days, the Arab culture had not quite died out; the Arab refinement had not been entirely destroyed. Excellent schools were maintained at Cordova. The judicial and financial administration was superior, not only to anything in Spain, but probably to anything in Europe. Ambassadors were welcomed from Emperors and Caliphs; and the arts and sciences were cultivated in the cities, even when the country was being ravaged by rebels and robbers, and the frontiers were harried by Christians from the Asturias, and more savage pirates from the Baltic. Mohammed I. died after a long and inglorious reign, in 886, and was succeeded by his son, Al Mondhir, who gave place, in 888, to his brother Abdullah, who reigned without glory, if without special shame, until 912, when he was succeeded by the third and the last Abdur Rahman, the greatest of all the Mohammedan rulers of Spain. Under the master-hand of this blue-eyed, fair skinned Arab, the amiable, the gentle, the prudent, the accomplished Abdur Rahman an Nasir-who first made the title of Caliph of Cordova,1 no less honourable and no less honoured than that of Caliph of Bagdad-was Moslem Spain once more raised from insignificance and anarchy to a splendour undreamed of by any former sovereign. The Berber, the Marabout, the renegade, the refugee, all these had vexed Spain for nearly one hundred years. And Spain rose once more to new and greater glory under an Arab Caliph at Cordova. The first care of the young monarch was to restore peace and unity to the Moslem Commonwealth; and his efforts were completely successful. Distracted by constant revolts, and dissatisfied with a fruitless independence, the rebel cities gradually submitted themselves to the arms of one who was bold enough to demand obedience, and strong enough to enforce it. One by one the leading rebels were vanquished and slain; one by one the leading cities were subdued and pacified. The new Caliph was stern, but he was not cruel. His work was at once quietly and thoroughly done. Unconquered in war, he was essentially a man of peace; liberal, refined, magnificent, with an iron will and a generous heart; and after eighteen years of firm and resolute government he found himself, not only the master, but the idol of a united country. Nor was he less successful in his attacks upon the Christians in the North; and his great victory at Val de Junqueras, in 920, over the combined forces of Leon 1 In 929 he was also called Amir al Momenin, Commander of the Faithful, a title as familiar to every reader of the Arabian Nights as that of the Caliph of Bagdad. It has been corrupted by Spanish writers into Miramamolin. and Navarre, was scarcely overshadowed by the Moslem defeat at Alhandega twenty years later, in 939.1 Abdur Rahman an Násir died in 961.2 In the course of his long and brilliant reign he had restored the Rule of the Moslem in Spain from a condition of anarchy, weakness, and disgrace to the highest pitch of power, of glory, ard of prosperity. Beloved at home, respected abroad; renowned not only for his liberality, his good taste, and his magnificence, but for his gentleness, his justice, his generosity, his name will ever be associated with the most glorious days of that most glorious empire which was well-nigh the creation of his youth, and the idol of his maturer years.3 II. The City of Cordova, The most beautiful, the most magnificent, the most luxurious, the most civilized city of medieval Europe in the tenth century was Cordova. Its markets were always stocked with the richest and most varied products of every country. No robe, however costly, says a contemporary writer, no drug, however scarce, no jewel, however precious, no rarity of distant and unknown lands, was wanting in its splendid bazaars. Even before his arrival, the visitor had some foretaste of the luxury that awaited him, for on all the principal roads leading to the city, the Caliph established Manzils or Rest-housessomething after the fashion of the Dak-Bungalows maintained by the modern Anglo-Indian Government-for the gratuitous occupation of travellers.4 Within the city the Caliph had his Palace of Flowers, his Palace of Contentment, his Palace of Lovers, and most beautiful of all, the Palace of Damascus, looking upon gardens watered by the noble Guadalquivir; while the humblest Moslem took his ease in the Golden Meadow, in the Garden of the Waterwheel, and the Meadow of Murmuring Waters.5 Rich and poor met in the Mezquita, the noblest place of worship then standing in 1 Ramiro also defeated the Moslems at Talavera in 950. 2 Abdur Rahman an Násir lidín illah; Defender of the Religion of God, was the title assumed by the Caliph in 929. 