddhisme in Indie. 2 vols. 8vo. Haarlem, 1882.

Kist—De Pausin Johanna. 8vo. Gravenhage, 1845.

Koenen—Varia, 8vo.

Kuenen—De Baalsdienst onder Israel. 8vo.

Kuenen—De Godsdienst van Israel. 2 vols. 8vo. Haarlem, 1869.

Nomsz—Mohammed. 12mo. Amstelodami, 1758.

Snouck-Hurgronje—Het Mekkaansche Feest. 8vo. Leiden, 1880.

Tiele—De Godsdienst van Zarathustra. 8vo. Haarlem, 1864.

Weil—Legenden der Muselmannen. 8vo. Schiedam, 1853.

Weil—Mohammed de Propheet. 2 vols. 8vo. Amsterdam, 1846.

Wunderlich—Geschiedenis der Geneeskunde. 8vo. Tiel, 1861.

DANISH.

Fabricius—Forbindelserne mellem Norden og den Spanske Halvo, i ældre Tider. 8vo. Kjobenhavn, 1882.

Molbech—Europa i Middelalderen. 8vo. Kjobenhavn, 1819.

Rydberg—Middelalderens Magi. 12mo. Kjobenhavn, 1873.

Sorensen—Araberne og deres Kultur i Middelalderen. 12mo. Kjobenhavn, 1888.

SWEDISH.

Afzelius—Svenska Folket’s Sago-Hafder. 11 vols. 8vo. Stockholm, 1844.

Böttiger—Om den Italienska Kulturens. 8vo. Upsala, 1846.

Brandel—Om och ur den arabiska geographen, Idrisi. 8vo. Upsala, 1894.

Engeström—Om judarne i Rom under aldere tider. 8vo. Stockholm, 1876.

Hellwald—Turkiet i vara dagar. 2 vols. 8vo. Stockholm, 1877.

Hildebrand—Om det Vatikanska arkivet. 8vo. Stockholm.

Jonquiere—Osmanika rikets historia. 8vo. Stockholm, 1882.

Lindberg—Mohammed och Qoranen. 8vo. Göteborg, 1897.

Reinach—Israeliternas historia. 8vo. Stockholm, 1891.

Sjögren—Sveriges kulturhistoria. 4to. Stockholm, 1891.

LANGUE D’OC AND LANGUE D’OIL.

Bartsch—Chrestomatie Provençale. 8vo. Elberfeld, 1868.

Born, Bertrand de—Poësies Complètes. 8vo. Paris.

Fauriel—Histoire de la Croisade contre les Hérétiques Albigeois. 4to. Paris, 1837.

Montaiglon et Raynaud—Recueil Général des Fabliaux. 6 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1878.

Raynouard—Choix des Poësies des Troubadours. 6 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1816.

Rutebœuf—Œuvres Complètes. 8vo. Paris, 1839.

LIMOUSIN AND CATALAN.

Carbonell—Chronica de Espanya. Folio. Barcelona, 1546.

Don Jaime de Aragon—Libre dels feyts esdevenguts en la vida del molt alt senyor En Jacme lo Conquerador. Folio. 1557.

March—Les Obres. 4to. Barcelona, 1602.

Muntaner—Chronica. Folio. Barcelona, 1562.

Pujades—Coronica universal del Principat de Cathalunya. Folio. Barcelona, 1609.

Roig—Libre de Cosells. 12mo. Barcelona, 1561.

Tornich—Historias e Conquestas dels Excellentissims e Catholics Reys de Arago. Folio. Barcelona, 1534.

LATIN.

Abd-al-Allatif—Historia Ægypti. 4to. Oxoniæ, 1800.

Abdul-Feda—Historia Anteislamica. 4to. Lipsiæ, 1831.

Abul-Pharagius—Historia Dynastiarum. 4to. Oxoniæ, 1763.

Anspach—Historia Califatus Al-Walidi. 8vo. Leyden, 1853.

Avicenna—Opera. Folio. Venitiis, 1595.

Bacon—Opera Inedita. 8vo. London, 1859.

Capasso—Historia Diplomatica Regni Siciliæ. 4to. Napoli, 1894.

Carena—Tractatus de Officio Inquisitionis. Folio. Cremona, 1741.

Casiri—Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana Escurialensis. 2 vols. Folio. Matriti, 1760.

—— Fuero Juzgo. Folio. Madrid, 1815.

Gerbert—Œuvres. 4to. Paris, 1867.

Gildermeister—Scriptorum Arabum de Rebus Indicis. 8vo. Bonnæ, 1838.

Hadji-Khalfa—Lexicon Bibliographicum. 7 vols. 4to. Leipzig, 1835.

Hille—De Medicis Arabibus Oculariis. 8vo. Lipsiæ.

Huillard-Bréholles—Chronicon Placentinum. 4to. Parisiis, 1856.

Longino—Trinium Magicum. 18mo. Francofurti, 1614.

Middledorff—Commentatio de Institutis Litterariis in Hispania quæ Arabes auctores habuerunt. 4to. Göttingen.

Muratori—Antiquitates Italiæ Medii Ævi. 6 vols. Folio. Mediolani, 1740.

Paulus Diaconus—Historia Longobardorum. 8vo. Hannoveræ, 1878.

Pococke—Specimen Historiæ Arabum. 4to. Oxoniæ, 1806.

Rasmussen—Additamenta. 4to.

Reiske—Opuscula Medica ex Monimentis Arabum. 8vo. 1776.

Reiske—Sail ol Arem. 4to. Lipsiæ.

Renauldon—Historia Præcipuorum Arabum Regnorum. 4to. Hauniæ, 1817.

Rhazes—De Variolis et Morbillis. 8vo. Londini, 1766.

Rutgers—Historia Jemanæ. 4to. Lugd. Batavorum, 1838.

Sprengel—Historia Rei Herbariæ. 2 vols. 8vo. Amsteldami, 1807.

—— Tractatus Talmudici Erubhin. 4to. Lipsiæ, 1661.

Wenrich—Rerum ab Arabibis in Italia Insulisque Gestarum Commentarii. 8vo. Lipsiæ, 1845.

GREEK.

Appianus—Historia Romana. 2 vols. 8vo. Lipsiæ, 1881.

Herodotus—Historiarum Libri IX. 8vo. Lipsiæ, 1890.

Procopius—Anekdota. 8vo. Paris, 1856.

Strabo—Geographica. 3 vols. 8vo. Lipsiæ, 1877.

HEBREW.

Akmin-Joseph-Ben—Tah-ul-Nufus (Extracts). 8vo. 1873.

Alfasi—Halakhoth-Rab-Alfas. (Exposition of the Talmud.) 4to. Oxford, 1875.

Maimonides—Selections from the Yad Hachazakah. 8vo. Cambridge, 1832.

Surenhusins—Mishna. 6 vols. Folio. Amstelædami, 1698.

—— Talmud Babli. 13 vols. 4to. Amsterdam, 1654.

ARABIC.

Abd-al-Wahid—History of the Almohades. 8vo. Leyden, 1881.

Abd-el-Rezzaq—Revelation des Enigmes. 8vo. Paris, 1874.

Aboulfeda—Annales Muslemici. 5 vols. 4to. Leipzig, 1794.

Aboulfeda—Description des Pays de Magreb. 4to. Alger, 1839.

Abulfeda—Joctanidorum Historia. 4to. Hard. Gel. 1786.

—— Ajbar Machmua. 8vo. Madrid, 1867.

Al-Bokhari—Canonical Traditions. Folio. Bombay, 1856.

Al-Ispahani—The Songs of the Arabs. 10 vols. 4to. Cairo.

Au-Makkari—Analectes sur l’Histoire et la Littérature des Arabes en Espagne. 2 vols. 4to. Leyden, 1855.

Amrolkais—Le Divan. 4to. Paris, 1837.

Antarah—Romance. 6 vols. 8vo. Beirut, 1883.

De Sousa—Documentos Arabicos para a Historia Portuguesa. 4to. Lisboa, 1790.

Dozy—Scriptorum Rerum Arabum de Abbadidis. 4to. Lugd. Batavorum, 1846.

Edrisi—Description de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne. 8vo. Leyden, 1866.

Elmacin—Historia Saracenica. 4to. Lugd. Batavorum.

Faris-al-Shidiac—Voyages. 8vo. Paris, 1855.

Faruki—Legal Decisions. 2 vols. Folio. Bulak.

Grangeret de Lagrange—Anthologie Arabe. 8vo. Paris, 1828.

Hamzae Ispahanensis—Annalium Liber X. 8vo. Petropoli, 1845.

Ibn-Adhari—Histoire de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne. 2 vols. 8vo. Leyden, 1848.

Ibn-al-Walid—The Lamp of Kings. 4to. Cairo.

Ibn-Badroun—Commentaire Historique. 8vo. Leyde, 1846.

Ibn-Batoutah—Voyages. 8vo. Cairo.

Ibn-Hajar—Biographical Dictionary. 4 vols. 8vo. Calcutta, 1853.

Ibn-Junis—Œuvres. 4to. Paris.

Ibn-Khaldun—Introduction to History. 8vo. Beirut, 1886.

—— Lois des Maures en Espagne. Folio. MS. XII. Century.

Macoudi—Les Prairies d’Or. 9 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1861.

Mohammed—Al Koran. 8vo. Leipzig, 1881.

Muhammed-Alfergani—Elementa Astronomica. 4to.

Sharastani—Book of the Religious and Philosophical Sects. 2 vols. 8vo. 1842.

Wright—Opuscula Arabica. 8vo. Leyden, 1859.

Wüstenfeld—Das Leben Muhammeds. 3 vols. 8vo. Göttingen, 1859.

Wüstenfeld—Die Chroniken der Stadt Mecca. 4 vols. 8vo. Leipzig, 1858.

HISTORY OF THE MOORISH EMPIRE IN EUROPE

CHAPTER I
THE ANCIENT ARABIANS
B.C. 2500–A.D. 614

Topography of Arabia—Its History—Influence of Other Nations—Ancient Civilization—-Commerce—Persistence of Customs and Language—Character of the Bedouin—His Independence—His Predatory Instincts—Power of Tribal Connection—War the Normal Condition of Existence in the Desert—The Virtues and Vices of the Arab—Blood-Revenge and its Destructive Consequences—Absence of Caste—Condition of Woman—Marriage—Religion—Astral Worship—Idolatry—Phallicism—Human Sacrifices—Importance and Power of the Jews—Christianity in Arabia—Poetry, its Subjects and Character—The Moallakat—-Popularity of the Arab Poet—His License—Influence of Arabic Civilization and Culture on Subsequent Ages.

Few countries of the globe present to the eye of the traveller so desolate, so forbidding an aspect as that vast and arid peninsula which, embracing an area of more than a million square miles, stretches away through twenty-four degrees of latitude, from the confines of the Syrian Desert to the shores of the Indian Ocean. Its surface, while far from possessing the monotonous character with which popular fancy is accustomed to invest it, is, for the greater part of its extent, destitute of those physical advantages which tempt either the cupidity or the enterprise of man. Its coasts are low and unhealthy. Its harbors are few and unsafe. Its mineral resources are to this day unexplored and unknown. Its impenetrable deserts, guarded by a fierce and martial population, have always set at defiance the best-matured plans of invasion and conquest. In the principality of Yemen, appropriately named The Happy, the cultivation of the soil has flourished from time immemorial, but in almost every other province the returns of agricultural labor are discouraging and unremunerative. Illimitable wastes of sand, over which sweeps the deadly blast of the simoom; mountains, bald, craggy, and volcanic, whose slopes are destitute of every trace of vegetable life; plains strewn with blocks of tufa and basalt; valleys dotted here and there with stunted shrubs, or encrusted with a saline deposit similar to that upon the shores of the Dead Sea; a soil impregnated with nitre; such are, and have been from prehistoric times, the physical features of the Arabian Peninsula. No stream worthy of the name of river, dispensing wealth and fertility in its winding course to the sea, flows through this dreary and inhospitable land. Wherever a spring was found, a permanent settlement arose, and the black tents of the Bedouin gave place to huts of sun-dried bricks, while the dignity of the sheik, who now aspired to the title of prince, was satisfied with a dwelling superior to those of his subjects only in point of size. The oasis, generally suggestive of shady groves and purling streams, is often, in reality, nothing more than the dry bed of a mountain torrent, along whose borders a little withered vegetation furnishes the hardy camel with pasture, and where a scanty supply of brackish water can, by laborious digging, be obtained. Overhead glitters a sky of brass, unflecked by a single cloud, and, morning and evening, the rays of the sun, mellowed and refracted by the vapors of the earth, clothe every elevation with scarlet, azure, and violet tints which, blended in exquisite harmony, rival the splendors of the rainbow; developing, under the effects of radiation, optical illusions and charming pictures of the mirage, attributed by superstitious ignorance to the influence of enchantment. The unbroken stillness of the Desert, the wide expanse of uninhabited territory, produce a sense of mental depression, accompanied by an apprehension of danger from the convulsions of nature and the violence of man, which no experience seems able to remove; affecting even the sturdy camel-driver, familiar with these solitudes from childhood, who shudders as he urges his string of panting beasts over the drifted sand-heaps and through the mountain fastness, the reputed haunt of evil genii and the vantage ground from whence the murderous banditti oft beset the caravan. So deeply-rooted and tenacious is this feeling that the Arab regards a journey successfully performed as just cause for congratulation, and indeed not inferior to a triumph, as is indicated by his familiar proverb, “Travel is a victory.”

The modern geographical division of Arabia into The Stony, The Desert, The Happy is arbitrary, and unknown to the people the boundaries of whose country it purports to establish. The distinctions between the various tribes of the Peninsula have always been determined by mode of life, habits, and tradition rather than by the accident of locality; have been, in fact, rather personal than territorial. This peculiarity is the result of an extraordinary persistence of a national type which neither a new physical environment, nor the change of political and economic conditions, nor the lapse of centuries has been able to modify sensibly, still less to eradicate completely. Hence has arisen the division of the Arabian people into two classes, nomadic and sedentary, the only one universally recognized by them, and whose line of demarcation has always been sharply defined.

The primordial story of Arabia is lost in the unfathomable darkness of antiquity. The annals of no people are involved in more uncertainty or present greater difficulties in their investigation than those of the Bedouins, as the popular accounts which we possess of their early history bear unquestionable indications of recent date and fictitious origin. Ignorant of the art of writing for centuries before the time of Mohammed, their traditions were orally transmitted, and, in addition to being necessarily subject to all the defects of this mode of communication, were colored by that love of exaggeration and falsehood which seems to be an integral part of the Oriental character. The meagre hints which can be gleaned from these unsatisfactory materials are all that we can rely upon in the almost hopeless attempt to construct a chronological and historical outline of pre-Islamic events. The statements of Moslem writers concerning these events must be subjected to rigid criticism. They suppressed many facts, and condemned indiscriminately the practices of their heathen ancestors; although they knew that the Prophet drew his inspiration largely from this source, and that Islamism could never have been established without the acceptance of many of these idolatrous ceremonies in all their integrity. As far as can at present be determined by the aid of the imperfect and suspicious data at our command, and by a comparison of the physical and mental characteristics of surrounding nations, Arabia has long been a base of extensive emigration, chiefly into Central Asia; while her southern and eastern provinces have, from the days when some famished Bedouin first discovered the marvellous fertility enjoyed by the Valley of the Nile, been the prolific source from whence Egypt recruited her diminishing population.

On the other hand, the influence of neighboring countries upon Arabia has been attended, in its turn, with consequences of the greatest importance. It was peculiarly fortunate that her geographical situation rendered her maritime cities—and in a still greater degree her interior settlements—entrepôts for the distribution of the luxuries of the East and West. Of the latter, in ancient times, and indeed until superseded by the doubtful advantages of Mecca, Petra was the most remarkable. The latter was a veritable troglodytic city. Its dwellings, excavated in the solid rock, disclose by their vast extent that at one time they must have sheltered a population of at least a hundred and sixty thousand souls. Nor was Petra the only town of this kind in Northern Arabia. Many others almost rivalled it in size and opulence, in the splendid architecture of their temples, in the vast ramifications of their commercial interests, in the sybaritic luxury of their inhabitants. Under such conditions a high degree of civilization must necessarily have been reached, which, however, had disappeared with the decline of Phœnician influence at a period long before the dawn of the Christian era. From an epoch not improbably coeval with the establishment of the first Egyptian dynasty there had been an almost incessant passing and repassing of strangers, attracted by the profits of the Ethiopian and Indian trade, upon the highways, which in every direction traversed the Peninsula. This continual intercourse with foreigners, the curious information of distant lands which the latter imparted, the mysterious dogmas of unknown faiths which they professed, their extensive learning and polished manners, insensibly enlarged the sphere of observation and activity, developed the mental faculties, and softened the rudeness of the wild tribes of the Desert. Many of these traders were Phœnicians and Jews whom a common origin, indicated, among other traits, by a striking similarity of language, brought at once into familiar and intimate contact. with the Arabs. The commercial intercourse of Arabia with Egypt is known from inscriptions to have existed for thirty-five hundred years before Christ, and that with Phœnicia may, not improbably, have been of equal antiquity.

No greater contrast can be imagined than that presented by the respective lives of the Arabs and their neighbors and kindred, the denizens of the Valley of the Nile. The actions of the former, like those of all pastoral nations, were irregular, uncertain, capricious. The existence of the latter was controlled by the unvarying phenomena of the Great River, whose influence was perceptible in every phase of political, religious, and social life; whose inundations were symbolical of prosperity, and whose rise was announced by the celestial messenger Sirius, the most magnificent star in the heavens. The subjects of the Pharaohs were dependent upon Arabia for the gums and aromatics so extensively used in embalming; and these precious substances, which must have been produced far more abundantly then than now, were also exported to Phœnicia and Palestine, whence considerable quantities annually found their way into Europe to be consumed in sacrificial ceremonies, in the service of medicine, and in the ostentatious pomp of patrician luxury.

The maritime and agricultural advantages possessed by the southern coast of the Peninsula—designated by the Romans as Arabia the Happy, and afterwards, by the natives, as Yemen, “The Country on the Right Hand” (because the speaker was supposed to stand at Mecca)—had enabled that region to attain to a degree of prosperity and civilization unknown to the pastoral settlements of the interior. Nothing can now be ascertained concerning the early history of Yemen, the royal genealogies of whose sovereigns nevertheless include a period of twenty-two hundred years. Nor can speculation, with any degree of probability, assign even an approximate date to the beginning of its commercial relations with the East. Not only did the bold and adventurous spirit of the Arabian sailors lead them to the extreme Orient, but their coasting vessels regularly visited the shores of the Persian Gulf and the bays and inlets of the African coast; undertakings far more hazardous, if not more lucrative, than voyages to distant Hindustan. From the latter country the native and foreign merchants introduced, with articles of traffic, many idolatrous practices and dogmas of a corrupt philosophy, destined subsequently to manifest the powerful hold they had obtained upon the popular mind by their incorporation into the creed of Islam.

All classic writers who have written upon the subject agree in attributing great wealth to Southern Arabia, a land familiar to antiquity as Saba, or Sheba. Herodotus, Strabo, and Pliny frequently allude to it as the richest country on the globe. Its agricultural resources, dependent upon a vast and intricate hydraulic system which embraced hundreds of leagues of productive territory, were the principal basis of its prosperity. Its streams were confined by massive walls of masonry of cyclopean dimensions and by great embankments. One of these reservoirs was eighteen miles in circuit and a hundred and twenty feet deep. Its stones were laid in bitumen and bolted together with iron rods. Many others, inferior in dimensions and of not less solid construction, collected and retained the melted snows of the mountains. The flow of water was regulated by sluices, and its apportionment rigidly prescribed by law. This thorough system of irrigation, applied to a soil of prodigious fertility under a tropical sun, eventually produced results rivalling those of the vaunted plantations of Babylonia. An innumerable population, distributed throughout this favored territory in hundreds of cities and villages, carried to its highest perfection the cultivation of the soil. The daily expenses of the royal household were fifteen Babylonian talents, eighty-five thousand five hundred dollars of our money. It is related that Mareb, the capital, stood in a vast expanse of perennial verdure, where the branches of the trees, touching each other, formed a vault of continuous shade over the highways, of such extent that a horseman would require a journey of two months’ duration to traverse the cultivated portion of the realm of the monarchs of Saba. One of the latter was the famous Queen Balkis, the friend and admirer of Solomon.

In a region so fortunately situated for commerce, mercantile activity kept pace with agricultural development. The merchants of Saba enjoyed a reputation for shrewdness, ability, wealth, and enterprise not inferior to that of the Phœnicians themselves. They engaged in transactions involving immense pecuniary investments. They despatched great fleets to China. Their caravans traversed the Syrian and African deserts. They exported to Persia annually a thousand talents weight of frankincense. Not only did they purchase directly the commodities in which they dealt, but they also bought and sold extensively on commission. Their warehouses were filled with the rich products of a score of climes; silver vessels; ingots of copper, tin, iron, and lead; honey and wax; silks, ivory, ebony, coral, agates; civet, musk, myrrh, camphor, and other aromatics, some of which were worth many times their weight in gold. Such was their prodigal luxury that only sandal-wood and cinnamon were used as fuel in the preparation of their food. The vegetable kingdom contributed no insignificant share to the commercial wealth of Southern Arabia. Coffee, indigenous to the Peninsula, was exported as a luxury to the provinces of Asia. In that dry climate, where flourished every known variety of cereals, grain could be stored without injury for thirty years. The cotton-plant, the sugar-cane, the cocoa-palm, yielded enormous revenues to those who engaged in their culture. The balsam of Mecca, the gum Arabic, the sap of the Acacia Vera, and the famed frankincense were also important articles of export. The country was reputed to be rich in minerals; inexhaustible deposits of salt existed in Saba; gold was found in the mountains; but Arabia produced no iron, which Strabo says in his time was equal in value to the precious metals. The pearl fisheries of the coast, opposite to the Isles of Bahrein, were unrivalled for the beauty and value of their products.

For an unknown period, embracing, however, many centuries, the prosperity of the kingdom of Saba continued. Then it suddenly declined; a general emigration took place, and the former paradise was transformed into an uninhabited desert. The cause of this great and profound change, involving the desolation of a vast region and the dispersion of an entire people, is hidden in obscurity. The puerile fables which attribute it to a threatened inundation from the rupture of a dike are unworthy of notice. It is probable that this calamity was mainly due to the diversion of the caravan traffic to the channels of the Red Sea, to the abandonment of stations, to the cessation of revenue, and to the consequent dearth of the means of subsistence. Foreign wars or domestic convulsions, which, aided by increasing luxury and subsequent weakness, also contributed to drain the resources and exhaust the population of the kingdom, may have hastened the ultimate catastrophe that is supposed to have occurred during the first century of the Christian era.

From this epoch the traditions of the Arabs become more and more confused. Some tribes seem to have emigrated to Mesopotamia, others to have settled in the vicinity of Medina, then called Yathreb, where they intermarried with the Jews already established in that city. We know nothing further of Arabian annals till the promulgation of the faith of Islam began a new chapter in the history of nations. Before the Hegira no date could be fixed with certainty, as there was no chronological system by which to ascertain the year of an historical occurrence, and no public or private records existed to preserve it. But a step beyond the unreliable transmission of past events by tradition were the inscriptions occasionally made upon the shoulder-blades of animals. Not only was the material indispensable to the scribe entirely wanting, but the ability to use it was possessed by only an insignificant number of the people. Among the nomadic Bedouins contempt for literary accomplishments, except that of extemporaneous poetical composition, universally prevailed. Even in the great commercial city of Mecca, at the time of the publication of the Koran, there was but one man who could write. It was not without reason that Mohammed designated the long and obscure period preceding the Hegira, the Age of Ignorance.

Arabia, alone among the countries accessible to the ambition of the powerful sovereigns of antiquity, escaped the humiliation of conquest. The genius of Alexander had planned its subjugation, but death prevented the realization of his vast, perhaps impracticable, design. The legions of Augustus, trained under the discipline of the greatest of the Cæsars, proved unequal to the task of triumphing over a region where the soil, the elements, and the valor of its defenders formed a combination invincible by human prowess. The Persians, for a period of insignificant duration, occupied the western and southern coasts, having previously expelled the Abyssinians, who had invaded and retained a portion of Yemen during the sixth century. No nation, however, was ever able to claim supremacy over any considerable portion of the Arabian Peninsula. For this immunity it was indebted not only to the natural obstacles which defied the advance and the maintenance of an invading army, but also to the superstitious fears with which cunning and credulity had surrounded its name. It was a land of mysterious portents and prodigies, whose borders were guarded by malignant demons; whose deserts, all but impenetrable to the boldest adventurer, were inhabited by cannibal giants and monstrous birds of prey that watched over treasures placed by evil spirits under the spell of enchantment. Every caravan that left Phœnicia for Central Arabia carried quantities of storax, which the Tyrian merchants declared was burnt in the neighborhood of the frankincense shrubs, that its offensive fumes might drive away the winged serpents which were their custodians. The climate was said to be so pestilential that slaves and criminals alone were employed to gather the precious gum, their liberty being conditional upon their success. These politic inventions, implicitly believed by the ignorant, while they insured to the shrewd traders of Phœnicia a monopoly of the valuable products of the Peninsula, exercised no inconsiderable influence over the popular mind of the ancients, and clothed the Desert with terrors which even the reputation and allurements of its prodigious wealth were unable entirely to overcome.

As a result of its exemption from foreign dominion, no other country has preserved the integrity of its customs, its language, and the personality of its inhabitants to such a degree as Arabia. It alone still presents a picture of the government and the domestic economy of patriarchal antiquity. Its manners are those which prevailed centuries before the time of Abraham. The wonderfully sonorous and flexible idiom of the Koran was already formed before the Bible or the Iliad was written. The absolute immobility of the Arabian in his native haunts, contrasted with his ready adaptation to diametrically opposite conditions elsewhere, is one of the most striking anomalies of human character. The influence of Greece and Rome, whose taste in art and maxims of government have left their traces wherever either the valor or the enterprise of those nations has been able to obtain a foothold, is not perceptible in the political or domestic history of Arabia. No ruins of any majestic structure raised by the master-hand of the Athenian or Roman architect have ever been discovered in the great Peninsula, the accounts of whose commercial wealth were matters of popular faith and wonder throughout the ancient world. And, what is probably a more conclusive indication of the permanent absence of foreign influence than any other, however plausible, no name with a Greek or Latin termination has survived in the dialects of those Arabian settlements most intimately associated with the trade of Europe for many centuries.

This inflexibility of national peculiarities becomes invaluable in tracing the causes of the decay and disruption of the great Moslem empires which subsequently dominated so large a portion of the globe. The ethnography of a people who have stamped their characteristics deeply upon succeeding ages; whose customs, laws, and language have, to a certain degree, survived their dominion; the analogy between the religious dogmas which they professed and those which have supplanted them; the play of passions, destructive or beneficent, exhibited by those rulers whom hereditary descent or the accident of fortune raised to supreme authority; the development of the transplanted race, its precocious maturity, the lasting effects of its intellectual supremacy, and its slow but inevitable decline, are circumstances well deserving the attentive scrutiny of the philosophical historian. The absence of reliable information renders impossible an accurate conception of the mental and physical traits of the Arab of two thousand years ago. But, as we know the extreme conservatism of Orientals, their pronounced aversion to change, the obstinate persistence of their traditions, and the general outlines of their character, we may with safety assume that the shepherd who now roams over the desert plateaus of Nejd and Oman is the intellectual counterpart of the Amalekite of the Bible, and that the Arab whose features are sculptured upon the eternal walls of Edfou and Karnak did not differ in any material respect from the predatory Bedouin of to-day. It is a strange anomaly in a land, the greater portion of which, either through the obduracy of Nature or the indolence of its inhabitants, had been for ages condemned to eternal sterility and isolated by sea and desert from contemporaneous civilization, to encounter a race whose genius was capable of at once adapting itself, with equal facility, to the formation and development of an agricultural system surpassing that of any other people, ancient or modern; to the invention of mechanical devices of marvellous ingenuity; to the solution of the most abstruse mathematical problems; to the perfection of a graceful and exquisite order of architecture, unique in design, infinite in detail, remarkable in execution, unrivalled in beauty of ornament; to the protracted investment of cities and the attainment and exercise of that proficiency in the intricate system of military tactics indispensable to success in the art of war; to the foundation and the preservation of empires. A long and tedious apprenticeship is usually required for the attainment to perfection in any of these accomplishments; but the versatile Arab seemed, by intuition, to be able to grasp them all, without previous experience or instruction. In literature, as well, was this pre-eminence of genius disclosed. Poetry was the sole form of literary manifestation appreciated by the Arabic mind; improvisation the only talent it deemed worthy of applause. Even among the most intelligent, nothing deserving of the name of history was preserved; and the genealogies upon which the Arabs prided themselves were merely interminable lists of barbarians of local or tribal celebrity, and dreary catalogues of idols. Yet their predatory hordes effected a great intellectual revolution in every country which submitted to their sway. In addition to their own memorable achievements, they developed and expanded, to the utmost, the mental faculties of their subjects and tributaries. By precept and example, they aroused the emulation and rewarded the efforts of all who struggled to escape from the fetters of ignorance which had been riveted by the superstition and prejudice of ages passed in ignominious servitude. Their conquests in the world of letters offer a far more noble title to renown than the laurels won on fields of appalling carnage or the prestige acquired by the subjugation of vast provinces and kingdoms. To the finest literary productions of modern times does this subtle intellectual power extend. The impress of Arabian genius can be detected in the novels of Boccaccio, in the romances of Cervantes, in the philosophy of Voltaire, in the “Principia” of Newton, in the tragedies of Shakspeare. Its domain is coincident with the boundaries of modern civilization, its influence imperishable in its character.

These far-reaching results are neither derived from spontaneous impulse nor are they of fortuitous origin. They indicate unmistakably a gradual and incessant advance through long periods of time. The inexorable laws which control the destiny of man require a transition through many connected forms, insensibly merging into each other, eventually to effect radical changes in the mental and physical characteristics of individuals and nations. The evolution of a race, like the development of architectural construction, is slow but progressive. The union between the foundation and the superstructure is evident, although the former may not at the first glance be visible. A great distance separates the barbaric sheik of pre-Islamic Arabia and the powerful and enlightened khalifs of Bagdad and Cordova. Yet both the Abbaside and the Ommeyade dynasties traced their lineage directly to the Bedouin robbers, who, each year, waylaid the Mecca caravan. There is no apparent resemblance between the rude structures of prehistoric antiquity and the matchless edifices erected by Athenian genius and skill. It cannot be disputed, however, that the unhewn and misshapen shaft of the cyclopean quarry, which had neither fluting nor volute, base nor capital, was the architectural prototype of the superb columns which adorned the temples of ancient Greece and Rome. In view of the rapid advance of the Arabs under Mohammed’s successors, we are forced to concede to their pagan ancestors not only intellectual powers of the highest order, apparently inconsistent with the degraded conditions of savage life, but also an extraordinary capacity for political organization and for the practical application of the principles of every art beneficial to mankind; talents unconsciously formed and dormant through countless generations; a fact which may well excite the admiration of every scholar, and of which history in previous or subsequent times affords no example.

The Arabs, despite their apparent barbarism, occupy no contemptible place in the annals of antiquity. They conquered Egypt, and, under the dynasty of the Shepherd Kings, governed that country for many centuries. One of their race, enlisted as a private soldier, was, by a series of rapid promotions, raised to the throne of the Roman empire. Their cavalry fought with conspicuous distinction in the imperial armies. More than once the valor of Bedouin mercenaries determined the fate of the Persian monarchy. They constituted the greater part of the forces of Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, in her desperate struggle with Aurelian. Under whatever banner they served, their courage and tenacity of purpose were never questioned. It must be admitted, however, that their fidelity was not beyond suspicion, and that, only too frequently, the name of Arab was a synonym of treachery.

The most remarkable peculiarity of Arabian life is its restless energy. The continuance of this condition from primeval times explains many of the distinctive traits so prominent in the character of the race. The well-known relation existing between commercial activity and civilized habits was powerless to change the existence of the nomadic Arab. His predatory instinct was always stronger than the attractions of sedentary comfort and opulence. Familiarity with Oriental luxury only increased his contempt for those who enjoyed it. His vagrant impulse carried him everywhere. He fearlessly penetrated the mysterious depths of the Libyan Desert. He served in the armies of Hindustan. He was enrolled in the Prætorian Guards, where his natural rapacity was gratified and stimulated by the donatives received for the ignominious sale of the imperial throne. For a considerable time before the advent of Mohammed, an increasing spirit of unrest had characterized the Arabs. With roving and predatory tastes, there could, of course, be no attachment to the soil,—a condition, indeed, regarded by the Bedouin as a badge of servitude. It required centuries to correct this prejudice; but no change of residence, no association with populations long civilized, or even the adoption of a new polity, the admonitions of a new religion, and the powerful attractions of affluence and ease, were ever able to eradicate the spirit of individual independence and tribal hostility which were the most prominent features of the Arabian character. These national peculiarities repeatedly threatened the existence of both the Eastern and Western Khalifates in the days of their greatest splendor. They intensified the bitterness which marked the struggles of rival princes for empire. They promoted and sustained the feuds of the nobility. They lurked under the tattered garments of the infuriated zealot. In the minds of the populace these feelings were scarcely ever concealed. They manifested themselves continually in personal quarrels, in the violence of mobs, in religious tumults, in insurrections, in the commission of frightful atrocities. They were potent factors in the destruction of mediæval Moslem civilization wherever established, and especially is this true of the Hispano-Arab domination, the most advanced, if not the most despotic, of them all. The temperament of the Arab, impetuous, fiery, vindictive, though admirably fitted for conquest, was deficient in those qualities of broad statesmanship and impartial discrimination vitally essential to the security and maintenance of government. Those who enjoyed the highest privileges of individual freedom were the mountaineers, who, in their inaccessible haunts, inured to privation, skilled in all manly exercises, and ignorant of luxury, clung with obstinate tenacity to their idols, and defied all attempts of the Prophet to convert or subdue them. Nor did Islam enlist her adherents in the purlieus of crowded cities. In Pagan as in Moslem Arabia, trade and religion were closely associated. The sympathies of the organized community were with the ancient religion, which contributed to its wealth, its employment, its personal profit, and its social distinction. The merchants and their numerous dependents looked coldly upon a revelation which menaced their revenues and their importance. The priesthood, recruited from the noblest families of the Peninsula, fostered this prejudice with an ardor born of instinctive hatred and professional pride. These two classes, therefore, contributed little to the propagation of the new doctrines; it was the wild hordes of the Desert that conquered the world.

The Himyarite inscriptions, recently deciphered, have established the fact that, at an unknown epoch, two migratory populations, one proceeding from the North, the other from the South, came together in their course, and were so blended by association and intermarriage as to form, in a short time, a single people. This rapid fusion points to a common racial derivation, and it is not improbable that the northern division were the Canaanites expelled by the sword of Joshua.

The very conditions of their existence, in early times, necessarily precluded the idea of systematic organization or concerted union among the vagabond tribes of Arabia. Their polity, if it may be dignified by that name, was essentially patriarchal. Chief’s and rulers were selected from families renowned for individual merit, noble descent, and antiquity of origin, and, in accordance with the paternal custom of the Orient, all retainers of the prince—who, in fact, were usually related to him—were in time enrolled as members of his household; and, in this way, fragments of certain tribes, drawn to a common centre by the ties of real or fancied kindred or through the fear of annihilation, acquired a great preponderance over their neighbors. Before the establishment of Mohammedan rule, there was no government, no code of laws, no superior authority either delegated to or assumed by the magistrate. Each family was independent; each member of it recognized no obligation to society except the protection of his clansmen. The instinct of self-preservation, the force of public opinion, and the apprehension of the encroachments of rival tribes were the only motives sufficiently powerful to effect a temporary union of those whose vital interests were threatened. The power of the sheik was nominal; his functions advisory rather than executive. His station was one of more honor than usefulness; of his own volition he could neither direct military operations, enforce obedience, reward merit, nor inflict punishment. The affairs of the tribe were administered by such of its members as were conspicuous for age, dignity, and wisdom. Even the decision of such a council was not imperative in cases where the general welfare was concerned; for, under such circumstances, the judgment of every personage of wealth, rank, or social distinction was consulted. Absolutism, so prominent a feature of Asiatic government, and carried to such an extreme by Mohammed’s successors, was thus unknown in ancient Arabia. Dominated by the tumultuous freedom of individual caprice, its isolated communities were not even subject to the ordinary legal restrictions imposed by the voice of democracy; and their control approached as near to anarchical license as was compatible with the bare preservation of society. Natural obstacles, such as the scarcity of water and the barrenness of the soil, added to long-inherited prejudice, traditional enmity, and difficulty of intercommunication, have always prevented the political and intellectual development of the Arabs in their native land. The persistence of his original institutions after the mighty revolutions elsewhere wrought by Islam prove conclusively that national regeneration of the Arab under the sky of the Desert is a practical impossibility.

The life of the Bedouin was passed in unremitting hostility. War was the normal condition of his existence; it supplied the sole incentives he deemed worthy of attention—the gratification of revenge, the acquisition of glory, the appropriation of the property of his neighbor. The indulgence of these passions, and especially of the ignoble propensity to rapine, and his cruelty, were his most conspicuous and discreditable characteristics. The occupation of robbery was in the eyes of the Arab rather honorable than otherwise, as it was intimately associated with the profession of arms. In a society without the resources of agriculture, manufactures, or commerce, violent means must be relied on for the sustenance of life. In the Desert the only available expedients to this end were the plunder of enemies and the blackmail of travellers. The total absence of organized government rendered the possession of property doubly precarious. Nowhere else was the fickleness of fortune so apparent. The attack of a hostile tribe might render the most opulent individual a pauper in a single night. No vigilance could prevent such a catastrophe in a region affording unlimited opportunities for surprise and ambuscade, where there was no title to the soil, where the wealth of a community consisted largely of flocks of sheep and herds of camels. Under circumstances where a man’s importance and position among his fellows were dependent upon his inclination to encounter danger and his capacity to elude detection in the pursuit of pillage, poverty became disgraceful. Constant apprehension bred distrust of strangers, until it became a predominant national trait. Where two parties of Bedouins, unknown to each other, met in the Desert, the stronger immediately attacked the weaker. A daring predatory enterprise conferred the highest popular distinction upon its hero. A great robber, who united the qualities of courage and duplicity, and who had amassed wealth by his exploits, was the idol of his tribe. The memory of the famous brigand Harami is even now cherished in the Hedjaz with an admiring veneration scarcely inferior to that conferred upon his countryman Mohammed.

The mental constitution of the ancient Arab presented many remarkable inconsistencies, most of which are still apparent in the character of his descendants. Brave even to temerity, he felt no compunction at the secret assassination of a foe. Professing reverence for age and relying for guidance upon the advice of the elders of his tribe, he did not hesitate to drive the old and infirm from the public feast. While the greatest renown attended the plunder of an encampment, the commission of a trifling theft made the perpetrator an object of universal detestation. He assisted the unfortunate and plundered the defenceless with equal alacrity. The exercise of a generous and unselfish hospitality was no bar to the pursuit of a guest after he had left the inviolable precincts of the camp. In many respects, however, the character of the Bedouin was eminently worthy of admiration. His courage was undisputed. He possessed a high sense of personal honor. The fugitive who solicited his protection, even though he were an enemy, was safe so long as he remained within the enclosure of his tent, and he espoused the cause of the unknown suppliant as if it were his own. After sunset, his blazing watch-fire, like a friendly beacon, guided the course of the belated wanderer over the desert sea. He disputed with his neighbors for the honor of entertaining the stranger, and the deepest reproach he could undergo was the imputation that he was deficient in the virtue of hospitality. His sense of chivalry, nurtured amidst the constant perils of an uncertain existence, was conspicuous in the respect and consideration he afterwards exhibited in the treatment of woman. His simplicity of manner and gravity of demeanor imparted an air of dignity to his appearance, which elicited the respect of those far superior to him in rank, education, and knowledge. Patient in adversity, he considered the display of grief as an unpardonable evidence of weakness. His love of liberty dominated his nature to an extent impossible of appreciation by those subject to the salutary restraints of civilized communities. The existence of many noble qualities in the character of the Arab, however, only rendered its defects the more glaring. His apparent imperturbability screened from the public gaze many vices and imperfections. Like all barbarians, his disposition was largely infantile and capricious, petulant, diverted by trifles, controlled by instinct rather than by reason, quick to take offence, and relentlessly vindictive. Of all beings he was pre-eminently the creature of impulse. His pride was inordinate, his rapacity insatiable. With him the prosecution of vengeance was a sacred duty, which took precedence of every moral and social obligation; and such was his enmity, that he regarded the forgiveness of a serious injury as the badge of a coward. An incorrigible braggart, he never hesitated to employ treachery when it would accomplish the purposes of valor. He practised cannibalism, and like the ferocious Scandinavians drank from the skulls of slaughtered victims. Participation in these horrid banquets was not confined to warriors; women also were present at them, and wore, with savage pride, necklaces and amulets composed of the ears, noses, and bones of the dead.

Under the pretext of preventing future dishonor, but really with a view to economy, under conditions of existence involving a perpetual struggle, he often buried his female children alive. It is said that Othman was never known to weep except when, at the burial of his little daughter, she reached up and caressingly wiped the dust of her grave from his beard. From such unspeakable atrocities as this did Mohammed deliver his countrymen.

The Arabs practised both polyandry and polygamy to an extent rarely countenanced by other barbarians. One woman, whose career would seem to be unique in the history of matrimonial achievement, was celebrated for having been the wife of forty husbands. In a society where communal marriage prevailed, the passion of jealousy was necessarily unknown. The Pagan Arab indulged to the utmost the vice of drunkenness, and prided himself upon his capacity to absorb great quantities of liquor—there were some Himyarite princes who obtained an unenviable immortality by drinking themselves to death. Gambling was so popular in the Desert that the Bedouin, like the ancient German, often staked his liberty, his most priceless possession, on the toss of a pebble. Like the Hebrew patriarchs, he contracted incestuous marriages. He gloried in the name of brigand, and regarded the capture of a caravan as the principal object of life. It was not unusual for him, after plundering the dead, to mutilate them with a brutal malignity that would disgrace an American Indian. He tested guilt or innocence by ordeals of fire and water, which he and his kinsman the Jew had inherited from a remote antiquity. The practice of licentious gallantry, universally prevalent in the Peninsula, and celebrated in many an amatory stanza of the Bedouin poet, was temporarily checked by the austere rule of Islam; but, reviving ere long, under the congenial skies of Spain and Sicily, spread northward, and, inseparably associated with deeds of chivalry and romantic adventure, infected, in time, the rude and comparatively virtuous barbarians of Europe.

An unusual degree of intelligence, a lively imagination, a vivid curiosity, a retentive memory, a childish love of the marvellous, distinguished the Arab of the Age of Ignorance from the other pastoral nations of Africa and Asia. Feuds between tribe and tribe, nourished by injuries mutually borne and inflicted for a hundred generations, intensified the ferocity of a nature which became, under such provocations, incapable of pity. Everything connected with the daily life of the warrior had a direct tendency to foster an already too violent inclination to deeds of blood. The war-horse had his biography; the sword of every famous chieftain had a name and a history. The sayings of the successful marauder, often uttered with epigrammatic terseness, passed into proverbs, and were quoted, with extravagant admiration, by his most remote descendants; his exploits, immortalized by the stirring verses of the poet, were recounted nightly by the camp-fires of his tribe. In case of the murder of a kinsman, no mourning was tolerated until ample vengeance had been taken for the crime. The execution of the savage law of blood-feud, while it contributed to stifle every sentiment of humanity where an hereditary foe was the offender, does not appear to have had any marked effect in increasing the fierceness of the character of the Arab in his contests with those against whom he had no special cause of enmity. Where tribal hostility was, however, a point of honor as well as a religious duty, the vendetta was prosecuted with implacable severity. No circumstance of gratitude or chivalric attachment, neither the memory of past favors nor the hope of future distinction, was permitted to interfere with its rigid enforcement. The right of revenge, originally descending to the fifth generation, passed by inheritance, and was, in fact, never lost, and seldom relinquished. A regular schedule of fines was recognized, dependent upon the age, rank, and social position of the person murdered; but no family that entertained a becoming idea of its own importance and of the dignity of its tribe would condescend to accept the stated number of camels which ancient prescription and common consent had established as the equivalent of a homicide. This barbarous custom applied to every soldier slain in honorable warfare, as fully as to the victim of the assassin’s dagger; and the wholesome dread of the consequences of a hard-fought conflict, where a score of lives might be exacted in return for every fallen enemy, usually rendered the encounters of the Arab comparatively bloodless. An extraordinary value therefore attached to human life in the Desert, where the killing of an individual might entail the extermination of a clan. Considering the bitter hostility evinced by many tribes towards one another, the consequences of animosity inherited for ages, and the continual opportunities for mutual destruction, with their insignificant results, we may, without hesitation, conclude that the law of blood-revenge, despite the idea of ferocity it conveys, has, in reality, been powerfully instrumental in the preservation of the Arab race.

The habits of the Arab were necessarily abstemious. The requirement of constant exertion to obtain the necessaries of life, the uncertain tenure of property, the menacing presence of danger, the poverty of the soil, the national prejudice against industrial occupations, were not conducive to indulgence in those vices which flourish most vigorously under the artificial conditions of an established civilization. The scanty harvests of the South were insufficient to maintain even the population of those thinly settled provinces. Among the products of the vegetable kingdom, the date was the principal reliance of the nomadic people of Arabia. Of this most valuable fruit a hundred varieties grew in the neighborhood of Medina alone. Its highly nutritious properties, its easy preservation, the convenience with which it could be transported for great distances, rendered it an article of food especially adapted to the denizen of those arid and unproductive regions in which it flourished, and which, without it, would have been depopulated. Even its seeds were an object of traffic, and were fed to horses and camels. With the Arabs, as with other nomadic races, a vegetable diet was resorted to only in case of necessity. The quantity of meat served at a repast was an index to the host’s importance as well as the measure of his hospitality. A brass caldron was considered as of only ordinary size when it would easily hold a sheep, and some were so large that a horseman could, without difficulty, eat from them without dismounting. The morsels served from these seething receptacles were proportioned to the vessels in which they were cooked and to the voracious appetites of those who consumed them. The belief, prevalent among barbarians, that the characteristics of an animal are transmitted with undiminished vigor to all who feed upon its flesh, was shared by the Arabs. As their favorite meat was that of the camel, they attributed to its use their irascible temper, a trait which is prominently developed in that beast, also noted among quadrupeds for its dogged obstinacy. In a land where barrenness so discouraged the labors of the husbandman and the shepherd, no object affording nutrition could be neglected, and even the insect world was called upon to contribute its share to the urgent necessities of humanity. Locusts, dried and salted, have always formed a staple article of diet among the poorer classes of Arabia, and, an important part of the larder of every camp, are sold in vast quantities in the markets of the Peninsula.

The differences and the prejudices of caste, the most serious impediments to progress, were unknown to the proud rovers of the Desert, where individual merit was the highest title to respect. The authority of the chief was founded on the consideration he had obtained among the members of his tribe rather than on the illustrious circumstances of his birth or the antiquity of his lineage. Age was an essential requisite to the attainment of official dignity, as indicative of the wisdom supposed to be the result of long experience. With the Bedouin, there was none of that greed of power whose indulgence so often disturbs the peace, and inflames the passions of societies in an advanced state of civilization. The sheik governed through the respect entertained for his character, through the influence of his manners, above all, through his relationship with his clansmen. The paternal sentiment was paramount among the Arabian people. They cherished the memory of their forefathers with peculiar respect. The right of sanctuary attached to their sepulchre; the tribal organization and domestic traditions of the Bedouin were derived from this feeling of ancestral veneration. Like other Asiatics, they considered a numerous family the greatest of distinctions; the father of ten sons was ennobled by a title of honor; and no nation attached more importance to the possession of phenomenal virility. In their treatment of women, a striking contrast exists, in numerous instances, between the Pagan and the later Arabians. With both, it is true, woman was generally a slave. Yet sometimes, in the Age of Ignorance, she was raised to official dignities, even to the throne itself; her opinion was solicited in momentous affairs of state; and in the rôle of diviner and sorceress she wielded a power, unlimited for good or evil, over her superstitious followers. Often gifted with rare poetic talent, she competed, not without distinction, for the coveted palm of literary excellence. Tradition has also handed down the names and achievements of certain intrepid amazons, who fought by the side of their husbands and brothers; and whose determined courage contributed, in a marked degree, to change the fortunes of more than one doubtful battle. But, as a rule, both before and after Mohammed, the advancement of the sex from a condition of servitude was resolutely discountenanced by the Arabs. In the Age of Ignorance, it was stigmatized by the ungallant epithet of “Nets of the Demon.” The sacred ties of blood, and the fact that with marriage woman did not renounce her hereditary privileges, could always command the assistance of her kinsmen, seek refuge among them, and be avenged by their valor in case of grievous personal injury, gave her a considerable degree of importance in the social system of Arabia. It is very evident that in early times polyandry prevailed everywhere in that country, an indication of a scarcity of females, and a custom always incident to a certain stage in the formation and development of society. Its prior existence is demonstrated by the vestiges of communal marriage to be traced to-day in remote portions of the Peninsula, and in the well authenticated tradition that female kinship was originally the rule in the Desert, the child belonging to the tribe and following the fortunes of the mother. Among the Bedouins, the only recognized methods of obtaining a wife were those of capture and purchase. The former was thoroughly congenial with the warlike instincts of a race whose possessions acquired an especial value as the result of martial prowess; the latter represented an indemnity for the possible loss of sons who, under other circumstances, would have become warriors of the maternal tribe. There was, however, no real difference between the lot of the bride who, as the prize of victory, was dragged shrieking from the folds of her tent, and that of the smiling victim whose beauty had been bartered for a hundred camels. Both were regarded as chattels, and descended with other personal property to the heir. As the population increased, and the means of livelihood became more difficult to procure, the appearance of a female child was looked upon as a calamity; infanticide grew common; and nothing but the hope of being able, at some future day, to add to his herd the camels of some prospective suitor, ever reconciled the mercenary Bedouin to the birth of a daughter.

The attainment to a high degree of civilization with all its demoralizing influence was not able to destroy the native politeness, the air of conscious dignity, the noble hospitality, and the courtly graces of manner which distinguished the fierce and untaught tribesman of the Desert. His sense of independence was not hampered by invidious distinctions of rank or inconvenient regulations of property. His intuitive knowledge of human nature, his rare susceptibility to every impression which can improve and develop the mind, his capacity to deal with the most difficult questions of policy, his willingness to encounter the most appalling dangers, were qualities which insured his success in the most distant countries and under the most adverse and discouraging conditions. Despite his readiness to profit by the superior knowledge of his adversaries, he entertained the most extravagant ideas of his own importance, and looked down upon all who were of different manners, religious faith, or nationality. His inordinate family pride preserved for the astonishment of subsequent generations the endless nomenclature of his progenitors; and, at the birth of Mohammed, the most obscure and poverty-stricken individual could name, with a fluency born of long practice and traditional inheritance, his ancestors for six hundred years. His language, wonderfully complex but flexible, offering to the purposes of the poet and the orator—by reason of its prodigal richness and inexhaustible variety—every resource of sentiment, pathos, and eloquence, yet so easily acquired that it was spoken by young children with grammatical correctness and fluency, he justly boasted as one of the most perfect idioms ever invented by man. In short, the Arab regarded himself as the highest exemplar of humanity; his arrogance revolted at the idea of matrimonial connections with races which he deemed inferior to his own; and the pre-eminence he claimed for himself and his countrymen was indicated by the prerogatives which he asserted Allah had vouchsafed to them alone of all nations; “that their turbans should be their diadems, their tents their houses, their swords their intrenchments, and their poems their laws.”

