Abdur Rahman, who, as the son of a Christian princess, was mistrusted both by the palace and by the people; and the country became a prey to Anarchy.

Cordova was sacked. The Caliph was imprisoned; rebellions, poisonings, crucifixions, civil war, bigotry and scepticism, the insolence of wealth, the insolence of power, a Mahdi and a Wahdi, Christian alliance, Berber domination, Slav mutineers, African interference, puppet princes, all these things vexed the Spanish Moslems for thirty disastrous years; while a number of weak but independent sovereignties arose on the ruins of the great Caliphate of the west.1

The confused annals of the last thirty years of the rule of the Ommeyades are mere records of blood and of shame, a pitiful story of departed greatness.

On the death of Hisham II., the Romulus Augustulus of Imperial Cordova, Moslem Spain was divided into a number of petty kingdoms, Malaga, Algeciras, Cordova, Seville, Toledo, Badajoz, Saragossa, the Balearic Islands, Valencia, Murcia, Almeria, and Granada. And each of these cities and kingdoms made unceasing war one upon another. From the death of Hisham, if not from the death of Almanzor, the centre of interest in the history of Spain is shifted from Cordova to Castile.

1 The Caliphate indeed is said to have come to an end only on the death of Hisham III. in 1031; but the sovereigns from the death of Almanzor had little authority and no merit.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE KINGDOM OF LEON.

(910-1068.)

THE brief reign (912-914) of Garcia, the son and successor of Alfonso the Great, is only remarkable for the transfer of the Christian capital from Oviedo to Leon; and his younger brother, who succeeded him at his death as Ordoño II., reigned from 914 to 921 as King of Leon. This Ordoño abandoned the peaceful policy of his greater father, and undertook many expeditions with varying and uncertain success against the Arabs. He plundered Merida in 917, and routed the Berbers in Southern Spain in 918. Yet three years later, at Val de Junqueras (921), near Pamplona, the Christians suffered disastrous defeat. The usual rebellion at home was appeased by the treacherous execution or murder of no less than four Counts of Castile in 922, and was followed by the King's death in 923.

Of Fruela II. (923-925), Alfonso IV.1 (925-930), and Ramiro II. (930-950), little need be said, but that they lived and reigned as Kings of Leon.

To Ramiro, however, is due, at least, the honour of an authentic victory over the Moslem forces of the great Caliph, Abdur Rahman an Nasir (939), at Simancas,2 and afterwards in the same year at Alhandega.3

Ramiro, after the usual rebellion, abdicated, in 950, in favour of his son Ordoño-who had married Urraca, daughter of the principal rebel of the day, Ferran Gonzalez, Count of Castile-and who succeeded his father as Ordoño III.

But decapitation was a far more certain way of suppressing rebellion than matrimony; and Fernan Gonzalez lived to intrigue against his daughter and her royal husband in favour

1 Alfonso IV. abdicated in favour of his brother Ramiro, Oct. 11th, 930; and retired, having first been fraternally exoculated, into the Monastery of Sahagun (Dozy, Recherches, i. 165).

As to the celebrated Battle of Simancas, see Lafuente, iii. 437, and iv. 15, 16. 3 Dozy, Recherches, i. 181-186, discusses, with his usual erudition and acuteness, the situation of Alhandega, the second battle of this well-nigh forgotten campaign-victoire si éclatante qu'on en parla au fond de l' Allemagne aussi bien que dans les pays les plus reculés de l'Orient.

of Sancho, a younger brother of the king. Ordoño, however, held his own against his brother, and revenged himself on his father-in-law, by repudiating his wife; who, with her personal and family grievances, was promptly acquired by Sancho, who succeeded, on his brother's death, to the crown of which he had failed to possess himself by force. But even as a legitimate sovereign, Sancho, surnamed the Fat, was not allowed to reign in peace. He was driven from his kingdom by that most versatile rebel, Count Fernan Gonzalez, and sought refuge at the court of his uncle Garcia of Navarre at Pamplona. Thence, in company with Garcia, and his mother Theuda, he journeyed to the court of the Caliph at Cordova, where the distinguished visitors were received with great show of welcome by Abdur Rahman at Az Zahra; and where Hasdai, the Jew, the most celebrated physician of the day, succeeded in completely curing Sancho of the distressing malady-amorbid and painful corpulency-which incapacitated him from the active discharge of his royal duties.

The study and practice of medicine were alike disregarded by the rude dwellers in Leon; but the Cordovan doctor, surpassing in his success, if not in his skill, the most celebrated physicians of the present day, contrived to reduce the king's overgrown bulk to normal proportions, and restored him to his former activity and vigour, both of body and mind. Nor was the skill of Hasdai confined to the practice of medicine An accomplished diplomatist, he negotiated a treaty with his Christian patient, by which Sancho bound himself to give up ten frontier fortresses to the Caliph, on his restoration to the Crown of Leon, while Don Garcia and Doña Theuda undertook to invade Castile in order to divert the attention of the common foe, the ever ready Fernan Gonzalez.

In due time Sancho, no longer the fat, but the hale, returned to Leon at the head of a Moslem army, placed at his disposal by his noble host at Cordova, drove out the usurper, Ordoño the Bad, and reigned in peace in his Christian dominions. The visit of this dispossessed Ordoño to the Court of the Caliph Hakam at Cordova, in 962, is an interesting specimen of the international politics or policy of his age and country.2

As Sancho had recovered his throne by the aid. of Abdur Rahman, so Ordoño sought to dethrone him and make good his own pretensions by the aid of Hakam. The Caliph, already harassed by Fernan Gonzalez, and doubting the honesty of King Sancho, was not ill-pleased to have another pretender in hand, and Ordoño was invited to 1 Dozy, Histoire, iii. 80-89.