3 Viardot, Essai sur l'Histoire des Mores d'Espagne (1833); Dozy, Histoire, tom. ii. and iii.; Stanley Lane Poole, Moors in Spain; Murphy and Shakspear, Mohammedan Empire in Spain; Casiri, ii. 39; Cardonne, i. 338; Gayangos, i. pp. 200., etc., et seq. 4 Viardot, Essai, p. 101. B Gayangos, I., lib. iii., cap. I. Europe,1 with its twelve hundred marble columns, and its twenty brazen doors; the vast interior resplendent with porphyry and jasper and many coloured precious stones, the walls glittering with harmonious mosaics, the air perfumed with incense, the courtyards leafy with groves of orange trees-showing apples of gold in pictures of silver. Throughout the city, there were fountains, basins, baths,2 with cold water brought from the neighbouring mountains, already carried in the, leaden pipes that are the highest triumph of the modern plumber. But more wonderful even than Cordova itself was the suburb and palace of Az Zahra. For five-and-twenty years the third and greatest Abdur Rahman devoted to the building of this royal fancy one-third of the revenues of the State; and the work, on his death, was piously continued by his son, who devoted the first fifteen years of his reign to its completion. For forty years ten thousand workmen are said to have toiled day by day, and the record of the refinement as well as the magnificence of the structure, as it approached completion, almost passes belief. It is said that in a moment of exaltation the Caliph gave orders for the removal of the great mountain at whose foot the fairy city was built, as the dark shade of the forests that covered its sides overshadowed the gilded palace of his creation. Convinced of the impossibility of his enterprise, An Nasir was content that all the oaks and beech trees that grew on the mountain side should be rooted up; and that fig trees, and almonds, and pomegranates should be planted in their place; and thus the very hills and forests of Az Zahra were decked with blossom and beauty. Travellers from distant lands, men of all ranks and professions, princes, ambassadors, merchants, pilgrims, theologians and poets, all agreed that they had never seen in the course of their travels anything that could be compared with Az Zahra, and that no imagination, however fertile, could have formed an idea of its beauties. Of this marvellous creation of Art and Fancy not one stone remains upon another-not a vestige to mark the spot on which it stood; and it is hard to reconstruct from the dry records of Arab 1 The Parthenon had no worshippers; St. Sophia alone could compare with the great Temple at Cordova. 2 "The Arabs of Andalusia are also the cleanest people on earth in what regards their person, dress, beds, and in the interior of their houses; indeed, they carry cleanliness to such an extreme that it is not an uncommon thing for a man of the lower classes to spend his last dirhem in soap instead of buying food for his daily consumption, and thus go without his dinner rather than appear in public with dirty clothes." Of the general rudeness and dirt of their Christian contemporaries the evidence is only too abundant. Gayangos, i., pp. 116, 117. historians the fairy edifice of which we are told no words could paint the magnificence. According to these authors the enclosing wall of the palace was four thousand feet in length from east to west, and two thousand two hundred feet from north to south. The greater part of this space was occupied by gardens, with their marble fountains, kiosks and ornaments of various kinds, not inferior in beauty to the more strictly architectural parts of the building. Four thousand three hundred columns of the rarest and most precious marbles supported the roof of the palace; of these some were brought from Africa, some from Rome, and many were presented by the Emperor at Constantinople to Abdur Rahman. The halls were paved with marble, disposed in a thousand varied patterns. The walls were of the same material, and ornamented with friezes of the most brilliant colours. The ceilings, constructed of cedar, were enriched with gilding on an azure ground, with damasked work and interlacing designs. Everything, in short, that the wealth and resources of the Caliph could command was lavished on this favourite retreat, and all that the art of Constantinople and Bagdad could contribute to aid the taste and executive skill of the Spanish Arabs was enlisted to make it the most perfect work of its age. Did this palace of Zahra now remain to us, says Mr. Fergusson, we could afford to despise the Alhambra and all the other works of the declining ages of Moorish art.1 It was here that Abdur Rahman an Nasir received Sancho the Fat, and