The pre-Islamitic religion of the Arabs was mainly a debasing idolatry polluted by human sacrifices, and ascending, by ill-defined gradations, from the lowest forms of fetichism to the adoration of the stars. Their faith was far from uniform, and almost every tribe had special objects of veneration and peculiar modes of worship. Some were absolutely destitute of the idea of a God; some grovelled before roughly-hewn blocks of stone; others worshipped trees and springs,—the most grateful gifts of nature in a parched and thirsty land; others, again, greeted with praise the rising sun as its beams illuminated the purple mists of the Desert, or bowed reverently at night before the glittering majesty of the heavens. The members of certain tribes were materialists; not a few accepted the metempsychosis; many were familiar with the philosophical creed of the Buddhist, which regarded death as the irrevocable end of all spiritual activity, the beginning of a state of absolute quiescence, of eternal and immutable rest. The majority of the Arab races, however, looked upon their idols as mediators between the Supreme Being and man. Hence they erected temples in their honor, named their children for them, made pilgrimages to their shrines, and solicited their good offices with precious gifts and offerings. The heavenly bodies were placed in the same category. Their intercession with the Deity was also invoked by frequent applications; and to their power, thus indirectly exercised, were attributed the most important as well as the most trivial occurrences of life, the benefits of fortune, the infliction of calamities, the mysterious and terrifying effects of natural phenomena. It is a superstition as old as the human race to imagine the universe to be peopled with mysterious beings, and the lives of men to be moulded by the beneficent or malignant influence of the stars. The worship of the Sun, the genial dispenser of light, of warmth, of health, in whose train follow the increase of flocks, the bursting of buds, the welcome sight of refreshing verdure, the author of all that is useful and attractive in every species of organic life, a worship which in ages of primeval simplicity has always most strongly appealed to the gratitude and veneration of man, was highly popular in Pagan Arabia. Classic historians have established the fact that it was at one time almost universal in the Peninsula, where the idol which was the terrestrial manifestation of that great luminary was designated by the appellation Nur-Allah, “The Light of God.” His authority was everywhere paramount, whether openly worshipped, represented by fire the great purifying agent, or exhibited under various symbols of force and power, which all nations, however separated, and differing in physical and mental characteristics, have, with wonderful unanimity, adopted as his peculiar emblems. Temples were also raised to the Moon, Sirius, Canopus, the Hyades, Mercury, and Jupiter. But of all the starry bodies none enjoyed greater favor, or was worshipped with more splendor, than Saturn. His attributes were often confounded by his votaries with those of his kindred divinities Mars and the Sun. It has been proved by the learned researches of Dozy, that the famous Kaaba was originally a shrine dedicated to that deity. He was the Baal of the Hebrews, and once their tutelary god as well as that of the Phœnicians—carried by the former during their sojourn in the wilderness, venerated by the latter in the magnificent temples of Sidon and Tyre. The extent of his worship in the East was, it might be said, coincident with the view of the brilliant planet by which he was represented in the tropical heavens. The giver of all material blessings, he was, in this capacity, invoked as the creator and preserver of terrestrial life; but he was also propitiated as the avenger of sacrilege and crime. Among different peoples he was adored under innumerable manifestations. The familiar word Israel is a synonym of Saturn; the Hebrew priests knew him as Sabbathai—whence is derived our Sabbath; and in Judea, as in Egypt, the first day of the week was dedicated to and named for him. In Arabia, this popular divinity was known as Hobal, a word indisputably derived from the Hebrew language. Occupying the most exalted position in the Arabic Pantheon, while his image was anthropomorphic, he was, in reality, a representative of the monotheistic principle. His name and his worship in the Peninsula were alike of Jewish origin. Antiquarian ingenuity and research have traced his various migrations from the eastern shore of the Mediterranean to the province of Hedjaz, and have elucidated certain obscure Scriptural texts relative to his shrine, his worship, and his festivals. Among the multitudinous divinities which claimed the reverence of the ancient Arabians was also the Hebrew Jehovah, adored under the form of a he-goat, sculptured in gold, as well as the profligate Venus, known to the Babylonians as Mylitta, and to the Phœnicians as Astarte. As a tribute to their eminence in the Christian world, the Virgin and the Child occupied a post of honor among the three hundred and sixty idols which crowded the sanctuary of Mecca. In the religious system of the Peninsula there was no mythology, a fact which perhaps contributed not a little to its speedy overthrow. But, though polytheistic to the last degree, the Arabs recognized a Supreme Being whose majesty was confined to no particular locality, to whom no altar was dedicated, and who, too awful to be directly addressed, could be approached only through his celestial ministers the stars. This was the great Al-Lah, whose name, corresponding to the El and the Elohim of the Jews, was pre-eminent in honor and dignity, both in the Age of Ignorance and in the Age of Islam. The most superstitious races of men, and those that are the highest in intelligence among the most civilized, have and require no shrines. In Arabia the whole Desert was the temple of the Supreme God.

Associated with the most exalted ideas of divine power were to be found superstitions usually encountered only in the primitive epochs of society. The wide-spread worship of the generative forces of nature, whose remaining monuments seem to the uninstructed sense of our cavilling age mere evidences of a depraved imagination, had its share of public favor in Arabia, where the male and female principles were adored under various symbolical forms. Many of these have survived in the monoliths scattered throughout the Peninsula, whose towering masses are regarded, even by devout Moslems, with no small degree of superstitious awe. The stone-circles and menhirs mentioned by travellers as existing in Oman and Nedjd are evidently of the same general type as those of Carnac and Stonehenge, and, from the descriptions given of them, of scarcely inferior dimensions, and perhaps of still higher antiquity. It is a singular circumstance, that gigantic structures, bearing such a common resemblance as to suggest that they were erected by the same race of builders and designed for similar purposes, should be found in countries so different in physical features, climate, inhabitants, religious traditions, language, and history, as Central Arabia and Western Europe.

Like other nations of ancient times, the Arabs invested certain trees with a sacred character, a custom indicative of the lingering influence of phallicism; a worship whose original principles, long forgotten in the Peninsula, survived only in the exhibition of its peculiar emblems and in the practice of a gross and shameless immorality. Among the Pagan Arabs, no form of superstition was too debasing to claim its votaries. They raised altars to fire. They attributed supernatural powers to the crocodile and the serpent. Each tent had its image; every hovel of sun-dried bricks was filled with tutelary deities. Shapeless masses of stone, which tradition had associated with remarkable events or endowed with celestial origin, were approached with a reverence not vouchsafed to idols of the most costly materials and elaborate workmanship. Of these blocks, which partook of the nature of the fetich, the black were sacred to the Sun, the white to the Moon. In the Pagan world two of the former were especially famous; over one was erected a splendid temple on the mountain near Emesa in Syria, whence the infamous Roman emperor Heliogabalus derived his name; the other was built into the wall of the Kaaba of Mecca. The latter was the most remarkable object of the kind known to antiquity. A plain fragment of basalt, seven inches in diameter, whose composition is apparently identical with that of a neighboring mountain, it had acquired, in the eyes of the people of Arabia, a sanctity not shared by any other emblem of idolatrous worship. It was probably, in its origin, a phallic symbol, and stood alone in an open square of the city, ages preceding the building of the Kaaba, an event which tradition has assigned to a date four hundred years before the foundation of the temple of Solomon. Thus invested with the sanction of immemorial prescription and the virtues of a miraculous relic, it has received the reverent homage of millions upon millions of idolaters and Moslems. It has survived the accidents of conquest, of iconoclasm, of conflagration. The silver bands which unite its fragments bear witness to the vicissitudes and rough usage to which it has been subjected. The healing power it was supposed to possess attracted the sick and the disabled from regions far beyond the limits of Arabia. It was the starting-point of ceremonial and pilgrimage. It imparted its virtues to the Kaaba, that temple where alone, in all the Peninsula, hereditary feuds were suspended; where violence was forgotten; where rudeness gave way to courtesy; where the temporary surrender of individual freedom, and the voluntary relinquishment of tribal animosity, seemed to announce the existence of national sentiment and the possibility of national union. The recognition by Mohammed of the claims of the Black Stone and the Kaaba—the ancient temple of Saturn—to public veneration, in a creed otherwise uncompromisingly hostile to idolatry, demonstrated the high estimation in which they were held by the Arabs. The latter, with their numerous shrines, their swarms of deities, their elaborate paraphernalia of worship and imposture, were, however, far from being a religious people. They evinced a decided aversion to metaphysics. Their ideas of personal liberty were not consistent with unquestioning submission to the tyranny of a priesthood. Their native intelligence rendered them. skeptical; their nomadic habits were unfavorable to the maintenance of a permanent ecclesiastical establishment. The multiplicity of deities had, as is invariably the case, weakened the faith of the masses in any. The genuine piety of a people is always in an inverse ratio to the number of its gods.

The early Arabians practised magic and divination, had recourse to oracles, maintained wizards and sorcerers—charlatans whose ascendency was largely due to the narcotics they made use of to open a pretended communication with the spirit world. Amulets were universally worn as a protection against the baneful consequences of the evil eye. Hand in hand with presages and magical arts, auguries, and incantations, came the incipient doctrine of the influence of the planets upon mineral substances, as well as a belief in their power to affect the destiny and welfare of man; theories which, eventually developing into the vain pursuits of alchemy and judicial astrology, indicate an acquaintance with the principles of science only acquired by much study and repeated experiments. The practice of these rites, so severely reprobated in the Koran, was associated in the minds of the people with the ceremonies of public worship during the age of polytheism. The words altar and talisman are practically synonymous in Arabic, a fact which discloses the intimate alliance originally existing between divination, sorcery, and religion in the Peninsula.

Human sacrifices, so repugnant to all our ideas of piety and justice, but common to nations of Semitic origin, were of frequent occurrence among the Arabs before Mohammed. The mode of death was by fire, which removed every earthly impurity; but it was only in the fulfilment of a solemn vow, on an occasion of national rejoicing, or to avert some impending calamity, that such a costly expiation was exacted. The Israelites, allied to the Arabs by the ties of consanguinity, and by similar religious conceptions, had also long been familiar with these revolting and cruel rites; instances of whose observance will at once suggest themselves to all who are familiar with the Pentateuch.

The Hebrew has always exerted a remarkable influence upon the public sentiment, the religious faith, and the foreign and domestic relations of the inhabitants of Arabia. A great analogy exists between the languages of the two nations, and the Hebrew alphabet was used by the prehistoric Arabs. It is believed by many Oriental scholars that Israel was not the founder of the people who bear his name; that the twelve tribes have a mystic relation to certain of the heavenly bodies or to the months of the year; and it is known that the word Keturah means simply “frankincense.” No doubt now exists that the Jew and the Arab are of common ancestry. For a period of twenty-five hundred years before the Hegira the former had been established in Yemen. The trade of that kingdom, with all its vast ramifications, was in his hands. His power enabled him constantly to dictate the policy of its sovereigns.

His worship, equally idolatrous with that of the Bedouin—for he was the descendant of the Simeonites, against whom, among others, the anathemas of the Bible were directed—surpassed the latter in the splendor of its appointments and the insolence of its priests. In a land where toleration was otherwise universal, he was enabled to persecute, with implacable enmity, Christian exiles, whom even the rapacity of the desert freebooter had spared. The rich settlements of northwestern Arabia were, to all intents and purposes, Jewish colonies. In the barren and inhospitable region of the Hedjaz, the Jew founded the towns of Medina and Mecca. In such a congenial atmosphere, the superstitions of Asia Minor obtained a ready acceptance. He established the worship of Baal, the most renowned of the Phœnician divinities. He introduced the rite of circumcision, hitherto unknown in Arabia. He communicated his idolatrous observances to the population of the country which had offered him a refuge. He gave a name to its principal city, for the word Mecca is Hebrew, signifying “Great Field of Battle;” the Pagan ceremonial of the Hedjaz can be traced to Palestine, and the Kaaba was originally known as Beth-El, “The House of God.” Quick to recognize the advantages to be derived by commerce from religious pilgrimage, he made that city the centre of national devotion as well as the chief distributing point of the vast trade of Europe, Asia Minor, Ethiopia, and India. The excellent commercial situation of Mecca, near the Red Sea and on the great caravan highway connecting Syria and Yemen, could scarcely compensate, however, for the serious physical disadvantages which unfriendly nature had imposed upon it. Its houses were crowded into a narrow valley two miles long by only nine hundred feet wide. The rays of a vertical sun beat pitilessly down upon a landscape destitute of verdure. Water, the most priceless of blessings in the Desert, was scarce and unpalatable. A salt effervescence covered the neighboring plains. The seasons were irregular; storms were violent; the coast of the Hedjaz possessed the unenviable reputation of being one of the most pestilential in the world. The city was dependent upon trade for the necessaries of life, and the unexpected delay of the caravan often menaced the population with famine. Yet, with all these drawbacks, the commerce of Mecca flourished almost beyond precedent. Caravans of more than two thousand camels were no uncommon sight in its narrow streets. Each of these beasts of burden carried a load of four hundred pounds of rare and costly commodities,—silks, spices, ivory, gold-dust, and perfumes. The annual exports of the town in the closing days of Pagan ascendency reached the enormous sum of fifteen million dollars, half of which was profit. Not the least of the sources of gain to the people of Mecca were the valuable offerings left by pilgrims and merchants in their temples. For a distance of leagues the ground was holy, and all who trod upon it could claim the right of sanctuary. The blood of neither man nor beast could be shed within these sacred precincts without incurring the imputation of sacrilege and the punishment of death. There was no traveller, from whatever country he came, who could not find, among the innumerable idols of the Kaaba, a familiar divinity upon whom to bestow the tribute of his devotion or gratitude. Of the immense profits resulting from the politic combination of traffic and superstition, the Hebrew exacted the lion’s share. His rulers met each day at the Kaaba to exchange views on finance and theology. The heathen legends of Palestine were incorporated into the new system, with the astral worship of the Sabeans and the polytheism of the aboriginal inhabitants of the Desert, itself derived from a thousand different and uncertain sources. The monotheism of Israel was not recognized by the tribe of Simeon, which had been driven into exile long before the Pentateuch was written. Ideas thus blended in the popular mind for centuries might, under favorable conditions, be modified, but never obliterated. There is no question that Islam is largely Hebrew in origin, although a considerable number of its ceremonies can be deduced from the customs of Pagan Arabia. In their migrations, which closed with the settlement of the Hedjaz, the Jews, while wandering far, had at last returned to the cradle of their race.

The arbitrary rules of ceremonial cleanliness; the exclusion of blood from the precincts of the temple; the classification of certain animals as “holy,” which an error of the translator has transformed into “unclean;” the penalties for many offences; the adoration of Phœnician divinities; the nomenclature disclosed by family genealogies; the correspondence in meaning of many terms used in their languages—peculiarities common to both the Arab and the Jew—go farther to prove an intimate relationship between the two races than the uncertainties of tradition or the association of neighborhood would tend to establish. The antipathy to the Hebrew, subsequently so bitter among Mohammedans, did not exist in ancient Arabia. The Jew served with distinction in the armies of Khaled and Amru. Mutual aversion, however great in subsequent times, was never sufficient to induce the Israelite to destroy those whom he regarded as his kinsmen. As his myths had formed the basis of a new religion, his enterprise and assistance contributed, in no insignificant degree, to the foundation of a new and magnificent empire. He guided the councils of the most renowned Mohammedan princes. Without the dogmas he furnished, the history of Islam would never have been written. Without the suggestions he voluntarily offered, and the treasure he poured into the Moslem camps, the conquest of Spain could never have been achieved. The fairest of Mussulman writers have rarely failed to acknowledge the obligations of their countrymen to an unfortunate race which the prejudices of nearly twenty centuries have subjected to universal proscription.

Christianity made no progress in Arabia until after its political alliance with Constantine had imparted such a tremendous impulse to the dissemination of its doctrines. The latter do not seem to be adapted to the Asiatic mind, and have never been able either to appeal to the reason or to arouse the enthusiasm of nations of Semitic blood. It offered little that was congenial with, and much that was abhorrent to, the lax and tolerant code of the independent and polytheistic rovers of the Desert. At the birth of Mohammed it had already, for four centuries, been established in the Peninsula, and still, in the very shadow of its temples, the mocking Arab bowed before his thousand gods. The principles of the Ebionite sect, which prevailed in the Arabian churches, so far from attracting the curiosity or awakening the reverence of the sarcastic Bedouin, only served to excite his ridicule. The sublime truths of the religion of the Bible, the eloquence of its teachers, the piety of its saints, the pomp of its ritual, the promises and threats of its revelation, were lost upon the reckless freebooters, devoted to sensual pleasures, to escapades of gallantry, to the generous rivalry of poesy, to daring feats of arms. The only mark of attention its adherents received was their classification with the despised Hebrew as Ahl-al-Kitab, “The People of the Book.” In its adaptability to the requirements and the mental capacity of the multitude, it was ill-fitted to cope with the religion that eventually supplanted it. On one side were the incomprehensible dogmas of a debased Christianity, indispensable to its acceptance; on the other, the simplicity of the profession of Islam, which even a child could understand. For these reasons it made comparatively few proselytes in the Peninsula, and at no time was acknowledged over any considerable area, except during the short period which intervened between the Abyssinian conquest of Yemen and the rise of Mohammedanism.

Many of the rites and customs adopted by the great Lawgiver, or preserved by his followers and generally regarded as peculiar to Islam, antedated the Koran by centuries. The Mohammedan attitudes of worship are the same as those depicted upon the eternal monuments of the Pharaohs. The heathen pilgrims, clad in the Ihram, or sacred garment, seven times made the circuit of the Kaaba; embraced the Black Stone; ran the courses between the holy stations of Al-Safa and Al-Marwa; cast stones in the valley of Mina; performed the ancient duties of sacrifice and local pilgrimage, and were systematically plundered by the greedy and scoffing Meccans, just as all good Moslem pilgrims are to-day. The primitive Arabs inculcated the duty of personal cleanliness by frequent ablution. They shaved their heads, and used the depilatory for the removal of superfluous hair from the body. Like the Egyptians, they stained their hands and feet with henna, and blackened their eyelids with antimony. They removed their sandals, as Moses did, when they stood on holy ground. They scrupulously abstained from certain kinds of food, and their actions were often governed by regulations practically identical, in their general character, with those prescribed by the canons of Jewish and Moslem law.

The spirit of Arabian genius, destined in subsequent ages to effect such a revolution in the literary and scientific history of the world, had in the sixth century of the Christian era disclosed no indications of its gigantic powers. No condition of existence could be less suggestive of a capacity for intellectual achievement than that whose main dependence was violence and plunder. The Arab of that epoch had no written records save a few obscure inscriptions in the Himyarite dialect, which have been deciphered by the plodding industry of modern scholars, and are, for the most part, epitaphs. Traditions, modified or corrupted by the vanity or the prejudice of each successive generation, were the sole and uncertain reliance of the chronicler. The power of memory by which these were retained and transmitted from an unknown antiquity seems absolutely miraculous and incredible.

Although destitute of authentic history, and even unskilled in the common arts by which a nation’s glory may be perpetuated, the early Arab excelled in a species of literary composition in which barbarian races have always exhibited the greatest proficiency. A talent for poetry, which invariably attains its highest development among those least exposed to the practical ideas and refined vices of civilization, was considered by the Bedouin as the most noble of human accomplishments. His temperament, his situation, his pursuits, rendered him peculiarly susceptible to the charms of the Muse. His spirit was impetuous, his invention inexhaustible, his imagination riotous, his enthusiasm unbounded. From an abnormally sensitive nervous organization which nature had bestowed upon him, on occasions of prolonged mental excitement often proceeded an hysterical frenzy, a state declared by the most renowned of poets to be indispensable for perfection in his art. The scenery of the Desert; its impressive solitudes; the enchanting illusions of the mirage; the magnificent constellations of the tropical heavens; the life of incessant peril; the exploits of romantic gallantry; the nocturnal excursion,—the surprise, the battle, the retreat, the rescue,—these all stimulated the imaginative faculty of the Arab, and urged him to the cultivation of a talent which might transmit to posterity events whose immortality was at once his personal title to honor, the pastime of his camp-fire, and the glory of his tribe. In the means at his disposal the poet enjoyed a rare, almost a unique advantage. The energy and softness of the Arabian language, its melodious character, the abundance and variety of its metaphors, render it peculiarly available as the vehicle of poetic sentiment. There is perhaps no idiom which lends itself with such facility to the construction of rhyme; for its very prose is frequently musical. The researches of modern philology have brought to the notice of Europe the complexity and perfection of its grammatical construction, the richness of its vocabulary, its boundless scope and graceful imagery. Most appropriately did the old philosopher, Mohammed-al-Damiri, referring to the native eloquence and exuberant diction of his countrymen, exclaim: “Wisdom hath lighted on three things,—the brain of the Franks, the hands of the Chinese, and the tongues of the Arabs.”

The poetry of the Arabs is even more obscure in its origin than the primitive history of their race. Without the assistance of writing, no literature, however popular, can maintain its integrity for even a single generation. Even the phenomenal memory of that people—a gift so universal as not to elicit comment among them, and which was strengthened by the daily rehearsal of favorite compositions—could only imperfectly supply the place of permanent and authentic records. The matter of the Arabian poems was therefore constantly changing, while the subjects and versification remained the same. Their form was generally that of the dramatic pastoral; sometimes the elegiac ode, which offered an opportunity for the enumeration of the virtues of the deceased and, incidentally, of the achievements of his tribe, was adopted. The genius of the pre-Islamitic poet never attempted the epic, which so often profits by the inexhaustible resources of the fabulous; and, although surrounded by an atmosphere eminently favorable to the inspiration of such productions, it does not seem to have had an adequate conception of them. Its representations exhibited to the enraptured listener the stirring events of his adventurous life, which his pride taught him to regard as vastly superior, in all that promotes the dignity of humanity, to the corrupt and inert existence of civilization. The universal possession of the poetic faculty was one of the peculiarities of the Arab nation. Old and young alike seemed gifted with it. The rules of prosody, and even the simplest canons of metrical composition, were unknown. Yet such was the instinctive perception of rhythmical correctness, that the versification of the most humble was characterized by propriety and elegance, qualities which tended to enhance the fierce enthusiasm, the sublimity of thought, the touching pathos, the burning passion, which pervade the noble poems of the Desert. Many of the latter bear a striking resemblance to the Song of Solomon; some are remarkable for their rhapsodies; others for their weighty and sententious wisdom; others again for their sparkling wit and pointed epigrams. The seven poems called Moallakat, “The Suspended,”—a word of doubtful significance so far as its relation to these productions is concerned—have always been considered the masterpieces of the ancient Arabs, and form the principal source from which our ideas of their attainments in the art of poetry must be derived. Popular credulity ascribed the name of these compositions to their presumed suspension in the Kaaba as evidence of the triumphs of their authors over all competitors; the more rational conjecture, however, connects the title of Moallakat with a necklace or pendant, of which each poem formed a jewel, a figurative mode of designating literary works among Orientals, and one especially affected by poets and historians. The entire body of tradition, combined with facts accumulated by subsequent writers of every race and creed, does not afford such a thorough insight into the public and domestic life, the prevailing sentiments and prejudices, the habits and customs of the inhabitants of the Peninsula, as do the Moallakat. They enable us partially to reconstruct the political and religious systems of the early Arabians, and to establish, by comparison, their identity with the conditions of modern existence, in localities where the sword of Islam has never been able to exterminate the detested practice of idolatry. They place before us, in all its impressiveness, the silent majesty of the Desert, its dazzling sky, its waves of quivering vapor, its interminable waste of sand; they pass in review the indolent life of the camp, varied only by a nocturnal alarm or by some daring intrigue; they relate the exciting scenes of the foray; they delineate with erotic freedom the charms of the lovely Bedouin maid; they describe the fate of the female prisoner whose captivity was often the result of artifice or barter; they rehearse the midnight march under the starry firmament, which in the florid language of the East “appeared like the folds of a silken sash variously decked with gems.” Nor is the excellence of the Moallakat confined to mere description. The proud boast of exploits not unworthy of the Age of Chivalry, which, in fact, received its inspiration from this source; the sacred duties of a lavish hospitality; the rare qualities of a favorite horse or camel; the absorbing passion of love, its perils and its pleasures; the Herculean feats of virile manhood,—these were the chosen themes of the Arab poet. His verses abound in moral precepts and philosophical apothegms, conveying lessons of worldly wisdom which recall, in both their phraseology and their profound acquaintance with human nature, the Suras of the Koran and the Proverbs of Solomon. In addition to maxims of a moral tone, scattered through these productions, they exhibit, on the other hand, much that is repulsive, cruel, and barbarous. Epicureanism is, however, the prominent characteristic of the Moallakat, as, indeed, it is of all primitive Arabic poems which have descended to us. The charms of wine and women, and an indulgence in the pleasures of the banquet to the extreme limit of bacchanalian revelry, are everywhere celebrated with a license worthy of the grossest couplets of Catullus and Martial. In the relation of scenes of intrigue and midnight assignation, often laid in the camp of a hostile tribe, where discovery would have led to instant death, the adventurous spirit of the lover is deemed worthy to rank with that which sustains the hero in the front of battle. The most fulsome adulation characterizes the homage tendered by the ardent lover to the object of his idolatry. Modern fastidiousness would not tolerate the descriptions given by the poet of the physical perfections of his lady-love in all their circumstantial details; though translations exist, they are mere paraphrases; and the voluptuous images of the poet’s fancy still remain discreetly hidden in the obscurity of the original idiom.

There is much similarity and repetition in Arab poetry, which the interpolations and substitutions inevitable among a people dependent for the preservation of their literature upon oral tradition will hardly account for.

The existence of the Bedouin was bounded by a narrow horizon, the Desert was his world. Its familiar objects and localities, which never changed; the deeds which they recalled; the hopes which they inspired; the memory of ancestral renown with which they were associated, suggested the topics of his song. The haughtiness which was one of his most offensive characteristics, and forbade his permanent alliance or his intermarriage with other races, strengthened the feelings of reserve which had been a national peculiarity for countless generations. His ideas, his aspirations, his joys, his sorrows, evoked by the monotonous circumstances of his environment, were little subject to deviation during the course of centuries. While his religion was a compound of all degrees of fetichism, idolatry, and astral worship, his poetry was original, pure, artless, and natural. His aptitude for versification was disclosed by the most trivial occurrences of life. A rhyming stanza, which set forth an appropriate sentiment, was often the reply to an ordinary question. Where allusion was made to an historical incident, the speaker was often challenged to confirm his statement by the recitation of an original verse, or by an apt poetical quotation, as the most reliable authority. The quick perception of the Arab was shown by his ability to finish instantly a couplet corresponding in sense and measure with a line repeated by a competitor. Its general similarity to all others renders the assignment of any Arabic poem to a certain epoch impossible, for the natural taste has never varied, and a composition that was popular three hundred years before the Hegira would be equally acceptable to-day to the mountain tribes of Central Arabia.

In the opening lines of most Arabic poems, and in those of the Moallakat especially, there is a dearth of individuality, and a common resemblance which would almost suggest that they had been written by the same person. The purity of style which characterizes the latter was, however, universally admitted; they were the recognized standards of grammatical correctness; they were consulted whenever a dispute arose concerning the meaning of a word or the construction of a sentence in later authors was in doubt; and among Mohammedans the authority of those Pagan compositions was never entirely superseded even by that of the Koran, whose sublimity of thought and elegance of diction were reverently ascribed to the direct inspiration of God.

We owe the survival of the Moallakat to the capricious taste of some self-appointed critic, who selected them from a number of poems with which he was familiar; and, through his arbitrary choice, we are deprived of the opportunity of forming an opinion of the others which his rejection has tacitly pronounced inferior. We know nothing of his qualifications for such a task, and are even ignorant of his name; but, from the remaining fragments of these productions, we may safely conclude that some of them, at least, were as fully entitled to preservation as the seven more fortunate ones which have descended to posterity.

It is a remarkable fact that no Arabic poem shows traces of Hebrew influence or contains ideas borrowed from either the Scriptures or the Talmud. The wealth and political power of the Jews; their intimate association with the nomadic tribes of the Peninsula; a close similarity of traditions, customs, and language, produced no perceptible effect upon the prehistoric literature of the Arabs. The Hebrews of Arabia, nevertheless, had their poets, whose productions, on the other hand, exhibit a marked coincidence of thought and style with those of their Arab kinsmen. Their sentiments are lofty and admirable, their language pure, and their merit, while inferior to that of the Moallakat, is still far from contemptible. The Book of Job, which has no apparent connection with the rest of the Scriptures, has been pronounced by competent critics a translation of an Arabic poem.

Improvisation, a talent possessed only by those endowed with unusual readiness of perception, a lively imagination, and an inexhaustible command of language, was practised with great success by the itinerant poets of Arabia. From their auditors, a couplet happily applied, by the inspiration of the moment, to some well-known event, elicited far more applause than efforts, however meritorious, which had cost days of arduous labor. This art of extemporaneous composition, which, when thoroughly developed, implies the possession of extraordinary mental ability, carried into Europe by the Moslems, and long employed by the troubadours, now survives only among the lowest class of the Italian peasantry. It is, in our day, most difficult to determine what degree of authenticity may properly be ascribed to the poetry of the ancient Arabs, none of which ascends to a higher antiquity than two hundred years before the Hegira. The unreliability of oral tradition, the variety of dialects, the frequent substitutions of modern phraseology, the bad faith, interpolations, and mistakes of unscrupulous commentators, the corruption and suppression of passages through tribal prejudice—all of these causes have had their share in effecting the gradual deterioration of the grand and stirring poems of Arabia.

It is impossible for us to appreciate the influence exercised by those who had attained to eminence in the poetic art over their imaginative and passionate countrymen. The Arab bard was without exception the most important personage of his tribe. Wealth, rank, beauty, personal popularity, military distinction alike paid tribute to his genius. To his talent for improvisation and versification, he often united the threefold character of statesman, warrior, and knight-errant, and thus became the model of his associates, the idol of the fair sex, and the terror of his enemies, who were as sensitive to the poisoned shafts of his satire as to the keenness of his sword. The most famous of these rhyming paladins, and the author of one of the Moallakat, whose life and achievements have been made the subject of a romance which approaches more nearly to the nature of an epic than any other production in the Arabic language, was Antar. By instinct and training a Bedouin, he was, however, of Arab blood only on his father’s side, his mother having been an Abyssinian slave. According to the custom of his country, he shared her lot until his bravery in battle induced his father to emancipate him. His amatory exploits, as well as his daring enterprises against the enemy, made him the admiration of the fiery Arabian youth. It was the regret of Mohammed, often expressed, that he had never seen this knight-errant of the Desert, who shrank from no danger, however appalling, who redressed the wrongs of woman, who restored the property of the plundered, and whose favorite maxim was, “Bear not malice, for of malice good never came.”

The unbridled license of the Arabian poet offers a curious commentary on national manners. The most exalted dignity, the sacred attributes of the gods, the pride of opulence, the delicacy of the sex, were not exempt from the attacks of his venom and sarcasm. He exposed with relentless severity the frailties of the wife and daughters of the sheik. He boasted of his own intrigues with a shameless audacity which, under more refined social conditions, could only be atoned for with blood. The immunity he enjoyed was one of the prerogatives of his calling. A certain sacredness of character was believed to attach to the latter by reason of the demoniac possession to which was popularly attributed the inspiration of the poetic faculty. His verses abounded in chivalrous sentiments, but uniformly ignored the claims of religion to the veneration of mankind. No beautiful mythology, like that of ancient Greece, was at hand to prompt the efforts of his muse. The maxims of the luxurious Epicurean were those that exerted the greatest power over his imagination and his life. An idea may be formed of the influence of poetry. on the public mind when we remember that the Koreish in vain attempted to bribe the pagan bard Ascha to deliver a panegyric on Mohammed at the commencement of the latter’s career, and, unable to secure his compliance, succeeded with much difficulty in purchasing his neutrality and silence at the expense of a hundred camels. The Prophet was so sensitive to the keen thrusts of the satirist, that when Mecca was captured and a general amnesty proclaimed, one of the four unfortunates whom he expressly excluded from this act of clemency was an obscure poet, Habbar-Ibn-Aswad by name, who had published a lampoon against him. The Arabian bard, like his literary descendant the troubadour, was attended by minstrels who chanted his verses, often to the accompaniment of musical instruments. The latter vocation, regarded as degrading by the Bedouin, was always exercised by a slave.

Islamism, while in other directions it zealously promoted the intellectual development of its adherents, fell like a blight upon the poetic taste and genius of Arabia. The dreams of the poet disappeared before the stern fanaticism of the soldier, who had no time for rhapsodies, and cared for nothing save indulgence in rapine, the acquisition of empire, and the extension of the Faith.

It is now generally admitted that the literary contests said to have taken place during the annual fair at Okhad, where, from poems read before an immense concourse, the one to be suspended in the Kaaba was selected, are apocryphal. Tribes of vagrant robbers who passed ten months of the year in plundering their neighbors would hardly consent to spend the other two in an orderly assembly, composed mainly of their enemies, in determining by a popular vote the comparative merit of their respective poets. The settlement of such rival claims for intellectual precedency by the voice of the people implies a degree of culture and critical acumen certainly not possessed by the Arabs of that age. This idle tale has doubtless been suggested by the literary exhibitions of the Olympian games, and is perhaps indebted to the imagination of some garrulous and mendacious Greek for its origin. It is, however, unquestionable that the poet, as well as the story-teller—that other important personage in the East—was in high favor at all the fairs and assemblies of Arabia. The mixed multitude which, impelled by motives partly mercenary, partly religious, collected on these occasions, and in its hours of leisure listened to the verses of the poet, constantly promoted his inspiration and refined his lays by the hope of applause, the fear of censure, the collision with foreigners, and the powerful influence of tribal emulation.

The later history of the Arabs is decked with all the gorgeous imagery of the East. The fascinations of romance invest and embellish it. With the commonplace facts incident to the various stages of national progress are interwoven narratives of indisputable truth, but which, in their demands upon human credulity, almost surpass the fabulous legends of chivalry or the enchanting tales of Scheherezade. The primitive life of the Arabian people previous to the advent of Mohammed offered no indication of their extraordinary capability for improvement. Commercial intercourse with other nations for ages had, however, enlarged their experience, expanded their faculties, and aroused their ambition. The caravan winding amidst the lonely sand-hills of the Desert—the precursor of those great expeditions which subsequently interchanged the commodities of Asia Minor, Egypt, Andalusia, and India—was also the more important agent of science, of refinement, of civilization. It increased the sum of geographical and historical knowledge. It familiarized the trader and his customers with the manners, the laws, the social systems, the mechanical skill, the arts, and the inventions of the most enterprising nations of the globe. These associations assisted in no small degree to generate the practical utility which, the most important feature of Arab learning, afterwards conferred such substantial blessings on mankind. The phenomenal advance of the race to maturity, impossible without previous preparation, was stimulated by perpetual wars and excitement. Less than one hundred and twenty years intervened between the vagabondage and ignorance of the Desert and the stability and intellectual culture of the great Abbaside and Ommeyade capitals. The career of the Arab was too rapid to be permanent. In four generations it had covered the ground ordinarily traversed in twenty. Its delusive splendor concealed the decay which was coincident with the era of its greatest prosperity. The same causes which facilitated the foundation and advancement of his power and culture were active during their decline, and contributed to their ultimate destruction.

The statement may appear paradoxical, in view of the acknowledged influence of mercantile associations upon the faculties of the human mind; but a certain degree of isolation seems to be necessary, at least in tropical and semi-tropical regions, for the complete development of the arts of civilization; and these arts have usually attained their highest perfection among nations which inhabit peninsulas. Egypt and China, whose reliance was entirely upon their own resources, were the most exclusive of nations in the ancient world, as were Mexico and Peru in the modern. The vast majority of the populations of India, Japan, and Spain had but little intercourse with those outside their boundaries, which were defended by stormy and mysterious seas. In no other countries have the powers of the human intellect, in the creation of all that is grand and imposing, of all that is beautiful, of all that is artistic, of all that contributes to the benefit, the cultivation, and the material improvement of mankind, been manifested as in Greece and Italy. And Arabia, although denied by Nature the advantages of soil and climate enjoyed by more favored lands, yet possessed what, in the crisis of her fate, rendered her superior to all her adversaries,—a race of bold and hardy warriors inured to hardship by the privations of an abstemious life, and by habit and inclination capable of the most arduous and desperate enterprises. Their experience with the surrounding effeminate nations had taught them not only the weakness of the latter, but also how their coveted wealth might be obtained; and at a propitious moment, under the guidance of an impassioned enthusiast, a horde of outlaws, driven from their homes by their scandalized neighbors, became the nucleus of victorious armies the fame of whose gallantry filled the world. And yet, while glorying in the deeds of martial heroism which insured the establishment and maintenance of her Prophet’s faith, she was conscious of the instability of an empire sustained by arms alone, and labored to raise upon more substantial and enduring foundations the splendid fabric of her greatness. The same fervid impulse which prompted and carried to a successful issue the conquest or extermination of those designated by the comprehensive term of infidel was able to adapt itself with singular facility to all the conditions of peace, and to enable the posterity of the half-naked banditti that swarmed around the banner of Mohammed to accomplish results worthy of the most exalted genius, and in every department of knowledge to ascend to the highest rank of those celebrated for their literary and scientific attainments in the most polished communities of Asia and Europe.

CHAPTER II
THE RISE, PROGRESS, AND INFLUENCE OF ISLAM
614–712

Comparative Religion, its Interest as a Study—The Benefits of Islam—Arabia at the Birth of Mohammed—Condition of Christendom and the Byzantine Empire—Popular Idea of the Prophet—His Family—His Early Life—The First Revelation—Persecution of the New Sect—The Hegira—Growing Prosperity of Islam—Character of Mohammed—Causes of His Success—Polygamy—The Koran—Its Arrangement, its Legends, its Sublime Maxims, its Absurdities—Its Obligations to other Creeds—The Kiblah—The Pilgrimage and its Ceremonies—Reforms accomplished by Islam—Universal Worship of Force—Corruption of the Religion of Mohammed—Its Wonderful Achievements—Mohammed the Apostle of God.

The study of Comparative Religion is one of the most fascinating, but at the same time one of the most unsatisfactory, of human employments. In historical research, in mathematical calculation, in chemical analysis, in the investigation of natural phenomena, either absolute certainty or an approximate degree of accuracy is attainable. This, however, is obviously impossible in the consideration of questions with which the eternal happiness or misery of mankind may be concerned. Who is competent to determine the relative value of the various religious systems,—always mutually antagonistic, often irreconcilable,—yet all alleged to have proceeded alike from the fiat of Almighty God? Who is to judge of the peculiar qualifications of those who have arrogated to themselves the important office of passing upon their respective merits? Why should certain doctrines be accepted and others repudiated by zealous but uncritical sectaries?, Where does this presumed inspiration begin and end? To use the words of the Koran, “What is the infallible? And who shall cause thee to understand what the infallible is?” Who, in short, possesses the touchstone of truth?

The experience of all ages, the history of all nations, have established the melancholy fact that systems of religion are, like institutions of human origin, subject to the ordinary incidents of mortality. They have their age of youthful vigor and enthusiasm; their stationary epoch, when their principles have lost their expansive power; their period of degeneracy and decay. Their duration, like that of created beings, corresponds to the degree of vitality which they may possess; their vitality is in proportion to the intrinsic merit of their doctrines, and their adaptability to the moral nature of man. As omniscience is denied to him, his estimate of the value of a divine revelation must necessarily be speculative and uncertain, largely dependent upon his intellectual capacity, and colored by the influences to which he has been exposed. On the other hand, many learned metaphysicians have argued with transcendent ability that faith is not accidental, and merely derived from volition and association, but is a matter of inexorable necessity, in which the will is absolutely powerless. As a result of inherited prejudice, the principles of every religion always appear heterodox, false, and absurd to sincere believers in other forms of faith. Of all theological dogmas, none have suffered more from the effects of ignorance and injustice than those of Islamism. The name of its founder has for thirteen centuries been a synonym of imposture. His motives have been impugned, his sincerity denied. His character has been branded with every vice which degrades or afflicts mankind. The greatest absurdities, the grossest inhumanity, have been attributed to his teachings. Ecclesiastical malice has exhausted its resources in efforts to blacken his memory. Even in our day, comparatively few persons are even superficially conversant with the doctrines which, in less than a century, were able to usurp the spiritual and temporal dominion of a considerable portion of the habitable globe.

The love of novelty which reigns supreme in the human breast is nowhere more striking in its manifestations than in the facility with which men adopt a fresh revelation. No new religion ever lacks proselytes. Imagination, sentiment, hope, fear, interest, combine to induce its acceptance, notwithstanding the obscurity which may invest its doctrines or the illiteracy which often is the most prominent characteristic of its interpreters; and if the conditions which attend its promulgation are not decidedly unpropitious, it is morally certain of success.

Some embrace it through curiosity, others from conviction, many from motives of selfishness. Its power is frequently in a direct proportion to the awe with which it inspires its votaries. As military glory is most admired by the populace, great prestige must of necessity attach to a creed which proselytes by conquest. On the other hand, apotheosis was considered the highest distinction attainable by the heroes and sovereigns of Pagan antiquity. Individuals whose genius had conferred great benefits upon the human race were assigned by public gratitude to a place among the gods. All the Roman emperors from Cæsar to Constantine were deified. An atmosphere of peculiar sanctity invested the eagles grouped in the post of honor in the camp of the legion. The crucifix and the reliquary were borne in the van of crusading armies. A more or less intimate association has thus always existed between the sacerdotal and the military professions. The latter has repeatedly furthered the projects of the former. The priest has rarely refused to absolve the offences of the orthodox soldier. Most religions have, in fact, been established or maintained by force. When we recall the overthrow of Paganism, the successive attempts to recover the Holy Sepulchre, the reconquest of Spain, the Inquisition, the atrocities attending the subjugation of the New World, the utter devastation of Provence and Languedoc, the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we should certainly not subject to invidious scrutiny the polity of Mohammed, whose history is free from the reproach of persecution, and whose supremacy was only partially established by arms.

The examination and criticism of a religion whose canons have been honored with the implicit and reverent obedience of millions of men; whose dogmas have been recognized by the devout of many diverse races as inspirations of the wisdom of Almighty God; a religion which, by the weapons of argument or by the resistless force of enthusiasm, subverted the power and absorbed the leading principles of other creeds whose traditions had hitherto enthralled the world, and which, despite the degeneracy of its practice, the divisions and consequent antagonism of its sectaries, the vicissitudes of many centuries, and the inevitable accidents of war, persecution, and treason, still manifests an astonishing and, to all appearances, an inexhaustible vitality, is a great and arduous undertaking. The story of Islam, by whose influence the natives of the East and West, heretofore hostile, were joined in a bond of fraternal union and guided through a marvellous career of prosperity and glory, is the realization of what would have ordinarily appeared a most extravagant dream of conquest and dominion, and is without parallel in the annals of humanity. In the moral as in the material world, the most perfect and durable forms and systems usually arrive slowly, and by almost imperceptible gradations, at ultimate maturity. But to this rule Islam was a striking exception. It attained the summit of its greatness, and raised the Arabians to an exalted rank in the family of nations, in a shorter period of time than is generally occupied by a people in passing through the primitive stages of their intellectual development.

It refuted the familiar maxim of the Romans, whose foreign policy was based upon the fomenting of dissensions and the subsequent discomfiture of their enemies, and, assailing its adversaries simultaneously on every side, won its way by a series of victories surpassing, in momentous results, the most renowned triumphs of the consuls and the Cæsars. In the traditions relating to the genealogy and history of its Prophet there is much that is enigmatical and much that is romantic. The latter deduced his origin from Ishmael, whom, with his unfortunate mother, Abraham, the acknowledged head of God’s chosen people, had inhumanly abandoned in the Desert to starve.

But in the seventy-one generations which separated Mohammed and Ishmael, a radical change of circumstances had befallen the rival branches of the house of Abraham. The descendants of Isaac, who had been promised the earth for an inheritance, now enslaved or exiled, and proverbial for bad faith, had become reviled and contemned of all men. On the other hand, from Ishmael the vagabond, deserted by his father and renounced by his kindred, had sprung a noble, valiant, and hospitable race, whose destiny was the promotion of civilization and the extension of empire. And in due time the latter, having obtained possession of the opulent regions of the East, tolerated the despised Hebrew only upon payment of tribute, and restricted him to a distinctive costume as a symbol of his degradation. He was compelled, in token of respect, to remove his slippers whenever he passed a mosque, and under penalty of the lash to kneel abjectly in the dust before the haughty Ishmaelite; while the capital of the land from which he had been banished, endeared to him by the memory of his sovereigns and the traditions of his faith, was in the power of his hereditary enemies, whose sacrilegious hands had raised the gilded dome of one of their proudest fanes upon the very spot long consecrated by the most revered associations of his race and his religion. The law of compensation, which controls the fate of man, was at last fulfilled, and retribution, if long delayed, was then exacted with relentless severity.

The benefits wrought by Mohammedans—especially during the Middle Ages—have, until the end of the last century, been silently ignored or studiously depreciated by historians; in some instances through want of information, but, for the most part, because the phenomenal progress of Islam, when compared with the apathetic condition of other religions, suggested a formidable rivalry. But in this age, insatiable of knowledge and equipped with every means of obtaining it, it is no longer possible for clerical intolerance to obscure the splendid achievements of Moslem science. The day has long since past when the labors of astronomers like Ibn-Junis, of historians like Al-Makkari, of philosophers like Averroes, of physicians like Avicenna, and of botanists like Ibn-Beithar, can be treated with obloquy because they were not authorized by the decree of an Ecumenical Council or approved by a bull of his Holiness the Pope.

The history of a religion, the exposition of a form of faith, is not infrequently the memoir of an individual and the chronicle of a race. As a rule, the union of the offices of Prophet and Lawgiver in a single personage deeply impresses the individuality of that personage upon the character of his nation. The annals of the Hebrews are indissolubly bound up with the Holy Scriptures and the precepts of Mosaic law. The mention of ancient Persia suggests at once the texts of the Zendavesta and the ordinances of Zoroaster. The Koran is practically the biography of Mohammed, the tale of his sorrows, his aspirations, his failures, and his triumphs. And what more noble monument could Arabia boast than the proud distinction of having been the home of a prophet and the cradle of a faith for centuries identified with religious toleration, with princely munificence, with scientific investigation, with literary merit,—all intimately associated with her name and with the varying fortunes of her children? The latter, from the first, devoted themselves to the interests of civilization. They settled colonies of skilled artisans in the wake of their armies. They promoted manufactures, encouraged commerce, and in every department of industrial occupation stimulated the efforts of mechanical ingenuity. They developed the science of astronomy. To them chemistry and pharmacy owe their origin. While persevering botanists explored the flora of many lands, the mathematician, in his secluded retreat, expanded and perfected the science of algebra. When a new region was subjected to their rule, all fruits, plants, and herbs, which examination or experience had found to be either edible or curative, were inscribed upon the lists of tribute, and their importation and distribution became compulsory. They branded idleness with contempt; they ennobled labor; and even royalty did not disdain to follow the example of the Prophet, who, with his own hands, assisted in the erection of the mosque of Medina, the first temple of Islam. They translated and preserved for the pleasure and instruction of posterity the immortal productions of the sages of Greece and Rome. They fostered learning, and encouraged its pursuit by maxim, reward, and example, until it became a matter of popular belief, as firmly grounded as the most sacred tradition, that the diligent cultivation of the mental faculties was an imperative religious duty.

In ancient times, to compel the observance of a salutary law, it was connected with public worship and directly sanctioned by the precepts of religion. In this way, hallowed by divine authority, it acquired a force not obtainable by human enactment, and conclusively indicated the wisdom of the sovereign or lawgiver who promulgated it. It was thus with circumcision among the Jews, with the cultivation of the soil in Mesopotamia, and with irrigation in Egypt, where the Nile was deified as the creator and preserver of the harvests and the source of the material prosperity of the nation. Mohammed was not blind to the advantages to be secured by this theocratic supervision of the affairs of mortals, and, by recourse to it, enforced the adoption and practice of many healthful customs and profitable employments whose effects upon the subjects of his successors were of the greatest importance.

The contagion of superstition, the impression produced by the grandeur of scenery, and the periodical recurrence of mysterious natural phenomena must always be attentively considered in determining the philosophical belief and religious tendencies of a people. Intimate relations with Egypt, sustained for a vast but unknown period of time, have left ineffaceable traces upon the traditions of Arabia. In the religious system of the former country there was one Supreme Being. All other divinities were but manifestations of his majesty and omnipotence concealed under different names. From him emanated the multifarious triads, the personification of the Nile, the countless array of gods to whom the days, the months, and even the very productions of the earth, were sacred. The great secret that these inferior deities were mere abstractions proceeding from a common Essence, to be eventually absorbed into it,—a fate to which even the soul of man, after divers transmigrations, was subject,—was jealously guarded by the Egyptian priesthood, and was the chief of its famous mysteries. The Sabeans of Yemen, instructed through their mercantile relations with the inhabitants of the Valley of the Nile, had long been familiar with the idea of a Supreme God and the personified attributes of His power and dignity. This doctrine had spread from the South, and, at the date of the advent of Mohammed, underlay the idolatrous worship of which Mecca was the centre, and whose ramifications extended in every direction to the borders of the Peninsula. A considerable number of the more intelligent Arabs who professed adherence to the religion of Abraham, yet, in fact, knew nothing of that religion except that it was monotheistic, repudiated all forms of idolatry, and styled themselves Hanifs—a word variously defined as “Incliners” and “Heretics.” The Manichean conception of the Spirit of Darkness—or, in other words, that important and enterprising personage the Persian devil, without whose presence no modern creed would seem to be complete—was also unknown to the ancient inhabitants of Arabia. As the idea was imported,—no branch of the Semitic race having been originally acquainted with it,—it probably travelled in the train of Cambyses when he invaded the Desert; although Iblis, the Arabic name by which this spirit is popularly designated, is evidently of European derivation and a corruption of the Greek Διάβολος.

Nor have the physical features of the landscape less to do with the formation of man’s moral impressions, and the direction of his impulses, than the reciprocal interchange of the ideas of contiguous nations. This is apparent in even a greater degree than the influence of soil and climate in the modification of his physical aspect and temperament. The more imposing those features, the more profound the emotions they excite; and, partly for this reason, Asia, which Nature has endowed with the most stupendous manifestations of her energy, has been prolific of those superstitions which have exercised the most extensive and lasting dominion over the human mind.

For more than a century before the birth of Mohammed, the most deplorable ignorance had obscured the face of the Christian world. The gentleness and beauty of the religion of Jesus had been supplanted by the direst fanaticism; its altars had been profaned by heathen sacrifices and the adoration of images; its priesthood had become inconceivably corrupt and immoral. The countless sects evoked by the machinations and worldly ambition of the clergy had, by mutual recrimination, revolting crimes, relentless persecution of their adversaries, and obstinate refusal to listen to any plan of reconciliation, almost destroyed the faith of reasonable men in every religion. Each of these sects had a leader who was regarded by his followers as endowed, to a greater or less degree, with that mysterious power conferred by divine inspiration. Disputes, frequently settled by massacre, were constantly maintained upon abstruse and frivolous questions in their very nature unanswerable; the precepts of justice and the laws of morality were contemptuously disregarded; and the sacerdotal class, instead of setting an example of piety and moderation to its congregations, was conspicuous in the daily saturnalia of rapine, lust, and murder. The Church had long since departed from the simplicity and purity of its original institution. For a century only after the death of the Saviour it had remained free from the influence of schismatic doctrines. While in comparative obscurity and acknowledged weakness, it offered no inducements to the disturbing spirit of fanatical innovators or to the selfish schemes of political aggrandizement and ecclesiastical ambition. In the beginning, divided into a number of federated republics practically independent, yet bound together by a common interest, governed by their own laws, relying upon their own resources, guided by the wisdom of their own ministers, their thoroughly organized polity, their obstinacy, their claims to superior holiness, naturally excited the odium of the Pagan populace, and frequently provoked the wrath and the interference of Imperial authority. From a condition of meekness, humility, and self-abnegation, the Church had become the prey of hostile factions, and was already tainted with scandal. Its synods were polluted with the blood of contending sectaries. Its councils resounded with the unseemly disputes and mutual recriminations of prelates more ambitious for the attainment of supreme power than for the discovery of divine truth. The Trinitarian controversy had nourished prejudices which centuries of apparent tranquillity had failed to eradicate. The spirit of persecution, incomprehensible to the polytheists, the essence of whose creed was universal toleration, and who could not appreciate the motives impelling the Christian to the employment of force to establish his doctrines, had early begun to manifest itself. Monasticism, synonymous with ignorance and intolerance, represented the sentiments and hopes of the most degraded of the populace in every community of the Empire. At Alexandria and Nicea it had forced, by weight of numbers and by turbulent demonstrations of violence, the adoption of some of the most important articles of Christian faith. In every ecclesiastical feud it had invariably espoused the cause of bigotry and imposture. The monk of the sixth century united in his character the inconsistent attributes of the priest and the politician, the saint and the demagogue. His retreat in the solitude of the desert was visited by thousands of weeping penitents, suppliants for the doubtful but cherished privilege of his blessing. With his companions, armed with clubs and stones, he fomented disorder in the streets of great capitals. His voluntary renunciation of the follies of the world was no bar to his greed of power. He dictated the policy of the Church. He settled involved points of casuistry. He formulated canons of ecclesiastical discipline. He enforced the claims of his faction by intrigues, by corruption, by the commission of the most revolting crimes. He aspired to and often attained the episcopal dignity. The superior numbers, the fanatical spirit, the unanimous resolution of his order, gave him a preponderating influence in the Church not to be heedlessly resisted. Before the imperial organization of the Papacy, the monk was the dominant factor in the determination of the laws, the measures, and the regulations of Christendom.