2 See Gayangos, vol. ii., lib. vi., cap. 6.

Cordova, and received by Hakam in the palace at Az Zahra with the utmost pomp and display. The Leonese prince craved in humble language the assistance of the Moslem, and professed himself his devoted friend, ally, and vassal; and he was permitted to remain at the Court of Hakam, to await the issue of events in the North. Some few days afterwards a treaty was solemnly signed between the Caliph and the Pretender, and once more the glories of Az Zahra were displayed to the eyes of the astonished barbarian from Leon.

Nor did the fame of these splendid ceremonies fail to reach Sancho in the north-west; and his spirit of independence was considerably cooled by the prospect of a Moslem army, headed by his cousin Odoño, making its appearance before his illdefended frontiers. The manoeuvre was sufficiently familiar; and the reigning monarch lost no time in disassociating himself from the hostile proceedings of Fernan Gonzalez; and sending an important embassy to Hakam at Cordova, to assure him of his unwavering loyalty, he hastened to announce his readiness to carry out to the letter all the provisions of his recent treaty with the Caliph. Hakam was satisfied. Ordoño languished disregarded at Cordova, despised alike by Moslem and Christian, but unharmed and in safety as the guest of the Arab. Sancho reigned in peace until 967, when he was poisoned by the rebel count of the day, Sanchez of Gallicia. His son, who was known as Ramiro III., an unwise and incapable monarch, reigned at Leon from 967 to 982, without extending the possessions or the influence of the Christians in Spain; and Bermudo II., who usurped the throne, was no match for the fiery Almanzor, who ravaged his kingdom, took possession of his capital, and compelled the Christian Court to take refuge in the wild mountains of the Asturias, and. once more to pay tribute to the Moslem at Cordova

Bermudo died in 999; and on the death of Almanzor, three years later, the Christian fortunes under the young Alfonso V.,1 who had succeeded his father Bermudo, at the age of only five, began to mend. Cordova was given up to anarchy. The Moslem troops retired from Northern Spain. Leon became once more the abode of the king and his Court, and though Alfonso gave his sister in marriage to Mohamined an Amir or Vali of Toledo, he extended his Christian dominion in more than one foray against the declining power of the Moslem.2

1 Romey, Hist. d'Espagne, tom. iv., pp. 451-2.

There was an invasion of the Northmen in 966-971, and again about the year 1008, when the town of Tuy, at the mouth of the Minho, was destroyed.

In 1018 Catalonia was ravaged by the French Normans, under one Roger; and the taking of Barbastro, in Sobrarbe, from the Moslems in 1064, by the same bold adventurer, was accompanied by the most terrible atrocities. The unhappy

Alfonso V., who is known in Spanish history as the Restorer of Leon, sought to consolidate his own power, as he certainly exalted that of his clergy, by the summoning of a Council, after the manner of the Visigothic Councils of Toledo. The Council met at the city of Leon on the 1st of August, 1020, in the Cathedral Church of St. Mary. The King and his Queen Elvira presided, and all the bishops and the principal abbots and nobles of the kingdom took their seats in the Assembly. And if there was no Leander, nor Isidore, nor Julian to impose his will upon King or Council, the interests of the Church were not entirely overlooked. Of the fifty-eight decrees and canons of this Council, the first seventeen relate exclusively to matters ecclesiastical; the next twenty are laws for the government of the kingdom, the remaining thirty-one are municipal ordinances for the city of Leon.

But Alfonso V. was not exempted from the usual rebellions, and marriages, and assassinations, and executions, which constituted the politics of the day. Garcia, the last Count of Castile, was treacherously slain in 1026; and Alfonso was himself more honourably killed in an attack upon a Moslem town in Lusitania in 1027.

The life of Fernan Gonzalez, the Warwick of medieval Spain, is almost as much overlaid with romantic legends as that of Roderic or Roland.2 The lives and deeds of his ancestors, and the origin of his ever-celebrated County of Castile, are involved in the utmost confusion and obscurity; but Fernan Gonzalez himself is at least a historical personage. He married Sancha, daughter of Sancho Abarca of Navarre, and their son, Garcia Fernandez, succeeded him as hereditary Count of Castile.

As early as the year 905, Sancho, a Christian chief of whose ancestors and predecessors much has been written, much surmised, and nothing is certainly known, was king or ruler of the little border state of Navarre. A prudent, as well as a warlike sovereign, he fortified his capital city of Pamplona; and when his son, in alliance with Ordoño II. of

town was recovered in the course of the next year by the Arabs under Moctadi, of Saragossa, the first patron of the Cid; and was once more taken by Peter of Aragon in 1101, after which it remained for ever in the power of the Christians. For an account of all these expeditions see Dozy, Recherches, etc., vol. i., 300-315; and 388-390.

As to this most interesting assembly-the first of the great Councils of Spain after the fall of the Visigoths-see post, chapter xxxiii., Constitutional History.

2 The monumental tomb at Burgos has "A Fernan Gonzalez, libertador de Castilla, el mas excelente General de ese tiempo." Cf. España Sagrada, xxvi. Lafuente, iii., 494-501, and iv., pp. 19, 20. See also a Disertacion by Don F. Benito Montego, printed in the Mem. of the Real Acad. de Hist., iii., 245-317; and a judicious summary in Romey, Hist. d'Espagne, tom. iv., pp. 286-295.