Theuda, Queen of Navarre, the envoys from Charles the Simple of France, and the ambassadors from the Emperor Constantine at Constantinople. The reception of these Imperial visitors is said to have been one of the most magnificent ceremonies of that magnificent Court. The orator who had been at first entrusted with the speech of ceremonial greeting, was actually struck dumb by the grandeur of the scene, and his place was taken by a less impressionable rhetorician.3 Nor was it only material splendour that was to be found 1 There was another palace and city somewhat similar in name, Az Záhirah, built by Almanzor between 978 and 981, on the banks of the Guadalquivir, not far from Cordova. In riches and beauty Az Záhirah is said to have rivalled even Az Zahra, but owing to its having been destroyed by the Berbers during the civil wars on the death of Almanzor, all trace of the city has perished, and even tradition is very uncertain as to the details.-Gayangos, i., 232-242. 2 The Imperial embassy was sent by Constantine VII. in 947. The Caliph is said to have also received embassies from the Duke of the Slavonians, the King of the Alamani, and from Hugo of Franconia. 3 Gayangos, ii., 143-145. Respecting the state of science among the Andalusians, we must own in justice that the people of that country were the most ardent lovers of knowledge, as well as those who best knew how to appreciate and distinguish a learned man and an ignorant one; indeed, science was so much esteemed by them that who at Cordova. At a time when Christian Europe was steeped in ignorance and barbarism, in superstition and prejudice,1 every branch of science was studied under the favour and protection of the Ommeyad Caliphs. Medicine, surgery, botany, chemistry, poetry, the arts, philosophy, literature, all flourished at the Court and city of Cordova. Agriculture was cultivated with a perfection, both theoretical and practical, which is apparent from the works of contemporary Arab writers.2 The Silo, so lately introduced into England as a valuable agricultural novelty, is not only the invention of the Arabs, but the very name is Arabic, as is that of the Azequia and of the Noria of modern Spain. Both the second and the third Abdur Rahman were passionately fond of gardening and treeplanting; and seeds, roots, and cuttings were brought from all parts of the world and acclimatized in the gardens at Cordova, A pomegranate of peculiar excellence, the Safari, which was introduced by the second Abdur Rahman from Damascus, still maintains its superiority, and is known in Spain to the present day as the Granada Zafari. Thus, in small things as in great, the Arabs of Cordova stood immeasurably above every other people or any other government in Europe. Yet their influence unhappily was but small. They surpassed, but they did not lead. The very greatness of their superiority rendered their example fruitless. Mediæval chivalry, indeed, was largely the result of their influence in Spain. But chivalry as an institution had itself decayed long before a new-born Europe had attained to the material and moral perfection of the great Amirs of Cordova. Their political organization was unadapted to the needs or the aspirations of Western Europe, and contained within itself the elements, not of developinent, but of decay. Their civilization perished, and left no heirs behind it-and its place knows it no more.3 ever had not been endowed by God with the necessary qualifications to acquire it did everything in his power to distinguish himself and conceal from the people his want of instruction; for an ignorant man was at all times looked upon as an object of the greatest contempt; while the learned man, on the contrary, was not only respected by all nobles and plebeians, but was trusted and consulted on every occa sion. His name was in every mouth, his power and influence had no limits, and he was preferred and distinguished in all the occasions of life.-Gayangos, vol. i., lib. ii., cap. iii. And see Renan, Mélanges, p. 15. 1 Les Espagnols (i.e., the Christians at this period, says Condé) vivent comme des bêtes sauvages, entrant les uns chez les autres sans demander permission, et ne lavent ni leur corps, ni même leurs habits, qu' ils n'ôtent que lorsque qu'ils tombent en lambeaux.--Viardot, Essais, i., 191-2. 2 Particularly the work of Abu Zakariah al Awán, which has been translated by D. José Antonio Banqueri (Madrid, 1802).—Cf. Viardot, Essai, i., 129-131; and Wentworth Webster, Spain, p. 45. 3 L'irrémédiable faiblesse de la race arabe, says M. Renan-Mélanges, p. 283--est dans son manque absolu d'esprit politique, et dans son incapacité de toute organization. |