It must be remembered that at that time there was no established, centralized, sacerdotal authority. Nevertheless, for more than a century, imperial officials, designated for that purpose, had determined the degrees and inflicted the punishment of heresy. Confiscation, banishment, torture, and death threatened all who refused to subscribe to the doctrines which, varying with different reigns, were promulgated as the momentary and uncertain standards of orthodoxy. The incomprehensibility of a dogma was considered an infallible indication of its truth. The philosopher was then, as now, stigmatized as the implacable enemy of religion. A reign of terror overspread the empire. Every scholar became an object of suspicious aversion. His neighbors shunned his company. The clergy anathematized him from the pulpit. Informers dogged his footsteps and intruded upon his privacy. Indifference to religious duties, or an unguarded statement frequently distorted by malice, was a sufficient cause for imprisonment. The discovery of an heretical passage in a volume of his library rarely failed to provoke a sentence of death. Such measures, equivalent to a proscription of knowledge, produced the most lamentable consequences. Literary occupations became to all intents and purposes criminal. Everywhere valuable collections of books were hastily consigned to the flames by their owners, apprehensive of being compromised by their contents. Oratory, except that of the pulpit, could not survive such restrictions. Public sentiment, controlled by ecclesiastical prejudice, became inimical to the maintenance of even ordinary institutions of learning. A blind reverence for the Church, and a disposition to enforce obedience to its mandates by the merciless employment of the secular arm, were popularly regarded as the duties of every member of society. It was the ominous inauguration of that fearful power which afterwards culminated in the irresponsible despotism of the Vatican.

The Roman Pontiff had not yet stretched forth his mighty hand from the seat of ancient empire to allay dissension, and to enforce obedience to the edicts of the greatest hierarchy that has ever arisen to enchain the intelligence and repress the independent aspirations of mankind. The final decisions of councils had not been formulated upon controverted points of doctrine. The Patriarch of Constantinople—first in ecclesiastical precedence, yet almost rivalled in pomp and prestige by the great episcopal dignitaries of Antioch, Alexandria, and Carthage—exacted with difficulty the reverence of the giddy and scoffing mob of the capital, and could not always maintain the dignity of his office, even in the presence of his sovereign, who was sometimes a skeptic and often a tyrant. Nor was the civil power, to which the ecclesiastical system was still jealously subordinated, in a less degraded condition. The authority of the Emperor was persistently defied in the precincts of his own palace, which, with the Cathedral of Saint Sophia, had become the theatre of the treasonable plots and licentious intrigues of infamous combinations of every class and nationality, and where a portentous union of monks, eunuchs, and women reigned unquestioned and supreme. A cumbrous and pompous etiquette; a theatrical display of costumes and devices; a court swarming with buffoons and parasites; an atmosphere of cowardice, duplicity, effeminacy, and corruption had supplanted the high sense of national honor, the austere dignity, the proud consciousness of superior manhood which, in the early days of republican simplicity and imperial grandeur, marked the exercise of Roman power. The incursions of pirates, which the diminished naval power of the emperors was inadequate to check, had driven commerce from the sea.

Intestine broils, and the lawless conduct of the barbarian soldiery who chafed at the restraints of discipline, and whose incessant and exorbitant demands upon the imperial treasury had aided not a little to impoverish the country, rendered agricultural operations unsafe and unprofitable, and land was no longer tilled except in the immediate vicinity of large cities. Whole provinces, which, under the Romans, had flourished like a succession of gardens, now abandoned and uninhabited, were growing up with forests and relapsing into the wilderness of primeval times. The dire effects of barbarian warfare were conspicuous in every province of the Empire. The fruits of centuries of civilization had disappeared with the conditions which had been favorable to their maturity and to the political corruption and moral degeneracy which, more than the fortunes of war, had contributed to their annihilation. The proud title of Roman citizen, once coveted alike by foreign princes and aspiring plebeians, had been erased from the tables whereon were inscribed the most exalted distinctions of nations. Society no longer wore the alluring aspect which it had exhibited under the luxurious dominion of the Cæsars. The patrician, deprived of property and freedom, reluctantly swelled the train of barbaric pomp in the city which had been the scene of his extravagance, his tyranny, and his vices. The slave who had fled to the camp of Alaric or Attila now ruled in the palace which had formerly witnessed his humiliation, and was served by the children of those who but a few months before had made him the victim of their cruelty and caprice.

The face of the country, repeatedly overrun by swarms of ruthless savages, presented a picture of hopeless desolation. The trail of the Gothic or Lombard marauder could be traced by heaps of whitened bones, by dismantled cities, by ravaged fields and fire-swept hamlets. The beautiful temples of antiquity, which had survived the decay of Paganism and the assaults of Christianity, were defaced or ruined. The exquisite memorials of classic art, the triumphs of the Grecian sculptor, were broken and scattered. Vases, whose elegance and symmetry had called forth the admiration of all who beheld them, had been melted for the sake of the bronze and silver of which they were composed. The gardens which had been the pride of the capital had been trampled under the hoofs of the Gothic cavalry. Here and there, amidst a heap of blackened ruins, arose a crumbling wall or a group of tottering columns, which alone remained to mark the site of a once magnificent shrine of Venus or Apollo. The repression of general intelligence and individual ambition among the masses had always been a leading maxim of imperial policy. No system of education was provided. All exertion was discouraged. The populace was for generations provided with food and amusement by the government. There was no inducement to mental or physical activity. The natural march of human destiny, the improvement of man’s physical and social condition, was arrested. Enjoyment of the comforts of life rendered labor unnecessary. The paternal supervision and generosity of the sovereign made the criticism, or even the discussion, of public affairs irksome, ungrateful, dangerous. There being no longer any incentive to progress, society, in obedience to the organic law of its existence, began to rapidly retrograde towards barbarism; a condition to which the division of the people into castes—noble, plebeian, mercantile, military, and sacerdotal—greatly contributed. Through ideas of mistaken piety, and allured by the prospect of idleness and comparative ease, a multitude of able-bodied men had withdrawn from the occupations of active life to the seclusion of the cloister, whence they issued at intervals, when summoned to raze some Pagan temple; to influence, by the terror of their presence, the vacillating spirit of an ecclesiastical assembly; or to wreak the pitiless vengeance of their superiors upon some virtuous philosopher whose intelligence was not profound enough to grasp the meaning of a theological mystery. The enterprising general who had raised himself from a subordinate command in Britain to the imperial throne, and who, for reasons of state policy, had adopted and made compulsory the ceremonial of a religion whose benign precepts the base profligacy of his whole life insulted, possessed at least the stern and rugged virtues of a soldier. His effeminate descendants, however, both ignorant and careless of the arts of war and government, and devoted to the practice of every vice, had abandoned the administration to the perfidious and venal instincts of their retainers and slaves. Through the incompetency of the rulers, the insatiable ambition of the priests, and the unbridled license of the mercenaries who composed the bulk of the army, all desire of the majority of the people—in which was, of course, included the useful classes of farmer and artisan—for the improvement of their circumstances had yielded to a sluggish indifference to their fate. In a few generations social isolation became so thorough that the community of thought and interest indispensable to national prosperity ceased to exist; and this seclusion of caste, increasing in a direct ratio with rank, finally fastened upon the most noble families the stigma of exceptional ignorance. Indeed, in the palace itself, whence ecclesiastical bigotry had expelled all valuable knowledge, the education of princes was entrusted to nurses and domestic servants, whose pernicious influence was speedily exhibited in the superstitious fears and arrogant behavior of their pupils, the future masters of the Roman Empire. The fusion of races had produced mongrel types, in whose characters were developed the most objectionable and vicious traits of their depraved progenitors. Constant intercourse with barbarians had transformed the polished language of Homer and Plato into an uncouth dialect, where the gutturals of the Danube, mingling with the scarcely less discordant accents of the Nile and the Rhone, had overwhelmed the copious and elegant idiom of the Greek poets and historians. The fanaticism of an intolerant sect and the weakness of a succession of impotent sovereigns had extinguished the spirit of Pagan philosophy and ancient learning.

Since the erection of the famous church of Saint Sophia—the final effort of the genius of Byzantine architecture—that art had fallen into desuetude, and such of the famous structures of the ancients as survived were used as quarries, whence were derived the materials for the basilica and the palaces of the wealthy and luxurious patriarch and bishop. But this, unhappily, was not the worst of the prevalent evils of the time. An organized conspiracy against learning existed, and was most active in those quarters where education, however imperfect, should at least have suggested the importance of preserving the priceless remains of antiquity. The art of making parchment had, with many other useful inventions, been lost, and, in consequence, writing materials had become rare and expensive. The monk, too idle to invent, but ever ready to destroy, soon devised means for supplying this deficiency. Invading the public libraries, he diligently collected all the available manuscripts upon which were inscribed the thoughts of classic writers—of whom many are now only known to us by name—and, erasing the characters, used their pages to record the legends of his spurious saints and apocryphal martyrs. It is not beyond the range of probability that the original books of the New Testament, falling during these evil days into the hands of persons ignorant of Greek, may have undergone a similar fate; which hypothesis may also account for the thirty thousand different readings of which learned divines admit that the Gospels and Epistles are susceptible. The manifold and prodigious achievements of Roman civilization—its palaces, its temples, its amphitheatres, its aqueducts, its triumphal arches; its majestic forums, with their colonnades of snowy marble adorned with the statues of the heroes, the philosophers, the legislators of antiquity; its military roads; its marvels of mechanical engineering; its magnificent works of art; its eternal monuments of literature; the graceful legends of its mythology, perpetuated by the genius of the sculptor in creations of unrivalled excellence; the glowing words of its orators which stir the blood after the lapse of twenty centuries; the prestige of its conquests; the wise principles of its civil polity, generally enlightened, often audacious, always successful—were but trifles in the eyes of the debased Byzantine when compared with a fragment of the true cross, or a homily preached by some unclean and fanatic anchorite upon the metaphysical subtleties of the Trinity or the theological value of a diphthong.

Such, then, was the condition of the Christian Church and the Byzantine Empire at the close of the sixth century; to such a deplorable extent had barbarian encroachment, social corruption, and sectarian controversy undermined the foundation of both Church and State. In spite of its degradation, the latter represented the highest embodiment of mental culture and political organization which had survived the incessant depredations of barbarian armies and the demoralizing effects of generations of misrule; where the character of the monarch, both before and after his elevation to the throne, was dominated by the passions and infected with the vices of the most wicked and infamous of mankind. Throughout Europe the state of affairs was even more deplorable. The Goths were masters of the continent, and the Vandals, traversing the Spanish Peninsula and planting their victorious standards upon the northern coast of Africa, had, after the commission of atrocities which have made their name proverbial, driven the descendants of Hannibal and Hamilcar into the desert and the sea. The schools of Athens—that sole remaining seat of philosophical discussion and free inquiry in the world—had been suppressed, a hundred and fifty years before, by Justinian. The descendants of the Cæsars, stripped of their splendid inheritance and reduced to degrading vassalage, cowered beneath the scowling glances of the skin-clad savages who had issued in countless numbers from the forests of Germany and the shores of the Baltic. The effigies of the gods, the masterpieces of the skill of the Augustan age, had been tumbled from their pedestals, and the fetichism introduced by the strangers had been superseded by a corrupt form of Christianity scarcely less contemptible and fully as idolatrous. Rome had twice been sacked; Milan had been razed to the ground; prosperous seaports had fallen into decay; the fairest fields of Italy had been made desolate, her highways were overgrown with grass, her aqueducts were broken, her fertile Campagna, once the paradise of the capital, had become a pestilential marsh, whose vapors were freighted with disease and death. Among the miserable, half-famished, and turbulent population of the cities, riot and sedition were frequent, but were hardly noticed by the haughty barbarian ruler, so long as the outbreak did not seriously menace his life or his dignity. Civil war, relentless in atrocity, completed the devastation begun by barbaric conquest and servile tyranny. The army, filled with traitors, offered no warrant for the stability of government. Informers, that pest of a decadent state, swarmed in the Byzantine capital. Oppressive taxation, enforced by torture, impoverished the opulent. Promiscuous massacre, instituted upon the most frivolous pretexts, intimidated the poor. There was no loyalty, no sense of national honor, no appreciation of the mutual obligations of prince and people. The martial spirit which had been the distinguishing characteristic of ancient Rome was extinct. The proverbial discipline of the legions had been supplanted by license and disorder. Immunity from foreign incursion was secured by the ignominious and obnoxious expedient of tribute. Yet, in the midst of this accumulation of horrors which threatened the total destruction of a society already thoroughly disorganized, numbers of resolute men existed in every community who, while despoiled and oppressed, had not entirely abandoned themselves to despair, and in the minds of many of these, imperceptibly to the masses, and, indeed, scarcely discernible save by the most acute and sagacious observer, a great moral revolution was passing. The misfortunes which had befallen in succession the Pagan and the Christian religions had weakened the hold of both upon the reverence and affections of the multitude. Persons familiar with the Gospels, and with whom the Apocrypha claimed as much respect as the remaining portions of the Scriptures, looked forward to the coming of a reformer, known as the Paraclete, or Comforter, repeatedly promised in the Bible, whose mission was to restore to mankind, in its pristine purity, the truth as expounded by Christ. The material advantages which might accrue from the realization of this prediction were fully appreciated by the heads of a considerable number of contemporary sects—among them the Gnostics, the Cerintheans, the Montanists, and the Manicheans, each of whom confidently asserted that he was the heavenly messenger referred to and that all others were impostors. The Gospel of St. Barnabas is said, upon very respectable authority, to have originally contained the word Περικλῦτὸς, “Illustrious,” instead of Παράκλητος, “Comforter;” and to have been subsequently altered, with a view to checking the increasing number of claimants to divine inspiration, whose pretensions were becoming troublesome and dangerous. Moslem ingenuity has shrewdly availed itself of this prophecy, which popular credulity accepted as a direct announcement of the coming Mohammed, whose name, “The Illustrious,” is the Arabic equivalent of Περικλῦτὸς. It is also stated in the most ancient chronicles that a prophet called Ahmed, or Mohammed, had for centuries been expected in Arabia, where the Gospels were widely distributed; and it is therefore possible that a word written in an unknown tongue, a thousand miles from Mecca, may have had no inconsiderable share in determining the political and religious destinies of a large portion of the human race.

All things considered, perhaps no more auspicious time could have been selected for the announcement of a system of belief which based its claims to public attention upon the specious plea that it was not an innovation, but a reform, the purification of a mode of worship which had been practised for ages. It is usually far easier, because more consonant with the prejudices of human nature, to introduce an entirely new religion than to engraft changes, no matter how beneficial, upon the old. Mankind regards with eager curiosity a recent communication from Heaven, yet instinctively shrinks from serious interference with the time-honored ceremonial and revered traditions of a popular and long-established faith. But in Arabia, as has already been remarked, while there were innumerable shrines and temples and a host of idols, there was in reality no deep-seated religious feeling. The prevalent worship was maintained through the influence of long association rather than by any general belief in its truth, its wisdom, or its benefits. The claims of kindred, the maintenance of tribal honor, and the inexorable obligation of revenge had far greater weight with the Bedouin than the respect he owed to the factitious observances of his creed or the doubtful veneration he professed for the innumerable deities of his pantheon. The absurdity of their attributes, the inability of their gods to change or to resist the operations of nature, had long been tacitly recognized by the Arabs. Their idols partook of the character of the fetich, whose favor was propitiated with gifts, whose obstinacy was punished by violence. Long familiarity had lessened or entirely abrogated the awe with which they had once been regarded. The system which they represented had fallen behind the intelligence of the age, limited though that might be amidst the prejudices and superstitions of the Desert. A wide-spread and silent, but none the less vehement, protest against polytheism had arisen. At no time in the history of the Peninsula had been evinced such a disposition for reconciliation and compromise. In Arabia, therefore, as well as in the other countries of Asia, the season was eminently propitious to the promulgation of a new religion.

The ignorance of the natural talents, general characteristics, and daily habits of the Prophet of Arabia almost universally prevalent, even among persons of education and of more than ordinary intellectual attainments, is extraordinary; especially when the abundant facilities for information upon these points are considered. No name in history has been subjected to such fierce assaults by sectarian bigotry and theological rancor as his. The popular idea of Mohammed is that he was a vulgar impostor, licentious, cunning, brutal, and unscrupulous; periodically insane from repeated attacks of epilepsy; given to the practice of fraudulent miracles; a monster, who hesitated at no crime that would further his ends; who wrote a book called the Koran, which is full of sensual images, and describes heaven as a place especially set apart for the unrestricted indulgence of the animal passions. In former times public credulity went still farther, and Christian writers of the eleventh century, and even later, were in the habit of representing the greatest of iconoclasts—who excepted from the clemency of the victor only the adorers of fire and of idols—as a false god; a conception which, indicated by the familiar word “mummery,” has been incorporated into our language. Afterwards he was considered merely as a propagator of heresy, and, punished as such, he figures in the immortal work of Dante:

“Poi che l’un pié per girsene sospese,

Maometto;”

and, finally, the absurdity of ignorance having reached its culmination, he was described as a camel-thief, and an apostate cardinal who preached a spurious doctrine through envy, because he had failed to reach the coveted dignity of Pope! Motives of ecclesiastical jealousy and religious intolerance led also to the suppression of information and the falsification of truth respecting the Koran. Hardly one person in ten thousand has read a translation of it; indeed, this feat has been repeatedly declared an impossibility, on account of the monotonous and prosaic character of its contents; nor has one foreigner in a million perused the original, which, it may be added, cannot be appropriately rendered into another tongue. No complete rendition of this famous book into a living language was made for eleven hundred years after the death of Mohammed, and to-day not more than a dozen versions, all told, exist. It has been, moreover, a rule, subject to but few exceptions and those of recent date, that translations, commentaries, and analyses of the Koran, edited by misbelievers, have been written with the express design of casting odium upon the Prophet and his followers. Under such unfavorable circumstances, an impartial examination of the doctrines of Islam was impossible to one not versed in Arabic, and the public mind, which received its impression of such subjects largely from the pulpit, obstinately refused to consider any view which was at variance with its preconceived opinions. To obtain a competent idea of the principles, the virtues, and the defects of the religion which he established, it will not be unprofitable to glance for a moment at the salient points of the career and character of this wonderful man, the most prominent of his country, and the most illustrious of his race.

Among the ancient tribes of Arabia, highest in rank, most esteemed for intelligence and courage in a nation of poets and warriors, and renowned for a generous hospitality, was that of the Koreish, the hereditary guardians of the temple of Mecca. Proud of their distinguished ancestry and of the exalted position they enjoyed by reason of their office, which its religious functions invested with a dignity not inferior to that of royalty itself, and superior to all other employments in a country where the jealous independence of the people precluded the exercise of kingly power, the influence of the Koreish over their countrymen was unbounded. The annual pilgrimage to the Bait-Allah, or “House of God,” when hostilities were suspended, and devotees and merchants, rhymers and thieves, met upon a common equality in the enclosure of the temple—an occasion which is said to have called together the brightest minds of the Peninsula to contend in friendly rivalry for the prize of literary distinction—was the most important event of the year to the Arabian, and was particularly advantageous to the perpetuation of the wealth and authority of the Koreish. Some of the tribe enjoyed the exclusive privilege of distributing water and provisions among the pilgrims during their sojourn in the Holy City—an employment originally gratuitous, but afterwards a lucrative monopoly; others had charge of the buildings of the shrine; others, again, were the custodians of the sacred banner, which was only raised upon the occasion of the annual re-union of the Kaaba, or when the safety of Mecca was threatened by war or sedition. The Koreish, moreover, aspired to a state of petty sovereignty; they despatched embassies to the neighboring tribes, made treaties, established regulations for the departure and arrival of caravans, which secured an organized, and consequently a more safe and profitable, traffic with surrounding nations, and exercised a nominal jurisdiction in both civil and religious matters over the entire Peninsula. Elated by their success, and by the homage universally paid them, they boldly abrogated many of the ancient ceremonies connected with the national worship, and substituted others better calculated for the advancement of their pecuniary interests or the gratification of their political ambition. Some of these new regulations were unjust, and, as may be easily conjectured, were accepted with great reluctance by a population so opposed to innovation and impatient of restraint as that of Arabia; and the fact that they were adopted without serious disturbance shows conclusively that the attachment of the Arab to the gods of his country bore no approximate ratio to the awe with which he regarded their powerful guardians. In time, however, the rivalry of influential chieftains of the various divisions of the tribe produced mutual distrust and enmity; dissensions became frequent, and the national influence of the Koreish, which the hearty co-operation of their leaders could alone sustain, began to be seriously impaired.

Of one of the haughtiest clans of this distinguished tribe—the Beni-Hashem—was born, in the year 570 of the Christian era, Mohammed, known to misbelievers as the False Prophet, and to the Moslems as the Messenger of God. A strange fatality, which is evidently based upon something more substantial than the uncertain authority of tradition, appears to have attended his family both before and after his birth. The household of his grandfather, Abd-al-Muttalib, although it contained several daughters, could boast of only one son,—a circumstance which, to a man of noble birth, in a country like Arabia, where a chieftain’s consideration was founded upon the number of his male descendants, where female relatives were classed with camels and horses as chattels, and were often buried alive to get rid of them, was looked upon as a disgrace as well as a misfortune. In bitterness of spirit, the sheik betook himself to the Kaaba, and invoked the aid of Hobal, the presiding genius of the assembled deities of the nation. At the conclusion of his supplications he promised that, if ten sons should be born to him, one of them should be sacrificed upon the altar of the god. The prayer was answered, and in due time inexorable religious obligation demanded the fulfilment of the vow. Accompanied by his sons, Abd-al-Muttalib again approached the shrine of Hobal, and the customary lots having been cast, the god made choice of Abdallah, who subsequently became the father of Mohammed. Abdallah was the favorite of his parents and the idol of his kindred; his manners possessed a rare fascination; he excelled the most accomplished of his tribe in the arts of poetry and eloquence, and his manly beauty has been celebrated by the extravagant praise of his countrymen. Appalled at the prospect of losing his best-beloved child, Abd-al-Muttalib was in despair, when the shrewdness of a female diviner proposed an ingenious solution of the difficulty. The established compensation for homicide, when the injured family was willing to accept one, was ten camels; and the prophetess suggested that Abd-al-Muttalib again consult the deity, in the hope that he might be propitious and consent to receive the less valuable sacrifice. The mystic arrows were once more shaken and drawn, and, for the second time, Abdallah was devoted to death. The father doubled the number of camels with the same result; but, nothing daunted, persevered until the tenth lot had been drawn, when the god deigned to accept the costly ransom. Thus upon the cast of a die depended the regeneration of the Arabian people, the conquest and subversion of the Byzantine and Persian empires, the impulse of modern scientific inquiry, and the future hopes of the Moslem world!

Mohammed was a posthumous child. His father died while on a journey to Medina, and left to his widow Amina little save the memory of his domestic virtues, and a reputation for manly courage and unblemished integrity. The boy passed his early years, as was the custom at Mecca, with one of the tribes of the Desert, where the coarse fare and active life of the Bedouin developed and strengthened a frame naturally robust and vigorous. At the age of five he returned to his mother’s home, where, within a few months, he was left an orphan. His grandfather Abd-al-Muttalib then took charge of him until the death of the former two years afterwards, when Mohammed was taken into the family of his uncle Abu-Talib. The successive bereavements of relatives to whom he was devotedly attached had no small effect in determining the character of the future Prophet, already thoughtful and reserved beyond his years, and imparted a permanent tinge of sadness to his life. When he grew older he was employed by his uncle as a shepherd, an occupation considered by the Arabs as degrading, and only proper to be exercised by slaves and women. In his twenty-sixth year his handsome face and figure, and his reputation for honesty, which had acquired for him the flattering title of Al-Amin, “The Faithful,” attracted the attention of Khadijah, a wealthy widow and a distant relative, who made him a proposal of marriage, which he accepted. Khadijah was forty years old, and had already been twice married; yet for twenty-five years which intervened before her death—and long after she must have lost her attractiveness—Mohammed never failed in the duties of a constant and affectionate husband. She bore him six children, four girls and two boys, of whom the daughters alone survived the period of infancy. When he reached the age of forty, a great change came over Mohammed, and there appeared the first positive indication of his aversion to the established worship of his country. His mother, who seems to have been a woman of highly excitable temperament, had transmitted to him a hypersensitive condition of the nervous system, which developed occasional attacks of muscular hysteria, a disease rarely affecting the masculine sex. Long accustomed to abstinence, contemplation, and revery, he contracted the habit of seeking solitude, to muse upon the moral condition of himself and his countrymen; and as he grew older, and especially after his fortunate marriage had removed the necessity for labor, the passion for dreaming grew upon him. He often betook himself to Mount Hira, where a recluse once had his abode; and for days at a time, with but little food and depriving himself of sleep, in tears and mental agony, he strove to solve the problem of divine truth. As continued fasting, excitement, and solitude inevitably produce hallucinations, it was not long before Mohammed believed himself visited by an angel, the bearer of celestial tidings. Doubtful at first of the significance of these startling visions, and in his enfeebled condition easily terrified, he fancied he was possessed by devils, and was almost driven to suicide. Finally, mastering his emotion, he returned to Mecca, and from that time visitations of the angel—who declared himself to be Gabriel—were frequent. In the original revelation, Mohammed was addressed as the “Messenger of Allah,” and was directed to preach the unity of God to his erring and misguided countrymen. His converts in the beginning were very few and composed of the members of his own family, his wife being the first believer. The new doctrines made slow progress; apprehension of the summary interference of the ruling powers made the proselytes cautious, and they rehearsed its texts behind locked doors and in the most private apartments of their houses. At the expiration of four years the adherents of Islam had only reached the insignificant number of thirty-nine souls. But now Mohammed grew bolder; expounded his doctrines before the Kaaba itself; openly advocated the destruction of idols, and denounced the unbelieving Arabs as devoted to the horrors of everlasting fire. The impassioned oratory of the Great Reformer had at first no appreciable effect. Most of his auditors regarded him as under the influence of an evil spirit; some ridiculed, others reviled him; but respect for his family and a wholesome dread of blood-revenge protected him from serious violence. In vain did he depict in words of thrilling eloquence the joys of heaven and the tortures of hell; his exhortations were lost upon the skeptical Arab, whose religion was a matter of hereditary custom, and who, in common with the other members of the Semitic race, had no belief in an existence beyond the grave. At length his denunciations became so furious as to raise apprehensions among the Koreish that their political supremacy, as well as the lucrative employments of their offices, might be endangered. A solemn deputation of the chiefs of the tribe waited upon Abu-Talib, the head of the family to which Mohammed belonged, and demanded that the daring apostate should be delivered over to their vengeance. This Abu-Talib, although himself an idolater, without hesitation, declined to do, and, in consequence of his refusal, the entire clan of the Beni-Hashem was placed under an interdict. No one would trade or associate with its members, and for two years they were imprisoned in a quarter of the city by themselves, where they endured great hardships. Nothing can exhibit more prominently the family attachment of the Arab and his high sense of honor than the self-sacrifice implied by this event, for it must not be forgotten that the large majority of those who suffered with Mohammed had no confidence in the truth of his mission, but were still devoted to the idolatrous and barbarous rites of the ancient faith.

The cause of Islam had received a severe blow, and the threats and armed hostility of its adversaries boded ill for its future success. The Moslems who did not belong to the Koreish sought refuge with the Christian king of Abyssinia, who peremptorily refused to surrender them upon the demand of an embassy from Mecca. At length, through very shame, the interdict was removed; the members of the imprisoned band came forth once more to mingle with their townsmen, and the exiles were permitted to return in peace. But persecution had not intimidated Mohammed, and his condemnation of idolatry and its supporters increased in violence. His uncle and protector, Abu-Talib, having died, his position daily became more critical. A fortunate occurrence, however, soon opened an avenue of escape. Some years before, a handful of the people of Medina had secretly embraced his doctrines and sworn fealty to him as their temporal sovereign. Their numbers had greatly increased, and now, in acceptance of an invitation tendered him by these zealous proselytes, Mohammed prepared to withdraw from the midst of his enemies to the proffered asylum at Medina. The inhabitants of the latter city, who were principally agriculturists, were heartily despised by the Meccans, who considered every occupation but those of war, plunder, and the cheating of pilgrims derogatory to the dignity of an Arab. The irreconcilable rivalry between the two principal towns of the Hedjaz had much to do with the adoption of Islam by the Medinese. The influence of the numerous Jews of Medina had materially affected the religion of that locality, and their predictions of the speedy coming of the Messiah, and the bestowal of the possessions of the Gentiles upon his chosen people, had attracted the attention, and at times aroused the fears, of the idolaters of that city. When, therefore, the report was circulated that a prophet had arisen at Mecca, the Medinese naturally concluded that he must be the Messiah expected by the Hebrews, and they determined to forestall the latter by being the first to extend to him a welcome, and thereby secure his favor. It was from these motives that the alliance between Mohammed and the citizens of Medina was concluded; an alliance whose results were little anticipated by the parties to its provisions, and whose importance has been disclosed by the portentous events of many subsequent centuries. Intelligence of this proceeding having reached the Koreish, they prepared for decisive measures, and held a meeting, in which, without apparently taking any precautions to conceal their design, the assassination of Mohammed was resolved upon. The latter, having received timely warning, escaped by night, with his friend Abu-Bekr, and, concealed in a cave in the mountains, eluded the vigilance of his enemies until a few days afterwards they found means to reach Medina. This event occurred in the year 622 A.D., and, marking the era of the Hegira or “Flight,” is, as is well known, the starting-point of Moslem chronology. Its usefulness, however, anticipated its legality for three hundred years, and it was not publicly authorized by law until the tenth century.

On his arrival, the first care of the Prophet was the erection of a mosque and the institution and arrangement of the ritual of Islam; the next, the reconciliation of the two hostile Arab factions whose tumults kept the city in an uproar; and the third—the only task in which he was unsuccessful—the conversion of the Jews. Hardly was he domiciled at Medina before he abandoned the continence which had hitherto adorned his life and placed his character in such a favorable light when compared with the excesses of his libidinous countrymen, and by degrees increased his harem until it numbered, including wives and concubines, nearly a score of women. And now appeared also other changes of a religious and political nature, when the humility and patience of the preacher were eclipsed by the ambitious plans of the sovereign, eventually realized in the proselytism of entire nations and the intoxication and glory of foreign conquest. The employment of force had never been mentioned at Mecca, but the vexations, contempt, and ill-usage of years had borne bitter fruit, and at Medina was received the first revelation commanding the propagation of Islam by the sword. At first desultory attacks were made upon caravans; then followed the engagement of Bedr, where three hundred believers defeated a thousand of the Koreish, and the battle of Ohod, which ended with the wounding of Mohammed and the total rout of the Moslem army. The blockade of Medina, undertaken three years later by the chiefs of Mecca, ended disastrously for them, as the fiery Arab could not be brought to endure the restraint and inactivity incident to the protracted operations of a siege. Next came the expulsion of the disaffected Jews from the city, a measure not unattended by acts of injustice and sanguinary violence, but imperatively demanded by the requirements of political necessity. The power and prestige of Mohammed now grew apace; tribe after tribe joined his standard; distant princes sent him costly gifts and voluntarily tendered their allegiance; and in the year 630—the eighth of the Hegira—he prepared for the invasion of the sacred territory and the conquest of Mecca. Only a short time before, guarded by two faithful companions, he had fled from the Holy City with a reward of a hundred camels and forty ounces of gold upon his head; now he returned in royal state, at the head of ten thousand warriors, most of whom would have gladly laid down their lives at his command, and all of whom acknowledged him to be the Apostle of God. Before this imposing array, inspired with the fervor of religious enthusiasm, resistance was hopeless. The people fled to their houses and to the sanctuary of the temple, and the invading army occupied the city. The rights and property of the citizens were respected; there was no massacre and no pillage; no violence was offered, except to the images of the Kaaba, which were shattered to pieces without delay or opposition, for the idolaters viewed with but little emotion the destruction of the tutelary deities of many generations, whose inability to protect their worshippers had been so signally demonstrated. With a magnanimity unequalled in the annals of war, a general amnesty was proclaimed, and but four persons, whose offences were considered unpardonable, suffered the penalty of death. When the various ceremonies consecrated by the usage of centuries and destined henceforth to form an integral part of the Moslem ritual had been accomplished, and the Pagan altars in the vicinity of Mecca had been swept away, Mohammed set forth to subdue the remaining tribes that disputed his authority. A single battle sufficed; Tayif, the sole important stronghold that still held out, voluntarily submitted after an unsuccessful siege; and the supremacy of the Prophet was henceforth acknowledged over the Arabian Peninsula. Three months after the subjugation of Mecca, Mohammed, who already seemed to have had a presentiment of his approaching end, accompanied by an immense multitude, performed the pilgrimage which his teachings enjoined as an indispensable duty upon all his followers. Leaving Mecca for the last time, he slowly retraced his steps to the home of his adoption, whose people, more generous than his kinsmen, had received and protected him when a persecuted fugitive, whose factions he had reconciled, who were proud of his renown, and who, despite his kindness and the natural urbanity of his manners, never failed to approach his presence with all the reverential awe due to the possessor of divine favor and supernatural powers. His constitution, though originally fortified by abstinence and a simple diet, had for years given evidence of debility and decay, for his health had been seriously impaired by poison administered by a Jewish captive, whom his magnanimous spirit refused to punish; and, after a short illness, he expired in the arms of his favorite wife, Ayesha, upon the eighth of June, 632.

There have been few great actors upon the stage of the world the events of whose lives have been so carefully preserved as those of Mohammed, although no native contemporaneous writer has recorded his history. And yet there is no man whose talents raised him to extraordinary eminence whose deeds and whose character are so unfamiliar to Christian readers as his. Few know him but as a successful impostor. Many believe him to have been an idolater. Almost all attribute to him indulgence in the most degrading of vices,—cruelty, avarice, licentiousness. Even Christian viceroys who have lived long in Mohammedan countries know nothing of the doctrines and the career of one of the most renowned of reformers and legislators. His personal appearance, his occupations, his tastes, his weaknesses even—a strong proof of the honesty and credibility of the Mussulman narrators—have been related by the latter with scrupulous minuteness. His sayings and the opinions attributed to him, embodied in the Sunnah, are considered by devout Moslems as second only in sanctity to the verses of the Koran, and have given rise to the amazing number of six hundred thousand traditions, which laborious commentators have seen proper, upon doubtful evidence, to reduce to four thousand that may be relied upon as genuine. The study of the Koran, however, affords a better insight into the character of the Prophet than the uncertain and suspicious testimony of the Sunnah. It is the mirror in which are reflected the sincere convictions, the lofty aims, the political experiments, the domestic troubles, the hopes and apprehensions which, through many trials and perplexities, influenced the mind and directed the movements of the author in his career, from the position of a simple citizen of Mecca to the exalted dignity of sole ruler of Arabia. The estimate of Mohammed in the Sunnah, which has been transmitted by his early associates, who knew him well and daily observed his conduct in the time of his obscurity, is nevertheless entitled to far more credit than any opinion that may have been formed without the assistance of tradition by the most capable scholar after the lapse of even a single century. But unfortunately, in many instances, their accounts have been so corrupted by the fabulous embellishments of subsequent commentators as to detract much from their undoubted historical value.

The most conspicuous trait of Mohammed was his absolute inflexibility of purpose. From the hour when he first communicated to Khadijah his belief in his mission, through the long and weary years of mockery, persecution, conspiracy, and exile, during the even more trying period of prosperity and empire, up to the sad final scene in the house of Ayesha, he persevered unflinchingly in the plan which he had proposed for his guidance, and which had for its end the abolition of idolatry, the improvement of his countrymen, and the establishment of the sublime and philosophical dogma of the unity of God. The only rational explanation that can be given of this remarkable conduct in the midst of difficulties and perils which would have shaken the constancy of a mortal of ordinary mould lies in his evident sincerity. The most convincing evidence of his honesty of purpose, his self-confidence, and his earnest devotion, is furnished by the rank and character of his first disciples, and the reverence with which his teachings were received. The early proselytes of all other religions of which history makes mention were ignorant and uneducated, destitute of worldly possessions, without pride of ancestry or title to public consideration. Their ungrammatical harangues were often heard with derision; their credulity excited the contempt of the philosopher and of the hostile priesthood alike. It was even made a subject of reproach to the first Christians—an accusation, however, never conclusively proved—that their numbers were largely recruited from the criminals, the idlers, and the beggars of the Empire. The origin of modern sects has invariably been obscure, and their proselytes of humble rank and servile occupation. Not so, however, with the early followers of Mohammed. They were members of the proud and exclusive aristocracy of Arabia. Their lineage could be traced, in an unbroken line, for more than six hundred years. Their hereditary office of custodians of the shrine venerated by every tribe of the Peninsula gave them immense prestige among their countrymen. Their interest in the preservation of the national worship would naturally prejudice them against innovations which must inevitably diminish their power and curtail their emoluments. Their wealth was not inferior to their illustrious descent and their political and religious influence. Some of them were included among the most opulent citizens of Mecca. The Jewish apostates of Medina possessed the proverbial thrift and intelligence of their race. In that Hebrew colony none stood higher in public estimation than they. The success of Islam demonstrated beyond dispute the superiority of its original proselytes in the arts of statesmanship no less than in the science of war. Great talents were required to encounter successfully the exigencies which attended its institution, and which afterwards repeatedly menaced its permanence. The high character of such disciples is a positive indication of the purity of their motives and the sincerity of their belief. Men are not liable to be readily imposed upon by claims to divine inspiration asserted by their intimate associates. Distance and mystery are far more propitious to the success of a religious teacher than the familiarity which results from close acquaintance and diurnal scrutiny. It is a common error to attribute the spread of Mohammedanism entirely to the agency of force. Military success was undoubtedly a powerful factor in the accomplishment of its destiny. The sword was peculiarly esteemed in Arabia. The steel of which it was composed was, in a country where no iron was produced, the most valuable of metals. The prodigious nomenclature by which that weapon was distinguished was an indication of its national importance, and of the potency of its effects entertained by those by whom it was wielded. It represented the martial spirit of the Arab,—the ruling incentive of his life, the inspiration of his predatory exploits, the glory of a long succession of cherished traditions. A mystic significance attached to it, which, in time, assumed a religious character, and rendered its employment, according to popular belief, acceptable to the omnipotent and invisible Deity of Arabia. These ideas descended to the Moslems, and promoted, in no small degree, their energy and their enthusiasm. But force alone could never have enabled a tumultuous horde of barbarians, unaccustomed to concerted action and impatient of the restraints of military discipline, to overwhelm three great empires in less than a century. The policy of Islam was at first more conciliatory than menacing. It preferred to inculcate its principles by argument rather than to provoke opposition by invective. It disclaimed the invention of new dogmas, but labored to reconcile its tenets with those of its venerated predecessors. It discouraged proselytism by violence. Whatever it could not abolish or modify, it adopted; whatever it could not appropriate, it ruthlessly destroyed. National decrepitude; the universal decay of religious belief; the dexterous adaptation of alleged prophecy; the hopeless condition of the devout, terrified by the fierce animosity of contending sects; the impossibility of ascertaining the correctness of the Gospel amidst the confusion of doctrines and the multiplicity of versions; the political disorders resulting from barbarian ascendency; the abrogation of the offensive distinctions of caste; the mysterious fascination which attends the unknown; the prospect of wealth, renown, and empire held out to aspiring genius; the guaranty of independence of thought and immunity from persecution—grouped under the banner of Mohammed the disorganized and exhausted nations of the mediæval world. The tenor of his life until the first revelation was that of a man of unimpeachable morality. Already in his youth he had been distinguished by the significant appellation of The Faithful. His marital relations until after the death of Khadijah were without reproach; a fact conceded by his most implacable enemies. A profound knowledge of human nature, an appreciation of the spiritual requirements of his countrymen—upon whose minds the doctrines of Zoroaster and of Christ had made no permanent impression—enabled him to fabricate a system demonstrated by experience to be admirably fitted to the taste, the genius, and the superstition of the Oriental. Without a supreme conviction of the genuineness of his mission he could never have impressed his teachings upon the minds of the satirical and incredulous Arabs, or have secured proselytes among his kindred, to whom his daily intercourse would have soon revealed sentiments and conduct wholly inconsistent with his pretensions as a medium of divine authority. And yet, with all the sincerity of his convictions, he thoroughly distrusted himself. He repeatedly affirmed that he was but a man, a preacher, a reformer, whose mission was the regeneration and the happiness of mankind. In spite of his realistic descriptions of heaven and hell, he declared that he was ignorant of what was in store for the soul after death. The spirit which consolidated a hundred vagrant tribes distracted by the feuds of centuries, deaf to offers of compromise and peace, so jealous of every infringement of their personal liberty that they resented even the benignant and patriarchal rule of their chieftains, into a powerful empire; which noted the glaring absurdities of contemporaneous creeds, and offered in their stead an idea of the Deity so simple, and yet so comprehensive, that no mind, however bigoted, could conscientiously reject it; which moulded into an harmonious system the jarring interests of antagonistic races, and, by its maxims of toleration, conciliated those sectaries who denied the authenticity of its principles, and refused compliance with its ceremonial; which, in consonance with ideas of policy far in advance of the time, united the functions of ruler and priest without apparently giving undue prominence to either; which founded a religion that has endured for nearly thirteen centuries, and has claimed the devoted allegiance of a thousand million men, can hardly with propriety be said to have been created by the irrational and selfish impulses of insanity or imposture. Rather may these results be designated the operations of a master-mind actuated by a lofty ambition; a mind capable of solving the most perplexing questions of statecraft, and endowed with a degree of political wisdom not often exhibited by even those few whom the voice of history has invested with the proud title of artificers of nations.

Much has been written and spoken by persons having important material interests to subserve, possessing limited knowledge of the subject, and with little inclination to use even that knowledge with impartiality, concerning the physical weakness which, at irregular intervals, affected the Prophet. It has already been alluded to as a form of muscular hysteria, an affection peculiar to delicate, nervous organizations, whose attacks are generally evoked by sudden and intense cerebral excitement, and a physiological phenomenon belonging to the same class as somnambulism and catalepsy. It is but temporary in its effects; and while its symptoms are not dissimilar to those of the “falling sickness” of the Romans, the patient does not lose consciousness, and neither the origin nor the continuance of the disease implies even a temporary impairment of the mental faculties. In view of the thorough investigations of medical scholars, the generally received opinion, fostered by ignorance and religious prejudice, may be pronounced erroneous; even if the efforts of enlightened historical criticism had not already established beyond contradiction that to the Byzantines, who enjoyed a world-wide reputation for accomplished mendacity, is to be attributed the popular fable of the epilepsy of Mohammed.

In personal appearance, Mohammed did not differ from his countrymen of gentle blood. His head was large, his chest well developed, his limbs slender but sinewy, and his whole frame capable of the exertion of enormous strength. A heavy beard reached half-way to his girdle, and his coal-black locks, slightly curling, fell down upon his shoulders. He had the purely Semitic cast of features; the dark eyes gleaming with half-hidden fire, the thin aquiline nose, the brown complexion, and teeth of dazzling whiteness. While his expressive physiognomy indicated the possession of a high order of mental power, the sensual, as is often the case with men of extraordinary genius, was visible to an abnormal degree side by side with the intellectual. His gait was rapid and his movements energetic; his manners quiet, but pleasing: his address affable; while his commanding presence, and his proficiency in all the winning but superficial arts of the courtier, heightened by his calm and impressive demeanor, displayed to advantage the graces and charms of his eloquence. Though habitually grave and taciturn, he was easy of access to the vilest outcast; and it was said of him that he always left his hand in that of an acquaintance until the latter had withdrawn his own. His liberality was boundless, and often subjected his household to serious inconvenience; his gentle disposition is shown by his fondness for children, and his humanity by the repeated injunctions of the Koran relating to the treatment of animals. The degrading passion of avarice had no part in his nature; with immense treasures at his command, his establishment was inferior to those of his followers, and the greater part of his income he bestowed upon the poor. His tastes were always simple and unpretending; and even after he had been raised to sovereign power he retained the frugal habits of patriarchal life; his house was but a hut of sun-dried bricks and palm branches, to which a leathern curtain served as a door. So humble was he in everything that did not concern the dignity of his prophetic office, that he even mended his own sandals, cared for his goats and camels, and at times aided his wives in the performance of their domestic duties. Ever constant in friendship, he early secured, and preserved until. death, the attachment of those who were associated with him, whether equals or inferiors, both of whom he treated with the utmost consideration. Such was his self-command and perfect control of his passions that he never struck an enemy save in the heat of battle, scolded a servant, or punished a slave. So far from assuming supernatural powers, he absolutely disclaimed their possession, and no public teacher has ever displayed less self-assurance and dogmatism. As a ruler and a politician, his measures were taken with tact and prudence; as a commander, he displayed in the field considerable military capacity; and it is undisputed that flagrant disobedience of his orders was the cause of his early reverses. He had the strictest ideas of the responsibilities that pertain to the administration of justice; the poorest suitor, however trifling his cause, never failed of a hearing; and he threatened with the severest penalties those who refused the settlement of their pecuniary obligations. While inculcating the crowning merit of good works, he recommended their concealment, and resolutely discountenanced all pharisaical display of pious affectation or pretended virtue. He was slow to resent an injury and quick to pardon an offender,—a signal mark of cowardice in the opinion of the Arab; timely submission and an appeal to his generosity rarely failed to disarm his short-lived hostility; and those who began by being his most implacable enemies ended by becoming his loyal and devoted champions. His magnanimity and the profound knowledge of the human heart which stamped him as a leader of men were evidenced by his noble conduct and princely liberality to the Koreish after the conquest of Mecca. In a word, the brighter side of the character of Mohammed needs no higher eulogy than is revealed by the definition which he has left us of charity, a virtue which he never ceased to practise: “Every good act is charity; your smiling in your brother’s face, your putting a wanderer in the right way, your giving water to the thirsty, your exhortation to another to do right, is charity. A man’s true wealth hereafter is the good he hath done in this world to his fellow-men. When he dies, people will inquire, ‘What property hath he left behind him?’ But the angels will ask, ‘What good deeds hath he sent before him?’”

With all the greatness of Mohammed there was mingled not a little of the frailty incident to human nature,—a considerable portion of which, however, is to be credited to his want of education and to the superstitious prejudices of the age in which he lived. He abhorred darkness, and feared to be left alone without a light; he cried like a child under the slightest physical suffering; he was an implicit believer in the virtues of even numbers, and lived in constant apprehension of sorcery; while the evil-eye was to him, as to the most ignorant of his countrymen, a calamitous and dreaded reality. His conduct was frequently regulated by dreams and omens; some of the latter being not less puerile than those evoked by the arts of divination which he so resolutely condemned. He was guilty of petty affectations and exhibitions of weakness scarcely to be expected in one of his genius and position; he dyed his hair and stained his hands with henna, and displayed an amusing self-consciousness and vanity when in the presence of any of the female sex. He was inordinately jealous, and to this failing, for which history has admitted that at times he had sufficient cause, is to be attributed the seraglio, the veil, the escort of eunuchs, and the seclusion of women. His polygamous connections, which have elicited the censure of European casuists and theologians, were, in the main, measures adopted for political effect; for by these matrimonial alliances he cemented his influence and extended his power. While it would be vain to deny his amorous susceptibilities,—for we have his own testimony that of all things he loved women and perfumes,—it must be remembered that he controlled his passions until after middle life; and it is certainly less worthy of remark that he should have permitted himself the indulgence of a harem, than that, with his opportunities, he did not abandon himself to unbridled and vicious indulgence. The moral aspect of polygamy, moreover, seems to vary with the locality, and to be after all only a question of latitude. In the scorching heat of the torrid zone, which causes no appreciable deterioration in man’s virility and endurance, woman matures when but a child in years, and is old and wrinkled long before her partner has reached the prime of life. Again, as is well known, the passions of Orientals are far stronger than those of Western nations, bearing to each other a ratio approximating to that of the warm-blooded mammalia to the sluggish reptilia, the voluptuous temperament of the Arabs is repeatedly mentioned by classic writers, and under the tropics the imperious demands of nature may not be disdained or neglected save in the cavern of the starving and emaciated anchorite. The civil institutions of the East have from time immemorial legalized the custom of polygamous marriage, and the words monogamist and Oriental are antithetical, and imply a contradiction in terms. Though distinguished ethnologists maintain with considerable acumen that polyandry is one of the first phases of social existence, their inferences are for the most part merely speculative; for history seldom, if ever, has recorded such alliances, and this apparently anomalous condition of family life is now found only in Thibet and Hindustan. The sacred books of the dominant religions of the world, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, and Mohammedan, all of which are of Asiatic origin, either openly sanction polygamy or sedulously refrain from denouncing it. Every one knows that it is universal in China and India; the Zendavesta recognizes it; the student of history and legend need not be reminded of its prevalence among the Children of Israel; and the law of Islam permits its practice under certain wise and equitable restrictions. The Bible, from beginning to end, has not a single word to offer in condemnation of it; indeed, in the days of the patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, its utility in the lands where it prevailed appears to have been unquestioned. Although our ideas of social and domestic happiness do not tolerate this custom, which the rigor of our climate renders unnecessary and, in a measure, revolting; still, we should not attempt to measure by our arbitrary standard of propriety the habits of nations formed under far different circumstances, and satisfied with institutions consecrated by the experience of a hundred and fifty generations; nor can we, with justice, subject to our rigid canons of theological and political ethics the sentiments and actions of an illiterate man, bred among semi-barbarians, and who died nearly thirteen hundred years ago. While Mohammed shared with his countrymen all their cynical distrust of the feminine character, he is the only lawgiver claiming divine inspiration who has ever made any effort to improve the condition of women by restricting polygamy, and by the imposition of regulations which admit of no evasion without a forfeiture of legal rights. The beneficial effects of these ordinances in placing restraints upon divorce, in securing to widows immunity from destitution, and in preventing female infanticide, contribute of themselves no inconsiderable addition to the prestige of his name. Far more serious than superstitious weakness, the foibles of vanity, or predilection for women, are other accusations which have been brought against the Prophet. The employment of bravos and the assassination of prisoners, which, if not ordered, are said to have been at least connived at and rewarded by him, are ineffaceable stains upon his character; and it must be confessed that the evidence tending to establish the commission of these sanguinary deeds is but too well founded. They only indicate, however, that, while Mohammed was far in advance of his age, the passion for blood, esteemed the cardinal virtue of an Arab, had not been eradicated from his breast after a life devoted to prayer, alms-giving, and benevolence. The invocation of divine authority in the Koran to justify deeds of which even the lax morality of the age disapproved, while the exigencies of the occasion might have to some extent excused them, is also, under any circumstances, extremely discreditable. The glory of Mohammed consists in the fact that he fully realized the moral and political necessities of his people, and opened for them a career of unprecedented brilliancy; that his efforts for their substantial improvement, reacting, in turn, upon other nations utterly foreign to the Arab blood and language, will be felt to the end of time; that he abolished many cruel and degrading customs; that he elevated and dignified the character of all who received his teachings, and left devout worshippers of a single God those whom he had found polytheists and idolaters.

The Koran is believed by Mussulmans to have been delivered by the Almighty, through the angel Gabriel, to Mohammed, who communicated it orally to his companions as it was revealed, whence is derived its name, “Recitation.” Having thus a divine origin, it is considered sacrilegious by the Moslem Pharisees to question the authenticity or propriety of any of its statements, or to criticise its manifold contradictions, repetitions, and absurdities. As knowledge of writing was at that time a rare accomplishment in Arabia,—it being asserted by many scholars that Mohammed himself never acquired it,—only scattered portions of the revelation were inscribed upon such materials as fragments of leather, stones, palm-leaves, and the shoulder-blades of sheep, and the remaining verses and Suras, as they fell from the lips of the Prophet, were impressed upon the marvellously retentive memories of his auditors. In the course of events many of the latter were killed in battle, and the Khalif Abu-Bekr, fearing the loss of the sacred texts, took measures to collect and preserve them in a permanent form. When Othman was raised to the Khalifate, many different readings had already arisen from this manuscript; and innumerable editions, each claiming superiority and producing endless controversy and scandal, were distributed throughout his dominions. To secure uniformity, he caused copies of the first edition to be made, and all others not agreeing with the latter were destroyed; so that the work as published under the auspices of Othman is the Koran as we possess it, the spiritual guide of all true Moslems. It is not voluminous, containing only a little more than half as much matter as the New Testament, and is composed of one hundred and fourteen Suras, or chapters, grouped together apparently without any attention to rational connection or chronological order, and wherein the same sentiments are expressed and the same legends are repeated time and again. An attentive perusal of a translation of this book is an arduous task, and even in the original it is an undertaking well calculated to exhaust the patience and application of any one but a Mussulman theologian or saint. The compiler began with the longest chapters and ended with the shortest ones, the reverse order in which they were revealed, which suggests the hypothesis that the Koran may have been at first written in some language other than Arabic, and in which the characters were read from left to right. It is also suspected, upon plausible grounds, that the sacred book has suffered interpolations and omissions made in the interest of the successful faction to which Othman belonged; a theory which has gained credence from the well-known corruption of the Scriptures by the Jews. Be this as it may, no means of comparison existing, as in the case of the different versions of the Bible, the conclusions of the critic must necessarily be drawn from the internal evidence afforded by the text itself; a mode of examination at best but unreliable and unsatisfactory. Moslems love to cite the Koran as the one miracle of Mohammed, on account of its purity of language and perfection of style; leaving out of consideration its chaotic condition, its anachronisms, and the desultory, monotonous, and disconnected rhapsodies with which it abounds. Having no diacritical points to indicate the vowels, its meaning is often ambiguous, and seven different readings exist, all of which are admitted by theologians to be correct. Though written in the dialect of Mecca, the most polished of the Arabic tongue, it contains, nevertheless, many grammatical errors; probably traceable to the illiterate persons from whose recollection was obtained much of the first compilation, and whose words, taken down verbatim, would obviously require correction, which the scribe naturally hesitated to make through fear of sacrilege. In view of the suspicion not unjustly attaching to the motives of those who revised it, and which, to a certain extent, affects its authenticity as a whole, it is scarcely proper to subject the volume to searching and invidious criticism. Nor is it creditable to attribute to the teachings of Mohammed doctrines adopted by subsequent Moslem theologians which he would probably have been the first to condemn. The bulk of the Koran is composed of Jewish and Christian legends; rules for the ceremonial of Islam; excuses for the conduct of the Prophet when the indignation and suspicious temper of his followers threatened his ascendency; the foundation of a code of law, and a large number of moral precepts breathing a spirit of enlightened piety, impartial justice, and self-abnegation, unsurpassed by any collection of maxims ever offered for the guidance of mankind. The popular anthropomorphic idea of the Deity is rejected, all His physical attributes being now regarded as figurative; triads are classed with idols as manifestations of polytheism; and the exalted conception of God without equal or rival is perpetually impressed upon the mind of the reader in phrases glowing with the fire of religious zeal and impassioned eloquence. The poetic talent of the untutored Arab appears in all its wonderful perfection in the Koran, and yet Mohammed did not acknowledge his possession of this faculty, and persistently discouraged its exercise as a reminiscence of Paganism. Throughout the entire volume no assumption is made of divine powers by the Prophet; the ability to work miracles is especially repudiated by him as unnecessary for religious conviction, and is mentioned as an unavailing and unprofitable accomplishment of his inspired predecessors. The prevalent idea that a blind fatalism is inculcated in the pages of the Koran is a fallacy. The entire substance of its teachings is contrary to this doctrine, and would be worthless if belief in it were enjoined; passages constantly occur admitting the exercise of the utmost freedom of will, and thoroughly inconsistent with any theory depending upon the foreordained destiny of man. The fact is that the misapprehension of the meaning of Islam—absolute resignation to the will of God—is responsible for this perverted principle, which, like the crescent now universally adopted as a Moslem religious symbol, is an invention of the Turks, and was absolutely unknown as such to the early followers of Mohammed.

To the Kaaba, whose deities had received the pious homage of so many centuries, an additional importance was communicated by its adoption as the central point of Mussulman worship. In time it became invested with a mystical character resembling the personification of a female principle of faith, which, while anomalous in the practice of Islam, is so familiar to the constitution of almost all religions. A black covering representing a veil, and renewed each year with impressive ceremonies, screened the sacred building from the public gaze. A guard of eunuchs, fifty in number, the dignity and importance of whose office, as custodians of the shrine, entitled them to the superstitious reverence of the devout, were in constant attendance. In these singular regulations, which suggest both the adoration of the Virgin and the restraints of the harem, can be detected an expression of the innate and irrepressible desire of mankind for a material representation of feminine divinity.

The licentious character alleged to belong to the Mohammedan paradise has provoked much unreasonable vituperation from those who are unfamiliar with the literary peculiarities and highly imaginative temperament of the people of the East. The mind of the Oriental has ever delighted to wander in the mystic realm of parable and allegory. His sacred books, from the Zendavesta to the Koran, abound with examples of this method of impressing important truths, and even the lighter productions destined to beguile his leisure are not free from it. No educated Mussulman believes, no candid and well-informed Orientalist thinks, that the famous houris, with their unfading charms, their graceful presence, their intoxicating embraces, and their peculiar physical endowments, are anything more than the shadowy personages of allegorical imagery. Allusion is made to them in terms of vague and mysterious import susceptible of various construction; and, even if we should admit the belief in their actual existence, and adopt a literal interpretation of the verses relative to this recompense of the blest, the descriptions of their attractions are not comparable in minuteness of detail and carnal suggestiveness to the voluptuous inspirations of the Song of Solomon, which no reader, however credulous, will venture to construe otherwise than as an allegory. In the romantic and highly embellished visions of the Koran, uncultivated Moslems, imbued with the imaginative credulity of the East, have been only too ready to accept metaphor and parable for absolute fact.

The other pleasures to be found in heaven are connected with what would be most precious and refreshing to the poor and thirsty dwellers in the Desert,—the domes of pearl; the dust of musk; the pebbles of hyacinth and emerald; the sumptuous banquets; the robes of satin and gold; the exhilarating but harmless draughts of generous wine; the forests of stately palms; the everlasting verdure; the luscious fruits; the sparkling fountains; the shady gardens watered by cool and limpid streams. It was not without reason that green became the distinctive color of the returned pilgrim, a color selected by the Prophet as emblematic of the fields and groves of Paradise.

Mohammed, having derived his idea of heaven indirectly from the Chaldean accounts of the Garden of Eden, and that of the devil from the dualism of Persian mythology, borrowed the name and description of the place of torment from the Jews, who denominated hell Ge-Hinnom, literally, the “Vale of Hinnom,” from a fertile and pleasant valley near Jerusalem, which, however, was rendered execrable in spite of its attractions, on account of its being the home of the relentless Moloch, upon whose altar was periodically immolated the flower of the Hebrew youth. The rabbinical division into seven stages, entered by as many gates, and each set apart for a different degree of punishment, is adopted without sensible alteration. If reference to Paradise is seldom made in the Koran, the details of the tortures of the damned are, on the other hand, remarkable for their vividness and frequency, and, conceived by the flights of an unbridled imagination, are delineated with all the earnestness of a mind convinced of their fearful reality.

The Koran, like the Zendavesta, which enjoins the tilling of the soil as an indispensable religious duty, recommends the practice of agricultural pursuits, the extension of commerce, and the foundation and development of every species of manufacturing industry. The encouragement of these occupations, by representing them as praiseworthy and agreeable to God, with a view to their general adoption by a people who had hitherto considered trade and manual labor as contemptible, was naturally a task of considerable difficulty. But expectations of pecuniary advantage, joined to the prospect of individual distinction and national glory, speedily removed this prejudice; especially in a society which contained no privileged classes, and recognized none of the artificial and depressing obligations of feudalism. In consequence of this wise recommendation, the restrictions of caste—which had never prevailed in Arabia to the extent common to the kingdoms of Asia, probably because it possessed no hierarchy and no organized system of government—were eradicated; all employments of an honorable character were placed upon an equal footing; and the merchant and the artisan each enjoyed a degree of dignity, popular esteem, and social importance proportionate to his talents and success.

Although the Koran has been made the subject of interminable commentaries, numbering forty thousand as near as can be estimated, and isolated precepts have been expanded and distorted for the purpose of forming an elaborate system of jurisprudence, it was never intended as a general text-book of law. The few maxims upon this subject which it contains were borrowed partly from the Hebrews, but chiefly from the sanguinary code of the early Arabians. Some, in addition to those above mentioned, grew out of the requirements of particular cases; the majority of them, however, relate to the domestic difficulties of the Prophet and to the regulation of the harem. Notwithstanding the latter preferably adopted the Koran as the basis of his legal decisions whenever it was practicable, it is a well-known fact that after his death the collections of the Sunnah furnished a standard of broader application, and of scarcely less authoritative character, in the settlement of the principles of Mohammedan law.

The Koran commands relief of the oppressed, protection of the defenceless, mercy to the orphan, and kindness to animals. It enjoins the strict performance of engagements, even though entered into with members of a hostile creed; in humiliating contrast with the policy of Catholic Rome, whose children were perpetually absolved from the observance of contracts concluded with infidels. It denounces awful penalties against the murderer and the suicide. In its pages the profound deference that usually attaches to aristocratic birth and distinguished station is ignored; titled insolence is not permitted to assert superiority over the unpretending worshipper, and the monarch and the beggar meet as brethren before the throne of Almighty God. The right of private judgment is repeatedly and authoritatively declared to be the privilege of every believer; the humblest Moslem may place his own interpretation on the texts of the alleged revelation; and his conception of their meaning and application is entirely independent of the edicts of priests or the suspicious decisions of synods and councils.

Abstinence from swine’s flesh and from the blood of all animals is enforced through hygienic considerations arising from experience of the injurious effects of such food in tropical climates; and the requirement of personal cleanliness by frequent and regular lustration has its origin in the same vigilant solicitude for the public welfare.

A marked difference of ideas and phraseology is to be discerned in the Suras delivered at Mecca and Medina respectively; the former being more poetic, inspiring, and defiant than the latter. As Mohammed consolidated his power, the text of the Koran evinced more of the calmness and dignity of the ruler than of the fire of the enthusiast. The earnest desire to make converts of the Jews is disclosed by the appeal to a common ancestry, and by the politic incorporation of Talmudic legends into the holy book which was to replace the Bible; while the signal failure to secure this result is foreshadowed by threats of divine wrath soon to be realized by slavery, exile, and death. Though Arabia was full of infidels, and even a large proportion of the idolaters observed the rites of their religion merely as a matter of form and fashion, and were deeply infected with skepticism, it is singular that Mohammed, in his denunciations of hypocrisy and idolatry, did not utter a word in condemnation of atheistical ideas. The book, moreover, which was to be the guide of a sect whose adherents improved algebra, discovered chemical analysis, and brought agriculture to an unprecedented degree of perfection, contains no science, and only the most rudimentary notions of civil government. According to the Koran, the sun sets in a morass of black mud; water is the element whence all life is derived; and the conceptions of natural phenomena which are gravely set forth in its pages are only worthy of the vagrant fancies of children and barbarians.

Among Orientals the Koran is invariably published in Arabic, the sacred language of the Mussulmans, who are instructed in it during childhood, just as orthodox Jews are early familiarized with the Hebrew tongue. It is not known through the medium of translation in Mohammedan countries unless when the latter is interlined with the original; so that the reader, by comparing the different texts, may have an opportunity to judge of the qualifications and accuracy of the translator. Great luxury is usually exhibited in the embellishment of the sacred volume. Its leaves are blue or purple, odorous with costly perfumes, its letters of gold. Its covers are often studded with jewels. Amidst its interwoven arabesques the name of God appears, repeated thousands of times. No Mussulman handles it without every demonstration of reverence. It almost always bears upon the side an admonition not to touch it with unclean hands; an unnecessary precaution for the devout, whose respect for its contents is indeed not unreasonable, as we may perceive from a single invocation taken at random, and not conspicuous among the expressions of sublime piety to be found upon almost every page: “Architect of the heaven and the earth, thou art my support in this world and the next. Cause me to die faithful to the law. Introduce me into the assembly of the just.”

Islam means substantially the Religion of Peace. From this verbal form are derived the terms Mussulman and Moslem, indicating all who are submissive to the will of God. The commonly adopted appellation Mohammedan is not countenanced by followers of the Prophet, and is of European origin. The Islamitic confession of faith is the simplest known to any creed; it merely involves the repetition of the formula, “There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his Apostle.” By the acceptance and utterance of this phrase, any one may become a Mussulman; although the observance of the practical duties of prayer, fasting, alms-giving, and pilgrimage, urged with such eloquence in the Koran, are regarded as obligatory upon all professing that religion. Moslems pray five times daily, and before each prayer an ablution must be performed, as a token that the suppliant has cleansed his heart of every vestige of insincerity and impure desire. The Pagan Arabs, as often as they addressed their supplications to their ruling divinity, turned their faces to the rising sun, and when Mohammed instituted his form of prayer, he selected as the objective point, or Kiblah, the temple of Jerusalem, with the design of attracting the Jews; but after the conversion of the latter was seen to be impracticable, and no further reason for conciliation existed, the Kaaba was substituted; and thenceforth the holy shrine of Mecca became the Kiblah of the Moslem faith. During the month of Ramadhan—set apart because in it was communicated the first revelation—a fast is enjoined throughout the domain of Islam, and abstinence from food and drink is required from sunrise to sunset; an intolerable hardship in torrid lands, where the month often falls in summer on account of the constantly retrograding divisions of the lunar year.

The unostentatious bestowal of alms was a duty whose importance Mohammed constantly impressed upon his followers as a cardinal virtue; the Moslem is taxed to the tenth of his income for the benefit of the poor; and if his wealth has been increased through injustice or dishonesty, the penalty of a double contribution is exacted. Pilgrimage, the last of the religious obligations of Islamism, whenever possible, should be performed in person; its observance confers a life-long distinction, and its neglect implies a deplorable want of energy in the believer that may compromise his happiness hereafter.

When the pilgrim enters the sacred territory, which extends for several miles in every direction from Mecca, he lays aside his clothes, performs complete ablution, and dons the Ihram, or Garment of Holiness, which is composed of two long, seamless pieces of cotton cloth, one to be wrapped about the waist, and the other to be adjusted upon the upper part of the body so as to leave the right shoulder bare. All covering for the head is prohibited; a severe restriction under the blazing sun of the Hedjaz. He now approaches the Kaaba, kisses the Black Stone, and makes the circuit of the edifice seven times, repeating certain prayers prescribed for the occasion. Next he drinks of the waters of the holy well Zemzem, which tradition asserts burst forth spontaneously at the feet of Hagar when she and Ishmael were about to perish of thirst in the wilderness. Near at hand is the Station of Abraham, a large stone upon which the Patriarch is supposed to have stood when he built the Kaaba, whither the pilgrim must now resort and perform his devotions. Finally, he leaves the precincts of the shrine and runs seven times between Safa and Merwa, two elevations beyond the walls of the mosque; a ceremony commemorative of the despair of Hagar in her search for water to sustain the life of her suffering child before the fountains of Zemzem were miraculously opened. Upon the eighth day of the Pilgrimage, a mighty host, amounting not infrequently to the number of seventy-five thousand souls, with twenty-five thousand camels and countless other animals for sacrifice, sets out for Mount Arafat, ten miles distant, from whose summit a sermon is preached by the chief imam of the Mosque of Mecca. The sermon concluded, all hurry amidst great confusion to the Valley of Mina, where each pilgrim should cast seven pebbles at three pillars representing the devil, in commemoration of an incident in the life of Abraham. The animals, sheep and camels, are next slaughtered,—a ceremony symbolical of the sacrifice by the patriarch, whose victim, however, is stated by Arabian tradition to have been Ishmael instead of Isaac,—and the pilgrims are then at liberty to resume their ordinary garments, shave their heads, trim their beards, and pare their nails; acts considered illegal before the various rites of the Pilgrimage have been performed according to the prescribed routine.

The visit to the Prophet’s tomb at Medina is not compulsory, but is indispensable to secure the honorable title of Hadj, which confers the privilege of wearing a green turban, and excites the perpetual envy of those unfortunates whose physical incapacity or limited financial circumstances will not permit a journey to the Holy Cities of Arabia.

“Show me a people’s God,” said Euripides, “and I will tell you that people’s history.” To the history of Islam is this significant remark especially appropriate. The Moslem conception of the Deity is one of unapproachable grandeur and sublimity. While placed immeasurably above His creatures, their praise and their petitions are always tendered Him without the officious intervention of a privileged caste, and wherever the hour of prayer may find the worshipper, whether in the retirement of his home, in the noisy bazaar, upon the deck of a vessel in mid-ocean, or amidst the awful stillness and solitude of the Desert.

The practical value and consequent importance of a religion consist not so much by whom or under what circumstances it is alleged to have been founded, but in what it has effected for the happiness and permanent improvement of humanity.

Through the enthusiasm inspired by its exalted ideas of Almighty power, Islam extirpated idolatry so thoroughly, that in the second generation after it was promulgated men feared even to mention the names of the false gods of their fathers. It made cannibalism detestable, and swept away human sacrifices, with which the Arabs had been familiar for a period whose commencement was long anterior to the days of Abraham. It softened the asperities of warfare; extended to the vanquished the advantages of instant liberty and prospective distinction, upon the sole condition of conversion; it protected the unfortunate captive from violence, and abolished the shocking practice of mutilation of the dead. Its hostility to the spirit of feudalism insured the protection and freedom of every degree and profession of mankind. It elevated the position of woman; repressed the unblushing licentiousness prevalent in the Age of Ignorance; formulated an equitable law of divorce, where separation had been previously a matter of caprice; and shielded the wife from the cruelty, avarice, and injustice of the husband. It stamped out, at once and forever, the horrible crime of infanticide. It prohibited not merely the abuse of wine and other intoxicants, but even the slightest indulgence in them. It declared divination and all games of chance to be devices of Satan, whose practice would inevitably cause a forfeiture of Paradise. While countenancing slavery, it ameliorated the condition of the slave, who, under the patriarchal customs of the Orient, enjoyed the familiar intercourse and shared the paternal care of the master; declared his manumission to be the most commendable of acts and the most effective of penances; defined his rights, regulated the measure of his punishment and the amount of his ransom, and established the humane provision that, when sold, the slave-mother should never be separated from her child. It recommended as indispensable duties of the true believer the practice of humility, of resignation, of benevolence. By proclaiming the equality of all men and by the persistent inculcation of the virtues of charity and forgiveness, it gradually weakened, and ultimately abrogated, the law of blood-revenge, which the Bedouin had been accustomed to consider his most cherished privilege; a right whose violation, according to popular opinion, involved the honor of his tribe and the assertion of his manhood. It liberated property from the arbitrary impositions of a horde of petty chieftains, who levied excessive tribute to the infinite detriment of commerce, and imposed a single tax—the tenth of the increase—understood and acquiesced in by all. It punished mercilessly the abuses which arose from the unprincipled exactions of usury, and, by the enforcement of laws of unexampled rigor, guaranteed the safety of travellers in regions where successful robbery had been a mark of personal distinction, and where the outrage of private rights was still the unquestioned prerogative of every inhabitant whose arm was more powerful than that of his neighbor. Attaching the highest importance to habitual cleanliness, it commended its daily observance, and, to avoid a plausible excuse for neglect, it suggested the use of sand, as symbolical of water, in localities where the latter could not be obtained. It admitted into its ceremonial the wise and time-honored custom of circumcision; a purely sanitary regulation, whose important physiological significance every surgeon will readily comprehend. Islam is emphatically a religion of good works, and the believer is constantly reminded that upon the Day of Judgment his meritorious acts and deeds of benevolence will speak eloquently in his favor, although his lips have long been closed in the silence of the grave. No organized body of ecclesiastics, greedy of gain and notoriety and utterly unscrupulous as to the means of obtaining them, thronged its temples; for, in its original purity, it dispensed with a salaried priesthood, and all who read or expounded the Koran in public were expressly forbidden to receive for their services any remuneration whatever. The unseemly contests of sacerdotal ambition, the senseless privations of asceticism, the bloody and turbulent spirit of monastic bigotry, were, by the prudence and foresight of its founder, excluded from its system. Imposing a moderate contribution upon all those in its dominions who declined to abjure the faith of their ancestors, it, upon the other hand, refused to the ministers of other religions, its vassals, the privilege of taxing the members of their congregations without their consent. It impressed upon youth, of whatever rank or station, the obligations of polite and courteous behavior and the unremitting exercise of filial piety. It accorded to every seeker after truth the inestimable privilege of private interpretation and individual opinion,—an inherent right of man refused by Christianity until the time of Luther, who, on account of his advocacy of this innovation, was himself denounced as a Mohammedan; and in certain countries of Europe, not asserted until the seventeenth century, except in secret, and under the threatening shadows of the stake and the scaffold. Unlike other religions, it did not refuse salvation to those who rejected its dogmas. In the presence of the allurements of the seraglio, it still represented continence as the most precious jewel of a believer; but, perceiving the vices provoked by the unnatural restraints of monastic life, it prohibited celibacy, and, for two centuries after the death of the Prophet, the faquir, the santon, and the dervish were unknown. By adopting to a certain extent the primitive code of antiquity, eliminating the evil and retaining the good it contained, it appealed strongly to religious sentiment and national pride, rendered still more binding the virtues of public faith and private hospitality, and, by its repudiation of idolatry in all its forms, concentrated the mind of the devotee upon the compassion, the justice, the infinite grandeur and majesty of God.

A marked peculiarity of Islam is the absence of the female element from its ritual. Even now, in the days of its degeneracy, women have no place in the calendar of its saints; and yet we are aware that among all former, and many contemporaneous, religions the employment of priestesses was common, and female deities were favorite objects of adoration. The Virgin of the Koran—though her immaculate conception was conceded seven hundred and sixty-one years in advance of the decision of the Council of Basel—is, in all other respects, an ordinary mortal, and is far from possessing the dignity and importance of the famous Isis, that fascinating goddess who, banished from the banks of the Nile, was exalted, crowned with her starry emblems, in equal majesty and superior beauty, upon a more gorgeous throne in the imperial city of Catholic Rome.

Mohammed was not exempt from the prejudices entertained by his countrymen towards the sex. The sentimental gallantry and respectful homage tendered its members by Western nations is unknown to the suspicious and sarcastic Oriental. The Prophet declared that the majority of persons he saw in hell during his nocturnal journey were women. But if the power of woman to act directly upon the fortunes of Islam was disdained, her indirect influence in that direction was enormous and undeniable. The harems of the polygamous conquerors at once absorbed the noblest and fairest maidens of the households of the vanquished. The children of these mothers became, without exception, Moslems; and, after the lapse of a generation, the lingering traces of other beliefs disappeared, and nothing but a reconquest and a fresh immigration, or a miraculous interposition of Providence, could have restored the land, so recently subjugated, to its pristine faith.

In religion, as in politics, success is the generally recognized criterion of truth; of the multitude, few have time or inclination for the solution of abstruse theological questions; but substantial results are unmistakable, and even the most credulous are subject to the contagion of example. The successive and dazzling victories of Islam were, in the eyes of its superstitious adversaries, the most convincing argument of the divinity of its origin.

The doctrine of compulsion subsequently associated with Islam was, as already stated, not an original or essential part of its dogma. Mohammed did not advise recourse to the sword until all means of peaceable persuasion had been exhausted, and then only during the continuance of active hostilities. The moral impulse which Islam received as soon as its first victories were won was remarkable and suggestive. It was but the manifestation of the reverence for Force, a feeling which is never eradicated from human nature even in the mostly highly civilized communities. The Roman empire was founded upon this principle, of which it subsequently became the practical embodiment and representative. The successors of the Cæsars, the Khalifs, well aware of its power over the masses, retained and perpetuated its influence, and the scimetar and the Koran usurped the place and dignity of the deposed deities Mars and Hercules. And even in our day we see the evidence of the survival of this sentiment—as old as man himself—in the ceremonies relating to marriage by force among barbarous nations; in the proverbial, yet unconscious, admiration of both sexes—and especially of women—for the soldier; in the applause that greets the espada in the bull-ring; and in the homage and hero-worship accorded to the successful athlete and pugilist.

The mountain region of the Hedjaz, the rocky and barren valleys of Palestine, are insignificant in extent, destitute of natural resources, and without political importance in the eyes of the conquerors and rulers of nations. Yet within their contracted limits were promulgated the three religions which have exercised a predominant influence over the destinies of the most diverse and widely separated races of the globe. The unsocial and repellent character of the institutions of Moses which discouraged proselytism did not prevent the power of Hebrew genius from being felt in every country in which the detested sectaries of Israel established themselves. Christianity and Mohammedanism have by turns disputed the empire of the civilized world. The Khalifs, the spiritual heads of Islam, were long the exponents of intellectual culture, the masters of the fairest regions of Europe and Asia, the discerning patrons of art and letters. The most renowned of the Cæsars, the greatest of modern potentates, were alike inferior in rank and public consideration to the Supreme Pontiffs, who inherited the throne ennobled by the traditions of Roman glory, and whose dignity was confirmed by the omnipotent authority of God. No secular government, worthy of mention in history, has ever been instituted in a region so dreary and inhospitable as that from whence the most powerful and practical forms of faith that have ever enthralled humanity deduce their origin. The changes which all of the latter, in turn, have undergone, present a suggestive commentary on the perishable character of religious systems. The influence of the Babylonian captivity upon Judaism is apparent in every book of the Old Testament and in many of those of the New. We may safely conjecture that Christianity was something very different in the time of Tiberius from what it was in the time of Constantine, and we know what radical changes were made in its canons and ritual by Gregory the Great and Luther. The ancient manuscripts of the Gospels—perhaps destroyed for sinister reasons—have left no data for speculation as to their contents; but it is not unreasonable to at least surmise that the originals did not offer the glaring examples of inelegant diction and barbaric idioms that deform the modern versions. Nor has Islam escaped the fate of its predecessors, the result of the vicissitudes of time, and of the prejudices, weaknesses, and ambition of their votaries. Its distinctive peculiarity was its positive disclaimer of supernatural powers; yet the miracles attributed to Mohammed compose a considerable portion of its sacred literature, which is also oppressed and discredited by a vast mass of preposterous fables, treasured up for centuries in the voluminous body of Islamitic tradition. The simplicity of its creed would seem to effectually preclude all attempts at sectarian division; yet seventy-three sects exist, whose members lose no opportunity to persecute each other with acrimonious hostility. Mohammed execrated idolatry and the arts of the diviner, and denied the merit of works of supererogation; and now relics are suspended in the mosques; omens are sought in the Koran; intercession of saints is daily implored; the Persians worship the Imams; and the Omanites, instead of recognizing the Kaaba, render their obeisance to the Kiblah of their Sabean ancestors, the pole-star of the heavens.

In the Prophet’s attempts to secure the improvement of public morals, his attention was particularly drawn to Mecca as the central point of Islam, whither the believer turns in his daily devotions, and towards which his sightless eyes are directed when his body is deposited in the tomb. But the effects of his salutary admonitions died with him; and the Meccans, relieved from restraint, again became notorious for the excesses which had formerly made the Holy City a reproach even to heathen Arabia. It is a deplorable fact, and one which unhappily affords but too much excuse for the gibes of the profane, that those seats of piety which public opinion has invested with the sacred prestige of celestial influence are the very ones whose population is the most blasphemous, vile, and degraded. The worst Mussulmans of the world are the Arabs of the Hedjaz, as the Italian populace has ever been the scoffer at papal infallibility and the relentless enemy of the Vicar of God. The three cities of the world whose inhabitants early acquired, and have since maintained, the most unenviable reputation for depravity and licentiousness are Jerusalem, Mecca, and Rome.

Unlike most theological systems to which men, in all ages, have rendered their obedient and pious homage, no mystery obscures the origin and foundation of Islam. The purity and simplicity of its principles have undergone no change. Its history has been preserved by the diligence of innumerable writers. The life and characteristics of its Prophet, even to the smallest detail, are accessible to the curiosity of every enterprising scholar.

The austere character of a faith which, at its inception, exacts a rigid compliance with the minutest formalities of its ritual, naturally becomes relaxed and modified after that system has attained to worldly importance and imperial authority; or, in the language of one of the greatest of modern writers, “a dominant religion is never ascetic.” It is strange that Islam, which, in this respect, as in many others, has conformed to the general law of humanity, and now acknowledges tenets and allows practices that would have struck the subjects of Abu-Bekr and Omar with amazement, has been able to preserve in such perfection the observance of its ceremonial; especially when it had no organized sacerdotal power to sustain it. The absence of an ecclesiastical order which could dictate the policy of the throne, and humble the pride of the ermine and purple with the dust in the presence of some audacious zealot, also left untrammelled the way for scientific investigation and research, and, more than all else, contributed to dispel the darkness of mediæval times. The doctrine of toleration enunciated by Mohammed gave no encouragement to that system of repression whose activity has exhausted every means of checking the growth of philosophical knowledge, by imposing the most direful spiritual and temporal penalties upon every teacher who ventures to publicly explain its principles; and it is a matter of far deeper import to the civilization of the twentieth century, than is implied by the mere performance of an act of devotion, when the Temple of Mecca—the seat of a time-honored faith, from whose shrine emanated the spirit of learning that redeemed degraded Europe—is saluted five times every day by the reverent homage of concentric circles of believers, one hundred and fifty million in number, from Tangier to Pekin, from the borders of Siberia to the Equinoctial Line.

We may well consider with admiration the rapid progress and enduring effects of this extraordinary religion which everywhere brought order, wealth, and happiness in its train; which, in destroying the deities of the Kaaba, swept away the traditions of thirty centuries; which adopted those pagan rites that it could not abolish; which seized and retained the birthplace of Christianity; which dispersed over so wide a territory alike the theocracy of the Jews and the ritual of Rome; which drove the Magi from the blazing altars of Persia; which usurped the throne and sceptre of the Byzantine Church; which supplanted the fetichism of the African desert; which trampled upon the mysteries of Isis, Osiris, and Horus, and revealed to the wondering Egyptians the secret of the Most High God; which invaded the Councils of Catholicism, and suggested a fundamental article of its belief; which fashioned the graceful arches of our most famous cathedrals; which placed its seal upon the earth in the measurement of a degree, and inscribed its characters in living light amidst the glittering constellations of the heavens; which has left its traces in the most familiar terms of the languages of Europe; which affords daily proof of its beneficent offices in the garments that we wear, in the books that we read, in the grains of our harvests, in the fruits of our orchards, in the flowers of our gardens; and which gave rise to successive dynasties of sovereigns, whose supreme ambition seemed to be to exalt the character of their subjects, to transmit unimpaired to posterity the inestimable treasures of knowledge, and to extend and perpetuate the intellectual empire of man. These signal and unparallelled results were effected by the inflexible constancy, the lofty genius, the political sagacity, of an Arabian shepherd, deficient in the very rudiments of learning, reared among a barbarous people divided into tribes whose mutual hostility had been intensified by centuries of warfare, who had no organized system of government, who considered the mechanical and mercantile arts degrading, who recognized no law but that of force, and knew no gods but a herd of grotesque and monstrous idols. Robbery was their profession, murder their pastime. Except within the precincts of their camp, no friend, unless connected by the sacred ties of blood, was secure. They devoured the flesh of enemies slain in battle. Deceit always excepted, cruelty was their most prominent national characteristic. Their offensive arrogance, relentless enmity, and obstinate tenacity of purpose were, in a direct ratio to their ignorance and their brutalizing superstition, confirmed by the prodigies, the omens, and the legends of ages.

To undertake the radical amelioration of such political and social conditions was a task of appalling, of apparently insuperable difficulty. Its fortunate accomplishment may not indicate the active interposition of Divine authority. The glories which invest the history of Islam may be entirely derived from the valor, the virtue, the intelligence, the genius, of man. If this be conceded, the largest measure of credit is due to him who conceived its plan, promoted its impulse, and formulated the rules which insured its success. In any event, if the object of religion be the inculcation of morals, the diminution of evil, the promotion of human happiness, the expansion of the human intellect; if the performance of good works will avail in that great day when mankind shall be summoned to its final reckoning, it is neither irreverent nor unreasonable to admit that Mohammed was indeed an Apostle of God.

CHAPTER III
THE CONQUEST OF AL-MAGHREB
647–707

General Disorder following the Death of Mohammed—Regulations of Islam—Progress of the Moslem Arms—Northern Africa, the Land of the Evening—Its Fertility—Its Population—Expedition of Abdallah—Defeat of the Greeks—Invasion of Okbah—Foundation of Kairoan—March of Hassan—Ancient Carthage—Its Influence on Europe—Its Splendid Civilization—Its Maritime Power, its Colonies, its Resources—Description of the City—Its Architectural Grandeur—Its Harbors, Temples, and Public Edifices—Roman Carthage—Its Luxury and Depravity—Its Destruction by the Moslems—Wars with the Berbers—Musa appointed General—His Romantic History—His Character—He subdues Al-Maghreb—Africa incapable of Permanent Civilization.

The dissensions excited by the fierce hordes of Arabia, whose intolerance of authority and aversion to tribute had been with difficulty controlled by the mysterious influence of Mohammed, at his death broke forth with redoubled violence, and seriously threatened, for a time, not only the integrity of the Moslem empire, but even the existence and perpetuity of the recently established faith. With the exception of a few tribes which the ties of blood or considerations of personal interest, joined to their intimate commercial relations with the inhabitants of the Holy Cities, retained in a precarious allegiance, the whole population of the Peninsula rose at once in arms. Each petty chieftain, jealous of the central power, and endowed with an extravagant opinion of his own abilities as ruler and legislator, arrogated to himself divine authority, and aspired to the title and the prerogatives of a prophet of God. The populace, half idolatrous and half infidel at heart, and which had received the injunctions of the Koran with apparent enthusiasm and inward contempt, welcomed with joy each new revelation, as affording a prospective state of war and discord so thoroughly in consonance with its predatory instincts and turbulent character.

With this condition of affairs, whose gravity might well have appalled the mind of an experienced statesman, the executive ability and diplomatic tact of the first Khalif, a man bred to mercantile pursuits, yet admirably fitted by nature for the arduous duties of his exalted position, were found fully competent to deal. The insurgent armies were annihilated; the false prophets killed, driven into exile, or compelled to renounce their claims; the rebellious tribes were decimated, and their property seized as the legal spoils of war. With keen insight into the character of his countrymen, Abu-Bekr employed their fiery and indomitable spirit in the extension of Islam and the settlement and consolidation of its hitherto ill-defined and uncertain jurisdiction. The policy partially developed under his wise management was finally established and perfected by the iron will and martial genius of Omar. The latter realized thoroughly the paramount importance of preserving unimpaired the unity and prestige of his nation, whose victories, in brilliancy and political effect, had already surpassed those of any preceding conqueror, and bade fair to make the dominion of Islam coextensive with the world. In pursuance of this design, the spoils of conquest, the tribute of subjugated nations, the enormous rental of the plains of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, the rich harvests of the Valley of the Nile, the magnificent gifts of distant sovereigns—hoping to escape a visitation from the swarthy horsemen of the Desert—were all placed in a common fund, from which was pensioned every individual belonging to the Arab race, in regular gradation, the stipend increasing with years, dignity, and value of military service. No one was too insignificant to have his name inscribed upon the official registers at Medina; and even slaves, women, and newly-born infants were, as well as the most renowned warriors, regularly paid their stated allowance. In the various countries reduced by the prowess of the Moslems, the lands, though confiscated to the uses of the state, remained by special provision inalienable, and, while forming a part of the public domain, could not be acquired by those who had conquered them, and continued to be occupied and tilled by their former proprietors. By these regulations, also, the legal residence of the Arab was established and made perpetual in the Peninsula. Everywhere else, no matter what his rank or employment, he was but a sojourner, liable at any moment, without warning, to be summoned to battle with the infidel; and even viceroys of the Khalif could not purchase a foot of ground in the cities which they ruled with all but absolute power. While in the case of female captives, the most unbounded license was permitted and encouraged, the believer was particularly enjoined to select for his wives the daughters of some Arab clan; and his children, without exception, were early taught to assert their assumed superiority of birth, and to look down upon all foreigners, however illustrious they might be by descent, wealth, military distinction, or literary attainments.

The comprehensive and exacting laws of Omar, which arbitrarily determined questions of legislation and finance, the marshalling of armies, the adjustment of territorial disputes, the arrangement of the household, and the offices of religion, laid the foundation for the future greatness of Islam. By his edict the date of the Hegira was fixed. His inflexible sense of justice inflicted the humiliating punishment of the lash, prescribed by law for drunkenness, upon beggar and noble alike. The Code which bears his name is remarkable, even in an age of fanaticism, for the severe restrictions it imposed on the personal liberty of Jews and Christians, the only sectaries to whom Moslem clemency permitted the practice of their rites and customs.

The assassination of Omar in the prime of manhood, and before his great designs had been fully matured, was the signal for feuds, conspiracies, and every form of domestic convulsion, fomented by tribal jealousy, ancient prejudice, and disappointed ambition; disturbances which the weak and vacillating spirit of his successor was unable to repress. Yet, despite the disadvantages arising from the intellectual impotence of Othman, the constitution of the Mussulman theocracy possessed sufficient vitality to retard dissolution for a considerable time. The glorious traditions of a decade of uninterrupted victory were not easily forgotten. The trophies wrested from the despised and hated foe were displayed in every city and village; his banners drooped in the courts of every mosque; the harem, the street, the bazaar, swarmed with captives from the most distant climes; while the annual distribution from the public treasury evidenced at once the wealth and weakness of the infidel and the paternal generosity of the conqueror. The Persian monarchy which had successfully withstood the attacks of consul, dictator, and emperor, supported by the discipline and inexhaustible resources of Roman power, had fallen, after two great battles, before the impetuous valor of the Moslem hosts. Palestine, with its hallowed associations, its memories of all that is most sacred in the annals of Christianity, its scenes of divine miracle and mystery, of privation, suffering, and triumphant glory, was in the hands of the Mussulman, whose sacrilegious footsteps daily defiled the precincts of Gethsemane and Golgotha, and whose call to prayer arose from a magnificent shrine erected upon the site of the ruined temple of Solomon. The Greek Emperor, after a reign of extraordinary vicissitudes which had, in some degree, retrieved the vanished prestige of the Roman arms deprived in rapid succession of the choicest realms of his empire, was now virtually a prisoner, protected only by the Bosphorus and the impregnable walls of his capital. Egypt, the depository of traditions of incalculable antiquity, had submitted, after a brief and determined struggle, to the common fate of nations, and the banners of Islam floated in triumph from the towers of Alexandria and Memphis. It was with a feeling of awe and wonder that the fierce, untutored Arab gazed upon the monuments of this strange and, to him, enchanted land. Before him were the Pyramids, rising in massive grandeur upon the borders of the Desert; the stupendous temples; the mural paintings, whose brilliant coloring was unimpaired after the lapse of fifty centuries; the groups of ponderous sphinxes, imposing even in their mutilation; the speaking statues, which, facing the East, with the first ray of light saluted the coming day; the obelisks, sculptured upon shaft and pedestal with the eternal records of long extinguished dynasties; the vast subterranean tombs, whose every sarcophagus was a gigantic monolith; and the effigies of the old Egyptian kings, personifications of dignity and power, holding in their hands the symbols of time and eternity, or grasping, in lieu of the sceptre, that emblematic staff, which, more potent than the wand of the mightiest magician, has controlled the destinies of millions of men, and which became in turn the wand of the Grecian hierophant in the mysteries of Eleusis, the lituus of the Roman augur, and the crosier of the Catholic archbishop. At his feet rolled the turbid flood of the mysterious river, to whose periodical inundation was due the civilization of that venerable country. The anticipation of this phenomenon had necessitated the study of astronomy; its overflow had developed a perfect system of irrigation, and a complicated body of laws, which regulated the distribution of its fertilizing waters; its subsidence had required a thorough acquaintance with the rules of geometry and mensuration; and the noxious vapors arising from its steaming deposits demanded the speedy disinfection and embalming of all putrescent animal matter, a precaution which was rigidly enforced by established custom and the inexorable precepts of religion. The initiations of the priesthood, the jealously treasured maxims of its occult knowledge, the attributes of its innumerable deities, all bore an intimate relation to the waters of the Nile, whose recurring and invariable changes also indicated the seasons of the Egyptian year, which were measured by the harvests. The influence produced by the sight of these marvels upon the destiny of the simple Arab, whose horizon had hitherto been defined by the shifting sands and quivering vapors of the Desert, by whom the grandeur and symmetry of architectural design were undreamt of, and whose ideas of decoration were limited to the barbaric tracery of an earthen jar or the coarse patterns of the primitive loom, was incalculable. As every civilization is but an adaptation to new conditions of elements more or less perceptible in those which have preceded it, so it was with that of the Arabs. Their architecture, mainly indebted for its beauty to the selection of designs from the vegetable world and the skilful combination of geometrical forms, may in this respect justly lay claim to originality. Nevertheless, in the groundwork of its finest edifices, the practised eye can easily detect the foreign influence by which the efforts of its artisans have been inspired; and the characteristics of Persian, Egyptian, Carthaginian, and Byzantine are prominent in the solid walls, the graceful curves, and the sparkling mosaics of the builders’ masterpieces which adorn the widely-separated provinces of the Mohammedan empire.

It was during the reign of Othman that the attention of the Moslems was first seriously directed to the northern coast of Africa, a region which, extending from the Nile to the Atlantic, comprised a territory of one thousand miles in length by five hundred in breadth in its largest diameter. In its approaches, which were made over burning sands, it exhibited the familiar phenomena of the Desert. The greater portion of its vast area was susceptible of cultivation, and contiguous plantations and gardens marked, with an unbroken line of verdure, the possessions of the once magnificent and still important cities which in the days of her glory acknowledged the authority and claimed the protection of the imperial metropolis of Carthage. Here the most abundant harvests, the most luscious fruits, rewarded, with but trifling exertion, the industry of the husbandman. Luxuriant pastures, through which meandered sparkling brooks fed by perennial springs, sustained large numbers of cattle and sheep. The date flourished in such variety that it was only by its shape and stone that its species could be determined. The soil was favorable to the olive, and oil formed an important article of export. It was indeed a land of promise, renowned in history, celebrated in myth and legend; the Ophir of Holy Writ; the scene of the sufferings of Marius, Regulus, and Cato; where originated many of the most charming fictions of classic mythology; the home of Danaus, Antæus, and Atlas; for centuries the abode of Tyrian civilization; the seat successively of Punic splendor, Roman luxury, Vandal license, and Christian faith. In its capital Hamilcar had prepared for the descent upon Sicily which had secured the mastery of the Mediterranean, and Hannibal had planned the campaign which humbled the pride of the Eternal City; the land which had received in its bosom refugees from Palestine and Arabia, the founders and supporters of a new and glorious empire; the see of St. Augustine; the enchanted Garden, where dwelt the beautiful daughters of Erebus and Night; where the gigantic portal marked by the two famous columns pointed out to the Phœnician mariner the way to the Cassiterides—

“Abyla atque Calpe.”

Carthaginian enterprise for ages bartered its manufactures for the tin of Britain and the luxuries of Syria; under the Romans, for four centuries, its agricultural products maintained in profligate idleness the degenerate inhabitants of Italy.

The further extremity of this region, which the poetic nomenclature of the Oriental had designated by the name of Al-Maghreb, “The Land of the Evening,” was the wealthier and more productive; but its storm-swept coast had subordinated its trade to the superior commercial advantages of the eastern half, now Tunis and Tripoli, which was known as Ifrikiyah. A prefect appointed by the court of Constantinople administered the government of these colonies, in the name of the Emperor, but his jurisdiction was confined to a narrow belt of territory, beyond which roamed at will bands of ferocious and hardy barbarians, some of whom had no settled habitation; while a considerable number dwelt in the slopes and defiles of the Atlas Mountains, eking out a miserable subsistence by a superficial cultivation of the soil and a precarious traffic with their scarcely less civilized neighbors. The population of this province was, owing to repeated immigration and invasion, and the consequent admixture of races, of the most heterogeneous character. Along the coast, the elegance of the Grecian type, occasionally modified by the dignified features and martial bearing of the Roman, whose physical traits had been partially preserved by the frequent renewal of garrisons and the importation of colonists from Italy and Constantinople, largely predominated. Further inland appeared, in the swarthy complexions, blue eyes, and auburn locks, the cross between Vandal and Mauritanian, side by side with the unmistakable lineaments of the Syrian and the Jew. But most numerous of all, the most formidable in war, the most perfidious in peace, were the Berbers, whose origin tradition has variously assigned to Europe, Assyria, Arabia, Ethiopia, and Palestine. Whatever may have been the home of this undoubtedly Semitic race, their affinity with the Arabs was most conspicuous and remarkable. Generous, brave, patient of suffering, prodigal of hospitality, reverential to the aged, loyal to their kindred, impatient of restraint, merciless in revenge, their character was an epitome of the rugged virtues and cruel vices of the roving barbarian. The fighting qualities of this people, joined to the inaccessible nature of their haunts, and, in no small degree, aided by their poverty, had always secured for them immunity from conquest. Political reverses had never been able to efface their national peculiarities. Under persecution, while apparently conforming to the public faith, they remained, in reality, fetich worshippers. The long dominations of Phœnician, Roman, Byzantine, Teuton had effected no alteration in their language—the Arabic alone has been able to engross about a third of the terms of their guttural idiom. Their polity resembled a republic, where each village was independent and governed by a chieftain elected by the people. Time and again they had mustered for service against the Emperor armies of thirty and forty thousand men; but the first defeat dissolved their confederacy; and the rival chiefs returned with increased avidity to the plunder and massacre of their allies and friends. Their perfidy, which excited the unwilling admiration of nations long practised in the arts of deceit, and which was experienced to their cost by the Romans in the war with Jugurtha, was, without doubt, in a measure responsible for the proverbial reputation for duplicity—the “Punica fides”—of Carthage. Originally idolaters, believers in sorcery and divination, and adorers of the Sun and of Fire, their intercourse with their neighbors, considering its irregular and transitory character, had been singularly productive of changes in religious belief. The emissaries of Christianity had, with but indifferent success, disseminated among them the mysteries of their faith; but to the doctrines of the Pentateuch and the Talmud they lent a willing ear, and the tenets of Judaism, although not a little tinctured with the traditions of Pagan mythology, nominally received the assent of the entire Berber nation. The peculiar type of the Hebrew, insensibly diversified elsewhere by the associations of commercial intercourse, and by the influence of soil, climate, and the operation of laws more or less favorable to the fusion of races, had, in the wilds of Northern Africa, found a congenial locality for its preservation. The exiles who had escaped the persecutions of Titus and Hadrian had settled there and prospered. Laying aside their proverbial reserve, they had joined to their hereditary inclination for traffic an unwonted disposition to acquire proselytes; and their opinions had infected, to a greater or less extent, the population of the coast as well as that of the interior, from the Greater Syrtis to the Pillars of Hercules. Their relations and acquaintance extended not only to the extreme Orient, but were sustained with the semi-barbarous courts of Europe; and their sympathies with their brethren of Semitic origin, assisted by the community of ideas, habits, and mode of life of the Berber tribes, contributed, in a degree which cannot be overestimated, to the establishment and preservation of the Western empire of Islam.

In the year 647, the covetous glances of the government at Medina were turned towards the rich plantations and populous settlements of Al-Maghreb; and the predatory inroads which had hitherto vexed its borders were, for the first time, superseded by a systematic and determined attempt at conquest. The weakness and partiality of Othman, with whom the aggrandizement of his family was a paramount consideration, had removed the famous Amru from the viceroyalty of Egypt, and invested with its administration Abdallah-Ibn-Sa’d, the foster-brother of the Khalif, a warrior of experience and courage and the finest horseman of his nation, but a man whose renown had been sullied by the crime of apostasy, and who had used an employment of confidence to ridicule and revile the inspired teachings and sacred character of the Prophet.

Calling into requisition all the resources of his government, this Moslem general marched into the Desert with twenty thousand soldiers, among them many of the companions of Mohammed and representatives of the most noble tribes of Arabia. After a few unimportant skirmishes, and a short but bloody engagement in which a division of the Greeks was entirely destroyed, the Arab army advanced to Tripoli, and, investing its walls, pushed forward the operations of the siege with an energy hardly to be expected from a people whose experience had been confined to marauding expeditions and the stratagems of partisan warfare. Under the dominion of the Byzantine emperors, the office of prefect had been substituted for that of the ancient proconsul; and this employment was not only charged with the execution of the laws relating to civil and military affairs, but also claimed jurisdiction over matters pertaining to the welfare of the church, the appointment of its ministers, and the enforcement of the canons of ecclesiastical discipline. The prefect Gregory, whose talents had been exercised, and whose prowess had been approved, in many negotiations and conflicts with the Berbers, at the head of a tumultuous and undisciplined force of one hundred and twenty thousand men, moved forward to the relief of Tripoli. Abandoning the siege, the Arabs accepted the challenge, and a series of battles ensued without decided advantage upon either side, until the prefect, mortified that the numerical superiority of his troops should be neutralized by the desperate courage of his adversaries, offered the hand of his beautiful daughter—who, completely armed, was each day conspicuous in the ranks of the vanguard—and a purse of one hundred thousand pieces of gold to any one who would bring him the head of the Moslem general. The courage of Abdallah, although he had faced death in a hundred forms, was not proof against this effort of his wily antagonist, and, remaining idly in his tent, he left the conduct of operations to the care of his lieutenants. In the mean time there arrived at the Arab camp a small detachment headed by Ibn-al-Zobeir, a warrior of distinction, who heard with contempt of the pusillanimous conduct of the general. Seeking him, he denounced his cowardice, suggesting that he should retaliate by the offer of a similar sum, and the prefect’s daughter as a slave, to whoever should cast at his feet the head of the Greek commander. The advice was taken; the tempting reward was published throughout the camp; the Arab youth were fired by emulation to redoubled efforts; and Abdallah himself, shamed into action, again appeared in the front of battle. But the overwhelming numbers of the Greeks, inspired by the example of a few legions which yet retained the traditions of Roman steadiness and discipline, and supported by the rapid evolutions of the Numidian cavalry, famous from the days of Jugurtha, still rendered the issue doubtful, and by repeated engagements the ranks of the Arabs were being constantly diminished. Again the talents of Ibn-al-Zobeir were called into requisition; the battle was renewed as usual at daybreak; and when the blazing sun had exhausted the strength of the combatants, both armies retired to the shelter of their tents. But the Moslems had not all been engaged, and a division composed of troops, selected for their bravery and commanded by the intrepid Ibn-al-Zobeir, burst suddenly like a thunderbolt upon the hostile camp.

Seized with a panic, as they were reposing after the arduous struggle of the day, the ranks of the enemy were broken, the prefect was killed, and the camp given over to pillage. A rich booty and innumerable captives compensated the victors for their trials; the beauteous Amazon became the slave of Ibn-al-Zobeir; and, after the capture of the important city of Sufetela, the entire district acknowledged the authority of the Khalif. The ravages of disease, the losses resulting from a series of engagements lasting for months, and the lack of reinforcements, made it impossible for Abdallah to garrison the towns, or to retain in subjection the restless tribes of the interior; and he consented, with alacrity, to accept a bribe of two million five hundred thousand dinars and abandon the conquest. The spoil was sent to Medina, and Othman further incurred the charges of injustice and nepotism by presenting Abdallah with the royal fifth, and by permitting his cousin Merwan to purchase the remainder at the low valuation of three hundred talents of gold.

For nearly a quarter of a century, the civil wars provoked by the conflicting claims of the various aspirants to the throne of the khalifate and the succeeding political establishments left in security the Greek possessions of the West. The Byzantine court learned with amazement of the enormous ransom with which the inhabitants of Africa had purchased the withdrawal of the invaders; and its avarice was excited when it considered the resources of a country which could collect so large a sum after having, for generations, been subject to the rapacious inquisition of the imperial tax-gatherers. Without delay, the Emperor demanded a contribution of the same amount as unpaid tribute; and all the mechanism of extortion was employed, to complete the ruin of his already impoverished subjects. Oppressed beyond endurance, the Africans sent an embassy headed by the Patriarch himself to Damascus, and reciting their grievances, described in glowing terms to Muavia the wealth of their country and the advantages which must accrue to the Moslems from its possession. The Khalif, deeply impressed by their representations, ordered Ibn-Hajij, governor of Egypt, to undertake the conquest; but the enterprise was not carried out with the customary vigor of the Saracens, and resulted only in the partial occupancy of the coast and the subjection of a few unimportant cities. The permanent establishment of Mussulman rule dates, however, from this expedition, and henceforth the standard of Islam, although often furled before the intrepid spirit of the Berbers, was advanced, foot by foot, to the far distant shores of the Western Ocean. The most successful commander, and the one who alone, excepting Musa, made the most enduring impression upon the valiant and treacherous barbarians of Al-Maghreb, was Okbah-Ibn-Nafi, who was next invested with the command. Entering the hostile region at the head of ten thousand veteran cavalry, he made war with the same resolution and uncompromising spirit which marked the careers of the daring Amru and Khalid, “The Sword of God.” The Christians who refused, by either submission or conversion, to acknowledge the divine origin of Islam were ruthlessly slaughtered; but the orders of the Khalif explicitly prohibited the equipment or use of naval armaments, and the seaports of the Greeks escaped, for the time, the fate which was inevitable. The Berbers, beholding with wonder the apparently invincible character of their enemy, equally fortunate in plain and mountain fastness, defeating with ease their bravest squadrons, and scaling, despite all obstacles, the all-but impregnable defences of their strongholds, clothed him with the attributes of divinity, and, submitting to his dominion, recognized the power of the Khalif, while at the same time, abjuring their idolatry, they confessed the unity and majesty of God. The advance of Okbah was the triumphant progress of a conqueror. Almost unresisted, he traversed the regions peopled by hordes of fierce barbarians, until, having penetrated to the Atlantic, he rode his horse into its seething waters, and, drawing his sword, cried out, “God is great! Were I not hindered by this sea, I would go forward to the unknown kingdoms of the West, proclaiming the greatness of Thy Holy Name and subduing those nations who worship other gods than Thee!”

The moral effect of the expedition of Okbah, which familiarized the nations of the north of Africa with the doctrines of Islam, was of far more importance than the spoil collected by the victorious army, which was, in itself, not inconsiderable. The wealth of the Berbers, ignorant as they were of the mechanical arts and the elegant appliances of luxury, was confined to flocks and herds; but the beauty and fascinations of their women aroused the passions of the conquerors, and many of them subsequently commanded in the markets of Alexandria and Damascus the extraordinary price of a thousand mithcals of gold. The inconstant character of the tribes of Mauritania and the Atlas, amenable only to the restraints of military power, and to whom conversion and apostasy were mere matters of temporary expediency, suggested to the sagacious mind of Okbah the necessity for the establishment of a fortified post in the territory of this active and formidable enemy. An inland position was selected, to avoid the attacks of the naval forces of Constantinople, and, despite the serious physical disadvantages of barrenness, drought, and excessive heat, a city was built, to which was given the name of Kairoan; a metropolis destined in after times to attain to an important rank in the annals of the dynasties of Africa. The walls were of brick, with flanking towers, and embraced six miles in circuit. The foundations of a mosque, an edifice measuring two hundred and twenty by one hundred and fifty cubits, were laid; its seventeen naves were adorned with the plundered marbles of Utica and Carthage; the graceful proportions of its minaret and the elegance of its mural decorations are still proverbial in the Mohammedan world. The bazaar of the city lined a street three miles in length; its schools became the resort of the learned; the authority of its muftis on points of doctrine was indisputable; and, as the seat of the viceroy of the Khalif, it long maintained its political importance.

The implacable and perfidious spirit of the Berbers, whom no treaties could control, now broke out in the prosecution of petty hostilities, which the scattered forces of the Moslems were powerless to prevent. Forays were made upon isolated settlements, flocks were driven off, hamlets given to the flames, and even the security of the rising colony of Kairoan was threatened. Emboldened by their success, the Berber chief’s confederated for the total destruction of the Moslems. Koceila, an influential chieftain, who had been wantonly insulted and maimed by Okbah and was now kept a close prisoner in the camp, was the moving spirit of the conspiracy. Learning too late of the plan of the enemy, Okbah was compelled to weaken his army, and while a detachment for the relief of Kairoan was on the march, it was suddenly attacked near Tehuda by an overwhelming force of barbarian cavalry. The little band of Mussulmans, less than four hundred in number, seeing the hopelessness of the contest, commended themselves to God, and, casting away their scabbards, perished to a man, scimetar in hand. The tombs of these martyrs are still objects of veneration to the devout, and Zab, where they are situated, enjoys the sanctity, privileges, and lucrative trade of a place of pilgrimage. The Franks and Berbers with their usual inconstancy now flocked to the standard of Koceila, who assumed the title of an independent sovereign and for five years remained the undisputed ruler of Ifrikiyah. At the expiration of that period, a fresh army of Arabs under Zoheir defeated the Berbers in a decisive battle, and, Koceila having been killed, the lieutenant of the Khalif again asserted his unstable authority. It was not long before the new governor Zoheir succumbed to the treachery of the cunning barbarians, and the Khalif Abd-al-Melik imposed upon Hassan, Viceroy of Egypt, the task which had foiled the skill and energy of so many of his predecessors. But none of the latter had mustered such a force, or could have controlled such vast resources, as did the new commander-in-chief. His office, as Governor of Egypt, placed at his disposal the enormous wealth of that fertile country, and he marched out of Alexandria at the head of a thoroughly equipped army of forty thousand veterans. He was well provided with scaling ladders and the various engines for the siege of fortified places, while the success of the Moslems in the East had inspired them with confidence, and afforded experience in the attack upon fortifications, a branch of warfare in which they had at first been entirely deficient. Resolving to reduce the strongholds of the coast, which were still in possession of the Greeks, Hassan, after traversing the region which had been desolated, and partially colonized by former commanders, advanced at once upon Carthage. This famous city, which had preserved, amidst unparalleled disaster, the prestige and the traditions of its former greatness, was still the capital of Africa and the seat of the imperial prefect. The power of Phœnicia, almost omnipotent in the maritime world of the ancients, founded upon boundless wealth, upon extensive acquaintance with distant lands and peoples, upon scientific secrets, whose importance was exaggerated by mystery, and upon the undisputed dominion of the seas, had been transmitted to Carthage, her favorite and most important colony. A brief notice of the history of the latter, so intimately connected with the fortunes of every nation of ancient and modern Europe, is not foreign to an account of the Mohammedan conquest of Africa, nor to that of the subsequent occupation of Spain. For, inspired by her example, from her harbor issued the first naval expedition of the Moslems in the West, which ravaged the coasts of Sardinia, threatened the Greek empire, and subdued the Balearic Isles. The invention of the compass, popularly but erroneously attributed to the sailors of Amalfi, it has been conjectured, with some degree of probability, was in reality a legacy of Tyre to Carthage; and it is certain that the peculiar properties of the magnet, designated the Stone of Hercules, were familiar to the mariners of those cities, who employed it in divination and in the secret ceremonies of their temples upon the shores of every sea. The straight sword of the Spanish Arab, so different from the curved blade of the Orient, is the sword of the Carthaginian; a weapon which, subsequently adopted by Rome from Iberia, conquered the world, including the African warriors who invented it. The cap of the Basque is a modification of the old Punic, or Phrygian, head covering, still worn by the Jewesses of Tunis, and which, in our day, has been adopted as one of the emblems of Liberty. The toga of Rome and the burnous of the Arab can be traced to the same origin, being derived by Carthage from Phœnicia, and by the latter from Lydia; and the names, customs, traditions, and ceremonies of modern Spain suggest daily, to the intelligent observer, the enduring impressions produced by the domination of the ancient Queen of the Mediterranean. Even in her ruin did Carthage contribute to the progress of science and the well-being of humanity. The cathedral of Pisa, under whose dome Galileo pursued his experiments and perfected the pendulum-clock, was constructed of the marbles of her palaces; and the unrivalled mosque of Cordova, the centre of mediæval learning, in whose precincts was the finest library of the age, still contains hundreds of columns, around whose shafts once curled the wreaths of incense that rose from the altars of the Tyrian Hercules. But far more important than all else was the influence exerted upon the Arab invaders by the defaced and shattered memorials of her departed grandeur. Despite the effects of Roman hate and vengeance, the destructive energy of Genseric, and the shameless neglect of the Byzantine emperors, Carthage was still a great and beautiful city. Many of her stately edifices were preserved; her temples, towering in their pristine majesty, beckoned the anxious mariner to her prosperous shores; her harbors with their colonnades were still intact, and it was with no ordinary emotions that the Moslem looked upon these evidences of the taste and civilization of one of the most opulent and renowned capitals of antiquity. The Phœnicians, by their proximity to and regular intercourse with the highly cultivated races of Assyria and Egypt, had added immeasurably to their stock of learning, and eagerly disseminated among their colonies the notions of politics, philosophy, and science, which they had imbibed in their periodical voyages to the banks of the Euphrates and the Nile. And as from Asia Minor, plainly disclosed in the myth of Cadmus, first emanated that knowledge of letters and the arts, which, expanding with a prodigious development, culminated in the matchless creations of the Grecian sculptor and the Grecian muse; so to the northern coast of Africa can be traced the dawn of that inspiration of refinement and taste which awakened in the minds of the rude and warlike nomads of the Desert a desire for something better than the subjugation of barbarian tribes, something more enduring than the costly pageants of military glory.

Settled almost thirteen centuries before the Christian era, and inheriting from the parent city of Tyre that spirit of enterprise which had gained for the latter the carrying trade of the world, at the time of the foundation of Rome, Carthage was already the wealthiest and most polished state on the shores of the Mediterranean. Her inhabitants, rather inclined to peaceful occupations and the luxurious ease that prosperity confers than to the privations of the camp and the dangers of the field, usually enlisted mercenaries to prosecute their conquests. When at the height of her power, her armies, which had penetrated the mysterious depths of the Libyan and Ethiopian deserts, and whose prowess had been displayed alike in the defiles of Sicily and upon the plains of the Bætis, had subjected to her authority a wide extent of territory, and more than three hundred towns in Africa alone, many of them places of considerable magnitude. In the Spanish Peninsula, whence she drew her supplies of the precious metals, she employed in the silver mines fifty thousand men. The most assiduous care was paid to agriculture, and the extraordinary fertility of the soil, yielding with ease one hundred and fifty fold, was assisted by an equable climate and a scientific and extensive system of irrigation. The substantial character of the public works of the capital is evinced by the ruins of the cisterns and the aqueduct, which have defied the storms and revolutions of two thousand years. But it was chiefly in commercial affairs that the Carthaginians asserted their immeasurable superiority over all their contemporaries. Their merchants, whose enterprise was proverbial, were familiar with some of the ingenious expedients that, in our day, among civilized nations, so facilitate and simplify important business transactions. The most remarkable of these described by Latin writers were certain pieces of leather which, when folded in a peculiar manner, and sealed to prevent forgery, readily passed as money, undoubted precursors of our bank-notes and bills of exchange. They seem to have had also well-defined ideas of the fiscal and other regulations demanded by the exigencies of foreign trade, such as banking, insurance, and duties on imports.

Until the conclusion of the second Punic War, no noticeable progress had been made in the arts at Rome, and the total destruction of Carthage was, in this respect, as in many others, of incalculable advantage to her fortunate adversary. Among the treasures procured at the sack of the city are mentioned, besides paintings and statues, gold and silver vessels of curious workmanship, and so valuable that the portion reserved for the triumph of the victor amounted to a sum equal to eight million dollars. In the spoil were also included beautiful mosaics, and incredible quantities of precious stones, articles of luxury especially prized by the Carthaginians, and which they knew how to engrave with surprising skill. These exquisite models, perfected by the labors of countless generations, were not without a decided effect in promoting the education and stimulating the ambition of the Roman designers and artisans. We learn from Appian that there were many libraries in the city, which also boasted not a few writers of note, but none of their productions have been preserved, and the only native author whose fame has reached posterity is Terence, a liberated slave, who, at the age of twenty-five, delighted the critical audiences of the Roman theatres with the flights of his precocious genius. Some estimate may be formed of the military and naval power of Carthage, when we recall the fact that during the Sicilian wars, which lasted twenty-four years, she lost, in a single battle, five hundred ships of the largest size, together with an army of one hundred and fifty thousand men, without sensibly impairing her resources or retarding her career of conquest. Had a similar misfortune befallen any contemporaneous state it could hardly have survived the shock. The equipage and plate of the Carthaginian generals were of the most sumptuous description, and they went into action bearing magnificent bucklers embossed with medallion portraits of their owners in massy gold.

Occupying the centre of the Southern Mediterranean coast, and accessible to every port frequented by traders, Carthage was speedily enabled to profit to the utmost by those advantages of geographical position that paved the way to her political and maritime ascendency. At her left hand were the Pillars of Hercules, and the channel through which passed the trade of Spain and Britain; at her right the inexhaustible granaries of Egypt; in front of her, the quarries, mines, and slave-marts of Italy and Greece; in her rear the gold and gems of Libya. Upon a peninsula, whose isthmus was defended by a triple wall, lay the city, embracing a circuit of twenty-three miles, and containing a population of nearly a million. Inside the fortifications, on the east, was the Kothon, a double harbor, consisting of two circular basins connected by a canal sixty feet wide, barricaded with enormous iron chains. The outer and larger basin, six thousand feet in circumference, was destined for the use of merchantmen; the inner one was reserved exclusively for galleys and men-of-war. Both were surrounded by docks, storehouses, quarters for marines, and arsenals, and were approached by splendid Ionic porticos and colonnades of white marble. In the centre of an island in the inner harbor, at whose quays two hundred vessels could ride securely at anchor, rose the castle of the admiral who directed all manœuvres at the sound of trumpet. Immediately over the Kothon, on an elevation that commanded it, stood the famous Byrsa, or citadel. Its wall rose to the height of sixty-five feet, and was flanked by numerous towers; adjoining the latter were stables for four thousand horses and three hundred elephants, and barracks that could accommodate a garrison of twenty-four thousand men. Eighteen cisterns, seven of which are still intact, each ninety-three feet long by twenty wide and twenty-eight feet deep, connected by a tunnel with reservoirs in the suburbs, furnished an abundant supply of water. The highest point of the Byrsa was occupied by the temple of Æsculapius, the tutelary deity of the city, and although, in fact, an almost impregnable fortress, the skill of the engineer had thoroughly disguised its formidable character. It was situated above a series of terraces, resembling the hanging gardens of Assyria, and was reached by superb marble staircases adorned with beautiful statues, urns, and other works of art. Slabs of porphyry and verd-antique covered its walls; its arcades were paved and encrusted with mosaics; and the veneration in which it was held by the people was attested by the gorgeous appointments of its shrine. But the fane of Æsculapius, with all its splendor, was not without many rivals in the African metropolis. The religion of the Carthaginians, originally astronomical and profoundly symbolic, had centuries before discarded the purer forms of astral worship for a debased and cruel polytheism. The different wards of the city were named from the various deities whose altars they contained. West of the Kothon was the temple of Apollo, and adjoining it the shrine of Melcareth, or Hercules—whose precincts no woman was suffered to enter, and whose priests, assuming the vow of chastity, went barefoot and with shaven crowns—stood side by side with the fragrant gardens within whose mystic groves were celebrated, amidst indescribable orgies, the licentious rites of the Phœnician Astarte. Nearer the sea was the grand temple of the African Baal, the Moloch of the Hebrews, surrounded by a labyrinth and covered with three concentric domes, which, open above like that of the Pantheon at Rome, permitted the rays of the sun at high meridian to descend upon the brazen image of the god.

The other edifices of the African capital were, in richness and splendor, eminently worthy of its temples and its citadel. The vast commerce of Carthage placed at its command the resources of all antiquity. No labor or expense was spared in architectural decoration. On the façade of its theatre, which rose for seven stories in tiers of graceful arches, were sculptured the forms of animals, the effigies of famous artisans, the figures of military commanders, and symbolical representations of the elements, the seasons, and the winds. The circus, inferior in extent only to that of Rome, was supported by fluted columns of such enormous size that twelve men could sit with ease upon the edge of one of their capitals towering a hundred feet above the arena. In the principal square, the reservoir, fed by the great aqueduct, was surrounded by balustrades and arches. All of these public works were of white marble, which glittered like crystal under the rays of a southern sun. The taste which designed them was the result of three thousand years of civilization. Every nation of the ancient world had contributed its share to their symmetry, their value, their magnificence. The beauty of the material was enhanced a thousand-fold by the incomparable elegance of the sculpture and the ornamentation.

The Megara, a suburb of Carthage, contained the country-seats and palaces of the nobility, some of them built, like the houses of Venice, upon piles and arches in the sea. It was an immense park seamed with canals and rivulets, whose waters were conveyed by conduits from the mountains sixty miles away. The reservoirs of the Megara, so extensive that they now constitute an Arab village, were constructed in the same substantial manner as the cisterns of the Byrsa. On a promontory above them was the necropolis, where the ashes of the dead were deposited in countless niches hewn in the living rock.

Upon the ruins of this rich and powerful city, which had so long and so obstinately disputed the supremacy of the masters of the world, had risen another that almost rivalled its predecessor in commercial importance and architectural splendor. Founded one hundred and one years after the triumph of Scipio, it yielded in prestige and luxury only to the great capitals of Italy and Egypt, and was justly regarded as one of the most valuable possessions of the Roman colonial empire. Its advantages of location, the agricultural wealth of the country, the settlement of many noble Italian families—fugitives from imperial oppression and barbarian violence—and the glorious example of former ages, soon raised the new metropolis to a position scarcely inferior to that of the old. Its edifices could vie with even the proudest monuments of the Eternal City; the wealth, intelligence, polished manners, and boundless excesses of its inhabitants made its name proverbial throughout antiquity. In the seventh century it divided with Alexandria the commerce of the Mediterranean, and was greatly its superior in rank, population, and power. The head of the civil magistracy of Africa, and the seat of a large military garrison, it almost monopolized the taste and refinement, the learning, the philosophy, and the jurisprudence, of the Western world. Universities with chairs of the liberal arts, academies which afforded instruction in every language and every science, flourished within its walls; its circus and its amphitheatre were crowded daily with the wit and beauty of the city, whose pleasure-loving society, unspeakably corrupt, had added to the dissolute habits inherited from Punic times the unnatural vices imported by patrician refugees and colonists from the orgies of decadent Rome. For perversity of disposition, for shameless effrontery, for perfidious disregard of faith and contempt of honor, and for brazen immodesty, the most debauched communities of the East and West, by universal consent, conferred upon the population of Carthage the unenviable distinction of unapproachable infamy. The Vandals had plundered its treasures and enslaved its people, but had spared its noble buildings, and exempted its walls from the destruction which had usually befallen those of other towns conquered by these barbarians. Such was the city which interposed a formidable and hitherto insuperable barrier to the enterprise of the Moslems; and whose transcendent influence has left its stamp upon the habits, the creeds, and the opinions of every subsequent age; to which ancient commerce was indebted for its development, and from which modern belief has derived some of the most popular of its dogmas; among them the doctrines of St. Augustine and the leading principles of patristic theology, that even now control ecclesiastical councils and prescribe the rules of Christian discipline.

His preparations completed, the Moslem general, seconded by the enthusiasm of his splendid army, and confident of success, prepared at once for an assault. The ladders were planted, and despite the terrors of Greek fire, and the valor of the Byzantine garrison which behaved with unusual spirit, the city was taken. But, in the mean time, news of the danger of the colony had reached the Bosphorus; the Court was aroused from its lethargy; a powerful fleet was equipped; and the Moslems had scarcely rested from. their efforts before the arrival of this new enemy compelled them to retreat. A few months later, however, reinforcements having been received by Hassan, Carthage was again stormed; a decisive victory was gained by the Moslems over the Greeks, who imprudently risked an engagement in the open field; the city was plundered and burnt; and the jurisdiction over its territory passed away forever from the hands of the corrupt and pusillanimous sovereigns of the Eastern Empire.

But the destruction of the capital, a political measure to secure supremacy, while producing a decisive moral effect upon the remaining colonies of the Greeks, was far from intimidating the Berbers, whose omnipresent squadrons remained the masters of all the region situated beyond the fortified towers of the frontier. A female impostor of princely lineage—whose name, Dhabba’, has been abandoned by subsequent chroniclers for the popular appellation Kahina, or Sorceress—had, by her mysterious arts, obtained unbounded influence over her countrymen; and, inspiring them with a certain degree of patriotism, had appeased their feuds and united the roving tribes of the Atlas in an extensive and powerful confederacy. Animated by her teachings and allured by her promise of booty, the Berbers pressed upon the forces of Hassan until the latter, after great losses, were finally expelled, and repairing to Barca, remained there in a state of inglorious inactivity for nearly five years. It is related that as soon as the enemy had passed the borders, the sorceress-queen ordered the fertile region of the coast, which, in the days of its prosperity, had furnished the supplies of the Empire, and whose beauty had been celebrated by every traveller, to be utterly desolated, as a precaution against future invasion. The fields were laid waste, the towns depopulated, the harvests burnt, the orchards cut down, the plantations transformed into a wilderness. This irrational act of violence was not viewed with complacency by the land-holders and other civilized inhabitants of the country, and, from time to time, emissaries were despatched to the Arab Viceroy of Africa, promising him in return for his interference the assistance and future allegiance of the persecuted colonists. At length the order to advance arrived from Damascus, and Hassan, with the most numerous army that had ever invaded Africa, encountered the priestess at the head of her adherents near Mount Auras. In the battle that ensued, Kahina was killed; the Berbers were overwhelmingly defeated; and the whole of the refractory province again invoked the clemency of the victor. But the same evil genius which, from first to last, attended the administration of the Moslem governors of Africa, now began to disturb the fortunes of Hassan. Abd-al-Aziz, the brother of the Khalif, was appointed to the viceroyalty of Egypt, upon which the jurisdiction of Africa was made dependent; and Hassan was summoned to Damascus, to answer serious accusations of tyrannical conduct which had been lodged against him. But the sight of the spoil wrested from the Berbers, the present of female captives of extraordinary beauty, the plausible explanations of his conduct which his fertile ingenuity suggested, and the glowing accounts of his successes, soon restored the distinguished commander to the favor of his sovereign, and Hassan was reinvested with the government of Africa with increased authority. On the return of the latter, while passing through Egypt, Abd-al-Aziz demanded the surrender of his commission under color of the supremacy formerly attached to the viceroyalty of that country, and by which the rest of Mohammedan Africa was claimed as a dependency. Enraged by his refusal, the governor arbitrarily deprived Hassan of his commission, tore it in pieces before his face, and, in defiance of the royal authority, declared the office vacant, and appointed at his own instance Musa-Ibn-Nosseyr commander of the armies of the West.

The history of this famous soldier is tinged with a coloring of adventure, unusual even in the romantic atmosphere of the Orient. A hundred miles directly west of Ctesiphon is Ain-Tamar, now an oasis frequented by wandering banditti, but in the seventh century a prosperous settlement enriched by the trade of Syria and Persia, and the seat of a Nestorian church and monastery. Attracted by the reports of its wealth, an expedition headed by Khalid himself surprised it, after a long and painful march over the desert. In the cloisters of the monastery were found a number of youths of high rank, who were nominally pursuing their studies under the direction of the monks, but were in reality hostages selected from the most distinguished families of Asia Minor. When offered the customary alternative of slavery or apostasy, the majority chose the latter, and two of them, Sirin and Nosseyr, became the fathers of sons who exerted a wide-spread influence over the destinies of Islam. From Sirin descended Mohammed the learned doctor of Bassora, and one of the most famous authorities of Islamic literature; and Nosseyr was the parent of Musa, the conqueror of Africa and Spain. Nosseyr was attached to the family of Abd-al-Melik by the right of capture and Mohammedan custom, and his son occupied the same relation to Abd-al-Aziz, the heir of the Khalif, who bestowed upon him marks of distinguished favor, and shared with him a friendship rare indeed in the families of princes. Educated in the best schools of Syria, which had already attained a high and well-deserved reputation, Musa early developed a precocity of intellect, and a talent for negotiation, which led to his employment in diplomatic affairs of the greatest importance. Under the reign of Abd-al-Melik, he was appointed vizier to the governor of Bassora, but having been convicted of peculation, he only escaped with his life through the intercession of his protector Abd-al-Aziz, who also paid for him the fine of one hundred dinars of gold—fifty times the amount of the theft—which the wrath of the Khalif had imposed upon the defaulter. Residing afterwards at the court of Egypt, and acting as the trusted councillor of the viceroy, history is silent as to the fields in which he acquired the experience in arms that subsequently gained for him such enduring renown. Of a hardy constitution, inured to hardship, plain in his attire, frugal and abstemious in his habits, his form presented an example of robust health, although he had long since passed the meridian of life; and under his locks, whitened by the snows of many winters, still smouldered the ardent passions of youth, and the powerful incentives of ambition and adventure. Sagacious in council, prompt in execution, fearless in battle, implacable in revenge, his character was, however, tarnished by cruelty, by suspicion, and by ingratitude; and he never hesitated to risk the sacrifice of power and position, in the gratification of the avarice which seemed to dominate his being, almost to the exclusion of every other passion. Unrivalled in tact and instinctive knowledge of human nature, by his powers of persuasion he made even his enemies subservient to his designs; while the strict observance of the ceremonies of his religion, although he became liable at times to imputations of inconsistency, yet procured for him in general the reputation of profound and sincere piety. In his military operations, he displayed the qualities of a skilful and wary leader, and his dispositions were made with remarkable prudence; realizing the demands of successful warfare, he annihilated the power of his adversaries by massacre or wholesale captivity; and by rapid and sudden advances after a battle he never failed to secure the uncertain fruits of victory. Such was the character of the man to whom were now committed the destinies of the Moslem armies of the West.

The veterans who had served under the banner of Hassan, who had scaled the walls of Carthage, and dispersed the army of the Berber sorceress, looked with little favor upon their new commander. Calling them together, Musa paid them their arrears three times over, and addressing them in a speech in which the eloquence of the orator, the humility of the devotee, and the art of the demagogue were shrewdly blended, said: “I am a soldier, like yourselves; applaud and imitate my good deeds; censure and reprove my failures, for none of us are free from weakness and error.” Impressed not only with the politic generosity of their chief, but gratified as well by the unwonted condescension he displayed, the soldiers greeted him with applause, and he became henceforth the idol of his army. Without unnecessary delay, and with his accustomed vigor, he opened the campaign. At the very outset an incident occurred which not only secured the gratitude of his followers, but, in that superstitious age, seemed to invest their general with supernatural powers. A long-continued drought had dried up the springs and wells, and the army, now far advanced into the desert, was threatened with death by thirst. In the midst of the troops solemnly assembled, Musa prayed long and fervently for relief. Tradition relates that the supplication was almost immediately granted; and the identical prayer which evoked this apparent miracle was repeated for nine centuries afterwards by the Spanish Moors when their country suffered from a scarcity of rain. The Berbers, elated by their former successes, ventured upon a pitched battle, and were defeated. Thousands were killed; the fugitives who took refuge in the mountains, where the natural obstacles of the locality made their defences the more formidable, were besieged and forced to surrender. The policy of Musa, different from that of his predecessors, was marked by unusual severity. If resistance was offered, the tribe was enslaved, its property confiscated, and its villages burnt to the ground; but, on the other hand, a ready submission guaranteed protection and favor, and the stoutest warriors were at once enrolled in the Moslem ranks. Twelve times already had the Berbers professed adherence to Islam, and apostatized; and Musa, conscious of their instability, now provided his new troops with teachers learned in the Koran, who could give them daily instruction in their religious duties. Their new associations, the trust reposed in them, the separation from their kindred, and the boundless prospect of plunder and glory, soon transformed these unruly bands into a serviceable force, capable of the greatest exploits. The seizure of the horses, cattle, and sheep, which constituted the wealth of the Berbers, compensated the victors, in some degree, for the absence of the costly booty which had rewarded the courage of their brethren in Syria and Egypt; while the prodigious number of slaves, resulting from the depopulation of entire provinces, provided a source of wealth whose profits were easily realized in the markets of Alexandria and Damascus. The royal fifth of the latter reserved by Musa amounted to sixty thousand, a number so vast as to be incredible, and which caused the Khalif to regard the announcement as false when he received it. With characteristic munificence, he directed Musa to reimburse himself for the fine which he had formerly paid as the penalty for his dishonesty, and, at the same time, he granted to him and the most distinguished soldiers of the army pensions commensurate with their services.

The invasion and sack of Medina by the Syrians, bent upon retribution for the murder of Othman, had caused a great emigration from Arabia, and thousands of the descendants of the proudest families of the Holy Cities had established themselves in Africa, and had rendered great aid to the projects of Musa. Their incorporation into the armies of Al-Maghreb and Iberia sensibly affected the fortunes of the latter country, and indirectly led to the restoration of the dynasty of the Ommeyades. Four sons of Musa had accompanied him in his campaign, and now deputing his authority to the two eldest, he despatched them to the South and West, where a few remaining Berber tribes still asserted their independence. Following the example of their father they exterminated such tribes as dared to resist, and in a few months returned to Kairoan, whither Musa had retired with considerable spoil and a large number of captives. In the mean time, the latter, recognizing the supreme importance of naval operations, and treating with contempt the absurd prejudice of his countrymen whose superstitious dread of the sea amounted at times to absolute terror, ordered the refitting of the dock-yards and harbors of Carthage, whose substantial quays had been little impaired by the successive calamities which had befallen the city. A hundred vessels were built, launched, and manned; Abdallah was appointed admiral; the fleet cruised along the coast of the Mediterranean, and crossing to Sicily, sacked the city of Linosa and returned in triumph with a booty of twenty thousand pieces of gold. Four years afterwards a descent was made by Abdallah on the Balearic Isles, and Majorca was, after a short campaign, added to the dominions of the Khalif.

Their incorrigible duplicity and restlessness, and the absence of a competent military force, again impelled the tribes of the interior to revolt. Taking the field at the head of a picked force, Musa, with trifling difficulty, took Tangier, the last fortified post held by the Greeks in Al-Maghreb; and sending his son Merwan with five thousand cavalry against Sus-al-Aska, the head-quarters of the insurgents, soon had the satisfaction of learning that the rebellion was subdued, and the recalcitrant Berbers punished with a rigor unexampled even in the sanguinary wars of Africa. After making two attempts to capture Ceuta, one of the keys of the strait separating Africa from Europe, both of which the gallant behavior of the governor, Count Julian, rendered ineffectual, Musa appointed Tarik-Ibn-Zeyad, a Berber convert, formerly his slave, and now one of his most trusty officers, to the command of Tangier, and returned to Kairoan.

With the surrender of Tangier the Byzantine domination in Africa came to an end. Sixty years of warfare, the destruction of fleets, the annihilation of armies, the devastation of provinces, the enslavement of nations, had been required to accomplish this result, never for a moment lost sight of by the Moslems amidst the imbroglios of courts and the revolts of pretenders to the Khalifate of Damascus. The abnormally perfidious and martial character of the Berber placed him outside the category of ordinary enemies. No reverses, however severe, could break his spirit. He ignored the obligation of treaties. No resource remained, therefore, but depopulation. The number of slaves made by the Mussulmans in Africa excited the amazement of their brethren in the East. A successful campaign often yielded two hundred thousand of these unfortunates. Such wholesale captivity was without precedent even in the annals of Rome. The fortresses, with the exception of Ceuta, which was nominally a dependency of the Visigothic kings of Spain—though held by a feeble and uncertain tenure—were now in the possession of the Saracens.

The Berbers either paid tribute to the Khalif or, serving under their own commanders, were enrolled in his armies. Already, after the expiration of only two generations, during which the laws and customs of Mohammedan life can be said to have been established, the momentous effects of polygamy were strikingly noticeable. The children of the pagan slaves who filled the harems of the conquerors were educated in the doctrines of the Koran, and idolatry had totally disappeared, save, perhaps, in some sequestered valley of the Atlas Mountains, where the half-savage devotee bowed before a rude and lonely altar, and with mystic incantations invoked the aid of some misshapen image. Islam, which, even by the reluctant testimony of Christian missionaries, exalts the character of the Negro and invests him with a sense of personal dignity and self-respect which no other religion has been able to inspire, soon gained the professed allegiance of the Berbers; and like the Arab, the more suspicious and clannish they had been in their Age of Ignorance, the more patriotic and enterprising they became as Mohammedans—the very isolation and irreconcilable antagonism of their former condition seemed to insensibly impress them with a realization of the imperative necessity and paramount value of national union. The call to prayer of the muezzin everywhere rang out from the towers of pagan temple and Christian church, whose magnificent decorations, bestowed by penitent Goth and Vandal, had once glittered as trophies amidst the splendid pageantry of a Roman triumph. But, despite community of interest, ethnological resemblance, and identity of religious belief, the environment of the inhabitants of Africa seems to be hostile to the permanent improvement of the human species, and before attaining to the highest degree of development of which the race is elsewhere susceptible, it begins to retrograde. The natural state of this great continent, determined largely by climatic and other physical conditions, is essentially and eternally barbarous. Unlike Europe, which has reaped something of value even from its misfortunes, and, by the example of its achievements in art and letters, subdued its very enemies, the institutions and influence of no polished people have ever impressed upon the natives of Africa any enduring traces. The astounding expansion of the Arab intellect—the crowning phenomenon of the Middle Ages—was as transitory in its effects upon them as the thrift and refinement of Carthage or the more solid and majestic influence of Rome. In some respects resembling Asia—whose voluptuous idleness tends inevitably to physical and mental degeneracy—Africa, with its vast mineral resources, its unsurpassed facilities for commercial intercourse, and its inexhaustible agricultural wealth, has—with the exception of Egypt, whose isolation rendered it practically a foreign country—been of little use to its inhabitants, alike incapable of appreciating these manifold advantages and of systematically employing them for their own benefit or for the general profit of mankind.

CHAPTER IV
THE VISIGOTHIC MONARCHY
507–712

Origin and Character of the Goths—Their Invasion of the Peninsula—Power of the Clergy—Ecclesiastical Councils—The Jews—The Visigothic Code—Profound Wisdom of Its Enactments—Provisions against Fraud and Injustice—Severe Penalties—Its Definition of the Law—Condition of the Mechanical Arts—Architecture—Byzantine Influence—Manufactures—Votive Crowns—Agriculture—Literature—Medicine—Slave Labor—Imitation of Roman Customs—Parallel between the Goths and the Arabs—Coincidence of Sentiments and Habits—Causes of National Decline—Permanent Influence of the Gothic Polity.

Among the countless hordes of barbarians who in the third and fourth centuries overran the provinces of the Roman Empire, and insulted the majesty of the sovereigns of the East, none were so pre-eminently distinguished for valor, loyalty, generosity, and chastity as the Goths. From the third century, when the luxurious tastes of Rome impelled adventurous traders to penetrate to the shores of the Baltic in search of amber, to the establishment of an independent monarchy in Italy by Theodoric in the fifth, their name was familiar to Europe—now suggestive of a bulwark of the tottering throne of Byzantium, and again, as a synonym of murder, pillage, and devastation. Of towering stature and fierce aspect, their forms were cast in the gigantic proportions which pagan mythology loved to attribute to its gods and heroes. Their habitations were situated in the depths of gloomy forests, on the banks of deep and rapid streams, or were surrounded by marshes, over whose treacherous and yielding surface a winding pathway usually led to a remote and well defended stronghold. Like all people whose intellectual development had scarcely begun, they believed implicitly in omens, auguries, signs, and dreams; their religious ideas were vague and ill defined; and neither history nor tradition has preserved for us the appellation or attributes of a single Gothic divinity. At their banquets, defiled by drunken orgies, and not infrequently the scenes of violence and even homicide, were celebrated, in uncouth ballads, the exploits of the famous warriors of the nation. Their very name, indicative of the superiority which their prowess never failed to exact, signified The Nobly Born. Without literature, save a fragmentary translation of the Bible, without government, save the dominion of some chieftain who, covetous of renown, temporarily enjoyed the precarious title of sovereign, eager for change, the most reckless of gamesters, the most pitiless of conquerors, destruction was with them a passion, and war an amusement. In common with other barbarians, with whom the ignorance and fears of the age have confounded them, they claimed and exercised, to the utmost, the privileges of individual dignity and personal freedom. An arbitrary classification, dependent upon a fortuitous geographical distribution, had divided this people into Ostrogoths and Visigoths, according to their relative location upon the eastern and western banks of the river Borysthenes. The pressure from the north, which had dispersed the tribes of the forests of Germany and Pannonia over the European provinces of the Roman Empire, had induced the Visigoths, by necessity or choice, to seek a home in Gaul, which country they occupied in common with the Vandals, the Suevi, the Alani, and other more obscure, but not less formidable, barbarians; and scarcely had the division of the empire between Arcadius and Honorius been effected in the first years of the fifth century, when the inhabitants of Spain, either through treason or from the negligence of the garrisons stationed in the passes of the Pyrenees, were overwhelmed by a deluge of savage marauders.

For four hundred years, the beautiful, the rich, the fertile and densely populated Peninsula had enjoyed the inestimable blessings of peace. With the defeat and death of the sons of Pompey, the last vestige of civil war and intestine discord had disappeared from its borders. Its fields were cultivated with assiduous care; its seaports were thronged with the shipping of the Mediterranean; the manufacturing interests of its inland cities were diversified and important. Its people, who had inherited from Rome and Carthage that love of pleasure which was at once their boast and their disgrace, with Epicurean unconcern, lived only for the present, in the participation of all the luxury which boundless wealth and national prosperity could bestow. Upon this earthly paradise—with its splendid cities, its sumptuous villas, its majestic souvenirs of Roman greatness, its traditions of heroic achievement and maritime adventure; where Hannibal had gained his boyhood’s laurels, and Cæsar, moved by the sight of Alexander’s statue, had first aspired to the dominion of the world—now descended the brutal and licentious plunderers of the North. The excesses perpetrated by them in other provinces of the empire were trivial when compared with the havoc they committed in Iberia. No considerations of public policy, no sentiments of mercy, interposed to mitigate the calamities which befell the smiling plains of the Anas, the Iberus, and the Bætis. Such of the inhabitants as were fortunate enough to find an asylum behind the walls of fortified cities, soon paid for their temporary security with the pangs of famine. The growing crops, delivered to the torch, left to-day a blackened waste where only yesterday had been every promise of an abundant harvest. A smoky pall, appropriate symbol of destruction, overhung the sites of prosperous hamlets and marble villas, where a few smouldering embers alone indicated the former abode of taste and opulence. Heaps of corpses, denied the rites of sepulture, covered the land, which was infested with incredible numbers of wolves and birds of prey, attracted from every side to their loathsome and inexhaustible repast. A feeling of utter despair fell upon the survivors; the instincts of humanity and the feelings of nature were suspended or destroyed; men murdered their families and then committed suicide; women devoured their offspring; exposure, want, suffering, and anxiety produced their inevitable consequences; and the crowning misfortune, the pestilence, daily claimed its victims by thousands. The savage masters of the country, satiated with rapine and mutually jealous of power, now began to quarrel with each other. In the contests which ensued, almost from the first, the superior organization and martial genius of the Goths acquired for them the acknowledged supremacy over their adversaries—a supremacy which soon became coextensive with the Peninsula and laid the foundations of an extensive kingdom. Early in the fifth century the extermination, expulsion, or absorption by intermarriage, of the various tribes, and the emigration of the Vandals, in a body, to Africa, gave the control of the entire country, with the exception of a few seaports still tributary to Constantinople, to the Visigoths. In political organization, in nomenclature, in the construction and in the application of the maxims of jurisprudence, in the election of their rulers, in the punishment of criminals, in the regulation of their amusements, they observed the traditions and honored the observances of their old homes on the Vistula and the Baltic. The accident of conversion, a matter of indifference to the majority of the nation, and one, in this instance, partially dependent upon policy, had made them Arians, and consequently heretics. The Gothic Church, in its independence of the See of Rome, while it honored the Supreme Pontiff, and recognized, to a certain extent, the religious supremacy of the Papacy, presented an anomaly in the Christian world. The monarch chosen for his wisdom or his bravery had not as yet assumed the exterior insignia of royalty, and the laws held him to a strict accountability for the lives and property of his subjects, but in ecclesiastical affairs his authority was undisputed and supreme. He convoked at his pleasure and presided over the national councils—assemblies originally composed entirely of the clergy, and in which, at all times, the theocratical element largely preponderated; he published encyclical letters; he possessed the power of revising the decrees of councils before their adoption and promulgation; and his wishes and suggestions were received with a respect surpassing that usually accorded by his haughty vassals to the majesty of the throne. The clergy were in fact absolutely dependent upon the sovereign; their immunities were subject to his will or his caprice; and, far from enjoying the exemption they obtained in after times by reason of their sacred office and superior sanctity, they were liable to taxation, and amenable to punishment for the violation of the laws as strictly as were the laity. Not only were these restrictions imposed upon them, but the interests of the secular portion of the community were carefully guarded against the possible encroachments of ecclesiastical tyranny; the judges were particularly enjoined to scrutinize the conduct of the priesthood; and instances were by no means rare where heavy fines were imposed upon them for acts of injustice and for the oppression of their parishioners. From the decision of every bishop and metropolitan an appeal lay to the throne, a privilege conceded. to the meanest peasant; the king could suspend or abrogate the rules of ecclesiastical discipline; no canon was valid without his sanction; and he assumed the rights of nominating, and of translating from one see to another, the greatest prelates of the Church. But as assemblies of men who possess a monopoly of the learning and worldly wisdom of a nation, conscious of mental superiority and incited by motives of ambition, are never satisfied with acting in a subordinate capacity; the ecclesiastical councils of Spain almost imperceptibly, but none the less surely, began to encroach upon the royal prerogative, and, assisted by the weakness or gratitude of princes whose titles had been assured by their confirmation, aimed at the seizure of absolute power. By the institution of the rite of anointing, which imparted a sacred character to the monarch, and invested in them an implied control over his coronation—a rite first used in Spain and not adopted in France till the reign of Pepin, in the eighth century; by the framing of laws favorable to their order, and whose essential provisions were carefully disguised under the specious name of enactments for the public welfare; by a command of a majority of the votes which elected the sovereign; and lastly, by the conversion of the whole nation to the doctrines of the orthodox faith; the Gothic clergy advanced unswervingly towards the establishment of their claim to political supremacy. The Third Council of Toledo was the first of these important convocations in which questions relating to the settlement of the constitution of the Gothic monarchy were debated and settled. From this time until the meeting of the Eighth Council in 653, the palatines did not participate in the deliberations of these assemblies, which now began to assume the appearance of legislative bodies, in which the aims of exclusive ecclesiastical representation were already clearly disclosed by the partiality and exemptions which characterized the canons treating of the rights and privileges of the priesthood. After the middle of the seventh century, although the nobles were admitted as members of the national councils and took part in their discussions, the influence of the clergy became paramount, and the duties of the nobility were confined to a passive assent to, and registration of, their edicts. A separate tribunal for the final adjudication of all disputed points of doctrine which might incidentally arise in the ordinary administration of justice was granted to ecclesiastics; the latter were prohibited from engaging in commerce, which the poverty of the Church had formerly rendered necessary; it became customary to select bishops for the negotiation of treaties, and for the direction of military embassies which were invested with the all-important powers of peace and war; the councils occasionally claimed jurisdiction over secular causes—an unwarranted assumption of power which the indifference or bigotry of the sovereign usually failed to resent; and the intolerant character of the canons treating of heresy indicate, but too plainly, the growing spirit of persecution—the germ of future inquisitorial atrocities.

But, notwithstanding the acceptance of Catholicism, and the consequent advance towards the enjoyment of absolute independence, the Church was hampered by many serious restrictions. Bishops, clerks, and monks remained subordinate to the secular arm and responsible to the courts of the realm; they could not, with impunity, disregard their processes, still less defy their authority; and the commission of crime rendered them liable to heavy fines and long terms of imprisonment; although, like the nobility, they could not be subjected to the punishments inflicted upon the lower orders, such as scourging and branding—the latter being considered especially infamous. The immunity which subsequently attached to the character of the clergy as non-combatants was not known to the founders of the Gothic monarchy. When a city was besieged or the country threatened with invasion, every subject, regardless of his profession, was obliged to serve in the army, and no ecclesiastic could plead his sacred office in bar of military duty to his sovereign, under penalty of confiscation and exile; the tonsure was regarded as of peculiar significance and sanctity, and any one whose locks had once been shorn, or who had assumed the clerical habit, was henceforth excluded, as a rule, from all military and civil employments, and consecrated for life to the service of the cloister; a law which, when abused by fraud or ignorance, was more than once productive of important results, and even of changes in the royal succession. Upon the whole, however, the influence of the Church in those days of intellectual darkness was highly beneficial. Its monopoly of the scanty wisdom of the time was often employed for the protection of the oppressed, for the alleviation of suffering, for the frustration of tyranny, for the consolation of death. The bishop stood as a guard between the helpless peasant and the unjust judge; his mediation with the throne, in cases of flagrant injury, was not optional but mandatory; and his official conduct was subject to the constant supervision, and was liable to the censure, of the magistrate. The ambition and political aspirations of the clergy, joined to their insatiable greed of dominion, which increased with each successive encroachment upon the civil power, with the daily accumulation of wealth, and the acquisition of extensive estates by gift, extortion, bequest, or purchase, disclosed themselves in time in their legitimate consequence, religious intolerance. The Arian Church in Spain never disgraced its rule by persecution for differences of opinion. With the acceptance of the orthodox belief in the sixth century, however, the spirit of vindictive malevolence,—which has always animated and directed the genius of Catholicism when in the ascendant, at once infected the counsels of the ecclesiastical tribunals, and indirectly, through their influence and example, the decisions of the courts of law. The coronation oath rendered obligatory the expulsion of all heretics without consideration of birth, position, or previous service to the state. The Jews, in whom were vested the most important offices, and who possessed the bulk of the wealth of the kingdom, were banished, imprisoned, plundered, or burnt; and while it is true that the severity of the laws against this sect defeated, erelong, the object of their enactment, even their partial enforcement was the cause of great and wide-spread suffering. With the consciousness of power came the increase of pomp and the desire for prohibited enjoyments and indulgence in carnal pleasures wholly inconsistent with the observance of the vows of poverty and chastity as well as contrary to the rules of ecclesiastical discipline. The canons enacted from time to time by the councils, and whose provisions were designed to impose restraints upon the irregular conduct of the clergy, show, more conclusively than the pages of any chronicle, the lax morality and deplorable condition of the religious society of that age. Stringent regulations were adopted against the acceptance of bribes as the price of exemption from persecution—especially referring to the Jews—a proof that the zealous protestations of the clerical order could not withstand the pecuniary arguments of the astute Hebrew; while the censures fulminated against priests and monks who abused the privileges of the confessional, or violated nature in the commission of revolting crimes, indicate the secret and universal corruption which had already begun to pollute the sacred offices of the Church and impair the usefulness of its ministers. The Eighteenth Council of Toledo, at the dictation of King Witiza, whose profligate conduct and contempt for religion had aroused the horror of Christendom and provoked the anathemas of the Pope, had, with unexampled servility, passed laws authorizing the marriage of ecclesiastics, the institution of polygamy, and the practice of promiscuous concubinage. Under these conditions of sacerdotal degradation, sanctioned by custom and established by law, the influence of the Church was everywhere diminished; the faith of men in the existing religion was weakened; and the public mind was insensibly prepared for the new revelation which, appealing to the strongest passions of the human breast, stripped of metaphysical distinctions, and inculcating moral precepts such as the most skeptical and dissolute must applaud, was soon to be published to the discontented and priest-ridden subjects of the Gothic empire. The ill-defined powers of the Crown and the Mitre, at first reciprocally dependent, led eventually to a clashing of interests and a struggle for precedence between the royal and the sacerdotal authority, in which the clergy, though their aspirations were occasionally checked by some monarch of stern and decided character, in the end invariably obtained the advantage. The dependence of the sovereign upon the priesthood was never lost sight of. No occasion which might remind him of the obligation he owed to the order whose suffrages had conferred, and might, with equal facility, resume possession of his crown, was suffered to pass unimproved. The anointing with holy oil, which symbolized the right of divine consecration, had already forged another link in the chain which bound the king to the Church. The anathemas denounced upon a prince for failure to execute the laws against heretics, far exceeded in virulence those to which any subject was liable. At one time, the wishes of the sovereign were anticipated by the subserviency of the prelates; at another, his prerogative was invaded and his commands disobeyed with an arrogance worthy of the imperious spirit of Julius II. or of Gregory the Great. The populace, through ignorance, prejudice, and habit, blindly devoted to the sacerdotal order, furnished a formidable body of auxiliaries, ever ready to hearken to the appeals of their ghostly advisers, a force which the dignity and assurance of the haughtiest ruler could not with impunity disregard. The turbulent and illiterate nobility, although the king was selected from their number by the voices of the assembled bishops—in which ceremony the concurrence of the palatines was admitted, in reality, only through courtesy—possessed, in the practical application of the precepts of the Gothic constitution, scarcely the shadow, still less the substance, of power. The council was the embodiment and representative of the intellect and the collective wisdom of the nation. Its canons were, for the most part, framed in strict accordance with the principles of equity, and the deliberations and conclusions of its sessions were often characterized by a breadth of understanding and a degree of impartiality which clearly indicated that its members were not deficient in the knowledge and requirements of enlightened statesmanship. The results of their labors are contained in the Gothic Code, a body of laws remarkable in many respects, when we consider the general illiteracy and ignorance of the age in which it was compiled, and its transcendent importance as the prototype of the systems of jurisprudence which now regulate the civil and criminal procedure of the courts of Europe and America. In the extraordinary minuteness of its details, in its thorough and comprehensive treatment of the manifold transactions of daily life, and in its provisions for almost every contingency which could arise in the administration of the sovereigns under whose auspices it was framed, this extraordinary work presents the modern legislator with a subject eminently worthy of his attention and study. The contact with races which had long enjoyed the blessings of civilization, and the development of the intellectual faculties consequent upon the experience obtained in frequent expeditions and protracted campaigns, imperceptibly modified the ancient laws of the Goths; the very essence of which was, from the first, and long continued to be, the assertion of the principle of personal liberty. Rome, whose toleration of the religious prejudices and customs of the nations subjected to her dominion—so long as they did not conflict with her interests or contravene her authority—was one great secret of her power, had, in accordance with that policy, indulged the Iberians in the use of their own laws, and only those who enjoyed the privileges of citizenship could be summoned before the tribunal of the imperial magistrate. The incursions of the barbarians had abolished every restraint, and transformed the previous quiet and peaceful condition of the Peninsula into a state of anarchy. There was then no law but the will of the chieftain, who was inclined to encourage, rather than to repress, the excesses of a brutalized soldiery. All records and muniments of title had disappeared; boundaries had ceased to exist; the tenure of lands was entirely dependent upon the numerical strength of the claimants; and when the fields of one district were exhausted, the discontented settlers sought a new residence in another locality, whose wealth had excited their avarice, and the inferior military resources of whose occupants rendered the retention of their possessions uncertain. The cessation of hostilities was always accompanied with the plunder and impoverishment of the vanquished; no treaty was valid, because no moral obligation, or superior power by which it could be enforced, existed; every vice was committed with impunity; every grudge was satisfied with all the abuse of unrestricted license; the caprice of the military commander had supplanted the precedents of the prætor, and the sword had become the only acknowledged arbiter of every controversy.

During the reign of Euric, in the year 479, was codified and published the first book of Gothic law, the basis of the subsequent complex and exhaustive system of jurisprudence which increased in size, and gathered reverence and authority with the reign of each succeeding sovereign. It was known as the Forum Judicum, or the Book of Judges, and consisted mainly of a compilation of the rules applicable to the various customs and ordeals, which had been approved by time and experience as beneficial in the administration of the government of the Gothic nation, combined with such maxims of Roman law as had gradually been absorbed through frequent association with the courts and magistrates of the empire. The new rights and duties arising from the acceptance by the Goths of the orthodox belief in the latter half of the sixth century, necessitated a revision of the existing laws and the formulation of another code of far more extensive scope than the one which already existed. By certain provisions of the former the constitution of the Iberian church was definitely established and the predominance of the clergy in secular matters assured; measures of portentous significance, whose evil effects upon the intelligence and prosperity of the Spanish people are discernible even in our day. From the date of its adoption and promulgation, the inhabitants of the Peninsula were, without exception, declared subject to its statutes. From this time dates the absolute supremacy of the Church in the Peninsula. The hold which it then obtained upon temporal affairs it has never relaxed. The awful consequences of that supremacy upon all classes and conditions of men owing allegiance to the Spanish crown are familiar to every reader of history.

The Visigothic Code exhibited, in the restrictions it imposed upon the royal prerogative, that spirit of jealous independence always conspicuous in the character of the German warrior, and which had been preserved through many centuries by the importance that distinguished the privileged orders under an elective monarchy. The king, who, at first, had been liable to censure and judgment by his subjects, was informed, when invested with his office, that even its dignity could not exempt him from the obligation to observe the law, a principle of justice and equality which he shared with every resident in his dominions. The authority of the turbulent and illiterate nobles, who, with all the arrogance of power, did not hesitate to threaten and insult the creature of their choice, was curbed in time by the potent yet gentle influence of the clergy, whose learning and talents at first swayed, and finally absolutely controlled, the deliberations of the National Councils. The high rank of the prelates, their superior accomplishments in an age of universal ignorance, and their claims as members of an independent hierarchy, which even the Supreme Pontiff himself scarcely ventured to contradict, in the end communicated to the Visigothic constitution all the worst characteristics of an irresponsible and intolerant theocracy.

The Forum Judicum consists of twelve books, which not only define the rights of the different classes of society, but prescribe at length, and in copious detail, the mode of procedure to be followed in the various tribunals. Every precaution which ingenuity could devise was adopted to insure the fidelity, the honesty, and the impartiality of the magistrate, whether of the civil or the ecclesiastical order. It was the duty of the judge to observe and report upon the decisions of the bishop and the priest, while, on the other hand, the higher clergy possessed, under certain contingencies, the power of examining causes and rendering judgment when the proper official had refused or neglected to exercise his judicial functions, and the interests of either of the parties litigant were exposed to injury in consequence. The courts were open from dawn to dark, and the period of vacation and the hours of rest were strictly regulated by law. The trial of causes could not be delayed except for valid reasons; the speedy rendition of judgment was compulsory; the procrastination, injustice, or corruption of the judge was punished by a fine amounting to double the loss incurred, and when the circumstances were peculiarly aggravating his property was confiscated and he was publicly sold as a slave. No person, however indigent, was debarred, for that reason, from the benefits of justice, and a fund was set apart in every town for the support of impecunious litigants, which was disbursed by the municipal government with the approval of the bishop. An appeal from the decisions of the inferior tribunals was granted as a matter of unquestionable right, and the slightest suspicion of interference by the throne in the proceedings rendered them invalid and worthless. The ceremonies relating to the administration of the law were characterized by great simplicity, and the pleadings were divested of unnecessary verbiage. The highest reverence for the officers of the crown was inculcated and enforced; and a resort to litigation was persistently discouraged by public opinion, excepting where it was imperatively demanded by the interests of justice. In the rules of evidence, as well as in their application, traces of the deeply rooted superstitions of the Teutonic barbarians still remained. The ordeals of fire and water were not infrequently adopted. The wager of battle could not be refused, without ignominy; and the oaths of compurgators were, at times, invoked to restore the lustre of some tarnished escutcheon, or to remove the stain attaching to a suspected violation of female honor. Torture was allowed, but excessive severity in its application was prohibited, and, in case of death or permanent injury resulting from its abuse, the judge was liable to forfeiture both of his possessions and his liberty. In determining the competency of testimony, an unwise and unjust discrimination was made against the poor, through the unwarrantable presumption of temptation to bribery, and this exclusion also applied to Jews—even though apostates—as well as to their descendants, and to slaves. The crime of perjury was mentioned with horror; its commission was deemed worthy of the severest punishment; and the false witness, visited with public execration, was condemned to life-long servitude. In general, the criminal code of the Visigoths was conspicuous for the moderation with which it treated offenders against the public peace. The penalty of death was rarely inflicted, and was confined to cases of arson, rape, and murder. A regular schedule of minor crimes and their punishments existed; the severity of the latter depending upon the social rank and political importance of the individual. In flagrant instances of malicious prosecution, bribery of public officers, or abuse of political power, the culprit became the slave of the injured party, with the sole limitation to his resentment, that the life of his former oppressor should be spared. Rebellion was punished by banishment; infanticide by blinding; and the counterfeiter, or the forger of a royal edict, suffered the loss of the right hand. When the atrocious nature of an offence against morals demanded a penalty of corresponding infamy, the head of the criminal was shaved and branded, marking him for life as a social outcast, to be forever an object of public abhorrence. Scourging was the penalty of most universal application, and even a freeman, however exalted his station, was not exempt from its infliction, if he ventured to provoke the vengeance of retributive justice, and was not possessed of the stated fine which was the legal equivalent of the lash. The right of asylum, a privilege whose importance as a salutary check upon the passions of a fierce and tyrannical nobility, in an age of violence, is with difficulty appreciated in modern times, was recognized by the Gothic constitution; and no suppliant, who had sought protection at the foot of the altar, could be removed without the consent of the proper ecclesiastical authority. In the provisions which define the civil relations of society, the Forum Judicum recalls to every one conversant with the Commentaries of Blackstone, the familiar maxims and precedents of the Common Law of England. The different grades of relationship, and the rights of inheritance in the ascending and descending lines, were treated of exhaustively in the books of the Visigothic Code. In the protection of the interests of children its sections displayed a paternal and anxious care. No child could be disinherited unless it had been guilty of some aggravated act of violence towards its parent. In all questions relating to the descent of property, no preference was accorded to sex, and the female remained on the same footing as the male. A minor of ten years could, without restriction, dispose of his or her possessions by will. Guardians were appointed by the courts, who were required to observe the conditions of their trust, and to render accounts of the funds which passed through their hands; and the power of appointing a guardian ad litem was frequently exercised, where the affairs of a minor necessitated the institution or the defence of a suit at law. The boundless control of the father over the child, which formed so prominent a feature in the domestic regulations of Rome, was repugnant to the independent spirit of the Goths; the parental duties and responsibilities were expressly defined; the son who resided with his father was entitled to two-thirds of his earnings; and the courts exercised unremitting and vigilant supervision over the persons and estates of minors and orphans. A reminiscence of the ancient custom of marriage by purchase survived in the price paid by the bridegroom to the relatives of the bride; all clandestine alliances were considered invalid; a woman could sue, and be sued, without joining with her husband; and no responsibility attached to either for the illegal acts of the other. Integrity of descent and purity of blood were preserved by laws of exceptional severity; a free-born female who abandoned her person to, or even contracted marriage with, a slave was scourged and burnt with her unfortunate paramour or spouse. A wife who had incurred the guilt of adultery was delivered over absolutely to the tender mercies of the injured husband. This offence, which evoked ordinarily the strongest denunciation from the descendants of the cold and sluggish barbarians of the Baltic, was, however, in an ecclesiastic rather reprobated as an amiable weakness than condemned as a crime; an indulgence to be attributed partly to the predominant and sympathetic caste of the legislature, and partly to an appreciation of the opportunities and temptations which beset the father-confessor, who, after conviction, was immured in some comfortable monastery until he professed penitence and received absolution.

The conditions of vassalage and serfdom, as understood and practised elsewhere in Europe, and especially in Germany, were foreign to the polity of the Visigoths. Feudalism, with its mutual rights and obligations as subsequently known to Europe, strictly speaking, did not exist. The relations affecting the status of lord and vassal were, to some extent, borrowed from the Roman system and modelled upon those of patron and client. The sections relating to the conditions of servitude were minute and voluminous. The master had generally unrestricted power over the life of his slave. He who aided the escape of the latter was legally responsible for his value. Recognizing the peculiar facilities for criminal intercourse, and the corresponding difficulty of its detection, the law sentenced the servile adulterer to the stake. While the most liberal encouragement was given to the manumission of slaves, the numbers of this unfortunate class were constantly increasing, by the capture of prisoners of war, by the degradation of dishonest officials, by the submission of debtors, and by the conviction of criminals. Every slave belonged to a certain rank, and castigation for petty delinquencies, as well as punishment for serious crimes, was inflicted with more or less rigor, according to the cause of his servitude, his industrial ability, and the social condition of his owner, whether he was born, purchased, or condemned; whether he was a skilful artisan or mechanic, or an ordinary laborer; or whether he was the property of the Crown, of the Church, or of an individual. The influence of the Visigoths did much to lighten the burdens of slavery; the bloody spectacles of the gladiatorial contests possessed no allurements for a nation not degraded by cowardice and cruelty; the treatment of bondmen was, in some localities, so softened and modified that scarcely more than the name of hereditary servitude existed; and in cases of intolerable oppression, where the slave took refuge in the sanctuary, the master could be compelled to dispose of him to some one more actuated by feelings of kindness and pity.

The precepts of the Forum Judicum which relate to bailments, to strays, to trespass, to accessories before and after the fact, to the obstruction of highways, to malicious mischief, to the attestation of documents, and to contracts made under duress, are substantially the same as those set forth in our law-books of to-day. A statute of limitations, which recognized a period varying from thirty to fifty years, beyond which even some criminal prosecutions could not be instituted, was in force. The legislation pertaining to agriculture, irrigation, and the boundaries of land was particularly complete and exhaustive. Security was obtained by bonds and pledges; inventories were required of guardians; and the culprit who was guilty of slander was not only responsible in damages for his intemperate language, but was also often liable to corporeal punishment; as, for instance, if he called another a “Saracen,” or even insinuated that he had been circumcised, he might consider himself fortunate if he did not receive fifty lashes at the hands of the common executioner.

Considering the general condition of society, the antecedents of a nation whose energies had hitherto been directed to the overthrow of every institution which secured the perpetuity of peace and order, the previous slender opportunities of its authors, and the limited educational facilities at their command, the Code of the Visigoths presents us with a system of legislation of extraordinary interest and value. So remarkable is this body of jurisprudence in the wisdom, foresight, humanity, and knowledge of mankind which characterize its leading maxims, that they almost seem to have been suggested by divine inspiration. Its first statutes appeared when the comprehensive system of Justinian, which had enlisted the talents and exhausted the erudition of the most accomplished jurists of the Eastern Empire, was nearly perfected. It borrowed but little, however, from the learning of Tribonian and the laborious ingenuity of his seventeen coadjutors. The eternal principles of justice, it is true, are equally the basis of both of these collections; but their construction and the methods of their application, under similar conditions, are widely different; and the superiority, upon the whole, is largely on the side of the so-called barbarian. In the majority of instances, excepting where ecclesiastical ambition and monastic prejudice perverted the ends of legislation, the laws of the Visigoths were uniformly framed for the protection of the weak, the relief of the oppressed, and the general welfare of society. Unlike the practice of more civilized nations in comparatively recent times, the judicature of the former confined its penalties to the personality of the offender, and imposed no disabilities, either by forfeiture or attainder, upon his innocent relatives and descendants. It restrained the tyranny of the monarch; it defined with conciseness and accuracy the rights of the subject; it accorded unprecedented concessions to the widow and the orphan; it respected the unfortunate and helpless condition of the slave. It prohibited encroachments upon personal liberty, and declared the sale of a freeman to be equivalent in atrocity to the crime of homicide. In almost every provision which did not conflict with the claims of the priesthood, it hearkened to the voice of mercy and humanity. By the constant menace and certain infliction of civil degradation, confiscation, and perpetual servitude, it secured the fidelity of the judges and fiscal officers of the state. It accepted the great principle of the Salic law, and, with worldly prudence, forbade the election of a female sovereign. But, when the theocratic influence which pervaded every branch of the Gothic constitution comes to be examined, its effect upon contemporaneous legislation is seen to be pernicious and deplorable. The power of the clergy was irresponsible, ubiquitous, and thoroughly despotic. It dictated the proceedings of every assembly. It whispered suggestions of questionable morality in the ears of the monarch. When thwarted in its unholy aims, its vengeance was implacable. The abuse of the convenient and formidable weapon of excommunication had not reached the extreme which it subsequently attained, yet the all but omnipotent hand of the priesthood was already able to invade the privacy of domestic life, to interfere with the sensitive and delicate mechanism of commerce, to violate the rights of property, to desecrate the sacred precincts of the grave. Ecclesiastical intolerance dictated the passage of ex-post-facto laws, a measure whose monstrous injustice is patent to every unprejudiced mind. The disability imposed upon the Hebrew race, and the savage spirit of the canons enacted for its oppression, point significantly to the prospective horrors of the inquisitorial tribunals. The practice of sorcery and magic—so dreaded in an age of intellectual inferiority, and especially offensive to the Church, which tolerated no wonder-workers outside of its own pale—was severely reprobated, and punished with excessive severity. The ends of the clergy, when not obtainable by the arts of controversy, were secured by other means not unfamiliar to the intriguing courtiers of mediæval Europe; its propositions were advanced with caution and debated with consummate skill; and its arguments were either insinuated with more than Jesuitical adroitness, or urged with all the energy of sacerdotal zeal.

In its respectable antiquity; in the sublime morality inculcated by its precepts; in the obligations incurred by every nation which has drawn upon its accumulated stores of wisdom; in its freedom from the dishonorable expedients of legal chicanery; in the simplicity of its procedure; in the certainty and celerity required by the practice of the tribunals where its authority was acknowledged; in the inflexible impartiality with which it invested the decisions of those tribunals; in its well-founded title to public confidence; the Visigothic Code is without parallel in the annals of jurisprudence. But great as are its claims upon the gratitude and reverence of the jurist and the legislator, they are scarcely comparable to the indebtedness imposed upon the historian. The meagre information to be gleaned from the works of native chroniclers is, in great measure, thoroughly unreliable. The literature of the age, scanty in itself, consists mainly of the recital of ecclesiastical fables, the martyrdom of legendary saints, the discovery of spurious relics, the averting of calamities by invocation and miracle, and trivial incidents in the lives of holy men and women, whose preternatural gifts the indulgent credulity of their biographers has handed down to the contempt and ridicule of posterity. The pages destined for such records were too precious to be defiled by the accounts of wars and insurrections and the interesting descriptions of mediæval society. The diligence of the compilers of the Forum Judicum has, however, largely supplied the deficiencies of the monkish annalists. In their various civil and prohibitory enactments, they have unconsciously delineated the follies, the vices, the superstitions, and the crimes of the age. The penalties imposed for the violation of statutes denote infallibly the barbarian origin of those who formulated them. The law of retaliation—tolerated only among the lowest races of men—occurs repeatedly among the provisions of the Visigothic Code. The deterrent effect of criminal legislation was almost always subordinated to considerations of vengeance. The magistrate was regarded as the vindicator of wrong, rather than the calm representative of judicial dignity and the impartial interpreter of the laws. Scalping, maiming, blinding, scourging, branding, emasculation, were punishments prescribed without discrimination, for offences varying widely in the nature and degree of misconduct and criminality. The period of transition which separated the barbaric rudeness of Adolphus and the effeminate luxury of Roderick is traceable, step by step, in the progressive legislation of centuries. The rise and consolidation of ecclesiastical power; the limitation of the royal prerogative; the decline of the insolent pretensions of the nobility; the elevation of the peasant from the position of a beast of burden to a self-respecting being, who, however steeped in ignorance he might be, was always sure of an impartial hearing before the magistrate; are there related with all the fidelity and minuteness of a chronicle. There too are depicted the sources of that inspiration which animated and sustained the sinking hopes of the founders of the Spanish monarchy, from its organization as a little principality in the Asturias, down through the turbulent era of Moorish domination, until it attained the summit of greatness as the dictator of Europe and the arbiter of Christendom. These are the general characteristics of that incomparable monument of jurisprudence whose noble conceptions of the ends of legislation are best expressed in its own concise and energetic language:

“The law is the rival of divinity, the messenger of justice, and the guide of life. It dominates all classes of the state, and all ages of humanity, male and female, the young and the old, the wise and the ignorant, the noble and the peasant. It is not designed for the promotion of private aims, but to shelter and protect the general interests of all. It must adjust itself to time and place, according to the condition of affairs and the customs of the realm, and confine itself to exact and equitable rules so as not to lay snares for any citizen.”

Lost in the confusion attending the Conquest, the Forum Judicum was carefully preserved by the Moors for the benefit of future generations; and, recovered when the Moslem capital was taken by St. Ferdinand, it was subsequently translated into Castilian.

Among the nations composing the heterogeneous population of Spain, the most important in intelligence, wealth, commercial activity, and talent for administration, in ancient times, were the Jews. Classed with the first colonists of the Peninsula, the earliest mention of Iberia by the Greek and Roman historians represents the Jewish population as already rich and prosperous. If we consider their intimate relations, kindred interests, alliances by marriage, and common inclination for traffic, with their Tyrian neighbors, it is not improbable that the settlement of the Hebrew in Bætica was coincident with that of the Phœnicians. The first National Council that assembled at Illiberis in 325—the same year in which were determined the principles of orthodox Christianity as set forth in the Nicene creed—inaugurated the long and bloody persecution which finally culminated in the wholesale expulsion of the unfortunate race by Philip V. By the canons of this council, the blessings of the rabbi, to which the husbandman seemed to attach a virtue and an importance equal if not superior to those presumed to attend the benediction of the priest, and which custom from time immemorial had invoked upon the growing crops, was declared an offence against religion, punishable by summary expulsion from the Church. The morose spirit of ecclesiastical bigotry did not hesitate to violate the rites of hospitality and cast a shadow over the amenities of social life. With an exquisite refinement of malice, it pronounced subject to excommunication all who, even in cases of charity or under circumstances of the most urgent necessity, shared their food with a Jew. The passive submission of the entire race to the barbarian invader procured, however, for its members, in many instances, a degree of consideration not enjoyed by their Christian neighbors. With their natural talents for business, their capacity for intrigue, and, above all, their superior knowledge of mankind, they were not long in securing the confidence of the conquerors. Under the Arian sovereigns, their religious opinions remained for generations unquestioned, and their worship unmolested. But hardly had the nation renounced its ancient communion, before the disturbing spirit of the new hierarchy began to assert itself. The edict of Sisebut, in 612, published the decrees of the Third Council of Toledo which had been drawn up for the pious purpose of “eradicating the perfidy of the Jews,” whose general prosperity and political power had aroused the apprehensions of the priesthood. From this era until the accession of Roderick in 709, the legislation of the councils relating to the Jews presents the extremes of brutal harshness and occasional liberal indulgence. In all these enactments, however, the offensive qualities of injustice and malevolence largely preponderated. The aggressiveness of Catholicism demanded instant and uncompromising submission to its creed. What was at first attempted by the imposition of civil disabilities was soon after exacted by degrading insults, by torture, by slavery, and by death. Such was the unrelenting ferocity of this persecution that it awakened at times the indignation even of a semi-barbarous and fanatical age. But despite continuous and systematic repression, this maligned and down-trodden race prospered; the forbearance of royal and ecclesiastical inquisitors was purchased, and the clamors of furious zealots were silenced by opportune contributions to the monastic orders; for the services of the most capable diplomatists and financiers of the time could not be dispensed with in a society where even a large portion of those who devised measures for their oppression could neither read nor write. The superiority of the Jews was also indicated by the prices they commanded when their liberty had been forfeited by law. While slaves of other nationalities ranked as “bestias de cuatro pies,” and were purchasable upon the same terms as a horse or an ox, the Jew was worth a thousand crowns. The great possessions of the Gothic nobles, which the universal illiteracy of the latter made them incompetent to manage, rendered the shrewd and accomplished Hebrew a necessary steward. He enjoyed the confidence of the monarch. He administered the royal revenues, always with discernment and in most instances with fidelity. His advice was eagerly solicited in exigencies of national importance, and in the crooked arts of diplomacy he proved more than a match for the ablest negotiators of the age. His wealth, his political and social influence, which he preserved in defiance of civil disabilities and ecclesiastical malice, his scholastic attainments, the elegance of his manners when contrasted with Teutonic rudeness; all of these qualities ingratiated him into the favor of the palatines, by whom he was often treated with the consideration deserved by a friend, rather than with the abhorrence due to an outcast.

The political organization and legal privileges which the Jews possessed in the early days of the Visigothic monarchy magnified their importance, increased their wealth, and fostered their spirit of exclusiveness. The latter feeling was also strengthened by the policy of separation which it was deemed expedient to adopt, during the Middle Ages, in Christian communities, towards the Hebrew race. For a considerable period of the Gothic dominion, the Jews were confined to a certain quarter of every city and village, over which magistrates of their own blood exercised both civil and criminal functions, unrestricted, save in questions that affected the national faith or where personal injury had been inflicted upon a Christian. The jurisdiction of each provincial assembly was rigidly subordinated to the supreme authority of the central synagogue. The territory beyond the limits of the town—which was often entirely Jewish—was subject to the control of a governor who was responsible only to the sovereign. At one time the Jews controlled the most important landed interests of the kingdom. The prejudice attaching to payments for the use of money did not deter the Hebrew banker from the practice of usury, although the legal rate of thirty-three per cent. certainly offered sufficient inducements to abstain from the violation of the law which he either secretly evaded or openly defied.

The activity displayed by the Jews of the Peninsula in every department of science, literature, government, commerce, agriculture, and finance was incessant and indefatigable. No contemporaneous people could boast, in proportion to their numbers, so many men of genius and erudition. Their influence was so extensive that it was acknowledged alike in the hovel of the peasant and in the council chamber of the king. Their powerful individuality survived the cruel impositions which repressed their enterprise, but could not damp their ardor; and the patriotism which attached them to a country in which they were only tolerated as exiles, was sufficient to induce their descendants to heartily aid, by every means in their power, the famous princes and warriors whose capacity and resolution supported, amidst continuous disaster and defeat, the doubtful fortunes of the struggling monarchy of Castile.

In their application to the mechanical arts, and in their development of architecture, the Visigoths disclosed rather an imitative faculty than a spirit of marked originality. What is known to us as the Gothic style owes nothing to that nation to which popular belief has ascribed its invention, and, in fact, was not introduced into Spain until the thirteenth century. The name has been arbitrarily given it to distinguish the pointed arch—its principal characteristic—from the rounded one peculiar to the edifices of Rome. The rude and primitive structures of the German forests, constructed of logs, stained with mud, and designed solely for purposes of shelter and defence, could neither suggest nor transmit traditions of architectural elegance and beauty. The sight of the noble memorials of Roman genius which had escaped the destructive impulses of the predatory barbarian, erelong inspired the uncouth conqueror with the spirit of emulation. In the Iberian Peninsula these vast and splendid structures abounded. The walls which once encompassed the seats of its proconsul; the fanes from whence had arisen the incense to its gods; the colonnades which adorned its capitals; the aqueducts rising to prodigious heights, and surmounting difficulties which would have perplexed any engineer save a Roman, were worthy of one of the richest provinces of the empire. From such models the Visigothic architect, wholly destitute of experience, yet animated by the desire of imitating an excellence which had awakened his admiration, designed the palace and the basilica. The wealth which, from the earliest times, Spain has lavished upon her children, furnished the means, while the religious spirit which pervaded every class of society afforded the incentive, for public display and private munificence. An innumerable body of slaves and dependents, available at a moment’s notice, facilitated the rapid construction of edifices of the largest proportions. Churches grand in dimensions and barbaric in decoration were erected by priests, abbots, and private individuals, whose generosity was commensurate with their devotion. Before the shrines of these temples were deposited vases, reliquaries, diptychs, crosses, of precious materials and curiously intricate patterns. The religious enthusiasm of the Gothic princes, mingled perhaps with a certain share of worldly ambition, impelled them to a generous rivalry, and nourished in the bosom of each the desire to surpass his predecessor in liberality to the Church. Hence the various temples were, under each successive reign, enriched with royal gifts of inestimable value and ostentatious magnificence. Sacramental tables of gold studded with emeralds, diamonds, and sapphires, whose wondrous beauty and richness Saracen tradition has transmitted to posterity, with monstrances and ciboria of ingenious design and encrusted with jewels, formed a portion of the pious donations of the sovereigns of the Goths. The influence of the arts and taste of Byzantium, communicated through the channels of commerce, the interchange of civilities, and the frequent intercourse between the courts of Constantinople and Toledo, appears in the mural ornamentation of the temples and in the vessels of their shrines, as well as in the habitations, utensils, and trinkets of the people. Geometric forms and floral designs—afterwards so popular among the Moors, who unquestionably derived them largely from this source—were almost exclusively employed by the Gothic goldsmiths and architects. Vines, leaves, buds, and quatrefoils enter into almost every combination in great variety and with charming effect. The churches were dimly lighted by means of marble slabs pierced with intersecting cruciform apertures, which increased the mystery and awe of the interior, devices which are visible to-day in places of worship as widely separated and of as originally diverse character as the chapels of the Asturias and the Mosque of Cordova. As soon as the rage and hatred inspired by the resistance of their enemies—and which was wreaked upon the edifices of the latter with hardly less vindictiveness than upon the ranks of their legions—had been allayed, a desire to profit by the skill and experience of their Roman subjects became paramount; new structures of simple design and enduring materials arose in the cities; the ancient monuments were spared; and the superior state of preservation which distinguishes the Roman remains in the Peninsula affords incontrovertible evidence of the enlightened appreciation of the Visigoths.

In the encouragement of the useful and elegant arts, the Visigoths displayed an enterprising spirit considerably in advance of the other branches of the great Teutonic nation. Manufactures of clothing, glass, armor, weapons, thread, and jewelry are known to have existed in their dominions. But it is in the fabrication of church furniture, votive offerings, and utensils designed for the service of the altar, that the labors of their artisans are best known to us. In the province of Guarrazar, a few miles from Toledo, was accidentally discovered, in the middle of the last century, a deposit of objects which had evidently been hastily buried by the priests on the approach of the Saracen invader. It was composed of a number of votive crowns—some of which were inscribed with the names of the donors—sceptres, censers, crosses, candlesticks, lamps, chains, girdles. All of these were of gold enriched with precious stones. The ignorance, fear, and avarice of the peasants who discovered this treasure resulted in the dispersion and loss of the most precious portion of it; but the crowns were saved, and are now in the Hotel de Cluny at Paris, and the Royal Armory at Madrid. These articles enable us to form an excellent idea of the condition of the arts at the beginning of the eighth century. The accounts given by Christian and Arab historians of the Visigothic kings, and of the enormous booty obtained by the Moors, had, until this discovery was made, been ridiculed by critics as exaggerations, due to the national vanity of both conquered and conqueror. From even a cursory examination of these objects—unique in the world—can readily be detected the taste and style of the Byzantine, whose influence over the artistic traditions of the Peninsula, far from disappearing with the Gothic dynasty, was exhibited in some of the most magnificent creations of the Moslem domination. The clumsy but massive patterns of the crowns show that the value of the materials was taken into consideration, quite as much as the labor that was expended upon them. From their ornamentation is revealed a not inconsiderable familiarity with the art of the enameller. Some of the settings are of polished silicates, inserted, probably by way of contrast, at intervals in lines of uncut gems. The accuracy with which they are adjusted and their points united is indicative of long practice and extraordinary skill. A separate intaglio belonging to the same treasure discloses a hitherto unsuspected degree of perfection in the glyptic art. The carving of stones as hard as the jacinth gives us a still further acquaintance with the skill of the Gothic lapidary, and the delicacy of the filigree borders is of almost equal excellence with the best work of modern Italy.

While the manufactures of Gothic Spain were due to the talents and industry of slaves, its commerce was monopolized by foreigners. The genius of the barbarian, fearless in adventure upon land but too indolent for application to mercantile employments, instinctively shrank from the perils and the hardships incident to protracted navigation of the seas. In agriculture, however, great progress was made. Pastoral occupations had been largely superseded by the tillage of the soil. The character of the various enactments relating to real property shows the importance with which that branch of the law was already invested, and the attention its occupancy and its tenures had received from the legislative power. In literature the Visigoths could boast of few productions of merit, and what we designate by the name of science was to them totally unknown. But a single name, that of San Isidoro of Seville, one, however, famous in every department of knowledge—historian, polemic, commentator, theologian, and saint—has emerged from the chaos of literary obscurity which enveloped the life of Visigothic times. His acquirements were prodigious for the age. The oracle of ecclesiastical councils, his writings were perhaps more voluminous than those of any other author that Spain has ever produced, and they are still regarded by Catholic divines as authoritative in settling controverted points of doctrine.

The practice of medicine—in addition to being subordinated to the irresponsible intervention of the priesthood, whose imposture reaped a profitable harvest by the working of spurious miracles and by the application of relics—was hampered by the prejudices of the ignorant, and by the absurd restrictions imposed by the jealousy of an ecclesiastical legislature. No matter how pressing the necessity, a physician was not permitted to attend a free woman unless her male relatives were present. If great weakness resulted from his treatment he could be heavily fined, and in case death ensued he was abandoned to the vengeance of the family of his patient. The law, however, as a partial compensation for the inconveniences to which he was subjected, exempted him from imprisonment for all crimes save that of murder. A limited knowledge of anatomy and some, acquaintance with the fundamental principles of surgery were possessed by these practitioners, as is disclosed by their successful operations for cataract. Their compensation was regulated by statute, and was, besides, subject to special agreement; but, in case the patient was not cured, no fee could be collected, and the physician was liable, at all times, to prosecution for flagrant acts of malpractice.

The empire of the Visigoths, during the period of its greatest prosperity, extended from the valleys of the Loire and the Garonne to the Mediterranean. The surrender of a portion of this territory to Clovis consolidated the power of both the kingdoms of France and Spain, by adopting for their common boundary the natural rampart of the Pyrenees. The tastes and traditions of the Teutonic nation, heretofore averse to sedentary occupations, and considering all labor, and especially the cultivation of the soil, as degrading to the character of a freeman, caused such employment to be abandoned to the former subjects of the Roman Empire; nor was it until several centuries had elapsed, and the advantages resulting from industrious tillage had been demonstrated, that this prejudice was in some degree removed. At all times during the sway of the Visigoths, every species of manual labor was largely performed by slaves. The institution of colleges of artificers—a custom inherited from the most polished nation of antiquity—had been adopted by the barbarian conquerors, and the slaves composing these bodies, where the talents of the father were transmitted to the son, were naturally ranked among the most valuable of personal possessions. Large numbers of these artisans were the property of the Crown and of the Church, being respectively under the control of the Royal Treasurer and the Bishop, and the unique specimens of the goldsmith’s skill which the fortunate discovery at Guarrazar has preserved for us, reveal to what proficiency in the mechanical arts these accomplished bondmen had attained.

The greatest luxury and pomp were indulged in by the Visigothic nation, a people which the world still calls barbarian. Their palaces were encrusted with precious marbles. The furniture of their apartments was of the most expensive character. The garments of the nobility were of silken fabrics embroidered with gold. The ladies of the court used for their ablutions basins of silver, and admired their beauty in exquisitely chased mirrors set with jewels. The horses of the royal household were covered with harnesses and trappings blazing with the precious metals. A hundred wagons laden with baggage and all the paraphernalia of boundless extravagance followed in the train of the monarch. Such was the lavish expenditure of even the middle and lower classes, that it became necessary to enact a law prohibiting the bestowal of a dowry of more than one-tenth of the property of a bridegroom upon the bride.

Not only did the Visigoths strive to imitate their Roman subjects in the style and finish of their edifices, but in every public employment, in every department of art and labor, was the potent influence of the subjugated people visible. The organization of the various corps and divisions of the army was modelled after that of the legion. The most popular amusements were, with the exception of gladiatorial combats, identical with those which had excited to frenzied enthusiasm the vast audiences of Rome and Constantinople in the circus and the amphitheatre. The dress of the citizen, the armor of the soldier, were Roman; the ornaments of the ladies, the insignia of royalty, the decorations of the churches, were Byzantine. The language in common use was a barbarous and bastard Latin. The fusion of hostile races, the amalgamation of the conqueror and the conquered, that political problem which has taxed the skill of the wisest statesmen, was almost brought to a successful solution by the broad statesmanship of the Visigothic sovereigns. The adoption and enforcement of a uniform and well-conceived body of laws did much to accomplish this end. But the acceptance of orthodox Christianity as the recognized form of national faith, and the legalizing of intermarriage between the different peoples of the Peninsula, by their tendency to remove the formidable barriers raised by caste, which had hitherto isolated the various classes of society, did far more to promote the union of the discordant elements of society. The Basques—constant types of the primitive Iberian—alone, among the multifarious tribes which acknowledged the supremacy of the court of Toledo, have preserved their nationality, and have obstinately refused to surrender those distinctive racial peculiarities that have made them for centuries the subject of the entertaining speculations of the ethnologist.

In some respects a striking parallel, in others a decided contrast existed between Goth and Arab, representatives of the Aryan and Semitic branches of the human family, who crossed swords in Europe for the first time in history, on the plains of the Spanish Peninsula. Between these two great ethnographical divisions, a spirit of irreconcilable enmity has always prevailed. No fusion between them has ever been effected. Where one has obtained ascendency in any part of the world, the other has either preserved its special traits or gradually become extinct. Considerations of political expediency, the claims of divine revelation, the benefits of trade, the ultimate prospect of national union and social equality, have not been sufficient to counteract the influence of an antagonism which anticipates all human records in its antiquity. The customs of nomadic peoples are proverbially persistent; their occupation frequently survives the change of residence, the accidents of migration, and the influence of new and radically different associations. Both the Goths and the Arabs placed their principal dependence upon their flocks and herds, but neither ever hesitated to exchange the crook of the shepherd for the spear of the robber. The love of war and violence was the predominating characteristic of both. They had a common admiration for courage as the greatest of virtues; a common appreciation of the noble qualities of personal liberty, of private honor, of generous hospitality. Their habits were slothful, their existence precarious. Their jealousy of power forbade their acknowledgment of royal authority. They considered all industrial employments as beneath the dignity of manhood. Their worship was tainted with the most objectionable features of idolatry,—the adoration of stones, the practice of fetichism, the horrors of human sacrifice. Alike were they drunkards and desperate gamesters, who eagerly placed their liberty at stake, whose revels resounded with brawling, and whose disputes were settled with the sword. They recognized no permanent ownership in the soil, possessed little portable wealth, were ignorant of the arts and without the knowledge of letters. Like all barbarians, they believed disease and insanity to be caused by demoniacal possession. With both, love of poetry was a passion, and the personality of the bard the object of almost idolatrous reverence. Such were the traits common to two nations, separated by a distance of eighteen hundred miles, ignorant of each other’s existence, and living under entirely dissimilar climatic conditions. The atmosphere of the Baltic was perpetually cold and damp, that of Arabia dry and torrid almost beyond endurance. Eastern Europe was covered with dense forests, traversed by noble rivers, and dotted with impassable swamps. In the Desert nothing was so rare as a tree or rivulet. The physical conformation of the Goth and the Arab respectively was controlled by his environment to an even greater degree than was the mental constitution of either. The former was of giant stature and strength, and of fair complexion; the latter slender. nervous, and swarthy. With the Goth, female chastity was held in the highest esteem; with the Arab, it was the subject of caustic epigram, of jest, and of satire. The Goth, a monogamist, knew nothing of the pleasures of gallantry; the polygamous Arab placed indulgence in them second only to the excitement of battle. The Goths were among the first and most devout proselytes of Christianity; the Arabs have ever obstinately refused to acknowledge the divinity of Christ or the superior authority of the Gospel.

That invincible prowess which, nurtured by poverty and an abstemious life, was displayed with equal distinction and success amidst the forests of Europe and on the sandy plains of Africa, was the potent weapon which obtained for each of these great nations supremacy over their adversaries; an advantage which, through internal dissension, sectarian prejudice, and social corruption, was eventually lost; but not until the moral and physical peculiarities of both had impressed themselves upon their contemporaries, so deeply as to insure their transmission, with but little modification, to subsequent ages.

The spirit of the Visigoths was, almost from the first, decidedly progressive. This general tendency towards improvement, and a desire for the blessings of civilization, stimulated commercial activity, increased domestic happiness, and opened a field for the development of art, the advancement of science, the strict administration of justice, and the consequent decrease of brutality and crime. The wisdom of the Gothic polity and the equity of its laws afford a pleasing and instructive example of the capacity of a people to raise itself unaided from barbarism—a people which, in addition to the romantic interest attaching to its history, is entitled to the grateful remembrance of mankind for the beneficent influence it has exerted upon the political institutions and the social order of Europe; as well as for the creation of a judicial system whose merits and whose principles, confirmed by the experience of centuries, are still acknowledged by the most august tribunals of the civilized world.

CHAPTER V
THE INVASION AND CONQUEST OF SPAIN
710–713

General Conditions and Physical Features of the Spanish Peninsula—Various Classes of the Population—Supremacy of the Church—Tyranny of the Visigothic Kings—Fatal Policy of Witiza—Accession of Roderick—Count Julian—Invasion of Tarik—Battle of the Guadalete—Its Momentous Results—Progress of the Moslems—Arrival of Musa—His Success—Immense Booty secured by the Victors—Quarrel of Tarik and Musa—Interference of the Khalif—Submission of the Goths—Musa’s Vast Scheme of Conquest—The Two Generals ordered to Damascus—The Triumphal Procession through Africa—Fate of Musa—Causes and Effects of the Moslem Occupation of Spain.

The encroaching spirit of Islam, dominated by the potent motives of avarice, ambition, and fanaticism, was not content with its marvellous achievements and the possession of two continents, it aspired to universal conquest. The submission of Africa was now complete. The sovereignty of the Byzantine Empire had vanished forever from the southern coast of the Mediterranean. The tact and military skill of Musa had won the confidence, and inspired the respect, of the treacherous, warlike, and hitherto intractable, tribes of Mauritania. A large number of the latter had embraced Mohammedanism. A still greater proportion who, either from association, policy, or conviction, professed attachment to the law of Moses, maintained an intimate correspondence with their oppressed brethren of the Spanish Peninsula. The latter in secret brooded over the accumulated wrongs of centuries, and, under an appearance of resignation, harbored designs that boded ill to the temporal and ecclesiastical tyrants of the Visigothic monarchy. The restless glance of the Arabian general had long contemplated with envy, mingled with an insatiable desire for plunder, the rich and splendid cities of ancient Bætica; its teeming mines; its pastures, with their myriads of cattle; its plains, traversed by innumerable canals and rivers; where even a careless and incomplete system of cultivation produced harvests almost rivalling in luxuriance those of the famous valleys of the Euphrates and the Nile. A strait, of less than eight miles in width in its narrowest part, now presented the sole physical impediment to the further progress of the conqueror. It was defended upon the African side by the fortress of Ceuta, whose governor was a vassal or tributary of the Visigothic king, and whose valor had rendered nugatory the efforts of the bravest Moslem captains, who, fully appreciating the strategic importance of this stronghold, had made repeated and desperate attempts to capture it. This promontory, which formed one side of the channel, familiar for ages to the Phœnicians, and supposed by the ignorant to be the end of the world, was protected from foreign intrusion by the portentous fables and prodigies invented by Tyrian artifice. Facing it, on the Spanish shore, stood the Temple of Hercules, with its dome of gilded bronze, its columns of electrum, and its mysterious altars raised to Art, Old Age, and Poverty. Unlike other Pagan shrines—for it contained no visible representation of a divinity—it was always approached by the Phœnician mariner with feelings of gratitude and awe. It was associated with his naval superiority over the other nations of antiquity. It was intimately connected with the increase of his wealth; with the continuance of his prosperity; with the discovery of lands unknown to his contemporaries and rivals; with the preservation of his stores of occult wisdom, whose sources he explored with such acuteness and concealed with such success. Every device of fable and superstition had been employed to clothe this locality with such a character as might effectually check the efforts of an inquiring or aggressive commercial spirit. To the accomplishment of this end, the phenomena of Nature lent their powerful aid. The contracted passage between two of the greatest bodies of water known to the ancients was of unfathomable depth. On both sides, despite the agitation of the waves, its level remained the same. Even during both the ebb and flow of the tide, the current always ran strongly towards the east. Its force was steady, constant, invariable; the waxing and waning of the moon, the most furious tempests, exerted no appreciable influence over the inflexible regularity of its motion. It was not without reason that the apparent suspension of the laws of equilibrium and of the forces of Nature was attributed by the superstitious to the divinity whose temple guarded the famous portals upon which he had imposed his name. It has been maintained by scholars that within this shrine was preserved, as a sacred relic, a fragment of magnetic ore, of great antiquity, known to the Tyrian navigator as a priceless talisman—the precursor of the mariner’s compass—which had guided his course to distant Britain, and assured to his countrymen the empire of the seas. According to popular belief, through this channel the way led to the realm of Chaos. To brave its unknown and dreaded perils was sacrilege, and to none, save those authorized by the priests of Melcareth, was this undertaking permitted. In subsequent times, invested with little less mystery, this region had bequeathed not a few of its reminiscences to the Roman, and awakened the curiosity of the Arab, as he fixed his gaze upon the white-topped waves sparkling in the sunlight between continent and continent and sea and sea, like the facets of a precious gem; or, in the beautiful imagery of the Oriental chronicler, “like a diamond between two emeralds and two sapphires, the master-stone in the ring of empire.”

In the beginning of the eighth century the kingdom of the Visigoths presented every appearance of prosperity and power. Its inherent weakness was imperfectly disguised by the pomp of its hierarchy and the luxury of its court, which veiled the defects of its constitution and the abuses of its government with a false and delusive splendor. Its licentious sovereign retained none of the primitive virtues of his ancestors, whose intrepid spirit and resistless valor had sustained them on a hundred fields of battle, and had borne their arms in a long succession of triumphs from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. The successor of Reccared and Wamba had degenerated into a feeble tyrant, who reigned by a disputed title, and in whose sensual nature neither the rites of hospitality, the obligations of friendship, the dignity of the regal office, nor the infirmities of age, interposed any obstacle to the indulgence of his unbridled passions.

A haughty nobility decimated by the sanguinary feuds promoted by a contested succession, and divided into factions whose members hated each other with far greater intensity than that which they bore to a common enemy; unaccustomed to the exercise of arms; destitute of faith and honor; concealing treasonable sentiments under the semblance of enthusiastic loyalty, endeavored to sustain, by vainglorious boasts and barbaric ostentation, the dignity of their order and the majesty of the throne. The martial ardor of the legions which had for centuries upheld the greatness and the renown of the Roman name had been supplanted by the zeal and avarice of the monastic hordes, who defended by every expedient of fraud and violence the rising cause of the church militant. The crosier, in the hands of an arrogant caste which monopolized the learning of the age, had become far more potent than the sword or the sceptre, and the origin of all political measures of national importance was to be sought not in the palace but in the cathedral. The wise, tolerant, and judicious policy of the early ecclesiastics, that had animated and directed the councils of the Church, which by its humanizing influence had softened the prevailing rudeness of the age, and framed laws whose equitable maxims have served as models for succeeding legislators, had been abandoned for the degrading but profitable occupation of hunting down and plundering heretics. The proud and exclusive hierarchy of the Visigoths refused to acknowledge the supremacy, or respect the edicts, of the See of Rome. When the Pope interfered in the spiritual affairs of the Peninsula—an occurrence, however, that rarely took place—he did so rather in the capacity of a mediator, or even a suppliant, than as a mighty ruler, the head of Christendom, and the Vicar of God. His titles were assumed and his prerogatives usurped by the Spanish prelates; his infallibility was questioned, not only by the higher clergy, whose ministrations were declared to be endowed with equal virtue, but even by the sovereign and the nobles, who openly ridiculed his pretensions and defied his authority. The evil example of royal profligacy had infected every grade of the priesthood. The episcopal palace became the scene of daily turmoil and midnight orgies, which scandalized the populace, itself far from immaculate; while the excellence of the wines and the beauty of the female companions of priest and primate were matters of public jest and infamous notoriety. The relative positions of the great officials of Church and State had, by reason of the peculiar functions exercised by the former, who had entirely usurped the legislative power, been reversed. The prelate, while still retaining the outward insignia of his sacred profession, had, from the practice of the generous and self-sacrificing duties of a minister of grace and mercy, descended to the ignoble arts of an active, scheming, unscrupulous politician. The nobility, after having virtually surrendered to their spiritual advisers the complete control of the administration, preserved, to a pharisaical degree, the outward semblance of devotion. In private life, the morals of both classes were stained with degrading vices and crimes which were thinly veiled by a more or less rigid observance of the prescribed forms of religious worship.

No country in Europe had, from the earliest times of which history makes mention, constantly offered such inducements to the enterprise and prowess of an invader as Spain. The Orient and the Occident met upon her shores. Every material advantage which could attract the attention of man, which could stimulate his ambition, increase his wealth, insure his comfort, supply his necessities, and minister to his happiness, was hers. The balmy air of her southern provinces—whose skies for months were unobscured by a single cloud—was tempered by the breezes of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. The varied landscape of hill and plain, seamed with a net-work of artificial rivulets, was covered with a mantle of perpetual verdure. Her orchards furnished an inexhaustible supply of the most delicious fruits. The products of her mines had made the fortune of every possessor—Phœnician, Carthaginian, Roman, Vandal, and Goth. Her gold and silver had embellished the thrones of Babylon, the shrines of Tyre, the palaces of Memphis, the temple of Jerusalem. Her coasts, easy of access from every point, offered a succession of safe and commodious harbors. The Visigoths, despite their barbarian prejudice against manual labor, recognized the importance of agriculture. The provinces of the realm were apportioned among the nobility. A stated tribute was required of their vassals by the great landed proprietors, who rarely had the justice to grant indulgence for a failure of the harvests or a deficiency resulting from public or private misfortune. The cultivators were attached to the glebe, which could not be alienated without them, and, forming an hereditary caste, were, to all intents and purposes, slaves; although, under the Gothic polity, their position was nominally superior to that of the unfortunate who was exposed for sale in the market. From these two classes, dispirited by generations of arduous toil and constant oppression, were recruited the rank and file of the army, who were expected to fight for the preservation of their tyrants’ possessions and the continuance of their own degradation. The lot of the serf under later Visigothic rule was, in general, far more grievous than that of the slave had been under the Roman. The Teutonic custom which encouraged the imposition of personal service in return for protection was unknown under the Empire. The rendering of this obligation an hereditary charge—a cardinal principle of the German constitution, but which became in a measure obsolete under the later Visigothic kings—added to the aggravation which attended its performance. The restrictions upon marriage, the separation of families, the severity of punishment imposed for even trifling offences, added to the humiliation and hardships of the servile condition. While the Arian heresy was predominant, the burdens of serfdom were lightened, and its state had been gradually improved. The generosity of the bishops was displayed in every way that kindness and consideration could suggest; in the diminution of labor; in rewards for fidelity; in attendance in sickness; in sympathy in misfortune. The unhappy serf, deceived by these concessions and favors, not unnaturally concluded that they portended increased liberty and ultimate emancipation. The clergy gave color to this presumption by frequent declarations from the pulpit that slavery was contrary to the teachings of the Gospel. In time, with the increase of influence, the control of royal elections, and the absolute dictation of the policy of the throne, these spiritual statesmen found it expedient to forget the benevolent precepts of government which they had formerly so earnestly inculcated. After the acceptance of the orthodox faith, the inherent evils of the servile system were magnified to an unprecedented degree. The high rank, sacred character, and practically unlimited power of the great prelates of the Church, offered unusual opportunities for the indulgence of the passions of tyranny and avarice. The dependents of bishops walked in the processions, by which were celebrated the great festivals of the Church, attired in silken liveries embroidered with gold. The appointments of their palaces and the magnificence of their trains surpassed even those of the sovereign. The estates of these dignitaries were the most extensive and important of the kingdom; in many instances they exceeded in value the royal demesnes. Immense numbers of slaves were employed upon them, not merely in the cultivation of the soil, but in the producing and perfecting of every article, then known, which could contribute to the pleasure of their luxurious lords. For these unhappy laborers, whose tasks each year became more arduous, and whose aspirations for liberty, cherished during many generations, were now destroyed, the prospect of relief from their unsupportable burdens seemed absolutely hopeless. Inferior in numbers to these two classes of agricultural serfs, and the individuals condemned by the accident of birth, or the process of law, to perpetual bondage, but vastly superior to them in intelligence, in shrewdness, and in all the arts of deceit, were the Jews. A sweeping decree of the Seventeenth Council of Toledo had confiscated their possessions and sentenced them to servitude. A hundred thousand of these sectaries, in whose breasts rankled a spirit of fierce and sullen hatred, born of hostility handed down for ages, and aggravated by a system of repression scarcely justifiable even by the sternest demands of political necessity, constituted an element of a far more dangerous character than all of the others whose machinations and discontent had undermined the fabric of the Visigothic empire. The national sentiment of superiority—born of theocratic government, of the claims of an arrogant priesthood, of the alleged favor of the Almighty, and of the traditions of three thousand years—was then, as now, all-powerful in the minds of the Jewish people. The defective annals of that age have failed to furnish us with data by which we can determine with what degree of strictness the laws against the Hebrews were enforced. It is probable, however, that in the cities, where a higher condition of intelligence existed and more correct ideas of justice obtained, observance of these inhuman edicts was frequently evaded. In the villages and hamlets the fanaticism and jealousy of the peasantry undoubtedly inflicted every hardship and indignity upon the Jews. In vain might the favored steward or counsellor of the noble, who still retained his residence in the palace, and continued to supply by his own talents and experience the deficiencies produced by his employer’s sloth and incapacity, attempt to alleviate the wretchedness of his countrymen. With the ignorant rabble, the possession of wealth and the exertion of political power by heretics were always unpardonable crimes. The clergy, on all occasions, for ends of their own, fomented the popular discontent, lauded this cruel policy as acceptable to God, and by every device sought to perpetuate the ancient antagonism of the Aryan and Semitic races, in which is to be sought one cause of the irrational and widely-diffused prejudice against the Jew. This feeling was also intensified by the current tradition that, during the reign of Leovigild, the Hebrews had, with unconcealed alacrity, aided the heterodox clergy in persecuting members of the Roman Catholic communion. Under these circumstances, too much importance cannot be attached to the part played in the Moorish occupation of Spain by this numerous and enterprising sect, skilled in all the arts of dissimulation, and exasperated by centuries of oppression, which the Visigothic kingdom nourished in its bosom. Without the information afforded by its members the Arab attack would probably have never been undertaken. Without its support and co-operation it is certain that the subjugation of a nation of six million souls could never have been accomplished in the space of a few months by a mere handful of undisciplined horsemen.

No nation has ever flourished under the rule of a hierarchy. The circumstances indispensable for the security and happiness of the subject are incompatible with the demands of the alleged representatives of divine inspiration and omnipotent power. The narrow policy inseparable from protracted ecclesiastical domination is inevitably productive of national ruin and disgrace. In this instance, it dispossessed the Spanish people of the richest part of their inheritance for eight hundred years. Under the monarchs of the Austrian line—incapable of profiting by the experience of their predecessors and deaf to the warnings of history—similar acts of imprudence and folly contributed more than aught else to deprive the Spanish Crown of the political supremacy of Europe.

The events in the annals of Spain which relate to the close of the seventh and the commencement of the eighth century are involved in more than ordinary obscurity. It was a period fraught with political and social disturbance. Treason and regicide, crimes from which, heretofore, the Gothic people had been proverbially exempt, were now considered justifiable expedients by every ambitious noble who aspired to raise himself to the throne. The degrees of favor and absolution which the successful traitor could expect from the clergy were directly proportionate to the value of the gifts which he was able to deposit in the treasury of the Church. Every offence, no matter how flagrant, was pardonable after satisfactory pecuniary intercession with the priest. The fulminations of the Holy Council were denounced against all who refused allegiance to the royal assassin, whose election had been ratified by the votes of the assembled prelates. Where the aspirant to kingly power lacked the courage for deeds of blood, a resort to fraud was deemed excusable, provided it was attended with success and the customary liberal contribution for ecclesiastical purposes was not forgotten. To such a depth of degradation had fallen the descendants of the loyal, brave, and generous warriors of the Teutonic race!

The greatness of the Visigothic monarchy had departed with the reign of Wamba, the last of its heroes, and one illustrious for the practice of every public and every private virtue. Deprived of his crown by an artifice which reflected more credit on the astuteness than on the integrity of his successor, he was condemned to pass the latter portion of his life in a convent. The new king Ervigius, after an uneventful reign, left his kingdom to his son-in-law Egiza. The character of the latter monarch, while not destitute of the manly virtues of courage and resolution, was tarnished by insatiable rapacity. He was as persevering in his pursuit of wealth as he was unscrupulous in his methods of obtaining it. He commuted the enforcement of penal laws for the payment of fines, which varied with the pecuniary ability of the culprit to discharge them, without regard to the degree or the circumstances of the crime. Under trivial pretexts, he banished wealthy citizens and confiscated their property. He imposed excessive taxes. Emboldened by the impunity of power, he did not hesitate to resort even to forgery; and, by means of spurious documents, implicated in offences against the state such wealthy individuals as had the hardihood to resist his importunate demands. And, worst of all, he lost no opportunity to appropriate the revenues of the Church, under whatever pretence his ingenuity or his audacity might suggest. By an unprincipled and tyrannical hierarchy the former misdemeanors might be overlooked, but the latter offence was tainted with the double reproach of oppression and sacrilege. After formal and unavailing remonstrance, a plot was formed in 692 by Sisebert, Archbishop of Toledo, which had for its object the assassination of the King and his entire family. Some of the most powerful nobles were involved in this conspiracy, which was hatched by the principal ecclesiastics of the capital. Timely information of the plot having reached the ears of the sovereign, the most vigorous means were taken to counteract it. The metropolitan was arrested and deposed. A number of the chief conspirators were executed or exiled. Scarcely had this conspiracy been suppressed, before the existence of a still more formidable one was revealed. The Hebrews, whose condition under this and the preceding reign had been more favorable than for many years, evincing no gratitude for the leniency with which they had been treated, and remembering only past indignities, exulting in their numbers and influence, and assured of aid from Barbary, made arrangements for a general revolt, with a view to a complete reorganization of the government and the metamorphosis of Spain into an absolutely Jewish kingdom. This treasonable design was discovered, however, almost at the moment when it was ripe for execution. The authorities took measures to insure their safety with exemplary severity. A council was convoked and a decree passed, by which the Jews were condemned to be banished, enslaved, stripped of their possessions, and deprived of their children. The outrageous cruelty of the measure, however, caused an almost immediate reaction, and it was not generally enforced. The discontented sectaries, grieving under their accumulated wrongs, and exasperated by the miscarriage of their plans, continued to hope for assistance from abroad, and embraced every opportunity to send information of the public disorders to their sympathetic brethren in Africa. The reign of Egiza, agitated hitherto by almost incessant political convulsions, was now threatened with the evils of foreign invasion. A Saracen fleet, well manned and equipped, descended upon the defenceless Spanish coast, ravaged the fields, plundered the villages, and carried the inhabitants into captivity. To provide against this new danger a naval expedition was fitted out, and entrusted to the command of Theodomir, an officer of approved experience, and a noble of the highest rank. Setting sail, the Gothic admiral lost no time in encountering the hostile fleet. A bloody engagement took place; two hundred of the enemy’s vessels were destroyed or taken; and the embryotic maritime power of the Moslems was swept from the seas. In the following year a war with the Franks, the cause of which is unknown, was carried on for several months with the indecisive results characteristic of the operations of desultory warfare. Egiza, being advanced in years and conscious of his infirmities, was desirous of associating his son Witiza with him in the administration, and of securing to him the succession at his decease. A council having been convoked for this purpose, his wishes were realized without opposition, and Witiza was raised to the regal dignity. The following year the old King died, leaving to his young and inexperienced successor the sole responsibility of government, and a series of difficulties and embarrassments such as no other monarch of his time had hitherto been forced to contend with, and which involved both the stability of the Visigothic empire and the preservation of the Christian faith. The accession of Witiza promised a happy and prosperous future to the country afflicted with so many calamities. His youth had been distinguished by the practice of the virtues of temperance, generosity, justice, and filial reverence. As soon as he attained to absolute power, he evinced a disposition to win the attachment of the people by making amends for the pecuniary exactions and oppressive laws which had been imposed by the avarice and extortions of his family. A general amnesty was proclaimed. The forged documents by which the wealthy had been plundered were destroyed. All taxes, except such as were absolutely necessary to the support of the government, were remitted. Great numbers of exiles were invited to return, and their possessions were surrendered. The Jews were restored to partial favor; but, as the popular prejudice was still bitter and universal, a politic appearance of severity was maintained, which, however, it was evident would be entirely removed in time. Under such favorable auspices began the reign of Witiza, whose magnanimity, tact, and affable demeanor had already won the hearts of his subjects. The opinion of the latter was at first confirmed by the mild disposition and virtuous behavior of their youthful sovereign. But this fair promise of future greatness was fallacious, for Witiza soon plunged into excesses which awakened the horror of his subjects, and provoked the censures of the clergy, ever disposed to be lenient towards such transgressions except when they threatened their influence or their revenues. The whole court was soon abandoned to indiscriminate licentiousness. Not only was the violation of the most sacred traditions of the Church permitted, but polygamy and concubinage were openly encouraged by sacerdotal authority and example. The pious instructors of the people were the first to improve the opportunities afforded by these impolitic enactments, and the feelings of the devout were outraged by excesses which did not respect even the sacred precincts of the altar and the confessional. No scandals, however, aroused such indignation as the indulgence which was manifested towards the Jews. Every ecclesiastic, especially, considered any moderation of the condition of this down-trodden race an affront to his order, and a crime worse than sacrilege. Enraged by the contempt with which Witiza treated their remonstrances, the clergy lost no occasion of increasing the prevailing discontent, and, with a view to strengthening their position by enlisting the aid of the Holy See, they secretly despatched an embassy to Rome. The ire of the Pope was excited by the representations of the envoys of the Spanish Church, whose prelates, though not acknowledging his supreme jurisdiction, did not disdain to solicit his intervention as an affair which seemed to involve the interests of Christendom. Elated by the hope of establishing his authority in the Peninsula, the Holy Father Constantine, without delay, sent a message to the recalcitrant monarch threatening him with the loss of his kingdom, unless he at once revoked the offensive edicts and permitted the unrestricted persecution of the Jews. To this Witiza retorted with contempt that if the Pope did not cease intermeddling with what did not concern him, he would drive him from the Vatican; and he forthwith published an edict that no attention should be paid to the mandates of the Papacy under penalty of death. These proceedings further embittered the prejudices of both the clergy and the people, and the popular clamor became so loud that Witiza began to tremble for both his crown and his life. Agitated by his fears, and resolved to afford as little encouragement as possible to any treasonable undertaking, he dismantled the principal fortresses, and razed the walls of every city in the kingdom, excepting those of Toledo, Astorga, and Lugo; an act of folly which not only failed of its object, but in the end directly contributed to the overthrow of the monarchy. The Jews, on the other hand, now placed in positions of profit and responsibility, far from appreciating the honors with which they were invested and the confidence which was reposed in them, with characteristic treachery and ingratitude, availed themselves of their power for the destruction of their royal benefactor. Aided by their intrigues, a formidable conspiracy broke out. The majority of the clergy and a considerable body of the nobles joined the insurgents; a rival king was elected; and, after a short conflict, Witiza was deposed and probably murdered, for history has preserved no record of his fate.

The new monarch, Roderick, although he had reached the great age of eighty-two years, retained, in an unusual degree, the strength and activity of early manhood. His life had been passed amidst the athletic pastimes which exercised the leisure of the Gothic youth, and, in occasional expeditions undertaken against the hardy mountaineers of Galicia and Biscay, he had earned a well-merited reputation for courage and military skill. Although not of royal blood, his natural endowments, the dignity of his carriage, the apparent but deceptive austerity of his manners, and the mildness of his temper, gained for him the respect of all who were admitted to his presence. In the elegant luxury of his palace, in the splendor of his retinue, in the majestic pomp which distinguished every public ceremony over which he presided, he far surpassed his predecessors, and emulated, with no little success, the magnificence of the Roman court in the age of imperial decadence.

The intriguing spirit which animated the subjects of a monarchy essentially elective, but one where courtesy and real or apparent merit occasionally made an exception in favor of hereditary descent, had established, among the Visigoths, the custom of retaining near the throne the children of powerful families; nominally for purposes of education, but in fact to insure the fidelity of their relatives often entrusted with the custody of frontier strongholds or important military commands. The sons, until they attained to manhood, served as pages in the royal household, and were trained in all the manly and martial exercises of the time. The attendants of the queens were recruited from the noble maidens, whom this prudent custom placed and retained in the precincts of the court, and who were carefully instructed in the few but graceful accomplishments indispensable to the position of ladies of distinguished lineage. Among the latter, at the court of Roderick, was the daughter of Count Julian, formerly a vassal of the Byzantine Empire, and the commandant of the fortress of Ceuta; whom political necessity, the isolation consequent upon the subjugation of every Greek settlement in Africa, and the rapidly increasing power of the Moors, had compelled to appeal to the nearest Christian monarch for protection, and to transfer his allegiance to the court of Toledo. This girl, who was of great beauty, excited the licentious desires of the King, who, failing to accomplish his object by fair means, in an evil hour resorted to force. Informed of the injury which had been inflicted upon his family, Count Julian, braving without hesitation the storms of winter, hastened to the capital. Dissembling, with true Greek astuteness, his outraged feelings, he asked permission to remove his daughter to the bedside of her mother whom he represented as being dangerously ill. Without any misgivings Roderick granted the request, and, manifesting every appearance of respect and loyalty, the veteran officer left the court and retraced his steps. No sooner had he arrived at his post, than he began to carry out the plan of vengeance which he had already fully matured. The castle of Ceuta was the key of Europe. Impregnable to all the resources of military engineering in an age when gunpowder was unknown, its value as an obstacle to foreign invasion was not understood by the Visigoths. The immunity of centuries; the contempt for barbarians; the ignorance of the mighty and unexampled power of Islam; the inertia produced partly by the influence of climate, but principally by an abuse of all the pleasures of unbridled luxury, had disposed the sovereigns of Toledo to consider their kingdom inaccessible to attack, and their empire eternal. As has already been mentioned, this haughty and corrupt nation was constantly agitated and its integrity menaced by a score of discordant factions. Its recent monarchs had bent all their energies to the abrogation of the statesmanlike measures inaugurated by their forefathers. The nobles and the clergy, inflamed with mutual animosity, suspicious of their partisans, and arrayed against each other, were engaged in a mortal struggle for superiority. The Jews, indulged and persecuted by turns, lived in a continual state of apprehension and despair. All the salutary restraints of religion were apparently removed; the Church was regarded as a convenient instrument for the attainment of political power; the priesthood were devoted to the practice of nameless vices; the people to indiscriminate libertinage. A large body of slaves, who, under the lash of brutal masters, still preserved the traditions of liberty, were ripe for revolt, and longed for the day of their deliverance. A disastrous famine, followed by its usual successor the pestilence, and whose effects were still apparent in untilled fields and deserted hamlets, had contributed to increase the popular suffering and discontent. Fortified on one side against the incursions of the Franks by the natural rampart of the Pyrenees, and isolated on the others by the Mediterranean and the ocean, the inhabitants of the Peninsula, in the enjoyment of a salubrious climate and fruitful soil, rested in fancied security, and had long since laid aside the armor whose weight had become oppressive, and abandoned those warlike exercises whose preservation was their only safeguard.

Incited by a spirit of desperation which considered neither the consequences of his acts nor the means by which they were to be accomplished, Count Julian sought the presence of Musa. He found the Moslem general at Kairoan, which had been selected as the seat of the viceregal government of Western Africa. The intrepid character of his visitor was not unknown to the great Arab soldier whose designs upon Ceuta had been twice frustrated, by the valiant Greek, after the employment of all the resources at the command of the Khalif, and Count Julian was received with every token of honor and respect. Unfolding his project, he descanted long and earnestly upon the riches of the Gothic monarchy and the facility of its conquest. He explained the feuds and bitter feelings engendered by disappointed ambition, by religious persecution, by the seizure of hereditary estates, by the sufferings of wounded pride. He expatiated on the sense of injury experienced by the advocates of hereditary descent, who considered the reigning monarch of foreign lineage and inferior rank that had justly incurred the odium of usurpation. He portrayed in glowing terms the innumerable attractions of the country, its productive valleys, its crystal streams, the medicinal value of its herbs and plants to which magical virtues were attributed by popular report, its mines, its fisheries, the precious spoil which awaited the hand of the invader, the transcendent beauty of its women. He described the effeminate character of the inhabitants, enervated by idleness, luxury, and sensual indulgence. Much of this information was already familiar to Musa, but hitherto the impassable barrier of the fortress defended by the stubborn courage of the governor of Ceuta had checked the aspirations of the Moslem commander; nor had it been possible to even confirm the accuracy of the wonderful tales which had been related concerning Ghezirah-al-Andalus, or the Vandal Peninsula, as Spain was known to the Arabs.

Thoroughly appreciating the importance of the proposal, the magnitude of the interests involved, and the uncertainty which would attend the issue of the expedition, and, at the same time, distrusting the good faith of the Goth, Musa determined to obtain the consent of the Khalif before returning a definite answer. Despatches, with complete information, were accordingly sent to Damascus. The reply of Al-Walid, who then occupied the throne of the khalifate, was favorable; but he strongly advised the exercise of caution, a recommendation entirely superfluous in the case of a man of Musa’s suspicious and crafty disposition. Sending for Count Julian, Musa informed him that he would be required to prove his fidelity by heading a reconnaissance into the enemy’s country. The count accepted the condition with alacrity; crossed the strait with a small detachment of soldiers belonging to his garrison; ravaged the coast in the neighborhood of Medina Sidonia; burned several churches; destroyed the growing harvests, and returned with considerable booty. Knowing his ally to be now compromised beyond all hope of pardon, and the trifling resistance encountered having apparently demonstrated the feasibility of the enterprise, Musa announced his willingness to negotiate. The conditions of the compact which disposed of one of the richest kingdoms of Europe have escaped the notice of history. There is reason to believe, however, that Count Julian was promised substantial pecuniary remuneration in addition to the gratification of revenge; and that their hereditary estates were to be restored to the family of Witiza, whose sons were present at the conference, and whose brother Oppas was not only privy to the conspiracy but was one of its principal promoters. The keys of Ceuta were surrendered, and Count Julian, having sworn allegiance to the Khalif, was invested with a command in the Moslem army.

The wary old veteran Musa was not yet satisfied, and determined to send a second expedition, under one of his own captains, to explore the Spanish coast. He selected for this purpose one of his trusty freed-men, Abu-Zarah-Tarif by name, who, embarking with one hundred cavalry and three hundred infantry, landed at Ghezirah-al-Khadra, now Algeziras, in July, 710. The incursion of Tarif differed little in its results from that of his predecessor, but confirmed the representations of the latter, and proved beyond doubt the defenceless condition of the Visigothic kingdom. Preparations for war were now made upon a larger scale, but one which still could not contemplate the overthrow of the monarchy in the incredibly short period required to accomplish it, and which, indeed, was designed only as a predatory expedition. The command of the troops was given to Tarik-Ibn-Zeyad, a Berber, whose red hair and light complexion disclosed his descent from the Vandals. The similar names of these two officers, both of whom were freed-men of Musa, have led to a confusion and mistaken identity, which has greatly embarrassed the narratives of both ancient chroniclers and modern historians. Tarik was a soldier of approved experience, extraordinary enterprise, and unflinching courage. His army was one of the most motley forces which had ever been assembled under the Moslem standard. The number was comparatively insignificant, amounting to only seven thousand, of whom but few were cavalry. The bulk of the troops was composed of Berbers—fierce savages of the Atlas Mountains, proselytes reclaimed from fetichism by the policy and eloquence of Musa—among them being representatives of the tribes of Ghomarah, Masmoudah, and Zenetah, names destined to a cruel celebrity in the subsequent history of Spain. Every nation whose types chance, misfortune, the love of plunder, or the spirit of adventure had impelled upon the African coast, was represented in the ranks of the invaders; descendants of the Vandals and the Goths; Bedouins from the Hedjaz; political exiles from the far Orient; conspirators from Syria; apostate Byzantines who had renounced allegiance to the Emperor of Constantinople; and a considerable body of Jews, whose relations with their Spanish brethren rendered them valuable auxiliaries, swelled the command of Tarik. In the latter were adherents of every form of religion,—the adorer of fire, the worshipper of the stars, the Pagan votary of the gods of Olympus, the orthodox and the heretic Christian. Each tribe was marshalled under its respective banner, and the varied nationality of the rank and file was equally displayed in the widely diverse origin of the subordinate officers—Count Julian the renegade Greek, Tarik the Berber, Mugayth-al-Rumi the Goth, and Kaula-al-Yahudi the Jew. Vessels for the passage of the strait were furnished by Count Julian, who impressed such merchantmen as lay at anchor in the ports under his jurisdiction, the only ones obtainable; the number of these, however, was so insufficient that the transportation of the army consumed several days. The Moslems finally disembarked at the foot of an immense promontory known to the ancient world as Calpe, but which, rechristened by the Arabs Gebal-al-Tarik, the Mountain of Tarik, has transmitted its new appellation, almost unchanged, to future ages as the famous Gibraltar. Scarcely had the invaders landed, when they were attacked by the Goths under Theodomir, that chieftain whose successful conduct of the naval expedition during the reign of Egiza had induced Roderick to invest him with the command of the forces at his disposal. The ill-equipped and undisciplined troops of the Gothic general at once disclosed their inability to withstand the onset of the fiery horsemen of the Desert, and Theodomir was compelled to retreat. He sent, without delay, the alarming news of the invasion to the King, revealing the universal dismay with which this strange enemy was regarded, in the following language: “Our land has been invaded by people whose name, country, and origin are unknown to me. I cannot even tell thee whence they came, whether they fell from the skies or sprang from the earth.” This ominous despatch reached Roderick before the walls of Pampeluna, which had recently revolted against his authority. Whatever were his faults, the Gothic monarch was certainly not deficient in courage and resolution. Raising the siege, he hastened to Cordova, and devoted all his energies to the assembling of an immense army for the defence of the kingdom. Every resource was employed,—promises of amnesty, threats, bounties, and conscription, until a hundred thousand men had been mustered under the royal standard. But this great host was formidable only in appearance. The levies of which it was composed were wholly wanting in discipline and unaccustomed to the perils of warfare. Their weapons were mainly implements whose use was familiar in the practice of the peaceful arts of husbandry. The rank and file, a tumultuous rabble of slaves and hirelings, marched on foot. Horses were few and expensive in the Peninsula; only the nobles were mounted; and to the deficiency of cavalry among the Goths the Arab historians have largely attributed the crushing reverses sustained by their arms. To the unwieldy and disorderly character of the Gothic army was added the secret and fatal influence of treason. Thousands had been enrolled to defend the imperilled crown of Roderick, whose chief desire was the transfer of that crown to a rival dynasty. Others, high in rank, had tendered their services with the hope that, amidst the general confusion, they might push their political fortunes and gratify an inordinate ambition. The imperative necessity of the occasion had compelled the enlistment of the leaders of the hostile faction who had been injured beyond reparation, and whom it was equally dangerous to trust or further to offend. At the head of these were the sons and brothers of Witiza, who, while they repulsed the conciliatory overtures of Roderick, eagerly accepted a command which might promote their schemes of vengeance. Scores of those belonging to the noble and ecclesiastical orders, and the Jews to a man, inflamed with revenge and hatred, were in daily communication with the head-quarters of the enemy. The jealousy of rival commanders tended still further to impair the efficiency of the Christians, whose feuds and discontent being well known to their adversaries had a tendency to inspire the latter with a well-grounded hope of victory.

In the mean time, Tarik had seized and occupied the ancient town of Carteja, and, fortifying himself securely, sent foraging expeditions far and wide throughout the surrounding country. These were, without exception, successful, and the rapid movements of the Arab cavalry, their seemingly invincible character, and the valuable booty they secured, not only struck terror into the astonished natives, but greatly encouraged the main body of the invading army, encamped under the shadow of Gibraltar. The emissaries and secret allies of Tarik, who swarmed in the court and camp of Roderick, lost no time in apprising him of the preparations being made for his destruction. Alarmed by the accounts he received, he despatched a messenger to Musa for reinforcements. A detachment of five thousand Berber cavalry was sent to his aid, which with the remainder of his troops amounted to twelve thousand veterans; a mere handful when compared with the army of the Goths, but composed of warriors inured to privation, accustomed to conquer, inflamed with religious zeal, and bearing a devoted and unswerving attachment to their commander.

On the morning of a beautiful July day, in the year 711, the beginning of an era most notable in the annals of Spain, the hostile armies faced each other near Lake La Janda, upon the rolling plains of Medina-Sidonia. The Moors, flushed with the uniform success which had hitherto attended their arms, relying upon the dissensions of the enemy as much as upon their own valor, and impatient for the conflict, appeared in glittering mail, wearing snowy turbans, and equipped with sword and lance; while over their shoulders was suspended the Arabian bow, whose shafts, like those of the Parthian, made the archer all the more formidable in retreat. The Moorish general, after performing the rites of his faith, addressed his soldiers in a few stirring and well-chosen words. With consummate skill, he availed himself of the strongest passions which control humanity,—avarice, military glory, the love of woman, the priceless rewards of religious constancy. He revealed to them a dream, in which the Prophet had announced that the issue of the conflict would be favorable to the adherents of Islam, and which portended the confusion of the infidel. He placed before them their desperate position, where defeat implied annihilation, and victory was the only hope. He exhorted them to banish all thought of fear, and to rely upon their courage tested upon many fields of battle. He pictured in burning language the attractions of the country and the matchless charms of the Gothic houris who inhabited it. He repeated the passages of the Koran which promised that all the martyrs who fell in battle would at once receive the reward of their devotion amidst the ineffable delights of Paradise.

Upon the other hand, the bribes, the appeals, and the threats of Roderick had brought together the entire available military power of the Gothic monarchy. The King, surrounded by his nobles and escorted by his guards, displayed all the pomp and splendor of the Orient. He was borne to the front by white mules, upon a litter of ivory richly inlaid with silver, and sheltered by a canopy of many-colored silk; a purple cloak covered his shoulders, upon his head was the royal diadem, and his robes of cloth of gold were enriched with priceless jewels. The devices of the nobles marked the order of the various divisions, and in the rear was led a train of many thousand beasts of burden whose only loads were ropes with which to bind the prisoners. The details of the battle which changed the destiny of Western Europe are unusually meagre, even for the unlettered and credulous age in which it occurred. It seems to have consisted of a series of indecisive skirmishes which lasted eight days, during which time the two armies traversed a distance of twenty miles, to the neighborhood of the modern city of Jerez de la Frontera. Here, with amazing ignorance, or with fatal disregard of the elementary rules of military tactics, the Goths took up their position with the river Guadalete in their rear. Upon the final charge of the Arabs, the treason of the former partisans of Witiza became apparent. A large body of nobles with their retainers openly deserted; a panic ensued; and the vast array took to headlong flight. Pressing forward with the shrill war-cry of the Moslem, which struck terror into the defeated Goths, the Moorish squadrons drove the enemy into the rapid waters of the Guadalete. The carnage was terrible. Exasperated by days of fighting, and haunted by the constant jeopardy of servitude and death, the soldiers of Tarik gave no quarter. The ground was heaped with corpses. The channel of the river was choked with the dead and dying, with horses, and chariots, and camp equipage, with treasures which the fugitives vainly tried to save. Of the invaders, three thousand are said to have fallen, but no computation was made of the loss of the Goths. The remnants of the army which escaped the swords of the Arabs were pursued to the very gates of the neighboring cities. Many were cut to pieces before they could reach a place of safety; and finally, satiated with blood, the conquerors found upon their hands a great number of prisoners whom the ropes which they themselves had provided now served to secure. The war-horse of Roderick covered with trappings of great value was taken, but no trace remained of the King. One of his sandals, encrusted with rubies and emeralds, was found on the bank of the river, which would seem to indicate that he perished by drowning; but his body was never recovered, and his fate is a mystery; notwithstanding that Spanish romance and monkish credulity have invested his disappearance with many extravagant legends, attested by a formidable array of ecclesiastical evidence. The booty which fell into the hands of the Moslems was incalculable. The number of horses taken was so large that the entire army was mounted, thereby adding greatly to its efficiency. The housings of these animals—whose possession among the Goths implied the enjoyment of rank and fortune—were of the costliest description; many of the finest chargers were shod with silver or gold. The Gothic nobles, rather accustomed to vie with each other in the service of their tables, the size of their retinues, and the magnificence of their equipages than in valor and military knowledge, and little dreaming of the result, had brought with them their most valuable possessions in plate and jewels. Their love of ostentation caused them to surround themselves with multitudes of slaves, whose daily broils kept the camp in a continuous uproar, and between whom and the enemy existed a secret understanding, whose effects were fearfully manifested in the hour of disaster. All of this wealth, together with the ornaments and insignia of the royal household, became the spoil of the conqueror. The fifth, which according to the law of Islam belonged to the Khalif, having been set aside, the remainder was divided on the field, amidst the tumultuous acclamations of the exultant soldiery.

The battle of the Guadalete is justly ranked with the great and decisive victories of the world. Indeed, if we consider the relative number of the combatants, the duration of the action, and the importance of its results, it has no parallel in the annals of warfare. While the intrigues of unscrupulous factions contributed largely to the success of the Arabs, the fact must not be lost sight of, that the numbers of the latter were scarcely appreciable when compared with the vast masses of their antagonists, and that they labored under the additional disadvantage of fighting in the enemy’s country. As to generalship, none could have been displayed on either side. The Moslems were little better than banditti, commanded by barbarians and renegades whose sole military experience had been acquired by predatory raids in the African Desert. The Goths, idle and effeminate in life, debilitated in body, cowardly, debased, and wholly unused to arms, were dominated by inordinate vanity and filled with contempt for their opponents. The tyranny, excesses, and arbitrary acts of Witiza having caused the exclusion of his posterity from the throne, the partisans of the latter were willing to sacrifice their country and their religion to insure the overthrow of the usurper and to satisfy their insatiable cravings for revenge.

Thus fell the enfeebled and tottering monarchy of the Goths. It had long survived its glory and its prestige. The severe political maxims of its founders, suited to the frigid regions of the Baltic, had been found incompatible with the physical and moral conditions imposed by the voluptuous climate of Bætica and Lusitania. Undermined by the vices of the nobility, by the turbulent ambition of the priesthood, by the treasonable machinations of the Jews, and by the supine indifference of the masses to any fate—provided only that it involved a change of masters— the first shock of a determined enemy swept it from the face of the earth. In its stead arose a new empire and a strange dynasty of exotic origin, foreign alike in dress, in laws, in customs, in constitution, in religion. Far from being uncongenial, the meteorological conditions of the semi-tropical Peninsula, which have insensibly determined the manners, the policy, and the fate of so many races, were eminently favorable to the highest intellectual development of its people. Through the wise and noble ambition of its rulers was established that universal culture which made Cordova the intellectual centre from whence diverged those rays of light which illumined the darkness of the mediæval world. From the genius of its statesmen, the skill of its generals, and the prowess of its armies arose that constant apprehension of impending disaster, a portentous shadow, which, hanging over Europe like the imperfectly defined outlines of a gigantic spectre, threatened for centuries the overthrow of the Seat of St. Peter, and the destruction of that system of faith which had risen upon the ruins of Pagan idolatry and superstition.

Great and wide-spread was the consternation which seized the Goths after the rout of the Guadalete. The entire resources of the kingdom had been staked and lost. The sovereign had mysteriously disappeared. In the carnage of the field, and in that which had accompanied the still more disastrous retreat, the nobility had suffered so greatly that few, if any, of its members who were eligible to the throne had survived or remained at liberty. The sacred profession of the priesthood, which had encouraged by its presence and exhortations the flagging spirits of the soldiery, had not been able to protect them from the edge of the Moorish scimetar. The hatred and fanaticism of the invaders were aroused to frenzy by the sight of the vestments and insignia of the Church, and even the most venerable prelates were massacred; for the ferocious Moslem gave no quarter to the ministers of Christianity, and disdained even the menial services of those who had denounced to eternal perdition the followers of the Prophet. The accumulated wealth of generations, which the vanity and ostentation of the palatines had exhibited at the court, on the march, and in the camp, had been swept into the coffers of the victor. The fugitives who were so fortunate as to escape took refuge in the neighboring cities; whither they were soon followed by the peasantry, who beheld with dismay the sight of their burning homes and desolated fields. In one engagement, and virtually in a single day, one of the most populous and opulent countries of Europe had succumbed to the impetuous but desultory attack of an unknown foe. For the space of two centuries, and under far less favorable circumstances, the Carthaginian and Iberian provinces of the Peninsula had successfully defied the resources and the prestige of the Roman arms. For three centuries longer, the Visigoths, relying upon the traditions and military fame of their ancestors, had protected, without difficulty, their possessions wrested from the feeble hands of the Cæsars, and had repeatedly rolled back the tide of Frankish invasion from the slopes of the Pyrenees.

With the advent of overwhelming national misfortune, there fell upon the terror-stricken people the apathy of despair. The public wretchedness was augmented by the censures of the clergy, who, with characteristic effrontery, declared the invasion to be a divine punishment for the crimes of the wicked; crimes in which they themselves had not only participated, but by their shameless conduct had obtained an infamous pre-eminence in an age of unprecedented corruption.

The Moslems under the lead of the enterprising Tarik, who displayed the talents of a skilful general in his ability to profit by every advantage, lost no time in securing the fruits of victory. From the army—now a compact and active body of cavalry—were sent in all directions detachments to cut off straggling parties of the enemy, and to capture supplies destined for the overcrowded cities already threatened with the horrors of starvation.

Tidings of the wonderful success upon the plains of Jerez soon spread far and wide through the towns and provinces of Africa. Animated by the hope of plunder and glory, the Moslems, many of them abandoning their homes and making use of every available craft to cross the strait, flocked by thousands to the standard of Tarik. The latter, after thoroughly reorganizing his new recruits, and appointing to the command officers of tried fidelity and experience, took Sidonia. The strongly fortified city of Carmona next claimed his attention. As its reduction by the slow process of a siege was out of the question with the resources at his command, resort was had to stratagem. A squadron of the retainers of Count Julian, headed by that worthy in person, and apparently pursued by a body of the enemy, appeared before the walls. Shelter was at once given the fugitives, who in the dead of night killed the sentinels and opened the gates to the enemy. Thence Tarik advanced upon Ecija, where the greater portion of the survivors of the battle of the Guadalete had taken refuge. The Goths, disdaining the protection of their defences, and nerved to despair by their situation, which involved the alternative of slavery or famine, boldly encountered the Moslems in the field. The action was hotly contested, and although the loss sustained by the invaders was greater, in proportion to the number of combatants engaged, than any suffered during the Conquest, the Goths were in the end defeated, and the city taken. Ecija swarmed with members of the monastic orders, and the nuns, who largely predominated, were famous for their beauty. The prospect of the infidel harem filled these pious virgins with horror; and they adopted the heroic expedient of mutilating their features, hoping by the sacrifice of their charms to preserve both their honor and their lives. The compassion of the Moslem freebooter, infuriated by this attempt to deprive him of his prey, was not moved by the evidences of saintly devotion; the sight of a conventual habit became the signal for outrage; death followed fast upon violence; and many hundreds of the self-mutilated spouses of Christ received the crown of martyrdom.

In the mean time, Musa had forwarded despatches to Damascus announcing the victory, but, actuated by the petty jealousy which formed such a prominent feature of his character, he carefully concealed from the Khalif the name of the successful commander. Having formed the determination to cross over to Spain and conduct the campaign in person, he sent peremptory orders to Tarik not to advance farther until he arrived. But the hero of the Guadalete, fully alive to the importance of affording the enemy no opportunity for rest and reorganization, and advised by Count Julian to march at once on Toledo, was of the opinion that the interests of his sovereign, as well as his own fortunes, would be promoted by disobedience of the commands of his superior. He therefore paraded his troops, and after enjoining them to make war only upon those actually in arms, to leave all non-combatants unmolested, and scrupulously to respect the religious prejudices of the people, set out for Cordova at the head of a numerous army. The latter city was strong and well defended, and Tarik, after nine days, seeing that the siege would probably be of long duration, left its conduct to his lieutenant, Mugayth-al-Rumi, and moved without delay upon Toledo. The governor of Cordova, who was of the royal blood of the Goths, and a brave and determined officer, inspirited by the departure of the main body of the enemy, made no question of his ability to defend the city against a force not greatly exceeding his own in numbers. But the good fortune which seemed to attend the Moslems upon every occasion did not desert them in the present emergency. Information was soon brought to Mugayth-al-Rumi of a weak point in the fortifications which might be scaled. Aided by a dark night and the noise made by a storm of hail, a detachment crossed the river under the guidance of a shepherd, and reached the place which had been indicated. A fig-tree which stood near the wall was mounted by an active soldier, who, unrolling his turban, drew up several of his comrades, who occupied the battlements without resistance; for the severity of the tempest had driven the sentries from their posts. Proceeding quietly and rapidly through the streets, the guard at the gates was surprised and cut to pieces, the army was admitted, and by daybreak the city was in the hands of the Moslems. The governor, with four hundred of the garrison, fled to the church of St. George, which stood outside the western wall, and being surrounded by a moat and supplied with water by a subterranean conduit from a spring in the neighboring mountains, offered all the obstacles of a fortress whose towers and barbicans could bid defiance to an enemy destitute of military engines and ignorant of the mode of conducting a siege. For a considerable time the Goths repulsed the attacks of the band of Mugayth-al-Rumi, until at last, after diligent search, the source of the water-supply having been discovered and the aqueduct cut, the besieged, reduced to extremity, were compelled to surrender. The majority of the garrison were permitted to join their countrymen in the North, but the officers and the governor—who was a personage of too great importance to be set at liberty—were retained in the camp of the victor.

Before leaving Ecija, Tarik had sent one of his officers, Zeyd-Ibn-Kesade, at the head of a considerable force, to overrun the southern portion of Andalusia. In this region, as elsewhere, the mysterious terror which attended the exploits of the invaders had preceded them. Baja, Antequera, Elvira, and the adjoining districts yielded almost without resistance, but Granada, relying upon its fortifications, refused to accept the proffered terms and was carried by storm. The small number of the Moslems rendered it impossible for them to leave garrisons in the captured towns, and the most important of the latter were placed in charge of Arab governors, with whom the Jews, who seemed to have thriven under persecution, engaged themselves to co-operate. So numerous was the Hebrew element in Granada that it was practically a Jewish community, and, with its aid, a single company was sufficient to hold in subjection a city of nearly a hundred thousand souls. Having accomplished the object of his expedition with trifling loss, loaded with rich booty, and accompanied by innumerable slaves of both sexes, Zeyd, sacking Jaen on his way, hastened to join Tarik at Toledo.

Eight months had elapsed since the battle of the Guadalete before the Moslem army appeared before the gates of the Visigothic capital. Perched upon a lofty eminence, and almost surrounded by the Tagus, whose current ran swiftly through a deep channel worn in the living rock, art had combined with nature to render its position impregnable. Walls built of stones of almost cyclopean dimensions environed it, and rose to a great height even on the side towards the river, where the precipitous cliffs themselves discouraged all attempts at escalade. The approach from the north had been protected by barbicans and outworks of double strength. These defences had been designed and perfected by Wamba, the last of the Gothic kings whose martial genius had, for a brief period, revived the glorious traditions and long forgotten exploits of the ancient dynasty. The imperial capital, a citadel in itself, where all the resources of a vast monarchy had been lavished and all the knowledge of military engineering of the age had been employed to insure the safety of the court, now trembled in the presence of a few thousand roving barbarians. The dread which was associated with the unknown enemy was augmented by the rapidity of his movements, which to the superstitious fears of the Visigoths made him appear ubiquitous. A sufficient military force had been available to defend this fortress, but the sentiments of patriotism, loyalty, and courage, so essential to the preservation of obedience and discipline, had disappeared. Instead of preparing for resistance, each individual thought only of his own preservation, when news arrived that the foe was approaching. The majority of the citizens, leaving their possessions, fled to Galicia and the Asturias. The lawless soldiers of the garrison pillaged the deserted houses, and stripped without hindrance the defenceless fugitives. The clergy, considering the evil as only temporary, walled up the treasures of chapel and convent in crypts, where to-day the greater portion of them still remain undiscovered. The primate, laden with the most precious effects of the churches, and leaving his ecclesiastical inferiors to contend for the prize of martyrdom offered by the infidel, accompanied his terrified parishioners in their flight, nor did he arrest his steps until safe within the walls of Rome. A disorderly rabble of priests and monks, actuated either by faith or indolence, remaining at their posts, endeavored to avert the impending calamity by fasting, prayer, and pilgrimage to the innumerable shrines situated both within and without the city. Unfortunately, however, no divine response was vouchsafed to these last frantic efforts of a despairing hierarchy. The waving pennons and sparkling lances of the Arab cavalry appeared in the distance, and their light and active squadrons swept around the walls. The fields were laid waste. The convents and the villas which embellished the suburbs were razed to the ground or burnt. Every unlucky straggler was compelled, at the point of the sword, to renounce the religion of his fathers or submit to the fate of a slave. In a town deserted by its garrison, half depopulated, without provisions, deprived of every prospect of relief, and principally occupied by non-combatants and Jews who were in sympathy with the enemy, no idea of resistance could be entertained. The usual conditions offered by the Moslems were eagerly accepted. All had permission to retire who desired to do so, with the understanding that such abandonment of their homes involved a forfeiture of every description of property. Those who preferred to remain were assured of protection, under payment of a reasonable tribute. Both Jews and Christians were indulged in the practice of their religious rites; but half of the churches were confiscated for the use of Islam, and no new houses of worship could be constructed without permission of the government. The tributaries were left subject to their own laws, enforced by their own tribunals, as long as these did not conflict with the policy of the dominant power. No impediments to proselytism were tolerated, and severe punishment was denounced against such as should offer intimidation or insult to Christian renegades. Such were the terms imposed upon the inhabitants of the Peninsula by the generous policy of the conqueror; a pleasing contrast to the brutality of the barbarians, the duplicity of Carthage, and the avarice and selfishness of Rome.

Notwithstanding the most valuable treasures of the imperial capital had been carried away by the fleeing population, the plunder secured by the Moslems was immense, and even their rapacity, ordinarily insatiable, was for once appeased. The variety and number of the precious objects which met their bewildered gaze was so great, that the rude warriors of the Atlas not infrequently turned aside from the splendid vestments and jewel-studded furniture destined for the service of the Church, to more portable and gorgeous baubles which caught their momentary fancy. It is related by the most accurate of the Christian and Moorish chroniclers, that two Berbers, having found an altar-cloth of gold brocade enriched with rows of hyacinths and emeralds which was too heavy for them to carry, cut out that portion containing the jewels and rejected the balance as worthless. Another, who had secured a golden vase filled with pearls, kept the precious receptacle, but, ignorant of their value, cast away its contents. In the cathedral were found many votive crowns of gold, each inscribed with the name of a Gothic king. The confusion incident to a hasty flight had left in the religious houses of every description a vast amount of wealth, which fell into the hands of the conqueror. An apartment was discovered in the palace occupied by Tarik which was literally filled with the treasures and royal insignia of the various dynasties which had for ages swayed the fortunes of the Visigothic monarchy. Chains and diadems, urns and uncut jewels, sceptres, richly decorated weapons, costly armor, robes of cloth of gold, have been enumerated among the spoil by the historians of the time; by the Christian, with regret and shame, by the Mohammedan, with all the exultation of victory.

After the surrender of the capital, Tarik, leaving the city in charge of his faithful adherents, the Jews, at once advanced northward in pursuit of the retreating Goths. The latter, in every instance when it was possible, upon the appearance of the cloud of turbaned horsemen, abandoned their burdens and took refuge in the mountain fastnesses. Overtaking a body of fugitives a short distance beyond Toledo, Tarik captured a magnificent table, or lectern—used to support the Gospels—which had belonged to the cathedral; whose origin the romantic credulity of that age attributed to Solomon, and supposed to be a portion of the booty brought by Titus from the sack of Jerusalem; but which more reliable accounts have demonstrated to have been the handiwork of Visigothic artisans. The body and framework of this precious jewel were of the purest gold. Into it were inserted alternate rows of hyacinths, rubies, pearls, and emeralds, and, as it was the custom of each monarch to contribute something to its embellishment, royal emulation had exhausted itself to surpass the efforts of preceding reigns in the decoration of an object whose sanctity made it more priceless in the eyes of the superstitious than even the inestimable value of its materials and ornamentation. It stood upon four feet, the latter being so encrusted with emeralds as to convey the impression that each was formed of a single stone. This table, whose estimated value was five hundred thousand crowns, and which has been described with such exaggeration as to have even aroused the doubts of historical critics concerning its existence, was set aside with the portion of the spoil destined for the Khalif.

The capture of Toledo was the last important exploit of the Berber general, whose success could not atone for the gross insubordination of which he was guilty. A few other cities had been taken, a large area of territory had been ravaged, when the news of the approach of Musa, and the anticipation of his commander’s wrath, suddenly checked the career of Tarik in the full flush of conquest and glory.

The fame and popularity of the latter as well as the report of the vast riches amassed by him had excited, to the full measure of their malignity, the envy and the hatred of Musa. The adventurers who had hastened to Iberia to serve under the standard of Tarik had depleted the garrisons of Africa, and it was fourteen months after the main expedition had sailed before Musa was able to muster a sufficient force to take the field in person. Crossing the strait with a numerous body of troops—which included representatives of the most distinguished families of Arabia, many of whom had enjoyed the rare distinction of being friends of the Companions of the Prophet, as well as the flower of the African soldiery—he disembarked at Ghezirah-al-Khadra. His jealousy of the success of Tarik, and the certainty that the Berbers had left no city or hamlet unplundered in their march, led Musa to desire to proceed to Toledo by a different route. Informed of his wish, his guides promised to gratify him, and place within his power cities of far greater extent and magnificence than those which had submitted to his rebellious lieutenant. They conducted him first to Carmona, which, like most of the other towns of Andalusia, had cast off the Moslem yoke as soon as the departure of the army of Tarik had inspired its inhabitants with confidence; and this well-fortified place, despite its strength, seems to have at once yielded to the summons of the invader. Seville, then as now one of the largest, wealthiest, and most beautiful cities of Spain, was next besieged. One month sufficed to reduce it, but not without many bloody engagements, in which the Moslems sustained considerable loss. A garrison was left in the citadel, and Musa marched upon Merida, famous from the days of the Romans for its massive fortifications, its imposing public works, and the architectural grandeur and richness of its temples. Founded by the veterans of Augustus, and honored with his name, Merida still retained, in the eighth century, a few of the stupendous memorials of her pristine splendor, which nearly three hundred years before had so impressed the astonished barbarians of Germany, and now exerted their awe-inspiring influence upon the simple and superstitious tribesmen of Africa and Arabia. The partiality of the Roman emperors had lavished upon this provincial capital treasures that had enabled its citizens to raise structures rivalling those of Rome itself. Bridges, of such extraordinary length and huge proportions as to almost defy the efforts of modern science to demolish them, crossed the sandy bed of the sluggish Guadiana. Aqueducts, suspended upon tiers of graceful arches, traversed, high in air, the populous and highly cultivated plain. Monuments of the reigns of Hadrian and Trajan spanned the streets and towered in the forum. In the suburbs stood the theatre, the circus, and the naumachia; buildings worthy of the taste and grandeur of any city of the empire. The population was one of the most prosperous and opulent in the kingdom. The archiepiscopal see of Merida vied in dignity and influence with the primacy of Toledo. It had not been many years since the vassals and slaves of the metropolitan, to the number of nearly a thousand, glittering with jewels and cloth of gold, had dazzled the eyes of the populace, and excited the envy of the nobles, while participating in the ceremonial pageantry of the Church—exhibitions so well adapted to impress the beholder with the greatness, the pomp, and the resources of ecclesiastical power. Well might the enthusiasm of the predatory Arab be excited by the architectural magnificence and historic souvenirs of the far-famed capital of Lusitania! While the gigantic proportions of its edifices called forth his admiration, and led him to attribute their erection to giants and demons, his avarice was, at the same time, stimulated by the thought of the booty to be obtained by the pillage of a place of such extent and importance. But the inhabitants, worthy of the renown of their ancestors, and undismayed by the sudden appearance of an unknown foe, did not hesitate to engage him on equal terms. A series of combats followed, in which the valor of the besieged acquired for them a temporary advantage. In the face of such determined resistance, and wholly unacquainted with the methods of carrying on a siege, the Moslems began to falter. But their veteran commander, confident in his skill, now brought to bear the experience which he had acquired in many hard-fought campaigns in Syria and Africa. The city was completely blockaded. Every foraging party which issued from the gates was intercepted and captured or cut to pieces. The stratagems of Berber warfare were adopted to the confusion of an intrepid but unwary enemy. Detachments which sallied forth to attack the besieging lines were lured into ambush and annihilated. Military engines familiar to that age were constructed, but the activity and courage of the Visigoths were such that, although breaches were made, no forlorn hope could effect a lodgment within the fortifications; and one which succeeded in penetrating them—a circumstance which gave to the place where it occurred the suggestive name of the Tower of the Martyrs— was destroyed to a man. Each day, with the rising of the sun, the battle was renewed, and Musa saw with rage and apprehension his well-tried veterans and the bravest of his officers perish before his eyes. The fortifications appeared impregnable; and had it not been for the opportune arrival of Abd-al-Aziz, the son of the Arab general, with a reinforcement of seven thousand cavalry and five thousand crossbow-men, the Moslems would have been compelled to abandon the undertaking. Disheartened by this change in their fortunes, and beginning to suffer from a scarcity of provisions, the inhabitants of Merida now made overtures for a surrender. Although in the position of suppliants, the envoys provoked the resentment of Musa by their demeanor, and several conferences were necessary before the citizens would condescend to accept the usual terms of capitulation. When all had been arranged and hostages delivered, the Moslem army took possession of the city. Great wealth fell into the hands of the grasping Musa, who appropriated as his slave Egilona, the captive widow of Roderick, a princess whose subsequent marriage to his son Abd-al-Aziz was the source of many calamities to his family and nation.

The heroic defence of Merida had inspired with the hope of freedom the cities of the South, upon whom the Moslem yoke but recently imposed sat lightly, and Seville, Malaga, Granada, and Jaen rose simultaneously in revolt. The attention of Musa was first directed to Seville, the latest and most valuable of his recent acquisitions. The rebels of that city had massacred thirty men of the garrison and put the rest to flight, while the Jews, true to the instincts of a people long degraded by servitude, not only refused to assist their allies, but hastened with cringing servility to make peace once more with their old oppressors. For this defection, a terrible retribution was exacted. Abd-al-Aziz carried the place by storm, and put to death without mercy every Christian and Hebrew male who was found within its walls. The Moslems, taught by experience the imperative necessity of colonization, and being now in sufficient numbers to justify a division of their forces, placed a strong garrison in Seville; while the confiscated lands were partitioned among the natives of Arabia the Happy present with the invading army, who hastened to take possession of the luxurious estates of the Gothic merchants and nobility. This was the first instance of the settlement of conquered territory by the natives of a particular country, afterwards so common under Mohammedan rule; a stroke of policy whose effects are to this day apparent in the traditions, the dialects, the customs, and the popular superstitions of the different provinces of Spain. Abd-al-Aziz easily reduced to obedience the remaining rebellious cities of Andalusia, which, colonized in like manner, remained ever faithful to their allegiance. A portion of Murcia was also occupied; and unusually advantageous terms were, at the surrender of Orihuela, accorded to the Christians through the address of the Gothic general Theodomir, whom, after the death of Roderick, a faction of the Goths had invested with the supreme command.

The authorities are so contradictory that it is impossible to ascertain how far into the enemy’s country Tarik penetrated after the capture of Toledo. It is probable, however, that his operations were mere inroads, destitute of historical importance. The spirit of the nation was broken; its armies were scattered; its leaders killed or enslaved; its capital in the hands of the enemy. The subjugation of the Peninsula was virtually ended, and the successful general could well afford to rest upon his laurels and devise means to avert the just indignation of his superior, provoked by flagrant disobedience to his orders, an offence which under the strict regulations of military law was punishable with death.

The two captains met at Talavera, whither Tarik in his anxiety had advanced, attended by his officers and loaded with costly presents, the choicest spoil of the Visigothic capital. The envious spirit of Musa, however, was not to be appeased by gifts whose splendor only served to suggest the greater value of the plunder which he had lost. He assailed his insubordinate lieutenant with bitter reproaches, and, forgetting the magnitude of his recent services, even went so far as to remind him of his former servile condition by striking him in the presence of the entire army. Then placing him under arrest, he hurried to Toledo, and ordered him instantly to collect and deliver all the booty which had fallen into his hands at the surrender of the city. Of the latter, the so-called table of Solomon, whose fame had long before reached Musa, was by far the most valuable. Tarik, thoroughly cognizant of the baseness and injustice of his commander, and suspecting that he would appropriate as his own the credit of this important prize, with an astuteness worthy of his Berber origin, had secretly removed one of its emerald-studded feet. In this condition it was delivered to Musa, who, being assured that it was thus mutilated when found, had the missing foot replaced with one of gold; no jewels of corresponding size being obtainable, although the collections of individuals and the coffers of the Gothic treasury were diligently ransacked for that purpose. Musa, having secured the coveted booty, now deprived Tarik of his command, and threw him into a dungeon. The keen foresight of the Berber chieftain, who knew that such a step was only the prelude to assassination, did not abandon him in this trying emergency. Having, through the mediation of his friends, succeeded in bribing a messenger whom Musa despatched to Damascus, a special envoy was sent by the Khalif ordering the immediate release of the illustrious captain and his restoration to authority. With unconcealed reluctance Musa complied with the orders of his sovereign, and Tarik, relieved of his chains, resumed his duties amidst the acclamations of the troops. A temporary and apparent reconciliation was effected between the antagonistic leaders, who in public treated each other with courtesy, but in whose hearts smouldered the inextinguishable fires of mutual hatred, kindled by unpardonable wrong and baffled enmity. With united forces, eager for glory, they invaded Aragon. Each horseman was provided with a small copper pot, a leathern bag for provisions, and a bottle for water; the infantry carried nothing but their arms. The camp equipage was loaded on trains of pack-mules. Military and political considerations required and enforced the observance of the strictest discipline. Non-combatants were unmolested. Pillage was forbidden under pain of death, save in actual battle and during the storming of cities. The religious prejudices of the people were respected, and no property was destroyed except when resistance or violence was offered the troops. The province was overrun, and its capital, Saragossa, taken and settled by adventurers from Africa. Upon the inhabitants of this city Musa imposed a fine new in the annals of Islam, denominated the Contribution of Blood, which was exacted before the army entered the gates and exempted the conquered from annoyance. The Valley of the Ebro pleased the colonists, who intermarried with the people, and the governor, Hanash-Ibn-Ali, signalized his administration by the erection of a splendid mosque, vestiges of which still remain. Catalonia and Valencia next submitted to the common fate, and then the two generals, reversing their course, marched to the wild region of the West where, among the mist-enshrouded sierras of Galicia and the Asturias, the remnant of the Visigothic nation, led by its honored prelates and indomitable chieftains, had borne its venerated relics and its household gods; to lay under such unpromising auspices the foundations of a far grander and more powerful empire, destined in after years to command the admiration and the terror of the world.

The reports of Musa to the Khalif show that the Arabs fully appreciated the value and importance of their conquest. “In the clearness of the sky and the beauty of its landscape it resembles Syria; in softness of climate even Yemen is not its superior; in profusion of flowers and delicacy of perfumes it suggests the luxury of India; it rivals Egypt in the fertility of its soil, and China in the variety and excellence of its minerals,” wrote the experienced veteran to whom the wealth and resources of both Asia and Africa were familiar. The multitude of captives acquired by the Moslems struck the old general with surprise. “It is like the assembly of nations on the Day of Judgment,” he exclaimed; although he doubtless remembered that Mauritania had yielded its prisoners by the hundred thousand, and human chattels were so cheap that it was not an unusual occurrence for an able-bodied man to be sold in the bazaar of Kairoan for a handful of pepper. A female merchant, who dealt in trinkets and perfumes, left Toledo after its surrender with five hundred slaves in her train. Thirty thousand Christian maidens, selected for their beauty, were destined for the markets of the East. The Jews especially reaped a rich harvest from the misfortunes of their former oppressors. Profiting by the ignorance of the soldiers, they purchased for trifling sums the sacred utensils of the altar, the jewels which had graced the beauties of the court, and all the rich and costly appliances of Gothic luxury. From the Saracen conquest, with the enormous wealth it afforded them, dates the prominence subsequently attained by the Hebrews in the political and financial affairs of Europe.

The strange fatality which preserved for future greatness and renown the broken fragments of the Visigothic monarchy, even now at the very outset, when it seemed inevitable that the entire Peninsula should become Mohammedan, asserted its mysterious power. Tarik had reached Astorga and Musa was still at Lugo, when a message was delivered from the Khalif Al-Walid ordering both generals to return to Damascus. This step had been resolved upon, not so much on account of the mutual hostility of the two leaders which, manifested even in their despatches, seriously impaired the prestige of the Moslem arms and menaced the stability of the Moslem conquests, as from fear lest the ambition of Musa might lead him to usurp the sovereignty of the newly acquired possessions. Prudential considerations also prevented the appointment of Tarik as governor of the Peninsula. His popularity was even greater than that of Musa, and the remote situation of the conquered territory was but too favorable for the establishment of an independent monarchy, whose subjection in case of rebellion would be difficult, if not impossible. The aspiring genius of the veteran commander had formed a vast scheme of conquest, a project so grand as at first sight to appear extravagant, yet which, after careful examination, might be considered far from impracticable. It was his wish to emulate the example and surpass the achievement of Hannibal by traversing Europe, and to meet before the walls of Constantinople an army which could co-operate with him in the siege and capture of the Byzantine capital. Had this gigantic design been realized, the domain of the Khalifate of Damascus would have far exceeded the limits of the Roman Empire. He had seen with what ease the Visigothic kingdom, possessed of incalculable wealth, and animated by the military traditions of three centuries, had been subverted in a day. The unprecedented success of their recent military operations had induced the fanatical and credulous soldiery to regard themselves as the special favorites of Allah. It was moreover a matter of common notoriety that the able chieftain who had crushed, and then converted, the hitherto independent tribes of the Libyan Desert and the Atlas Mountains, and swept resistlessly over the plains of the Peninsula, had, in campaigns which extended over an entire generation, never failed in an enterprise or lost a battle. The very mention of a crusade against the infidel roused the wildest passions in the Moslem’s heart. Unlimited treasure was available for any undertaking, however extensive; a consideration of but little moment, however, with a force accustomed to be paid in booty, and whose subsistence was wrested from the enemy. The barbarian monarchy of France, perpetually vexed by internal dissensions, was not likely to offer more serious impediments to invasion than those which had vanished before the tempest of the Guadalete. Was it then chimerical for Musa to hope that, with the combined aid of his own genius and the invincible prowess of his veterans, he might add to the domains of the successor of Mohammed the fairest regions of Europe, in the very seat of the Papacy proclaim from the towers of the Eternal City the doctrines of Islam, and, passing eastward, exchange greetings upon the shores of the Bosphorus with his friends and brethren of Syria? This plan of conquest, doubtless suggested by the invasion of the Carthaginian general, but which promised far more important results, owing to the thoroughly disorganized condition of the provinces once constituting the Roman Empire, an enterprise worthy of the ambition and daring of any military leader, was unhesitatingly condemned by the suspicious Khalif, who saw in its successful execution the portentous menace of a rival monarchy. With inexpressible grief and vexation, yet, to some degree, sustained by the hope that a personal interview might accomplish what written explanation had failed to do, Musa prepared to obey the mandate of his sovereign. In furtherance of this resolution, and to gratify a not unreasonable vanity, he determined to parade before the court and populace of Damascus the trophies of Africa and Spain with a pomp proportionate to the splendor of those conquests.

A general rendezvous was appointed at Seville, now designated as the capital of the kingdom, by reason of its proximity to the sea, and its ease of access to the Moslem settlements of Africa. There were assembled the spoil of palaces, the sacrilegious plunder of churches, the booty of many a battle-field, the throngs of noble captives, the insignia of fallen royalty. Ponderous vehicles were constructed for the conveyance of this treasure, whose value for once exceeded the wildest estimates of Oriental exaggeration. When all was ready, Musa, having appointed his son Abd-al-Aziz viceroy during his absence, crossed over to Ceuta. In obedience to orders issued previously to his arrival, every town of Al-Maghreb in the line of march contributed its contingent to increase the magnificence of the triumph. The fierce chieftains of Mauritania trooped after the victor in the character of warriors, proselytes, or slaves. Heaped in picturesque confusion upon endless strings of camels were the primitive spoils of the Desert—rude weapons, defensive armor, wearing apparel, and coarse trappings upon which had been lavished all the resources of barbaric decoration. Hundreds of the wild and beautiful Kabyle maidens, selected for their superior charms and fettered with chains of gold, toiled wearily along the dusty roads which ultimately led to the distant harems of Syria. Four hundred Gothic nobles, in whose veins coursed the royal blood, clothed in gorgeous robes secured by golden girdles, and crowned with diadems, represented the departed fortunes of the dynasties of Iberia. Thirty wagons hardly sufficed to convey the enormous quantities of gold, silver, and precious stones—objects of public ostentation, private luxury, and personal adornment—the gem-encrusted receptacles of the Host, the costly vessels of the mass, besides other and innumerable mementos of the most finished efforts of Visigothic opulence and Byzantine art. Among the guards of Musa, splendidly equipped, rode descendants of the proudest families of the Koreish, and the most distinguished officers of the Moslem army. In the rear of this brilliant cavalcade followed, to the number of more than a hundred thousand, the less important captives taken in the campaigns of Africa and Spain.

Arrived at Kairoan, Musa divided the government of Africa among his three sons Abdallah, Abd-al-Melik, and Abd-al-Ala, in the hope of perpetuating in his family the authority which he realized that he now held by an uncertain tenure, and then resumed his journey.

Tidings of his approach having preceded him, the wanderers of the Desert and the inhabitants of the cities of the coast alike poured forth in countless multitudes to do him honor. It was a strange and impressive spectacle, one which had not been seen since the laurel-crowned victor, preceded by his trophies and his captives, had traversed the streets of Rome amid the acclamations of the populace, to deposit his offerings upon the shrine of the Capitoline Jupiter. With the progress of the triumphal procession the number of curious spectators increased, reaching its culmination at Cairo, where the way was blocked by the teeming myriads from the banks of the Nile. During the course of the journey, Musa, elated beyond measure by the adulation heaped upon him, was prompted to the commission of an act of tyranny which seriously prejudiced his fortunes. Desirous of neglecting no opportunity of magnifying his importance, and utterly unscrupulous in appropriating the credit due to others, he demanded of Mugayth-al-Rumi the captive governor of Cordova, whom the latter held as his slave, and designed as a present to the Khalif. Upon the refusal of that officer to comply with his demand, Musa ordered the immediate execution of the Gothic prince, and by this deed of violence and injustice increased the enmity of Mugayth-al-Rumi, whose sympathies had already been enlisted on the side of Tarik, his friend and former comrade in arms.

Hardly had Musa passed the borders of Syria, when there was placed in his hands a secret message from Suleyman, heir presumptive of the Khalifate, announcing the fatal illness of his brother Al-Walid, and desiring him not to advance further until he received authentic information of the death of his sovereign. Suleyman was induced to make this request, not only on account of the prestige which his accession to the throne would derive by the public exhibition of the vast plunder of the nations of the West, but also because the personal gifts presented to the family of the Khalif, presumably of immense value, would be lost to his successor. Musa, however, whose native tact and shrewdness seem to have been diminished by age and disappointment, paid no attention to the representations of Suleyman; and without an hour’s delay marched on to Damascus. He entered the city on Friday, and proceeding to the great mosque, where Al-Walid was at prayer, entered at the head of the captive nobles and chieftains, all of whom were clothed in the costumes of their respective countries and adorned with the insignia of their rank. After the service the Khalif embraced Musa, clothed him with his own robe, and presented him with fifty thousand dinars, in addition to pensioning his sons and the most worthy of his subordinates. The inferior captives and the royal fifth were then placed in the custody of the officers of the Treasury. The wonderful table was, as Tarik had conjectured it would be, claimed by Musa, who, on being interrogated concerning the golden foot, declared it was in that condition when he found it. Thereupon, Tarik, who was present, advanced, claimed the honor of the capture, and after relating the stratagem he had practised, produced the missing portion in corroboration of his testimony, to the speechless rage and confusion of his rival. Al-Walid, who estimated this work of art solely by the value of its materials, caused the jewels to be removed, and then sent the frame of the table as an offering to the temple of Mecca.

Forty days after Musa’s arrival at Damascus Al-Walid died, and Suleyman ascended the throne. The latter, notorious for the ferocity of his disposition and the vulgarity and gluttony of his tastes, lost no time in imposing upon Musa the full weight of his displeasure. The first judicial act of his administration was the arraignment of the veteran general, now more than eighty years of age. The evidence of corruption, extortion, and tyranny, to which Musa could make but a feeble defence, having been presented, he was found guilty, sentenced to be stripped of his property, and required to pay a fine of two hundred thousand pieces of gold. In addition to this severe penalty, he was also forced to remain chained to a post under a blazing sun, as a punishment for having publicly reproached the Khalif for his ingratitude. Through the intercession of friends he was released after many hours of torture, and permitted to retire from the court, accompanied by a single faithful slave. His remaining years were passed in poverty; dependent upon alms, he begged his bread from the Bedouin tribes, putting aside every dirhem he could obtain to be applied to the payment of his fine, until he died in abject wretchedness at Wada-al-Kora, a remote settlement of Arabia. Such was the miserable end of one of the greatest military leaders Islam ever produced. His courage was dauntless, his sagacity almost amounted to inspiration, his resources were inexhaustible. His zeal, which bordered upon fanaticism, assured him of the favor of Allah, and infused into his troops the most unbounded confidence in his genius. The bursts of his oratory rivalled in eloquence and enthusiasm the rhetorical efforts of the greatest preachers of the age. He observed the ceremonial of his faith with scrupulous diligence. His prudence and the accuracy of his perceptions were proverbial. In all his experience, where he held command in person, no enemy ever prevailed over him. His suspicious nature and intuitive knowledge of mankind made him more than a match for statesmen whose lives had been passed in the atmosphere of courts. Increasing his wealth by the most questionable methods, he excluded his companions from all participation in his prosperity, and under his incessant peculation the royal revenues were sensibly diminished, an offence which more than all others insured his ruin. Thus, in spite of his extraordinary talents, his avarice—whose gratification no bond of friendship, no obligation of loyalty, no precept of religion, and no fear of punishment could restrain—proved his destruction, and the famous commander who had acquired kingdoms, and accumulated wealth which excited the envy of princes, died poor and despised; an outcast in the centre of a barren and lonely region far from the scenes of his glory, and an object of curiosity and compassion to the barbarian shepherds and brigands of the Desert. History is silent as to the fate of Tarik after the settlement of his controversy with Musa. Had he been prominent thereafter in either good or evil fortune, it is certain that the Arabian chroniclers would have mentioned the fact. It is probable that he was permitted to pass the remainder of his life in obscurity and comfort, if not in luxury; and it is beyond question that he was not intrusted with any important employment; for the jealous court of Damascus feared the ambition and the ability of the distinguished general who had achieved the most splendid conquest of his time. And thus disappeared from the stage of the world the second of those noted characters to whom was due the acquisition of the beautiful land of Iberia by the crown of the Khalifate. Of Count Julian, the third and last of them, whom the undiscerning prejudice of monkish writers and the animosity of churchman and Spaniard, intensified by baffled ambition and injured pride, have for thirty-six generations branded with the name of traitor, we have accounts but little less unsatisfactory. His nationality, his antecedents, his relations to the Goths, the origin of his appointment as governor of Ceuta, the scope of his authority, his obligations to the court of Toledo, are, for the most part, matters of conjecture. Even the story of the outrage to his family, the immediate cause of his defection, though supported by the testimony of almost every Arab chronicler, has been disputed. There are excellent reasons for presuming that he occupied the position of a mere tributary of the King of the Visigoths, and had voluntarily surrendered his daughter as a pledge of his fidelity. Under these circumstances his allegiance could not have been deeply grounded; and his conduct appears under a less odious aspect than the treason of an hereditary vassal would have done, especially when it is remembered that he was not the aggressor. The general and unqualified abhorrence with which his name is associated can be traced to ecclesiastical writers, who have neglected no opportunity to blacken the character of every political adversary, heretic, and apostate in the eyes of posterity.

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.”

CHAPTER VI
THE EMIRATE
713–755

Abd-al-Aziz—His Wise Administration—His Execution ordered by the Khalif—Ayub-Ibn-Habib—His Reforms—Al-Horr—Al-Samh—His Invasion of France—His Defeat and Death—Abd-al-Rahman—Feud of the Maadites and Kahtanites—Its Disastrous Effects—Anbasah-Ibn-Sohim—His Ability—He penetrates to the Rhone and is killed—Yahya-Ibn-Salmah—Othman-Ibn-Abu-Nesa—Hodheyfa-Ibn-al-Awass—Al-Haytham-Ibn-Obeyd—Mohammed-Ibn-Abdallah—Abd-al-Rahman—His Popularity—Proclaims the Holy War—Treason of Othman-Ibn-Abu-Nesa—The Emir attempts the Conquest of France—Character of Charles Martel—Battle of Poitiers—Death of Abd-al-Rahman—Abd-al-Melik—Okbah-Ibn-al-Hejaj—His Wisdom and Capacity—Charles Martel ravages Provence—Berber Revolt in Africa—Victory of the Rebels—Abd-al-Melik-Ibn-Kottam—Balj-Ibn-Beschr—Thalaba—Abu-al-Khattar—Condition of Western Europe—Unstable and Corrupt Administration of the Emirs—Importance of the Battle of Poitiers.

The principle of hereditary right, although it occupied no place in the polity of Mohammed, was denounced by the Koran, and repudiated by the Arabs of ancient times, had been, since the dynasty of the Ommeyades attained to power, to a certain extent tacitly recognized by the subjects of the khalifs. Although the latter dignity was among orthodox Mussulmans still elective, like the office of an Arab sheik, the Persian schismatics had, for some generations, accustomed themselves to consider the descendants of Ali as the only legal Successors of the Prophet, to whom had been transmitted the inalienable prerogatives of regal power and even the sacred attributes of divinity. The ambition of the sovereigns of Damascus had been occasionally gratified by the accession of their sons to the throne, a result not unfrequently accomplished by means of questionable character. When the loyalty of the nobles and the obsequious devotion of the multitude were not sufficient to enable him to attain the desired end, the Khalif did not hesitate to use bribery, threats, and even assassination, to perpetuate the coveted dignity in his family. From the monarch this natural principle—a species of hero-worship, so common as to be almost universal, and exhibiting its tendencies even in the administration of the greatest of modern republics—descended to the prominent officials of the empire and to their subordinates the walis, the governors of provinces and cities. For these reasons, the appointment by Musa of his three sons to be respectively emirs of East and West Africa and Spain was regarded by the Moslem population of those countries and by the army as the exercise of a prescriptive right which scarcely required the formal confirmation of the sovereign. Notwithstanding the ferocious and jealous temper of Suleyman, and the fact that he had heaped upon Musa injuries which were unpardonable, he, for some time, permitted the sons of the conqueror of Al-Maghreb and Andaluz to exercise without molestation the functions of their several emirates. Abd-al-Aziz, to whom had been assigned the difficult task of the political reorganization of the Peninsula,—a task which involved the erection of one system of government upon the ruins of another which had nothing in common with, and much that was hostile to, it,—entered upon his duties with all the energy and tact of an accomplished soldier and statesman. Some cities removed from the immediate influence of the conquerors had renounced their allegiance and refused the customary tribute. These were speedily reduced to submission. The convention of Musa with Theodomir, the Gothic tributary of Murcia, was solemnly ratified. Detachments under different commanders were despatched to the North and West, who carried the Moslem arms to the shores of Lusitania and the mountains of Biscay and Navarre. Castles were built for the protection of the frontiers, and garrisons of important towns placed under the command of experienced officers of tried fidelity. A Divan or Council was established. Receivers of taxes and magistrates were appointed to conduct the civil departments of the administration. Secure in the protection of their own laws and the enjoyment of their ancient religious privileges, the Mohammedan yoke was hardly felt by the Christian population, whose restrictions were confined to a show of outward respect for the institutions of their masters and the regular payment of tribute. All acts of violence and oppression were punished, and public confidence was restored. The peasants rebuilt their cottages; the labors of the agriculturist, interrupted by civil commotion and foreign encroachment, were resumed; the grass-grown thoroughfares of the cities once more echoed with the welcome sounds of traffic, and the sad traces of many successive years of warfare and devastation began to gradually disappear from the face of the Peninsula.

But, however equitable was the civil administration of Abd-al-Aziz, its beneficent effects in the eyes of both Moslems and Christians were more than neutralized by the excesses and licentious violence of his private life. In the gratification of passions strong even for an Oriental, his conduct surpassed the ordinary limits of brutal tyranny. The fairest maids and matrons of the Gothic population crowded his seraglio; and even the homes of noble Arabians were not secure from the visitations of his eunuchs. Egilona, the queen of Roderick, having fallen into his hands, became first his concubine and afterwards his wife. She was indulged in the practice of her religion, an unusual privilege for one in her position; and, by the unbounded influence she soon acquired over her husband, succeeded in sensibly alleviating the miseries of her countrymen. Her beauty, her vast wealth, which she had secured by a timely submission and the payment of tribute, and her talents, which appear to have been of no mean order, added to the ambition once more to sit upon a throne, soon made themselves felt in the affairs of government. She began to direct the policy of the Emir, to the disgust and apprehension of the members of the Divan and the officers of the army. She imprudently attempted to introduce the ceremonial of the Visigothic court, which required the prostration of all who approached the throne of the monarch; a custom repugnant as yet both to the equality and independence recommended by the precepts of the Koran and to the proud spirit of the Arab. By her advice the treaty was concluded with Theodomir, who thereby acquired for life the sovereignty of the beautiful province of Murcia. The exercise of such authority was considered by pious Moslems as boding ill to the empire of Islam when enjoyed by a woman and an infidel. The rumor spread that Abd-al-Aziz, helpless under the fatal spell of this sorceress, was meditating apostasy and aspiring to independent power. These reports, which derived some color of probability from the universal belief of the multitude, the personal popularity and well-known ambition of the Emir, and his presumed desire to avenge the wrongs of his father, were communicated to the Khalif, who determined to at once remove all danger from any designs of the sons of Musa. Orders were accordingly despatched to five of the principal officers of the army of occupation in Spain to put Abd-al-Aziz to death. The first who opened and read the commands of the Khalif was Habib-Ibn-Obeidah, an old and valued friend of the family of Musa. His distress may be imagined; but the order was peremptory, and the ties of friendship, the sentiments of gratitude, the reminiscences of social intimacy, were not to be considered by the devout Moslem when was interposed the imperious mandate of the Successor of the Prophet of God. Having consulted with each other, the executioners, who feared the vengeance of the army, devoted as it was to its chief, determined to kill Abd-al-Aziz while at his devotions. It was the custom of the Emir to pass much of his time at a summer palace in the suburbs of Seville, attached to which was a private mosque. Here, while upon his knees reciting the morning prayer, he was attacked and despatched without resistance. His body was buried in the court of the palace, and his head—a sanguinary proof of the obedience of his assassins—was sent in a box filled with camphor to Suleyman at Damascus. Thus perished one of the most distinguished captains of the age, whose talents and dexterity promised a rapid solution of the difficult questions of policy which confronted the new rulers of Spain, and whose gentle and considerate treatment of the vanquished—conspicuous amidst the repulsive asperity of barbarian manners—proved his destruction. A few weeks elapsed, and his brethren, the emirs of Africa, followed him by the hand of the executioner. The fate of his unfortunate consort, Egilona, is unknown. In common with King Roderick and his conqueror Tarik, with Count Julian and the sons of Witiza, her future, after a remarkable career, passes into oblivion. It is not a little singular that so many of the most conspicuous personages of their time should all, one after another, without any apparent reason, have been thus abruptly dismissed by the chroniclers of the age.

The Khalif, in his haste to destroy the family of Musa, had neglected to designate a successor to Abd-al-Aziz, and Spain remained for a short time without a governor. Realizing the dangers of a protracted interregnum among the heterogeneous elements of which the inhabitants of the Peninsula were composed, a number of the Moslems most eminent in rank and influence assembled, and, in accordance with the ancient custom of the Desert, elected Ayub-Ibn-Habib provisional Emir. Ayub was a captain of age and experience and the cousin of Abd-al-Aziz. His first act was to remove the seat of government from Seville to Cordova, on account of the more advantageous location of the latter city, destined to remain during the domination of the conquerors the Mecca of the Occident, the literary centre of the Middle Ages, the school of polite manners, the home of science and the arts; to be regarded with awe by every Moslem, with affectionate veneration by every scholar, and with mingled feelings of wonder and apprehension by the turbulent barbarians of Western Europe. For greater convenience in collecting the revenue and restraining the indigenous population, the country had been divided into numerous districts, governed by walis, inferior officials responsible to the Emir. The lives of these magistrates, passed amidst the turmoil of revolution, the sack of cities, and the slaughter of infidels, rendered them but ill qualified to administer the affairs of a nation in time of peace. The acts of cruelty and extortion perpetrated by these petty tyrants, far removed from the eye of the court, had become an intolerable grievance. It devolved on Ayub to investigate their official conduct, and many of them were deposed and punished. The new Emir travelled through his dominions, correcting abuses, building fortresses, repairing the decaying walls of cities, encouraging the development and cultivation of fields long since abandoned by the farmer, redressing grievances without distinction of creed or nationality, and by every means promoting the welfare of his grateful subjects. In those provinces which had been depopulated, he established colonies of immigrants and adventurers from Africa and the East. In others, where the Christians preponderated, he settled numbers of Jews and Moslems, whose presence might curb the enthusiasm and check the aspirations of the implacable enemies of the Mohammedan faith. The watch-towers which crowned the summits of the Pyrenees and defended the passes leading to Narbonnese Gaul—that region of mystery which the imperfect geography of the Arab had designated the Great Land, and the imagination of the Oriental had peopled with giants and fabulous monsters—were strengthened and garrisoned with troops whose activity and vigilance had been tested in many a scene of toil and danger. Scarcely had the administration of Ayub been fairly established, before the vindictive spirit of the Khalif demanded his removal. Mohammed-Ibn-Yezid, Emir of Africa, was ordered to deprive of office all members of the tribe of Lakhm, to which Musa had belonged, and Al-Horr-Ibn-Abd-al-Rahman was invested with the precarious dignity of Viceroy of the Peninsula. Four hundred representatives of the proudest of the Arabian nobility, whom zeal for the faith, the love of adventure, or the hope of renown had attracted to the shores of Africa, accompanied him; warriors, many of whose descendants were destined to attain to distinction in every rank of civil and military life—even to the royal dignity itself—and to become the most prominent members of the Moslem aristocracy of Spain.

From the beginning, the arbitrary measures of the Emir carried distress and anxiety into every town and hamlet of the country. His rapacity knew no bounds. Under pretext of a deficiency in the collection of tribute, the officials charged with that duty were imprisoned and put to the torture. In the infliction of punishment no distinction of religious belief was recognized; Moslem and Christian alike felt the heavy hand of the tyrant; and even the oldest and most renowned officers of the army, veterans who had served in Syria and Africa, the companions of Tarik and Musa, were not exempt from the exactions of his insatiable avarice. So intolerable did these oppressions become, that the cause of Islam was seriously endangered; proselytism ceased; no official, however high in rank, was secure in the possession of liberty, property, and life; and the unfortunate Jews and Christians were exposed to all the evils of the most cruel persecution. As the Emir of Africa evinced a remarkable apathy when the removal of Al-Horr was demanded by the outraged people of Spain, application was made to the Khalif Omar in person, who at once deposed the offensive governor, and appointed as his successor Al-Samh, the general commanding the army of the northern frontier. This appointment did credit to the discernment of the Khalif, for it proved eminently wise and judicious. The first efforts of Al-Samh were directed to the correction of irregularities in the administration of the revenue. Formerly the large cities, where was naturally collected the most of the wealth of the kingdom and hence the bulk of property liable to taxation, had been required to contribute only one-tenth of their income towards the expenses of government, while the villages and the cultivated lands had been assessed at one-fifth. This inequality was due originally to a desire to favor the Jews, whose love of traffic had induced them to establish themselves in the principal towns, offering, as the latter did, better facilities for the encouragement of commerce and the rapid accumulation of property. In addition to this much-needed reform, the able viceroy collected the bands of Moors and Berbers,—whose nomadic habits and predatory instincts, inherited from a long line of ancestors, had resisted former attempts at colonization,—settled them upon unoccupied lands, and, by every possible inducement, tried to impress upon the minds of these savage warriors the importance and the superior advantages of civilization. He caused a census to be taken of all the inhabitants of the Peninsula, and with it sent to Damascus elaborate tables of statistics, in which were carefully described the various towns, the topography of the coast, the situation of the harbors, the wealth of the country, the nature of its products, the volume of its commerce, and the extent of its mineral and agricultural resources. The restoration of the magnificent bridge of Cordova, constructed in the reign of Augustus, is of itself an enduring monument to his fame. But the energies of Al-Samh were not expended solely in the monotonous but beneficial avocations of peace. As the friend and associate of Tarik he had seen service on many a stoutly contested field, and now, when his dominions were tranquil and prosperous, he received, with the exultation of an ardent believer, the order of the Khalif to carry the Holy War beyond the Pyrenees.

The province of Narbonnese Gaul, once a part of the Visigothic empire, and hitherto protected from the incursions of its dangerous neighbors by the lofty mountain rampart which formed its southern boundary, continued to cherish the traditions and to observe the customs of its ancient rulers. It embraced the greater portion of modern Languedoc, that smiling region which, watered by the Rhone, the Garonne, and their numerous tributaries, had, through the fertility of its soil and the advantages of its semi-tropical climate, early attracted the attention of the adventurous colonists of Greece and Italy. The high state of civilization to which this region attained, and its progress in the arts, are manifested by the architectural remains which still adorn its cities,—remains which, in elegance of design and imposing magnificence, are unequalled by even the far-famed ruins of the Eternal City. No structures in any country illustrate so thoroughly the taste and genius of classic times as the arch of Orange, the Pont du Gard, the temples and the amphitheatre of Nîmes, whose graceful proportions and wonderful state of preservation never fail to elicit the enthusiastic admiration of the traveller. The inhabitants also have retained, through the vicissitudes of centuries of warfare and foreign domination, the traits and features of their classic ancestry. In the vainglorious pride of the Provençal and his neighbor the Gascon are traceable the haughty demeanor of the Roman patrician; while the women of Arles, in their symmetry of form, their faultless profiles, and their statuesque grace, recall the beauties of the age of Pericles.

This territory was known to the Goths by the name of Septimania, from the seven principal cities, Narbonne, Nîmes, Agde, Lodève, Maguelonne, Béziers, and Carcassonne, included within its borders, and was still governed by the maxims of the Gothic polity which formerly prevailed in the Peninsula. Although divided into a number of little principalities, whose chieftains promiscuously indulged their propensities to rapine without fear of the intervention of any superior power, it had for years preserved the appearance of a disunited but independent state. In the North, the anarchy accompanying the bloody struggles of the princes of the Merovingian dynasty, which preceded the foundation of the empire of Pepin and Charlemagne, removed, for the time, all danger of encroachment from that quarter. But the Gothic nobles, since the battle of the Guadalete, had cast glances of anxiety and dismay upon the distant summits of the Pyrenees. Innumerable refugees from Spain had sought safety among their Gallic kinsmen, and the tales which they related of the excesses of the invaders lost nothing in their recital by these terror-stricken fugitives. Too feeble of themselves to entertain hopes of successful resistance, the Goths suspended for a time their hereditary quarrels, and, to avoid the impending ruin, acknowledged the sovereignty of Eudes, the powerful Duke of Aquitaine.

Al-Samh, having completed his preparations, emerged from the mountain passes at the head of a formidable army. After a siege of a month, Narbonne, the capital of Septimania, surrendered to the Moslems, who obtained from the churches and convents an immense booty, most of which had been deposited by fugitive Spanish prelates in those sanctuaries as places of inviolable security. Almost without a blow, the fortresses of Béziers, Maguelonne, and Carcassonne accepted the liberal conditions of Mohammedan vassalage. The flying squadrons of Arab cavalry now spread ruin and alarm over the beautiful valley of the Garonne. So attractive was the country and so lax the discipline, that it was with some difficulty the Emir succeeded in collecting the scattering detachments of his army, which had wandered far in search of plunder; and, resuming his march, he at length invested the important city of Toulouse, the capital of Aquitaine. The siege was pushed with vigor, and the inhabitants, reduced to extremity, were already meditating a surrender, when the Duke approached with a force greatly superior to that of the Moslems. The latter, disheartened at the sight of such an overwhelming multitude, were disposed to retreat, when the Emir, actuated by a spirit worthy of the ancient heroes of Islam, roused their flagging courage by an eloquent harangue, in which he artfully suggested both the prizes of victory and the promises of the Faith. As the two hosts ranged themselves in martial array, the priests distributed among the Franks small pieces of sponge which had received the blessing of the Pope; amulets more serviceable, it appeared, than the thickest armor, for we are assured by the veracious chroniclers of the age that not a Christian soldier who carried one of these valuable relics lost his life in the battle. The contest was long and obstinate; the Moslems performed prodigies of valor; but they had lost the religious fervor which had so often rendered their arms invincible; and anxiety for the safety of their spoils had greater influence upon them than the security of their conquest or the propagation of their religion. The issue long remained doubtful; but the Emir having exposed himself too rashly fell pierced by a lance; and his army, completely routed, retired from the field with the loss of two-thirds of its number. Abd-al-Rahman-al-Ghafeki, an officer of high rank and distinguished reputation, was invested with the temporary command by his associates, and conducted the shattered remnant of the Moslems to Narbonne. Intent on plundering the treasures of the enemy’s camp, which contained the bulk of the portable wealth of Septimania, the Franks could not be induced to reap the full advantages of victory. The retreat was conducted with consummate skill, for the peasantry, aroused by the news of the disaster, swarmed in vast numbers around the retreating Moslems, who were often compelled to cut their way through the dense and ever increasing masses, which immediately closed in and harassed their rear.

This was the first serious reverse which had befallen the hitherto invincible arms of Islam. The tide had begun to turn, and the implacable enmity cultivated for centuries between the two contending nations of Arabia—which neither the precepts of a congenial form of faith, nor military fame, nor uninterrupted conquest, nor the possession of fabulous wealth, nor the enjoyment of the fairest portions of the globe could eradicate—was now to exhibit to the world the splendid weakness of the Successors of Mohammed. A glance at the origin and progress of this barbarian feud, which survived the impetuous ardor of proselytism, and had nourished for ages its hereditary vindictiveness, and, arising in distant Asia, was destined to be revived with undiminished violence upon the plains of Aragon and Andalusia, is essential to a proper understanding of the causes to which are to be attributed the downfall of the Moslem Empire of the West.

As already mentioned, irreconcilable hostility had existed from time immemorial between the inhabitants of Northern and Southern Arabia. Due to a difference of origin, and probably based upon invasion and conquest in a prehistoric age, this race-prejudice had been aggravated by a feeling of mutual hatred and contempt, derived from the different avocations of the people of Yemen and those of the Hedjaz, the peaceful merchants and the lawless rovers of the Desert. The Maadites, to whom the Meccans belonged, were shepherds and brigands. They prided themselves upon being the aristocracy of Arabia; and the thrifty and industrious dwellers of the South, the Kahtanites, who saw nothing degrading in the tillage of their fields, in the care of their valuable date plantations, and in the profits of commerce, could, in the consciousness of superior wealth and culture, readily endure the scorn of their neighbors, whose gains were obtained by overreaching their guests, by extortions from pilgrims to the Kaaba, and by sharing in the plunder of caravans. The Medinese, whose origin was partly Jewish, whose pursuits were sedentary, and whose affiliations connected them with the trading communities of Yemen, were classed with the Kahtanites by the children of Maad. From this mutual antagonism the religion of Mohammed received its greatest impulse and the power which enabled it to overturn all its adversaries; and from it, also, are to be traced the misfortunes which befell the empire of Islam even before it was firmly established; which made every country and province in its wide dominions the scene of civil strife and bloodshed; which profaned with insult and violence the shrines of the most holy temples; which annihilated whole dynasties by the hand of the assassin; and which, far more potent than the iron hand of Charles Martel and the valor of the Franks, lost by a single stroke the sceptre of Europe. Hence arose the disputes which terminated in the murder of Othman and its terrible retribution, the sack of the Holy Cities; the intrigues and controversies which resulted from the election of Ali; the death of Hosein; the insurrections of the fanatical reformers of Persia; the proscription of the Ommeyades; the perpetual disorders which distracted the Emirate of Africa. In Spain also, whither had resorted so many of the fugitives of Medina and their Syrian conquerors, the smouldering embers of national prejudice and religious discord were rekindled. The most sacred ties of nationality, of religion, or of kindred were powerless to counteract this deep-rooted antipathy, which seems inherent in the two divisions of the Arab race. The most noble incentives to patriotism, the pride of victory, the alluring prospects of commercial greatness, of literary distinction, of boundless dominion, were ignored in the hope of humiliating a rival faction and of gratifying a ruthless spirit of revenge. At different times—such is the strange inconsistency of human nature—the Maadites became voluntary dependents of the kings of Yemen and Hira. In an age of remote antiquity, the Himyarite dialect spoken in the South had been supplanted by the more polished idiom of the Hedjaz.

The intensity and duration of the hatred existing between Maadite and Yemenite are inconceivable by the mind of one of Caucasian blood, and are without precedent, even in the East. It affected the policy of nations; it determined the fate of empires; it menaced the stability of long-established articles of faith; it invaded the family, corrupting the instincts of filial reverence, and betraying the sacred confidences of domestic life. Upon pretexts so frivolous as hardly to justify a quarrel between individuals, nations were plunged into all the calamities of civil war. A difference affecting the construction of a point of religious discipline was sufficient to assemble a horde of fanatics, and devote whole provinces to devastation and massacre. A petty act of trespass—the detaching of a vine-leaf, the theft of a melon—provoked the most cruel retaliation upon the community to which the culprit belonged. The Maadite, inheriting the haughty spirit of the Bedouin marauder, despised his ancestors if there was in their veins a single drop of the blood of Kahtan; and, on the other hand, under corresponding conditions of relationship, the Yemenite refused to pray even for his mother if she was allied to the Maadites, whom he stigmatized as a race of barbarians and slaves. And yet these were divisions of the same people; with similar tastes and manners; identical in dress and personal aspect; speaking the same tongue; worshipping at the same altars; fighting under the same banners; frequently united by intermarriage; actuated by the same ambitions; zealous for the attainment of the same ends. The investigation of this anomaly, an ethnical peculiarity so remarkable in its tenacity of prejudice, and which, enduring for more than twenty-five hundred years, the most powerful motives and aspirations of the mind have failed to abrogate, presents one of the most interesting problems in the history of humanity.

In the train of Musa had followed hundreds of the former inhabitants of Medina, who carried with them bitter memories of ruined homes and slaughtered kinsmen. The impression made by these enthusiastic devotees—defenders of the sepulchre of the Prophet, and eloquent with the traditions of the Holy City—upon the savage tribes of Africa was far more deep and permanent than that of the homilies of Musa delivered under the shadow of the scimetar. Their bearing was more affable, their treatment of the conquered more lenient, their popularity far more decided, than that of the haughty descendants of the Koreish. With the memory of inexpiable wrong was cherished an implacable spirit of vengeance. The name of Syrian, associated with infidelity, sacrilege, lust, and massacre, was odious to the pious believer of the Hedjaz. His soul revolted at the tales of ungodly revels which disgraced the polished and voluptuous court of Damascus. The riotous banquets, the lascivious dances, the silken vestments, the midnight orgies, and above all the blasphemous jests of satirical poets, struck with horror the abstemious and scrupulous precisians of Medina and Aden. The Ommeyade noble was looked upon by them as worse than an apostate; a being whose status was inferior to that of either Pagan, Jew, or Christian. The feelings of the descendants of the proud aristocracy of Mecca towards their adversaries were scarcely less bitter. They remembered with contempt the obscure origin and plebeian avocations of the first adherents of the Prophet. Their minds were inflamed with rage when they recalled the murder of the inoffensive Othman, whose blood-stained garments, mute but potent witnesses of his sufferings, had hung for many months in the Great Mosque of Damascus. With indignation was repeated the story of the cowardly attempt against the life of Muavia, and of the poisoned thrust which brought him to an untimely end. With but few exceptions, the Emirs of Spain were stanch adherents of the line of the Ommeyades, and never failed to discriminate against the obnoxious Medinese and their posterity. The latter retaliated by secret treachery; by open rebellion; by defeating vast schemes of policy before they were matured; by encouraging the dangerous encroachments of the Asturian mountaineers. This sectional strife early disclosed itself in the face of the enemy by fomenting the quarrel between Tarik and Musa. It thwarted the plans of the great Arab general, whose enterprising genius and towering ambition aimed at the subjugation and conversion of Europe. It armed the hands which struck down in the sanctuary the wise and capable Abd-al-Aziz. It retarded the progress of Abd-al-Rahman, filled his camp with brawls and confusion, increased the insubordination of his troops, and gave time for the recall of the barbarian hosts of Charles Martel from the confines of Gaul and Germany. In the Arabian population the Yemenite faction largely preponderated, especially in Eastern and Western Spain, which were almost exclusively settled by its adherents. In consequence of their numerical superiority and political importance, they claimed, certainly with some appearance of justice, the right to be governed by an emir whose views and sympathies were in accordance with their own. The court of Damascus, thoroughly cognizant of the uncertain hold it maintained upon a distant and wealthy province, inhabited by a turbulent rabble whose animosity towards the family of the Ommeyades was thinly disguised by lukewarm professions of loyalty and occasional remittances of tribute, had the sagacity to humor its prejudices, and to appoint to the Spanish Emirate governors of the dominant party. In the course of forty years, but three of the rulers of Spain out of twenty traced their origin to the detested posterity of Maad. This politic course preserved in its allegiance the wealthy provinces of the Peninsula, until the influence of the Yemenites and the Berbers was hopelessly weakened by the civil wars preceding the foundation of the Western Khalifate. The effects of the latter, by the serious disturbances they promoted and the consequent injury inflicted upon the integrity of the Mohammedan empire, had awakened the hopes and revived the faltering courage of the terrified nations of Christendom.

There is perhaps no recorded instance of a feud so obscure in its origin, so anomalous in its conditions, so momentous in its consequences, as this rancorous antagonism of the two divisions of the Arabian people. It illustrates more clearly than an entire commentary could do, the inflexibility of purpose, a trait conspicuous in the Bedouin, which could sacrifice all the advantages and pleasures of life, all the hopes of eternity, to the destruction of an hereditary foe. For centuries, in an isolated and arid country of Asia, certain hordes of barbarians, ignorant of the arts, careless of luxury, proud, intrepid, and independent, had pursued each other with unrelenting hostility. With the advent of a Prophet bringing a new revelation, the most potent influences which can affect humanity are brought to bear upon the nation. A whole people emigrates; is in time united with many conquered races; appreciates and accepts the priceless benefits of civilization; becomes pre-eminent in science, in letters, in all the arts of war and government, in all the happy and beneficent pursuits of peace. But amidst this prosperity and grandeur the hereditary feuds of the Desert remained unreconciled. Neither the denunciations of the Koran nor the fear of future punishment were able to more than temporarily arrest this fatal enmity. Islam was in a few generations filled with dangerous schismatics, whose tribal prejudice was, more than devotion to any dogma, the secret of their menacing attitude towards the khalifate. The mockery and sacrilege of the princes of Damascus, scions of the ancient persecutors of Mohammed, were caused by equally base, selfish, and unpatriotic motives. And the people of Medina, without whose timely aid—induced, it is not to be forgotten, by this perpetual feud between Kahtanite and Maadite—-Islam could never have survived, were doomed henceforth to a career of uninterrupted misfortune. Their city, which had sheltered the Prophet in his adversity, and had received his blessing, was sacked and laid waste; and in the sacred mosque which covered his remains were stabled the horses of the Syrian cavalry. The unhappy exiles, pursued in every land by the impositions and cruelty of the tyrants of Syria, were, despite their frequent efforts to throw off the yoke, finally cowed into submission. In the long series of rulers, from Sad-Ibn-Obada, surnamed The Perfect, the champion of Medina, whose election as the first of the Khalifs the overbearing insolence of the Koreish was scarcely able to prevent, to the effeminate Boabdil, his lineal descendant, the conduct of the Defenders of the Prophet is marked by errors of judgment, by want of tact, by defiance of law, and by ill-timed enterprises prolific of disaster. No city, however, has placed a deeper impress upon the history of nations and the cause of civilization, since the immortal age of Athens, than Medina. Its influence, although often of a negative character, while it was the support of Islam in its period of weakness, was a serious impediment in its day of power. The benefits it conferred upon a handful of struggling proselytes were more than counterbalanced by the discord it promoted in the camps and councils of Irac, Syria, Africa, and Spain.

The census taken by Al-Samh had disclosed the vast preponderance of Christians who still adhered to their ancient faith, and the fears of the Khalif Yezid were aroused by the presence of so many hostile sectaries in the heart of his empire. To obviate this evil, and to assure the future permanence of Moslem supremacy, he devised a scheme which indicates a degree of worldly wisdom and political acuteness rare in the councils of that age. He proposed that the Christian population of Spain and Septimania be deported and settled in the provinces of Africa and Syria, and the territory thus vacated be colonized with faithful Mussulmans. Thus Spain would have become thoroughly Mohammedan, and the establishment of armed garrisons in Gaul would have been supplemented by the aid of a brave and active peasantry, affording an invaluable initial point for the extension of the Moslem arms in the north and east of Europe. But this was by no means the greatest advantage of this bold and original stroke of statesmanship. The penetrating eye of Yezid had already discerned the dangerous character of the mountaineers of the Asturias, who had preserved the traditions and inherited the valor of the founders of the Gothic monarchy. The removal of this threatening element was equivalent to its extirpation, and would probably have preserved for an indefinite period the Moslem empire of Spain in its original integrity. The province of Septimania, supported by the powerful armies of a united and homogeneous nation, could then have defied the desultory assaults of the Franks. The exiles, scattered in distant lands, must by force, or through inducements of material advantage, have gradually become amalgamated with their masters; their children would have professed the prevailing faith; and the progenitors of that dynasty whose policy controlled the destinies of Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries would have disappeared from the knowledge of man. The severity of this project, dictated partly by religious zeal, but principally by political acumen, would have been excessive, yet its beneficial effects upon the fortunes of Islam must have been incalculable. But the mind of Al-Samh, incapable of appreciating the paramount importance of the enterprise, despising the Goths of the sierras as savages, and, like the majority of his countrymen, underestimating their resolution and capacity for warfare, induced him to discourage the plan of the Khalif, by representing that it was unnecessary, on account of the daily increasing numbers of converts to the doctrines of the Koran. The successful inauguration of a similar policy by Cromwell in Ireland nine hundred years afterwards, whose completion, fortunately for the rebellious natives, was defeated by his death, demonstrates the extraordinary sagacity of the sovereign of Damascus in devising a measure of statecraft whose execution portended such important consequences to modern society, and which has, for the most part, escaped the notice of the historians of the Moorish empire. Before departing upon his unfortunate expedition, Al-Samh had left Anbasah-Ibn-Sohim, one of his most trusty lieutenants, in charge of the affairs of the Peninsula. The latter, learning of the rout of Toulouse, without delay sent a large body of troops to the North to cover the retreat of the defeated army; a precaution rendered unnecessary by the generalship of Abd-al-Rahman, who was now recognized as emir, the choice of his comrades being soon afterwards confirmed by the Viceroy of Africa. The Christians of Gothic Gaul and the Asturias, greatly elated by the disaster which had befallen their enemies, soon manifested greater hostility than ever, and it required all the firmness and prudence of Abd-al-Rahman to restrain them. The insurrection which began to threaten the power of the Moslems in the trans-Pyrenean province was, however, crushed before it became formidable; the mountaineers were driven back into their strongholds; the suspended tribute was collected, and an increased contribution was levied upon such communities as had distinguished themselves by an obstinate resistance.

Although the idol of his soldiers, Abd-al-Rahman was not a favorite with the great officials of the government. They admired his prowess, and were not disposed to depreciate his talents, but they hated him on account of his popularity, for which he was mainly indebted to his lavish donations to the troops. It was his custom, as soon as the royal fifth had been set apart, to abandon the remainder of the spoil to the army, a course so unusual as to provoke the remonstrances of his friends, while it elicited the applause and secured the undying attachment of the soldiery. Application was made by the malcontents to the Viceroy of Africa, Baschar-Ibn-Hantala, for the removal of Abd-al-Rahman, under the pretext that the Moslem cause was becoming endangered through the prevalence of luxury introduced by his unprecedented munificence. The charges were pressed with such vigor that they prevailed, and Anbasah-Ibn-Sohim was raised to the emirate. Abd-al-Rahman—such was the confidence of his opponents in his integrity and patriotism—was reinstated in the government of Eastern Spain, which he had held previous to the battle of Toulouse. With the submission and piety of a faithful Moslem, he congratulated his successor, swore fealty to him, and retired without a murmur to reassume a subordinate position in a kingdom which he had ruled with absolute power. Anbasah soon displayed by active and salutary measures his fitness for his high office. The administration had become to some extent demoralized by the easy temper and prodigal liberality of Abd-al-Rahman, and Anbasah’s first care was to remodel the fiscal department and adopt a new and more exact apportionment of taxation. Carefully avoiding any appearance of injustice to the tributary Christians, he divided among the immigrants—who now, in larger numbers than ever before, poured into Spain from Africa and the East—the lands which were unoccupied, and had hitherto served as pastures to the nomadic Berbers, whose traditions and habits discouraged the selection of any permanent habitation. While inflexibly just to the loyal and obedient, Anbasah punished all attempts at insurrection with a rigor akin to ferocity. Some districts in the province of Tarragona having revolted on account of real or fancied grievances, the Emir razed their fortifications, crucified the leaders, and imposed upon the inhabitants a double tax, both as a punishment and a warning. In order to keep alive the respect for the Moslem name, he sent frequent expeditions into Gaul, whose operations, conducted upon a limited scale, were mainly confined to the destruction of property and the seizure of captives.

The Jewish population of the Peninsula, relieved from the vexatious laws of the Goths and greatly increased in wealth and numbers by foreign accessions, had already risen to exalted rank in the social and political scale under the favorable auspices of Mohammedan rule. It enjoyed the highest consideration with the Arabs, whose success had been so largely due to its friendly co-operation. This community, endowed with the hereditary thrift of the race, rich beyond all former experience, still ardently devoted to a religion endeared by centuries of persecution, and by the deeply grounded hope of future spiritual and temporal sovereignty, was now startled by the report that the Messiah, whose advent they had so long and so patiently awaited, had appeared in the East. The highly imaginative temperament of the Oriental, and the phenomenal success of the founders of religious systems in that quarter of the world, had been productive of the rise of many designing fanatics, all claiming the gifts of prophecy and miracle, and all secure of a numerous following in an age fertile in impostors. In this instance, the Hebrew prophet, whose name was Zonaria, had established his abode in Syria; and thither in multitudes the Spanish Jews, abandoning their homes and carrying only their valuables, journeyed, without questioning the genuineness of their information or reflecting upon the results of their blind credulity. No sooner were the pilgrims across the strait, than the crafty Emir, declaring their estates forfeited by abandonment, confiscated the latter, which included some of the finest mansions and most productive lands in the Peninsula. This fanatical contagion extended even into Gaul, and the Jewish colonists of that region hastened to join their Spanish brethren in their pilgrimage of folly, only to realize, when too late, that they had lost their worldly possessions without the compensating advantage of a celestial inheritance.

Having regulated the civil affairs of his government to his satisfaction, the eyes of Anbasah now turned towards the North, where lay the tempting prize of France, coveted by every emir since the time of Musa. The prestige of the Arabs had been materially impaired by the serious reverse they had sustained before Toulouse. The first encounter with the fiery warriors of the South whom fear had pictured as incarnate demons, and whose prowess was said to be invincible, had divested the foes of Christianity of many of the terrors which exaggerated rumor had imparted to them. Of the numerous fortified places in Septimania which had once seemed to be pledges of a permanent Mohammedan settlement, the city of Narbonne alone remained. Its massive walls had easily resisted the ill-directed efforts of a barbarian enemy, unprovided with military engines, and unaccustomed to the protracted and monotonous service implied by a siege, while its vicinity to the sea rendered a reduction by blockade impracticable. Thus, protected by the natural advantages of its location and by the courage of its garrison, Narbonne presented the anomaly of an isolated stronghold in the midst of the enemy’s country. Traversing the mountainous passes without difficulty the Emir took Carcassonne, a city which had hitherto enjoyed immunity from capture; and by this bold stroke so intimidated the inhabitants, that the whole of Septimania at once, and without further resistance, returned to its allegiance to the Khalif. No retribution was exacted for past disloyalty, as Anbasah was too politic not to appreciate the value of clemency in a province held by such a precarious tenure; the people were left as before to the untrammelled exercise of their worship; but the unpaid tribute was rigorously collected, and a large number of hostages, chosen from the noblest families of the Goths, were sent to Spain.